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#they should have waited a year until they had... some fuckin gameplay

istesvioutyet · 3 years

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But we got... Starfield, I guess... so...

#they should have waited a year until they had... some fuckin gameplay #remember the fallout 4 reveal? remember how good that was?#forget the quality of the game itself. the quality of the reveal.#I will remember that e3 for the rest of my life it was insane

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svtskneecaps · 4 years

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i’ve been enabled

here’s the sitch on the goddamn harry potter hogwarts mystery app game

it fucking sucks

here’s my main issues in a handy list i’ll go down later:

the gameplay

energy

art / visuals

the story

the writing

the choose your own adventure like elements (technically gameplay since there isn’t much else l m a o)

and i have receipts for most of this stuff. fun fact, i’ve been taking videos of all plot relevant events since year 1.

some context:

i’ve played up to year 3 myself. i have watched up until the very beginning of year 5 in someone’s youtube series (will bits? that was his main character [henceforth referred to as MC]’s name, however that was a year ago and it was in the background like a podcast so the details are sort of fuzzy. i have not played the game since march (it’s september, ish), but i’m loading it up as i type this just to get a feel for it

idk whether to assume my audience has or hasn’t played the game. i’ll keep my complaints as clear as possible.

i’m mainly an author so the storytelling sections are where i’m really going to pop off, since that’s something i have the most experience with and passion in, but i’ll be touching on everything else because compounded it’s all pissing me off lmao

[a couple hints at spoilers for maybe an event in year 1, and year 3, but nothing major]

let’s start with: THE GAMEPLAY

there isn’t any

literally. there’s like. zero gameplay.

you tap some highlighted figures, and then sometimes you get to trace a little shape, and sometimes you get to play rock paper scissors to fight somebody (they did manage to make duelling slightly better but it’s still not good by any standard)

sometimes you get to choose between three dialogue options, but those have barely any impact on the story or on your character. any impact they have is limited to a couple stat points, or maybe some house points, or like. some event at the end of the year. but like barely any make any real serious difference (but i’ll touch on that more later)

and then there’s the factor of stat points (and this gets kind of mathy, so feel free to skip to the bolded sentence)

for those who haven’t played the game, you have three stats (empathy, courage, and knowledge) that you can level up by taking classes, 1, 3, or 8 hours, for various rewards

back when i stopped playing, i had gained 8914 points in courage. if i recall correctly i was only about halfway to leveling up that stat. if you take an 8 hour class, you receive consistently 200 stat points, with a possibility of extra rewards that i can’t count for since those are randomly generated.

to get those 8914 points, i would have had to take 44.57 8 hour classes (while 8 hour they only take about 7, counting for the 2 hours it takes my energy to recharge to full). with 44.57 classes taking 7 hours each, to get halfway to level 24, i would have had to have done:

THIRTEEN STRAIGHT DAYS OF GRINDING, ASSUMING THAT ALL I HAD BEEN DOING WAS CHECKING ON THE HARRY POTTER HOGWARTS MYSTERY APP

and again, I WAS ONLY LIKE HALFWAY TO LEVELLING UP

I AM BARELY BEGINNING FOURTH YEAR. I AM NOT EVEN HALFWAY THROUGH THIS GAME.

i think they’ve fixed this now; it said i had 8914/1550 courage and when i got stat points it fixed itself and jumped me from level 23 to 28, so thanks for that jam city.

but it doesn’t change the fact that the grinding is fucking horrible and i’ve done my fair share of hours, and who knows what it’s going to look like when i get to a higher level again

the energy

yes, i know it’s an app game. i know they want my money. but holy FUCK the energy recharges disgustingly slowly, and every bit they expand my energy bar is an insult

“here, have another energy capacity!” they say, and then add to the amount of energy it takes to complete a task at the same time, so now shit just takes me even damn longer

it’s an insult. don’t think i didn’t fuckin notice jam city.

since it’s an app game, naturally, energy requires paying real world money or the (semi) rare in-game currency to get more if you blow through your bar. they want your money. i know they want my money, but it doesn’t make me any less disappointed by how damn blatant they’re being. app games like bakery story probably also want my money, but at least those are still fun to play.

the art / visuals

now i’m not an artist. nor am i a 3-d modeller. but if solo indie devs and 10 men teams can make video games that have to have models with a much fuller range of motion (since there’s ACTUAL GAMEPLAY and not just little cutscenes of characters moving around) and that don’t make me sick to watch, then jam city working on a HARRY POTTER GAME should be able to (jk rowling fucking sucks but her books have brought in so much goddamn money that they can afford to pay their devs enough to make the game look good; in this case i’m not entirely sure where the blame lies)

there’s like. 10 motions characters can use while in the cutscenes and talking. like 10. and i can recognize every one of them, and there is not a single motion unique to a character. the characters are something i’ll touch on later in the storytelling sections, though. just, please god give them SOMETHING even SLIGHTLY different. like make two versions of a couple of the crowd animations at LEAST, so that when people celebrate at the end of the year there’s not twenty people in the shot doing the same “pump my fists in the air in celebration” motion at the exact same time. PLEASE.

sometimes animations in story events and classes sync up too, which is. beyond distracting. like it’s completely immersion breaking and i mean please, please jam city, if you haven’t fixed that please fix it. please.

the animations that roll in flying class are fun, ONCE. when you’ve seen them eight hundred thousand times because you’re grinding up your courage stat, they get hella boring. all of the classes are like this to some extent but flying is the biggest offender since those were the longest animations. if they haven’t implemented a skip button since i last played it, they should. they fuckin should.

also the fertilizer animation in the greenhouse scenes is gross. you pick up a deformed cone of dirt with your shovel like a slice of cake and then shove it clipping through the edges of a pot, where it disappears without a trace. i hate it. jam city please make the game look good.

if you still play the game please tell me it looks better; i’ll be playing through a couple things after i post this but it’s hphm. it’s gonna take me a goddamn long time to hit all the points and confirm whether what i complained about has been fixed or not

also also, wearing dresses is so distracting, especially while dueling. the way the dress flexes around your legs is like you’re wearing clothing made from jello and when my character does the idle animation her hands clip through her skirt, and there’s all kids of glitches with hair where it clips through outfits (and why in the fuck do the necklaces float a full foot from the character’s body)

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the storytelling

alright there’s a lot to cover so strap in

i’m not mad about the story having some of the same beats as harry potter. whatever, right? if it worked, it worked. having a big climax at the end of the year just works well for storytelling. having a school bully antagonist also works well for easy storytelling (it’s kinda cheap, but whatever works, right?) it’s what you DO with the archetypes you use that makes or breaks your story

jam city broke it

i don’t know how to organize my thoughts so here’s a bulleted list

it is very clearly obvious they wrote this as they went along (ex. a previously unseen character pops up in year 3 and was supposedly the best friend of your greatest enemy in previous years) and didn’t think to fix the plot holes

there’s too many goddamn characters (i love them, but with a big cast comes a whole host of problems [I WRITE FOR A KPOP GROUP WITH 13 MEMBERS, I HAVE A LOT OF EXPERIENCE WITH THAT], and we’ll get there)

there’s too much goddamn filler for the sake of forcing us to spend time and in-game energy (yes i KNOW it’s an app game and they want our money but THEY COULD BE A LITTLE MORE SUBTLE ABOUT IT)

what honestly pisses me off the most about it is that IT COULD BE GOOD

IF THE STORY WERE GOOD, I WOULD FUCKIN IGNORE ALL OF THAT OTHER SHIT

but it’s not, and here’s the biggest gripe i have:

none of the choices you make matter. none of them. to the point where it’s immersion breaking at BEST

for example, while my MC is a hufflepuff, i know a lot of people play in slytherin. scenes where snape gets upset with your character and takes away house points no longer make sense for a slytherin MC, because snape would be infinitely more likely to give you three years of nightly detentions, or pitch you off the astronomy tower, than he would be to take house points from slytherin

honestly, they should have waited. if they wanted to put choose your own adventure elements into the game, they should have planned out every single one of those story arcs in detail, and THEN released the game. they could leave some of the more basic choices in and those choices only mattering for short term effects wouldn’t irk me as much as it does right now because THERE WOULD BE CHOICES THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE.

your very first choice over how you felt about your brother’s disappearance only matters for what wand you get (which i immediately forgot which really says something about the impact of that choice :)))) ). no matter what you pick, you still end up chasing after him for the rest of the game, so who cares?

story beats don’t land different based on your house. you could absolutely play it that merula hates you regardless of your house, that’s fine. just remember that if your MC is slytherin and lives in the female dorms, she probably shares a room with merula. which makes things fucky for all kinds of reasons, none of which jam city addresses in the current game, as far as i’m aware

also, there’s the deal with rowan

rowan is a character that goes into your mc’s chosen house no matter what (and as rowan changes pronouns with your player, i’ll be using “they” [or “she” as my player is a she and that’s what i’m used to; i’ll try to refrain but i might slip up occasionally] ). as far as i can tell, rowan’s personality remains the same no matter what house you’re in. they don’t try to play up the traits that match the house, rowan is just usually a sweet bookworm. why would the hat have put them in gryffindor? rowan khanna for me has never seemed to display any gryffindorish traits; or at the very least, no traits that should be prioritized over, say, the ravenclaw traits they have VERY STRONGLY (since rowan fills a sort of hermione role; rowan knows things about things and is your go to for research)

can we just put rowan in ravenclaw? sure, it would make it hard for fans in different houses to communicate between each other about the story for a time since certain sequences of events would play out differently, but here’s the thing:

if events play out differently based on your choices, people will want to play your game multiple times to get every ending

that’s the fun of a choose your own adventure game. if events play out distinctly differently if you’re a hufflepuff or a ravenclaw or a slytherin or a gryffindor, then people will want to play through the game four times at LEAST, once for each house, to get all the fun pieces of story (WHICH MEANS, they’ll be spending more and more time and using more and more energy, so you can make the same amount of money off people buying energy and watching the ads and maybe MORE while being able to cut out some of the more shitty pieces of filler)

in the current version, your house is just, what color are your robes and who is your prefect. i haven’t watched anyone who wasn’t a hufflepuff, but i’m sure that certain scenes and conflicts play out the exact same no matter what house you’re in

as an example, your house should affect how the duelling confrontation in year one should have gone. snape and flitwick should have different dialogue based on whether you’re a slytherin, or a ravenclaw, or a gryffindor, or a hufflepuff. snape fucking hates gryffindors, so he should be far less lenient against gryffindors, and on the flip side he should be battling between himself with how strict to be if you’re a slytherin; maybe he hates your guts because of a grudge against your brother, but you’re still in his house and we all know snape plays favorites. flitwick should be more disappointed if you’re a ravenclaw, because that’s his house and he had higher expectations for you. neither of them have many ties to hufflepuff that would skew the confrontation in a drastic direction, but had this been the first version of the game, then the confrontation that plays out in the current version we have would work fine for hufflepuff; you’re one of flitwick’s favorite charms students and he taught you this skill, and he’s disappointed to see you use it in this way, but not nearly as much as if you were one of his own

AND NOW PEOPLE WANT TO PLAY THE GAME MULTIPLE TIMES TO GET ALL THE DIALOGUE, WHICH MEANS MORE TIME, MORE ENERGY, AND MORE MONEY, JAM CITY, ARE YOU HEARING THIS??? MORE MONEY!!!!! IT’S A WIN WIN FOR EVERYONE

while we’re at it, change jacob to match his house. if you’re still gonna make him have the same house as the MC, make him match it. from how all the characters describe him that bitch is as slytherin as they come, if you’re gonna make him a hufflepuff with me then give him a clear, hufflepuff motive god damnit

finally,

the characters

there’s too many.

