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dokidokitsuna · 1 year

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Spoiler-Free Reactions to RWBY: Arrowfell~

I watched a playthrough, so I can’t comment on how it actually feels to play the game, but based on what I saw, my overall grade is C+...which is much higher than I thought it would be.

So although I’m gonna say a lot of nasty things about this game (and there are a lot of nasty things to say about it (o゜▽゜)o☆) I’m also gonna explain why it’s not as bad as I expected.

First, a moment of silence for all the people who thought this game was gonna be secretly * AMAZING * because WayForward and ArcSys were involved. Whoever you are out there...I’m so sorry. ^^;;;;

Love how the ‘towns’ just have NPCs standing in an evenly-spaced line XD Great immersive gameplay experience, 10/10 no notes

The action cutscenes look...good?! oAo Like, Team BRIR’s introduction actually looked kind of cool...maybe RT should downsize and just focus on working with game developers...

Love those little ‘item get!’ animations~

Of course Yang’s semblance ability is the ‘special block puncher’(¬_¬ ) ...all the other girls have some strategic elements to their semblances; even Ruby can be used to quickly zip past enemies when revisiting areas. But Yang’s semblance has only one use; you have very little reason to play as her for longer than half a second. Even when she gains the Burn+ damage boost, it doesn’t mean much when you could, for instance, simply stack Blake with 2 clones and get triple damage...

Speaking of Blake, her clones not only function as autonomous attack turrets, they can block bullets AND act as targets for enemy homing attacks. Far and away the best semblance in the game. ‘_’

Penny is beautiful and cute and deserves the world...honestly, shame on RT for throwing such a wonderful girl in the trash for mere shock value... Anyway, it was a very pleasant surprise to see her in this game, even if it was just as a silly side character.

Side note: Why is Weiss so mean to Penny now?? இ௰இ Almost everything she says to her is some kind of insult...

Ruby and Weiss both have noticeably different characterization in this game, actually: Weiss is a LOT meaner to everyone, worse than she was in V1, even...and Ruby kinda got turned into a stereotypical dopey airhead anime girl. :/ She’s still more entertaining than the canon show version, but...man, I miss awkward nerd Ruby...

Qrow is characterized differently too-- he’s actually entertaining again! o_O I legit forgot his character used to be cool and fun...

BTW, fixed Yang: instead of making her semblance a mere tool to get rid of glowy blocks, they could’ve given her ‘crowd control’ abilities as well-- maybe her special punch could knock back/stun enemies or repel attacks. It’d probably come in handy when you’re getting mobbed during the ‘Ambush’ stages... ...See, this isn’t hard, folks. ^^;

JAMES! JAMES!!! JAMES!!!! (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`) ...Okay, to be honest, Ironwood is only marginally relevant in this game, but it was nice to see him again too. ^^ It’s great that all these ruined and/or murdered characters get to have one last chance to shine here.

Demonizing the civil rights movement wasn’t enough; now we’re going to demonize unions...oh, Rooster Teeth...(╬▔v▔)

And on that note: did RT really not have a hand in writing this game...? Because it really feels like something they would write... Maybe they gave WayForward the concepts and basic story outline to use...it would explain why many things were actually executed well (i.e. ‘everyone can write RWBY better than its actual creators’ strikes again) even though the plot still contains some of their trademark icky writing decisions...

OKAY, so: The game may be cheap and basic-looking, but it’s solid. ‘_’ Definitely feels like something made by people with adequate resources and skill that they just didn’t feel like spending a lot of their time on, rather than the usual “we ran out of budget! DX We didn’t know what to do!” that we usually get with RWBY media. Basically, there’s not a lot there, but what is there is relatively well done. It’d be a good game to give to an 11-year-old kid or something (although idk if there are still RWBY fans that young). ^^;

Spoiler-FULL reactions are on their way, in which I’ll have a LOT MORE nasty things to say. =_= Stay tuned...

#rwby #rwby arrowfell

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hak · 5 months

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OKAYYY. I’ve been playing final fantasy x and here are some preliminary thoughts after like a hard won 4ish hours in 🫠

It was a huge leap to start this game just because 1) I don’t play games like this period (rpg fighters) and have even less experience than any other type of game I ever played and 2) there’s truly nothing more intimidating to me than the final fantasy franchise.. like it only won out over me trying out kingdom hearts because I didn’t feel like doing the punch _ button for _ move type fighting in a game just yet lol. BUT WHATEVER! It has been my goal this year anyway to try games out of my comfort zone (80% of games out there lol) so here I am…

I think the world-building is very appealing!! look I have never in my life even tried looking up final fantasy lore or anything I think I just know Sephiroth and the big ducks maybe but regardless I loved the 5 seconds we got in Zanarkand just because a fantasy steampunk-esque world can be charming.. and exploring the 1000yrs later world and it’s differences is also very interesting. I think I spent half of my hours just talking to everybody I saw and looking at the world textures lol it’s nice and peaceful most of the time

I love the cast a lot.. playing as Tidus kind of surprised me because I think I’m not used to fully formed playable main characters like him (was thinking Link or a fire emblem protag rip) but I LOVE HIM!!!! HES SO GOOFY AND CHARMING and I am so endeared by the voiceover narration (ummm his future self??) and where the story is taking him. He and Yuna are so sweet and cute. I actually really love that not ever cutscene was there to move the plot??? Like the one first boat scene where Tidus stole some guys binoculars and was monkeying around on the ship. Or this one 🥺😭💗

SO PRECIOUS!!! It’s how I know something horrible is going to come regarding them 🧎Well for now I’m just in for the ride. The other guardians are definitely a ragtag bunch but I really appreciated how they were fleshed out in this narrative. I like the big wolf beast guy and I will tell you every time I get a chance I try to get Tidus to go talk to him and every time I get ignored 🥲 ONE DAY!!!! And I love theeee goth woman supreme Lulu even her name is so cute. Love her little doll. She saves my ass every single fight I swear. Wakka is also charming in his own way lol he reminds me of a character I just don’t know who.. he and Lulu having their josei romance drama in the backdrop of this story also gets meeeee. Like!?? Look at them wtf…

Ok ok now about the fighting itself: it’s not as bad as I thought. It’s still not something I really have come to look forward to though, and I really really despise the mechanic where you’re walking and get a randomized battle out of nowhere. The Pokémon grass effect whatever you call it…. IM SICK OF IT!!!! LET ME RUN AWAY!!! especially when I’ve had like 3 fights in a row and that stupid breaking glass effect comes and I have to fight again. Oh save me. im not built for this. HOWEVER. Besides that. It’s okay. Figuring out what moves I should be doing isn’t all that difficult even if I do kind of just guess most of the time. I’m lucky I’m using an emulator and saving as much as I can in case I need to reload during a battle. I’ll be okay lol I just want to complain sometimes just cuz. 😖

And finally…. The one thing I did not expect to encounter in this game and genuinely made me want to QUIT this game for good despite everything positive above: BLITZBALL. WHY DO YOU EXIST. WHY. I CANT STAND THIS SHIT!!!!!!!!

This funny scene made me laugh when I first saw it because I literally thought blitzball games would play out like that first cutscene in Zanarkend - AS A CUTSCENE!!! TIDUS YOULL LOSE I HAVE NO SKILL YOULL LOSE TIDUS!!!!!!!

I will admit now I didn’t know wtf I was doing on that boat and totally failed at getting the Jecht shot but how??? Was I supposed to know????? I THOUGHT IT WOULD JUST LEAD TO A FUN MINIGAME how was I to know it was life or death (in blitzball)…. I did Google whether I needed it to win and results varied. But before I get judged I spent about 40 min trying to grasp the entire blitzball tutorial and things still didn’t wrap around until I began playing and EVEN THEN I wanted to cry and rage quit. Something I have never needed to do in all my life!!!!!! Then I thought fine whatever I’ll just let the game do it’s thing and maybe try to give the ball to Tidus as much as possible if that’s my only shot and lord almighty I couldn’t even get one point in. The ai would score so much and I swear I paid attention. Imagine me mid game pausing just to google 10+ year old forum answers on whether I can just do the bare minimum and still win. I don’t even think I needed to win??? But the other team was so mean to us …. LIKE I WANTED TO WIN….. but I’m not capable of it. I knew it when I first started the tutorial too versus the real game I truly am so disinterested in this kind of minigame (the least mini of mini games I’ve ever played ever) that I don’t care. Like I’m just so so frustrated that it’s 3am im writing this post just to vent about how I want to keep playing ffx but not at the cost of this stupid side game that shouldn’t even take me more than 15 min to play!!!!!

I should’ve known from this part in the tutorial that this was bullshit fr. Look I know its not like all of the mechanics were rocket science, if I took 1 day to actually study the game I would BUT WHY WOULD I DO THAT. WHY WOULD I WASTE MY TIME AND DO THAT. I am just so put off at this point from this game simply because of blitzball. Sorry to Tidus and his quest for home and all but it will not come true because I cannot stand playing blitzball. 🤬

Where i am now: I paused at the end kinda when Wakka comes in at the end of the game. I couldn’t score a single point so it was just left at 2-0. I really don’t care anymore I will just lose the game because I’m sick of it. But damn I was really trying okay. Kinda. I hate being petty but we’ll see if I want to even pick it up as a whole game again when I wake tmrw after this experience lol

To be extremely honest I kinda began ffx as a total “wouldn’t it be funny if?” type game for me because I know what I like and dislike in games and this one bordered that for me so I was genuinely curious to see how far I’d last. But this blitzball game is so far into my dislikes that it actually bums me out because the storytelling is so in my lane. I don’t want to quit just yet but I will say now if blitzball gets any worse I’m out. That truly is my last straw lmao. Also it seems like a very long game otherwise and even that is a struggle for me to comprehend. Plus battles are even going to get worse and I can barely slide by during those… idk it is looking grim for the mariel partakes in final fantasy era 😭

#g*

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legionofpotatoes · 3 years

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we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

#text #another one in my bulleted review series with no rhyme or reason #sorry resident evil fans this could be a painful read pls turn away #i know almost nothing about it but i am gonna be super fake familiar and critical of this one hey ho

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c-is-for-circinate · 3 years

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Okay, so I’ve got way more reactions to P5 Strikers for a longer post later, but I want to keep playing, so I’m recording some thoughts and predictions after the first boss (and all the cutscenes thereafter) before they get derailed or confirmed by later events.

This is going to be a story about cycles of violence, I suspect. On the whole, I really liked how the game handled that with Alice: what happened to her was terrible and traumatic, and in no way excuses what she did in return. And Ann was still desperate to save her. I’m hoping we see more of that: understanding and also condemning, all folded in together.

Oh!!! And as I’m writing this, I’m thinking about how that ties in thematically with what I suspect may be the deal with jails and monarchs. See, palaces, we know from Yaldabaoth, were jails in their own sense--prisoners kept in isolation from the general population of Mementos and the Prison of Regression, shunted over into their own private little pocket dimensions where they could rule whatever they wanted. (And I have some more complex thoughts thoughts about the specific ways that system enables further violence by rewarding bad behavior, in terms of Yaldie’s motives and also reflections of the real world, but that’s another post for another day.) This, on the other hand, feels far more like the entire jail system is just big sprawling pocket remnants of that universal prison complex with all the wardens gone. Now individual shadows have clawed their way up to becoming monarchs over their own pockets, but being queen of your own jail still makes you in jail. The monarchs of these places, I suspect, will all be prisoners of their own pasts and the violence that taught them to turn to violence, which is a thematically cool way to do this and I like it.

Actually, framing it that way is making the whole concept of a cycle-of-violence P5 game grow on me. One of the things I honestly liked about the original P5 was that, with one notable exception, we never once gave a shit about the tragic backstories of the villains we took down. Sure, we’d learn a bit about them when we stole the Treasures, sometimes, but it didn’t really matter--because the important thing about each antagonist was the harm they are doing now, not forgiving them because of the harm done to them in the past. So I had a little bit of concern that this seeming reversal of that trend might veer off into too much sympathy for the aggressors, bur I’m thinking (I’m hoping) that what we’re actually getting is a look at how systematic violence can turn victims into further oppressors. And given that P5 was always a game about systematic violence, this ends up feeling like a natural progression rather than undercutting the original concept. Heck yes.

Speaking of systems of violence: yep, I am using social justice lingo when talking about this game, and no I do not think I am projecting or reading too far into it, because damn is P5S not remotely fucking around with how it feels about cops. Like, Zenkichi Hasegawa aside (and oh boy do I have thoughts on him), dear god do I love Haru sweet smile ‘Sorry, we just despise the police, is all!’ Okumura. Meanwhile, our hordes of faceless trash mob enemies are literally vaguely police-shaped Shadows in riot gear. We spent a major battle blowing up cop cars. Like. Persona 5 said prison abolition, to the tune of spending our entire game trying to break out of our metaphorical Velvet Room prison and boss-battling our final endgame through the cognitive prison of all society. P5 Strikers apparently said, ‘you know, we were too subtle last time, and also Fuck The Police.’

