#Yeah; in case you don't know; one of the main mechanics of the game is using emotions to fight enemies

[vonaegiremblem]

Is the core concept of Super Princess Peach kind of insulting? Yes. Is Super Princess Peach a charming, fun, and underappreciated DS-era platformer? Also yes.

#super princess peach #nintendo #mario #Yeah; in case you don't know; one of the main mechanics of the game is using emotions to fight enemies #I've been replaying it on my hacked 3ds and it's pretty good #it's a lot easier than I remember; though #if you've never payed it you should give it a try. It's solid all around. Nothing ground break; but it's good #the premise of peach rescuing mario and luigi was unique at least #it's also fairly short so it won't take you too too long to play #like I've put in a few hours over a couple days and I'm already mostly through world 6

[juni-ravenhall]

sso vs the concept of good gameplay. yeah its another fucking book length post >:3

thoughts from someone with a brain full of what good game design means and tons of years of studying and analysing that topic etc, bc of game design being one of my main interests.

basically the major thing i want to say about the hollow woods update aside from "yay forest kinda pretty :)" is that most of it doesn't really consist of what i would call gameplay. this is ofc something u can argue back and forth that im also open to, bc respectful analytical discussion is healthy.

the firefly stuff id personally call something more like "satisfaction play" than gameplay (idk if there's a widespread term that anyone else made up already). there is zero challenge to gathering fireflies - it's on the level of poking a glitter slime simulation app. it might feel satisfying to collect them, but there is no practised skill needed, no thinking or planning or anything. so i don't consider this "gameplay", but "satisfaction play" in itself isn't a bad thing, either. it's not that "gameplay" would be inherently better than "satisfaction play" in every case.

the puzzles are gameplay, i think - not very challenging gameplay (the answers are right there as soon as the puzzle is presented), but it *is* arguably gameplay, since we do call puzzle-solving "gameplay" in general. there is some argument there to be made about what a "puzzle" really means, and what is a simple "request and task" rather than a "puzzle", or what "knowing a real life fact" (what is 180 degrees?) versus "having to figure something out using information available inside the game" might mean for how we view what is or isn't a puzzle. but that's not specific to sso at all (a question for tons of various "puzzles" as seen in tons of various games).

there's nothing wrong in itself with satisfaction play, or with easy puzzles. sometimes that's exactly what an audience wants. but sso has a bigger issue, in that the main gameplay until now has been races (or courses, tracks, but let's say races) and that those races are not especially well designed. that there is very little of really challenging, fun, satisfying, rewarding gameplay in sso - in the terms of what people usually expect from videogames (of the gameplay-based type, not satisfaction play-based).

don't jump to conclusions here, but: i often make a comparison to mariokart, a game with a primary race mechanic. i used to play mariokart a lot because it was just really fun. it was fun alone or with friends or strangers, and it was fun to try to beat my best score, and it was fun to explore different ways of beating the same track. when you design a game, you have to think really heavily about: is the core gameplay loop fun? what makes people want to play this? to *re*play this? does it feel satisfying and exciting? is it better or at the same level as its competitors? what kind of things appeal to the target audience? and so on.

somehow sso has never felt like mariokart (except that one rainbow race, obvs), and i don't mean that sso could just "copy mariokart", this isnt the point. what i do mean is that there has to be a way to make your racing mechanic (if it is a primary mechanic of your game!) actually fun, engaging and challenging in the right way - the good game design way, not the clunky, frustrating and broken way. (yes, i know the engine is spaghetti garbage. no, i don't think that's a get-out-of-jail-free card for every problem that sse has.)

they made some progress with this when they added a completely out-of-place, more challenging race in one of the more recent story quests (i forget exactly when that was, but the race was in hollow woods). the problem then was that within the context of sso and what they have taught the players about their game, this race was thrown at us with no preparation for its challenges, which is bad game design. you want to introduce your player to different challenges and allow them to practice and learn, which didn't happen when we jump from "races with basically no skill needed to pass" to "a race with new things happening everywhere you need to react to while also successfully following a new path" out of nowhere. the intent was good - more challenging and exciting, dramatic races - the execution wasn't great.

they also made some progress with this when they revamped a few of the champs. the revamps aren't perfect, but they're good, and it was a good step towards improving core gameplay mechanics, that not only are genuinely enjoyable to many players but also *fit into the theme of the game* (as in, beating others at horse sports is a common theme within the equestrian theme). (i'm personally in shock that we don't have more champs across the map since all of these years, and that they aren't better already, since it's one of the most "regular videogame quality" content this game has and it shouldve been relatively easy to add more as well as maintaining and improving what was there).

so, back to the new valedale stuff.... sort of. there have been some puzzles in sso before, and some random gameplay (the click timing of searching for gold). the stuff we've had before: it's usually very basic puzzles and random gameplay, partially on behalf of that - for a long time - there doesn't seem to have been that much resources put into fighting with the engine to create new things that weren't in the code before, and partially because of a view held by some people at the company that games for young girls don't need to have any actual well-designed challenging gameplay, and that it's better to make it ridiculously easy so that nobody ever really loses or gets stuck on anything. you don't have to practice to beat any of the races - you might have to practice to get a top score or win a champ, but none of those are required for progress. similarly, there wasn't any real challenge that i remember to the absolute majority of non-racing quests, either. you might have to hit a thing with the right timing once in a while, but it's always easy (other games do this too - see QTE in certain AAA games!), or you might have to remember a number or a word for a minute and answer a question or type in a code correctly.

more or less everytime that there were puzzles in sso, they held your hand through it - whether you wanted to or not. the same is true for the rune puzzles, which have their solution blatantly in front of you as soon as they load. there is no changing actual difficulty level to make it more fitting to the player (which doesn't necessarily have to be a literal level setting - it can come organically, such as giving extra explanations, or slowing a timer down, after a player has failed a task 3 times, etc). yes, you can make the rune puzzles more complex in some sense - a bigger grid, or choosing the type of moves you are worse at - but the solution is always right in front of you, regardless. they hold your hand whether you like it or not, by the type of puzzle that they introduced.

races in sso have a "gold, silver or bronze" system, but we don't actually see that the races have been correctly playtested to properly reflect what a time worthy of each medal should be, and we also don't really gain anything from reaching any medal. i never feel a thing about getting this or that medal, because they mean nothing. it might be a good thing that we're never asked in a quest to "complete this race with a gold medal" or "complete this race under a certain time" or "complete this jumping course with no faults", since that could lock some players out of completing quests (while this is the case for most other games, there is also an important discussion happening around accessibility in game completion).

there are ways to make the medals in races matter, feel accurate, and feel rewarding. there are ways to make races more challenging or more interesting without just being more clunky or frustrating. there are ways to do that while keeping them more or less grounded in reality, and ways to do that while incorporating non-realistic elements that are fun and feel fitting (remembering that this is a game with magic and fantasy from the start). they could have added faults to jumping courses forever ago, they could have added dressage forever ago, and improved on gameplay like pole bending and barrel racing, and so on, and all while allowing players at all skill levels to still complete tasks and complete races, but also allowing players to challenge themselves for rewards.

if the core gameplay - around races and championships, around horse care, horse bonding and horse training - or around magic and protecting what's dear, or around rescue missions with the rangers, or tons of other stuff i can think up that would fit this game - if that stuff felt like actually well designed gameplay, something fun, not frustrating and buggy, challenging in the right ways and rewarding. if all that was done well, then adding some "satisfaction play" with fireflies or some simple puzzles with blatant solutions wouldn't be as easy to criticise.

the closest thing we got to challenging gameplay that you can really clearly *lose* at - that there is a risk and a skill involved - were some of the druid training missions. they still suffered from some clunky frustrations and non-ideal design decisions, but it was an attempt at more regular gameplay (among the non-racing gameplay). comparing the new gameplay in valedale to the druid training, you can see that the risk of failure has gone down a lot or been removed completely, rather than being built upon any more. they also didn't continue to update druid training in any way afaik or to build upon that foundation for other gameplay. (i'm open to that druid training may have been too difficult for a small subset of players, and that's a valid discussion. but i also think it was optional?)

i don't have a really nice tidy thought to end this with, and im really sleepy rn and going to bed. but the overall point is that if sso had other, well-designed and well-functioning gameplay that felt satisfying and rewarding for players, the flaws of the new valedale stuff would be less glaring. as things are, the lack of challenge and the lack of fun gameplay are really glaring problems with it, as well as the lack of reasonable rewards. (it makes very little sense that you have to purchase the items you unlock, but this is the same company that charged whatever x starcoins it was for those recoloured balloon pets, so.)

#ssoblr

[tearsofthekingdomcountup]

27 Days until Tears of the Kingdom Release. More trailer analysis today for y'all. I have watched it an unhealthy amount of times but like the music slaps so hard that rewatching it is not a chore at all. I'm sure most of you by now have heard that the main lead in instrument is a Saxophone which is sick imo.

Spoilers under the cut for those avoiding things.

Picking up where we left off yeasterday, we know have giant sinkholes in the desert. They could be quicksand or pits of death but they could also grant access to an underground section beneath the desert. Considering this is Arbiter's ground, these things might be related to the rising structure earlier in the trailer. Whatever the case, I know that one of my first courses of action will be to walk right into one of these to find out just what they are.

This part to me really hammers in that the underground sections of the game are no joke. They seem to be large and extensive and I'm so ready to explore them. Of course this place is also giving me dungeon vibes which is awesome. Also interesting to see the fire resistant armor mostly unchanged (from what I can tell at least.)

FLYING BOATS!! Are they ghost boats? Magic boats? Zonai tech boats? Who knows but I like the way they look. I think I made it very clear in the first trailer analysis that I needed to explore the giant tornado in the sky. Thank you Nintendo for showing more of the stormhead (although I'll get to the similarities with Skyward Sword another day.) You can see that this boat the trampoline that we see later in the trailer. Its going to be fun to use those.

Now this construct is fairly massive and it isn't the same as the minecraft looking one from the previous trailer. However, I wonder if this one will actually fight us or if its a larger construction construct (hehe). Either way it looks very cool and I am leaning towards fightin given the amount of boss fights this trailer highlights.