the problem with a big cast is no one gets enough screen time and some characters end up getting shunted to the side. that’s just what happens. you HAVE to zero in on four or five side friends and let the rest of them slip to the side. looking at my friends menu there are 17 characters you can befriend, not including hagrid, the quidditch crew, dobby, talbott, and chiara (since those are, as far as i know, unlocked via side quests, which are... fine. i don’t have any particular gripes about the side quests except for the thing with lupin being twice the size of tonks which, if you’ve read the seventh book i don’t need to explain how weird that is to you)

and BECAUSE there are so many, a lot of them have to be defined by one trait. ben is a coward, rowan’s clever and booksmart, penny has her hand on the school’s pulse and makes potions, liz likes creatures, charlie fuckin loves dragons, tonks likes pranks (seriously that’s her whole personality), andre likes clothes, barnaby is a dumb jock that likes creatures

like, traits are fun. but if that’s ALL THEY HAVE, that’s when things get a little fucky

how many of these characters have dimensions? i’m in year 4 chapter 4. the first screen recording of the game i took was on december 5 of 2019, and assuming i played about a minimum of 8 hours a day (”““played”““) until the final screen recording [may 20, 2020] before i dropped the game for about six months (i know for certain it was more than that, since i had some kind of activity going on at just about all times for at least a month of that, but i’ll take the generous estimate), at bare minimum that makes 1344 hours i spent playing this game, or about 56 days (keep in mind, this is a LOW estimate)

in those 56 days of gameplay, i don’t know ANYTHING about the characters other than their utility in my quest. i don’t know penny’s favorite color or even her favorite potion to brew, or how and why she started and when [there’s a reveal in third year that i watched someone play through, but i don’t know if i ever played through it myself; i don’t have any screen recordings of the event]. i don’t know anything about ben or his family aside from the fact that he’s muggleborn. i know some basic facts about barnaby’s family, and that he’s tough and likes creatures. rowan grew up on a tree farm and i have a vague recollection of her mentioning siblings. do we know anything about them?? do i know anything about how the characters interact with each other?? are barnaby and liz friends? they both like creatures. do they talk to charlie?? do ben and penny hang out while we’re not there? are ben and jae friends?? are jae and charlie??? DO THESE CHARACTERS EXIST WHEN THEY AREN’T NEEDED FOR THE CURSED VAULTS???

why in the fuck don’t i know these characters?? why don’t we know anything about tonks other than her affinity for pranking?? there’s a sharp bias in who the writer’s favorites are (they like the characters with angsty pasts they can twist around; what do we know about ben aside from his blood status? and he’s been around since first year; he’s the second friend you unlock. i know more about barnaby and i’ve known him for a much shorter time)

if you separate the routes, you get a chance to zero in on certain characters and actually develop them. if you’re a gryffindor, you befriend ben, charlie, and jae much more quickly and they make up the closest of your friends, along with rowan, if jam city is determined to keep their tutorial character constant across all plotlines (i still think rowan should be solely a ravenclaw, but i’ll allow rowan’s house to change so long as their personality shifts to emphasize certain qualities in order to match the change in house; your house should not just determine the color your robes are)

if you’re in slytherin, maybe you befriend barnaby in place of ben in the original game, or maybe there’s an arc where you clash heads with merula (who can still be an enemy even if you’re both in slytherin; merula doesn’t like competition and the MC is exactly that) and the rest of the slytherins in your year find themselves caught in the middle; maybe there’s an arc where your MC finds themself totally alone without allies due to the conflict between them and merula (might i suggest year two, while coming up on the climax of the year?)

hufflepuffs get to focus on tonks and penny much closer. ben can also be in this plotline, but he shouldn’t take center stage (characters should cross over plotlines, but only take center stage in one, aside from perhaps rowan if rowan remains constant). maybe chiara can get implemented into the main plotline to fill out the roster, and if not, diego caplan can get implemented earlier (i haven’t met him yet and know nothing about his character)

and ravenclaws get the ravenclaw characters BUT YOU GET THE POINT, i don’t want to bore anyone by repeating myself; this is long enough as is

what i’m saying is, these characters all have a different enough base that each route will be different just by focusing on different characters; ben and jae will respond to a situation much differently than penny and tonks might, which would ALREADY shake up the storyline of each house based on which house you choose in the beginning, and then characters overlap plotlines so you could leave hints in each route to the other characters’ unique backstories and motivations that leaves the player wanting to get to know the rest of your WELL DEVELOPED CAST (((MAKE SURE THEY’RE WELL DEVELOPED OR THIS WILL NOT WORK)))

WHAT I’M SAYING IS, THIS GAME COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD

if they put more effort into the story then maybe i would have gunned through the hufflepuff route so quickly and then restarted to go through all the rest of them. if you want people playing your game for longer then THAT is the way to go

yes, it will take time. yes, it will take effort. but you know what?

IT’LL ALSO MAKE YOU A FUCKTON OF MONEY FROM PLAYERS PLAYING EACH ROUTE IN FULL AND THEN PLAYING THEIR FAVORITE ROUTES AGAIN SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR

anyway, what i’m saying is, i hate this game so much because of the potential it had to succeed, and the potential it had to be a really good game. even if they didn’t change the gameplay much, even if they didn’t change the models, i could get past ALL OF THAT if the story was interesting

so uh. jam city, if you’re reading this, please. i will let you take away all of my days of playing this. i will let you render all of my progress obsolete and send me plummeting back into my first year at hogwarts to go through the game again, if you JUST, MAKE, MULTIPLE, ROUTES!!! MAKE MY CHOICES MATTER DAMN YOU!!!!!!!!

i’m also willing to let you use the ideas i posited here without credit or payment. because that sounds like a legal hassle and i am far too lazy to deal with that sort of thing, i just want to play a good game. please. please give me a good game to play.

also, make energy take 3 minutes to recharge. please.

so uh

TL;DR : i hate this game. and i wish i didn’t hate this game.

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sirbadgerduke · 5 years

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Devil May Cry V: “Hit’s the JACKPOT!”

I’ve got a hell of a lot to talk about regarding Devil May Cry and it’s franchise, both positive and negative(maybe?). But for now, I’ve got to play Devil May Cry 5 since it’s release back on March the 8th and am I ready to spill the beans that is my thoughts on this return to the classic style of Devil May Cry. Firstly, a warning; this review is going to be super, super biased since I’m a huge DMC fanboy, it was essentially the first Character Action game I ever owned and ever played and have loved it since. But anyway, let’s get down and dirty! Devil May Cry V is latest installment in the capcom made, Hack ‘n’ Slash franchise aptly named Devil May Cry. After a long eleven years between V and 4, due to a brief stint into reboot territory, the “Classic” style of DMC returns with a flash, bang and a ton of stylish pazazz to wash away the reboots grittier, edgy “Trylord” approach. The story follows Dante, Nero and newcomer, V as they try to take down a new threat that has risen a giant tree called the “Qliphoth” in Redgrave City. Returning faces such as Morrison(anime), Trish and Lady(Kyrie returns but in voice only) and another newcomer, the bombastic mechanic Nico Goldstein. Nero is out for payback since Urizen, the main antagonist, had taken his arm for more power. The story follows themes of family, humanity, both dark and light within clashing and forcing a separation that creates danger to those around it. The Story is, only narrowly so, the best yet.

Needless to say, the main element here? Is the gameplay. The aesthetic and graphics are probably the biggest things you’ll notice that have changed since 4. Going with a more photo-realistic approach ala the RE Engine, whilst still attaining that little “DMC-like” Style, it’s a very gorgeous game to look that’s for sure. The art style is pretty damn sexy in all the right ways, and works within the framework of “Smokin Sexy Stylish” like approach that whilst tones down some of the more psuedo-animeness? still keeps it all in line of how a Devil May Cry game should look. It’s more of a natural progression of how each iteration has grown and changed in many ways, both to reflect a growing maturity and a change in technology over time. To put it simply; The game is very gorgeous to look at, the character designs are great and refreshing whilst having a certain air of familiarity to it. Enemies look really good to, all kinds of creepy,badass, dead and grotesque, this goes to the bosses too. Older enemies return, and look better than ever, as if they’ve been fully realised in the RE Engine. While the level aesthetic is basically just “Cityscapes and alleyways to Underworldly demonic corridors” you could be mistaken to think that it could grow old fast but i’m currently on my third playthrough and it all still feels fresh in my opinion. The sound design? brutalising, pulse-pounding and raucous as hell. The VAs all do a splendid job of bringing these characters to life, Reuben and Johnny Yong Bosch are undeniably both Dante and Nero, possibly doing their best performances. The newer cast also do a great job, Nico’s actor really brings out her spunk and attitude with an infectious manner making her endearing and a lovable addition as well as V’s brooding, soft tone clashes with Griffon’s shitlord-esque delivery. The clinking and clanking of swords striking the Angelos armor to the fleshy tones of a demons being slice and the lightning cackles from Griffon’s lightning are all delightfully brutal. The music though, is probably some of the best in the franchise yet, from Cavaliere Angelo’s boss theme to V’s “Crimson Cloud” theme song, the music is affected by your style rank, and how pulsing and loud it gets. Score a D? it’s just low bakground murmurings but if you can score an S or above? it’s racing, pulsing and pumps you up ready to slay those demons to bits. Gameplay, oh what joy it is. The main course to your DMCV meal; is by far the best in the franchise(maybe only narrowly so). You have 3 playable characters at your disposal; Dante, Nero and V. Everyone who’s at least play 3 and 4 will already be used to Nero and Dante; The former focuses on one weapon though now he has access to the disposable “Devil Breakers” prosthetic arms that give you some neat abilities from slowing time, armor breaking to even replicating the Devil Bringer of 4. Dante is Dante; He has a versatile arsenal of devil arms and guns at your disposable and 4 styles you can switch between on the fly, same with the weapons too. It’s V though, who’s the most interesting as he doesn’t really fight directly, preferring the use of his Demon friends; Griffon, Shadow and Nightmare. Griffon is your “gun”, Shadow is your “Sword” and Nightmare acts as a devil trigger in which he just lumbers around the battlefield firing off lasers and doing his best Zangief impression to which V himself delivers the final blow with his cane. Each character is complex, deep and hard to master, but all kinds of fun to mess around with. You will be fighting to raise your Stylish Rank up to the lauded SSS tier, the challenge being both battlefield wary and keeping up your rank so it does not fall below and end up as D again. Enemies require varying tactics to beat, same goes with bosses, more so for them. The game is really simple enough(Auto-assist exists if you don’t want to focus too hard on learning combos) for anyone to pick up and play, though very taxing if you plan to master it. The Boss battles? my god they are a treat and super fun and really fuckin challenging to boot(especially the last one, but that’s spoiler territory). I’ve waited a loooong time for Devil May Cry’s return, after the woeful reboot attempt I had no hope of it returning. Here I am, writing up a review of possibly one of the best return to forms in video Games, hell definitely in Japanese Video Games. I’ve lived and loved this franchise since my first PS2, I continue to love it and will love it for a long time to come. I couldn’t be more happier with this fantastic hack ‘n’ slash title(Well, until Vergil is playable!), it brings me joy to see one of my favouriie franchise rise from the ashes like a phoenix, hell this is probably my GoTY contender so far. I’m so happy to say this; Devil May Cry is BACK and it’s hit the JACKPOT! Biased Score: A+ Unbiased Score: A

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davidmann95 · 5 years

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The Kingdom Hearts III Reaction

First thing’s first: yes, I got the responses to my initial reaction letting me know I could use L2 to cycle through triangle commands, and oh my god that made things so much more manageable, so thank you.