Okay and actually let’s talk about ol’ Zenkichi there (hell yes, team, you go right ahead calling this adult authority figure by his given name with no honorifics even in the original Japanese, I support you). My hope at this point is that we get his development as a parallel to the same things we’re seeing in these jail monarchs: as part of a cycle of violence. He’s clearly got some backstory if we’re meant to care about him this much, and it led him to this place of becoming a cop out of a desire to help or to hurt or whatever, but the road he followed brought him to this role of an authority figure with no issue manipulating, using, threatening, and borderline abusing his power over teenagers. (I say ‘borderline’ because he hasn’t moved beyond threats yet, but it’s pretty clear he wouldn’t mind doing so if necessary--we saw him beat up a drunk, so yep.) Which, can we talk about the parallels between that scene and Akira’s original confrontation with Shido? Drunk man harassing a woman, drunk man ends up on the ground. Except: Akira was alone on a dark street with only the three of them there, and Hasegawa’s surrounded by people who could intervene, help, or even side against him in court if anyone cared what they had to say. Except the drunk office-worker is clearly unimportant and unthreatening, while Shido was forceful in pride and anger even while drunk. Except Shido’s victim was terrified, while Ann is mostly just disgusted, surrounded by friends, in very little actual danger. And Akira never touched him, never pushed him, just took one step up to try and help. Zenkichi Hasegawa provoked a mostly-harmless drunk into attacking him for the excuse to punch him unconscious on purpose. Akira’s Shido flashback was framed in every way to show us the ways our protagonist was powerless. Zenkichi’s scene parallels it to show us a dozen different ways this man is powerful and unafraid to use it--not just against those he deems unworthy, but also, if he so chooses, over those he saves. I am really enjoying this guy as a character. Every single time the PTs have no use for his shit, I cheer. Him being unbalanced by the metaverse is glorious, and please let Morgana continue to freak him out by existing and Haru continue to freak him out with sweet, pleasant smiles while talking about how she’s very sorry, it’s simply that all cops are bastards, for the rest of the game. (Additional note: @errant-light and I have been watching and talking about a whole bunch of Fullmetal Alchemist lately, and apparently Hasegawa’s Japanese VA is also Roy Mustang. Which has just been a delightful detail re: this guy’s manipulative bastardry, because in some ways I am pretty sure the mass-murdering war criminal version of this character is the better person.)

Alice as a really obvious parallel to Kamoshida is interesting, I think. Even to the point of being a king and queen ruling a castle--and don’t think I didn’t see that “Birdcage of Lust” label! I don’t love having a pretty young social media influencer as our sin of lust (but even that’s complicated, because Alice was pretty clearly caged and abused for daring to feel lust in the first place, NOT for preying on people, except that then she did get predatory and it’s all a little thorny and not especially kink-positive). I do have a lot of feelings about Shujin as this place where Kamoshida abused and preyed on people with total abandon, while Alice was demonized for daring to even look at boys in the wrong way. I really wonder if they ever met. It’s a cool counterpoint, and a really cool counterpoint to Ann, who was likewise a victim of that school and refused to let it turn her into an abuser herself. (I have a LOT of feelings about Ann right now.) I’m really hoping future jail monarchs continue to mirror palace rulers in interesting ways. In theory, next up is vanity, and gosh knows there’s plenty to fuck around with in playing against Yusuke’s lonely artistic yearning to be understood. I’m very excited.

Apparently, the internet says this game takes 35 hours to play. Me and my 21-hour playtime so far have some Opinions About That.

#C plays persona #persona 5 strikers #what if I just became a persona blog #persona 5 #NO SPOILERS IN THE NOTES PLEASE

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senotsuri · 3 years

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Way back when, I posted an image of an OC, who fairly recently got a full name (she only had a surname back then.) So, with Eliza’s name finally figured out, I realised I hadn’t actually given my overview of the game that spawned her; Champions of Vestroia.

Time to lose my mind, I guess.

Some fore-knowledge before we get into this.

I am, by all means, a legacy bakugan fan, not a reboot fan. I’ve only seen one double episode (the become-smaller-child episode, which was cute, and Outer Demons, which has a super good premise, but the execution is. something.) By all accounts, CoV is essentially my introduction to the world of the reboot, and I’ll come to this later.

I played both the first game (Bakugan Battle Brawlers, specifically the Wii edition), and the... third game (Defenders of the Core, shortened to DOTC, also for the Wii. The second game, for anyone curious, is Battle Trainer, a DS exclusive.) This will come up later, of course, but I want to point out these two as they’re basically my control group for the quality here (not for the battles though; different battle system and all.)

I am incredibly stay-at-home. A lot of people I know irl I don’t have contact with, and most of them don’t live in my city. This is only important when it comes to the protagonist and literally no one else in the game, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

So the game begins with the character creator. This is pretty standard stuff, honestly. My one issue with it is just-- this is probably my fashion sense speaking, but the fashion in the game is very... for lack of a better term, naff. There aren’t many options that look good, personally speaking. This is ignoring the issues where the protagonist loses their name, mid conversation, or is referred to as if I chose the male option instead of the female option. These issues are likely just oversights, by all accounts, but talk about jarring.

The first time you see your character is where 3. comes in. The protagonist, no matter what you chose (I have two save files, in case there was a difference. There isn’t), will always be a football/soccer player. Are you one of many, many people who isn’t sporty, who is trying to play as themselves? Sorry, your character is sporty, and you can’t do anything about it.

In the legacy games, this was never really a problem; your character was never seen doing anything other than brawling and interacting with other characters. Whether they played sports, or stayed indoors and wrote fanfic, the game let you decide on that for your character, by not having them do either of those things: your character only battled, or snuck around in DOTC’s case.

Once you stop playing football, you get to run to your best friends, and I guarantee you, you won’t immediately guess who they are unless you somehow already knew.

I mentioned BBB and DOTC being my control group on quality. Bringing the character creator back into this, the NPCs are laughable in quality. Any character who has the same model as you (older child. There are only two other model types: adult, and younger child) will look like a remixed version of your character. Had it not been for some characters having special eye shapes, you could practically cosplay any character in the game, because they were made the same way you made your character.

This includes your two best friends.

You could easily make the same character (minus clothes) as one of your best friend characters, without knowing it until you saw them.

While, yes, BBB and DOTC had the characters from the legacy anime in them, the fact that your best friends are nigh indistinguishable from any other character in the area, because you could easily make any of them in the character creator, isn’t... great.

Speaking of that. Characterisation is questionable, to say the least. Whatever bakugan you have in your first slot will answer to you the same as any other bakugan you have in your first slot. If you started off with Howlkor in the front of your party, and you replaced him with, say, Barbetra, Barbetra will act the exact same as Howlkor did, and it’s really something.

There’s only (?) Armoured Alliance bakugan in the game, other than Dragonoid, Pegatrix, Trox, Hydorous, Nillious, and the afforementioned Howlkor. That’s a small roster, by all accounts, so having varied dialogue depending on the bakugan would make sense.

The characterisation of the other characters is also a little funky in places. Your best friends don’t brawl, and I honestly forgot about them for a portion of the game. The tournament brawlers are practically as faceless as the villain minions, and the villains- oh the villains...

Preston. I don’t like Preston, at all. He’s a villain from the moment you see him, and the whole “try to find Preston” section in Helena Heights makes me want to punch someone. When you fight him in the Parasol HQ, his dad being the CEO, it’s fairly clear that Preston is little more than a tool for him. Sometime later, you fight Preston again, this time as the final tournament’s final battle, and he’s laughably weak compared to the other challengers. Remember, this kid fights you with Leonidas.

You’d think Leo would be good, but I’ll get into the butchering that happened to my death dragon later.

Anyhow, he fights you, assuming his dad will enjoy him defeating you. With the power of you’re the player character, you beat him, he hands all of his bakugan to you, and gives up on brawling for good. Kinda.

The next time you see him... hoo boy. In Old Town, on the way to defeat dear detestable dad, you come across Preston. He offers you help, and when player character is understandably suspicious, Preston complains that... one of his toys was taken away because you beat him, and now he wants Revenge On Dad.

I wish I was joking. His revenge, by helping you defeat his dad, isn’t because he’s obviously neglected by his dad (company taking priority over him, the CEO’s son), and then is used as a minion to try and get rid of you. It’s not out of bitter feelings because his dad doesn’t care about him, no, it’s because his dad took his ball away.

What’s worse is how player character reacts: “Oh! :) You’ve learned that bakugan aren’t just tools! :) Yes you can help me, despite the fact that you learning this sounds less than genuine and definitely not last minute! :)”

This is a level of stupidity I’ve only seen in DOTC Mira when Spectra tricks her into giving him Drago. He’s literally sulking and moping about over his ball, and then he sees the player character, immediately being manipulative so that player character can take down his dad for him.

Leonidas also forgives him, and has the same reaction as the player character.

Speaking of Leonidas! I think everyone’s been excited for Leonidas in general - we all love a shark headed death dragon, and we wanted one in the reboot for ages.

I refuse to call reboot Leonidas Leonidas. This is like the Shun Kazami debacle, but one I’m substantially more angry about.

Leonidas, in BBB, was untrusting of everything, wanted to throw down with everything in sight, had no fear of anything because “I don’t fear weak [humans]”, and literally came from hell. He eventually grew to trust you and others, to calm down and enjoy himself at his own pace, and was willing to have help from others, showing anyone around him that his origins aren’t the be all and end all about him.

Leonidas, in CoV, is immediately trusting of the first human who showed a hint of kindness, has a weakness to all attacks in the game, comes from Vestroia (not the Doom Dimension), and forgives the human who threw him away when he didn’t win the battle against you for him.

Ignoring the fact that Leonidas just doesn’t look good in CoV, I’d say he got bastardised. That’s not Leonidas, it’s just a dragon with the same name.

The main villain is the CEO of Parasol, an energy company that, assumedly, used to use solar power. Upon finding out that bakugan battles give off incredible levels of power, they turned to using bakugan, forced to battle, to generate power. These guys literally dug into someone’s house to try and get Leonidas. They’re evil.

On the topic of the battling for power generation; this has a decay effect on Vestroia, as it happens, as battling energy would usually go back into Vestroia, which would be recycled and reused.

The CEO doesn’t bend the knee to you until you break him, which is undoubtedly nice for a villain; I was honestly expecting him to give up, but he doesn’t. You beat him into a corner.

But as my introduction to the world of BP, through CoV, is lackluster at best. Obviously the game is meant for those who have seen the reboot, and don’t mind being completely disconnected from the story, because CoV is self contained, and Dan only shows up to be the tutorial giver (as a jpg, no less).

From what the game tells me about the setting; bakugan are often exploited by adults, bakugan do not like adults because of this, but can’t tell when a human child is manipulating them, unless another child removes them from that situation (the lack of agency here is somehow worse than in the legacy series, who knew).

Despite bakugan being around for 18 years in the setting, no one seems to be aware that they’re living beings, other than the main charcter, as if BP humans are equivalent to Legacy’s Vestals. I was already aware of Vestroia and Earth sharing a location in space, but the fact that drilling deep enough causes bakugan to appear on Earth seems... really weird? Schrödinger’s Bakugan Summoning Pit, but they exist on every digging site possible. Bonus points to all bakugan being able to speak, and they do speak a lot, but only to the player and whoever is around the player in a cutscene.

I’m missing a lot of things, such as battle items being the worst sometimes, I’m aware, but at this point I’m tired of rambling, so let me end off in a comparison.

CoV has, in my opinion, the same replayability levels as Pokemon Shield; I couldn’t replay either game to the end, and I wouldn’t recommend either to anyone unless they were desperate for a new game to play, and had nothing else to chose.

#Bakugan #CoV #Bakugan Champions of vestroia #I had Feelings today #I give CoV a 4/10. personally #I think me being a legacy fan doesn't help it. but I don't think any of those biases actually held the game back?#Shoutout to the one kid in Oldtown who says something about the state of the economy. and makes the player character enter a mild panic #the kid is like. 6. the player character is maybe twice their age #The kid says it with a smug face too I wish I was making this up #I think his name is Rusty? I could be wrong #Bonus: I don't think Player Character has a house #There isn't a single house you can enter. not even one labelled as yours. all you have is your hideout. which has a clothes rack??#I'm almost convinced that's exactly where they live and that's it #Extra bonus to the ventus centipod you find when picking a flower. a flower that gets a guy to quit his job on the spot without a care.#sir. sir where is your sense of responsibility. sir--#Also it's like. half one in the morning--

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retphienix · 3 years

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I did it :)

So, I cried. That's a given.

Also this might be the most overwhelmingly happy ending in the series so far, you know, if you're used to every entry ending with "KIRYU DIE?????"

Bonus points because this ending DID NOT immediately reveal that he lives! I know my intro here is all unserious and the like but genuinely, that does a lot for making the scene so much more impactful and it worked here even though I know he returns for Y6.

So, I'm gonna do this post like the last big post because there's too many thoughts to expel.

Timestamps as I rewatch so I can share my thoughts. Then a short conclusion because honestly? This game has taken all my words multiple times.

I just want to calmly and happily say my final piece at the end :)

0:39 - Spoiler, this ending SUCKS because it doesn't include a final rhythm battle for Haruka! Now I think I read somewhere that there's a member of that assassin clan she can dance battle as a final challenge but I clearly didn't do that right and missed out and that's beside the point- THERE'S NO RHYTHM GAMEPLAY IN THIS FINALE >:(

9:00 - I EARNED IT, I'M USING IT!

