#and a reason for them to fight that’s completely separate from beating the finite enemies | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kob131 · 5 years

Text

Weiss Vs. Mitsuru Death Battle

First off, let me address some points that really irritate me.

‘Persona characters can beat up Gods!’

No, that’s SMT you’re thinking of.

Persona characters aren’t that strong. With Nyx, SEES only ever fought the Avatar (which is never stated how strong it is) and the actual Nyx was only fought by Makoto. In fact, if you take a look at the details of each ‘god’ incident: Makoto sealed Nyx, Izanami’s true form was only ever defeated by Yu and Yabbadoth was only truly defeated by Ren.

Even if we consider them the last two ‘gods’ (we’ll get to that): They aren’t defeated by anyone except the main characters. All of whom are treated by the narrative as being FAR more powerful than their members combined.

Even then, only NYX is an actual god. The others. Izanami and Yabbadoth, are effectively giant Shadows. That’s because Shadows are constructs built by humanity’s collective unconscious and Izanami and Yabbadoth are created from the people trying to ignore the truth and the people warped desires for peace of mind respectively. This is also why they are defeated so easily while Nyx is never defeated: Shadows can be harmed and destroyed by Personas as they are the same kind of creature. Nyx is neither and plays by a completely different set of rules.

Hell, the likes of Izanami and Yabbadoth are really unimpressive when you compare them to the likes of Metatron or Lucifier in SMT. Those guys can legitimately destroy the world like gods while Izanami and Yabbadoth can struggle to effect the world so it kind of tells me Atlus considers them lower in power than Gods (backed up by how Nyx can actually destroy the world.)

Why am I bring this up? Because I know people are gonna point to Erebus as a gotcha and everything I just said about Izanami and Yabbadoth also apply to Erebus (as it’s the collective desire for Death.) And the wild card thing still applies as Aegis gained Makoto’s Wild Card power (and in fact is stronger than Yu.)

‘Erebus is said to crush mountains!’

Said. Never shown. The only possible way for us to quantify this is through using Erebus’ in game stats. And while a STR stat of 80 is strong...Junpei outclass Erebus at Level 99 with 82. So unless anyone has proof that his Persona at least can bust a mountain, I can only assume that the statement was made to be dramatic. Especially considering this statement was said about 4 seconds before Elizabeth one shots this thing.

Not like Weiss is excluded from this bullshit.

‘Aura is infinite!’

That’s stupid and is blatantly untrue.

‘Weiss’ Summon can stop Artemista!’

That’s debatable at best as I don’t know how Aura relates to Personas.

Now let’s actually discuss this battle.

First, I wanna discuss both of their summons. Weiss is able to summon the Armor Gigas, which is a Grimm-possessed suit of armor about three times her size with immense strength (been shown to easily tear apart stone floors with the force of it’s massive broadsword) and durability but is rather klunky and slow. And the Queen Lancer, a giant bee-like Grimm with inherent aerial mobility along with projectiles in the form but it’s not as durable as the Armor Gigas (shown when Hazel punch a Dust blast at it and it dissapated without any shown damage before hand.) And finally the Boartusk...which is pointless. They also take more time to summon than a Persona but

Mitsuru meanwhile has Artemtisa whose rapier doubles as a bladed whip, can use ice attacks as well as being shown to quickly freeze objects around it (as shown in the Persona 4 movies like in the second one where it stabs into the Hierophant shadow and freezes it after being weakened as well as in the third movie where it froze the petals from the Strength Shadow.) In regards to the ice attacks, in Persona 4 Arena she’s shown to be able to create simple constructs from the ice like spears or a mirror. It can also use status effect moves such as Marin Karin and Tentafuroo to disable and cripple the opponent as well as a full power single target healing spell in Diarahan. She can also temporarily boost the power of her next magic attack with Mind Charge by 2.5 times it’‘s normal strength, And finally it has complete ice immunity, meaning ice based attacks do not work on it as well as being immune to non-Shadow enemies.

