#and then i decided i didnt like the story line for my gameplay | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

739337369137371082 · 3 years

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Hey so I found u thru the Halved Live Funnies and I gotta ask... whose Leon? What series these dudes from?

i got this ask and then forgot about it for like 2 days. anyways.

IVE ANSWERED THIS BEFORE BUT. GOD. LEON. ok so like....... long story short last year was when i first played resident evil........ bc we got a copy of re2remake in and.... jesus christ. i hyperfixated so fucking hard for the better part of a year going on into this year. and then i watched hl/vr and well. we know where that went. but now i am once again hyperfixated and now im back to where i was in like.... june of last year LMAO. but anyways i am once again going to ramble under the cut about them <3 (seriously. its very long and doesnt go much of anywhere. also spoilers)

tl/dr:

OK. SO. resident evil. the last time i answered this ask i either hadnt played some of them or just completely forgot the plot of others LOL but now upon beating/playing a large majority of them (besides 6 which i have not touched yet, and 7 is first person and im not rly interested in it rn)...... well others have said this as well but if you like cheesy b action movies you would love resident evil!!!

the orig 1-2 are more survival horror which is what i like the most. 3 is where it starts branching into more actiony stuff but is still survival horror. but 4 and after is just like..... cheesy action stuff which is fine but not really like.... my thing. altho i do think that they are fun in a “this plot is hilariously bad” type way because i do enjoy horrible things. but people who like resident evil dont like it for the plot they like it for the characters. and for me i latched the fuck onto leon kennedy and tyrant t-00 aka mr fucking x

listen.......... you guys know me relatively well enough to know that i have a type......... and i would define leon as not really fitting under it usually because he is 1. under 6 foot 2. human and 3. very much not a villain. but something about (mostly remake) leon hits fucking different!!!!!! hes kind and means well, thinks about others constantly, looks like an actual fucking person in the in game graphics instead of being some manufactured perfect model, nice voice, etc....... i fucking care him so much. also gameplay wise i find his weapons to be more enjoyable than claires so i always end up playing his route/2nd route the most compared to hers. but i do also like claire :) shes nice and epic

i dont really like the newer leons (4 and afterwards) as much.... i mean a lot of it has to do with trauma and general “growing up” after what happened in re2 but hes just so constantly... snarky? jaded? constantly spouting lines to make him seem cool? when in my head hes very much like... a loser LMAO. i mean dont get me wrong hes a badass. he survives a fucking zombie outbreak and nearly gets murdered dozens of time. thats the definition of badass. but also you cannot change my mind that hes also a anxious loser twunk. there is literally nothing you can do to convince me he is “cool” like the games and movies want to think. this is probably heresy to re fans but this is my truth

https://youtu.be/aVZWuSfGStk?t=129

here is a vid of his cutscenes. obvious spoilers in there but you can skip around and see how cute he is. also yes in his first cutscene he is listening to butt rock. i switch between thinking hes just listening to it because nothing else is on the radio or his taste really is that terrible

also you literally CANNOT convince me that he is straight. the games try SOOOOO hard to get you to ship leon/ada or leon/claire but like...... i cannot see it. he has one of the gayest run animations i have ever seen in re2 remake and i mean... he just radiates gay trans man energy to me. also please look at this small scene from one of the animated movies where a licker jumps on top of him and he wraps his legs around its hips and lifts it off of him to not die. gay king

https://youtu.be/d-VNikxYBPw?t=9

but yes ive basically decided to ignore all characterization from re4 and onwards regarding leon at least. every leon after that is not my leon (except in special cases when im thinking about something like leon/jd from re damnation..... they did jd so dirty and they should have fucking kissed. or how cute he looked in vendetta sometimes)

ANYWAYS. MR X

so basically there are these enemies in resident evil called “tyrants” that are manufactured by the evil capitalist company umbrella that are near indestructible save for like.... rocket launchers or super heavy artillery that youre not buying at your local gun store. and in re2 one of them get sent to the police station where leon and claire are and is told to wipe out all witnesses. (i also do think that 2 or more were sent there... or at least in the area when this happened due to some very obvious plot hole stuff on each route no matter how you play, even tho the devs have come out and said that only 1 existed in the game and that each route is like “a parallel dimension” to each other. i wont go into it more than that but i choose to ignore that)

and well. when i first played it i knew of mr x but didnt like... know much about him other than that he was a monster and Tall (like 7 or 8 feet tall) and that he chased you around. that already sold me on him but then. well. you first encounter him because he lifts up an entire goddamn helicopter and then proceeds to chase you. and it was then that i knew i was in deep shit because he fucking stomped his way into my heart and never left.

mr x basically has serious Side Character Disorder where (even tho the remake made him very cool and epic and did him really well compared to nemesis in re3 remake which is an entire different can of worms) he has LITERALLY no personality or like. thoughts. or anything. hes only there to chase you around and be on screen for like 10 seconds for a couple of cutscenes and then not show up again until the very end of the game for you to fight on leons route. but god. he means so fucking much to me.

you know how people latch onto random side characters that have no personality and essentially flesh them out more than the creators ever will? thats me with mr x. its gotten to the point where certain songs come on on my spotify and i actually get EMOTIONS or even TEARS because they remind me of him, but its not even really HIM, its the fucking ideas that ive come up with regarding him because all he ever does in game is chase you around and punch you and then die and is never brought up again

but anyways. mr x is a tall monster who chases leon and claire around in their routes but mr x is leons main monster in the game (claire has a different one). he chases leon around, literally never stops looking at him as he chases him, gets hit by an entire fucking car which then explodes BUT THEN chases him down into the sewers and into a secret underground lab just to get to him like a fucking bloodhound who, once he has the scent, will never stop chasing him

(you can see why this made me kind of insane)

just. AGHHH. the tyrants in this series get treated so dirty. i desperately want capcom to give us some sort of tyrant that can actually fucking like.... go against orders and brainwashing or whatever and actually have emotions and thoughts!!!!!!!!!! but capcom would never do anything with it cause its a rough and tough action series and people arent here to see tyrants have some sort of thought process beyond punching and killing and people only want to shoot guns at them instead of thinking about the possibilities of a tyrant that goes against its programming.

i so desperately want an au where mr x got the transmitter shot off of the side of his head (and while capcom never mentioned this ever many re2 fans have since decided that it is what feeds info/orders to him. i flip flop between thinking that it either is near controlling him and prevents free will and thought or that its just giving him orders and that hes just burying/hiding/not showing free will and thought in fear of being killed. either that or someone at umbrella is “piloting” him but also the whole point of tyrants is that theyre supposed to be smart enough to think for themselves somewhat so... eh). GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!

ive explained a bunch of this stuff in my other ask about it but just...... xleon means so much to me when it should not and will never be actually canon

anyways please play re2 remake at least, you dont have to know everything about re1 to like it, just go into it knowing that a few months ago in the mountains outside raccoon city claires brother chris and a few members on his team went to a mansion where they discovered umbrella doing shady zombie shit there. re2 remake was hyped up for years for a reason and it is really good, even if its short (altho i do appreciate short games in this day and age cause not every game needs to be like 60 plus hours long).

maybe one day when its not late and i can actually think i will explain all this better but todays not that day <3

(EDIT: ALSO RE DAMNATION TYRANTS ARE 14 FEET TALL. AND CHASE AROUND LEON AND ACTUALLY FUCKING RUN. FUN FACT! anyways while i do think jd in that movie and leon should kiss i also want leon and a tyrant from that movie to kiss. bye)

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superemeralds · 6 years

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I don't really understand why everyone is waiting for a sonic adventure sequel. The adventure series has ended years ago and it's perfectly normal for SEGA to prioritize new original games like Sonic Forces. I'd rather wait for a new fresh, creative game than a sequel they would have a huge chance of messing up (like they pretty much did with Sonic 06, but i still like the game tho). But what if they made a one (officially)? What would be a good new sonic adventure game for you? (i'm curious xp)

for the last time they didnt mess up with 06 !!!!!!!!!!! they didnt do anything wrong!!!!!!!1 it was just lots of events that couldnt be stopped inconveniencing the production and in the end they just didnt have the time and resources to flesh the game out; if they did have time and help they could’ve totally made this game revolutionary :(

content:

what i hoped/theorized forces would be

why forces looks like an adventure game, but isnt an adventure game

what i want in a new sonic adventure game (doesnt need adventure in the title)

lemme just sum up why i think forces is lacking and what i thought it would be when the first trailer dropped

I thoguht we’d get a 3 story game again. where each character shows us a different perspective of the same story.