13:00 - Spoiler for later, Shinada doesn't get to say this from what I recall. Instead Baba gets a different wake up call, but that works out :)

17:00 - Not now, but this will come up, I offer to you my johns for what happens in the first boss fight. My eyes were dry as hell so I missed some QTEs which means I didn't get the flashiest stuff to happen. This actually happened at the end of Y4 also but I restarted just to capture good footage- not this time.

17:30 - MOUSE. MOUSE MOUSE, A LITTLE RAT, MOUSE. Love to see it.

19:00 - The audible sigh I let out when they played the same song I've heard like 40 times in my playthrough was palpable. I do dig the song! But there are what? 4 Idol songs? They really needed more or to not saturate their use so much :(

19:40 - I legitimately gasped and went "Oh no... of course it's you!" at Baba's role in this. It added a lot of weight to the way he practically begged Haruka not to show up.

20:50 - So here's the gist. Majima's plan didn't work out, we know that. Majima has a REALLY good line and motivator moment where he says he's following orders now to protect Haruka because she means more to Kiryu than anything (and that's how Majima rolls), Majima then reveals some shit which can be amounted to "I think you've gotten weak and wanted to protect you!!!!" which does ring slightly hollow since we saw Majima at a ridiculously low point earlier. So either his low point was him contemplating Saejima's survival chances, or his low point was sincere (it sure sounded it) and his worry over Saejima being weak was just also happening at the same time. I don't really mind either way to be honest, we beat him up. I fail some QTEs.

33:00 - Baba deciding not to fulfill his orders on his own accord is actually extremely important and good as hell. It shows that all this changed him and gave him the motivation to forge his own path- or rather it began to though he's overwhelmed with doubt. It's extremely good.

33:50 - The fact he intentionally leaves evidence shows how much doubt he has though, he's giving up entirely more than forging his own path, he's just refusing to follow the orders of another but hasn't found the strength to continue on his own. It's really good is all.

38:00 - This was the first cry I had beating the game x.x Shinada is just a phenomenally likeable character, and watching him accept where his life has gone and what it's meant to others is way more touching than I'd assume considering it's a tale of a baseball star.

40:50 - THIS WAS HYPE AS HELL AND LEAD TO MY SECOND CRY. THIS PRISON FAMILY HAS NO RIGHT BEING THIS ENDEARING. Also, more or less, they get to deliver the message Shinada was supposed to lol.

42:50 - THIRD AND BIG AS HELL CRY. SHINADA YOU FOOL, YOU'VE A FOUND FAMILY AFTER-ALL!!! I genuinely adore this moment so much is all. It's such a wonderful payoff for this loveable fool. After all the runnin' away he has a home.

43:36 - I love Shinada so much the silly fuck.

46:00 - I got a laugh out of Akiyama KICKING ASS in the news footage (didn't mention but the first brawl cutscene was rather lacking wasn't it?) and Kiryu just like... punches a guy. It's hilarious to me. Also you best believe- I UNLOCKED IT, I'M USING IT!!!

48:00 - Now this is a, well, it's a bad reveal. Like look, there is a metric ton of good going on in this finale- but the reveal that Aizawa is his son and is evil and is the final boss is just too much zero-build-up-payoff. It's the worst part. It's not like extremely detrimental or anything- like it doesn't take away from the good stuff- but it's just entirely uninteresting and bad. It makes Aizawa's interest in Morinaga bizarre and uninteresting since he got no payoff, he had buildup with Saejima and then in the final scenes he's just like "Yeah, Mori was nice but who gives a fuck I am the one who killed him (I think he said) and I aspire to be strong as fuck because all of YOU IDIOTS have FRIENDS and CHARISMA >:(" and like, who fuckin' cares bud.

52:00 - Now I'll more or less sum up all of Akiyama's payoff here. 1- I unlocked it so I'm gonna use it! 2- He offhandedly says he wants to be a legend in this town, which in Y4 he already was- he was a myth, a city mystery- but of course he means like Kiryu not the loch ness monster. 3- He gets to be a legend by being the only civilian (or person in general) the Omi would bow to. It's kind of not built up at all and is a bit lame, but to be honest Akiyama has a pretty bit part in this entire game. He's kinda just a convenient returning character with motivation to assist Kiryu and a career that allows motivation to get involved through Park. To be blunt, his part in the story is weak. I wish it was stronger. But it's inoffensive and he at least gets something- as minor as it is. Getting to say he's king of the world is something, you know?

56:00 - I will say that the build up of "Oh shit, these are Kanai's men!" and the reveal that "Oh shit! They are WATASE'S men and all the clans who the Tojo were seeking alliances with!" is a good one. Watase is a fine enough character which I bring up only because I was told he was a standout- but he wasn't for me. His scenes are great, his growth with Katsuya is nice, but he's barely in the game and really only exists to be betrayed and then to be like "I'm one of the good yakuza despite being a war-lusting one because being a good yakuza is just complicated enough to allow this overlap" which is interesting for sure, but I don't know. Unless he does stuff in the subsequent games I didn't catch much in this one. Maybe he does- I assume he runs the Omi now!

1:00:00 - I kinda summed it up but yeah. Here's the final boss, Aizawa, a character we were mislead on and who's motivation is empty as fuck. It's, whatever. It's not the good part of the ending. The good part is everything prior and directly after. Like his entire deal is anti-silver-spoon talking points but also he includes being charismatic or capable as silver spoon-isms??? He pretty much just wants to be leader because he's strong. He'd arguably be more interesting if he just said it that way.

1:11:00 - The lyrics to Dream are anything but subtle and I love them and I love Haruka. Sliding this in here- Majima gets no payoff >:( Park's dream is accomplished in seeing her star on the stage, but no Majima moment? No sight of him accepting her loss? Lame.

1:14:00 - I genuinely LOVE that Aizawa focuses in on Kiryu's gunshot wound. He still accepts it as a fair fight because Kiryu presents it as one, but even then he pays mind to it as you'd expect someone wanting to fight at their strongest would- he wants to fight Kiryu at his best and he's accepting this because Kiryu presents as his best even when wounded- it's pretty cool. Fight happens. It's fine stuff, flashy and fun. Still maybe the weakest final boss yet because he has no build up. I'd be the first to admit without looking it up I can't list every final boss thus far, but like, Nishi was built up, Mine was built up, Goda was built up, I just, in this moment, don't recall having a big "WHO THE FUCK, THIS MEANS NOTHING?" fight in yakuza and this is certainly one of those.

1:25:00 - I cried AGAIN. Haruka just hit me with a truck of emotion here is all.

1:41:15 - This is a beautifully shot, emotional, and tragic looking ending. Heck, at 1:43:00 I initially thought he was being awoken in a hospital bed and I was like "Heh, there's the old Kiryu dies fakeout!" but no! They hammer home, they go for broke, they give a TRAGIC AS FUCK bitter ending on top of an ending that's like 99% happy as fuck in terms of offering everyone involved hope for the future. This was a good end :)

So then, some overall thoughts I maybe didn't get out- I mean there's no way this post touches everything but I want to at least try to because I like sharin' the experience and what I got out of it.

The fighting styles were mighty uneven as far as strengths or fun factor. To be blunt,

Kiryu has an overpowered counter attack and heat mode and since heat mode is underwhelming as hell that means he has JUST a counter attack- his strikes don't really hit all that well considering the improvements other characters saw this time around, so he's a bit one note here.

Saejima feel even meatier than before, nothing particularly 'stands out' but the fact that he has super armor as long as he has heat is a pretty big factor in making him feel good to use.

Akiyama got the short end of the straw this time around. His new gimmick is the launch combos and they are... well... less than shit at least from what I could feel during gameplay. They don't hurt much, they burn heat like crazy, and they can MISS, all while being a move that targets just one enemy- has no counter to blocking or armor- and provides no armor in turn.

Despite not losing anything, he kinda got screwed.

(I'm lead to believe Akiyama is invulnerable during his aerial combos which my blurb in my finale post complained felt worthless and cited that as a reason.

If so then I was wrong but I still hold all my other complaints towards it, just not the 'it has no armor or invuln' bit assuming that's true.)

Shinada wins out for being unique and being a weapon oriented character that actually does well with weapons. Weapons have always been something I pretty much ignore in Yakuza and the series itself has always desperately tried to make them interesting with things like weapon skills, Kamiya works, and the like. But other than the god weapons like the golden gun weapons just never felt good to manage.

Using them, sure, that's fine, but managing them? Durability and skills and limited movesets and all that? Nah. But Shinada really does a lot to make them less shit! His innate abilities that raise durability a metric ton REALLY make weapons feel better to use with him- and his unique movesets with weapons are pretty damn good (mostly. The pipe/'normal one hander pole size object' moveset is worthless as heck, it regularly misses).

He's fun.

===

Revelations were a miss this time around for me. Since you couldn't have seen them if you tried on my blog let it be known- I ONLY got the quest related revelations for each character- which is to say- ONE rev per character.

Revelations in 5 are weapon based, and not just 'bat or pole or gun' or whatever- they are DISPOSABLE TEMPORARY weapon based.

What you are supposed to do is go to the specific place on the map where that one revelation weapon spawns, hope like hell you find an enemy, and wail on them like crazy. If you use a weapon x amount of times then you'll get a revelation according to the internet. This is beyond ridiculous and means a normal playthrough will get none of these, while a focused one will be bored out of their mind GRINDING to get these.

I did not bother.

===

Now.

Yakuza 5.

This might be my favorite Yakuza overall.

I still think 0 is probably the best overall for most people, it has the best style, it has from what I've experienced the best gameplay, it's story is tear jerking and exciting and fun.

But as a yakuza game overall, I really have to give it to 5 personally. Because 0 tried to work within its bounds- it made itself a great entry point to the series or a great addition to Yakuza 1 / Kiwami as background.

But 5 is building on 4 previous games and it does so fucking phenomenally.

There's something to be said about a later entry in a series gaining extra payoff thanks to multiple entries of build up and character depth and 5 fucking does it.

I just. It explores the motivation of some fan-favorites so well, it expands characters so fucking well, I know I've harped on about it but just Saejima- man! Saejima goes from a run of the mill "Decent" character to a fully fledged and explored entity! And I LOVE him!

And no he's not the only shining spot, like hell he is, but he's such a posterchild for what 5 does right in my eyes- take something that's already good and breath some life into it. Also I adore it's laser focus on a singular theme and all the ways it wanted to explore it.

Like. I think Kiwami and Zero take the cake for the most fun I've had " 'playing' Yakuza so far, but 5 takes the cake for the most fun I've had 'in general' like gameplay and me just thinking about it because there's so much to think on.

More time will tell as I compartmentalize my thoughts and perhaps forget some details as one does, but right this moment- this might be my favorite Yakuza game.

I love it.

Also, woot! I beat Y5 before Monhun Rise came out :D Now I can start that game without putting a story on hold!

...

Except I also told my sister that I'd start Omori after Y5. So I guess alongside monhun I'll be playing through a game with a hefty and wonderfully done story. Which is what I didn't want to do with Y5.

I just can't win, lol.

#RetPlays #Yakuza #Yakuza 5 #Youtube

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annakie · 4 years

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An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part Two

Aliens! Exposition! Guns! Explosions! Kickass Ladies! Betrayal! So much death!

Um, this got long. Sorry not sorry.

List of Posts: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The first thing Mass Effect does after coming out of the introduction is assure us that yes, we have aliens

and we have hot guys (and hot aliens, if you’re into that sort of thing.)

They should have made an advertisement pointing out these things just for me so I would have paid release price for this game. Ah well, I’ve bought it on 360, Steam and Origin now. They have my money.

We’re going to make it most of the way through Eden Prime in this post.

One thing Mass Effect does a lot of in the beginning here is exposition. There’s a lot to learn about the state of the galaxy in 2148, and there are people there to make sure you learn about it. Jeff and Kaidan only do a little bit of exposition, you learn about Nihilus, a tiny bit about Spectres, and that Captain Anderson is badass. I wish this scene actually lasted longer -- this is the only time we see Kaidan away from his Orange Corner (or that other orange wall) on the ship for awhile. I guess there’s the conference room, but still. If they ever do a remaster, please Bioware, let the companions move around the ship like in ME3 and give our boy better lighting.

I love the flow of the Normandy SR1. It feels the easiest to get around in since it’s so much smaller... except when you have to get on the elevator. I also love the dark theme. The ME2 SR2 always feels so... blinding. The only thing I miss from the SR2 really is my decked out Captain’s quarters. I mean does anyone even ever go into the ME1 quarters except to get the one codex entry until it’s sexytime?

I do like ME1′s use of ambient conversations, you get to learn a little about Pressley and Jenkins before talking to them. Those conversations, though, are just such exposition dumps. I think they do it fairly well, but there’s so much to remember. Both Jenkins (with Chakwas) and Pressley really harp on what and who Spectres are, pretty sure even before you talk to Nihilus you have an inkling you’re gonna eventually be one.

I honestly wish we had more actual interaction with Pressley than what we get here, he has very little to say after this point. Another hope for a remaster.

This kid Jenkins, he’s got a good career ahead of him if we can tame his hot-headedness. That’ll be his role in the game, I’m sure, the kid you mentor and grow into a reflection of you. Good to know he’s from the planet we’re heading to, I’m sure he’ll be a valuable source of information there.

