MC level 31, play time 44 hours and 20 minutes, two weapons mastered, 174 quests fulfilled and at least another 100 to go. My left finger, wrist and elbow hurt from constantly pressing L to run. It really should be press L once to run and L again to turn it off, but game developers never learn. And the boost in speed is so slight that it would be millions of times better to make the running speed faster in the first place.

And still Frontier Gate Boost+ doesn’t have much of a story beyond “Explore and do quests until you get tired.” There are these two legendary heroes who have gone missing, and there’s mention of a “Frontier Gate” out there somewhere, but nobody’s really on my case to do anything about those. My partners have a little bit more story now that I’ve gotten our bonds up to level 4, but not much.

Alettio – Idolizes the legendary heroes and wants to be like them. Gets jealous of all the attention MC is getting, flies off on his own, gets his ass kicked and crawls back with his tail between his legs. I used to like him, but things just haven’t been the same between us since that incident.

Mariasharte – Princess of some country somewhere. Got tired of being a painted figurehead and ran off to the frontier to make something of herself. Not a bad character, but her weapon (spear) and its skills are pretty useless. She’s not very hardy either. I might make her a mage instead.

Emilio – Swordsmith on a hunt for a legendary sword. Once in a while we come across a clue and run off on a wild goose chase, but otherwise not much has happened in his story.

Sigrid – Looking for revenge on the renegade pioneer who killed her brother. Normally quite placid, but goes berserk whenever she hears of anyone who meets that description.

Lutil – A trainee nun of the game’s equivalent of a church. Needs to find a sparkly jewel of some sort to become a full-fledged sister, but every time she finds one, she trips, falls on it and crushes it. Plus it turns out they were all fakes anyway. Not too annoying as far as clumsy girls go, but as with Maria her weapon (great shield) is quite terrible.

Dandes – Old dude who has a long history with  a type of monster named Shin. Motivated by MC to come out of retirement. His axe weapon is powerful but slow, but since he joined at a high level I’m getting good use out of him anyway.

Dizzy – Local adventurer with a complex because she comes from the boonies and not the city. Not only is her attitude poor, but the mace she uses barely does any damage at all. I get the feeling MC could do good damage with a mace, so I don’t know why Dizzy is so pathetic. Another candidate for magedom, perhaps.

Melfy – Itinerant doctor. I think she joined so she could look for herbs and stuff in the field, but I don’t remember her reason any more. She uses knuckles, the best weapon in the game, but somehow she’s nowhere near as impressive with them as MC was. I guess MC is just special.

Nike – Priestess in training, taking time off to do whatever she wants before she enters priestess-hood proper. Her older sister was supposed to be the priestess, but she took off upon finding out that their “god” is actually a monster. So far Nike refuses to accept the truth, but she will.

Olga – Working to save money to help the kids in an orphanage. Started out as a renegade, then turned in her accomplices and went clean. So weak she gets killed in 9 battles out of 10, and MC kicks three times as much butt with the same bowgun as Olga does.

Folca – Hasn’t joined me yet, but he probably will. Based on the things he said, he’s either the one who killed Sigrid’s brother (but it was a misunderstanding) or he knows something about it.

I try to give all my party members equal play time, but the ones with more use (Melfy, Emilio, Dandes) inevitably get the more exciting quests while the item hunt and delivery quests usually go to the weaker ones. The downside of this is that they’re all 5 to 12 levels behind MC now. The way the battle system works means I’m not particularly inconvenienced whether they live or die, so I usually let them die if they want and revive them before killing the last enemy. *shrug* Whatever.

I don’t even know why I’m playing this any more. Force of habit? I don’t know. I’ll quit soon, or maybe I won’t. I don’t know. >_____< These mediocre games will be the death of my gaming career, seriously.