I thoguht sonic story was about sonic fighting the eggman empire and infinite, perhaps being trapped in infinites illusions and breaking out after noticing that things are VERY wrong when infinites clones of his friends start acting weird

the avatar is on their way to protect their city and about to give up until they see sonic and they decide to be a hero themselves to help others and therefore go on their own journey to confront infinite (back then i theorized that infinite was their childhood friend)

and classic story (as much as i hate it) would be about classic dimension warping and perhaps overhearing eggmans plan abt the ruby (bc like. he came with the ruby from mania but like. okay.) and through him being a lil spy we get to know more about the origin of infinite until he eventually joins with the main cast becuase a final story where all 3 fight eggman together was inevitable.

however story perspective is not necessary considering unleashed’s placement

ofc multiple gameplay styles and/or multiple playable characters are THE mandatory thing for an adventure game BUT forces gameplay didn’t have a very varying feel to it. the controls were a little tweaked for classic and avatar had the wispons, but essentially it was the same as sonic but with Gimmicks/Tweaks.

also the spirit of the game’s story didn’t have this strong adventure vibe. It preached the power of friendship, yet it was so….. hollow and empty. due to the avatar being a passive character their friendship with sonic was just so….. fake.

“power of friendship” was just hollow words in this game.

personally i also think the ost was lacking, theme of infinite is the most iconic song to come from it , and the only memorable song next to it was fist bump. which is sad (mainly bc it wasnt even the final boss theme)

also remixes and reuses arent a taboo in adventure games (sa2 did it too) but i think it’s different if character themes and maybe… one or two level themes are reused. there should be plenty more original content.

some ppl say crush40 is mandatory, but I don’t think so. the crush40 version of his world IS NOT the main theme for 06, and unleashed also didnt have c40 (jun did do the guitars tho)

i already debunked chao garden so like. not necessary

on the topic of original content i also want to say that the levels in forces were lacking variety. the environment was different, yea, but the way you get throguh the levels didnt really change much despite more 2d sections in eggman base levels and like. more spikes in urban areas and more slides and 3d in the “jungle” level. it wasnt even really a jungle it was jsut ruins… and green hill… AGAIN….. was not really anything special or new either

what i mean is that even when the optical stuff of the levels is different there was zero change of atmosphere or feel. no change in stradegy to get through. it was all just……. the same.

sonic forces was…………..boring.

there i said it. it was boring.

the most exciting part was the customization and i bet kids loved it. ppl who dont know much about game design and just are in to pass time and have some fun probably loved this game. but like. the game doesnt entertain anymore after its beat for the first time. replaying is a real drag, the fun was literally just…. in the story and getting enough customize stuff to make ur dream avatar.

if anyone feels different, as said, thats valid, but from a design point this is terrible.

WHAT I WANT IN A NEW SONIC (adventure) GAME

i do have a game concept for a silver game lying around (with gameplay, controls, story, levels and some dialogue) that would be an adventure-esque game but i cant leak that yet its too unfinished still

let’s start at the bare minimum: no ooc sonic anymore. writers take notes and be serious for once. sonic knows when its time to joke, and in case yall dont know the answer is NOT 24/7

also maybe more than just sonic playable OR have other characters be relevant beyond a bunch of jokes and random voice lines. (preferably both)

the story should be engaging and have a deeper meaning and a strong vibe for justice and/or freedom; the characters have to undergo development and learn from their mistakes. also the story CAN be dark/more serious while still being suitable for children.

we need a minimum of ONE plot twist.

gameplay styles should be varied and not just sonic, and sonic but with a gun

there NEEDS to be some kind of open world/exploration element in the game. be it a hug world or ingrained in the levels themselves. (things can be open world and still linear just saying)

iconic music!!! vocal theme!!! character themes should be representing the characters personality again!!!!11

story perspectives arent mandatory, but definitely a plus!!!!

minor puzzles in the levels please…. make it challenging to get through !!!1

100 rings=+1life

i cant stress this enough ok

the game also needs something innovative and new. (which is most probably the new gameplay style due to new character or something but ykno) adventure games have always introduced something new and it was AWESOME and fun and refresing!

and my mind just cant focus anymore akjshfkjshfakj i might revisit this some time but for now this is all i can say

man i wish i was neurotypical

#gayme log #long post #Anonymous #ask #i wanted to bold all important keywords but forgot halfway thru and im too lazy/unengaged to fix it #im so sorry im a mess

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tumblunni · 5 years

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

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

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

and it also fuckin FINALLY EXPLAINS THE DAMN PLOT LIKE GEEZ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

youtube

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

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

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

SO LIKE...

JUST....

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

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

AND FUCKING

IF IT IS CANON

THAT MY FUCKIN

STUPID THEORY

IS CANON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#no gramps shall go unappreciated in the bunni house

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ramblyravingnnjashark · 6 years

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Nier Automata - Genius and Madness

the works of Yoko Taro are something that have eluded me for most of my life, and that I have given very little attention to. Probably for good reasons because from the outside, the gameplay of his games range from Mediocre to Average at best and I consider myself a very "gameplay First" person. Some of my Freinds would rave about Drakengard and how weird it is but that didnt quite convince me to look into them much further. However, one Fateful Day a little game called "Nier Automata" was announced, a sequel to Yoko Taros Xbox 360/PS3 game Nier with a little line of Text that would change things in an instant

"Developed by PlatinumGames"

now friends of mine will know that, PlatinumGames is one of my alltime favourite Game Devs for their Crazy High skill Character Action Beat em up titles, containing Larger than Life characters and great and tight Gameplay that owes their roots in the Arcade games of old, which is something I have a appreciation for.

So, with a combination like this I finally decided to take on this series, by means of watching Youtube essays about it because goddamn, the gameplay in these games can get rather mind numbing sadly but honestly? Yoko Taro mighta earned himself now a nice cushy place as one of my favourite Directors, right next to Hideki Kamiya and Hideo Kojima themselves.

But there is one thing I realised from watching these Essays and actually playing one of them it is one thing to watch a guy sum this series up for you, its a whole different thing to watch the Insanity for yourself

because the works of Yoko Taro arent stories about Heroic Knights slaying Demons and Evil Dragons, or Loving Fathers/older Brothers trying to survive the Fall of Humanity with their Daughters/Little Sisters

they are stories about Love, Hate, War, the meaninglessness of the Universe and the Hope growing from it, what it means to be Human, and what it means to lose all reason and go complete and genuinely Mad

(there will be spoilers, so be warned if you wish to expirience these games yourself!)

so originally, this was gonna be a brief recap of Drakengard and Nier, but then I realised I couldnt do these games justice so I just link this and this recap of these games that should give you a good idea what these games are about but to keep it brief

Drakengard is essentially to RPGs what Evangelion was to Mecha Anime, and thats a fairly approviate comparsion when you just look at, this

its also notable for how it handles its different endings, usually referred to as Ending A, Ending B etc, Ending E of the first Drakengard game was a Joke ending that nontheless became the basis for the setting of Nier, a ruined Planet Earth set hundreds of years after the Fall of Humanity about a Father (in the Western Releases) or a Older Brother (Japanese release) having to fend for himself and his Daughter/Younger Sister in a world under constant threat of creatures known as Heartless Shades

both these games are interesting, because their gameplay is nothing special, in the case of Drakengard its outright terrible,they got mediocre reviews and poor sales and yet these games have a dedicated Cult following and tons of Novels, Audio Dramas, Manga and even Stage Plays that expand the Universes of these games and its lore

and thats for a simple reason: these games may have mediocre gameplay but, their Stories, their Characters, their Art Direction is actually of fairly high quality featuring intriguing Characters and worldbuilding that makes you invested in them regardless I mean, theres a entire exchange in Nier thats entireley between two Magical Talking Books for cryin out loud, and its one of the best parts of the game!