Having played a lot of World of Warcraft, and I mean a LOT, from the alpha, then release, for the next two or three years, the fact that his name was Jenkins was actually a bit of a hint for me even then. But more in the “Wouldn’t it be funny if...?” and then he did. Nice.

I’m really glad Chakwas gets fleshed out a little more in just the one more conversation after this one and in future games. Because there’s not much to say about her here.

Whew! Exposition over, right? We’ve learned about Spectres, the First Contact War, about Eden Prime, that we’re in the Alliance, that there’s Turians and a council that governs things and... we’re good, right?

Wait, didn’t Anderson say he was already with Nihilus in the conference room? Where’d he go? What a bro, to step out and let Nihilus make a big turn-around moment of introduction to us. Okay, more loredump. Cool. Really getting the concept of Spectres now, for sure, especially from this guy, who is one!

Finally, Anderson. Just in time to tell us about Spectres, and Eden Prime, and now it’s time to learn about the Protheans. Whaaaaat? You want ME to maybe be a Spectre? I’m shocked!

Oh sorry, Annakie just flew through time from ME3 to stare into the camera incredulously.

I’m sure that this will be a decision that will be deeply impactful through the entirety of the rest of the series.

But here we learn about Protheans, and they lost me a bit on that one when we first played the game. Who the fuck cares about what happened 20,000 years ago? THIS IS THE FUTURE!!! We’re in SPACE!

Well, we wouldn’t get away from the Protheans so easily.

Oh what the FUCK is that thing? You’ve hooked me right back in. Tell Alenko and Jenkins to suit up? LET’S GO.

You guys... ALOV is so good, and so pretty. And these screenshots look shittier on tumblr!! Look how clear these movies are now. And these are just 720p! They’re working to upscale them to 4k! Again I say, all hail the modders.

Still, that giant red spot doesn’t look so good for the people living there...

I’m sure it’s fine.

We’re all suited up, but sadly the super cool alien isn’t coming with us? Didn’t he say he was here to follow and observe us? Well, he knows what he’s doing.

Anyone else already willing to die for Anderson fifteen minutes into this game?

The sky is supposed to be that color red, right? Right Jenkins?

As cool as this level design is, also something that could use improving. There’s like... no housing here? Just a bunch of tall towers on the ground all really realy far apart from each other? You’re on a new planet and everyone lives inside a giant tower? I mean, good for preventing Urban Spawl I guess. I’d love to see a more populated Eden Prime. Even in ME3 we just saw a small dig site and more towers in the distance.

Anyway, better level up. Jenkins is young and needs some training if he’s gonna survive this mission!

Here we go, show us what you’ve got!

Shit.

My first time through, I truly thought I’d fucked up and probably reloaded this fight two or three times before accepting he was just... supposed to die. And then I remembered his name was Jenkins, knew it was intentional, and laughed.

Honestly, it’s a great fakeout with making us feel like Jenkins is important, and then having him lose the battle right away. ME1 is pretty brutal that way. It’s a good way to signal that this game is probably going to rip your heart out, so get used to it.

Shepard and Kaidan have a moment, and I like this because it’s really the first time I think you can really start showing who your Shepard is, with how you react to Jenkins’ death. Either way, I like it that she tells Kaidan that we need to focus. I also love that, though we don’t get to see a moment for Jenkins from here on out in ME1, that they finally gave his memory a moment in ME3.

I love Flycam.

What. An. Entrance. For. Ashley. Williams.

Bioware, give us Ashley and Kaidan living in a Mass Effect Remaster, please. I will pay $100 for this DLC. (I know, I KNOW.) I have only played through with Ashley living all the way through once. I’m sorry Ash, I love you. I just... LOVE Kaidan.

But hey that’s HOURS away. For now, she’s with us, and she’s amazing.

Sorry, I just caught several great images from Ashley’s intro and thought you needed to see them. It’s gonna be a miracle if tumblr lets this thing post.

This is fine.

Uh, I’m not the only one who still sometimes dies on Eden Prime because I can never remember how the controls work until like, the end of the planet, right? “CRAP, WHICH BUTTON IS MEDIGEL?” “WHY ISN’T THE SQUAD RESPONDING TO GOING WHERE I TELL THEM WITH Q and E?” “Shit shit shit gotta reload OH FUCK JUST THREW A GRENADE SIX INCHES AWAY. WHY IS THAT MAPPED TO R?”

Grotesque and yet... great visuals. This is when you realize these Geth aren’t playing around. This is Bad Bad.

Iiiiif you also used to always punch out Miguel and then like awhile later realized how shitty that was and now know that the “Geinuis is the other side of the coin of Madness” speech here is also really shitty... raise your hand. Especially since Miguel is, you know, right. Anyway, do better on a remaster, Bioware?

The one good thing here was the “Thank the Maker” at the very beginning of the encounter. I want Shepard to visit Thedas. Give us this DLC, Bioware!!

Oh Nihilus, you were too pretty, and trusting, for this world.

Bioware, again, in the remaster... please go with your original plan and not make Saren all Gethed out this early. I wish that could be modded away. It’s so distracting to have him be OBVIOUSLY HALF MACHINE and everyone being like “Saren? Working with the Geth? PREPOSTEROUS!!”

Got some AMAZING screenshots of Sovereign taking off thanks to Flycam.

Also, this is just such an OH SHIT moment. Look at that thing! It’s terrifying! Also it’s easy to miss if you’re looking the wrong way, this maybe shoulda been in a cutscene. But even so, when you see it, it fills you with SUCH DREAD. They do such a great job of amping up the tension and drama and mystery bit by bit on Eden Prime. Giving you bits of the greater story and also feeding you pieces that will eventually come together, but not for awhile.

I followed Soverign as long as I could before he disappeared. Got this far away from land. The actual spaces in the game are huge, but we’ll get to more of that later.

Congrats! You all survived! For uh... about two and a half more years?

Can’t believe we can’t loot the Spectre’s body.

Also... the luckiest dock worker in the world. I can never yell at him for sleeping on the job. It’d be hilarious if he showed up alive on Horizon in ME2, and like Haven in ME3.

This is the guy that usually kills me.

OK, this is ridiculously long already. We’ll finish up Eden Prime and get to the Citadel next time.

#mass effect #annakie's mass effect stuff #bioware #mass effect 1

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troofless · 4 years

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Just finished watching a walkthrough of Tales of Zestiria, and I must say it is as HYPE as its opening.

My favourite parts:

Sorey and Mikleo bickering — actually, every sormik scene

I swear 99.9% of Mikleo revolves around Sorey, the other 0.1% is him getting teased by everyone (this could be his biggest writing strength and flaw depending on who you ask)

The opening song. A BANGERRRRRR

The different branching routes you can take in Ladylake. Sell the knife? The pipe? Don’t sell both? Sell the pipe later on to get a cool hat as well? How do you enter the Sacred Blade ceremony? YOU CAN CHOOSE

Mikleo leaving Sorey, in the game: Oh don’t worry, Mikleo will be fine, I trust Mikleo to take care of himself :) :)

In the anime: dkjasfnlD MIKLEO DID WHAT??! LAILAH WE MUST GO AFTER MIKLEO RIGHT AWAY

Tbh the argument ‘arc’ he has with Sorey? One of the best parts of the game.

'Does a frog think of getting rid of snakes?’ ‘OH SO AM I A FROG NOW?’ ‘Your LIABILITY will be waiting in the inn’

When in the manga this slow burn (JUST GET CONTRACTED WITH MIKLEO ALREADY) gets extended to after Sorey contracts with Edna

When Mikleo calls Sorey out on his blindness in a skit THEY NOTICE EVERYTHING ABOUT EACH OTHER OKAY

Yeah also, just thinking about how Sorey’s known Mikleo’s true name for a long time now HNNNRNNHSDGGGGGHHHH

Mikleo using his rod not as a conduit for magic but as a whacking tool. He has a mystic arte Crystal Rod where he throws his rod at the enemy saying NOPE (best...) and a mystic arte Final Player where he uses it like a hammer saying “I’ll crush you! Again! Again and again!!” smacking the enemy into the ground LOLLLL

That One Mystic Arte where Edna rides on her umbrella like it’s a flying broomstick and shoots out earth rocks with a finger gun

Zaveid coming out of nowhere at random times, busting out his persona shooting himself in the head and demanding that they fight him

Rose shaking her hands with Sorey at supersonic speed when Sorey gets her to hear the seraphim and she thinks she’s hearing ghosts

The whole ‘we’re married’ scene when they get to Rolance, and the whole joke of Sergei continuing to think Rose and Sorey are married

Dezel laughing at Lailah’s lame animal jokes in the background

Dezel not being able to see, but that’s okay… because he can read the wind!

Dezel being the walking encyclopaedia for all animals and plants bc he’s been everywhere

Rose wants to catch a butterfly and sell it for money, but Dezel interjects and tells her it’s a ‘shae monyurose’ moth, so Rose gives up on catching it, saying people don’t pay a lot for moths

Another skit where Sorey and Rose want to catch these rabbits to eat, (they’re cute... AND delicious.) Dezel is horrified and chases them away by shouting really loudly (HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT??!!)

Everyone who plays Zestiria complaining about how Alisha isn’t a permanent team member, then having mixed debates about whether the anime saved or broke the story with Alisha-Armatization

ZAVEID RUNNING DOWN A WALL

“My way is to put the hellions back in hell” Zaveid says while doing the Dio pose

WRYYYYYYY

I love how he just appears out of nowhere and gets him to fight you, multiple times, in both Zestiria AND Berseria

Dezel suggesting they could just fly all the way to the top but Sorey and Mikleo go “But we WANT to see the ruins...!”

In the bad ending Heldalf is just like ‘nothin doing… just standing here…’ when the team goes in and slays him

Heldalf: You want to defeat me, right? But if you do, you can’t get the TRUE ending… bitch

Sorey:

I love how Rose and Alisha are uncommon heroines, using lances and twin blades instead of magic (Mikleo takes that one, hah).

It’s like the writers of Zestiria were like Hmm. How do we explore the dark elements in this game by showing how people in Age of Chaos possess immense malevolence in their hearts and align it to the main story, and then went, Got it. Assassins. (Story of how Shepherd Sorey went gallivanting around with a princess *cough cough redactedbecauseshedoesn’texistinthegame* and an assassin~~)

Mikleo: Zaveid, there is literally NO REASON for us to fight. At all.

Zaveid: You gotta beat this ass first

And I think that is very sexy of him

Apparently if you take Dezel out of your team during the third fight with Zaveid, he will yell at you

Zaveid, T-posing on the ground: oh don’t mind me, just setting death flags for the only other wind seraph in this game so I can fill the XXX-shaped hole in your team later on in the game. Also here, take my glock

Dezel 🤝Eizen

being the same person

GIVE ME THE HIDDEN DEZEL AND ZAVEID LORE (but Dezel doesn’t appear in Berseria…)

Rose “I just noticed, whenever Mikleo gets angry, it always has something to do with Sorey” after merchants look at Sorey and think he’s a con artist Shepherd, then in a later skit comments that No, that’s not true Mikleo does get angry even when it doesn’t involve Sorey, then Sorey says, Nah, he’s not angry, just overreacting.

When the plot says Sorey and Mikleo were destined to be the Shepherd and Sub Lord all along :o :v :O

THEY ARE FRIGGIN MARRIED OKAY

BOTH OF THEM. FROM THE SAME VILLAGE. BABIES. RED STRING OF FATE AAAAAA

Sorey and Mikleo in a skit talking about how they’re not really affected by their past bc their real family now is Elysia. It’s a really quiet and sweet moment.

Zaveid in a skit doing flower fortune readings bc he’s worried that the group hates him bc he was all FIGHT ME! before, but Lailah cheers him up with her own flower fortune telling (‘Uh, your origami flower only has... one petal Lailah’) saying Zaveid is their friend AWWWW

GIVE ME THE HIDDEN LAILAH AND ZAVEID LOREEEEEE

gdi I know we see more Pacifist!Zaveid in Berseria but I want a sequel nowwwwww

Sorey and Mikleo having a final conversation under the stars

SOREY FILLS IN MIKLEO ON HIS PLAN breaking the trope of not telling his team that he’s going to save the world by disappearing

One of the main messages Zestiria delivers is how one person shouldn’t take all the burden on themselves and how Sorey learns to rely on other people

Like Lailah staying silent bc of her oath and how that pains her

Like Mikleo... forming a pact with Sorey.....

God I love Zestiria for breaking tropes everywhere

Did I mention how Alisha and Rose have such good platonic relationships with Sorey? Yeah and you can take out the romantic hinting and it is still a good relationship? Without any shoehorning of ‘forced het couple’?

Sorey calling back to the time he had to close his senses to get Alisha to hear Lailah, tying it back into the main plot!!!! :o GALAXY BRAIN

SOREY PUTTING DEZEL’S HAT ON IN THE STARRY SKY CUTSCENE AND ROSE AND ZAVEID TRYING TO TAKE IT BACK

How the hell is Muse alive and not, like, a hag

Love how the final part is Sorey going “I’ll defeat you with the power of friendship!! And this gun I found”

*flashback to AFOvsAll Might* Sorey: You thought it was over with that punch? I have TWO HANDS!!!!