Gameplay wise, I said what I had to say right off the bat earlier: lot of fun, best version of the traditional playstyle. Gorgeous except for when it’s the most gorgeous. Way more game than I could handle on the margins, but it felt like fun available options I could choose whether to pursue or not rather than overwhelming.

Under the cut I’m gonna talk some broad structural stuff; I’ll avoid anything overtly spoilery, but it would certainly be understandable if you’d rather stay away. Under another bolded sign though I’m going to get into MAXIMUM spoiler territory, so those who just want my basic impressions but would prefer to hold off on more than that until they have their own go at it can know where to get off.

So this game does like 90% of everything I ever wanted it to do, plus so much MORE than I ever would have expected, resulting in a finale even more grand and resonant and satisfying than I might have imagined after nearly 13 years of waiting. The problem is that all that stuff is in the last 8 hours, and it is very, very clear that’s the part of the game Nomura and company actually cared about. This wasn’t interested in being Kingdom Hearts III, it wanted to be Kingdom Hearts III Part 3/3: The Finale after Dream Drop Distance and A Fragmentary Passage covered the other biggies, to the point of as mentioned before critically compromising the beginning of the game. It reached the point where Dream Drop Distance went from just baaaaarely pulling ahead of 358/2 Days to dead damn last in my ranking of these, because it not only set the tone for what went wrong here - even if this succeeded in the end in a way that couldn’t - but sponged off vital reveals and the conclusion to Riku’s character arc, both of which 1,000,000% needed to be in here so this could be a complete sequel rather than in an intermediary story where they were weakened by context.

Long story short, Nomura and Square are going to have to think very, very hard about what kind of a role the Disney worlds are going to play in these going forward, because the enthusiasm for them on the part of the writers is visibly dead. Not across the board, passion clearly went into the likes of the Toy Story and Big Hero 6 worlds, but it could not have been plainer that Monsters Inc. and Frozen were checkmarks being crossed off, perfunctory in a way I genuinely don’t feel the Disney worlds were in the past (though that may be in large part because this time around Sora is literally just there for level grinding, rather than an immediate search for friends, stripping away the central underlying emotional urgency of I and II). It would’ve been alright if there had been a major act break of the sort II had to provide a sense of forward momentum, but as is it really is just marking time while characters other than Sora drive the plot in the background, mostly in the form of catching up with what the audience already knows. They’ll always be a part of the franchise, and obviously the iconic Disney figures in Mickey and the rest will always be central, but unless the powers that be find a fresh new angle I think it’s getting to be time to scale the movie settings back in favor of the main story and original worlds, if not to the extent the Final Fantasy elements have received.

So I spent most of the game disappointed, figuring it would pull it all together for the finale and more than satisfy me, but not enough to retroactively redeem the game as a whole. And then it retroactively went and redeemed the game, because when I say it kicks off in the last 8 hours I don’t mean that that’s where things start getting parsed out in time for the finale. I mean it’s 8 solid hours of climax, physical and plot and character, the most intense and overwhelming of the franchise, answers to real-life-decade spanning mysteries and character resolutions and endgame-scale setpieces and catharsis being delivered just one after the other after the other. It’s the entire emotional underpinning of the game in a single titanic endrun, in an experience and at a pitch I’ve never seen before. Even the parts that should have been set up earlier in the game still have the entire rest of the series and years of anticipation leading into them, and while it’s a shame it had to bank on that advantage, it worked, because when I look back on the game in years to come it’s going to be this that I’ll remember, and when I someday a long time from now play through the franchise as a whole, I’ll go through the parts that previously irritated me with a smile on my face because it’ll just be a charming interlude rather than a dead stop. I can’t put this over II’s more well-rounded experience because of those structural issues, but while 0.2 is maybe the purest expression of intent thus far in the series, its brevity, and the fact that as good as it gets its best isn’t as good as this gets, puts III neck-and-neck with it as the franchise runner-up for me.

Okay, BIGGEST SPOILERS IN THE FUCKING WORLD UNDER THE IMAGE

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So being a person who exists online in the 21st century, I had some key images of the ending spoiled for me well in advance, which sucked but was also maybe a blessing in disguise, because if I hadn’t been braced when those last three seconds came...that would have been rough. It was startlingly rough as is, which is odd because as much as I’ve always liked Sora as a character and appreciated the odd way his nature as a Disney hero in a Final Fantasy dark epic makes him a perfect lead and counterpoint, I never realized the depths of emotional investment I’d attached to his specific fate until the rug got pulled out. It would be as blatant a “but there’s no body!” moment as any there’s ever been even without the secret ending and the confirmation on Nomura’s part that Sora will remain the main character, it’s an emotional blow and a setback and a mystery for the others to solve rather than a full tragic ending (and one would have to imagine the characters themselves would believe that and will act accordingly given this entire story was itself about bringing back a bunch of Very Definitely Dead Folks), but it’s harsh as hell even if it’s very clearly the next step in a Master Plan rather than purely blueballing players for the cruel joy of it. Still, even if it’s reminiscent of stuff we’ve seen before, a melancholy-at-best ending is fully within the franchise wheelhouse; if I’m right and there’s one full trilogy of main games remaining in the series (I’m guessing without many if any spinoffs, Nomura’s bosses are definitely going to have his nose to the grindstone to get through the remainder of this thing on a sane timescale so as not to have another...well, this), maybe it’ll fully establish a sad-odd-numbered-ending, happy-even-numbered ending pattern, with IV having a gleeful reunion, V ending with all seeming lost, and the grand finale letting the heroes have their happily ever after.*

Before getting into the gushing praise for the rest of it, the reason this is at 90% of everything I wanted rather than complete: Kairi is bizarrely shortchanged here compared to every other central character, especially given her relationship with Sora is the foundation of the very end and she’s the logical main protagonist for IV. Even her ‘death’ isn’t my issue so much - by the end of the game Sora has rescued literally every other main character from beyond the veil of the afterlife or a living hell in fairly rapid succession, she’s just the last and biggest deal to him personally - as that even a few more scenes with her would have shored up so much. Not that her material isn’t good when she is there, I absolutely do think it was, and the emotional buildup from the series up to this point was more than enough in my opinion to carry her stuff through, but it’s the equivalent of, say, Lois Lane appearing out of nowhere at the end of a Justice League story to provide the impetus for Superman: obviously this works and makes sense because we know how much they mean to one another, but in the context of this as a lone narrative it’s a little out of nowhere. Riku gets it pretty bad too, if not as much so, but he has the ‘excuse’ of having his character arc resolved in Dream Drop Distance. Still though, it means the central trio is scarcely a thing in here the way it was in the past, though it looks like the next game is going to be entirely about getting them back together and hopefully they’ll stay as a complete unit from there on out.

Also prior to gushing praise: if Dream Drop Distance hadn’t happened, it would be so easy to restructure this in a way that would make the whole thing satisfying instead of just a perfect chunk of it. Open the game with Sora and Riku going into the Realm of Darkness to save Aqua, have Sora succeed but in the process of THAT lose his powers (making it a noble sacrifice on his part foreshadowing the end rather than a non-fuckup that the player pays for); Aqua has to recuperate, preferably with Kairi and Lea so they can get more screentime, Sora’s off regaining his powers and tracking down clues to the location of Castle Oblivion since it was under Organization control and therefore hidden, and Riku’s off with Mickey having his DDD arc. Stick the reveal of the real Organization XIII midgame, and keep the finale almost exactly as is. That way, plot and character’s doled out throughout, character screentime is rebalanced, and everything that worked stays working and comes to the exact same conclusion.

Gushing praise time: holy fuckin’ cow, this hit me in ways I did not see coming. The reunion of the other two trios was something I looked forward to well enough but not anything I fully expected to outright bowl me over, but by god they pushed those buttons as hard as they could and made them everything anyone could need them to be. But that was expected, to one extent or another; what I don’t think anyone could have seen coming was, in the final gasp of this saga of hilariously, broadly Arch villains, every single one of them turning out to be a real goddamn human being with understandable emotions and motivations and implied history and arcs. Monsters see the light (with the contextually hilarious exception of the one character fandom MOST wanted to see get a face turn with Vanitas, and even he finds understanding and peace) after a whole series of believing there’s one in the darkness when only one or two major characters had made a turnaround, and it doesn’t just make this game richer, it retroactively improves the entire series thematically and emotionally, as well as setting the stage for more of that approach based on what we know of what’s to come. And action-wise, it really does go for trying to beat II’s last Xemnas fight, and while I don’t know that it manages it in sheer cool thanks to that final laser blocking/dual wielding finale, it I think really does come out on top in the fights leading up to it and the spectacle and the emotional power and the beautiful interface screw (after the shit with the tornado earlier!), nevermind the absolute end where Our Nerd Dad Luke Skywalker** shows up to give his blessing to the franchise and usher out the story as it was.

As for the pair of post-credits scenes: in each instance I had something spoiled for me, but also in each instance not the BIG thing. I knew Xigbar would live and summon the Foretellers, which honestly is not that shocking for me. That he IS one of them, that he’s been putting on an act (one clearly in the shape of his teacher) and been a bigger villain than Xehanort THE ENTIRE TIME? I believe that got a literal gasp out of me, and THAT’S before it turned out that after bullheadedly clinging to the idea that she’s still a main villain for all these years, Maleficent might actually end up a main villain again. And the secret movie? I had the title spoiled - and god what a perfect twist, the most gleefully apeshit moment in the game and already probable best moment in gaming of the year coming back around in a completely serious way to define the future of the franchise - but assumed wrongly that it meant Sora would be in some way ‘reincarnated’ amnesiac as Yozora and needing to be returned to himself. But nope, Sora’s for real out there alive as himself in...something like the real world? Or The World Ends With You, which I understand is at least a lot closer? And Riku’s gonna wind up stuck out there too? And because Yozora’s there it means they’re in some kind of fuckin’ Flash of Two Worlds! situation?! Or if it’s in the same physical realm (which I have to doubt or Sora would rush home as soon as he got a ship) it’s the equivalent of that dope two-part Terra Obscura arc in Tom Strong?! Sora and Riku, trapped in a world where Kingdom Hearts is a Dark, Realistic Modern Urban Fantasy (which, if Sora got here by dying, does...does that mean Gritty Realworld! AU Kingdom Hearts fanfic is that universe’s version of hell? Because that would be beautiful) (did “This is a fantasy based on reality” end up carried over as the logline to Final Fantasy XV from Versus XIII? Because if not, absolutely use it here to keep that gag going) and having to fight their way back to their world and friends, hopefully with Kairi going on her own playable adventure on the other end of the cosmos to find them since there’s no way she wouldn’t be leading the search? And with the Master of Masters waiting in the wings, the perfect villain in general because if Sora is the MOST Disney character in this universe he appears to be the LEAST, and especially perfect here now that Sora’s symbolically if not possibly literally on his turf? Waiting I’m guessing another 3-5 years is gonna be hell (I’m guessing IV’ll be announced next year or maaaaaaaybe late this year because thus far Kingdom Hearts has never gone with no announced games on the horizon longer than the end of the next calendar year, and we’ll see how development goes after that; like I said, I imagine the pressure is on for Nomura), but this could not look more like my shit.

So that’s, after all these years, Kingdom Hearts III: an understandable, maybe unavoidable, but still crushing disappointment that undermined itself narratively before it even began production and ran on a burned-out crew that could never meet the impossible expectations surrounding it. Until it suddenly winks, brushes itself off, and lives up to damn near EVERYTHING on its shoulders in the most incredible ways possible while also transcending its previous limitations as a story right in front of you, and then breaking your heart before planting the seed to repair it and charting a path towards an even more exciting future. All said and done, I liked it a whole lot, and it’ll always be special to me.