however, these games have thus far had a life as just that, Cult Classics, that didnt manage to garner a mainstream audience due to its aforementioned quirks, the Gameplay just could never stand up to the well written stories of these games

this is where PlatinumGames comes into play

now, the gameplay of Automata I honestly felt like was more on par with what Revengeance offered: there is stuff you can do with it but all in all its below the likes of Bayonetta and Devil May Cry 3 but thats not to say its poor, of course not, it doesnt encourage you to try anything other than just Mash about, but thats Fine, theres also Chips that your characters can even equip Chips that enhance their abilities and giv e them new ones such as a Bayonetta style Parry and Witch time or give them Heals upon Killing the enemy and while the actual enviroments can be a bit of a chore to go through (until you get Fast Travel), it still felt good to Parkour your way through them, nice snappy and smooth which gives me hopes they take a cue or two from this game for Bayonetta 3 in that regard at least

another thing I loved is the Soundtrack itself. Now I dont consider myself a musical person, however I can tell when a Song is used perfectly, and in Automata? Every Song is used to actual perfection. Music to me can be the deciding factor wether a Area or Scene in a Game or Movie is Garbage, Forgettable or Legendary, and for Automata, every song makes each area fall niceley into the latter fortunatly. One Standout track for me is Birth of a Wish (Become as Gods) a retake of an earlier song that adds in additional Chorus, and the Theme for Pascals village which is a cute Melody involving Children singing.

now onto the game itself, Route A puts you in the sexy and Lucious Thigh High boots of YoRHa Unit 2B, whereas Route B puts you in the cute Boy shorts of her Partner and mostly Good Boy YoRHa Unit 9S both tasked with ridding the world of Machine Lifeforms and making Earth inhabitable for the Humans stuck on the Moon again Both Routes play out roughly the same, 2B plays like a Standard Character Action Heroine with Lights and Heavies and such, whereas 9S is mainly focused around his ability to hack enemies and engage into brief SHMUP segments.

of the two I felt like 2B was a little more fun to play all in all, the Hacking was fine but also felt a teeny bit like a pace breaker but not too much, at least until late in Route B the game throws curvebals and unique hacking segments into the mix

a thing Yoko Taro games have been very good at showing, is showing the process of a Person losing their mental stability and throwing it all away to become a one track minded Mad Man and I find that interesting.

Drakengard had a good example when the Character Inuart completley loses it and becomes obsessed with bringing back his Dead Love interest, causing here to turn into the monster posted above. Automata meanwhile, shows this also but with Machines, being that shouldnt even go mad in the first place but become Insane with concepts like Revenge, Fear or other. Now I am not a Psychology Major or anything but I cant help but feel "this is Intriguing", not sure if thats a bad thing or anything but thats how it is.

now, Route C is where officialy the PlatinumGame ends and the Yoko Taro game begins, in that things become utterly, utterly Bleak. Not to say it was happy funtime before, many of the sidequests end on a very sour or outright terrible note, but here? Shits gon Bad!

YoRHa falls, everyone on the Protagonists homebase dies or becomes infected with a Virus that makes them go insane, 2B dies and 9S is severeley wounded and has his mental state utterly ruined by seeing 2B, his Love interest, die. from this Point onward, you play as Either A2, a former YoRHa gone Rogue and 9S as he tries to kill every last Machine Lifeform, and as hes utterly loses his mind. Focusing entireley on his one Goal so that maybe, he can find Death and be with 2B in the Afterlife.

this is where the game really became interesting to me. Gradually 9S goes from this sweet pure boy to a Violent Mess that only wants to Kill and Kill and Kill, Over and Over, its a Interesting Development for such a Character I feel. A2 meanwhile, while still a Great Character and a Blast to play, I felt like was severeley underutilized, getting very little playtime compared to 2B and 9S, with most of her greatest character Development limited to a Japan only Stage play that got a short text recap on a terminal. and it just goes from there and it keeps going, plot twists happen, reveals happen, callbacks to the first Nier and Drakengard 1 happen, its just this huge Mountain of themes and stuff to uncover and analyse. references to old Philosophers and the Concept of Nihilism itself ebing explored, little details that popped up in the early game and now have much greater meaning, its....actually incredible?

I dont think I ever played a game that had so much going on, the last time I think I did was, Metal Gear Solid 3, maybe?! I think....this might actually be one of the best written games I ever played?

and there is still so much content I could go through, the Stage Plays, the Novels, theres probably a buncha Audio Dramas for it too already its like, Jesus christ. and then theres Ending E, which while rather difficult (and probably causes at least 4 people to fucking hate my Guts) was probably one of the best ending sequences I seen in recent years, I'm not gonna go into detail what it is because, it needs to be seen to be belived, but I find it genuiley incredible.

I dont think theres a single game in the Drakengard and Nier series I would actually consider my "Favourite Game", maybe Nier Automata but thats up for consideration still, but I think I can safeley say that both games story as a whole is easily up there with Metal Gear as one of my favourite Game stories out there, and friends and followers of mine would know by now how much I love that Franchise and its wacky insane story, Drakengard and Nier are special little series that you dont see enough of these days, but maybe thats for the better

I'm not gonna say "Nier Automata rekindled my love for video games" or anything, but I am glad I got to expirience these two series.

#Recent Ramblings #Ramblings #Ninja Original

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pearls-and-ramen · 7 years

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Ugh so D&D last night was interesting.

One of the ONLY friends my wizard had turned out to be the big bad (like Sauron pre blazing ball of eyeball big bad. A multiyear and multi-campaign bigbad)

But yeah, he’s aparently been slumming and making friends with my PC who at this point is so desperate for a friend she only slightly questioned it. She ran off the ONLY previous one she had a few months eairlier (one of the other PCs, an elf named Andurion) and was heartbroken over it. The player decided after our characters last fight Andurion would go home for a while and deal with stuff there and brought in a rogue fm a previous storyline in this world who was still active. All of the other PCs just dont care about her at all. They think she is a self-centered, bobblehead of a Princess who has lost her damn mind. Parts of that are true, but she does have an Intelligence of a 20 and looks like a sorority girl so for a while it didnt bother her that they thought that. But then it got to the point where they wouldnt listen to her even if she was standing there with the answer unless Andurion stepped in. After he left in a rage(I mean she did end their last fight by throwing her drink in his face), it got worse.

But then she made a new friend. A NPC who was charming, brilliant, dangerously sexy and most of all friendly, talkative and WANTED to hangout with her. She was being wary with her new friend Erik, and at the end of last session she was definitely starting to be afraid of him but I was going to “deal with it later.” He’d say things, let bits of another personality slip through that bothered her. He’d tell a story and laugh at the wrong parts, appear places in town unexpectedly. She had started to wonder if he watched her even when he wasnt there. But he showered attention on her, was clearly very attracted to her but never pushed it unlike most men who grab her and harass her. She liked him.

But the party, fully prepared went to the north to make the multiweek trek to the “Heart of the Mountain” where the Warlock, the servant of the Shadow, lived. We fought our way through, found a fissure between the realms that was open to a hell dimension and she used down to her last spellslot to close it. She had been questioning the entire time, pointing out that all these traps and constructs seem to be keeping the monsters who came from the pit under control. They seemed to lock them in this side cave and we were destroying everything. The group laughed her off. This didnt have anything to do with the Warlock. We were miles from his castle. Stop complaining and close it. Her magic was worthless against the creatures and she hid each time one appeared, then jumped out and weakened the portal a little more before hiding again as the next one came through.

After she closed it she said again that they had done something wrong. Everyone laughed and said I was over thinking, we’d rest and then go after the Warlock in the morning. But then Erik walked into the cave.

The entire group lost it. This is your friend, why is he here. It was your idea to come this way ect ect. They turned on her and rushed him after Erik thanked them for closing the pit. They had followed his plan and map perfectly. The Barbarian did upward of 150pts of damage in a single attack and Erik barely flinched.