Issue is that Artemisa is never really shown to be very durable. It’s usually batted away and dissipated with one hit by stronger shadows (albeit in it’s weaker form as Pentelusa) and if we really wanna include gameplay, it has the lowest possible endurance stat in P3. It’s also locked into ice attacks which makes Artemisa’s attacks more predictable, it’s status effect attacks have a base success rate of 25% (if someone can give me the claculations for how the LUCK stat affects the success rate, I’ll adjust with Mitsuru’s 51 LUCK stat). And Artemtisa is weak to fire, which at the very least involves taking 50% more damage. I’ve also never seen Mitsuru and Artemisa act in tandum with each other, with Mitsuru usually treating Artemisa as an extension of herself rather than a separate entity to Mitsuru.

In short: I believe Mitsuru’s Persona is generally better than Weiss’ summon in a direct comparison due to being more powerful and having more skills than the summons but in terms of being used by others, while it is definitively more powerful as well as having a natural immunity to ice, the fact that the summons can act independently of Weiss means Artemisa can be limited in usage.

Now let’s move onto the skills of the combatants.

Weiss’ summons are in fact just an extension of her actual power, a Semblance (ie superpower) known as glyphs which allow her to create platforms in mid air to move around on as well as use as basic shields (she did so in her brief fight against the Boartusk ) Then using a finite resource known as Dust, she can make her glyphs turn dark and effectively change gravity, making the person stick to the top of the glyph. Her glyphs have also been known to add force behind people or objects, such as in Volume 3 Episode 4 where she was quickly launched from glyph to glyph Weiss also has acess to other forms of Dust, including Ice Dust in which she can create icicles to attack her opponent or walls of ice which have been seen to be able to trap a complex sized scorpion’s stinger within it for a few minutes. She’s also a skilled rapier user as shown through her victory over the Armor Gigas.

Mitsuru has...everything I listed above above with Artemisa, alongside being a skilled rapier user as well (I’d argue better than Weiss but not by much seeing as she’s shown to be effective against lesser Shadows but rarely fighters greater enemies with her own rapier.) Her Persona is her skills aside from her weapon usage.

In terms of skill/versatility, I’d say in a straight rapier fight Weiss would lose but combine that with her glyphs and dust and she’s able to fight on a more even ground with Mitsuru using her Persona as well.

In terms of mobility:

Weiss has access to her glyphs which can be used to leap about in mid air using them as platforms as well as gravity dust allowing for more flexible movement, not to mention how the Queen Lancer is capable of being used as a pseudo ship to move around on.

Mitsuru has...nothing special I can remember. She’s not especially agile nor do her skills give her any extra mobility.

Next we have defensive ability-

They both suck.

Weiss’ track record of losing 1v1 fights is due to her opponents being able to dish out a lot of damage (The WF lieutenant being a buff chainsaw wielding fighter, Flynt’s Trumpet requiring the force of Yang going berserk to break through and Vernal straight up blasting through her ice wall AND Armor Gigas).

And Mitsuru’s Persona dissipates after one good hit while she isn‘t the best at taking hits herself (being disabled from pain by a grazing lazer beam that cut her leg by the Fortune Shadow in the second movie.)

Neither person is good at enduring hits.

Intelligence...

Um, both are consider top of their grade and trained to take control of large corporations. Mitsuru makes more detailed plans but Weiss is able to adjust better...

... I honestly say this is a tie.

Experience.

... This is highly subjective. Neither one began their training at a definitive time, Mitsuru is three years older but by virtue of how tiring the Dark Hour is she can’t fight shadows everyday unlike Weiss with Grimm but Weiss is also younger...

You can see why I have a difficulty making a judgement.

Stamina

Well, Weiss’ best stamina feat is fighting Grimm for an entire day, getting a small amount of sleep before proceeding to fight the White Fang as well as more Grimm...