Ok no lie the final fight was epic

THIS... IS MY EVERYTHING!!!!!!

fsdljfnsdkflsfs;fsf look all the seraphim went into the battle not expecting to live and Sorey went in fully expecting to kill his seraphim friends and prepared to KILL

Compared to the start when Sorey was full-out 'don’t kill hellions Zaveid how could you!!!!’, you can see how the darker themes shine here

What I wouldn’t give for a corrupted!Sorey though, I was expecting it bc of clips I saw on Youtube BUT IT NEVER HAPPENED!!! Lowkey sad tho. Would love an arc where Sorey gets overcome by malevolence and becomes, like a jerk, but as like a morally grey character not fully blown evil (like Jerk Rose ig)

The epilogue with everyone!!! The Lord of the Lands (yeah Uno is very pretty)!!! Lucas!!!! Sergei and Alisha!!! The little drawings in the credits detailing Sorey’s journey!!!! Awwww

Overall a happy ending for Sorey and friends which is GREAT

SMOL SOREY AND MIKLEO EXPLORING RUIN TRAPS AT THE END

oh god I swear they are lowkey married they just don’t mention it to anyone look if you go back and play the whole thing with that in mind NOTHING ABOUT THE PLOT CHANGES

Mikleo my friend you have too many cape thingys on your back PLEASE

The callback to Sorey catching Mikleo though is so cute. In the anime we get the callback to “So this is the world!” htgdgmfgmmmmgfg idk the anime is one hole I don’t want to explore rn

sfaljdfsdlf but yeah though the epilogue was nice and clean and up to reader’s imagination, I wished they expanded more on the epilogue (LET US SEE SOREY..... *fighting back tears*), at least THANKS TO THE ANIME we get to see post-Heldalf Alisha and Rose tho hnggggrrgh

*chanting* D-L-C, didn’t know they had a D-L-C

DLC

ROSALI VIBES jkahdfjksdfs give it all to meeeee

Rose and Alisha catfighting sjdnflsjdfadfhgnfghth THIS IS THE ICONIC ROSALI VIBE I SWEAR

Because of this, this DLC is now elevated to god standards

Edna and Lailah casually talking while Rose and Alisha roll in the background LMAOOOO

Rose must be the most unconventional Shepherd ever and that is GREAT

Bruh is Alisha wearing an abbreviated costume of Mikleo’s

Anyway she’s so cute in her DLC outfit!!!

Alisha ditching keigo is so. Very. Cute.

Alisha and Sorey: :) :D :)))

Alisha and Rose: Bitch. }:( >:V

Love the girl’s party vibe, and how we get cameos of Zaveid and Mikleo (LET US SEE MORE DEVASTATED MIKLEO PLEASE....) along the way

Sadly no more DLC episodes :( wonder why that got axed, bc fans didn’t like it?

Overall I must say the Zestiria cast is awesome, I really like all the characters and how they are fleshed out very neatly with their own quirks and goals. Edna being god tier with her monotone sarcasm (she is QUEEN....), Zaveid being that dumbass that looks like a stripper (HIM.... baby...), Mikleo being ultimate waifu and how his comedic moments shine with Edna and everyone else when he’s being teased, Sorey being so pure and cute when he geeks out with Mikleo and how his character arc is just such a refreshing take on the hero archetype, Dezel with his stoicness Imma Get Revenge but also his cast knowledge and love for animals, Rose for exploring the side of reality in the malevolence in people’s hearts and her :3 smile and her determination to get things done and how she’s so different from Sorey which only brings out her charm, Lailah with her awful puns and eccentricity and quiet compassion. And uh, Alisha for being the bait-and-switch heroine but a decent character with her own personal goals that are separate from the main character. Sergei and Lucas are also very lovable.

As for the setting, Rolance and Hyland as two kingdoms seem a little small scale compared to lets say if they added one more kingdom, but seeing as this is a 2015 game I think the exploration map is pretty good (then I compare to Xenoblade Chronicles which came out in 2010 and just change the subject). Love the outside game mechanics Giant’s Fist, Wind Stepping and Water Shield (when Mikleo protects Sorey with that!!! And Sorey calls him out by saying he’s been practicing it for a long time... And you recall every time Mikleo asks Dezel and the other older seraphim to teach him stuff so he can get stronger to help Sorey and how 99.9% of his character revolves around Sorey). ‘That spinny mist thing sure gets the job done’ haha.

Anyway, great game and plot, please go check out if you have time, esp rn since animes and other games coming out will be stalled it is a great time to check out older games aaaaaaa

#troofless stuff #zestiria mumblings

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trashy-croud · 4 years

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India: Temple Ruins🌿🧗‍♀️

I'm back but this level broke me. I kid you not, during this entire hiatus from doing these reviews and such, I have been coming back to this level only to cry more in the long run. I am literally only on the second level of this game. This is where I learnt, there is no God. This level held back no punches and was delivering each blow with a full on k.o. for me. Yet I still enjoyed it. Ignore the time as per usual, I spent so much of it actually looking for the secrets and searching every nook and cranny, as well as being absolutely terrified and refusing to move after the first statue came to life.

Now to talk about this level. Well for starters, this one started us off with climbing trees and with mudslides and piranhas and snakes and oh god, there was plenty of stuff happening at the start. This did lead to me being stuck a couple of times of figuring out the best path to take but eventually we powered through. We then encountered our first monkey at one point or another and I thought he’d lead me to somewhere new, y’know, like in the previous level. Hah. The only thing he led me to was my demise as as sad as it is to say, I kept him following me for a bit, not realising that he was taking away my health and I was actually killed by a bloody monkey - of all the deadly things in this level, the first thing to kill me was a god forsaken monkey. I am ashamed of myself. It seemed somehow we annoyed them at one point from the last level, perhaps because I took the key before that monkey could or because I killed it, I honestly cannot remember which one happened when I finally completed it and carried on, but these little buggars are ferocious.

After the mudslide challenge which was interesting to encounter and pretty fun to manoeuvre, along with a waterfall, we entered a dark room. I thought, “Oh lets light a flare!” Because, y’know, I actually have some for a change compared to the previous game, and when I lit it up, the look of horror on my face as I saw a statue. I could only briefly remember some parts of this game and watching my dad play it, I didn’t stick around much for this one compared to the previous instalment, but I bloody remember moving statues and I froze up and entered the menu almost instantly. That may have added to my time with how long I was on that menu thinking about what I was going to do next. After a while of debating the best course of action, I closed the menu off, pulled out my shotgun only to realise that this one didn’t come to life. Luckily I didn’t waste any ammo on an inanimate object but I was definitely wary.

After this room and moving some blocks around, we crawled into the next one and I spotted another statue, I was wary and was right to do so as it came to life and I about wanted to cry. I didn’t even pull out the shotgun this time, I went full pistols on it and didn’t know that the statue could block, didn’t seem to get that memo! So yeah, that one took a while as well, much to my dismay.

After getting rid of it, we found the first secret which was well sneaky of them as we fell into a trap door to pull a switch, but next to it was a movable block which you couldn’t tell it was movable unless you had a keen eye. Entering the room of that secret honestly was a challenge in itself with poison dart traps, a boulder trap to boot as well but we got through it all. It just took a couple of attempts, y’know how it is.

Now, a lot of what happened after is a bit lengthy to talk about and off the top of my head, a bit hard to remember how I reacted to a lot of it, some key areas was the quicksand, which I about had a panic over because that is scary. How dare they bring that in. I panicked about being unable to get any further and it was terrifying! There was also an outside part where some of the ruins came tumbling down and I was in water and had to climb back up. Let’s just say I went well into the double figures with my deaths on that one. There was so much depending on how skilful I was with some of my jumps, and I’m rubbish at jumping. I really hoped this game didn’t depend on it! But alas, seems I’ll just have to “git gud” at this now, and weep whilst I do it. But there were so many different sections to get through, to get keys to progress further through the level. There was also one part which included invisible platforms.

Do not get me started on the invisible platforms. This was the part where my sister thought it was hilarious to watch and then got stressed with me at the same time. We both admit, the way they programmed these platforms was wonderful in our eyes, it reminded me of the uzi secret in the first game, except now we actually have a way of seeing them all through the use of lights, ain’t no leap of faith this time. Basically what we got annoyed at was that I wasn’t able to jump very well and the game sometimes didn’t register the jump, so a conversation like this played out.

“Press the jump button.” “I am, what do you think I’m doing?” “Press it harder then!” “You think it’ll work if I press harder?” “It’s the only way, press the button harder and she’ll go further!”

In my opinion, I found it to be a funny moment between us as she is starting to join in more with some of the game, being more interested in later instalments such as AoD which may be interesting to write about. But this conversation reminded me of watching my dad on the PC when him and my mum would play this, my mum watching him, and literally saying the exact same thing as my sister did. It really brought back fun memories.

Back to talking about this level. After we collected the keys, we ended up with more traps to get around, more boulder traps and more fire-breathing statues. This is the theme for this level it seems. Statues that do things that I hate, such as breathing fire, and moving. As we got past all these traps, we came to a new room. I walked in like it was nothing, only to realise that it was a room with two statues in, two statues that woke up and were ready to knock me out into next week! I screamed like I’ve never screamed before, this included my sister as she just kept shouting to shoot and I ignored all that and ran away up to a ledge that they couldn’t reach. I thought we were safe and panicked once I suddenly saw another statue on this ledge, except it didn’t come to life this time which was mildly reassuring.

I decided to do this the cowardly way and handle the statues from that ledge, dangling whenever they guarded to make them drop their guard and shot them from a distance. Typical me stuff, y’know. After killing them, I was lost. I was a lot little puppy with what to do because I didn’t see them drop a sword each to put on the statue. We were scanning around and I did take a while before we managed to figure it out.

Then there was the next room. The one me and my sister called, “the room with the floating jesus-wannabe”. I told her that this was someones “team mate” (purely because she didn’t see the first cutscene with Tony) and we’re kinda figuring out what happened, “she said she liked what she called them better. I didn’t notice the statue lying in wait up until i picked the key up from underneath Randy or Rory, whichever one he may be, and then heard music playing and footsteps. I started weeping and my sister saluted me and said “good luck soldier”. I about wanted to deck her for that because she left the room to get snacks after that moment, only to come back in once I defeated it. It was super easy when you face them head on with a shotgun. Totally didn’t take to long.

After defeating it, we found more traps that were my worst nightmare, the spiked ceiling was an enemy that I was becoming too familiar with with the amount of times I died to it. Then I managed to do it. My speedy butt finally did it and I was absolutely loving it. There was the other trap as well which was smart but my worst nightmare, because it was underwater with a current trying to suck you in. Oh, I loathed it and wanted to break something. But we powered through, put all the keys in and finished the level. My sister watched and said that Tony was doing some weird “voodoo shizzam”. I thought that was an alright way to put it and after that cutscene, we were ready for the next level but left it there for the day. To be fair, that cutscene was enjoyable to watch and interesting as we saw what Tony was doing, something that we didn’t see before as he seemed to show his true colours. So we found out what happened to Randy and Rory, was probably Tony’s fault, or the artefact we have been chasing after.

As a summary for this whole level, it was super dark yet it was atmospheric. I found out all monkeys are now rude and I have to kill them, and that Tony is also rude and a bit of a prick so I need to kill him too. All fun and games! Oh, I found out that statues are something that will haunt me to the grave, the first instalment had the centaurs which traumatised me, the second had the jade statue warrior by the end of the game, so now they’ve thrown in some right at the beginning. Great. Please let that be the end of the statues though, or am I hoping for too much there? This level has been fun and very challenging, there certainly is a bit of a difficulty jump in comparison to the first levels of the previous instalments, which were a bit easier to handle. Though I’m not complaining, to be honest, we definitely needed a challenge.

But that is all for the Temple Ruins as we will be back with the third level of the India levels, The River Ganges. It mentioned water and I saw a bike, I’m going to hate this aren’t I?

#long post #tomb raider 3 #croud's playthrough #tomb raider #classic lara #classic tomb raider #playthrough #temple ruins #these darned statues will be the death of me #we're making a comeback!

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teamoliv-archive · 4 years

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Cutscene: The Silent Sister, Part 2

Continued from Part 1

“They can’t have gotten that far ahead, can they?” Lapis says with frustration as he rushes into the tunnel. There was a Grimm in the back reaches of the tomb and both Auburn and their guide had decided to rush ahead.

“Keep your weapon out, Lapis.” Violet encourages. She had already drawn both your pistols. Vampires aren’t very strong Grimm, but there’s usually a lot of them in one place. We can’t get overwhelmed.”

A loud screeching noise from dozens of sources echoed further down the cave, followed by the sounds of combat. Then a flood of bat-like Grimm came flying toward them.

Lapis steadies his rifle and fires off shots into the blackened cave. The Dust illumination only barely helped aim. The burst fire took out of a few, but it was clear they weren’t going to take them all out before they got here. “At least we have a funnel.”

“Get ready to put up your shield when they get close.” They couldn’t get surrounded in close quarters like this. The tunnel was narrow and Violet knew that if too many of those bats let off their sonic screeching at once, it could collapse the tunnel. On top of that their darting tongues could do some serious damage if one wasn’t careful. She steadied her shots, focusing on the ones who opened their mouths, blasting off the heads of the Grimm in small blackened clouds. Then she got an idea. “Cover us, Lapis. We’re charging through!”