She knew they were all going to die. Erik had given then an opening to deal, to serve him and the barbarian had attacked him. If 10% of what she knew about Erik was true AND he was The Shadow’s Warlock they should never have come. This was beyond being over their heads, they should have come with all the armies in the land.

I thought for a split second and started to silently cry at the gaming table. She ran over to him, got between the barbarian and Erik and said,

“Take me and they can leave. You know if we fight and you take my blood by force you will get barely a fraction on its power. But if I give it willingly… and stay at your side that is different.”

(Bloodpoints are crazy important in Birthright. It has to do with magical purity and divine gifts. Im topped out at a level that has not been seen in tens of thousands of years. I also have a special ability to give my points away. Never has and wasnt planning on it)

The group lost it. This had been my plan all along. I was just trying to bed the most powerful guy in the world. They turned cruel. All except the rogue who has secretly/not so secretly been reporting everything back to Andurion, who also seemed to know ALL about us when he showed up with the letter of reference. I was so frustrated at everyone, I hadnt been planning this. They were all going to die if I didnt.

Erik nodded, smiled and reached out his hand. (Still in tears at the table now from frustration too) I had her strip off most of her items, drop the bag of holding and go to him. But right before she took his hand she said, “Tell Andurion I’m sorry” and they disappeared.

I was heartbroken at the group. They all settled down to divide her stuff barely a minute after she was taken by the Warlock, all except the Rogue who seemed horrified at everyone. He moved forward, took her spellbook and journal then moved back. The others offered him jewels, silk dresses, blankets and he turned them all down. Said the books were for Andurion anyway.

I was so mad, all of these guys didnt even think about what this means for her. She basically sold herself into sexual servitude to get their freedom and they see it as part of her plan. She is a little princess looking for the biggest and most powerful man to latch onto.

At that point the DM took me outside and let me know what was up. (Also to make sure if I was okay) but he had set that up as a sacrifice event. Everyone had something the Warlock wanted but I was the only one who saw the danger and spoke up. If we had fought it would have been a party wipe. Now that character’s future depends on the group. If they continue down the path to kill the Warlock there is hope for her. If they launch a rescue mission ect. I pointed out that is unlikely to happen. He kinda nodded then showed me his cellphone bc the guy who plays the rogue&Andurion was losing it. He was so pissed at the group, Andurion would flip out. If the group refuses to go, Andurion would raise a fucking Elven army to get her.

But if they push it off, over the next few years Erik will break her and finally twist her over to an evil alignment. She started the campaign as CG, slipped to neutral when she hit the real world after a time (which was actually the start of the fights with Andurion, he saw her slide. To be fair the world greeted her by killing her entire family and at one point being dragged kicking and screaming into a forced relationship with a vampire) and the group never understood why she just didnt bounce back. Which made me mad out of character bc I had made this innately good girl who believed in fairytales and princes who ended up being brutalized by the world and the others mostly had this “buck up and stop being native” attitude. Like they were going to LEAVE HER in the last town when she accidentally ended up in jail. Erik and the Rogue were the only ones who visited her. The Rogue brought meals, Erik paid off the guards and hung out all day in the cell with her. Brought cards, dice and kept her company for the week. Even near the end of the week when something seemed wrong he stayed in the jail with her. Just beought her a book and sat there with her as she read. (I found out later he KNEW the main party had planned to leave her and go after the Warlock alone, and they couldn’t close the portal without my speciality in magic. So he had been sitting there in the cell, still keeping her company, but keeping the rest of the party under a decent level if mind manipulation so they never left town

If that happens he will let me be active in destroying the party. Ill play another PC but we will have weekly DM time and plot. He did point out this was months (if not a year) of gameplay down the line so I had time to think.

#dungeons and dragons #d&d #d&d 5e #my ocs #isabella roesone #birthright #d&d: birthright

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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‘Ghost Recon: Wildlands’ review: Ambitious but poorly executed

Ghost Recon: Wildlands isnt just an open world game its a daunting expanse of unrealized potential.

SEE ALSO: 5 tips you’ll want to know before you start ‘Ghost Recon: Wildlands’

At first blush, Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a mesmerizing experience. The rocky hills in Itacua, the first province in the game, create a beautiful, treacherous landscape that is glorious to behold. But Wildlands quickly reveals itself as a husk, devoid of any life or meaningful story, with more veneer than actual substance.

A good start to the story breaks bad quickly

Wildlands narrative starts off compellingly enough. You play as a Ghost Recon operator, call-sign Nomad, in the wild lands of Bolivia, under the CIAs Operation Kingslayer. Your mission is to clear out the Santa Blanca cartel and rid Bolivia of its narco-state ties. But it isnt long before you discover the myriad flaws and plotholes that run rampant throughout the games latter half.

Yuri and Polito, the first provinces buchones (minibosses), were a fascinating pair to track down. Their cringe-inducing talk of necrophilia was enough to motivate me along the missions that would lead to their inevitable execution. Unfortunately, Yuri and Politos end was one of the only satisfying story conclusions in the game.

Everything in Wildlands takes place in an open world, which means that the buchones can be taken down in any particular order. Which sounds great until youre stuck in choice paralysis. I got so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of provinces to explore and buchones to execute that I began to resent the cartel map and its execution targets. Ten hours after starting the game, its repetitive nature and tone deaf narrative caught up with me.

The deeper Wildlands thready narrative gets, the more stale the ideas feel. Its flaws start with inconsistencies in the story but completely unravels when yet another cinematic rewrites a major plot point. But it was the ending both of them that was the worst offense. Not only is Wildlands narrative conclusion a massive letdown in terms of tension and story resolution, its treatment of drug trafficking and cartels is appallingly ignorant and still somehow heavy-handed.

Theres a way to handle those themes that doesnt rely on stereotypes or tired tropes. The Mafia games, especially the most recent installment in the series, provides a far more nuanced perspective of what it means to run a large drug operation. Lincoln Clay, Mafia 3s protagonist, and his gang leaders feel tangible, believable. Wildlands couldnt decide whether to be serious or satirical, evident by its bombastic characters that felt too ridiculous to be taken seriously, even if that was the purpose. Wildlands is a poignant reminder that painting broad strokes on top of existing real world issues is not the way to tell a compelling story.

Sniping is everything and your drone is your only friend

Story isnt always necessary to enjoying a game but, sadly in this case, Wildlands misses the mark almostall the way across the board. Thankfully, between decent gunplay, enjoyable long-range combat, and a drone that has more personality than anyone else on your squad, it manages to claw its way back to mediocrity.

The gunplay is mediocre in comparison to any number of third person shooters, including Ubisofts own The Division, mostly because the contextual cover system is twelve ways to ridiculous. The cover system is unreliable, accounting for at least a third of my deaths it was hard to stay fully protected because there was little indication as to what was considered true cover and what was only a cosmetic hiding spot. The latter obscured my line of sight but didnt give me any protection from enemy fire. But in spite of the unintuitive cover system and the shrug-worthy gunplay, there were a handful of moments that made the game worth playing.

The long-range snipe is where Wildlands really shines. There isnt much to shooting from the hip, even after youve put points into that particular skill. But the shots I made with my eye down the barrel or through a high-powered rifle scope were often the most exhilarating they challenged me to think tactically, rather than just react to the environment. The quick audible feedback, followed by the target dropping out of his sniper tower when the shot struck true from 300 meters away (regardless of whether or not it alerted the enemy to my position) was often the best part of beginning an encounter.

The majority of the game is played at long range, so moments like this are fairly frequent, which means theres a lot of fist-pumping along the way.

Sadly, the only things that your AI squad is good for are fist-bumping one another in background chatter and soaking up sicario bullets. The background information on Holt, Midas, and Weaver indicates that they have special roles within the team. Unfortunately, those roles arent realized within gameplay. Youre still the one laying C4 charges and blowing up trucks full of coke, even though you have a demolitions expert in the squad. So, while its easier to play stealth-heavy missions with the AI (as their presence doesnt alert enemies), theyre little more than meat shields in the heat of battle.