But Mitsuru’s best feat is her fighting off the hordes of Shadows in the final Persona 3 movie which were more intense and more numerous.

I dunno, I say any difference between the two likely wouldn’t make a difference.

You can understand why I’m a bit nervous about this battle.

The combatants have similar backgrounds, similar feats and similar skills so they’re very matched in a lot of regards and the few things they do have over the other seem to be countered by their own weaknesses (like Mitsuru’s sheer power would beat Weiss down easily if Weiss didn’t have better mobility options and more tools to work with.)

It’s also a reason why I find the reactions around the announcement rather infuriating as when you remove the iffy factors from both sides: the battle doesn’t have a clear winner yet.

All I know is: I hope Weiss loses so Ben and Chad don’t get burned at the stake and so I can shove it DB hater faces about them being biased.

#death battle #rwby #persona 3 #weiss schnee #mitsuru kirijo

20 notes · View notes

scoutception · 5 years

Text

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon review: a debatable niche

Fire Emblem, also known as “that series that only got localized because of Super Smash Bros. Melee”, is a series I enjoy greatly, despite becoming one of Nintendo’s most controversial franchises in recent years. For all its rough patches and longstanding flaws, I’m always eager to start another run when it comes to most of what I’ve played, something that ties into this specific review more than I’d even like to admit. This is Shadow Dragon for the DS, the remake of the very first Fire Emblem on the NES.

Story:

The story of Shadow Dragon takes place on the continent of Archanea, inhabited by humans and a species known as Manaketes, dragons who have sealed their power within magical objects known as dragonstones and have assumed the forms of humans to avoid succumbing to the insanity that their power would cause, which most of their race had fallen to. Abused and persecuted by humanity, many of these Manaketes would form the Dolhr empire, led by Medeus, the only member of the Earth Dragons who chose to become a Manakete, and the titular Shadow Dragon, though only in nickname. Conquering all of Archanea and subjecting humanity to their wrath, a rebellion eventually led to the death of Medeus at the hands of Anri of Altea, wielding the blade Falchion, forged from the fang of Naga, queen of the Divine Dragons. Half a century later, however, Medeus is revived by a sorcerer named Gharnef, soon reestablishing his empire, and gaining the aid of the kingdoms of Grust and Macedon. The king of Altea and inheritor of Falchion, Cornelius, is slain after Altea’s neighbor kingdom, Gra, joins Dolhr and launches a surprise attack on Altea. While they successfully take the kingdom and steal Falchion, prince Marth escapes with a small contingent of knights to the island kingdom of Talys. After 2 years in hiding, preparing for the day he shall join in the fight against Dolhr, Marth reemerges when pirates raid the kingdom, and afterwards, joined only by his small band of knights and a few allies from Talys, including its princess, Caeda, Marth journeys to the last kingdom able to oppose Medeus, Aurelis, led by prince Hardin, determined to reclaim Altea and Falchion and avenge his father.

That’s about as far as Shadow Dragon’s story goes, unfortunately. While it’s not lacking in dialogue, it plays its premise very straight. There’s very few, if any, twists along the way, with the journey mostly just being the reclamation of Archanea’s conquered lands, though there are a few detours when Gharnef gets involved. At the least, however, it’s still fairly entertaining to go through, mostly thanks to the localization giving the script a very old fashioned Elizabethan flair. While some dislike it, it adds a lot of charm to what would otherwise be a very unmemorable story, in my opinion.