* At this point, I really could go for the ending of the whole thing literally being Sora and Kairi walking into the sunset together, with the camera panning up into the sky and text (not mysterious narration like in the past, but old-school Disney-cartoon-style outside-the-world of the story cursive text) appearing to declare 𝒜𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎 𝓁𝒾𝓋𝑒𝒹 𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓅𝒾𝓁𝓎 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝒶𝒻𝓉𝑒𝓇. That is the level of closure and myth and satisfaction it’s gotta be building towards after everything thus far and everything to come.

** If you are reading this without having played or watched the game: given I know that’s now in the realm of possibility, no, I don’t literally mean Luke Skywalker showed up.

Yet.

#Kingdom Hearts III #Kingdom Hearts #Analysis #Opinion

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thekeybladehero · 5 years

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i have a lot of thoughts about KH3 so i’m going to put them below. it’s pretty long and obviously, spoiler-ish, so it’s under a cut in case anyone hasn’t played / finished it yet

okay, i have ... a lot of disappointment with KH3. when i first finished the game i was heart broken and hurt but i thought the journey had been incredible, but the more and more i thought about it, and the more hours and days started to pass and i started to really think on it, the more disappointed i became. i was just trying my best not to admit or recognize that i was disappointed because this is a game i, that all of us, have been waiting over a decade for, and to admit that it was anything less than what we’d hoped and imagined it to be is heartbreaking. but it wasn’t what i imagined it would be like, it didn’t feel like a proper end to a 16 year saga.

that isn’t to say i hate the game or that i even dislike it, i loved playing it, and the journey was incredible. there were so many things that KH3 did right and did amazing, a lot of amazing moments and the way they pulled everything together, convoluted plotline and dozens of characters and all, was interesting to see. it had a very different feel to the other games, especially the title games KH1 and KH2. it was far more poignant, more mature and serious. throughout the game you got the sense that this was the end to things, because everything was coming together and sora was reflecting on his journey so far.

so i feel like between that, and between nomura’s comments on how the end of the game would be hard to accept / how some friendships would change, i should have seen things coming, and i thought i did, but i didn’t. and i wish i could say that i was only disappointed in the ending of the game, but there’s far more to it than that. the ending however definitely felt a bit like a slap to the face, especially when you put it together with everything else that kind of fell flat.

to start off on the technical side: i feel very bad for any new players, because right off the bat square enix throws a whole lot at them, game mechanic wise, and it was a little tough even for me to keep up with all the controls at first. all the shortcuts and command switching in the middle of combat can be difficult sometimes. that being said, the way they incorporated all of the game mechanics from previous games and morphed into something more streamline, sleek, and uniform was fucking great. they really did well on that, and on making combat fun, exciting, and dynamic. all the links, the spells, the attacks, the combos, the team attacks and summons were great! the keyblade upgrading was a fun aspect too and i had fun maxing out starseeker and wheel of fate.

speaking of wheel of fate, aside from ultima which will always be the fuckin best keyblade to ever grace the goddamn planet, i LOVED wheel of fate so much!! it was so fucking badass and very powerful and along with starseeker, once i got it i don’t think i ever unequipped it lol.

also, one BIG THING that i absolute loved and could not stop talking about to anyone who would listen: THE NPCS!!! THE WORLD POPULATION!!! the fact that there were PEOPLE in the worlds! actual PEOPLE who walked, talked, laughed! people you could interact with and who reacted to you! It was so much fun just walking around the world and hearing all the conversations, seeing all the different NPC models. It really, really REALLY helped make the game feel more real. Like the worlds were actual worlds, and not just empty sets like in the other games. It really added another layer to the game, making it much more immersive, and I think the devs did a fucking AMAZING job and a fantastic decision on including them. :-)

and speaking of NPCS, the developers who scripted them and were in charge of them, i would like to thank them a whole lot. especially when it comes to the companions / teammates. because holy FUCK. CAN I TALK ABOUT THAT? BECAUSE I CAN’T GET OVER IT. in KH1 and KH2, it was always fun having your world companions with you, but there was never really much of anything to them apart from the fact that they fought beside you in combat and that they interacted with sora during cutscenes. but that was all there was to them. in between, while traveling, walking running breaking things or jumping on / off things, going different places, there was no reaction from them. teammates were silent companions and that was always kind of sad, always felt a little lacking.

and kh3 changed that. the scripts for your NPC teammates, having them interact with you during the actual game, point things out to you or comment on stuff you did. like flynn whenever you showboated tricks in the town, or the little games you could play with them while journeying through the world with them like in corona, when you slid down the meadow with rapunzel and flynn or danced in the town square with them. even whenever you took a selfie with them or a photo of them and they would look at the camera, comment on it, react, pose maybe. it’s those little things, the little reactions and the interactions between sora and his teammates / companions that made the journey seem much more ... real? it made the friendships more believable, that you actually did have someone traveling with you because they had personalities that shone and were shown outside of cutscenes or battle. but the cutscenes helped, too. there was much more interaction between everyone in the cutscenes this time around, and the dialogue -- while still cheesy at times (its kh and disney, of course, why wouldn’t it be?) was much more believable and natural as compared to the past few games. it felt more polished, more like conversations between actual friends, there was more emotion being displayed. in how they reacted verbally and also in the minute micro-expressions. the micro-expressions!!! god!! watching a brow twitch or an eye twitch or someone’s eyes crinkle or their hair move with the wind and the little subtle facial changes and scrunches !!! i loved it!!!

also, obviously ... the fucking graphics. the level of detail in the game. was fucking. GORGEOUS. the entire time i played i could understand why the game took so long, with everything that went into it, and how the gameplay graphics blended in so seamlessly with the in-game cutscenes. it was amazing. absolutely beautiful. all the models, all the textures, the lighting, the style --- so fucking gorgeous. and THE VIBRANCY OF THE WORLDS! the EXPANSIVENESS of them! they were HUGE! the fact that you could go so many places and weren’t bound to a small box room for the most part, no fading to black as you entered a new area. you just keep going for the most part and it doesn’t break you out of the illusion of actually being there. the maps were so expansive and the work that went into each of them was so clear...it was absolutely gorgeous and so much fun exploring them all and testing the limits and boundaries of them all.

HOWEVER, one of my main gripes with KH3, was the level of difficulty in the game. which is to say ... it had absolutely zero challenge in it. and it was extremely disappointing. in the other games you at least had to strategize on what items to equip and more importantly, what ABILITIES, but here they just hand you everything on a silver platter and let you go wild and yes, that can be fun, but not if it makes the game so unchallenging. even the boss fights were disappointing because they weren’t tough at all. the final fight against master xehanort wasn’t difficult, just time consuming. the boss battle of all boss battles in kingdom hearts 3, and he wasn’t even as difficult as riku or ansem from KH1. like. what? how does that make sense? they gave you kupo tokens in case you die but i literally never had to use it once. maybe it’s different on pride mode, but i’ve talked to people who have played it in pride mode, including my brother, and they say it’s not challenging at all either.

which, i don’t want to be eternally frustrated and never be able to beat a game because it’s so hard, but damn. at least some level of difficulty would have been nice. the enemies had a lot more HP this game but as far as their attack style went and how much damage you took, with all the accessories you were given and could equip, it didn’t matter how much HP they had, you’d cut through them easily and never be in any real danger of losing.

the worlds were also so short. like, incredibly short. unbelievably so. to the point where i really thought, for over half the game, that there would be a second go at them and you’d come back to them until i found out that that wasn’t the case, and you only go there once. the stories in so many of the worlds, toy story, mount olympus, twilight town and tangled especially, felt so ... incomplete. not only that, but so many of the worlds were just cut and dry repeats of what had happened in the original movies. it wasn’t like the other games where there were new plots and stories introduced that you could go through. the cutscenes were all basically just the movie repeated but with sora somewhere in the background. which, they looked absolutely beautiful! no joke. i won’t lie about that. it’s amazing how faithful to the disney movie art styles they stayed and how they recreated them. that’s amazing. but as far as actual content and story? they felt lacking. especially since so much of the worlds were made up of cutscenes. not even gameplay or battles but cutscenes.

there was eleven hours worth of cutscenes in the game. eleven! on average it takes around 20-29 hours to beat KH3. that’s practically half the game. that’s insane. and i hesitate to complain about this because i love cutscenes, i love seeing the characters and seeing them interact, but unlike the other games KH3 felt less like a game you played and more like a movie you watched where you could on occasion participate.

okay. now to the worlds:

Mount Olympus: so gorgeous....what a big ass fuckin world too. mount olympus had the most GORGEOUS lighting and colors and i probably spent a good hour just. turning every which way and staring for a couple of minutes at how beautiful and scenic everything was. the friendly back and forth between herc and sora was so cute too, really felt like they were good friends, it felt very natural and i adored it. sora’s instagram post on herc’s dad was hilarious too, oh my god.

Twilight Town: SO BEAUTIFUL! i love how they expanding on Twilight Town’s world, made it so much more open, made it so populated! the sunset was gorgeous and i took way too many selfies in front of it on the rooftops than necessary. hayner pence and olette were adorable and i adore them and how much they wanted to learn about roxas and get him back, and how they juped xemnas LMAO. ratatouille’s bistro was a lot of fun as well but cracking the damn eggs are devil’s work and i never fuckin got to five stars BECAUSE I COULDN’T GET EXCELLENT ON ANY EGG RECIPE BFBFRJFESJSAB

Toy Story: VERY VERY CUTE VERY NOSTALGIC GOD HOW CAN ANYONE NOT LOVE TOY STORY’S WORLD??? they did an amazing job in every world recreating the movie art styles but MAN ... TOY STORY FELT JUST LIKE THE MOVIE. fighting in the mechs was a lot of fun, the doll heartless was creepy, i had way too much trouble finding the stores i needed to go to and spent far too much time getting everyone’s voice high on helium LOL. woody was MVP of the world and he kicked ass, loved the sass he gave ymx. and speaking of ymx, how he kept subtly fucking with sora’s head, really fucked with me and left me so fuckin worried and anxious. also did we ever get an explanation on how they got home?? like we left them in a world split in two and we were just like okay bye now g2g laterrrr and its like, WELL ... OKAY THEN ... im glad it seemed their world was repaired at the end in the credits but, also, that means they forgot about sora and that makes me );

Tangled: My second fav world!! i admit ... i wasn’t looking forward to rapunzel’s world. i thought it would be my least favorite cuz tangled is my least favorite disney movie. i thought it was too boring and bland. but her world was anything but! and rapunzel and flynn themselves were very dynamic and active and interactive too. :-) it sucked that her world, like many of the other worlds, was just cut and paste of her movie with no difference, but her world was so beautiful --- full of vibrant colors, so expansive, and the movie cutscenes were gorgeously recreated. the festival where you dance with the townspeople was the CUTEST FUCKING THING EVER AND I MUST HAVE DONE IT LIKE TEN TIMES.

Frozen: i was very tired at the end of it after being thrown off the mountain like 5 times LOL BJSKDBA. the fact that they had sora poke fun at their plot after the last time he gets thrown off is funny too haha. other than that, frozen was cute. too cold and the colors too muted / the same in every direction for my tastes, and i had the most trouble finding one of the mickey lucky marks here too. all that fucking snow man. GAH. hearing idina menzel sing though was surprising but a blessing and while frozen has never been one of my favorite movies, i adore how much emotion idina delivers in let it go. the fact that sora was so clearly in awe of her voice and powers and his instragram post on it just makes it even better fbksba.