My jaw dropped the first time I saw this (although tbf it might have been dropped lower since so much of the trailer had me in shocked awe.) I love the new jump animation Link has (its shown much better later on) which as far as I've seen is only used in gravity manipulation sections. Also yeah gravity manipulation. I've seen several reactors look at this and the weird steps later on and talked about slowing time. Nah its gravity. The little green circle is keeping the water orbiting it at the center. Although, I wonder exactly how common this will be. I hope its used more than once.

Look at that flight suit!! It reminds me of a flying squirrel and I love it. Also mission impossible style laser dodging is not what I had on my totk bingo but I'm not complaining. However, if this section is motion controlled I think I can confidently say that many of us will need several tries. Still a cool use of the new diving mechanics. After this is the shot in the orb but I don't really have anything to say about it except the thing in the background looks like a gumball machine.

If this isn't one of the labyrinths in the sky, I will eat my shoe. In fact, I'm willing to bet that this is in that cube that haunted me in the past trailer.

Sick new spear, same animation, horse that looks very similar to Epona (oh I hope), and most importantly NPC's FIGHTING ALONG SIDE US!! I'm very stoked to see the other members of Hyrule fighting in groups against monsters. It's not just Link. Hyrule is everyone's home and I'm so happy that Nintendo is letting regular the NPC's fight to defend it. Even if their equipment is a little haphazard.

I love Link's expression so much. A little guy. But also he has the shiekah slate and it's got a usb connection into the spool of wire. I'm guessing this is right after/before the little robot arms shot in the past trailer. I have no idea what this is about but I'm curious. Maybe they are viewing more memories stored in the slate? Either that or plugging the wire into the slate is for upgrades or it accesses a specific area.

I have no clue who this person is but I am intrigued. They kinda look like the wall painting showed off in a past trailer but I have no idea what that means. I give this figure props for being mysterious and interesting looking. (Some people said this was in the art book but again I avoided that.)

This part of the castle is very pretty but I don't believe for one second that Link is actually there in the present. He is either reliving a memory or has time traveled because the throne room for sure hasn't been fixed in his time. Magic is involved here.

Zelda looks like she is at an altar. I'm very much reminded of Skyward Sword. I don't know what this means for her but maybe it has something to do with the Master Sword or her goddess powers.

Hmm I mean the random figure saying Link is the last line of defense is cool and all but this shot confuses me. Link's hand should be damaged/be the ancient hand. Is this even Botw Link? Also why is he pulling out the Master Sword again? We know it was damaged so did Zelda stick it back in the pedestal to recharge? So many questions.

Random figure talking to Zelda (who I think might be related to the Owl/the Sage in OOT that talks to Link in the sacred realm) has a similar looking hand. Maybe it's the same one that Link gets or maybe several Zonai have arms like this. Either way we get the first look at the tears part of Tears of the Kingdom but I'll talk about them more the next time.

That's it for today. The only other news I have is that Nintendo has apparently confirmed we will be starting the game in the sky. I'm assuming we either have a very long starting cutscene before they let us have control of Link or we do Great Platau 2.0 first and then we descend to the ground and have to explain what happened to someone like Impah and then the game gives us the explanation cutscene. Anyway, bye for now.

#loz totk #7 is a good number #tears of the kingdom #botw totk #totk link #totk #loz botw2 #loz link #legend of zelda #loz #totk trailer analysis #botw2 #princess zelda #totk trailer #botw 2

[dumbbanana]

@ido100 asked:

Could you maybe explore your characterizations for Monomon and Herrah? Your take on Lurien is incredible!

Phew! I did one for Herrah last time and said I'd do one for Monomon in another post.

So here it is (checks calendar) 9 FREAKING MONTHS LATER. Thanks for your patience!

As with the previous Dreamer asks, the main answer is under the cut!

Sooo the first thing I'd say about my Monomon interpretation is that, compared to other people's interpretations of her, she's a bit of a bimbo (to put it lightly). Most interpretations I've seen of her are of a sagely, delicate, scholarly lady who can do no wrong and knows everything or of a mischievous mad scientist (not saying this is a bad thing) but when I was designing her, I had the general idea of her being a bit of an airhead who doesn't always engage the brain before opening her mouth. That doesn't mean she's entirely stupid - she could tell you from her hoards of knowledge the exact way a mechanism for a complex lock works along with it's history, advantages, disadvantages and how to bypass it. But she'd still spend an hour pushing on a door that says "pull" until it's pointed out to her (if it ever is).

So yeah… Everyone else's Monomons: Graceful, elegant, erudite, high class, sensible This Monomon: Knowledge of an entire kingdom, wisdom of a wooden spoon

In a similar vein, she's pretty much comes off as the "dumb" friend of the Dreamer friend group and, being the kind of friends that they are, any two will not pass up the opportunity to mess with the other. Since I like to think of her as a somewhat impulsive and reckless personality, she may more often than not act on something without thinking, causing trouble for those around and earning endless facepalms from her two best friends (if they weren't dragged into the mess to begin with). While I don't think she's any less intelligent than the other two, I imagine it to be more of a case of her being clever in her own way. While Lurien and Herrah may have more "classic" and "logical" methods in the way they do things, Monomon's odd way of doing things may come off as downright bizarre to the average person but they do produce the desired results and that all she needs.

Leading from that, when she's not being a complete wally, I think of her as an ambitious and potentially cunning person - when she has set her sights set on something, everything is fair game and she'll make as many friends or enemies as she wants to get it. After all, as the Teacher of the Archives, she holds a pretty interesting position in Hallownest so I like to think she has her ways in having come to that position and fending off any threats to her power and post. I also like to imagine that she can be highly irresponsible, often not really caring for the consequences of her actions and that she is rarely the one who has to deal with it. This mixed with her earlier mentioned recklessness and impulsiveness may cause her to have a certain kind of arrogance about her as, so far in her life, everything has gone her way exactly the way she wants.

On a happier note, regarding her actual job: while I usually see her depicted as some kind of introverted genius scientist, with her role as an archivist, I quite like the idea that she actually enjoys going out to see and experience everything in the world and to document it for her archives. Since her whole schtick is about the preservation of knowledge, I like to imagine that she regularly goes on Indiana Jones like adventures either in recovering artefacts that require preserving and protection or transporting documents which may be highly sensitive and valuable. Thus, she is often getting into fights with foes ranging from petty thieves to maybe hired assassins. Her being her, I imagine has had quite a lot of practice engaging these enemies over the years and it's just another day in the life and she's more than able to handle herself.

She, of course, is more than happy having Quirrel by her side (I've mentioned before that their designs are based off the lovers known as the Cowherder and the Weaver Girl and I certainly headcanon them as a happily married couple) even if, and this is purely because the young child in me always wanted to see such a situation, he is the love interest in distress that she ends up rescuing in every adventure 😆

Thank you as always for your ask and I hope this was worth the wait! Have a great day! 🍶

#hollow knight #monomon the teacher #hk monomon #hollow knight gijinka #hk quirrel #ask

[thetombedspirit]

So, I just finished the main story of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora - WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!

First off, I want to talk about the cons of the game before jumping into the pros, but to be honest with ya, the cons are few and far in between and were more about personal preference then the performance of the game itself.

For starters:

1. The Glitches - Like literally, during a few quests, there will be some dialogue, but it'll randomly cut out with the excuse that enemies are near by, when that is absolutely not the case. It was only so bad that I had to exit to the main menu and then get back on in order for it to fix, so this was minor in comparison to other glitches like falling through the map randomly (which happened to me once during my play through of Far Cry 4 :p)

2. The Language - This is just a little peeve of mine, but I wish that the Na'vi, at least when talking amongst themselves and to us, spoke in Na'vi. Like, if Ubisoft could record a whole 'nother language for Far Cry Primal, they could have done it here. And I also wish that the animals, especially the Palulukan, were referred to by it's Na'vi names rather then human names.

3. The Main Character's Name - This is minor really, but I don't like how we are not given a name. Like, I get that it's fun coming up with names for our original character, but it's a bit isolating to only be referred to as 'the Sarentu'.

Not only does it make it seem like our identity as a member of a respected clan matters more then our identity as our own complex individual, but it feels weird when you read notes and listen to audio logs about the other Sarentu kids and not one thing about us, especially when Alma talks about how they're acclimation to life in the Resistance. Like how we're developing doesn't matter at all in comparison to how Ri'nela is coming into the role of leader and Tsahìk.

Not even a mention of our relation to Aha'ri when she writes about her murder and how it could be affecting us.

Like, just a gender-neutral name to tie things in, like Dani in Far Cry 6, would go a long way to make our character feel like a part of the story and not just a nameless side character doing all the hard work, like the Rookie from Far Cry 5.

4. The Villain - This is more of a 'meh' thing for me. Like yeah, Mercer was an asshole, but again, pulling from Far Cry here, who had amazing, complex villains like Vaas Montenegro or Pagan Min, and what we get is... a entitled, racist narcissist whose barely there, and therefore we get zero from this guy. He was more annoying then anything, like literally every time he talk, my eyes rolled into the back of my skull.

Like, could you imagine if AFOP made Mercer like Pagan Min, the tyrant king of Kyrat who had a relationship with Ajay Ghale's mother to the point where he was sympathetic to the loss of his mother. Pagan Min would just randomly call Ajay on his radio like an eccentric father-figure, and in two endings of the game, he'll actually help you out, taking you to Lakshamana so that you can place your mother's ashes beside her, just like she wanted, which is very generous considering that in one of those endings, it's after you lead a massive rebellion right to his door-step, taking out his generals and so-on! (Pagan is my favourite Far Cry villain is you haven't figured that, Vaas is a close second)

If you gave Mercer that kind of depth, then maybe you can actually understand why Teylan would believe Mercer wouldn't hurt anybody when he gave the location of the Resistance Base away.

Harding as well was mediocre. Just a hard-as-nails general that's running a pouching operation on the side. Like, if you made her even a fraction of insane like you did Vaas, I could actually be into it.

So anyway, on to the pros!