As for the characters, unfortunately, they suffer quite a bit more. The large majority of the playable cast, though admittedly at a downright massive 59 characters, are simply brushed aside, with most only having their recruitment scenes to display any characterization, with about 10 of them not even having that much, leaving them to only serve as units to command. That’s not to say that aren’t some gems to be found, though. Marth especially makes a good impression with the amount of focus he’s given as the main character, being a likeable mix of almost overly idealistic and trusting given his situation, yet still reasonable enough to know when he must steel himself, along with some subtle character development along the way. Even beyond Marth, though, there are quite a few memorable characters to be found, such as Caeda, Marth’s love interest, who, while genuinely very kind and good intentioned, is also very clever and manipulative, and has some of the best scenes in the game, such as convincing an extremely stubborn enemy general to join their cause by flipping his entire idea of what serving his country truly entails, and recruiting a completely random knight she had never even met before through, among other things, thinly veiled flirtation. Other notable characters include Minerva, the princess of Macedon who, despite knowing it would bring her into conflict with her brother, king Michalis, chooses her ideals over her family and rebels to join Marth, Linde, the wielder of the legendary Aura tome out to avenge her father’s death at the hands of Gharnef, Tiki, a Divine Dragon who is the daughter of Naga herself, Merric, a friend of Marth’s who uses the powerful Excalibur tome, and the trio of sister pegasus knights, Palla, Catria, and Est, who are the most frequently appearing playable characters in the franchise. Unfortunately, these only make up a small portion of an otherwise very unmemorable cast.

Gameplay:

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon, and, well, all the other games in the series, is a turn based strategy role playing game, taking control of Marth and his army of assorted misfits on tile based maps. Turns are separated into player phase and enemy phase, during which the respective side gets to choose all the actions their units will take, without any factors like, say, turn order. The player is limited to bringing 12-16 of their units per chapter past the initial few chapters, while enemy numbers often exceed that, though the vast majority of the regular enemies you fight, even for cannon fodder, are rather underpowered in this game. Every unit can carry up to 5 items, which can be anything from weapons they use to attack, to consumables to restore their HP. However, all items, including weapons, have limited uses, and while gold is pretty plentiful, many items are not easy to find copies of, or are unique, period, which can add a fair bit of stress. To engage in combat, a unit must be placed on a tile directly next to an enemy if they’re a melee unit, or 1 space away, if they’re an archer, while mages are able to attack directly in front of one space away from enemies. In combat, each unit takes at least one rounds attacking each other, assuming both units are within each other’s ranges. There’s also a weapons triangle which affects accuracy and damage; swords beat axes, lances beat swords, axes beat lances. There are 8 stats that are used in combat: HP, which determines how much health a unit has, strength, which determines the power of physical attacks, magic, which determines the strength of magic attacks, skill, which determines the accuracy of attacks, speed, which, if high enough compared to an enemy, allows a unit to take two rounds attacking instead of just one, luck, which influences many things, but primarily the possibility evading attacks and of critical hits, which do triple the damage of normal attacks, defense, which lowers damage from physical attacks, and resistance, which lowers damage from magic attacks. There is one other stat, movement, which determines how far a unit can move on the map. All of these stats except for movement can be raised by leveling up by gaining 100 experience points, which are gotten mostly from defeating enemies, but can be gotten in smaller amounts from simply attacking an enemy or healing another unit. Most units can initially level up to 20, but at level 10, they gain the ability to promote into stronger classes using master seals, giving them fixed stat increases, additional movement, and the ability to level up even more. A select few classes, such as thieves, Manaketes, and Marth’s personal class, the lord, cannot promote, but to compensate, their levels cap at 30 instead of 20.