Your drone, however, is your constant companion. In most altercations with either UNIDAD, the military police, or the cartel, the drone was the only way I stayed alive. Flying it (while safely in cover, of course) allowed me to mark targets, blow up a group of enemies, distract another group, and even revive a teammate remotely. My drone was my in-game bestie the only thing that kept us apart was a drone jammer and I always, always dealt with those first.

Vast spaces too empty for their own good

From breathtaking vistas to lush jungle rivers all the way to desolate salt flats, Wildlands has constructed a collection of incredible landscapes to explore. While Bolivias existence as a narco-state is a work of fiction, the environment is as close to real life as you can get without hopping on a plane (or three). Its a joy to ride a dirt bike around the early provinces, capturing shots of sunrises and twinkling stars, but the world is otherwise empty.

Strangely, the more you explore, the more overwhelming the world feels, in spite of the desolation in the environment. It takes a long time to travel from mission to mission the roads and mountains are unforgiving and expansive. As you uncover more intelligence within each province, the TACMAP becomes the most unsavory place in the game. Without a way to filter, it devolves into a lumbering beast with a plethora of icons obscuring the map and making navigation a chore.

Open world games shouldnt be daunting. Rockstar and 2K Games both managed to create open worlds that dont feel like youre drowning in them. So why didnt Ubisofts land?

Outside of the cartel hit list, Wildlands does very little to acknowledge progression. Theres the odd soundbite from DJ Perico, Santa Blancas propaganda-spouting mouthpiece, but there is nothing in the cinematics or the gameplay that recognizes the cartels destabilization. The videos from El Suenos perspective feel disjointed enough that its hard to believe that any part of the cartels operations are aware of one another. Story progression felt like a checklist of requirements rather than the interwoven narrative that it could have been.

Crackdown tackled a similar structure to Wildlands, but integrated the gang leaders executions into both the story and the gameplay. Each gang leader that you took out led to the decreased effectiveness of the gang itself. Taking out a particular leader could mean that enemies began to carry pistols instead of assault rifles; or typically well-defended hideouts would see their numbers drastically decreased. Sometimes, you had to fight certain leaders first before you could even think about tackling some of the games bigger fights.

Wildlands gives the player full reign of what to do and where to go next a true open world experience. But as I progressed through the game, it didnt feel like my actions impacted the game. It was a matter of finishing out a set of missions in order to get to the next set of missions, in order to maybe get the hint of a story. Crackdown, on the other hand, demonstrated through both gameplay and narrative how important it was to be tactical and strategic about the order of execution.

Huge, open world games need diverse soundscapes

Wildlands requires a lot of point A to point B travel but doesnt offer much in the way of companionship. Your options are either to listen to your squad mates drone on, or to endure the same two songs that play on the radio over and over again until youre fairly certain that you are, in fact, in hell. The combination of the two work to create an aggravating experience in between the major story beats.

Theres some satisfaction in looping through the terrain in order to pick up the plethora of meaningful collectibles, but even that wears thin.

Theres a hollowness to how your Ghost, call-sign Nomad, interacts with their squad mates. While Nomad perks up with comments about the mission every once in awhile, Midas, Weaver, and Holt are usually silent. The intermittent broisms including various musings about sex with twenty-two-year-olds and snorting coke to cope with altitude sickness cement how vacuous the game presents its operators. Granted, its a Tom Clancy game and exaggeration is usually the order of the day, but the dialogue writing feels downright lazy after more than a couple of hours with the squad.

There are only so many times a person can hear this medal has a coca leaf on it, thats kinda cool before they are driven to summoning an Elder God in order to end all existence.

Despite its best efforts, Wildlands can still be fun (with friends)

Somehow, out of the cocktail of mediocrity that the game serves up, Wildlands still manages to be kind of fun in partnered co-op. Hopping into a party, bantering with friends and taking down sicarios is pretty much the only way to enjoy playing the game.

With the exception of the day/night cycle, the entire multiplayer experience was disjointed. Weather conditions, radio audio, and incidental chatter was delivered locally, rather than synced across all players in a session. It could be a torrential downpour in my instance of the game while the sun was shining brightly in yours. But in spite of that, the multiplayer experience is what initially sold me on the game.

Cooperative play set a tactical atmosphere that solo play missed. While AI squad mates wandered around of their own accord, getting in the way of my tactical plans, real-life companions and I were able to coordinate our efforts more explicitly.

Everything except stealth missions were easier with human players because we had specialized our Ghosts skill trees. My co-op partners skillset was best suited for vehicle combat, so he often drove. My Ghost was far better at reconnaissance, so I would scout ahead with my drone, marking targets and blowing up small groups of sicarios along the way.

Were not booking a return trip to Bolivia anytime soon

Ghost Recon: Wildlands is an enormous departure from what makes Ghost Recon a reputable tactical squad-based shooter franchise. Beyond narrative fluff, the three AI Ghosts are indistinguishable from one another. Gone are the series staple of individual commands for squad members and the teams specialized skills in favor of a trite story with an empty, repetitive world. The mish-mash of ambitious, poorly executed ideas detract from what could have made the game truly great.

Sniping is a lot of fun. And roaming the gorgeous Bolivian landscape is absolutely breathtaking, no matter which province you find yourself in. But Wildlands myriad missteps are experiential landmines that blow up in your face in almost every province, with immersion and enjoyment suffering as collateral damage.

Amanda Farough has been writing about video and tabletop games for a number of years. Her tastes are eclectic and varied, with a love for strategy and action. You can find her on Twitter at @amandafarough, where she is likely shipping her Overwatch main, D. Va, and Lucio. You can also find her previous work at her personal site.

Read more: http://on.mash.to/2oysKUY

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tumblunni · 7 years

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Happy mother’s day to Johanna from pokemon. I mean.. happ day to ALL the game moms, but seriously wtf is it with this series and giving them absolutely zero role in everything. Johanna’s still the best we got, but I hold out hope that maybe she could be even more of a thing in a sinnoh remake! And oh man, does anyone else really miss unnamed johto mom? She had the most plot presence as a gameplay aspect yknow, even if she didnt have PLOT PRESENCE. i really really really REALLY loved sending a portion of my income to help my virtual mom, and her buying me cute dolls to decorate my virtual house with. I went APESHIT for Staidum 2′s feature to see your custom room in full 3d on the menu screens! ^_^ Plus like.. just... a bank was a REALLY necessary addition to pokemon and its been much harder to manage money in every game since GSC because WHY DID THEY REMOVE IT?? If people disliked the mom buying you gifts feature, then they shoulda just brought back mombank with gameplay balance changes or customization options or whatever, not removed it forever... But of course the most important part is that it reminded you of your virtual mom existing and let you have some cute phonecall conversations during the journey! I just really really love poke-moms. As someone who kinda Very Much Lacks a real good mom, it felt really happy to imagine i had a fictional one. Why does pokemon keep missing this great opportunity!! And its also why im kinda sad all the professors stopped being like grandpa figures and now the player is supposed to see them as attractive or whatever. Theyre like my teacher yo! Thats not gonna happen no matter how sycamore he is! Oh but its actually why i really adore kukui even though he’s the most fanservice professor design ever, they still gave him cute mentorly interactions and a dadlike personality! And he’s even canonically a dad figure to one of yor rival friend characters, even if its up to the player to decide if you wanna see him as your buddy or as your videogame crush, lol But just... MAN I really miss Johanna!! She still had a really minor role, to the point that you only know her name if you get lucky enough to face her in the randomly generated Contest finals. But THAT is why i loved her! She actually reappears later in your story and helps you out, and is implied to be having her own adventure behind the scenes instead of just sitting in that house with one line of dialogue for 90 hours of gameplay. Actually, even, I loved the easter egg that she did actually (very rarely) change dialogue when you go back to get your pokemon healed at story-important points. like when team galactic blows up the nearby lake you can go visit her to heal up after the boss fights and she’s actually like HOLY SHIT YOU NEARLY DIED IN A LAKE EXPLOSION SON/DAUGHTER! And she fusses over you but she still lets you continue journeying after this moment of hesitation, believing in you that you’re the only one who can save this world. I just fuckin love Johanna! And.. like.. she’s kinda the closest we got to my secret dream of Champion Mom Wants To Fight. it was equally surprising to see her suddenly appear as the contest champion, even if its a completely missable easter egg. It was still nice to be able to kinda battle with your parental figure in a friendly competition of love and hugs. Also it’s good fuel for a thousand headcanons of her somehow knowing wallace from rse and etc. ALL CONTEST FRIENDS KNOW EACH OTHER, YO. Pokemon contests are THE BEST, please give us more of them and continue the Actually Having A Plot As You Defeat Them thing from ORAS! Lisia was the bestttt Seriously just imagine like... Contest plot of sinnoh remakes actually revolves around giving momma johanna some more screentime and development and backstory and like... maybe even she could appear in the main plot too? Even if its just like the thing of the gym leaders being stated to be fighting the rest of team galactic offscreen so you can reach cyrus. Maybe TG attacks a contest hall or something as the final part of the contest sidequest, and you and mom have to fend them off while simultaneously doing the contest finals. ‘Hey is this part of the show?’ cliche. Kick ass in the prettiest way! It could be really cool as a unique kind of bonus contest match, like a doubles contest where you have to work with your partner to make combo moves, or like a hybrid of battling and contests where you have to maintain a certain tv ratings level during the fight. JOHANNA IS BASICALLY METTATON OKAY, THIS IS MY HEADCANONS She just... has so much personality for someone who does nothing in the whole game. Why WHY do we never get enough mom? Do they just assume everyone has a real mom... man I was really happy tho to have sun and moon address abusive parenting as a main plot and also give some more personality to the mom character even if she’s still not really a plot presence. and like everyone is a parental figure in this plot! Bunni’s fifty moms and dads and at least two grandpas! even if The One Original Mom still didnt get enough screentime im glad i could project my sadnesses onto every kahuna ever And also rescue my new best friends from Literally My Actual Mom: the Videogame Character! Lusamine fuck off, i wanna see johanna again >_>