1. The Gameplay - I know people moaned about the mechanics being too similar to Far Cry, but honestly, that was what drew me to it when I first saw the trailer for it! Far Cry is my favourite first-person shooter franchise (Far Cry 4 and Far Cry Primal being my favourites). The crafting of weapons, the hunting for food, skins and ingredients and the little things what made it unique was amazing to me,

The hunting was a pain, because half the time (for me anyway) I could almost never get a clean kill for the smaller or quick-moving animals, but I think it was done super well. When you hit an animal in the old Far Cry games, they either just drop dead or run away and bleed out quietly. But here, when it's an unclean kill, the animal squirms and writhes in pain before succumbing to it's wounds, really driving in the whole point of the Na'vi way of life (that's how I saw it anyway).

And the Memory Paintings, though tedious at most times, was another fun and unique mechanic to the game and felt very Na'vi to me and I enjoyed concentrating on them all and hearing the MC's interpretations of the Memory Paintings and the Sarentu Totems.

And the moments when you're flying on your Ikran or Pa'li made me feel like I was in an RPG, like Horizon, so that was a nice little touch. It was like they mashed two of my favorite games into one.

And in the end, it's not the gameplay that makes me play the game. It's the story.

2. The Harmful Effects of the RDA - There was not a minute within this story where it's quests and stories didn't resonate with me.

How the Kinglor of the Aranahe forest was displaced by the RDA's actions, giving us a Yellowstone situation where a key member of the ecosystem was being pushed out and it was causing all sorts of problems for the local flora and fauna.

The aforementioned poaching in Zeswa territory, where the Zakru were being hunted and killed for their tusks and how even their long deceased skeletons were being pilfered, very similar to elephant and rhino poaching, especially as Zakru are sacred animals to the Zeswa.

And then the Yavä, the green fog that brought sickness to the Kame'tire, something that happened, by the way, because the RDA disposed of the Sarentu's bodies by using caustic chemicals!!! (like, what the FUCK, Alma!) but anyway, is very reminiscent to the diseases that European settlers brought in to the native populace, who never had to build up immune systems for it and suffered because of it.

What I'm getting at here, is how big of a problem the RDA is, not just for going to war with Jake and the Omaticaya, but also by causing the exact same problems that people did on Earth and are still doing to Earth. In so many, seemingly innocuous way, the RDA are negatively effecting the ecosystem, the wildlife and the locals in their pursuit of a paycheck that, realistically, would never be able to use until they get off planet, and that is if they don't die on an alien moon because of all those problems.

3. The Efforts of the Resistance

Every time I got to talk with the Resistance members was a highlight for me. I truly do not understand how some people don't like Priya. I found her adorable, and she gave me Penelope Garcia vibes from Criminal Minds. And her budding romance with Resistance Pilot Anqa, whose history with incursion on her desert homeland inspired her to take action against the RDA.

Or Hajir's regrets for playing part in the Severeds origins, concluding how they are in a constant state of anger and sadness.

Or Billy, who break-dances as he's helping you escape imprisonment, before sacrificing himself to save what's left of the Resistance.

And then there's the Na'vi Clans that I just loved and each and every one of it's characters had me giddy. The playful old grandmother in Nefika and her immediate action to take us in and show us around the Hometree, the Zeswa sisters and their rightous anger over the poaching, the eccentricities of Okul and their faith in the Kame'tire's tradtions.

Honestly I could go on and on about every single character in this game. Nalin and her tentative offer to fill in the void of mother during the party, the Burden Carrier and the Milk Crafter who got drunk off their ass, saying the zakru can fly while we're trying to warn them of impending danger and Mosaka, who not only gave our clan's location away to the RDA, but used their deaths to manipulate his way into power and control over the clan by framing Anufi for their demise. (BTW, fuck you Mosaka)

That's all I got for now, but once the DLCs come in, I am defiantly playing through the whole game again and I may come back to this post with an update when that happens, along with my stance on said DLCs.

So, hope your all having a good day and buh-bye!

#Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora #na'vi #john mercer #general harding #teylan #the sarentu #ikran #the rda suck #the aranahe #the zeswa #the kame'tire #zakru #alma cortez #jake sully #the omaticaya #earth

[halorocks1214]

okay so i just steamrolled thru detective pikachu returns over the past 2 days because i was sick and had nothing else better to do and right after finishing it i went into the tags and WOWIE the negative reception is very large!! i do understand and even agree with some of it but i just felt the need to get my own thoughts down (again. sick with nothing better to do) so take a peek under readmore for very typical elongated halo ramblings about his fave video game series

for the record i never played the first game (only watched a few clips of it on youtube even) but i did go see the movie in theaters. just figured i'd mention this ahead of time so my favoritism is known and to prevent myself from coming off as a perfectly unbiased reviewer

BEWARE THE SPOILERS BTW

(post-editing note: it be long under here, you have been warned)

to start off YEAG this game is not worth 50 bucks! the story's pacing is all over the place and is very basic, the graphics are not particularly well refined, the characters' expressions do not fluctuate as much as they should (professor gordon in particular ;-; i felt so bad for him), and the voice acting outside of merloch and detective pikachu himself are kinda phoned in! it felt like an early 2000s 4kids dub for real. even the gameplay aspects themselves were rather meh in presentation; the button hitboxes were annoying to deal with and as cool as i thought the "main" mechanics were they were incredibly clunky and the tension they tried to build up in the "solving the case" climaxes was just Not It. there was absolutely no reason for the loading/pauses to take that long

(the pokemon gimmicks were okay tho. i would die for growlithe)

however, this isn't a problem specific to this game. while i enjoyed scarlet it was definitely not 60 bucks material (and when i went back to it for the teal mask i even went "good lord, did it always run this badly?"). i gotta give credit to detective pikachu, at least this game ran properly for the most part and never crashed on me lmao

while that doesn't negate the criticisms i previously mentioned i simply wanted to say that this is going to be a problem for as long as pokemon keeps making money. this isn't me finger-wagging at anyone in particular (i certainly have no room to talk, i did say i liked scarlet), i just wanted to say: yeah, pokemon has been A Mess

"but halo!" you cry. "you talked like the negative reception was overblown! what gives the giant negative paragraph??"

because much like scarlet, i still really enjoyed this game sdfjnsdk. how can i say that with confidence, though, when i largely agree that there were many, many issues to be had with its performance?

the word of the day: expectations

and perhaps this is where my bias comes into it. whenever i play a spinoff game (like snap or pokepark for instance), i don't really go into it for mindblowing gameplay and stories, i do it for the same reason this series has kept me enraptured for over a decade of my life:

the pokemon themselves!!

there are SO MANY little things that the regular games don't go into, and while i have my own headcanons and OCs i can play off of, it is so much fun to see actual canon material acknowledge certain things you've only ever theorized about!!

the whimsicott were so fun to watch float around, the article asking where a furret's tail began and ended made me laugh out loud, the fact that they went hard into the "slowpoke tails are eaten as food" thing, and the "let's not get into that right now" jokes about venonat hunting other pokemon and dusknoir eating souls LIKE. i LOVE when pokemon goes into its more "serious" aspects. i know main series games do it too occasionally but outside of offhanded mentions or pokedex entries, do they go this hard into them? if they do and i'm just stupid pls tell me about it i'll eat that shit up

being reminded of less-talked-about pokemon is always a plus and how can you not pop off when you see one of your faves included in the story? (INTELEON AND WOOPER I'LL KICK THEIR ASSES 4 U) it's simply fun immersing yourself into the world of pokemon and getting a glimpse of what it would be like to have pokemon walking down the street and how that affects everyday life! maybe the story is basic, but it served its purpose and i had fun going along with it!

perhaps it's just my mental illness talking, but walking around and seeing all the pokemon and THEN doing the quiz girl's quizzes was actually kinda nice! even if the puzzles weren't that hard, i can't lie and say i didn't pump my fist when i guessed where the mystery was going like with cramorant swallowing the jewel or how the passimian statues needed to hold different berries. overall, i just enjoyed being reminded of how much i know and what i love about this series

also, the ways they incorporated the movie were pretty baller. i liked how they didn't just do a repeat of the mewtwo plot from the movie and let me tell you, even tho i called it early on, i liked that my suspicions about the aurora drop being deoxys were confirmed!! (i suppose it's not that hard to guess bcs what other pokemon comes from space, but i just recently finished playing omega ruby again and i normally don't think about deoxys a lot so LET ME HAVE THIS)

plus "i heard they made a movie about the R case" MADE ME SCREAM. i thought they were just going to ignore the movie and do their own thing but then they DID THAT. incredible. you can call my expectations low (which is valid) but holy fuck

so the TLDR for those who want this: if you want a sweet but cliche game exploring the world of pokemon with a lot of funny moments + worldbuilding, then this game is perfect for you. if you want a game with a groundbreaking story with graphics to boot, then yeah, you're not gonna find it here. i've even seen people say their own nostalgia of the original spinoff wasn't enough to get them to enjoy this game, so take my words with a grain of salt

i would say just watch compilations of the game on youtube, but not every youtuber is gonna go fully exploring the game for all of its little details, so if you care about that kind of stuff, buying the game is your best bet. also if you don't care about that kind of stuff then you should just ignore the game altogether etc etc anYwAY

as for a TLDR for the TLDR: new pokemon snap is goated and i would say a more enjoyable experience than this game esp if you didn't like it so PLEASE buy it the game's only 30 bucks and you can throw treats at pokemon PLEASE it has so many sidequests and interactions you can partake in PLEASE i prommy i won't bite PLEASE stick your fingers in my enclosure PLEASE PLEASE PLE

#pokemon #detective pikachu #detective pikachu returns #video game review #my post

[shima-draws]

Why?

Why are the pokemon games becoming more and more of a clusterf*** as we proceed through gens?

I wouldn't go so far as to say THAT;; The last couple gens certainly have an abundant amount of flaws but there's a lot of replay value in them too. To this day I'm still mystified as to why people hated SwSh so much, I know some of the graphics were lackluster but? Honestly imo the actual towns and routes in SwSh are better designed than the ones in SV, especially when you're looking at Hammerlocke and Ballonlea. And the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra DLCs were a blast to play through if you decided to pay for them. SwSh's story was super lackluster but so far SV's storylines have knocked me flat on my ass with how good they are.