The objective in every chapter is to seize the castle/throne being guarded by the chapter boss using Marth, defeating the enemies along the way. While some units are given to the player automatically, many others must be recruited from the enemy side by talking to them with specific units, generally Marth or Caeda, or by visiting villages with Marth, which can also give items, but are at risk at being destroyed by bandits or thieves. It’s an interesting system that very much helps the feeling that this is a ragtag little army only held together by Marth. Unfortunately, Marth’s importance comes at a cost: if he is defeated at any point during the game, it’s an automatic game over. While he is a very capable unit, this can encourage only sending him out in special situations, while letting the normal units handle most of everything, but this isn’t the perfect solution either. Not only is Marth likely to end up underleveled if he doesn’t fight enough, but if a regular unit has their HP reach 0, they die, permanently, taking all the experience and items they were carrying. While an interesting idea, it doesn’t work out very well. The amount of experience points available to your units is finite, outside of the extremely risky arena, which allows your units to fight somewhat absurd enemies for gold, at the risk of dying if they lose, as if they were against any normal enemy. Since the viability gap between units is quite sizeable, something I shall go into more detail on in a moment, losing a unit you’ve trained a good amount is an extreme inconvenience, especially if they were holding rare items. Additionally, though it’s downplayed in this game for reasons I’ve said earlier, every unit is their own character, in some form. They have names, their own designs, and individual endings in the epilogue, and that alone is enough to encourage caring about them, if in varying amounts. With all these factors combined, many players, including myself, choose to just reset the game if a unit dies and start the chapter over. While that in of itself isn’t really a valid complaint, considering the developers weren’t intending that, considering some of the cheap tricks that get pulled, like enemy reinforcements showing up where your units started in a chapter, it can get grating, especially with how long some of the maps can go on.

The unit and class balance, unfortunately, is not very good. There is a very prominent viability gap when it comes to the individual units. There are three main points that usually determine a unit’s viability: their base stats, the stats they automatically come with upon recruitment, growth rates, hidden percentages that determine the likelihood of each stat being raised on a level up, and availability, how early in the game they are recruited. A character can have fantastic growth rates and a low starting level, but come so late in the game and with such awful bases that it’s not worth bothering with. Conversely, someone can come in fairly early in the game, prepromoted and with good base stats, but have such low growth rates that the chance of them actually improving at all is near zero. This holds true for every Fire Emblem game, to varying extents, but it’s especially notable here because almost invariably, the first couple of units you get of each class, or in some cases, just the first, are the best to use by far. Past chapter 12, and this is a 25 chapter game, the amount of units you get that are actually worth using over the units you got earlier could be counted on one hand, and even before that it’s giving you several units that are near pointless if you put even a bit of effort into the people of the same class you got a few chapters before. I think, though, that this was intentional on the part of the developers. The intention seems to have been for players to not get attached to their units at all, and simply accept any death they take, thus most units only function as replacements for what they thought would be inevitable losses. However, this is partially what caused the vastly underdeveloped cast, and thankfully future games would drop this mentality. Even past how underpowered the replacements are, many early units are just plain too powerful. Caeda in particular is an absolute monster thanks to her personal weapon, the wing spear, which grants damage bonuses against knights and cavaliers, which many of the enemy units are comprised of, but other special mentions go to Hardin, a very early and powerful cavalier who is flat out better than Jagen, the early game crutch character, despite not even being promoted, Barst, an early fighter who joins with two other fighters, but is strong enough and has good enough growth rates to render them pointless, and Julian, a thief who has very strong growth rates, to the point of easily becoming very hard hitting and tanky, despite the questionable class choice.

Some of the earlier intended replacements, however, can at least work out, since growth rates in Shadow Dragon are overall pretty awful. It’s entirely possible for several of your units to just refuse to gain important stats, and eventually cross a threshold where they’re beyond catching up, and the earlier replacements do have growth rates built that they should be able to level up their important points decently, but many of the post chapter 11 units have awful growths and bases, and even then, the class distribution throughout is awful. Of the “normal” classes that promote, there’s 12 in all: cavaliers, mounted knights that tend to be very nicely balanced overall, archers, who have to attack from a distance, but are useful for chipping and get damage bonuses against flying enemies, knights, who specialize in attack and especially defense in exchange for speed and moment, making them useful for baiting enemies out, pegasus knights, who lack attack but make up for it with speed, skill, and resistance, plus they can move over terrain freely, mercenaries, who are also very solidly balanced sword fighters, rangers, who are much like archers, but typically with higher attack, myrmidons, who, like pegasus knights, sacrifice attack for speed, though they focus more on evasion, fighters, axe users with low defense and skill, but much HP and attack, pirates, who sacrifice skill even harder in exchange for walking over water tiles freely, mages, who are very squishy physically but very much make up for it with attack, dark mages, who are more defensive based, and clerics, who cannot attack until promotion, but are able to heal units with staves. Some of the non typical classes are thieves, who are, in theory, supposed to stay away from combat, and instead go after the various treasure chests found in various maps, ballisticians, who have extremely low move and stats in exchange for having absolutely massive range, and manaketes, who have horrid stats normally, but use dragonstones to attack, which confer large stat bonuses, though they are very limited.