“Right!” Lapis put up his shield and swapped his weapon to its melee form and planted the aura barrier in front of him. Violet stuck close behind as he bull rushed through the cloud, letting his barrier take the impact of any screeches and darts that lashed out at them. To say the screeches were loud was an understatement. Lapis grit his teeth and forced himself to keep focused on just covering their headlong rush through the cave. Violet kept on his heels, ducking under his shield and firing on any Grimm that tried to get under it. The tunnel started to widen, giving them more room to work with. It opened into a large open area with glimmering stalactites overhead. They looked behind them to see the swarm of small Grimm giving chase.

“Now we have some room!” Violet pointed her pistols at the swarm and glowing lights formed in front of the barrels. She fired off both “shots” of her semblance, resulting in a loud and bright bang that staggered the bats. Several quick volleys finished most of them off, as the others started to flap away.

“Took you two long enough to get here.” Auburn taunts, “I hope you two aren’t tired out by the first wave. Then again, this is a mission meant for someone like me, not you.”

Sapir glanced back at Violet and Lapis with a grimace that seemed to be a mixture of concern and annoyance. She held up her hand and flashed another series of numbers, then pointed to the ceiling.

Lapis follows the point upward and sees one of the stalactites was a different color than the others. It looked like it was covered in bone- and it was moving. “Let me guess, something about not waking sleeping beasts?”

“She said, ‘Be ever vigilant in the presence of evil.’ but, yes, I think we woke it up.” Violet says, bracing herself. The alpha vampire was enormous. It flapped its wings and let out a horrifying screech, shaking the area around it. All four huntsmen and huntresses buckled under the sound.

Auburn recovered before the rest and stared up at it with a grin on her face. “How about you all leave this one to me. After all, that’s why I’m here.” A bundle of her shadowy semblance gathered around her feet and she spring-boarded off of it, flinging herself into the air. With a flick of her wrists, she sent out her blades curving into the air, slicing into the creature’s ears and wings. She kept one on each of her holsters and was using them to spike into the other hanging stalactites to keep herself airborne.

Lapis wasted no time readying his gun for another set of shots. “Aim for the mouth, right?” He lined up a shot just as the massive creature opened its jaws and shot. It bounced off of the bat’s armored face and then looked right at him.

He put up his shield in barely enough time to deflect the blow from the monster’s darting tongue. He felt his entire body lurch sideways from the impact. That thing was the size of a street light’s pole now that he saw it up close. “Can we really handle this thing?”

Auburn was darting around the hanging pieces of rock with expert precision. she was mostly dodging and flinging her blades back out to hit the monster’s wings, but seeing the less-prepared group below distracting it was useful at least. “Maybe you can’t, but-” Another loud screech distorted the area around Auburn. She managed to vault herself away from the sound wave itself, but she watched as several of the stalactites were crumbling and falling.

“Oh, right, the big ones are smart...” Auburn dropped to the ground and dashed through the falling debris, waves of her shadowy semblance forming a barrier around her. She was still getting used to the change, but she had to admit swapping from changing the terrain with illusions to having them become a physical morphic aura to manipulate was a good upgrade- if an unintended side effect. Holding the solid forms took a lot of concentration, though. She wouldn’t be able to do anything big with it just yet. In a way she felt like she had started over when it came to relearning her semblance.

Sapir swung her flail in a broad arc above Lapis and Violet, crushing any falling rocks that were directly above them. This wasn’t going to be enough. Whatever it was this Auburn thought she was doing, it was more destructive than helpful still. She turned to Violet, who had ducked behind Lapis’s shield again. Those two definitely had a partnership down well. This must be her teammate from Atlas she had heard about. The altar girl ducks behind the shield as well and glares at the Grimm, then back to Violet. She begins signing her verse again.

“Sap, is now the time?” Violet snaps back, taking a moment to make sure her memory of the holy book wasn’t incorrect. “Trust the wisdom of the holy servants... I hope that means you have a plan.”

Sapir smiles, nods, and holds out her right hand, her left still clutching the chain of her weapon. She mouths the words ‘trust me’.

Violet takes her old friend’s hand and she could see their auras lattice around where they touched. Then she felt an almost painful lurch as she saw the color of her aura drain and flow into the other girl. Violet let out a yelp as all the strength left her, like she just had her aura punched through from a powerful attack. It was going to take a while for her to recover from that.

Sapir’s aura seemed interlaced with the color Violet’s normally was. The extra yellow lattice radiated off of her as if only barely clinging to her own like some kind of armor. The residual aura, the source of a huntresses’s exceptional strength, speed, and stamina would give her a boost needed to fight the creature. She looks back to Lapis and nods to Violet with clear intention- guard her.

Lapis did as ordered, even if he didn’t like this one bit. “What the hell is she doing!? Now we’re down both of us because you can’t fight and I have make sure you don’t get caught in the crossfire.”

Violet gets up weakly, “I can’t use my semblance or protect myself from any attacks, but I can still fire. Just cover me. We’re still in this.” She steadies herself and double checks the ammunition in her pistols.

Sapir hopped up to one of the fallen stalactites and watched Auburn’s movements. She was circling around on the ground and bringing the creature’s attention back to them, practically ignoring the safety of the rest of them. She’d just have to keep the demon’s attention on her instead. With a powerful leap, she soared toward the flying Grimm and twirled her flail. Curved spikes extended from the massive steel ball and they shot out in pairs, attached by chains to metal plates forming two heavy pronged attacks. The extra aura flowed from her into the two sets of spikes, reinforcing the attack. The spikes dug into the beast’s wings, puncturing them. The chains reeled and brought her in closer, swinging down and pulling it downward and causing it to loose its footing and crashing down to the ground.

“Well it’s about time one of you did something.” Auburn swept below the Grimm with Sapir and her shadowy aura built up in front of her, forming a large spike. It was a bit annoying that she had nowhere near the range she used to with her illusion, but at least it would do damage. The creature was pierced through and let out a horrible scream before it started to dissolve.

With the largest of the evil creatures banished, Sapir turned to face Auburn with a look of suspicion and condemnation. She was still tensed, as if prepared to keep fighting. She approaches the shadowy spike, and swipes her hand against it. Immediately a small chunk of the fixture was ripped off of it and the residual aura started to coat Sapir’s hand. Her eyes went wide and she shook her hand violently, flaking it away.

Auburn held up her arms to recall her blades back to the discs on her wrists. “Okay, what is your problem? Besides not talking like a normal person, I mean. Don’t go touching other people’s... semblances like that. Do you know who I am!?” She cursed her lack of a real word for what it was she just saw. What kind of semblance just snatched up aura like that; and what was that reaction? The only thing she could think of was that something about how the Borealis procedure made her aura “feel” weird to this girl. She wanted to dismiss it as not her problem, but the girl just kept glaring at her.

Violet stood up and Lapis lowered his shield once the fight was over. She was still worried about what it was that Sapir had just done and what it meant. “H-Hey. We’re done right? Let’s get out of here before anything else comes back.”

Sapir relaxed her tense stance and nodded. Her flail had bunched back up and a few plates actually pulled back, revealing a censer underneath that began gently spewing incense. She made a motion signalling them to go. She would still have to re-sanctify the place after all.

Violet nodded, probably the only one who understood that. “Okay, we’ll see you later. I’ll stop by the church after you’re back okay? It was good seeing you again, Sap.”

“You sure we should just leave?” Lapis questioned, “There’s still plenty of Grimm that could be around.”

“I think she’s more than capable of handling herself. Besides, it’s cold, our target’s dead, and if sister silence over here wants to stay and blow smoke everywhere, let her. I’m leaving.” Auburn turned and after a reassuring nod from Sapir, Lapis and Violet reluctantly followed.

She waited until the trio left the holy site before finishing her ritual cleansing and pulled out a scroll from her pocket. The signal was really bad out here, but a simple text message should send. She hated using the thing, material possessions weren’t something she was meant to care about, but it had been insisted upon. She sent the update the first chance she knew it would go through.

[Sister Lucianna, the holy burial site is cleansed of evil.]

[Good. Did the huntsmen treat it with the proper respect?]

[One of three. Violet, my old friend, has again returned to Mantle. I will introduce you once she comes back to the church.]

[What of the others?]

[One is an outsider, I cannot say. The other is walking sin. Her aura is unnatural- blasphemous. This is not the simple heresy of cybernetics.]

[Tell me more when you return, then I will send Brother Castor to investigate. This may be Tyrael Chesire’s unholy Borealis Project. See if you cannot learn more from your friend and her team. If not, pray they do not fall into the crossfire.]

#teamoliv #Lapis Hamelin - Cutscene #Violet Goodfellow - Cutscene #Auburn Huldre - Cutscene #Sapir Antiny - Cutscene #Team OLIV - Project Borealis

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au-tumn-al · 6 years

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TTGC has been out for 2 weeks now and since it’s been enough time for me to stop crying and actually do the post-game stuff, I want to get all my thoughts out about it. It’ll be under a cut because it’ll be long, and I’m not sure how many of my followers are actually interested in what I have to say. Which is ofc fine, I just like talking about it and I’ve been sitting on some of this for a while.

To start off, I loved Torna ~ The Golden Country. It’s the best expansion DLC we’ll be seeing from Nintendo, and probably from most other games in general, for a while.

I like its core cast of main characters than base XC2, and I think I like it a little more than XC1’s as well. I didn’t actually like any of the characters more than my favorites from base XC2, but as a whole, they were all really likable and never felt like they were falling behind in the background. I never felt like “yeah, I like them I guess” to any of the cast members like Sharla was for me from XC1, and a pretty decent chunk of the protagonists in XC2. ...Because XC2′s cast was way too huge with too much focus on the antagonists and somehow not enough at the same time, but that’s neither here. Technically Team Hugo isn’t really as important to the story as Lora, Jin, Addam, and Mythra, but the sidequests very easily fixed that for me. All the characters were very present in the side-content so I never forgot about them. I regularly did sidequests when they popped up so it felt like a natural part of the story.

I would say that it delivered in everything that I was hoping for from a story standpoint but it really, really didn’t. One of the things I was looking forward to the most was seeing more of Amalthus and Malos’s dynamic before Malos left to start his rampage. Their relationship is only told through subtext in the core game and what we saw was interesting. Even in some of chapter 8 and 9, it almost felt like they were trying one-up the other on how much destruction they could cause. Malos’s “Amalthus, you never disappoint” line delivery even makes it sound like he was looking forward to what his driver would be throwing at Alrest.

The only thing we got from Torna about how they were initially with each other was

Malos shows up and Amalthus’s knee-jerk reaction is a deadpan “oh god, it’s this asshole” look. I enjoyed it probably more than I was meant to, but I wish we got to see more. Maybe it was a little unrealistic to expect it, but considering how much of the story depends on their relationship with each other, was it really?

Another thing I was hoping for was more backstory for Minoth. I wanted to know if he knew Malos (which was actually answered though, so that was nice) since they shared a driver, and I really wanted to know how he ended up becoming a flesh eater. Judicium was already destroyed by the time TTGC rolled around and we barely went into what a flesh eater even was, so that was lame. That said though, the game did go into his relationship with Amalthus and it told us all that was really important, on top of giving us some other stuff I wasn’t expecting (a North American wild west motif, Spanish, a weapon deadass called “gunknife”, and Elma’s specials except more stylized) so you certainly won’t hear me complaining. I loved what we got with Minoth even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, and I think he’s great.

Another thing that I was expecting was for Malos to have more screentime. He was heavily advertised so I think I’m justified in expecting this. There wasn’t necessarily anything about Malos I wanted expanded upon, I just wanted to see him more since he makes everything about a billion times more entertaining just by being there. He completely stole the show in every cutscene he was in and I loved every second of it. He was kicking everyone’s asses in his first boss fight and even won, but I was loving his script, animation, and voice acting far too much to care.

there was a nice little detail to his animation too

After he punches the ground for the Monado Cyclone(?), you can see him shaking his hand off because like damn, that probably hurt. ,,,I just liked it. Don’t ask me why.

He’s probably the main reason I only play in English to be honest. His voice actor sells the script and character so perfectly. I seriously don’t know if I’d like Malos as much as I do if he was played by someone else. He might be the only Xenoblade character other than maybe Shulk and Lin that I can say this about.

and his monologue to the party right after his first boss fight where he says “they see the divine flame of life and piss all over it” while sauntering away was actually the best scene in the game. We didn’t see as much of Malos as I would have wanted, but every scene we did get was the best so like with Minoth, I can’t complain. I love this man. He’s the most entertaining sack of shit I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying.

My ruined expectations and Malos aside, what the game actually gave us was so good, I can’t even complain about the things I wanted to see because they gave us plenty of stuff I didn’t know I wanted. The two biggest ones, for me anyway, are Mythra and Addam.