Pokemon has always been hit or miss, it really just depends on what aspect of the game you like the most that will determine how "good" it is in somebody's eyes. As for me, I love games that are more story driven, so yes I definitely prefer SV and SM over SwSh and XY, whose plots don't really fit my standards of being a well-written story arc. Some people just like games that are more fun, so they might prefer XY and Swsh for their mechanics over other games.

I definitely do think that SV was rushed, at least on the graphics front; they could have easily let it bake for another year and released a gorgeously rendered game, but we can't win at everything lol. And yeah, there's a good handful of designs in Gen 9 that could use some improvement, but there's a lot of designs that absolutely slap too.

The main issue now is that Nintendo and Gamefreak KNOW that Pokemon is the most popular franchise in the world. They're going to make money off of their games no matter how, or when or in what condition they release their games in. So obviously they're going to rush development at the cost of quality, and at the cost of their own employees, so that they can make bank every year with a game release. At least, that's what I think is the issue? When SV's release date was announced I know a lot of people said holy shit, THAT soon? It was definitely rushed. That's why there's so many lagging and rendering issues lol

But, my philosophy has always been this: You can thoroughly enjoy a piece of media and still criticize it for its flaws. SV may be buggy and glitchy as fuck but I've had an absolute blast playing through it. I already know I'll be starting a new file and replaying it sometime down the road. The problem now is letting Nintendo know that yes, we love Pokemon, we're going to play Pokemon no matter what, but at the very least we should get a say on how much work should be put into these games. (And, in SV's case, it was clearly not enough.)

Anyway sorry for the super long ramble lmao I clearly have some Thoughts about this. But idk. I'd rather be spending my energy enjoying myself and having a good time than being super negative and trashing on the game at any given chance. And yes I do have some criticisms but that's just how these things go

#Shima answers questions #Pokemon #Pokemon Scarlet and Violet #Pokemon SV

[game-boy-pocket]

Well, today I beat the Super Mario RPG remake. Only 4 days did it take, but i'm a veteran who knows this game very well and I was using almost every moment of free time I had to play. Not that i'm saying less experienced people are in for a 100 hour game, it's a very short game for an RPG... but I kind of like that it's not overly long. If any series can get away with being a short RPG, it'd be Mario.

I have almost no complaints with this. There's a few changes I don't care for, but none that are significant enough for me to care that much about.... except for two things...

Enemies that know sleep abilities really love to spam them, and it annoyingly reactivates the sleep status. Yeah there's accessories that prevent sleep, but I don't always know when these enemies are going to have these abilities, and they didn't spam them so much in the originals anyway.

The other one is the fight against the boss, Boomer. There's frame rate issues here that throw off the timed hits. I couldn't get ANY timed hits right because of the lag.

Those are the only real significant blemishes on the game. But they're not significant enough for this to not be the definitive way to play the game for me ( I still might pop in the SNES version once in a while for shits and giggles, but this is better in almost every way )

I will say, this remake solved one problem I had with the original. Once I got Bowser and Peach in my party, I almost never switched Mallow or Geno back in. I liked them. But Bowser was a powerhouse and Peach was an OP healer. There were only three active party members, and no switching out mid battle. Because of that, the only time i've ever beat SMRPG playing mostly as Mario Mallow and Geno was me forcing myself to do it as a self imposed challenge run.

Well this game feels like it buffed both Mallow and Geno, or in Geno's case, fixed him so that his special attacks actually functioned as intended. It gave Mallow a purpose of finding out weaknesses and reistences, as well as getting completed entries in the monster log book. The triple specials are also different for every party combination, and if one party member falls in battle, or is put to sleep, or just because you feel like it, they can be swapped out in mid battle. So for once, I was actually using my whole party, and even swapping out strategically so I could buff someone with Geno's boost, or swapping in both Mallow and Peach to do a super healing move on specific turns, it was great, it feels like this is how the game should have worked to begin with.

Now it might sound like this change makes things a bit too easy... well first of all, let's not kid ourselves, Super Mario RPG is a very easy game, especially if you know what you're doing, and even if you don't grind... second of all, this game imposes limits on recovery items you can carry, so only six revival items instead of filling your whole inventory with them. They also introduce the occasional special enemy that provides more challenge and a frog coin on defeat... that's another issue addressed because Frog Coins were way too tough to come by. They're still rare in this game, but you no longer have to grind ridiculous jumping challenges to get them.

This remake is very faithful, but every mechanical change they made is more than welcome in my eyes.

I've taken a little peek at the post game, emphasis on little, I really don't know what all is in store for me, but I have a general idea of how it's going to go... how they've implemented it seems very clever, doesn't seem to step on the toes of the ending much. But it looks like it's going to be a hell of a lot tougher than the main game, so I may need to do some level grinding. I'm just glad there's still some things to do, because, and I know i've said this with almost every major release lately, i'm not ready to be done playing.

It feels so fucking good to be a fan of Mario RPG right now. I do hope the Thousand Year Door remake makes Paper Mario fans feel similarly happy. I still think it's an odd choice not to remake the N64 game first but the fans didn't campaign for that now did they? Here's hoping Mario and Luigi RPG fans have something to look forward to as well.

That's it for now, maybe i'll give further thoughts when I beat the post game, but this covers most of the important stuff I think.

#pocket plays #super mario rpg

[loregoddess]

Would you be willing to share your builds/levels for the final boss(es) of Octopath II? I'm trying to figure out how much more grinding I realistically need to do to actually finish this game.

Oh yeah, sure! I uh, had a lot more thoughts on this than I realized I would, so I'm sticking most of this under a read more, and I've tried to be vague about spoilers bc I wasn't sure how much you knew already from osmosis or looking at other online tips/guides. Also I ended up breaking things up into sections for easier navigation, because there is...a lot.

Table of Contents

General Thoughts

General Overarching Strategies

Character Preferences

Notes on Bosses

General Thoughts

Full disclosure, I've basically just been rotating my party and using whoever's the lowest level to try and catch them up on levels. Because I started with Ochette, she's locked into the party and is ungodly powerful as a result, but this will occur with literally anyone you start with (my first run I was using Osvald and he was so damned powerful by the end of the game). So I don't have a real "strategy" per boss (except for the optional superboss) so much as I switch around passive skills and subjobs based on who's lowest in levels and who I have to have in the party (Ochette + whoever's story I'm completing).

I will say, I don't feel like most of the bosses require a lot of level grinding, at least not for the character story final bosses. I kinda assume that the recommended level of 45 is like, the average of the entire team. As a general rule, I rarely use the fast-travel feature until I'm in the postgame section, and will literally walk my team everywhere, which helps to maintain levels so that I don't have to grind (and even if I do it's like, running laps in the dungeon right before the boss area until my lowest level person gains two or three levels, which only takes about about half an hour for me usually). Like, when I finished Hikari's route first, I had to run laps before the miniboss to get my two lowest team members to lv. 40, but Ochette was already lv. 52 at this point, and Hikari was about 42 or 43, I think. But I haven't needed to run any laps for any of the other bosses so far.

Also, I feel like Octo2 is a lot more balanced when it comes to stats/subjobs, and you can get away with doing a lot of weird things that work out in the long run so long as you're familiar with the battle mechanics and passive skills and how to make them work for you (which was true for Octo1 too, but I found myself almost always having at least Tressa and Therion in my team so I could get free money and open the purple chests w/out needing to backtrack, which limited my team compositions a lot more than Octo2, where no one character has a field-specific skill that makes them more or less useful than another).

General Overarching Strategies

I do have some general preferences. I like to have a at least one cleric and one apothecary in the party, and they can't be the same character (unless there's multiple clerics or apothecaries) just in case I need one of them to revive the other. This is mostly bc I like having the option to heal all, heal single, cure status ailments, or revive on hand at all times (as a result, if I'm using these as subjobs, they usually end up on a character who isn't my main damage-dealer, but even then it depends on the damage-dealing character).

I also like to have a merchant so I can use Collect bc I like having money, and giving the merchant subjob to certain characters is really helpful bc of the Rest skill being able to restore SP and cure status ailments. Generally I also like to have a hunter for Leghold Trap, or Agnea with Windy Refrain (gained by visiting Sealticge's shrine in the Leaflands) so I can manipulate when the boss attacks. Aside from those classes, I end up being really flexible depending on what I think I need. (As a side note, Leghold Trap + A Step Ahead from the inventor job can be really useful if you go in knowing a boss's weaknesses ahead of time, since you can break the boss and deal a lot of damage before they even get a chance to act).

Oh, but as a general rule, whenever I notice a character start to hit the 9999 damage limit output, I go and get DMD from the warrior class for them, because I love seeing big numbers go boom by optimizing my damage output. I also switch around subjobs a lot depending on what I think I'll need, and if I die during a boss fight I will go and rearrange my jobs or skills before I try level-grinding.

I also don't use any stat-enhancing nuts until the optional superboss, but I really don't think they're needed for any of the character story final bosses anyhow. If you've used them already that's fine though, I've totally mismanaged my nuts in both Octo1 and Octo2, and it's nothing a bit of level-grinding won't solve when it comes to the post-game bosses.

Character Preferences

Here's an outline of how I like to use all the characters. Keep in mind, everyone has their general preferences for how they like to use each character, and there's no right or wrong way to use a character, this is just what works for my playstyle.

Ochette

General: I use Ochette mostly to break enemies quickly with her Provoke monsters ability, and to output a lot of phys. damage. She's one of my main damage-dealers, and I rarely use her for support.

Latent power notes: She has one of the best latent powers for dealing damage, since the damage of her attacks scales with her level. I use her latent power as soon as the boss is broken, and I'll save Ochette's BP to use it at a full boost. Generally I use Beastly Fangs, but if the boss has multiple enemies that need to be taken care of (i.e. Partitio's final boss fight), then Beastly Claws is excellent as well. I don't really use Beastly Howl because there are better options to achieve the same effects that don't require Ochette to drain her latent power. I always use Ochette's latent power before I use divine skills or legendary beasts, since the latent power will refill throughout the battle and it doesn't cost SP.