Just to begin with, the classes are rather unbalanced. Pegasus knights and cavaliers have way too much movement, being able to cross large portions of the map in one turn, while mages can destroy 90% of the units encountered due to resistance being extremely low on most enemies, and most playable units, for that matter. Several of them have 0 res, and 0% growth in it, to the point Marth has one of the highest growths, at 1%. Additionally, as I said, the distribution of the classes is extremely unbalanced, to the point there are 10 cavaliers, most of which you get very quickly, while there’s only 4 fighters and one singular pirate to be found, which is pretty bad considering those are the only axe users in the game other than promoted mercenaries, and the only dark mage is already promoted when, or if, you get him. However, the game does introduce the reclass system, where you can change any character in a normal class to a different one, depending on which of two class pools they’re in. It’s a good idea, in theory, however, the growth rates also change depending on class, so you could accidentally put them into a class they can barely grow in.

Many of these flaws are carried over from the original NES version, but the remake changes surprisingly little overall, and sticking true to the original wasn’t the best of moves. It did add several classes that didn’t exist in the original, along with items, dialogue, and the like, but the lack of significant additions, like support conversations to develop the characters, or alternative chapter goals, like defense chapters, make Shadow Dragon feel downright barren compared to almost any other game in the series. This does, however, debatably give Shadow Dragon a niche: it’s very easy to pick up and play. There’s not many complexities you need to worry about. You could even see it as a good introduction to the series. However, that’s not really a view I hold. More than anything, it’s just a bland experience, albeit a bland experience I’ve gone through several times, mostly just because of how easy it is to go through. On the subject of additions to the remake, however, there is one rather notable addition: gaiden chapters, which are short, easy bonus chapters that come after certain chapters if you fulfill certain requirements, and contain helpful items and new units. All good in theory, but unfortunately, all but one of them share the same requirement, and it’s an absolute doozy: have 15 or less units alive by the end of the preceding chapters. Not only is that the most counter intuitive requirement possible, but the sheer amount of characters you have to get killed, many of them useful, make them nowhere near worth bothering with, especially as many of the new units are not worth using, both in characterization and gameplay, with two exceptions: Athena, the first available, who is a very good myrmidon, and moreover is downright hilarious, and possibly the most notable character in the game just for sheer absurdity, with an extremely thick accent, a bad grasp on idioms and phrases, and the audacity to call Marth “a stupid manchild” right to his face, and Nagi, whose gaiden chapter can only be accessed by losing both Tiki and Falchion, the main methods for defeating Medeus. Not only is she a good unit by herself, she’s also quite interesting, despite her very limited, as she’s heavily hinted to be the reincarnation of Naga herself. Overall, though, the gaiden chapters are a very poorly thought out addition.

Graphics:

Shadow Dragon is not a great looking game, unfortunately, largely due to the artstyle used, being a rather weird combination of anime styled, yet realistic. It does lend to some rather good looking illustrations throughout the game, and some of the character designs do fit it, especially Gharnef, who looks downright horrific.

Unfortunately, overall the artstyle just does not work, and many character portraits are rather off putting, not helped by some being poorly drawn to begin with.

The map and battle graphics are also odd. They seem to be in prerendered style, and while they do animated decently, and while I honestly don’t mind them, they still aren’t very appealing.