I had no idea that TTGC would flesh her out the way they did, and I am not disappointed. Mythra was amazing in TTGC, and really made me appreciate her and her character arc in the base game a lot more. I loved how generally unbearable and unlikable they made her. She’s completely self-absorbed and full of herself, and just overall extremely similar to Malos. The way the game handles her attitude was really well done too. Because the other characters are constantly calling her out for her bad behavior (esp. Jin and Brighid. Lora chips in too sometimes) and lack of awareness on top of being the verbal punching bag and the butt of a lot of the jokes in the game, she’s not obnoxious to the player. She could have been really annoying, but she wasn’t. On the topic of the jokes though, I laughed at more of TTGC’s comedy. They relied less on anime tropes and were more character focused, which are usually the jokes I like more. The game felt a lot more like XC1 in that aspect, and that was really great.

Moving on, I loved Addam. He was my favorite character in the game. Making him act like Mythra’s dad was something I wasn’t expecting and I loved it. I have a pretty big post in my drafts where I talk about him extensively so that should go up at some point. It’s mostly about how he’s a really good foil to Rex and how he failed as a driver rather than about his pretty fabulous dynamic with Mythra (even if he ended up rejecting her as his blade, he did accept her as person for him to take care of, and he did everything he could in that area) though. Oh, and because there’s no way to shoehorn this in that Addam post, I want to bring something up. I don’t know if there’s any good footage of this (if there is, please send it to me so I can edit it in), but there’s a post battle conversation between Mythra and Lora that goes kind of like this:

Mythra: “Hey, Lora, what do you do when the going gets tough?”

Lora: “Just think about the people I care about.”

Mythra: “Think of loved ones, huh?”

Lora: “Yeah. If I do that, I’m usually grinning like an idiot.”

Now, let’s look at Mythra when she’s at one of her lowest. She’s scared and feels alone. Malos is attacking her with everything he’s got, and she’s is looking for anything to hold on to. ...You see where I’m going with this.

She flashes to memories of her friends, and thinks of both Addam and Milton specifically. The thing is though, for all she knows, Milton could be dead from Malos’s initial attack, and Addam is doing everything he can to hold her back from fully transforming into Pneuma because of his distrust and fear of her. Mythra trying to think of all her loved ones wasn’t enough, and then all she got was a confusing vision of a person she’d never met before. She’s completely alone, confused, and hurt, and she doesn’t have anything there to ground her. That’s when she breaks down in tears, and then starts sinking Torna in a daze because she can’t control her power.

...on a more positive note, two of the visions she gets of Rex is of him accepting her in chapter 7.

So that was finding comfort in a loved one, but it was just too soon. Like Jin told her, her true driver and real time to come as her own as a person wasn’t in Torna. It certainly didn’t help at the time, though.

At that point in chapter 7, she was in a similarly low state as she was in TTGC, except she had Rex that time, and then was fully able to achieve her full power as an Aegis. It should be noted Mythra’s “I just...want...to save...” line was apparently horribly translated, and the original was more along the lines of her begging for someone to save her. That’s what I hear anyway and I can believe it. It makes more sense that way.

Good God, was this a great expansion. It was already pretty fantastic with just its setting and premise alone, but it does an even better job in making me appreciate a lot of the scenes in XC2. Even the already-amazing scene in chapter 7. sPEAKING OF ALREADY AMAZING SCENES MADE BETTER BY TTGC

Rex: “I don’t even know what I’m doing here anymore... Did...did I go wrong somewhere...?”

This is one of my favorite Mythra scenes in the entire game, TTGC included. It’s so small but it’s so good. I don’t think I even need to explain why this is made better by TTGC.

XC2 is very loud, and unabashedly anime, but it has quiet scenes like this and dammit, are they the best parts of the game. I think they’re even made better by the fact XC2��s tone is generally so upbeat and anime.

I said this before, but TTGC didn’t tell us anything new. We already knew pretty much all of the events of the game before it came out. Maybe we were missing a few details, but in the end, we knew how things were going to go down. Mythra becoming a much more interesting character because of the expansion pass just by being able to see her growth just shows how important the “show, don’t tell” rule is.

I love Haze a lot. I hate how she’s a third wheel in Team Lora, I hate how Addam and Jin are the only people who really pay any attention to her, and I hate even more that no one hugs her when she’s crying at the end of the game.

oh yeah, Lora and Jin were the main characters. They weren’t very interesting to me (Lora barely had an arc and all of Jin’s intricacies mostly come from the base game) so I don’t have a lot to say about them other than I really liked them. The ending would have completely broke me if the game forced me to watch Lora die so I don’t even care that it was left out.

People consider the lyrics of “A Moment of Eternity” a message from Lora to Jin but I like to pretend that it’s Addam to Mythra because it’s less depressing that way. The singer is encouraging their loved one to find someone to help them move on and if it was to Jin, that meant that Lora’s last wish for him never happened. He met Malos and then

but seriously though, it could be both. The song ties in pretty well to “One Last You”, and that was very obviously from Pneuma about Rex. It was probably supposed to be up to interpretation anyway. ...a little off-topic, but there’s a line in the song that goes “time flowed differently for us/not to say it was all bad” and then there’s a scene where Addam talks about how he doesn’t have enough time to adapt to Mythra so...idk, maybe that’s something? I mean, Lora got 17 years with Jin, so she didn’t exactly have the short one year Addam had with Mythra.

i’m done now.

Half of this was me gushing about Mythra. I don’t even care because I loved her. Please forgive any of the obvious signs that I didn’t spend very long proofreading this thanks--

#personal #xenoblade chronicles 2 #torna spoilers #this is a long-ass post lmao

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elevatorelevenhatesyou · 2 years

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Final Fantasy 14 Part 25: HE'LL PROBABLY KILL US, BECAUSE HE'S INCREDIBLY POWERFUL AND I HAVE NO PLAN!

I was really forcing myself through the story at this point. Of course back then I was forcing myself with the powers or hope and friendship, and those are hollow and shite and just made me miserable. This time I'm fueled by HATRED, which is far stronger, so rather than imagining me quietly crying while dying inside as I play this game you can instead imagine me manically screaming FUUUCK YOOOUU over and over while repeatedly stabbing myself in the mouth. Hooray!

Before we go over the big plan, there's a bit of talk about Thancred and Ascians. Minfilia explains they're immortal energy being space monsters who possess people. I'd say this would have been helpful to know earlier, but it doesn't really change anything at this point so I guess kinda not really. We never had a concrete idea of how to actually fight Ascians, and we still won't by the time we face off with Labradoodle at the end.

Minfiila says here that Ascians possess people "by way of" crystals like that dark energon we saw waaaaaaaaaay back when Brash beat up the Ascian Intern like right near the start of the game. How this works, I don't know, but apparently if we can smash the crystal we free Thancred. Alright, cool, is this going somewhere?

It isn't. We don't actually come up with a plan to get the crystal off him or how to destroy it. When the time comes, God just kinda does it for us. Additionally, this method of defeating Ascians is never used again.

Anyway, time for Operation Archon, the big plan the Alliance leadership came up with to beat Gaius.

This is the part where in my first playthrough I started to actually skip the cutscenes because I could not possibly give less of a shit. It's just more Alf talking. I want him to stop talking. He's never going to stop. Brash doesn't understand what's going on, she just needs someone to tell her what things she has to go punch to death. Just tell Brash who to kill, Alf.

Now that I'm paying attention to this plan, it's got some big holes in it. Specifically a really big Ultima Weapon shaped hole, which is unfortunate because destroying the Ultima Weapon was supposed to be the whole point I thought.

The plan is, in brief, cut off all the ways that the fortress with Ultima Weapon in it can get reinforcements, then infiltrate that fortress and destroy the weapon. Brash is to go kill off that commander guy I forget his name whom Gaius sent to a fort called Camp Westwing, I mean Westwind. Meanwhile the three big Alliance armies will attack three other Garlean forts and blockade some supply lines and railways and shit, so Brash and an elite adventurer strike force can infiltrate the big fortress.

So, the Ultima elephant in the room. Two things. One, this plan seems to hinge on the gigantic super weapon staying in one place. There don't seem to be any contingency plans in case Ultima Weapon shows up to counter any of our attacking forces, which it totally could, because it can fly. We've already seen it being flown around on those giant mechastork chess piece things, and in fact we just witnessed it suddenly be brought in against us in the middle of one of our operations. It might appear in defense of any of these locations in a very short amount of time, even if all four assaults are simultaneous. Or it might go and attack someplace else in retaliation.

Like 'oh you're attacking my bases? Okay how about I go and stomp all over Ul'dah. I can do that seeing as I have an Ultima Weapon and you don't, and the Immortal Flames are concentrated elsewhere. Not that they could do anything about this anyway, because, again, I have an Ultima Weapon.'

Which brings me to the second point, which is kinda the really big one. So uh, I have a question. The plan is to get into the fort and destroy the Ultima Weapon, right?

So,

How do we do that?

Well first we’re going to cut off the reinforcements so

No no, I mean.. How do I destroy the Ultima Weapon?

Yeah, we have no plan for how to go about actually destroying the Ultima Weapon. It had enough power to bend three primals in like fifteen seconds without taking any damage. Then, it got STRONGER. Brash is supposed to infiltrate Castrum Meridianum and "destroy Ultima Weapon." But like, HOW? I guess she's just supposed to get inside and figure it the fuck out as she goes?

Is Brash really expected to just Fight the thing and win? Obviously, spoiler, she totally does, with her fists, but only once God says she's allowed to win. It sucks. We'll get to that. If the plan is for Brash to just wail on it like she does for any old boss, why didn't she just do that back when she saw it kill those primals, or when we were rescuing Minfilia? Oh well after fighting Garuda maybe Brash was already wounded from fighting Garuda okay then why is she supposed to fight Ultima Weapon after breaking through a bunch of fortifications first? Oh well after rescuing Minfilia there were all these other soldiers there OH so I'm supposed to think all those soldiers are a threat to Brash Anvil am I? IF THAT'S TRUE THEN HOW THE FUCK IS BRASH SUPPOSED TO DESTROY THE ULTIMA WEAPON IF ALL IT TAKES TO DETER HER IS A BUNCH OF REGULAR-ASS SOLDIERS!? This is not the first nor the last time that the question of 'how strong is the player character actually supposed to be' comes to haunt this story.

Nothing changes about Brash in between the Garuda fight when Ultima Weapon is first encountered and the Ultima Weapon boss fight. It's not like she couldn't fight Ultima Weapon before because she didn't have all six chaos emeralds; she got the sixth and final one from Garuda's boobs. She doesn't learn anything about Ultima Weapon's weaknesses, or gain some weapon or tool that will make it vulnerable. The only thing that changes is, I guess, Brash's level. In the first playthrough Brash would have gone from level 44 or so to level 50. But still, nobody within the story mentions that Brash has gotten nebulously stronger. What reason does the player have to believe that Brash has any chance of beating Ultima Weapon in the Praetorium garage if she had no chance back when it vored Garuda?

So we have no plan for how to deter Ultima Weapon if it attacks while we're attacking something, and we also have no plan for how to destroy Ultima Weapon while it's still in its garage. As for what I'd suggest instead, NO IDEA! I'm no fourteen star general but from my experience in strategy games when the other guy brings a Monkey Lord and you don't, that's kinda the ball game!

My advice would be, shit I dunno, maybe mass exodus? If the enemy has an unstoppable super weapon, DO NOT ENGAGE THE ENEMY'S UNSTOPPABLE SUPER WEAPON. If you're really committed to fighting it, instead go and attack EVERYTHING ELSE and hope the superweapon runs out of fuel or the enemy ruling party gets deposed before it can destroy all of your things.

Alf's plan is sort of like that, with the attacking everything else first thing, but they're only blockading and cutting off reinforcements in preparation for a big assault on the enemy headquarters, not as a means to deprive the superweapon of infrastructure it needs to be effective. And, I mean, does the Ultima Weapon even need fuel? Not sure, it's a big ancient magic robot.

Though obviously Ultima Weapon never does attack anything else; it just sits in the garage all day, even though it has already been seen in action twice and sustained no damage either time, so we know for a fact that it's in battle ready condition. I guess Gaius just decides not to use the stupid thing because he's a dumbass. Or maybe it did run out of fuel, though nobody's mentioned it. That interlude cutscene from a little while ago would have been a good place to do that but instead we just got Gaius hitting on Livia.

Fine, whatever, let’s just count on the enemy being an absolute moron who has no idea how to use his assets effectively.

yes, all of eorzea. great, any beast tribes included in that?

#alphinaud leveilleur #talking to alphinaud #minfilia warde #el11hypost #final fantasy 14 #final fantasy XIV #final fantasy a realm reborn #a realm reborn #ff14 #ffxiv #ffxiv arr #ff14 arr #critique #rant #analysis #that's right i'm calling minfilia a racist again

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dlamp-dictator · 7 years

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Allen Rambles About Fate/Extra & Extella (Allen’s Rambling XXXV)

Usually, when I do an “Allen Rambles About [Video Game]” post I wait until I’ve gone through roughly 20-30 hours of it since I mostly play JRPGs and it takes quite a bit of time before I can safely say I’ve seen everything about the game and have an informed opinion it, but... I’ll be making an exception for the Fate series.

Originally, I was going to talk more about Extra and Extella in a Video Game Update, a monthly post about the video games I’ve played and plan on playing, but since these were the only two games I was playing this month, I think a Rambling going in depth about them is more appropriate.

And so here we are, the Fate/Extra series. I’ve spent about 15 hours on both games, so I think it’s fair to make a Rambling about them now. And I have to say, I’ve got some conflicting opinions about both these games.