...so yeah basically pokemon moms this game series has been a constant comfort during my childhood when i was suffering from the bad mom stuff, so im glad it continues to give me the ol good mom wish fullfillment feels even as an adult i love unnamed slightly more screentime sun and moon mom i love contest star johanna mom i love mystery bank plush toy gifting mom i love even smaller role gen 1 and 3 moms even i love slightly medium sized role but really no personality unova mom 1 and 2 i love super cool kalos mom who’s so heavily set up as being a thing and then sadly never gets to have more than the every game regulated tiny screentime allottance I love every mom dad and grandpa-y pokemon professor I love 99% of all gym leaders who need more damn screen time too i love the kahunas making up for all that gym leader neglect AND being more parental than ever before i love the goddamn villain bosses that somehow end up being Officially My New Dad every damn time i love how the only truly unforgiveable fan unfavourite villain bosses are the two child abuse bastards i love kicking their ass with catharsis power and then going back to my million virtual family members and pretending i could do this in real life and everyone knows i inexplicably love charon from gen 4 cos he’s Slightly More Grandpa Than Every Other Villain i love games about found family and stuff... i wish pokemon would realise that its one of these games, yknow? sun and moon seemed a lot like a good step in that direction. i think if was able to play that game as a kid i would have been able to realise i was being abused. its really important to address these subjects in children’s media, yknow? and just GOD it sucks that the only way i dont get sad on mother’s day is wasting hours thinking about fictional 2 lines of dialogue moms from a dumb monster catching game aaaaaaaaa johanna why u no be real

#actually are johanna and grace the only ones who even got a name?

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tumblunni · 7 years

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gettinG REALLY KINDA SALTY about digimon world next order u guys GOD GODDDDD its like the sequel we always wanted to digimon world... IN GAMEPLAY IN GAMEPLAY ONLY the plot is SO BAD its so bad in THE WORST WAY its a good game with a bad plto, so it frustrates me infinately more cos i WANT it to be good enough to live up to the rest of the game! and it has infinate spewing geysers of potential that went completely untapped cos of lazy bullshiT!

and its not like they had a lot to live up to or anything?? like.. the first digimon world practically DID NOT have a plot 90% of it was just free open gameplay with sassy dialogue yes but no real overarching narrative it had an excuse why the story started, and it had a very cathartic ending to it all. But it was all up to you to decide in what order our nameless protagonist did it all, who he met, how he won, what bits he might have missed entirely even! it was so fun cos it was a game where EVERY quest was a sidequest! the only real thing that would stay the same is that you needed to complete a certain amount of those sidequests to unlock the final boss quest, but which ones you pick is totes up to you. Except that there was an annoying bug in the PAL version that meant that one area had a random chance of being locked off thus the ending fight never spawns :P But even if i never actually finished the game I still had infinate enjoyment making my own story, yknow?

so the bad plot shenanigans in next order are annoying because they also made really foolish gameplay decisions to FORCE you to follow this main plot stuff is way less open, very very VERY commonly you can unlock a damn area, walk around in it, and every sidequest in it just refuses to start because you havent hit the right chapter milestone. and it gets to be increasingly stupid excuses too! most of the time the npc is just like ‘yeah i have a huge emergency but I DONT WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT IT’ *sits there panicking forever* How the fuck do they even know I’m ‘not worthy’ anyway, and why would it MATTER??? In DW1 if youre underlevelled for an area you just find out cos you fail the quest! you at least get to see what it is and KNOW what you have to work towards to be prepared next time! plus the plot is just a huge fuckin textdump of nonsense pseudo science that is never explained, its EVERYONE ELSE just doing stuff offscreen instead of letting you even see the potentially cool plot threads! and whenever anything has to happen they have some made-up excuse why everyone can just magically know what the villain is planning, due to this pseudoscience, and they HAVE to explain it EVERY TIME which just makes it far clearer that its a terrible plot hole??? and they waste all this time on this yet skip over vitally important stuff like ENTIRE CHARACTER ARCS and LETTING YOU ACTUALLY PARTICIPATE. All you ever fuckin do is be the one to defeat machinedramon cos everyone else is inexplicably weak and useless! oh and EVERY FUCKING BOSS IS MACHINEDRAMON AGAIN AND AGAIN goDDDDDDDDDD

anyway, The Awful Plot is that [insert made up magic excuse here] is turning everyone into Machinedramon clones with a virus and somehow this is bad because as well as digivolving to an arbitrary form they also turn evil for no reason and then its just YEARS AND YEARS of people explaining exactly how the virus must have been created and like five different contrived things we can do to slow it down and then after like FIFTY HOURS we finally get out first appearance of the fucking villain. as a silhouette. in the background. im at 90 hours now and i still dont even know his fucking name, or why the fuck he wants everyone to be machinedramon. but man it was vitally important to instead waste time explaining the ‘antivirus enforcer program’ and how it would totally be useful only to reveal it was taken out offscreen before the game even started and now it’s a villain. cos like we needed five more fake villain minions to delay this actual villain man’s appearance, UUUUUGH! none of them even talk! its just magic virus that makes you magically evil. and why did we need to explain the compelx metaphysics of an antivirus when ultimately you could have just said ‘its omegamon, he’s a big hero in this setting, he got turned evil and now we have to save him’. Why did we need a misdirect that this antivirus wasnt a person??? why did we need to go on a quest to find a guy who can make flower seeds and then plant the flower seeds in the most contrived way waiting 1 ingame day between each step, then somehow the plant is a clue that omegamon is evil SOMEHOW and then its still 30 hours til we fucking meet the guy... sorry, sorry, this probably makes about as little sense as it did to me. i just had to try and give an example of a particular main quets line that FUCKING PISSED ME OFF and i STILL dont know what any of it means so i cant even explain it to you! i got spoiled for the goddamn ending and i STILL dont know why there was an omegamon-predicting rafflesia that took one ingame month to get past...

