#LB4 spoilers

[coffeecakecatt]

Lostbelt four’s story was really well put together and the time all the characters got was really well paced. It gave a lot of new characters really good story beats and screentime that they otherwise wouldn’t have had if there had been too much of either Arjuna alter or Karna. 

Jinako getting to see Karna again, keeping up this act of not knowing who he is, and then losing him so soon after that. She loses the person she knows the best and knows is likely the closest in strength to Arjuna alter. Then he gets himself erased from history for the sake of giving everyone the chance to actually fix the lostbelt. And helps give Jinako a little push to move through her own insecurities so he didn’t sacrifice himself for nothing. She doesn’t really understand why she’s the vessel for a servant, especially a god, but despite her insecurities and her fears she pushes through them to have one of the biggest moments in the entire lostbelt. She and Lakshmibai say fuck you to time and toss themselves back to the beginning of this India, and Jinako waits for thousands of years completely alone. Zero contact with anyone, to rewrite the worship of a god and give everyone a fighting chance to cut down the lostbelt. Jinako embodied the god she’s psuedoed with and became the remover of the biggest obstacle, Arjuna Alter’s power through people’s worship of him. She and Lakshmibai completely rewrote history.  Lakshmibai’s whole arc through the story was wonderful, and the wordplay with names and how that relates to the divinity she carries is really interesting. Lakshmibai was a really good character to show the love of home, and the love of people in that lostbelt. It was, again, ‘the master is committing murder and destroying people’s chance of living’. But her anger was from a genuine place, because she lived in PHH India, she fought for the people, she gave her life so that they could have the chance to live better. And she’s been staying with the people in the lostbelt, living with them, leading an entirely new resistance. She loves the people here. And it’s a really hard thing to hear that you’re working towards the erasure of the people she’s protecting. And the scene where she uses her bad luck to make a master marksman miss his ‘unmissable shot’ is great and shows a lot of strength in her character. Then going back in time with Jinako and fighting to protect her just adds to it. 

Then there’s Pepe, who was just great. Everything with Pepe was great. Their character, them getting to see Mash again. Mash gets what she wanted with Ophelia, which is way more time to talk and try to understand what’s going on. Why are these people that are supposed to protect humanity going against it now? And Pepe offers her some closure, Pepe tells her and the master they shouldn’t feel bad for doing what they have to do to protect the history they’re fighting for. On top of just being a really wonderful character with a really cool back story Pepe gives a good look into the train of thought for the Crypters’ motivations. 

Then we finally get Arjuna vs. Karna, a proper fight between the two of them that they haven’t really had the chance to have yet. There’s always been something in the way of these two getting to have the big fight that they keep talking up to.  It takes an entire ‘time has no logic’ training montage in muddled trash space with Karna and Ashvatthaman, and Rama’s sword for Karna to be super powered enough to face off with him. And there’s this really great moment where you see Karna break the dam, he’s the tipping point, the only thing there is that can push at that little nagging feeling and break Arjuna alter’s indifference.  Karna is the person that entices Arjuna alter back into entertaining his humanity, in allowing himself to be bitter and petty and selfish, to be excited and eager and have drive again. He breaks through the complete emotional wall that Arjuna embraced, his attempt to give up his humanity, and makes him angry.  And they get to have a massive super powered fight, and Karna breaks the narrative. He wins, and Arjuna has to face the despite everything he tried to do, how he did it wasn’t right. He gave up too many important parts of himself.  His talk with Karna at the end and his loss sets him up to have the redemption arc through love and care of the master after he’s summoned.  Basically, lostbelt four was really good and I loved the whole of it. 

#fgo #a lot of rambling #but yeah #the whole trip through lb4 was good #karna arjuna alter fight was great #I could talk more about other characters but this is already long #longpost #long post #lb4 spoilers #an interlude with base arjuna and arjuna alter would be cool #after junao has his humanity floating around in his chest #like cooking together making cookies or something #these two get to chat and talk about themselves and realize neither of them are perfect ideals of either a hero or a god and both of them #are beautiful little wrecks of being a human walking around and fucking up #that'd be good

[brave-symphonia]

Really? Why couldn’t she normally become Beast III?