Monstropolis: this was fun! boo was adorable. sully and mike caring for boo and their back and forth banter, the way they just yeeted vanitas through one of the doors was fucking hilarious. sora’s reaction to being monster-ified was funny as well, and it was nice that there was a somewhat different plot to this world from the original movie.

POTC: MY FAVORITE WORLD HANDS DOWN ... nothing compares imo bjsakdbsa. the fucking hours i spent grinding to get my leviathan ship to max level and finding all the treasures and all the ingredients AND THE GIANT TREASURE COVE FULL OF ORICHALCUM AND PRECIOUS MATERIALS AND ACCESSORIES. WHOOOOOO! sora’s enthusiasm for being a pirate was cute as always, and the fact that he finally became captain of his own ship!!! the sailing of the seas and ship combat was so much fun too and unexpected, and the undersea combat was very fun as well. diving down and seeing all the fish and coves and caves!! man. it was so much fun. easily my favorite world by far.

San Fransokyo: i think my favorite part about this world was the fact that it was modern day, and so phones and cars and television were a thing, and the fact that we SAW! HEARTLESS! ON NATIONAL TV! ON THE NEWS! PEOPLE WERE TALKING ABOUT HEARTLESS ATTACKING AND IT FELT SO MUCH LIKE TWO WORLDS COLLIDING AND I LOVED IT SO MUCH. and i know the BH6 world was the movie version of the world but i like to think it’s still connected to earth-616 like in the comics anyway and therefore marvel and therefore sora in the same world as the avengers and the x-men. as for the actual world itself...i was really excited at first, but it felt a little ... anti-climactic? it felt very short compared to the other worlds, and san fransokyo itself was probably the smallest out of every other one. so that was a little disappointing, but BH6 team was adorable, and i loved all their interactions with one another and with sora donald and goofy. :-)

Pooh’s World: pooh’s world probably gave me the world’s biggest heart attack, with sora reassuring pooh and having us think everything was fine and innocent and carefree like the other times and then BAM you hear sora’s thoughts and he’s like ‘he’s right something’s pulling us apart, what’s happening to me?’ and you’re just left like HUH WHAT ? THE FUCK, EXPLAIN. other than that, it was very cute. very short, but cute.

now onto the actualy story of the game. i was kind of shocked about how serious, how dark and much more intense the story was in this game. the tone and the emotion in KH3 was so vastly different compared to the other games. it’s partly due to the dialogue but also, i think there was much more of an emphasis on realistic emotions and reactions as well. in the other games, whenever something bad happened, it sucked, but it was never really a big deal. the characters would never really react like it was something world ending or horrible, they’d just move past it like it wasn’t grave or like it weighed on them. there were times where things were more serious, sure, but even then, it was usually resolved with a smile or a laugh or a joke or some motivational speech or saying.

KH3 on the other hand? totally different. everything felt like it had so much more gravitas, because the situations that the characters were put into, the battles they faced, the people they met or fought against --- they weren’t resolved with a laugh or a speech, they weren’t moved on from after a few seconds of deciding everything was alright. there were some moments like that, but there were far more weighty situations where the characters really took everything in, really reacted to it. showed negative emotions -- fear, sadness, confusion, doubt, anger. there wasn’t just symbolic talk of death in some abstract form, where you could interpret the loss of a heart for someone dying but still vague enough it could be said it wasn’t really death. there were far more realistic and understandable forms of death: flynn getting stabbed with a knife, will getting stabbed with a sword, xigbar purposely letting himself fall off the ledge down a cliffside. sora going to ‘heaven’, and chirithy telling him -- and us, the audience -- that when the heart and body perish together someone is dead, and that that’s what happened to sora and the others. and the reactions to those deaths were far more real as well. in the other games death, when it happened, was never given much weight, apart from a few -- the main characters in each of the game mainly. but for the most part, the organization members, the NPCS who lost their hearts?

they were given moments but sora and the others all just kind of. moved on very quickly, and that was that. but for this game the reactions to seeing someone die were so much more intense. they were more real. when someone was dying, like flynn or will, people cried, sora got angry and violent and lashed out. for the organization members, they all had their own moments, there were conversations that were had, emotions displayed and truths told, and when all of the trios reunited there were tears and joy and breakdowns of relief. you could feel all of those emotions and you could see it in them and just how much this journey had cost each and every single one of them. there was no moving on right away, there was surprise but blink and they’re over it moments. each reunion and each goodbye held so much real, raw emotion, where the pain and the exhaustion and the sadness and joy were able to be felt.

in general, there was much more of a range of emotion and personality for all of the characters during moments of duress or conflict, but especially when it came to sora. and i absolutely adored it, even though it gave me so many heart attacks lol and a lot of pain and worry. he was showing such a mature side of him that we haven’t been able to get in other games. the closest one is DDD, where we saw sides to him that were serious, had more weight, but even then his faith was never broken, never shaken, and he had unwavering faith and radiated positivity. this game pushed sora to his limits. we saw him at his weakest, and his strongest, and every moment in between. we were able to hear his thoughts --- hear all the directions his mind takes that he doesn’t speak out loud. we were able to see that yes, sora is smart, and no, when things happen to him, he doesn’t just brush them off. he feels them - the pain, the hurt, the anger, the sadness, the doubt - just as much as anyone else. and the doubt. i’ve been saying this for YEARS that sora, while his strength lies in his friends, he relies on his friends too much, in the sense that he attributes all his success and all his strength and his worth from them. that he believes he’s ordinary and unextraordinary without them. this game fucking confirmed that. the moments where he doubted himself, where he lost hope in himself, where he admitted that he didn’t think anything of his abilities without his friends. it was heartbreaking to see but it showed us that sora isn’t just happy - go - lucky all the time like some people like to believe.

and riku ... RIKU! i’m SO PROUD OF RIKU. so proud of who he’s become. his empathy, his kindness, his thoughtfulness was so beautiful and so sweet. especially when it came to aqua. that first time we saw him and mickey in the realm of darkness, and riku was hesitant to leave, and he voiced how lonely and sad aqua must feel trapped there, it really showed how empathetic he is towards people, how caring he is. his conversations with repliku, his reassurance towards sora, how he picked up on what mickey had been planning to use stopga, the way he protects everyone. he’s warm and kind and he has a strong heart and while his moments were sadly quite few in the game, he really shined bright in a couple of scenes.

for kairi, i couldn’t shake the feeling all game that they were shafting her, pushing her to the side again. more so really in the first half of the game because, wow, while riku didn’t get much screen time (and i’ll talk about that in the next paragraph), kairi had even less. i’m pretty sure hayner, pence, and olette had double her screentime in the first half of the game which ... i love them, but really? c’mon. i was hoping we’d see more of her and lea training, or their conversations, or something. the moments they had were lovely and cute and so scenic and very deep, but i was hoping for more, especially for kairi. ): they also really fucked her over fighting wise. despite stressing that she and lea have been training together to become keyblade wielders and despite both of them being told in the game that they were ready to fight xehanort and organization xiii, they only showed kairi needing to be rescued. we saw lea fighting, but kairi? maybe one or two seconds. and that ... sucks. they still didn’t do her justice in that sense. she’s prepared - she’s capable. why not show that? that being said, i’m happy she had more focus on the second half of the game, and i absolutely ADORE her being determined to be the one to save sora this time and not the other way around, and making good on that promise, and being sora’s light to guide him back to the world of the living.

that being said i am very disappointed we weren’t able to play as her, or even as RIKU apart from those two short battles in the realm of darkness. i thought we’d be able to play more as him or kairi or even aqua, seeing how this is the third and final game in the saga, and we were able to play as riku for half of DDD and aqua had her own prequel to KH3 but it seems not. :/

not only that, but the characterization for riku, while i definitely think it started off strong, felt like it fell flat after that first fight in the realm of darkness. the fact that sora and riku were in the same room together, twice, at yen sid’s tower, and yet hardly even acknowledged one another, felt so odd. especially considering the fact that in every other game, their friendship and bond was stressed heavily, implying how close they were and how much they cared for one another. the fact that this was the end to the saga, the third game in the series, and they had only two significant moments with each other, both which lasted only about a minute or two, was so weird. it was so so weird.

i know nomura said that he wanted to keep the friendships realistic, that friends can grow distant over time as goals change, and fine, that’s fine, but it doesn’t make sense when you look at literally every other game and see how close sora and riku are, and then they hardly even look each other’s direction out of nowhere. it was just so ... disjointed. not just sora and riku either, but riku and kairi. we never ONCE saw them interact or even TALK. not once! sora and kairi were the only ones who got any real screen time and development together in the game, which i’m happy for, because that was long overdue, and kairi was a STAR in the second half of the game and that moment between them where they FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY share the paopu fruit with each other and make a promise to protect each other was so ... fucking long overdue ... and so gratifying and sweet and romantic.

but it’s just incredibly disappointing how all the other trios were able to get their reunion EXCEPT for sora, kairi, and riku. every other trio. literally every other trio was close, were friends, had a reunion scene. were able to relax, to find peace and rest after this long journey they’ve all been on. everyone except sora kairi and riku. we were all expecting for them to finish their journeys the way they started it: together on the island. after years of searching for one another, chasing each other, fighting, being apart. they were constantly looking out for each other and looking for each other and in the end? we never got that. we never got them together on destiny islands at last, after everything. never even got them together, period. it felt like such a slap in the face, alongside the fact that sora is dead.

and i know sora will remain the protagonist of the kingdom hearts series, and that the secret ending set up KH4 and sora’s next adventure, where possibly riku stars in it like DDD as well, but ... FUCK. it doesn’t take away the disappointment and the bitter feeling of knowing that everyone else is able to be at peace and find happiness and be among their friends, together with everyone at last, while he’s dead and gone and alone. and i try to justify it, because sora was fine with sacrificing himself for kairi. his journey started when he looked for her. he loves her. he loves his friends. he doesn’t want them to be dead. and if they’re happy, if they found peace, he’s happy.

but it also just hurts to think that after all that, after all of the sacrifices he made, after all the people he brought together and saved, he doesn’t get that happy ending for himself. doesn’t get to relax after everything. that he doesn’t get to be with his friends, that he’s alone.

it’s a very bitter ending and i know nomura intended for it to be that way, but understanding and knowing that the ending was meant to be like this doesn’t mean that the ending is any good, or satisfying in any way. it’s just disappointing and a little insulting.

in the end, i’m very mixed on kh3. i’m trying very hard to focus on what i enjoyed and take it for what it is and accept it, because there were a lot of good moments, but i can’t help but feel like the game could have been better in many ways.