Favorite subjobs: My primary subjob for Ochette is warrior, since it gives her access to Brand's Blade which is a good alternative to Beastly Fangs, and the warrior stats buff her already high physical stats. Alternately I will use her in merchant, but specifically for the optional superboss so she has access to Hired Help's Beastlings in case she has to use them (notes on that in the boss section below).

Notes on monsters: In general you can have whatever monsters you enjoy using for Ochette's Provoke ability, but I highly recommend having at least one monster that can deal axe damage twice to all enemies (any level, even the highest level "2x axe (all) monster" will only deal 1 damage to the postgame bosses, so choose whichever monster you like best), and a monster that can deal either dagger, axe, staff, lightning, or light damage to all (recommend getting a 9/10 strength monster for this, as they tend to have additional effects to their attacks such as debuffing the enemies or buffing the party; the Peek-a-boo from the area around Timberain tends to be a favorite because it debuffs enemy phys. and elemental defenses). Those two monsters will be the most useful for clearing the optional superboss, and a lot of bosses in general have a weakness to axes.

Castti

General: Castti works well as either a damage-dealer or support, so I tend to change her subjob depending on the rest of the team.

Latent power notes: I refuse to use concoct unless I have her latent active so that I can save on the ingredients. The only time I use concoct without the latent is during the two postgame bosses. I managed to get through the final boss fight my first run with only one pomegranate leaf thanks to her latent power (I uh, forgot to stock up at the secret market, but if you need more rare ingredients for concoct, the merchants that show up at night in the area to the west of Healeaks will sometimes sell stuff like pomegranate leaves).

Favorite subjobs: If I'm using her as a damage-dealer, than warrior and armsmaster are my go-to. For support, I tend to stick with inventor or merchant.

Notes on concoct: I use it almost exclusively for healing and buffing the team, and the ability to give everyone BP is super useful for setting up other damage-dealers and support characters.

Throne

General: One of my main damage-dealers, one of the best damage-dealers in the game. I was able to hit the 99,9999 damage limit with Throne thanks to the fact that Aeber's Reckoning scales with speed and seems to take the phys. attack stat into consideration as well. Optimize her speed and give her a high-damage dagger and she's golden for dealing wild amounts of damage.

Latent power notes: I don't have a particular pattern for how I use Throne's latent power, since how I use it depends on the battle situation. Sometimes I use it so Throne can act as temporary support, and sometimes I use it to set up Armor Corrosive and then use Aeber's Reckoning. Really, whatever I need a double-turn for, this power comes in handy for.

Favorite subjobs: Hunter for sure, it gives Throne an excellent boost to speed and evasion while also buffing the phys. attack stat nicely. Dancer is a decent subjob as well bc it gives her even higher speed/evasion stats than hunter, and access to Dagger Dance which is a nice aoe attack when level-grinding, but overall Dancer!Throne is kind of glassy for my tastes, and I like having Leghold Trap as an option for Throne's debuff repertoire in boss fights. I don't mind using merchant for Throne either, since Rest and Collect are useful skills for her to have.

Osvald

General: One of my main damage-dealers, magical edition. He's very squishy though, a true glass canon, so I have to either patch up his defenses with equipment and passive skills, or have someone dedicated to healing on the team.

Latent power notes: Love his latent power, it's especially good if you stack it with the buffs from either Advanced Magic (or the Stone of Truth, which just provides the 2x spell buff from Advanced Magic permanently), or Alephan's Wisdom. I would recommend using this at a full boost for optimal damage output. Like Ochette, I use this as early as I can so it an refill as the battle goes on.

Favorite subjobs: Cleric. Osvald's base stats make him an excellent healer, and the extra magical stats do him nothing but favors; plus having access to Holy Light is useful when his latent is empty since it'll typically deal more elemental damage for less SP than one of his aoe spells, and Mystic Staff can restore his SP. Alternatively though arcanist will grant him the best magic stats possible. I also didn't mind using him as an apothecary high elemental defense means good healing, and he can be a decent support when he's not blasting enemies off the screen.

Partitio

General: I tend to use him mostly as support, but he can deal decent damage when he's not supporting. Mostly he's a main support character for me though.

Latent power notes: Very useful for getting extra BP whenever you need it, and it tends to refill pretty fast so I use it liberally whenever I need BP.

Favorite subjobs: I tend to have Partitio mainly as an apothecary because it gives him a nice buff to his physical stats and more support skills to use (he doesn't make a bad healer either, especially with access to lots of BP from his latent). It also gives him access to a decent aoe attack (Sweeping Cleave) and Poison Axe, which are both handy to have. Alternatively, Paritio does okay as a warrior, thief, or hunter if I want to boost his damage-output, and inventor or dancer are good jobs to give him for extra support options (although I really only use dancer for the optional superboss). I'm thinking of trying him in the conjurer job for a while in my current run to see if the extra magic stats make Bifelgan's Bounty more useful for Partitio, since he seems to lean more physically for me than magically. (I hardly used conjurer except to get SP Saver my first run bc I couldn't figure out how to use it effectively, but I know it's gotta be useful somehow).

Other notes: If it wasn't obvious, the merchant job is one of my favorites as a subjob, and it gives Partitio a really nice set of skills. I don't actually use Sidestep that often and instead focus on things like Donate BP to boost my main damage-dealers in a pinch. Collect is a great skill bc I like having money.

Agnea

General: Main support, and a secondary magical damage-dealer. I tend to focus her on supporting, but her high elemental attack (especially paired with the Mooneater dagger) puts her almost on par with Osvald. She also has access to Windy Refrain which moves ALL enemies' actions to the end of the next turn, which is super useful for turn manipulation (and like Leghold Trap, very powerful when paired with A Step Ahead).

Latent power notes: Honestly I rarely use her latent power. Mostly I use it in general battles when I have her subjob set to scholar so she can use a boosted Analyze on all enemies. It is useful for using Collect or Steal on all enemies as well, but again, there's very few bosses with multiple enemies that you can Collect/Steal from. I think I might be able to use the latent with the apothecary's Rehabilitate which would be very useful on occasion, but I've never tried it bc Agnea is so optimized for magic that the phys. aspects of the apothecary subjob don't seem to fit her. Might have to try that out at some point though.

Favorite subjobs: I tend to have her as a merchant (Bifelgan's Bounty is a very nice powerful single-enemy elemental attack for her), but she does well as a scholar (excellent stat boosts to her magical stats) or thief (nice boosts to speed/evasion). She should technically make a good cleric as well, but I've never tried it out since I usually have another cleric present when Agnea's in the team.

Dance session notes: Dance session comes into play any time you use a dance skill, including Dagger Dance, so if you have the right follower, you can really benefit from Agnea's dance session. For most of the game I've been dragging along an NPC from Cropdale who offers Calming Rhythm (restores 500 HP and 40 SP to the target), but there's a dance session called Celestial Chorus which grants 1 BP to the target, which is super useful in boss fights since extra BP means more boosted attacks. The Allure page on the Wiki (here) has a full list of the dance sessions, and potential NPCs who offer them. Dance session boosts the power of the support dances by granting extra support bonuses beyond buffing stats, and Agnea's probably one of the strongest support characters as a result.

Temenos

General: Like Castti, I use Temenos half as support, half for dealing damage, but unlike Castti who I tend to rely on more for support, I rely on Temenos more for damage.

Latent power notes: His latent power is wickedly good for his Coerce path action, especially when paired with Sixfold Strike from the armsmaster job, and technically you could use it the same way in boss fights to break shields quickly, it's just...armsmaster is better on other characters in boss fights for the physical stat buffs it offers as a job (although Temenos did hit the 9999 damage cap when I had him as an armsmaster in one of the side dungeon boss fights, so Armsmaster!Temenos isn't entirely useless as a phys. damage-dealer). But Temenos's latent power + armsmaster + Full Power from the merchant class makes Coercion much easier.

Favorite subjobs: I tend to move Temenos around a lot in subjobs depending on what I need. He makes for a decent scholar due to the magical stats buffs, and dancer offers him decent stats as well and more support options, but my favorite subjob for Temenos is arcanist because it gives him access to light and dark elemental attacks, making the most of the Sunshade staff, and most importantly Reflective Barrier. See, my favorite thing to do with Temenos is have a dancer use Sealticge's Seduction on him, have him use Prayer for Plenty at full boost (hopefully on a team that's at full HP) to boost everyone's HP (up to possibly 9999), and then use Reflective Barrier and/or Sacred Shield at various levels of boost so I can yeet spells back at their caster(s) or otherwise cut down damage for a little while. Also arcanist offers really nice magical stats, and gives Temenos a good boost to his total SP pool, which is handy for when I do try to use his personal EX skill (bc of his personal EX skill, you will want to have something equipped that lets him regen SP, bc he can drain his SP really fast otherwise).

Hikari

General: Main damage-dealer. Makes for a sturdy backup support when you need one though, but I focus on his high phys. damage stats.

Latent power notes: Very useful and somewhat similar to Ochette's latent skills. Depending on Hikari's SP and available skills, I either use Hienka at a partial boost, and then follow up with Brand's Blade, or Tenretsuzan at full boost. Alternatively, if I need Hikari to do some backup support or use another skill, I'll use Hienka at full boost, and then use his bonus action for whatever. Sougetsusen isn't bad as an aoe attack when you need it though. Like Ochette and Osvald, I use Hikari's latent early in the battle so it can refill and be used later.

Favorite subjobs: Hikari does great as a merchant because of the access to Rest, which makes his Challenge path action easier to use without using all your healing items. Also Rest restores SP, which is super useful for Hikari since he can burn through SP really quickly between his warrior skills and Learned Skills. When I don't have him as a merchant, I like to use him as my armsmaster bc it gives him the best phys. stat buffs, and giving Hikari a Blessing in Disguise with the armsmaster subjob means you can use a lot of high-power equipment with negative effects without suffering the negatives (you can do that for any of your armsmasters by the way). When I don't have him in those two jobs, he makes for a decent apothecary (not as good at the healing though) or hunter.