So as long as the other gods are present, Mara should be kept from doing something like this?

As long as the other Indian gods are not combined into one person who is busy with destroying and remaking the world on repeat, she shouldn’t be able to get free like that?

I think I’ve got an idea.

#zack plays video games #zack plays fate go #parvati #tokugawa restoration labyrinth ooku #zack explores nasuverse #spoilers #fate spoilers #lb4 spoilers

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

I try not to get to annoyed by it but it does get a bit depressing to see people get all hyped about stuff morgan does that arjuna alter already did

Case in point the new alt of hers has her eyes change from darker to lighter when she gets less like aesc and more like morgan, and arjuna alter has his eyes turn light purple when he uses his clairvoyance/is at a higher divinity level (ie they’re both linked to their role as a lb king and the specific trauma that entailed)

But of course because Morgan got so much more detail put into her backstory people have been paying much more attention to it and what it symbolizes for her

#pleeeease I need someone with writing sway to get really autistic about him and convince nasu to let them rewrite lb4 please please #my post #fgo spoilers #kind of but I’m playing it safe #this isn’t really a ‘oh she’s copying him’ type post to be clear it’s just #it’s just grrrrrr

[spiegelgestalt]

Lostbelt 4 is really peak FGo

FGO currently has a "finish the story" -campaign so I used it to finish lostbelts 4. It has a lot of similarities to Apocrypha (including Lakshmi who just looks like the lovechild of Shirou and Jeanne) which I approve of. Some random observations under the cut. Spoilers for LB4 obviously

Peperoncino is best boy and I can't decide if I ship him more with Daybit or Asvathaman

Lots of interesting Indian mythology which I do know nothing of but am now curious about. Has anyone any suggestions where to start?

GOREDOLF THE RACER!!! I love you, you loser!

Absolutely love Ganesha (and Ganesha/Karna) just wish they would stop fat shaming her (but I admit her NP always makes me smile because I'm a bad person)

Arjunas face whenever he sees Karna gives me life

Some really interesting observations that the search for a perfect world has some really nasty connotations (I just wish that it would be less accompanied with the whole Status Quo is the best possible world -stuff)

Asclepius is scarily similar to some doctors I know

I'm 90 percent sure that there will be a way to save the lostbelts - I felt like the game hit me really over the head with that idea

#FGO #Spoiler #Fate grand order #Fate #Arjuna #Karna

[ultimablades]

Okay, finally going to jot down my FFXVI thoughts, things I liked and things I wish had been different. No story spoilers so this is more about gameplay/game design choices, but I'm going to put under a readmore to be safe.

Pros:

Loved the main cast of characters. For me, the characters are the most important part of a Final Fantasy game, if i don't like the main party I'm going to have a hard time staying interested in the story. I ended up loving Clive so much more than I was expecting and he's quickly become one of my favorite FF protagonists. He is full of love and his journey was important to me!! Outside of Clive, I fell in love with a lot of the other characters. The Dominants were all so different and had their own unique stories and it was fun getting to learn all about each one of them. And there were so many secondary characters I grew fond of, I was excited to see them again. Also, last note, the main villain design was good. That's all i'm going to say about that.

Along with the characters, I thought the main story was really good. I don't want to say too much about it because I don't want to talk about story spoilers in this post but there were so many epic highs that had me going "Now this is a final fantasy game," nothing hits quiet like SE money does when it comes to jaw-dropping story moments and cutscenes.

I liked the side quests, yes most of them were fetch quests/go kill this monster quest, but that's just how side quests in most games are tbqh. They gave really good lore about both the characters and the lore so I didn't mind doing them. Some of them i think should've been part of msq.

I enjoyed the gameplay, Eikonic abilities are so varied and different, it's fun to mix and match and play around with them. The stagger bar was a good edition, I know FFXIII had something similiar but this reminded me of FFXIV's burst windows in a way, cause I found myself holding my LB4's and eikonic abilites for when I knew a stagger was about to happen. Dodging and parrying were fun once I got the timing for them figured out. I also like that you can't just eat potions and face tank your way through fights.