Music:

The music, unfortunately, is not a high point either. It’s not that the soundtrack is outright bad; there’s many decent tracks throughout, but few of them are actually memorable. The map themes are generally the most enjoyable, though, and thankfully they swap out as you get farther in the game, and Shadow Dragon has what may be my favorite version of the Fire Emblem theme.

Conclusion:

Overall, I honestly cannot solidly say if this is recommended or not recommended. There are certainly much more enjoyable games in the series, such as New Mystery of the Emblem, Awakening, Blazing Sword, Sacred Stones, and Path of Radiance, but even with me thinking it’s bland, it’s not a bad time. The dialogue is fun to go through, there’s plenty of room for experimentation, it’s very easy to pick up and play, there’s 5 different harder difficulties if you want more of a challenge, and it can be quite a bit of fun if you’re in the right mood. However, you’re not missing much if you choose not to go through it. With that, I’ve said more than enough about this game. Till next time.

-Scout

#fire emblem #game review #long post #fire emblem shadow dragon

5 notes · View notes

crystalelemental · 7 years

Text

Well, it’s finally done. After all these years of just refusing to play the damn game, I beat Dark Souls 2 in its entirety. Which means, I have now beaten the entire series to 100% completion, and it is time to make a decision.

I’ll start with the game itself. I know a lot of people identify it as the jankiest, and that it just doesn’t function right. I’m not quite sure I’d agree with that entirely? It’s definitely weird, though. Like, when adaptability is low and your roll sucks, you’ll be rolling through something but still take damage for reasons. That’s kinda shitty. And it’s only really fixable by keeping low weight and trying to allocate points there early on. So we hope you enjoy playing melee only for most of the game. Not that it makes sense to do anything else anyway.

What is a major problem is how many times your slow-ass character is surrounded by like 5 enemies. Look, the Souls series is weird. A single boss with big attacks is not really that threatening, but a room of three normal enemies is a death sentence if you aggro them all simultaneously. There are a ton of bosses where the only real difficulty is crowd control. Skeleton Lords, Ruin Sentinels, Looking Glass Knight, Twin Dragonriders, Throne Defender and Watcher, Duke’s Dear Freya, Executioner’s Chariot (which extra sucks because adds are infinite unless you kill the necromancers), Darklurker, the fucking Belfry Gargoyles, Royal Rat Authority. Then in NG+ you get Lost Sinner summoning help, and the DLC introduces all kinds of fresh hell for you, like Elana (who I actually love, but only from lore standpoint), Lud and Zallen, the Ivory King, and the ganksquad. So much of this game is difficulty by suddenly being surrounded by too many units, and there are locations that are outright impossible to get through without a bow or spells to draw one person at a time (the run to Velstadt and the Ancient Dragon most notably).

That said...this is probably the easiest of the games. Not for any sensible reason like bosses just being easier or anything. It’s because you can power-level like a motherfucker, and are almost encouraged to do so. Levels scale so minimally that, at around level 200, you still only need around 50,000 souls to level. That is not a high bar to set, and level 200 means you can pack a lot of different tools, including your melee weapon of choice, spells of choice, and still have a good HP pool and a solid roll. Not gonna lie: actually love this fact. I think that the series as a whole suffers from not really allowing you to mix-and-match sets. A lot of things require specification, and quality builds are notoriously Not That Good. So being able to fairly easily cap most relevant stats in the first playthrough is fantastic.

That said, then you have the negative: Soul Memory. So, in this game, you can be summoned to help a player fight a boss, to regain your humanity without using the finite consumable Effigies. This is good, because going hollow means your HP gets cut pretty sharply, up to 50% of your max life. Which is stupid as hell, but whatever. Now, to be summoned, you need to be in the right tier as other players. Meaning that, if you want to be summoned reliably to fight Old Iron King, you need to be...not at Soul Memory 800k. Otherwise it takes like 3 days to get your 30 sunlight medals you need for that spell to get the trophies. Not that I’m bitter. Basically, as you fight the boss, you gain more souls, which puts you at a higher soul memory, which puts you out of range of typical players, so you can’t really farm reliably or recover humanity reliably from easier bosses. I like the idea of encouraging co-op, but the soul memory system is awful. It probably also influences invasions, but fuck invaders. If you invade people, you’re a piece of shit and I hope your system bricks.