Notes on Learned Skills: Like Ochette's monsters, you can more or less have whichever Learned Skills you enjoy using, but I like holding onto Divine Dual-Edge from the Ch3 fight with General Rou since it's a useful aoe attack, and picking up Limb from Limb from the Sanctum Knight in Stormhail (enter the Sanctum Knight HQ, go down the left hall and knock out the guy standing in front of a room, then go into the room and the guy in there is the one you can learn Limb from Limb from). Limb from Limb offers a powerful 4x sword attack on a single enemy, and was the main skill used in the guide I found when I needed help with the optional superboss. You can find a list of Learned Skills on the Wiki as well (here).

Notes on Bosses

Most of the character story final bosses are pretty easy, or if they're tough it's bc of their stats and not battle gimmicks, so it's just a matter of chipping away their health. Here's a few battle gimmicks I'd keep an eye out for though:

Castti's final boss has an ongoing battle condition where the entire team's max HP is reduced every turn. You can bypass this with the Sealticge's Seduction + Prayer for Plenty tactic, but it's still risky (Angea ended the battle with a total of 5 HP on my current run). It's best to just try and finish this battle quickly. (Your team's HP will return to normal after the battle).

Throne's boss has the ability to lock the party's main job's skills (so Throne won't be able to use thief skills) until broken so subjobs are very important, and this boss can summon all of her previous bosses (not all at once, but over the course of the battle), so this can be a tough fight. There's a few other gimmicks this boss can access (I think subjobs can be blocked until the boss is broken at one point as well), so paying attention to what's happening in the battle and having a flexible battle plan will help. Either bring a lot of healers, or find a way to output a lot of damage so you can skip the prev. boss summons and gimmicks.

Partitio's final boss has three enemy units you have to defeat before the armor on the main boss's shield fall off. Dealings lots of aoe damage is useful for the first part of the battle. A Step Ahead + Agnea's Windy Refrain is probably useful as well (for my current run I did not have A Step Ahead equipped, and had to do quite a bit of healing in the first half of the battle).

Hikari has the most stages to his final boss. You have to fight a miniboss (which you can save after), the final boss part 1, then there's a cutscene and Hikari has to fight a battle via the Challenge path action, and then the final boss part 2. So just be prepared for like, a lot of battle segments.

(I also seem to remember something being kinda tricky about Ochette's final boss, but hers was the first story I completed on my first run, and it's the story I'm saving till last on my current, so I dunno if my troubles with her boss were "this was the first final boss I fought" or if there's actually something weird about the battle).

As for character levels, for my current run I started with Hikari's final chapter, then worked my way to Castti, Osvald, Throne, Agnea, Partitio, and I plan to do Temenos and Ochette next. As I noted earlier, Ochette, my starter, was at lv. 52-ish during Hikari's chapter, with my lowest level team members being at about 38-ish and I had to do some laps to get them to lv. 40. Right now, going into Temenos's final chapter, Ochette's level is in her mid-high 60s (which probably will be closer to or over 70 bc I want to explore some dungeon areas on the Sundering Sea before I head to Toto'haha), and my lowest level characters are like, 51 or 52, which is well above the rec'd lv. 45. So again, I don't think you have to level-grind for the character story final bosses, because just by fighting them and travelling to their locations, your characters are going to get stronger.

As for the two postgame bosses...

If you do want to level-grind, I would suggest the Infernal Castle, as it's the highest level area of the game at lv. 55. There's also ways to optimize the amount of exp and jp you get via passive skills and equipment, so make sure to move that around before you level-grind. Also I found bumping the game speed to x2, and using powerful aoe attacks made the grinding go so much faster (I only spent maybe 4-8 hours grinding total my first run? on a file where I put somewhere between 180-200 hours into, so basically no time at all for grinding). I would not rely on Bewildering Grace, Agnea party-wiped the team more often even than the optional superboss killed me, so it's just not a safe skill. Also if you fight the Infernal Castle's miniboss, it can show up as a random encounter, and I personally found that the exp gained from fighting it again wasn't worth the time spent. I gained more exp per minute just entering minor battles, smacking the enemies with a double-boosted aoe attack (from Step Ahead and Boost Start from merchant), and then moving onto my next battle (courtesy of Vigorous Victor from apothecary). It's tedious, but it does work.

I would suggest completing all the side quests before beginning the final chapter, as there's a lot of nice accessories and equipment you can get. Keep in mind that fighting the optional superboss is actually one of the side quests, so while you can track your completion of side quests by area in the Journal, one of the areas will be incomplete until you kill the optional superboss (you do not have to fight the superboss to complete the final chapter, and the ability to complete side quests opens back up after you defeat the final boss). The optional superboss is absolutely meant to be more difficult to defeat than the actual final boss.

Also there's technically four bosses in the postgame. Two minor bosses during the final chapter segments, the actual final boss, and the optional superboss. The two minor bosses are easy though, they're no stronger than the character story final bosses (although for my first run I had fought the optional superboss first, so I was waaay overleveled for the final chapter segments; still the two bosses couldn't do anything fancy as far as I could tell).

For the Actual Final Boss, I accidentally steamrolled this dude my first run bc I fought the optional superboss first and had misused my nuts and therefore had to level-grind to make up for stats. Half my characters were at lv. 80 and other other were at 74 or 75. I didn't even have my passive skills optimized bc I was expecting the "dungeon" the final boss is in to be an actual dungeon, not a flight of stairs with no enemy encounters. All the characters were in my preferred classes for them (Warrior!Ochette, Inventor!Castti, Hunter!Throne, Cleric!Osvald, Apothecary!Partitio, Merchant!Agnea, Arcanist!Temenos, and Armsmaster!Hikari, but not in that order bc I didn't optimize my party order either).

A few guides online list the recommended level for the final boss as being 72-75, but I wouldn't know bc again, lots of level-grinding (I plan to fight the final boss before the optional superboss for my current run, just to see the difficulty differences). You will get to use all 8 characters though, not in the same way as how the Galdera fight works in Octo1, but you will need all 8 characters for the battle, so keep that in mind. Overall I haven't heard/read about too many people having trouble with the final boss, so you should be fine using whatever your preferred battle strategies are with a full team that's at least in their low 70s level-wise.

The optional superboss is a terrible jerk, I hate this boss so much, and despite being Pretty Good at the game I had to eventually look up a guide. The guide I used is here (major spoilers obviously), although I will say I modified this person's strategy (for example, I optimized Osvald's critical stat, had Castti as a merchant, small changes like that). I will note this person manages to output enough damage to skip one of the mid-battle phases of the first half of the boss fight, and that the Hired Help Beastlings skill from the merchant class is needed for this mid-battle phase if you can't bypass it (if I'm being too vague and you don't care about spoilers, I can actually go through this entire boss fight stage-by-stage and explain the logic behind the guide and my adaptations to the guide). I'm thinking of modifying the strategy here further on my current playthrough, but overall this is the superboss for a reason. Extremely gimmicky, very high stats, very annoying, but also possible to beat in like, 10 minutes with the right setup.

#I don't have a link to a list of monsters for Ochette #bc I haven't FOUND any good lists that include 9/10 and 10/10 strength monsters and their skills #but otherwise I really do stand by the ''mechanics are flexible do what works best for you'' mindset #I've seen some insane builds from other people that I never thought would work that do so this really is just my preferences for things #anyhow here's some thoughts #I didn't realize I had so many thoughts about Octo2 mechanics #youcantencryptyourface #I still don't have an ask tag #octopath ii #also sorry if there's weird typos I've read through this like 10 times but I'm bound to miss something here or there

[beardedmrbean]

Oh actually there’s running gag in how convenient that a lot of historical figures are in one game

AC syndicate is one of the most infamous, because despite it taking over a year. We meet Frederick Abberline, Charles Dickinson and Darwin(actually there a lot of tongue meta jokes with him. As his theory of evolution is still accurate in ac. He doesn’t know that humanity to primatesto what dogs are to wolves), Karl Marx (sadly you can’t kill him), Alexander Graham Bell, Nightingale, and the motherfucking Queen Victoria

Not counting dlc with Arthur Doyle and Deup Singh

And yes we do have dlc centered around Jack the Ripper

Oh shit I forgot there ww1 segment where you work with Winston Churchill

Another thing, so in the halo series, there a propaganda line of “Spartans never die, there just Missing In Action”

It took Herdotus in odyessy, yes the Father of History (or Lies to the Egyptians), saying that Spartan poem of them being immortal I went

“Wait that where halo got it from?!”

Actually leaks said William Adams is going to be in the game too. I presuming third act or late game, wait could Adams travel to other places after becoming a samurai? I can see him being used a mechanic to explain how we can go to other countries like India

Btw I meet Rolo of Normandy in Valhalla when he was 17…in a medieval bdsm dungeon while he blindfolded and wiped

Dear god Middle Ages England was truly the apocalypse

Also I only realize it after the endgame…young Rolo actually lives in my settlement for a bit

But yeah I can see them making up a relationship with Yasuke and William Adams. Oh another joke

A Japanese: another Gajin join us?’

Yasuke: Yes and make him a proper samurai this time

Oh this is Valhalla main menu theme. But rest to sure the ac red music will be authentic

https://youtu.be/bApSPN-5TxQ?si=FcMKeReMxCuxGpxW

Hell the teaser trailer I sent actually ends with the game Japanese cover of ac iconic song ezio family

Lots of stuff ending with Oh shit I forgot there ww1 segment where you work with Winston Churchill

Doyle and Churchill don't quite fit, Deup Singh either but in the other direction

It took Herdotus in odyessy, yes the Father of History (or Lies to the Egyptians), saying that Spartan poem of them being immortal I went “Wait that where halo got it from?!”

Josephus is a good historian to read too, and it's entirely possible that's where they got it, not sure the poem tho so can't say for sure.

Actually leaks said William Adams is going to be in the game too. I presuming third act or late game, wait could Adams travel to other places after becoming a samurai? I can see him being used a mechanic to explain how we can go to other countries like India

Ya Tokegawa let him go back to England even at some point, he had freedom of movement probably had to still have permission from the boss to leave Japan but well

List of foreign-born samurai (Yasuke doesn't make the cut because they can't 100% prove he was or wasn't a samurai.) but this list goes through their credentials or however you want to put it.