In that same vein, I liked the look of our ascension grid. Like, just aesthetically, I enjoy the design of it.

The size of the zones was really good I thought. This was another thing that reminded me a lot of FF14, but you basically have a set number of zones that are more "open world," that you can run around in, do side quests, find hunts, kill mobs, etc. None of those zones were too big or too small and I think they struck a good balance between FFXV's massive overworld that could take a long time to traverse and the more linear, straight hallways of previous FF games. Between your chocobo and the obelisks (which are just FF14 aetherytes lol), it doesn't take long to get where you need to go.

Boss design in general was really good. It's hard not to keep making comparisons between FF14 because some bosses literally look like HD versions of their FF14 counterpart and do the same attacks, I'm not mad about it but as an FF14 player I kept going "Hey it's blah blah blah." But boss fights were fun! Especially some of the endgame ones really made me think about my eikon setup and what abilities I needed to use.

Eikonic battles in general I think were a lot of fun and the biggest spectacles in the game. They don't happen frequently enough that I got tired of it, the controls for the eikon are simplified so I think it would have been annoying to do them too much. But they always happened at a story high point, so you're like "OOOOHHHHHHH" when you're doing them. The high point of the game for me was an eikon battle.

Active Time Lore in general. I love it. I'm kissing it. I want it in every game moving forward.

I didn't personally use these but I love the accessibility features they added that do things like making dodging easier, auto-linking your combos together, etc etc. More accessibility features is never a bad thing! This story is good and I want everyone who wants to experience it be able to. And now they've made it so you can turn off the motion blur, which didn't bother me but I know it bothers a lot of people, so I'm glad they included it. Should've been there on launch but hey, better late than never.

Cons:

The pacing in this game can be.....rough at times, in a way that is very FF14. The highs of this game are soooooo high, they are so good, but then the lows are like trying to walk through mud. You will do the coolest boss fight of all time and then the next quest will be "go do this boring task." I don't mind downtime in a story – it's good to have an ebb and flow, you need the slower bits to enhance the epic moments. I just wish they had used their downtime better. Again, it feels very FF14 msq in that regard, if you have played FF14 than you will know what I mean. I mentioned liking the side quests and I wish they would've used some of that downtime to integrate those stories into the main one instead of having them be optional. There is some good bits about our main cast members that you can miss if you don't do the side quests, and I think that could've improved the pacing a bit – slows things down without making it feel slow cause we're still learning about our party members.

The crafting system in this game is a joke. It doesn't matter, it feels like a tacked on afterthought. You don't have to think about it at all. You will never want for crafting material and sometimes you will upgrade your gear only for a stronger item to become available at the shop after the next cutscene.

RPG elements in this game in general are pretty weak. There are no elemental weaknesses or anything of that nature, there aren't a lot of stats, so you don't really ever focus on that, you're just going to use whatever gear is strongest. The ascension tree for your eikonic abilities is cool but beyond that, you don't really have much control over Clive's numbers, you feel me.

In that same RPG element vein, you have no control over your party member's gears or stats as well. This makes sense because who is in your party changes depending on where you're at in the story. I wish I would've had more input in my party's actions though, outside of Torgal who is very easy to forget about, you can't give commands or plan attacks or anything like that. The party is just always AI controlled and will go off and do their own thing. Mainly, I wish there had been more party synergy. This is something that FFXV does incredibly well, and since I just replayed that game before this one, I think it makes it even more stark to me. in FFXV, you can issue commands to your party members called "techniques" and you can do thinks like link strikes that are unique to each party member that really makes it feel like you're fighting together as a team, even if the other characters are AI controlled. I would've loved something like that in this game, party members doing specific team attack when they're near Clive or piggy backing off specific eikon abilities as his. It's very easy to forget they're even there sometimes. I literally just realized as I was typing this, you party members don't even have their own health bars!!! They literally can't die!!! I also wish there was more banter between party members, though that may just be a personal want, cause I loved that in FFXV. Idk I love a good party dynamic in an RPG and there just. Isn't one at all in this game really lol.