#〈 out of worlds! 〉 ♕ ooc.#long post tw #spoilers tw #kh3 spoilers #very very long ....#i am very mixed and trying to stay positive and enjoy the good but

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tumblunni · 5 years

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Okay I know that kingdom hearts has a bad reputation for sticking crucial plot information on obscure spinoff games but HOLY SHIT I just finally watched a lets play of the fuckin digimon tcg game and found out it ACTUALLY HAS A GODDAMN CONCLUSION TO ANALOGMAN FROM DIGIMON WORLD 1

like 90% of the damn game has no plot whatsoever let alone indicating its a digimon world sequel! and then suddenly in the last battle without being foreshadowed whatsoever analogman returns and gets possibly the best boss battle ever IN A GODDAMN TCG GAME

holy shit his whole fight is framed as ‘this is literally the same guy from digimon world 1, hacking another game’, the interface wigs out and a bunch of fake command windows pop up with rapidly scrolling code of the game supposedly falling apart. And then his boss battle flips the entire gameplay system on its head by giving him fourth wall breaking special moves that pull overpowered effects by “hacking the engine”, with cool animations to fit. Fuckin badasssss!!

and it also fuckin FINALLY EXPLAINS THE DAMN PLOT LIKE GEEZ

digimon world’s conclusion was so rushed, you never even meet the villain until the final battle and it ends all weird with just “something” going wrong that causes him to get sucked into a portal or something while screaming dramatically in weirdly high resolution terror faces??? the tcg game confirms that this was him attempting to flee back to the human world after you defeated him, but one of the stray attacks from the battle damaged his machine and it caused him to essentially commit accidental suicide when he turned it on.

and HOLY SHIT MY FUCKIN OBSCURE HEADCANON IS TRUE????

the game had some sequel bait hints that maybe analogman is somehow still around and that the portal explosion just turned him into “corrupted data” so he can never return to the human world. and i always thought it would be super ironic if he actually got turned into a digimon aka the thing he hates more than anything

WELL OKAY I GUESS CRITICAL LORE IN A TCG GAME IS OKAY WHEN ITS A BIG YES BUNNI U THEORY BE CORRECT

he appears in this game as a malomyotismon who does a damn good vexen face during the fight, lol. And he’s all “gahh that stupid kid ruined my plans but this accursed body at least improved my hacking abilities!” Tho its implied that his corrupted state is more like a bodyless cloud of data that can possess/copy different digimon, which would be REALLY FUCKIN CRITICAL to explaining the goddamn plot of Digimon World Next Order!

Seriously wtf is up with this series? Digimon World 2 is not the sequel to Digimon World 1, all the numbered games are entirely separate individual stories with wildly different genres from pet sim to roguelike strategy. The real sequel is fucking DIGIMON THE CARD GAME THE GAME and then Digimon World Next Order a bazillion years later for the ps4. In which i am STILL REALLY SALTY that they have a FUCKIN RAD remix of analogman’s boss theme yet he doesn’t appear in the game. The added context of this damn tcg game confirms once and for all that the Ambiguous As Fuck Ending actually WAS him appearing in the game, this unexplained “oh wait the villain was good all along and he was just possessed by an evil virus” was supposed to be corrupted-digi-analogman and seriously WHY DONT THEY JUST FUCKIN EXPLAIN IT!!! this tcg game wasnt even released in europe!! and even american fans probably had no clue it was linked to this entirely separate subseries! You have to friggin piece it together with context clues like the battle music and the fact analogman’s signature mon was machinedramon. I mean vjesus christ Next Order is a litera; sequel with the grown up version of Digimon World’s protagonist as a badass home ec teacher who still defends the digital world in his free time yet you couldnt spare ONE LINE OF DIALOGUE mentioning the name of the villain?? and summarizing the fuckin tcg game everyone missed??? AND CONFIRMING THAT THE VILLAIN IS INDEED MAKING A REAPPEARANCE POSSESSING THIS GUY??? oh god everything makes SENSE, thank you terrible card game adaptation. ehh but i do still love Next Order for making Hiro/Mameo’s canon partner Mamemon, he’s even more badass as this big tough bishie version of himself with a tiny adorable pal that can shoot rocket fists through space and time. (its funny tho cos the DW1 intro movie showed metalmamemon and metalgreymon and the american boxart flipped a coin and decided metalgreymon must have been the one the protagonist was using in that scene. Whoops!)

anyway even with the added context that IT WAS INDEED GODDAMN ANALOGMAN, the final boss fight in Next Order was as terrible as the rest of the plot. So I’m glad trash gramps got a suitably badass boss fight after all, even if it was a CARD GAME VERSION! lets all celebrate the awesomeness of this obscure fuckin spinoff game’s obscure fuckin intercontinuity cameo with the boss fight music that other game wasted

youtube

seriously fuckin hell the biggest challenge in that final boss was that i was so distracted by SHEER OFFENDEDNESS at the cool music not matching it that it was hard to keep focused

its not just a great boss theme for a terrible boss, its a really fuckin EMOTIONAL song for anyone whose childhood was fuckin defined by the first game!!!

and look you had a PERFECT FUCKIN EXCUSE for a REALLY GOOD boss battle against MY MAN GRUMPY GRANDPA OF THE COOL DAMN NAME. Seriously guys analogman was THE FIRST digimon villain! digimon world came out before the anime, digimon world was the BETA FOR THE ANIME! this was the first place they had the ideas for file island, so much of the areas in the game are awkwardly mistranslated versions of stuff that would later appear in the anime in a different form. before this digimon had never been anything more than a fuckin 2-bit graphics tamagotchi and this was (after the manga) only the second goddamn time these monsters had an actual full colour character design! all of those charmingly janky 90s gross out show styled tcg illustrations? that was concept art that this game was working from! fuckin hell this game thought up the idea for metalgreymon’s changed design that ended up becoming the iconic partner of tai in the anime. (you can also see beta tai in the manga with a beta veemon as a partner instead! o_O)

SO LIKE...

JUST....

I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT ANALOGMAN OKAY!!! he’s a badly written guy with only like five sentences across all the videogames but fuckin hell he was such an Iconique part of the development of this series that they named him fucking ANALOGMAN

like dude you could have SO EASILY made me scream at my tv in a more positive way by bringing him out as the surprise villain and showing us wtf his deisgn is even supposed to look like cos god all we have is a blurry faceless early ps1 model buried under the glow filters of Mt Infinity’s funky background effects.

AND FUCKING

IF IT IS CANON

THAT MY FUCKIN

STUPID THEORY

IS CANON

slap a fuckin O on this man and LITERALLY LET ME BEAT HIM UP

like dont even give him a team or anything, just let me fight THE MAN HIMSELF

you canonically fuckin said he’s a digital ghost now and basically the same as a digimon

let me beat the shit out of a regular businessman in a suit and tie while he pulls his badass ‘i’m hacking the game i’m in’ bullshit from the GODDAMN TCG GAME THAT WAS MORE CLIMACTIC THAN YOUR SHITTY CASH GRAB FAKE SEQUEL

man god i didnt expect a fuckin TCG GAME to revive my righteous fury from back when i first played that piece of shit. i hate it cos Next order is so pretty and its gameplay is so good and i really loved my twin digis but there were SO MANY bugs and cut corners and missing content and really bad writing and GOD it made me so sad that the dub team really really tried, they tried so hard that they got fuckin renamon’s original voice actress back even though the renamon in this game has nothing to do with the anime one. THE DUB WAS REALLY GOOD BUT IT COULDNT SALVAGE THAT SCRIPT!! THE MUSIC WAS REALLY GOOD AND THE ART WAS REALLY GOOD AND THE DIGIMON THEMSELVES WERE MY BEST DAMN FRIENDS FOR THAT MONTH OF MY LIFE BUT THE GODDAMN FUCKIN SCRIPT!!! the postgame was MORE FUN because FINALLY everything opened up like the sandbox of the first game and you could just fuckin hug u digis without being distracted by constant cutscenes butchering your childhood nostalgia

man i wanted to write a fic/draw a comic about my headcanons on how to fix it but i never managed to do it cos holy shit it was basically “throw everything out and make a different game geez” I COULD RAMBLE FOR HOURS ABOUT THE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SEQUEL THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN!! and a fuckin!! tcg game!! was closer to that sequel!!!

and fuckin MY THEORY WAS RIGHT AND MY BETTER GAME IDEA ACTUALLY WOULD WORK IN CANON

fuck it im gonna do draw myself decking business gramps in the face

oh! and the female protagonist design! thats another rare good part of that thing! i loved the pixellization effect on her ponytal, way better than the male equivelant having a very ordinary costume design just with a pixel corner taken out of his jacket. also why did the plot never actually make a thing out of that? like you’d think that ‘unlike every other digimon tamer i’ve got this scar of my digitization’ would be a plot point. like they didnt give everyone else a cool pixel squares mark! they could have at least used it as an excuse why the protagonist is the Only Chosen One who can do all this plot shit. or if it was me i would have made it early foreshadowing for the Return Of Business Gramps, like you were partially infected by the Oooo Mysterious Unexplained Digi Virus (seriously why did they not just have ONE SENTENCE explaining its the fuckin original villain returning????) during the prologue and i dunno somehow that gives you powers to break analogman’s control on the digimon he possesses. or maybe the pixel thing is like a tracking device he put on you? or just give that cool design trait to the protagonist of digimon cyber sleuth instead, whose entire plot is that theyre a digimon human hybrid with literaly the power to pixellize themself into computers.

ALSO!!! actually do something!!! with mameo!!!

they really fuckin hyped up in all the prelease materials that the digimon world 1 protagonist was gonna be in this game and he’s all grown up now. and then he does NOTHING in the plot except babble exposition and stand around your home base. and has one line about how he’s a badass teacher now and his partner is mamemon but hey we made a bullshit excuse for why his digimon is sealed away and he never gets to fight :<

give me an actual cool teamup of new protag girl and her cool teacher dude beating the shit out of business trash with their bare fists and also their digimon’s bare fists while THE BEST DAMN MUSIC GOES UNWASTED

...fuck i sure do Feel Intensely about nostalgic games lol. i wonder if i’ll be so rambley when i play kh3? maybe itd be a really shitty lp, aaagh...

#no gramps shall go unappreciated in the bunni house

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wildpokemon · 5 years

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My initial KH3 thoughts

gonna put everything under the cut to not spoil anyone. this is mostly for me anyways to see if i feel differently in a few weeks lol

i wanna say first off that while i have been waiting for this game since i was 11 years old and that the series holds a special place in my heart (lolol), i don’t think my expectations were too high. I’ve been replaying kh1 and kh2 pretty much every year since those games first came out and have always felt satisfied with both the gameplay (2 was way better than 1, but 1 was still enjoyable) and the story (while convoluted, they both felt self contained for the most part and had satisfying arcs), and so my expectations were based on those two things alone - i was hopeful for fun and challenging/somewhat skillful gameplay, and an ending with similar care and development for those characters i’d come to love. And for me personally, it was a letdown in both areas.

okay here’s the list of my general thoughts. i have a feeling the list is gonna be mostly negative, but i do wanna say that while i was playing it i did enjoy it for the most part, it’s just the feeling afterwards wasn’t satisfying and that’s what’s sticking with me the most. I’ve tried so hard to stay positive but it hasn’t stuck.

first of all, the game is truly beautiful. this is probably my number one positive about it, the game is fucking gorgeous to look at, the colors all pop and the landscapes expand out forever and the views off of every clifftop look amazing. really good design overall.

the gameplay is fun and flash, but thats about it for me. i know the kh games get a lot of flack for being just button mashers, but kh1 and kh2 especially had a lot more nuance to them. when you played on proud or critical you had to really know and understand the game mechanics to be good at it and it was a satisfying challenge. that doesn’t happen in kh3. every second you get some new triangle command that just does a ton of area damage and everything just dies so quickly. almost none of the fights felt satisfying.

why did the disney worlds have NOTHING to do with the actual story?? they barely even tried. like marluxia shows up in corona to do what?? stalk rapunzel but then do nothing?? and then i don’t even get to fight him?? i got SO excited when he showed up, thinkin id get to fight data marluxia 2.0 from kh2fm, but nah he just KOs sora with some dumbass sleep shit that gets reversed by the fuckin horse licking his face two minutes later. and that shit happens in EVERY disney world! vanitas shows up? Sulley yeets him through a door. Larxene comes by just to lock you in a maze, and all luxord does is ram you with a fuckin ship.

so many of the boss fights were just big ass titan type things (literally at the beginning) that you just hack at until they die. someone please please tell me why i couldn’t just fight the organization members in the worlds they showed up in?? give me some satisfying hand to hand combat where i actually need to block a hit for once