For Addams it was

250 koku. He was granted the rank of Hatamoto, a fief and 80-90 servants. Interpreter and shipwright of Tokugawa Shogunate.

Only one managed a higher worth.

Btw I meet Rolo of Normandy in Valhalla when he was 17…in a medieval bdsm dungeon while he blindfolded and wiped Dear god Middle Ages England was truly the apocalypse

Not just in Europe either, though that's where we have the specific information about things, shit was bad in Asia, the middle east, and Africa too. Lots of those areas had the same problem too.

But yeah I can see them making up a relationship with Yasuke and William Adams. Oh another joke A Japanese: another Gajin join us?’ Yasuke: Yes and make him a proper samurai this time

I take it Yasuke managed to pick up the language ok then, Addams did ok but still had a interpreter with him all the time too just in case.

Oh that's pretty

Hell the teaser trailer I sent actually ends with the game Japanese cover of ac iconic song ezio family

I didn't catch that apparently, that's cool af

#zoomer huey anon

[box-dwelling]

I'm becoming slowly open to being a hater of AA5. In that I want to know where the bad stuff starts. Because I actually liked the first case a lot.

Like it's fucking goofy but thats AA baby. The characterisation seems good. Athenas a ton a fun. Phoenix is trying to be the adult desperately but is being vicariously a little shit through Athena while also showing he's incredibly caring and protective for these kids he's acquired, Apollo doing the heroic thing in protecting juniper but being so much of a workoholic he reopens his fucking wounds in the process is in character. The case makes sense especially for a turtoiral where the complexity has to be limited. I like the mood matrix mechanic. The cut scenes are fine. The judge is himself and got a few laughs from me. I was genuinely shocked and worried when Apollo was attacked. Juniper is sweet, Ted isn't the best murderer ever but the tutorial case ones never are (with 2 glaring exceptions where they cheat by having them be the main villain) and the ending hook was interesting as was Athena's PTSD. Like this is around as good if not better than 1-1 and 2-1 imho. Their villians are kinda bland and ted was goofy enough to be fun. I don't like the 3d look but it's tolerable if you meet it where it's at. Like it's good I'm kinda confused where the issue is.

5-2 is feeling weird. I'm glad to see Trucy but she does seem more bland and the 3d design did her very dirty but I'm only at the very beginning.

From what I've heard of from later on Apollo kind of gets too many unpreivously referenced stuff. Which ok but I'm going to be honest that feels like it's maybe more an AA4 issue? Don't get me wrong I loved that game and I love Apollo as a character but there's very little to work with after it. There's the sibling twist which does need addressing (I'm aware they don't) and his mentorship with Kristoph but, I'd Apollo always felt like the one who Kristoph had the least bad infulence on. Like Klavier is a very explicit victim of emotional abuse and Trucy and Phoenix's lives were destroyed by the guy. Apollo while still negatively impacted felt like the one who could get over it the easiest. Then there's his rocky relationship with Phoenix which, like the ending of AA4 kind of implies he started to understand that especially with how he talks about him in court. Does it happen off screen? Yes. The lack of wanting to repeat information after the mason section (objectively a great section) means we never really get his reaction to learning that Phoenix didn't forge evidence and that he didn't give up on the law and was just biding his time. We don't see it but from how he talks during the final trial day it's pretty clear his opinion of him increases a lot when he realised what Phoenix was actually doing and actually going through. I'm actually going to make a post about how I'd fix that tbh. But yeah. I just feel like this game had to build on something with very little left to build on.

#ace attorney #dual destinies

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

you say that as if it already hasn't been a shitshow in the fandom lol i remember a podcast once describing it as less of a P3 remake and more of a P3 for P5 fans, which i feel like is gonna be the case since that's more than likely the main audience, especially with the original's mechanics and elements more or less gone or replaced

prolly gonna b one of those fandom divisions, like smt5 or the like; i can def see some fans not happy with P3R jumping ship to Metaphor or the like

Oh yeah it is. I just mean it's gonna be MORE of a shitshow. :'D (I dunno why but I'm afraid it's gonna bring......"P4 anime only fans trying to argue canon with P4 game fans" energy, except worse because this will be canon alongside the OG TT0TT)

Oh yeah it's def P3 but for P5 fans.......I am nervous for P1/2/4 remakes now.....

More so if they rewrite chars/story....... Like the games don't NEED anything except new gameplay/presentation updates (my ass would've taken P3/4 era gameplay/updates I'm not that picky). MAYBE add elements from the cell phone games? Maybe an optional battle thing (like vision quest and such, but this is for gameplay reasons)? P4 I can see maybe adding a route/ending(s) to Namatame and Izanami because we could explore them more, but that's the only thing we're missing out on exploring in P4 (everything else has been covered).

Oh they're some how gonna fuck up the P4 dungeons I just know it.

P3 was the one that was an incomplete entry and needed a definitive edition.....The one that'd need some story changes (either by adding male SLs/friend female routes for P3MC, or giving us an FeMC themed Answer). But god what if they change P1/2/4's story/chars? TT0TT I don't want P5 versions of P1/2/4 I might not make it. TT0TT

Anyway back to the ask (excuse me for doom spiraling for a second kflasjdaklfj)

Is SMT5 divisive? I'm not paying attention (I've seen more neg than pos) TT0TT I know SH2 was kinda. They really should've been called something else, poor game. TT0TT

May we all jump ship to Refan! *pray emoji* TT0TT

#silly asks #silly answers #*sees I put 'only' and 'fans' next to each other in the same sentence* oh i can feel the bots coming TT0TT pray for me! ;w;/

[gaymer-hag-stan]

Ok so I finally completed Mirage, all story quests, assassin contracts and collectibles found.

I will be discussing spoilers so be warned.

I overall enjoyed the game. As always, the main draw for me in any Assassin's Creed game is the historical setting and Baghdad really delivered. I learned a lot about that time period that I didn't know before and I enjoyed running around the city and the surrounding desert!

I did not particularly care about Basim in Valhalla, but I really came to like him, before he became an asshole 🤣 I was really sad to see Roshan and even Enkidu turn against him but I guess it couldn't be helped. Nehal being a thing was so out of place and I don't think it was handled well, I guess they couldn't redo what they did with Eivor and Odin and still keep it a surprise but by the time they returned to Alamut at the river close to the camp I think it had become a bit obvious.

Now, about the gameplay. I did not mind the back to basics approach but I was never against the RPG elements either. Some of the mechanics of the old formula have really become obsolete while some aspects of the new one have become necessary and it was pretty obvious that this "return to form" was extremely forced.

Bringing back social stealth and a bigger emphasis on parkouring as well as the hiding spots were a welcome return. I was initially against the new old combat system because it takes a lot to get used to. It makes sense from a story perspective; Bayek, Kassandra and Eivor were all trained warriors and none of them were assassins in the same vein as all the previous ones. Basim had no formal training in fighting and the one he received in Alamut served as a defensive style in case he was caught sneaking about. Still, Ezio, for example, never controlled this badly in combat.

On the other hand, I can't see why stuff like being able to climb on any surface, like in the last three games was taken out. Yeah I get it, older games made you think your way through a climbing segment, and I can appreciate the sentiment on actually having to plan your way around a climbing segment, but taking free climbing back just for the sake of having this mechanic be like in the old games is a bit obtuse. Likewise, customization was weird. I don't see why we weren't allowed to mix and match gear pieces anymore or what purpose the talismans served other than having a weird, uncomfortable-looking piece of metal hang from Basim's back lol. Also, I fail to see why we can only make time progress when there's a bench we can sit on when you could do it anywhere in the last three games. I liked to do stealth segments during the night and explore the world during the day before, but now, if a mission was in the desert for example, and there was no bench nearby I couldn't change the time of day.

As for side content, I really enjoyed looking around for gear chests, finding and then solving the enigmas and looking at all the historical sights around Baghdad. The shards were kinda cool too, although the unlockable Isu artifacts were, as expected of Isu artifacts, too sci-fi-looking and ruined the immersion for me so I never actually used them lol. The assassin contracts, Dervis' artifacts and lost books though felt like a chore honestly. The payoff was not interesting or enticing enough and there were too many of them (not the books I guess, but the rest were a lot) I also can't tell why I had to reach a specific amount of artifacts before giving them to Dervis instead of just being able to give them to him whenever I wanted. On the bright side, both the artifacts and the books were all unique objects with details regarding their origins so that was a nice touch.

Last but not least, Baghdad was just the right size! I loved looking around England, Greece and, above all else, Egypt but my god, Assassin's Creed maps have been extremely overwhelming since Assassin's Creed fucking III! Baghdad had a bunch of stuff to do, some worthwhile and some not, like I already said, and felt like a breeze to explore, for the most part. I also had no idea there were leftover Greeks in Baghdad at that point so whenever I bumped into someone with my camel by accident and they cursed at me in Greek I burst out laughing 🤣 I played for about 35-36 hours and it happened very few times, less than ten, so almost every time I got a completely new line 🤣

My final score for Mirage is a 7.7 / 10

And here is my complete ranking of the entire series:

1. Assassin's Creed II

2. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

3. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

4. Assassin's Creed III

5. Assassin's Creed Valhalla

6. Assassin's Creed Odyssey

7. Assassin's Creed Origins

8. Assassin's Creed

9. Assassin's Creed: Revelations

10. Assassin's Creed Syndicate

11. Assassin's Creed Mirage

12. Assassin's Creed Rogue

13. Assassin's Creed Unity

It's, again, a good game, and while I feel like it achieved some of the things it set out to do, mainly giving a glimpse of the old formula and also exploring Basim's origins, you can clearly tell that it was a repurposed Valhalla DLC with the classic mechanics shoved in and it doesn't always work the way Ubisoft probably hoped it would.

Oh! Remember that new parkour pole mechanic Ubisoft was showing off? I literally only happened across it two (2) times lmao.