Now, I’m a casual fan of the Fate series, and I plan on going deeper into that in December, but I’ve watched the original Stay Night by studio Deen, the UBW movie by Deen, Fate/Zero, The Ufotable adaptation of UBW, and all four season of Prisma Illya. The only thing I haven’t done Fate-wise is invest into Grand Order, and that’s mostly due to my hatred/weariness of gacha/mobile games. When it comes to Extra and Extella, I was treading new Fate territory. It heard it was basically an AU of the Fate series with more technology and technobabble in it, and Extella looked flashy as hell, and published by Xseed and Marvelous, the folks that made Senran Kagura, and I love Senran Kagura, so I figured “why not?”

And... well, let’s talk a little about that, starting with...

Fate/Extra

With Fate/Extra, I’d say that this game has a good story, but bad gameplay. I originally picked up this game solely so I could have context to Extella. I originally thought Extella wouldn’t be trying to have much continuity in it since Extra was a story-heavy, visual novel/RPG game on the PSP of all things, that handle literally no one has anymore, and Extella was a Musou-clone where you could take out legions of enemies and typically had very simple stories because you were too busy mash the attack button and throwing lasers and fire magic to care about said story.

But I was wrong.

Oh, how I was wrong.

Not that Extella directly talked about stuff in Extra, but there were a lot of winks and nods to it that had me lost. The Moon Cell Grail War, how Nero was so affectionate toward the player character to the point of being a typical waifu, and the technobabble, dear lord the technobabble of how the Regalia and Moon Cell operated was just sleep-inducing.

Most Musou-style games outside of Dynasty and Samurai Warriors are usually pretty simple, and even Samurai and Dynasty Warriors is pretty easy on the story stuff. But Fate/Extella was pulling no punches with it’s technobabble and visual novel-style cutscenes (more on that later). I felt I needed to play Extra just to have a decent grasp of what was going on in that story. Thankfully, the game was only ten bucks on PSN, and works as a download on my Vita, so I bought and was playing it side-by-side with Extella.

And after about 15 or so hours, I can honestly say I’m more invested in Extra’s story than Extella’s by a mile. I’m invested in Hakuno’s struggle in the Grail War, how she’s slowly coming to terms with killing people for her own survival. I mean, goddamn, after winning the first match, when you saw the 128 active/living participants drop to 64 in an instant... damn, it was chilling. The world-building is nice too, I’d say even simpler than Extella. The Moon Cell is basically a virtual world where the Grail War takes place, and all the bits and particle effects tell that. These people aren’t mages, but gamers and hackers with magic circuits and whatnot. Really, this is leagues easier to grasp than Extella. And while Nero was more insufferable if anything in Extella given her forcefulness on you, in Extra I get the chance to see our relationship grow to that point. While I despise the fact that she looks like Best Girl Artoria and has a god-awful voice to show her inferiority to said Best Girl, I love her personality, her haughty and explosive natural is really endearing... I just wish she had a different design. I think this story and characters alone is enough to play through and even recommend you guys buy this if you have a Vita and the memory space for it.

However... when we talk about the actual game, I have some issues.

Let’s start with the gameplay. I’ll be frank, this game plays a little too slowly for my liking. The load times are fine, the frame rate is fine, but I hate the rock-paper-scissors, turn-based style of attacking, and I especially hate how you need to grind on enemies to read patterns and pray you’re right until then. I thank God I resisted choosing Best Girl Emiya!Archer went with the more Physical-focus, high attack power of Nero because the grind in this game... goddamn. Dying in the arena isn’t fun when I’ve grinded for an hour to gain three levels only to die and restart from outside the dungeon because I faced a new enemy type with a pattern I didn’t know about. Seriously, quick save would be nice to have, but this is the main reason I’m playing this game with a guide for both story progression and enemy patterns.

Speaking of story progression, gathering information matrices and how hit-or-miss that process can be is worrisome. Again, these enemies rely on know pattern recognition, and collect Servant matrices is top priority so I don’t get wasted in boss battles. I’m using a guide solely for that reason, but... to give credit where credit is due, the game is giving me hints about where and how to learn more about enemy Servants... so far anyway, I’m only on week three, we’ll see how it goes when things pick up.

Again, I’d say that Extra is the better story, but the has lacking gameplay. I recommend buying if you like visual novel-style games, but Lord alive, please find a guide for this game, both for enemies and story.

Fate/Extella

With Extella, I feel like this is the opposite case. I love the gameplay of Extella. It’s a little repetitive, and I swear Servant enemies have little to no hit stun, but it’s not bad. The story... well, I went over that for two paragraphs in the Extra section, but there’s a bit more I want to talk about.

I... really don’t like the visual novel style of storytelling in this game. It’s fine for Extra since the gameplay isn’t engaging enough to play the game solely for that, but Extella has great gameplay and a lot of fast-paced action. The long story cutscenes and My Room events just bog down the pacing and have me waiting longer and longer to get to the next stage and bash more enemies. Honestly, the story could just be summarized as Nero and Tamamo fighting over territory in the Moon Cell and possession of the Regalia with Altera playing both sides and being the final boss... oh, and something about an meteor and Colossal Titan with Archimedes rubbing his hands together and evilly chortling. I dunno, I’ve still gotta’ play through Altera’s story mode and the true ending, so maybe I’ll get some context to why all of this is so complicated, but I don’t think I’ll like the answer given how much time is spent trying to get me to care about anything but using Emiya!Archer in Nero’s campaign.

Also, Archimedes being the Chessmaster in the background does nothing but annoy me. Liz making a sudden Heel Turn makes sense, especially in Tamamo’s story where she’s constantly abused by the group. But Archimedes? Honestly, he could be cut out entirely, Altera could had been the final boss and a third faction holding the Body of Hakuno hostage, and nothing would be lost story-wise. This stuff about the Umbral Star, Velber, and all that... just... makes me skip all the story cutscenes because I don’t care. I care about Nero and Tamamo and how they want the best for Hakuno. I care about some of the side characters since I like a lot of their designs. I care about Altera and her deal in this situation and why she’s holding Hakuno’s Body hostage. But outside of that... I could care less about this technobabble about the Regalia, the Moon Cell, the Umbral Star, it’s just... pointless to me.

But again, it’s the gameplay that attracts me to this. The chance to take out thousands of soldiers with Emiya!Archer and Medusa, beating the stuffing out of that prick Gilgamesh, using all the cool and flashy Noble Phantasmas? Did you guys see how badass UBW looks in this game?

youtube

Seriously, Emiya!Archer is the best.

My only real critique gameplay-wise is that some more characters in Extra should had appeared. I think Francis Drake would had been a great addition to Tamamo’s faction as a mercenary unit, and honestly, Medusa has no range in her moveset, so having a gunslinger would be nice. Having Robin Hood replace Emiya!Archer, while tragic to my inner Emiya!Archer fanboy, would make more sense since the game is assuming you used Nero in Extra, and Robin Hood and Nero had some pretty fun banter in Extra, seeing more of that would be fun.

But again, I’m on the opposite end of Extella in terms of my opinion. A fun game with fun gameplay, but a story that’s more suffering to go through if anything. If it was a little simpler and pulled back on all the technobabble about the Moon Cell then I’d be more engaged, but even Extra has less exposition than this game, and that’s a goddamn visual novel.

So yeah, those are my opinions on the Fate/Extra series so far. I’m looking forward to seeing Extella Link come out, and I’m praying its story is simpler to grasp. I’m actually going to be taking a break from Extra for the rest of October and most of November to play Dangan Ronpa V3 (more on that later), but I’m glad I got into this series, and I hope to complete it by the end of the year.

#fate extra #fate extella #your dictator is speaking

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smokeybrandreviews · 5 years

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Final Heaven

Apparently, there’s a controversy budding about the Final Fantasy VII Remake. Is it about the overhauled battle system you ask? No. Is it about the fact that this thing is going to be at least two, full priced, current gen, games? Nah. Is it about the fact that it might take another 20 f*cking years to finish this game because Nomura and his team have no idea what the f*ck is going on? Not even that. No, the controversy I am speaking on is about Tifa’s character redesign, specifically her nerf tits. A friend of mine brought this to my attention yesterday but I had been hearing rumblings about it for a while. There is, apparently, a dedicated section of “fans” that have decried this game, in spite of all of the glorious, good faith, innovations we’ve seen so far, because they downsized Tifa’s boobs. These are grown ass men doing this; cats old enough to remember the original art that Nomura made of Tifa, way back in ’97 because, anyone under the age of 25, only really know Tifa from the Compilation,where she was nerfed the first time! I mean, these weenies can’t possibly be upset about the difference between in-game models because, way back then, everything was a f*cking polygon puzzle! Seriously, there is more geometry in Remake Tifa’s left eye, than there was in her entire character model from ’97! You can barely even tell there were boobs. What are you outraged about? What her once literal triangles aren't proportioned on the new, high res, models? Really, bro??

“But, Ryan,” I hear you ask, “What about that cutscene boob jiggle when the WEAPONS took off? Surely that was boob enough for your outrage, right?”

F*ck, no, dude. What the f*ck? Look, with PS1 era graphics, we were still using our imagination for a ton of sh*t. That cutscene was gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, and I appreciate the little fan service we got there, but I was more in awe of EVERTHING ELSE GOING ON! To see all those things explode from that volcano in real time? Coming off a generation where f*cking Mode 7 SNES graphics we the best we got? And you want to talk to me about a booby jiggle? Get the f*ck out of here! This is the saddest sh*t I’ve heard all week, man, and it pisses me off. Final Fantasy VII is a goddamn classic and it’s remake is one I’ve waited two f*cking decades for. Now that it's finally within my grasp, I gotta hear a bunch of f*ckboys complain about a downgraded bust, on a polygon cartoon? Shut the f*ck up, man!

Hell, to be perfectly frank, all of this outrage is mute because Tifa’s tits have been nerfed since Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. I kind of touched on this before but, literally, ANY of the new material Tifa's been in since Squaresoft became Square Enix, has her bust considerably downsized. Everyone thought all of those redesigns were dope. No one was upset about her little cowboy outfit in Before Crisis and Crisis core. When she made her entry into Dissidia the first time, not a peep. This same, incel, bullsh*t happened way back when Advent Children released and no one cared. That sh*t died almost immediately after everyone saw what she could do in the film. All of a sudden the focus shifted from “Tifa’s titties are to small” to “Oh, sh*t! Tifa’s kind of bad ass!!” WHICH IS THE F*CKING POINT! Tifa isn't defined by her mammoth mammaries. They aren't a trademark or whatever. Tifa is a goddamn beast! She is defined by pure, unadulterated, ass kicking. That's where the buck should stop, not at her chesticles. You see her fighting style? She f*cking beats up robots and dinosaurs and JENOVAS with her goddamn fists! Her weapon of choice is them hands! You try doing a Dolphin Blow with a pair of E-cups flapping about! That sh*t ain’t even realistic.

Tifa’s redesign is dope. It makes sense for her character. It's functional while still subtly sexy. Her leather shirt is gone, replaced with a pleated one and spats because she kicks high. Her suspenders seem to act as kind of an underwire for extra ta-ta support, even though her boobs have been downgraded anyway. Seriously, it doesn’t make any sense for someone who has trained in martial arts since she was a kid, to have ginormous gazongas. Kind of hard throwing a straight punch with so much chest girth, ya dig? But that might not even be the case because, as far as I can tell, and this is brilliant on the part of Squenix, they gave her a sports bra! Those are like compression shorts for your titties! They are designed to mush, separate, and hold. They are created to specifically limit boob jiggle BECAUSE them tits get in the way of a fight. Why do you think all these MMA fighters wear them? It is necessary to mitigate them in any way possible, especially if you’re out here punching giant, world created, anti-life, machines. If that's the case, you can chalk up her tiny bosom to some sort of ultra bra! But, really, come the f*ck on, man. Why is it even that serious? Why you gotta go through such contortions just to accept the fact that her titties are smaller? Why the f*ck do I even have to write this goddamn post?

Ultimately, this is all f*cking dumb. It’s a video game, dude. I understand you’re attached to a bygone “aesthetic”, I wanted an ATB system and not this we're action RPG hybrid sh*t, myself, but whatever, get the f*ck over it. I did. The new sh*t looks fun so i'm going to reserve judgment, just like yall should about them honkers. Stop bashing a game that you haven’t played, a game true fans have yearned after for a whole ass, two decades, because your waifu’s polygon funbags are too small for your neckbeard ass standards. I love Tifa. She one of my all-time, favorite FF characters. Her redesign is amazing and practical. It makes sense. Get over yourself and your prepubescent horny, dude. You’re f*cking 30. It’s the creepiest of looks.

Besides, ya'll out her acting like the second this game hits PC, you sad motherf*ckers aren't make nude and bob sliders for it anyway. Get f*cked, weenies.

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smokeybrand · 5 years

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Final Heaven

“But, Ryan,” I hear you ask, “What about that cutscene boob jiggle when the WEAPONS took off? Surely that was boob enough for your outrage, right?”

Besides, ya'll out her acting like the second this game hits PC, you sad motherf*ckers aren't make nude and bob sliders for it anyway. Get f*cked, weenies.

0 notes