AND THEN when you do finally fight the organization members, its three of them at once?? because theres two or three of them in front of you it lessens the value of them to you, like there’s not one specific threat or moveset to learn how to deal with, instead you just mash x on whoever is closest and hope it works. and it does work, because theyve dumbed down their movesets too. I felt like i didn’t actually earn any of the victories i got because it just wasn’t a challenge, there was nothing to learn in any fight, just hit x and win.

and because i found the gameplay to not be satisfying, it made big character moments feel anticlimactic to me too. like it just felt like i didn’t earn them.

how did roxas’s replica just happen to come zooming out of the sky right when they needed it???

why were we suddenly supposed to feel bad for all of the villians after we killed them?? some of them maybe, but definitely not all should have been shown as sympathetic

why did sora just all of a sudden get ‘the power of waking’/ the ability to go to the realm of darkness?? i didn’t earn that?? i beat up a purple baymax and then all of a sudden the game was like ‘okay time for the real story now’ thats such shitty writing, come on, who let that happen??

kairi’s characteriation was sucha fucking letdown jfc, i wait 13 years after finding out my girl can wield a keyblade just to watch her do half a fight before she gets fuckin snatched again, and then she just DIES???? what was the point in that other than just some bullshit reason for sora to sacrifice himself so that nomura didnt have to write anyore sora games? (yeah yeah the secret ending, hes alive, blah blah - im taking that with a grain of salt for now. plus i dont give two shits about whatever games theyre trying to plug at me now)

which brings me to another one of my huge annoyances. i absolutely cannot believe that they spent real actual game scenes showing maleficent and pete searching for the fucking black box shit, for that to only be relevant to an entirely different set of games that havent even come out yet. writing 101, dont put shit in if it isn’t relevant to the story you’re currently telling.

oh! thought of another positive. my boy riku is the fucking mvp. it was cool as fuck to play as him (still all too easy but oh well) and his character arc throughout the series was done relatively well, he’s come the farthest and had some really cool moments in this one.

i thought the birth by sleep arc was the best one of all of the trios (not counting eraqus and xehanort’s bullshit at the end - im sorry, you guys dont need a happy send off, eraqus tried to KILL ventus! does no one remember that??) but aqua was cool as fuck, and her reunion with ven, and them with terra was really touching imo.

did xion really need to be in the game? this might just be me cause i never played days, but like, her arc just felt like the writers made up this character and gave her this really tragic - but meaningful! - ending in her game, but the fans loved her so much that the writers had to bring her back. felt like major fanservice.

this was a mainstream kingdom hearts game. why wasn’t there more roxas and namine stuff?? roxas was barely mentioned and it felt like no work was actually done to bring him back - namine even less so. like kh2 was a huge game for the series, huge disappointment not to have more emphasis on them in this game.

in general theres just a lot of story stuff that i think could have very easily been fixed and it just felt rushed and messy. i could make a whole other post just about how they could have easily made it all more cohesive and satisfying for the characters arc. sora could have still died and had this like meaningful sacrifice instead of that abrupt shit they gave us, and i would have been satisfied with that. soras death was the tipping point for me that set me off trying to kid myself that i was enjoying the game. i have no problem with killing off the main character at the end of the series, it just needs to be more meaningful. he sacrificed himself for kairi, and we didnt even see it!!! and his friends didnt even mourn?? kairi sheds a tear but it just felt like the game was like ‘oh btw hes dead’ and that was fuckin it. bullshit imo.

i know some of this is nit picky and no one has to agree with any of it lol. ive just been seeing so much praise and so little people talking about this stuff and i needed to let my feelings out.

#kh3 #kh3 spoilers #dont feel like you have to read even if you play kh #i rant a LOT here and i know i come off super salty #but man the game just left me feeling so empty once i finished #long post #x

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hollyplays · 6 years

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Moonlighter

My brother once, a few years ago, gifted me a copy of Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale. I was a little reticent, because anime, but I found myself really enjoying it. The characters were cute, and I loved finding the perfect price to sell the items I had hunted down. I thought it was a really fresh, unique roguelike.

The problem was that Recettear is unplayable about 4 hours in- there’s a massive difficulty spike (I was maybe right to be reticent) that neither I nor my partner could get over.

So when I heard about Moonlighter, I was excited. The art was beautiful, and everything I’d heard was positive. It had a real shot of being what I wanted Recettear to be.

Thirty plus hours later, and I’m not sure how I feel. There is so much about Moonlighter I love, and I think it has a lot of potential. At the risk of sounding like a real estate agent, it has great bones. It needs some work, but the foundation is there. Metaphors abound. Anyway.

Moonlighter’s core gameplay is divided into two sections, and it does both of them well. The roguelike dungeoneering is exceptional. There’s a variety of combat options: sword and shield, bow, spear, bladed boxing gloves. Each one feels different than the last, but in my experience bow and spear ended being a cut above the others in terms of balance. Big sword had massive damage output, but was naturally much slower as a result and I found myself getting killed before I could put out that damage. Sword and shield let you block, but blocking pushed you back and often forced you to take other damage unnecessarily, and in a game with as fluid a dodge roll as Moonlighter you really didn’t need to be blocking.

Spear and Bow have marked advantages over the other weapons: they both keep you at a range from your enemies, which minimizes damage. Neither are slow enough that you’ll be spending too much time charging attacks, and the kicker: both can attack through walls, which almost no enemy can do. Meaning the spear and bow can deal damage in such a way that guarantees you no harm which, as far as i can tell, makes them the best option. I’m always a little bummed when a game has a ‘mechanically best’ option, especially a game with as many options as Moonlighter has.

Shopkeeping is also loads of fun, and managing what’s on your shelves along with your customer’s wait time and keeping an eye out for thieves makes for a really delightful rhythm. It speaks to the quality of Moonlighter’s design that both of it’s core gameplay elements would make for an excellent game just by themselves.

Shopkeeping, like dungeoneering, needs some tweaking. When you upgrade your shop to a specific point, you unlock an assistant who, in exchange for a percent of the day’s profit, will run the shop so you can spend more time dungeoneering. This is, in theory, a great reward for people who don’t enjoy the dungeoneering as much or find themselves short on cash. The problem is it doesn’t work. At all. The shop assistant took my items, didn’t sell a single thing, and the items vanished.

One of the less stressful parts of managing your shop is keeping an eye on a customer’s wait time. If a customer waits too long, they won’t buy the item and will walk out. The problem is, they’ll steal the fuckin item! Instead of just leaving the item on the counter, you lose not only the opportunity to sell the item, but you’re out whatever the item is worth too. This means I can be late talking to a customer because I’m stopping a thief, and then have my customer turn thief in the middle of the interaction, and there’s not a thing I can do about it. Even if I’m right at the counter, I get to watch them walk out with my shit.

If that wasn’t frustrating enough, something about the ‘customer setting the item on the counter’ interaction is clunky as hell. You see the ‘sell’ prompt, the customer sets it down, the prompt instantly vanishes, and takes about 2 seconds to show up again- leaving me sitting there spamming the sell button so that the line moves as fast as possible so that the weird mandatory wait time doesn’t make a thief out of my honest customers.

With both of it’s core mechanics developed, Moonlighter becomes a game of small design choices, and there are plenty. Most dialogue options are simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but each option has a really cute animation of a head nodding to accompany it. Not every customer is the same- some are ‘generous’ customers, which only buy items in display cases, but they’ll pay more than necessary. Some customers are ‘adventurers’ who only buy weapons. Some are ‘tourists’, who operate on a different pricing range and don’t update your pricing guide.

Perhaps my favorite part of the game is the secret rooms you can find in the dungeoneering segments marked by sparkles above pits. These vary, but my favorite is a pedestal with an expensive item on it- but if you take it without replacing it with something, you’ll trigger an exceptionally deadly enemy.

Moonlighter is full to the brim of good design. The dungeons are a delight to explore even as they get more difficult, and the enemies are consistent enough to be understandable but unique enough to still be interesting four dungeons in. There’s always something for the player to work towards, some new piece of gear to buy or boss to beat. Moonlighter has an absolutely fantastic rhythm to it.

It’s really frustrating, then, that a bug prevents me from beating the game. It crashes completely as I enter the climactic final dungeon, no matter what. There’s an update available for the PC version of the game that hasn’t come to the Playstation version, but this bug isn’t even on the list of problems that patch fixes.

I loved all of my time with Moonlighter, but between the shop assistant not working at all, the game occasionally not starting at all, and the final dungeon being entirely inaccessible, I’m angry. I don’t hate Early Access games or betas, but Moonlighter isn’t one. It’s a full release, and I paid full-release price, and I can’t beat it at all. I’m angry not because Moonlighter is bad, but because it’s extremely good, and a well-documented bug renders it unplayable.

Moonlighter is very good, and you should play it- but you should also wait until the game is out of the beta it appears to be in.

#holly talks #holly plays #moonlighter #moonlighter review

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reduxroyal · 7 years

Note

What are you thoughts on fire emblem heroes so far? And who's on your team?

lol okay buckle the fuckle in kids this is gonna be a ride

(also thank you for this ask and I’m sorry you’re about to get way more info than you probably wanted)

We’ll start with the short answer, so people who aren’t really here for a fucking Fire Emblem history lesson can dip:

Heroes is a fun little game that is honestly a good test to see if you’d like proper titles because the mechanics are identical. They use smaller versions of the original maps, and even pull a lot of the classic music. It’s fun, it works, and there are some nice nods to the older games. My team is Lazlow, Tiki, Niles, and Frederick, all four star or below because the gotcha gods hate me.

Here’s the long answer. Like, really long answer.

Fire Emblem is, historically, not what we’d call a raging success in the US. The first six titles were Japan-exclusive. So from 1990 until 2003, nobody in the US really knew or cared about Fire Emblem because there were no fuckin games for them to play. So what happened to change that?

Melee. Melee happened.

Marth and Roy (for whatever fucking reason I still don’t know why) were on the roster of the 2001 fighter Super Smash Bros. Melee and boy howdy were they popular. You may remember that all of their voice lines were in Japanese, and that’s because they literally didn’t have English voice actors, because there were no English Fire Emblem titles. To be fair FE didn’t use cutscenes at that point so there were probably no voice actors period but like whatever.

So Roy and Marth become like, overnight sensations, and that coupled with the success of Intelligent System’s other tactical RPG, Advance Wars, prods Nintendo to give it a shot and release Blazing Blade internationally for the GBA in 2003. Blazing Blade is the story of Eliwood, Roy’s father, as well as Lyn and Hector, two other big names in FE lore.

But Blazing Blade only sells so-so. In fact, over the next eleven years, Fire Emblem hits a slump, both in Japan and abroad. Titles like Sacred Stones (the first video game I ever played) Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn (why would you put a tactical RPG on anything other than a handheld literally why why why it makes no sense omfg) and Shadow Dragon (which is a rehash of the first game, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light) all do pretty mediocre.

So now the year is like 2010-ish and FE’s not picking up it’s lost revenue or interest, so Intelligent Systems starts planning what is essentially going to be the franchise’s finale, and that’s Fire Emblem Awakening. Intelligent Systems pulls out all the fuckin stops to make the best game they possibly can so it will be a proper last hurrah. If Awakening didn’t sell well, Fire Emblem was going to be shelved forever.

Awakening, of course, due to many things like good advertising, the right platform, a really fucking solid game with cool new mechanics, likeable characters, a decent plot, and fucking gorgeous cutscenes, becomes the best-selling game in Fire Emblem’s twenty-three year history. Which leads to the somewhat awkward question of what the fuck do you do when the thing that was supposed to be your franchise’s finale becomes the most popular installment of the whole goddamn series?