#Assassin's Creed #Assassin's Creed Mirage #Video Games #Gaming #Basim #Basim Ibn Ishaq

[ungojirasapiente]

Goji plays WATGBS: Windmill Isle

after kicking Samekichi's ass (tail?) last time, we head over to fix the next stone, but before that, we have a brief encounter with...

Y O U

"yes... we found the bodies of some Tosatsu Kingdom's soldiers floating around here"

IT WAS YOU, YOU DID IT!!!!

"it's fine! me and the rest will be making some rounds..."

YEAH, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE, GET OUT!!!

"yup yup"

DON'T YOU FUCKING SMILE AT ME YOU OVERGROWN PIECE OF SALMON, I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE!1!1!1

....

......

................................

what was i talking about? i think i kinda got sidetrack there, oh yeah!, Windmill Isle

nice place, really calm music, lots of Windmills... duh... nothing more to say really.

as always, instead of going directly where we're supposed to go, i decided to walk along the coast to find something extra, in this case, a chest with new armor

now we're fully decked in candy armour, hope there aren't any ants around here... *Walking With Beasts flashbacks*

with our new armour we go forward to our adventure, taking in the scenery and reading the little character interactions the main cast have during these scenes, now, we can go to fix the barrier stone

but before that!...

BIG WINDMILL

alright, now onto the cave!

and of course, it's time to decimate the local bat population, this time using Wadanohara's new magical attack, throwing a fucking helm at people and possibly breaking their skulls on impact, except it's

✧(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ *:・ﾟMAGICAL *:・ﾟ*:・ﾟ*:・ﾟ

oh, and another chest with new stuff

now i'm imagining Wadanohara, Memoca and Dolpi wearing ear muffs and finding it adorable (and Fukami too, except instead of adorable it's hilarious).

we massacred like half of your kind inside this cave and you are still willing to heal us, man, these healers are really forgiving people, the true MVPs of this game!

*insert Monthy Python reference here*

they didn't stand a fucking chance, kinda feel bad for the guys, couldn't even make a single move...

"i'm the only one who can get close to the stones, thanks to my father's blood"

alright, some insight into the stone and barrier's mechanics, only Wadanohara can access the stones directly, thanks to being Meikai's daughter, nobody in the entire kingdom, not even Tatsumiya (probably) can get direct access to the stones.

"no magic should be able to pass through that..."

not even spells and other magic fuckery can get pass the barrier that protects the stones, so the only way for someone to able to do something to the stones...

"unless it was myself, the stones can't be damaged"

it's using Wadanohara herself!

THIS is some really good foreshadowing (atleast in my opinion), i used to think the whole reveal at the end of the game kinda came from nowhere, but now replaying i see that some stuff was already kinda set up, but it was set up in a way to still leave the twist be an complete and absolute surprise, really good Funamusea, really freaking good!

and that's all for this installment of "Goji plays WATGBS" see you... whenever i upload the next, could be tomorrow, could be in a week, could be in a couple months, who fucking knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#funamusea #okegom #deep sea prisoner #ounabara to wadanohara #wadanohara and the great blue sea #goji plays watgbs #wadanohara (watgbs) #sal wadanohara #rpg maker horror #Youtube

[erigold13261]

If you could fix ONE or more plot point(s) from NSR/Psyconauts, what would it be?

Oh absolutely the ending of NSR. I'm sorry, but I fucking HATE that stupid hand they did at the end. It makes me so mad. All that buildup just to have a giant hand make a rock symbol and blow up the satellite. Like I am okay with some stupid things to happen, but that is way too much for me.

Especially by the fact that Tatiana specifically states she is going to clear out the tower in case the plan doesn't work, only for all the surrounding buildings to run up the tower and make a hand. What about all the people in THOSE buildings? Huh Tatiana!?

Also like, they make it VERY clear that the naval force of Vinyl City is a big one, with flying submarines/battle ships and regular battleships in the water. They could have easily done something with those!

Or even like some kind of powerup or something that allowed a beam to shoot from the tower to the satellite would have been fine! (though the implications of either beam or hand of the tower becomes dangerous considering that would mean NSR could literally just kill people in the city if they wanted to).

Like I GET they needed some super big bad to give power back to the charters and fix Mayday and Zuke's mistakes/actions, but they could have thought of something else that wasn't so ridiculous. Like do something with the main qwasa in the center of the city or something.

Also, a small thing, I would have liked to see 1010 and Mama in the end. I know it would have been a bitch to somehow add 5 more bodies to the already busy scene, but it would have been nice to see them. (though I do like the implications that 1010 get repaired later. I just wish they could have represented their own district instead of just Neon since Sayu is representing mer own district. But the devs/game is being ambiguous on how sentient 1010 are so I understand that, but at least let Mama be with her kid).

As for Pyschonauts, I think this is more gameplay than story, but I wish the first game made it easier to get down from the tower. Or at least tell us earlier there is no going back because I couldn't 100% the game afterwards and didn't want to go down the tower a 4th time. Otherwise with that first game I have no real complaints about plot or story. (other than not having Augustus screaming RAZPUTIN over and over every second in the last fight which got annoying quick).

For the second game though, I wish the interns were more prevalent in the story. Give them some side missions or something that INVOLVE them, not just us doing their work. Or make them do more in the scenes we see them in. Maybe each intern could help up with one of the Psychic 7 when we are recruiting them (I like the idea of Lizzie helping Compton). Just SOMETHING.

I've seen a lot of people say that you could take the interns out of the game entirely and not have to change much to get the same story. And honestly I see that as pretty true. I just wish they were more involved because you could completely ignore them if you wanted to once you get out of the mother lobe (pretty sure you can).

But yeah, other than that I don't have any real problems with the plot of the game. I only played them each like once compared to me playing NSR about 5-6 times, so I might not be as experienced in the game to give my take on the story. But from what I remember the story was fine. Fine enough I have no outstanding complaints in my head to change something other than gameplay/mechanic wise.

#nsr #no straight roads #psychonauts #eritalks #noart #asks #i legit hate the ending of n/sr #i wish they went with something else #i was so let down by it #it's goofy but not in a good way #at least not to me #especially after how they tried to make it sad #or emotional #it just didn't work with me #i couldn't #i just couldn't #that's probably the reason i forget about the satellite so much/easily #i just ignore the game's ending because i didn't like it that much #yeah sorry #this was more of a rant #i can complain about gameplay mechanics #or maybe about something else story wise #but the ending is the major hangup for me

[ordinaryxtreme]

Technoroid: Overmind and Unison Heart thoughts

I've just watched the final episode of the Technoroid anime and I've put my thoughts together. May or may not be coherent. Spoilers for the anime and for the entirety of the game's story too because I will mainly be talking about how Overmind connects to Unison Heart

So I'm not going to lie, the SOLE REASON I got into Technoroid in the first place was because of Kite. Listen, he is beautiful (and voiced by Furukawa Makoto). Who could resist that? So I thought I would start by watching the anime because that's leagues easier than getting into a gacha game. I knew the premise of the game (robot idols, yay!), and was extremely surprised to find anime Kite was a human! After the whiplash of episode 1's post credits and a few episodes later, I was already downloading the game because I was curious what exactly the anime is a prologue to. The game starts with KNOCC in sleep mode, in a random storage room in Babel, where the player character (you!) find them and turn them back on. They have no memory of the past. Esora seems surprised to see them awake, but he doesn't ever mention knowing them prior.

Which makes the ending of the anime very confusing to me. I thought something fucked up would happen to them, but the heartwarming ending seems to contradict that. Something ELSE happened between that ending and the start of the game and I'm dying to know what it is.

As for Kite. Yeah I felt his fate at the end of the anime was a bit... anticlimactic. (From now on I will refer to human Kite as Kaito, for ease.) Anyway, because of those prior expectations for KNOCC, I also expected something fucked up to happen to Kaito. My head was swirling with theories as to what could've happened. I just refused to believe it was something so straightforward, I guess. From the way it's looking, it was the twins who suggested they all become robots, and had Esora do the memory download thing for them. (What I don't understand is WHY the twins became robots too when technically only Kaito needs to).

Another thing which is really striking. No one seems to remember who KNOCC is. I mean straight up, it seems that everything about their victory and the incident 10 years ago is being suppressed or covered up. The only people who remember are Esora and Nobel. Not even Bora remembers them.

On the topic of Nobel. Yeah, no I have no idea WHAT he is, still. It's revealed that he's doing (illegal) android research now, though the specifics of that research is still unknown. He says he's doing it for no particular reason, but it's definitely just him being mr. cryptid creachur.

And no, the Stand Alone trio are not aware of their human past, just as KNOCC weren't at the start of the anime. I don't know if robots made from human memories can even boot up while actively remembering all their memories. I guess it might be too shocking to be human and suddenly wake up a robot? Toward near the end of the main story, Kite and Bora get flashes of KNOCC's victory from 10 years ago. In Bora's case, it may be that there's something programmed into the robots to suppress memories from 10 years ago. Meanwhile Kite is starting to realize he has memories of a past Kaito had lived. There has also never been any mention of Kaito's sister in the game. I can only hope she lives a healthy life after that. (Kite's VA even said in an episode of the Technoroid radio that the anime is the first he heard about Nagi, which is hilarious.)

The story of the game so far revolves around a cult that is clearly backed by the robot exclusionists. The specifics aren't important, the most important thing is that they have somehow developed a way to destroy robots through music. They've developed an "android drug", called "Apple". Yes, cool, more religious symbolism. "Apple" basically hijacks into a robot's programming, giving them a feeling of euphoria and freedom (it even overrides their interlock mechanism!), eventually causing a dependency and "killing" the robot permanently. My current theory is, there is a weaker version of this music developed somewhere between Overmind and Unison Heart that erased all memory of KNOCC from every android (bar Nobel).

As you can see, there's a whole lot of unanswered questions, and I'm sorely hoping for a season 2 of the game story. There's a lot of strings to connect and tie, still. I have other (much more sentimental) thoughts on the human themes that Technoroid touches (and about Kaito/Kite), but that'll have to wait for some other time.

#technoroid #technoroid: overmind #technoroid: unison heart