This story is really dark at times and I wish there had been more moments of levity and lightheartedness to balance it out. Maybe they just felt like it wouldn't fit tonally but I find having those lighter bits in a dark story can make us care about our characters even more! The story isn't all doom and gloom but there are no classic FF moments of silliness, you know.

Purely a personal gripe – there is no fishing mini game, gotta ding it for that.

Overall though, the game is legit like an 8.5/10 for me personally, I love it. I had a good time playing it. I'm still playing it when I'm not raiding. I'm going to beat it on Final Fantasy mode. I recommend it to anyone who loves Final Fantasy because this is without a doubt a final fantasy story.

I think the things that I listed as cons will be forgotten by most people in six months to a year and what will stick with people is the spectacle that was the boss fights and a story about the deep bonds of love that make us who we are.

TLDR: Game good

#FFXVI Thoughts #No Story Spoilers #Me about every Final Fantasy: It's a game about love #Sorry it's so long #I had many thoughts

[papika]

PEPE I ADORE YOU?

#fgo #fate grand order #lb4 spoilers #(ask if you need any more spoiler tags than that!) #vi.txt

[truealpha]

Ashwatthama really beat her ass and just left lmao

#fgo #fate grand order #lb4 spoilers

[arjunyas]

destroying and remaking the world is nothing. the true atrocities ajruna alter committed is making me farm eggs of truth

#fgo #arjuna alter #lb4 spoilers #I guess? #anyway the eggs are evil and i'm crying

[reignsan]

Crying in the club rn

#fate grand order #fgo spoilers #lb4 spoilers #karna #jinako carigiri

[fiannalover]

You know, I do appreciate Jeanne's whole "I'm not a saint, I'm but a simple farm girl who committed atrocities (and also I get a crisis everytime someone develops a personal friendship with me)" but I ALSO think Lakshmi SLAPPED when she said "I'm not a saint" somewhere in her introductory chapters and followed up with "I'M THE FUCKING DEMON QUEEN" right at the Lostbelt's climax

#fate #fate grand order #lakshmi bai #lb4 spoilers #jeanne d'arc #lakshimi #lakshmi #lostbelt 4 spoilers #fate spoilers #fgo spoilers

[brave-symphonia]

But what on earth could be affecting the Indian pantheon? It’s not like there’s an Indian lostbelt or something.

Maybe, it’s possible. It’s possible the Indian lostbelt could be an alternate version of history where Arjuna goes on to collect the divinity of every god in the Indian pantheon, thereby preventing them from keeping Mara locked up.

But what are the chances of that, Mash?

#zack plays video games #zack plays fate go #tokugawa restoration labyrinth ooku #zack explores nasuverse #spoilers #fate spoilers #lb4 spoilers

[dvalshock]

#fgo #lb4 spoilers #asclepius #god this scene

[hasmashdoneanythingwrong]

I think William Tell’s final moments in LB4 fully embrace one of the main themes of FGO (Do Not Go Gentle, for all humans have is their pride at the end), and that’s why it was so damn good, along with how it (namely his Noble Phantasm and its backup) annoying Arjuna despite doing no damage is also good because it serves to hint that he’s nowhere near as infallible as he makes himself out to be and basically builds up to how yes, Ashwatthama’s plan will work.

#fate #fate grand order #fgo #lb4 spoilers

[auspiciouscat]

asclepius said "I lived bitch" and took it personal for being brainwashed and immediately opened up a can of WHOOP-ASS on douman like go OFF honey get his clown ass

#LIKE BABE YOU REALLY DID FGDHDHDJ #lb4 spoilers #fgo spoilers #fate grand order #asclepius fgo #cat talks

[asclepyus]

Karna and Ashwatthama beating the shit out of each other in a timeless void for thousands of years is actually such a mood

#I love both of them so much I’m HDHSGSHGSJDBF #karna #ashwatthama #lb4 spoilers #ash plays fgo

[grandorderconfessions]

#sfw #fate grand order #lb4 spoilers