As the last thing to note: the major complain I often see is “why are so many bosses just armored sword man; what is this, Smash 4?” Which is super legit. There are a lot of bosses that are just different variants on knight. Especially in the main game, this made it really easy to reach Velstadt...and basically beat him no damage. Because you know what’s happening now. You know how the knight fight goes, and there’s nothing all that unique. It’s very same-y. Of course, this does nothing to stop me from getting my shit pushed in like 37 times against Fume Knight, but honestly fuck that asshole.

Lore-wise, I feel like this is the weakest of the games, but I also feel like it’s closest to what I would want out of a sequel. I’m serious. I think that DS1 presented a fairly complete story, that didn’t really have a need for continuation in this way. DS2′s focus on bringing all these references to DS1 back is obnoxious, and the thing that holds it back the most. Focus on kingdoms within the world all you want. Focus on this entirely separate place called Drangleic and have it focus on all this unique stuff, in a place that doesn’t even know what the hell Lordran is or why the curse is showing up. But keeping it separate was really what is lacking here. Why is Ornstein just here? Just hanging out? Why is the statue for the Warriors of Sunlight still here when nothing else remained, and why is it near fucking Earthen Peak of all damn places? Why do the four great lord souls from DS1 just show up on NG+ with the new four great souls? Just keep them separate. You didn’t have to do this.

There is, however, one thing I actually like that’s a tie-in, and that’s the queens. I like the idea of Manus’ defeat resulting in the creation of these beings of the abyss showing up, and trying in their own ways to bring things back to the Dark. It’s something that ties in nicely, but isn’t just a shallow reference without meaning. It also helps that they’re pretty cool. Elana is, as I mentioned, my favorite, which has a lot to do with her trying to poison a dragon to death. Fuck that dragon up, girl. Stupid bitch lizard ain’t got shit. She’s also just the most outright conniving of the four, I think.

Overall, it’s not a terrible game, but it does feel very different. I think the main thing I take away is that it’s still very much a Dark Souls game. It’s all focused around difficulty meaning dying a lot, but this time with added penalties in the form of hollowing, and soul memory fucking literally everything up by putting you out of summon range whenever you suck and have to re-do runs to the boss, or try to farm levels to handle a problem. Magic is still boring a shit, and this game is almost the worst offender considering all my best spell options were just throwing Dark Orb at shit until it stopped breathing because it was fast and had a stupidly high number of casts compared to everything else in the game. I still feel like boss health is way too goddamn high given how unforgiving the game is toward any mistake in a fight, and how little variation there often is in a moveset. I’ve said before that I enjoy this series largely because it’s an active playing process that lets you build up your character, and that stat allocations are something I adore above all else, but it’s just not doing it for me. I’ve played about every type of build I can, in every game. Magic is always boring and way less effective than heavy armor with a stick. Melee weapons function very differently, but every major boss still boils down to learn pattern, dodge or block, attack one or maybe two times then back to defense so you don’t eat shit, repeat for 15 minutes until dead. It’s...kinda boring by now.

Which leads me to this: I’m trading this entire series in for Etrian Odyssey V on Tuesday. I don’t hate the games, but I find there is no further enjoyment to be had here. I’m more invested in completing a build, which leads to a lot of time just spent grinding, and I experience more frustration with getting through a run than anything else, since the series has become more of a placeholder between games than something I actually want to play on its own. In a weird way, it’s almost become too effective of a placeholder, and I could probably accomplish more significant things or branch out a bit instead of just replaying these whenever I’m bored and waiting on something else to come out. So, I’m done. I’m trading it all in, and honestly, thank god.

#dark souls 2 #I'm finally done with this series #time to get rid of it and never look back

2 notes · View notes