Well, if you’re Nintendo, you try to recreate it.

That’s what Fates is: a recreation. They (understandably) want to make that magic happen again. So they put together the same artists, a lot of the same voice actors, and everyone’s favorite marriage-to-child mechanic (that just does not make sense in Fates okay I’m sorry I love it and I’m here for it but we all need to agree that it just doesn’t make sense) and Fates does pretty well. Fire Emblem’s back in business.

But you’re left in this curious situation where more than half of your fanbase is only familiar with two out of fourteen titles, so it’s hard to decide where to go. Awakening and Fates are not traditional Fire Emblem games. They are so very, very different in so many ways. The pace of the games, the length of the games, the unit-recruiting process, roster size, the way Support works, even the buying and selling and acquisition of weapons like…there’s just this huge gap. How do you bridge it?

A…mobile game, I guess?

Which like don’t get me wrong, Heroes’ shortcomings have nothing to do with its platform. Like I said before: it’s cute and it’s competent. My issue lies more in the marketing of the game.

I’m sure we all remember the polls that went on to decide which Fire Emblem greats were going to be playable characters in the game, right? And you could pick anyone. Literally anyone. It didn’t matter if they were only apart of your roster for a map and a half. It didn’t matter if they were an enemy unit. It didn’t matter if they were some like, random archer you got in the third chapter so you could learn about ranged attacks. You could vote for any character from any Fire Emblem game, period.

Except, that means it’s essentially boiling down to a popularity contest between twelve practically unknown or rarely known Fire Emblem titles and the two newest, best-selling, fan favorites. Which isn’t upsetting so much as it is, like, dumb? Like of course the majority of people are gonna vote for Chrom and Camilla, that’s what they know. One of the best Fire Emblem characters (in my opinion) is Prince Innes, from Sacred Stones. He has a hilariously arrogant attitude, is bold and brash, and a sick fucking sniper who constantly insists he should be on the front lines and not in the back of the party with the rest of the ranged attackers.

Innes, of course, didn’t make the list. Because ten out of the chosen twenty male heroes were from Awakening or Fates (that ratio is 13:20 for the ladies if you were curious) So this game that was intended to like, I don’t even know, revive interest in old games or at least make them relevant, ends up not really doing that at all. Especially because out of the first eight chapters (that’s as far as I’ve gotten) four of ‘em explore the worlds of Awakening and Fates.

What about Path of Radiance? What about Sacred Stones? What about literally anything besides the last two games in the franchise because it’s not that I don’t like those games, it’s that you promised me a game that embraced all of Fire Emblem, and this ain’t it. Also you went to the trouble of giving Eirika official art and she’s not even a character you can draw what the actual fuck is she in this game or nah

BASICALLY (we’re almost done you almost made it) I think it will be interesting to see how Fire Emblem: Echoes plays out. Echoes is a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, a 1992 Japan-only exclusive that I, personally, know nothing about, but can tell you with relative confidence that it’s not like Awakening or Fates because nothing in FE is like Awakening or Fates. It’s coming out in May of this year and like…I’m really curious to see how the “newer” (and by the way newer does not mean in any way that you’re like less of a fan. I don’t care if the only Fire Emblem game you’ve played is Awakening, I’m just fucking glad you’re playing Fire Emblem, let’s be friends) fans will like it. The official description for it is: “Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia recreates classic Fire Emblem gameplay with a modern twist, mixing in exploration of dungeons crawling with enemies.”

I have never played a FE title that had a dungeon of any kind, unless you count the Tower of Valni from Sacred Stones. I don’t even know what that means in the terms of a tactical RPG but like, I guess we’ll see.

tl;dr I like Fire Emblem a whole lot and will always be bitter over Eirika’s bullshit outfit in Awakening’s DLC

Thanks for reading!

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

Hi! I’m back again! And at this point lots of things have changed in regards to this post! Most notably: Heroes has added lots of older Fire Emblem characters to the game (including Innes which makes my earlier complaint look really dumb) and Echoes came out and it’s genuinely one of the best games I’ve ever played, and easily one of the best games in FE’s franchise.

Here’s the thing that past me writing this post didn’t get: newer fans are just as invested as old fans, they just don’t have as much to be invested in yet. I can prattle on and on about Sacred Stones and Binding Blade and Shadow Dragon and all the titles I’ve played, but newer players (under-fucking-standably) aren’t going to go back and play games with bad graphics from the late 90′s and early 00′s, so they just hang out with the titles they have played, which for some people, is just Awakening, or just Fates.

Echoes was universally adored by the fanbase. There were a couple times I saw comments like “well, where’s the avatar unit?” or “why can’t I marry other units and have kids?” and like, I wanted to be mad, because those aren’t staples of Fire Emblem, but if anything it’s Nintendo’s fault for making two games back-to-back that promoted the hell out of those features. How could someone who only played Awakening and Fates (which is the majority of this game’s base) know any differently?

And Heroes has really done well with bringing in more characters from other games. Every single game in the franchise (even fucking Tharcia 776) is represented by at least two characters, and they’re always adding more. I think they’re genuinely doing the best they can to please everyone, and the only people throwing a fit are "older” fans who think they deserve more because, what? They’ve put more time in? They’ve somehow “earned” it?

Nintendo is a business, and businesses rely on popularity to fucking succeed. That’s just how it works. Like it or not, the realistic faces of this franchise are characters like Lucina, Ryoma, Corrin, Camilla, and Robin. That’s just how it works. Characters like Math and Lyn will always endue because they’ve been built up as legends, but now there’s so many new characters, and so many new fans, so of course things have to change and the attention has to shift.

And new fans are picking up the old characters just as much!! Characters that haven’t gotten fanart in a fuckin decade are suddenly getting a bunch of attention, because a new fan pulled them in Heroes, didn’t know who they were but liked their design, and went to town.

tl;dr - you aren’t more important just because you’ve “been a fan” longer, it makes complete sense that Nintendo would shift the focus to games like Awakening and Fates, and if you’re waiting for a certain character to show up in Heroes give it some time.

That’s all for real this time.

Also my new team (if anyone cares) is Innes, Leo, Azura, and Raven. I don’t want to talk about how much money I spent trying to gotcha twelve year-old video game characters.

I, uh, I just really like Fire Emblem.

also for all the Path of Raidance and Radiant Dawn fans who sent me asks saying those games were the highest-selling games for their consoles: you’re wrong, and here are the fucking receipts

#ask duchess #anon #fire emblem #oh boy #this got deep real quick #fire emblem heroes #fire emblem awakening #fire emblem fates #basically a history lesson in fire emblem okay

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svtskneecaps · 4 years

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Hphm was supposed to be my way of like living out my Harry Potter years but it’s so boring and the storyline is really bland. Honestly there’s a similar HPHM game that jam city only released in China which looks so much better. I think you can actually interact with other people and there’s more free reign. It also takes place from when McGonagall becomes headmistress so it might be a different with professors and what not. I hate having the same convo with the same person (talbott) 3x a day!

“ I want HPHM to work on the storyline, continuity errors and make it more free play friendly. I also hate how repitive dialogue options are and quests never really impact you in the main story, like can’t I brag about my animagus form or the fact that I babysat Draco! It’s honestly like everyone but me was obliviated after the quest ended! Honestly I get Fly Solo is like our inside joke but must mc really say it so often! Plus my animals like never show up. I want to show them off!!! “

“ Honestly I think you probably could write better individual storylines! There’s like literally no continuity in the story. Things just don’t make sense sometimes! Like how am I on andres team for quidditch when I’m supposed to become seeker later! Why do I have to keep switching quidditch positions! Why can’t I have my friends (not just penny) cheer me up for matches like Ron and Harry. I also really want roommates in my dorm like show me their beds too! We should have a roommate hangout option! “

sorry lmao it got kind of long bc i’m a big dumb fool

honestly it’s so frustrating that jam city didn’t think most of their plot points through. like it’s really obvious that they’re writing things as they go. i don’t really mind discovery writing all that much; it’s how i write most of my stuff and it’s how the current story i’m posting is going right now (which is why i’m usually late to update; i have no idea where i’m going aside from a slight vibe)

but i’m writing some bullshit fluffy romancey crack fic for like, 35 people on tumblr, so it works for me. these are people making a HARRY POTTER GAME, so they don’t get that kind of slack

it’s weird that they force you to switch quidditch positions instead of, i don’t know, letting you PICK which position you wanted and giving you questlines related to it (and then maybe, letting you pick another position later if you got bored of it). i honestly was so unenthused with quidditch that i’m not even at the tryouts yet. i only started now because i want to get like, exp or something, for that month long thing like i’m not invested in the questline at all. the additional characters in the quidditch quest just bloat the game even farther and they don’t even develop the characters they already have

and OH MY GOD, EVERY TIME MC BRINGS UP “””FLY SOLO””” MY CHEST SHRIVELS. like it’s not funny, at least not the way they play it, and it drives me crazy. a good author might be able to play that as a flirty inside joke, but apparently the (likely underpaid) writers for this game just don’t bother (i want to give them the benefit of the doubt; i don’t want to call them terrible writers and say they can’t write good dialogue because listen, i’m a fan fiction author i’m not exactly shakespeare and i don’t even know any of their names, i don’t get to throw that stone. idk if they can’t or don’t but either way, it’s just not good writing)

the grinding is just killer. the grinding is KILLER. the grinding is the worst damn part of the whole thing and i hate it so much.

like damn bro maybe once i’ve played the game up to its current point i’ll release a set of general bulleted outlines for how they could play each of the four main storylines for the houses, like plot points and events and such, if i can think of things. like i said, i’m only in year four and if things keep taking this much damn time it might take me a couple months at least to get all the way up to the latest release

i don’t really have the time or the energy or the staying power to write each of them out in full, but bulleted outlines would be manageable so uh

we’ll see? i guess?

anyway it’s probably best to think of the side quests as totally separate from the main canon except OH WAIT, DOESN’T TALBOTT SHOW UP IN THE MAIN CANON?? I’M PRETTY SURE I HEARD SOMETHING ABOUT THAT, MAKE UP YOUR MIND, JAM CITY, WHICH FUCKIN PARTS ARE YOU GOING TO HOLD ONTO

anyway shameless self promotion, this pissed me off even all the way back in december when i first started playing, so i started making a rewrite of my own to hopefully keep continuity and make things believable (which is why i was screen recording everything; i wanted to know everything that happened and all the lines of dialogue because there was one segment after the duel where flitwick said something in response to my choice that i loved and i was never able to find what he said, so i started recording the plot moments to look back on later).

but then i stopped, because the tulip continuity error happened and i was left in the same position as jam city, because i hadn’t name dropped her either so i either had to come up with a reason for her to have never appeared prior, or i had to rewrite the beginning chapters

so i was like, oh, i’ll wait on finishing that one until i actually know everything that’s coming so i don’t run into this problem again

anyway, that’s up on ao3 and you can find it here if you’d like to read it. idk how well it holds up for general audiences, since it was mostly just a cathartic fic for while i was waiting the hours and hours for my energy to recharge. the beginning’s a bit sloppy tbh bc it was just a series of semi-connected scenes before i really found my groove, but they’re still sort of fun. in the span of a single scene i think i developed the characters and their interactions more than jam city has in the four years of gameplay i’ve made it through so far, so hey. jam city, hire me.

maybe i’ll even release the rest of the chapters i wrote (because i have more). who knows

sorry i wrote a whole essay anon uhhh i have a lot of words and feelings i guess. that’s my bad. this is honestly my passion though so seeing wasted potential gets my gears turning and i just gotta word vomit sometimes

thank you so much for talking with me about it uwu i love you

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