BUT YEAH SORRY IM TRYING TO SUMMARIZE THIS

theres some mystery villain who’s turning everyone into machinedramon for no reason thats the plot and youre not really given a reason why this town needs you to recruit more digimon except somehow if you get [insert amount here] prosperity that’ll take enough time that jijimon will finish magically hacking [insert plot device here] to find the next location of [whatever the thing is]... i mean its vaguely mentioned once at the start that a machinedramon destroyed the town or something? so i guess maybe we can assume all the townsfolk actually died and we’re getting new ones/searching for their reincarnated selves or something. Man if that was ACTUALLY THE INTENTION and ACTUALLY EXPLAINED then it would have been pretty damn good! it’d add some interestingness to the sidequests if the digimon had to recover lost memories of being someone else in the city once. plenty of potential for interesting interactions if their new digiegg’d self is a wildly different form or something! Like that could have been a good setup for the one endearing fashion designer skullgreymon who’s super sad about looking so scary. Also seriously WHY DID SKULLGREYMON NOT GET TO OPEN A FASHION SHOP?? why did they remove that feature from reDigitize, this game is for a far more powerful console so it couldnt have been impossible to add in... (I still have no clue how they managed to pull off actual digimon customization on the first generation psp! WHY IS THIS THE ONLY UNDUBBED GAME) so yeah the original DW1 even had a more solid establishing plot here, even though it was 99% less text! ‘for some reason digimon are turning violent and losing their abiloty to speak, all my friends at this city slowly dissappeared into the wilderness, please solve this mystery and bring them back’. THAT WAS INTERESTING! That had an actual reason why recruiting shopkeepers equals plot progression, you were ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING, not just waiting for someone else to decode an ambiguously explained ‘frequency’ to point you at your next key item/FIGHTING THE SAME DAMN BOSS AGAIN :P

ALSO ALSO why no analogman WHY NO ANALOGMAN how does this make ANY SENSE?? why is it even machinedramon in particular, if not for the fact it was analogman’s digimon in the first game??? thats just getting my hopes up for no damn reason! why didnt we get to see The Very Original Villain come back and get fully voiced dialogue and maybe some more development on who he is and what his backstory is or whatever his plot was minimal back then because it was a very low tech game, now we have NO EXCUSE for it :P its just ‘yeah his entire presence in the plot is that someone on the writing team was inspired by his postgame sidequest, i guess’ cos a ‘machinedramon virus’ did technically exist, but it was more like just an excuse for why the final boss battle was replayable for your enjoyment. a random digimon would turn into the final boss battle (sans analogman cos he’s Mysteriously Vanished And/Or Potentially Dead seriously that was SUCH A SEQUEL HOOK and they DIDNT TAKE IT) so like seriously they took ANALOGMAN’S ACTUAL VIRUS POSTGAME THING THAT HE MADE and yet no analogman! WHY! and also it fucking sucks to try and base a whole game’s plot on a single dialogueless sidequest that was just an excuse for battle replayability some guy just probably took 0.2 seconds to think ‘yeah maybe the computer the villain left behind does a virus thing to make the boss replayable’ and some fuckin bright spark decided to make an entire game about it IT DOES NOT WORK hell, a good writer could have made it work! if theyd expanded upon the vagueness and explained things! or gave motivations! or used it as a reason for analogman to retURN AND HAVE A FUCKING PLOT seriously WHY did they have to make this game be marketed as A DIRECT SEQUEL TO THE FIRST GAME they were just setting themselves up for failure yo every fucking thing in the game is 100% unrelated except someone else is doing analogman’s signature plan and the protagonist from DW1 makes an entirely pointless cameo just to remind you its supposed to be a sequel and is FAILING

OKAY OKAY SERIOUSLY LETS TALK ABOUT *HIM*

mameo mameo poor mameo you literally only existed to trick people into buying the game with a fake plot that doesnt exist it was marketed as if he’s the villain, and it got everyone curious about it, and then no he isnt he’s just mistaken for the villain once in his introduction as an excuse to drag out another pointless sidequest instead of progressing the plot then he just becomes a mostl;y voiceless useless npc who does more magic unexplained science to magically amke the plot do whatever the writers need it to do without needing to ACTUALLy have a REASON why it HAPPENS, gaAAHHHH he’s just magically a super hacker now, like how jijimon is magically a super hacker now, and blablabla jijimon for some reason couldnt track down the next place the villain would strike but mameo can the end end of mameo’s entire plot gone. oh, aside from a brief mention again that he’s developed a prototype antidote for the machinedramon virus and then it fails. which just exists to be an excuse for another plot to happen without (AGAIAN) any actual reason it happened, or any form of development or player participation. blablabla oh no one of the hero’s friends’s digimon got infected by the virus so now you get a boss battle against them, and they dont have to leave the plot or change or grow cos magic antidote thing turned them back. But it didnt REALLY work, she’ll just turn back into machinedramon in like 50 days or something blah blah. please feel sad for this character you barely know, who is facing no consequences for what they did, but we’re telling you they might maybe sometime in the future, but of course they never will because the plot doesnt actually have a time limit. Also please believe that mameo is useful! and its just ITS JUST SO FRUSTRATING!!! cos mameo is still THE BEST PART OF THE DAMN GAME! he’s the only character who seems to have any damn effort or emotion put into him, his english voiceactor really stands out in a cast of bored-sounding people. It feels like whoever voiced him was maybe actually a fan of the first game? And he gets to sound so cool and act so cool and look so cool and have really good sassy moments and then HAVE NO PRESENCE IN THE PLOT AT ALL! GAHHHHH!! why must you waste EVERYTHING???

ultimately the only real thing this game gave us was finally having a name for DW1 protagonist, and getting to know that he grows up to work with computers and gets to retain his ability to visit the digital world forever, and he still loves his partner [insert name of whatever you called it when you played] but EVEN THAT is fucking wasted!!! They say that Mameo’s original digimon from last time was somehow cursed to be stuck as a digiegg, as an excuse for not.. yknow.. having to canonize any particular partner choice and upset the fans. Even though the postgame cutscene in the first game already canonized Mamemon as his partner and you literally named him for it! (the excuse in-universe is that Mameo is a nickname and we still dont know what his canon name is. also he has a cute mamemon patch sewn on his beanie hat this time! that made my heart melt even as i was grumping about bad plotlines lol) Oh and this is also probably just an excuse for mameo being sidelined with no plot role, like he’s too powerful to let him actually fight or anything :P its making me mad cos im kinda imagining how this game would have worked so much better if mameo actually was the protagonist??? like, have him summoned back to face this new threat, and his powerful digimon is knocked back down to a digiegg and has to start over. i mean the actual protagonist ALREADY HAS THAT PLOT! you literally start as someone who’s EVEN STRONGER than mameo, you have an omegamon and then machinedramon kills it/them and you start over. And like.. if they decided to make a new hero cos they wanted male and female options, honestly just give me a female version of mameo and im fuckin fine. Pokemon Crystal retconned in a female option to a game that didnt have one before, and nobody complained! Oh and they dont even need to justify why mameo is clueless in this setting, cos its literally a different digital world anyway. Somehow. he fell through dimensions or something, they explain it very poorly. (WHAT A SURPRISE) actually, THAT is a huge wasted potential too! cos it means he never even gets to have a tearful reunion with jijimon and other npcs he met last time, instead every digimon that was in DW1 is just explained away as being a parallel universe equivelant that’s never met mameo. SeriouslY WHAT is up with this game and explaining ridiculous excuses to justify their pltoholes instead of just NOT WRITING THE PLOTHOLES??? i mean you could have just said this is like the digital world of the future. just like how mameo’s original adventure had him return to the human world and only one day had passed, maybe the amount of time it took him to grow up is the equivelant of centuries in the digital world? so Floatia could still be a new town, and everyone could be like descendants/reincarnations of the old npcs, and the digital world could have gained a bunch of new areas and etc. EASY EXPLANATION it wasnt necessary to make up a FUCKING HOUR LONG PLOTHOLE VERSION WITH METAVERSE SCIENCE

ALSO why dont we ever get to have any character exploration of like.. anyone?? why doesnt anyone get personality or scenes where you can actually get attatched to them and stuff. why are they just silent floating npcs that do NOTHING and then suddenly are revealed to have had a plot offscreen while you weren’t looking?? literally you are not even introduced to the two male and female friend characters they just.. come into existance in the plot you dont really get a scene of their personality or them getting to know you, or anything?? its just ‘oh i guess two other humans fell into the digital world’ then they sit around as silent npcs for 30 hours while you do everything without them then they just add some miscellaneous comments at the end of a main plot quest and oh i guess its been revealed that female character’s salamon digivolved into gatomon offscreen with no real emotional reason why it had to happen now, or any sign she was even training in the same way you are?? and then that just continues oh i guess she has an angewomon now and then you find out that offscreen her and angewomon were arguing about a problem that was never mentioned before offscreen you dont even SEE them arguing and its like you dont find out what its about no you just get a literal text that her and angewomon had a fight offscreen and angewomon ran away offscreen and hey can you go find her cos for some reason I CANT EVEN DO MY OWN DAMN PLOT then its just ‘oh no please worry that the character youve never even reallY MET has been struggling from a thing never mentioned before, and now she might die from a virus we never saw her get infected with’ and YOU have to defeat her beserk form and cure her and calm her down while her tamer just STANDS THERE and also btw she DIGIVOLVED INTO ANGEWOMON OFFSCREEN IN THE FIRST PLACE so its ‘hey please find my digimon who ran away’ and she’s A DIFFERENT DIGIMON when you find her! its THAT rushed! and then she digivolves again immediately afterwards because somehow being saved by SOMEONE COMPLETELY UNRELATED helped her bond enough with her tamer to become mega level and also the plot of her having the virus is just magically discarded instantly cos WHY NOT And after ALL this bullshit, what is it that they even argued about? it was just The Oldest Trope In The Book, a stupid misunderstanding caused by people not talking about something even though there is no reason why they wouldnt. Angewomon got upset that her tamer wanted to go home to the human world, thinking she’d done something wrong to cause it. And her tamer had just NEVER MENTIONED to anyone ever that she had twin sisters who’re suffering from sitcom disease or something and she’s worried they might not be okay without her. And like.. honestly why did there even NEED to be an excuse why she needed to go home? its natural for someone to miss home, it could have been solved much quicker in like one damn conversation yo. ‘hey i dont want to leave because i dont enjoy having a digimon, its because i have other friends back home too’ And honestly its kinda contrived how angewomon would even not understand that to begin with? this angewomon has a personality like a very young child too, which just makes it even more of a shame that we spend barely any time with her as her rookie form and pretty much never even LEARN that she’s like a little sis figure until this damn sidequest. this is the longest screentime these two ever had, and the first and only time theyre mentioned to have personalities and backstory! and its THEIR FINAL SCENE T_T and seriously it DOESNT EVEN MEAN ANYTHING to see her digivolve into a mega when none of these characters ever actually get to fight, or even exist in the plot theyre just stated to be having their own adventures offscreen. EVERYTHING OFFSCREEN! i mean GAHH the new gameplay even woulda justified this?? like, instead of having two digimon partners maybe you could bring along an assistant character to fight with you! or hell, maybe you could have both! if they can prove they can handle two playable characters onscreen at once then why not three? make everyone like social links that get stronger as you befriend them! and it;’d be a big help to developing your own digimon too, yo! like, these characters are at preset levels to you’re always gonna be able to be more powerful than them if you try. but it makes it less painful when your digimon reincarnates, you could partner up with a champion-level friend and they could help you train out in the field! hell, maybe add a feature of them being able to join in with the training gym too?? that’d be a better excuse for the daily bonuses than just... there’s daily bonuses. why does one particular training gym give better results on thursdays? maybe cos a certain character is there on that day and helps out!

and anyway where was i OH YEAH WHY IS THERE NOT AN ACTUAL CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT PLOT FOR MAMEO IN PARTICULAR he at least got an establishing scene and some cool dialogue, so im more invested in him than the other empty presences in this plot! like, we could have examined his actual emotions about his childhood digimon partner being stuck essentially in a coma with no idea if he’ll ever see them again. a guy hugging the digiegg of his poor dead mamemon is something you’d think they’d give SOME attention to! but he just talks about it so casually as if we should all already know, and then its NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. It literally IS just an excuse to keep mameo from being able to fight alongside you! more plots! you could have an actual friendship sidequest of him being like your mentor, passing down the torch to the next generation of heroes. we could explore the plot of an adult digimon tamer more! what is it like, is it ever difficult? What is his day to day life even like? its implied that he’s able to go to the digital world at will like the 02 protagonists, so can his mamemon come to the human world too? did he have to take it to school and hide it in his bag like davis and co? did he basically live The Better Written Version Of That Season??? Did his parents ever find out? Does his mamemon still run on digimon world rules, like is the gameplay actually meant to be canon in-universe? does the protagonist digimon only live 10-20 days while everyone else gets to have a good ‘ol long life? has it been sad for mameo that his best friend keeps dying and reviving like 12 times a year, and never remembers him? i really hope thats not how it works, seriously. itd make for a good sad plot tho... And seriously why couldnt this have been the same jijimon in the same town and they get to meet again and we get nostalgic heartwarmingness???

oh and the other ‘friend’ character is even worse, seriously he does absolutely nothing except complain about how upset he is that other people dare to be better than him wah wah but a girl digivolved before me wah he started off looking like a normal cute nerd guy but then he deliberately infects his growlmon with the virus to try and become stronger, and he seems to get off scott free for it?? cos the plot is so vague and undeveloped it rushes through his realizing he’s wrong and it just seems so un-genuine. and we dont even get to see him meeting his digimon again and apologising once he gets reincarnated! its just you see him die horribly cos his tamer infected him with a fucking death virus out of ego that he’s so perfect and so strong he could handle the power. and then you just.. see him again and he’s a baby jyarimon and its all fine. you just see jyarimon following this tamer’s silent npc model around and its like DID YOU EVEN APOLOGISE AT ALL?? apparantly his digimon never even got mad at him or anything about it! it makes me feel so damn sad for the poor guy, i mean he spent so long trying to tell his tamer he’s not useless for not being stronger than the otehrs,a nd blaming himself for not being able to digivolve, and yet STILL tamer guy chose to ignore him and force him to virus-digivolve while he was begging not to! And we dont get to see the consequences for this! we get to see him learn his goddamn canned lesson of the day but we dont get to see him apologise and yukimura the guilmon just reincarnates and goes right back to being a silent mindlessly obedient npc who never complains when he’s mistreated :( and its so fucking stupid cos the plot even started off promising, it started off seeming like the problem was just ‘i’m not strong enough to protect people like you are, protagonist’. but its so badly written it felt like it derailed into him just being egotistical?? and whining about being blessed with this magical monster pal who isnt THE BEST magical monster pal so why even fucking bother. and the game acts like he’s justified cos he has ~a boring school life~. He has no problems at all but he’s just AVERAGE and not THE BEST, and oh gosh that terrible terrible fate has just worn down on him and made him have no self confidence. except yknow for all the scenes where he’s screaming ‘IM THE BEST, I DESERVE THIS’ throughout this fucking stupid plot... its like i can see what he was supposed to be, but they really failed??? i think i would have liked what he was SUPPOSEd to be... also it sucks that yukimura’s evil digivolution is inexplicably skullgreymon instead of megidomon (i think thats the name?) Yknow, the one guilmon actually turned into in tamers and it only had a one episode appearance but it was really scary cool! man it never gets to reappear in the games, no wonder i keep forgetting its name :P

aaaaargh and i just listened to the final battle music on the soundtrack and i havent got that far yet but i just know its NOT GONNA BE AS GOOD AS THIS SONG DESERVES im getting so much feels imagining what if the final boss actually WAS analogman from the first game, and if the supporting characters ACTUALLY HAD CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT and they could fight alongside you to defeat him once and for all! and what if this game’s status as the direct sequel to DW1 wasnt just a fucking baldfaced lie. seriously why didnt they just remove this nonsense plot and let it be its own original thing, if they werent gonna actually put effort into making the cameos actually decent.... MAMEO YOU DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER AAAAA

#bunni plays next order #im sorry im just full of grump #this soundtrack is SO good #god it deserved a more emotionally resonant final boss to match it

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