#time for a fun game of Which Debuff Is This One Coming From This Time ? more at 11

[trainingdummyrabbit]

sory i cant come to work 2day iam too full of . love.

#trying 2 do Things but brain dont work :/ too full of I Love Yous. sory #piktalk #isnt. a joke. btw. i am starting to get suspicious. who keeps flooding the channel with ambiguous loveposting. mods. mods? #time for a fun game of Which Debuff Is This One Coming From This Time ? more at 11

[cerastes]

Would you happen to have recommendations for good, all purpose or simply just worth it 5* operators to raise in Arknights? For someone who has levelled none of them except Amiya, Cantabile, Kroos, Rockeock and Shamare

Going into detail for each and everyone one of them is unfeasible but let's start with the ones I consider really, really good and would always recommend:

Specter - Strong laneholder with self-sustain, best immortality staller in the game for the longest time and still arguably is, benefits from long-term investments in the form of Abyssal Hunter buffs, can be pseudohelidropped with S2M3. Very high HP lets her deals with Arts damage better than in-class equivalents.

Texas - Good DP generator with crowd control and above average damage. Extra starting DP from talent can enable entirely new openers, especially in endgame content. Not exceptional in anything, very reliable in just about any situation to open maps and cover light lanes.

Blue Poison - Strong AA Sniper with constant minibursts and ability to thin lanes thanks to multihits that don't compromise her single targeting, making her a tactical tool that circumvents Taunt to some degree until you can deploy your actual solutions to the Taunt source. Has one of the most famous M3s in her S1, with a charge of 2 attacks.

Warfarin - Versatile unit and easy M6, a lesser known property of her S1 heal is that it is instant, meaning she's a very reliable healer to keep someone under heavy damage alive. Rare Attack Up buff for others, which is what most people know her for. Good SP cycling and can help charge others' SP with her Talent.

Lappland - Best Silence-user in the game, as well as a solid, reliable unit in most maps thanks to her multitarget and Arts damage. You'll hear people claim she's fallen off or some other lie. She is still very solid outside of her Silence (which comes back into relevance every other Thursday anyways).

Ptilopsis - Strong, low investment unit, does not need Masteries at all in order to perform, powerful constant strong heals with S2 and has the best universal Skill Aura Talent that will speed everyone's SP charge by 30% just by existing on the map.

Elysium - One of the best utility units in the game, easy M6 with great SP production, DP reduction and ASPD buffs for Snipers, and a very strong S2 that reveals invisible units, reduces their speed significantly, and gives them a DEF debuff that stacks with other debuffs.

Cantabile - Lightweight assassin that can produce DP per attack while assassinating. Has a short timer to redeploy, so she can be an on-demand miniburst on a troublesome boss or lane, while making DP.

Any of the two Berries, Honeyberry or Mulberry - Handles Elemental Damage buildup, Honeyberry centers more on Elemental Damage, Mulberry has stronger HP heals, both are great. Honeyberry came free with your XBox, no excuse not to raise her. They also have very useful wide ranges that allow for unique safe set-ups.

Projekt Red - Lightweight assassin that can be used as a stunbomb or as a killer for light key targets. Nothing else needs be said, she gets the job done.

Firewatch and Andreana - Heavy duty shooters with wide range and unique targeting rules that specialize in dealing large amounts of damage one way or another, all useful. Firewatch can also use camouflage for fun strats, while Andreana can reap great benefits from long-term investment due to her status as a nominal Abyssal Hunter.

Asbestos - Strong Arts Guard, her S2 can target air, and is just in general very useful in balancing lanes that also need damage when you're spread thin elsewhere, or just as a fun, good unit to use.

La Pluma or Highmore - Both play very similar. Handy, self-sustaining middleweights with potent minibursts and unique three-frontal tile AoE ranges. They can get up to some truly wicked positioning strats.

Manticore - Heavy single hits with either Slow (truly constant with S1M3) or Stun and a large range with true AoE (actually hits EVERY unit in range). Straightforward use and can be used very creatively on chokepoints.

Platinum - S2 gives her extra range and strong single hits, letting her do things no other AA Sniper can do and giving you some ease of command on maps with inconvenient, distant ranged tiles. This is more valuable than you think.

Kazemaru - Middleweight laneholder with explosive bursts and ability to keep herself alive. Can hit air during Doll Form. Allows for various advance deployment strats thanks to her Dollkeeper nature, and has high constant damage during S2 uptime.

Silence - Her drone's healing is actually very powerful, a burst of healing that can actually enable some unique strategies and sustain that you'd otherwise not be able to achieve for cheap. Like her friend Ptilopsis, does not need Masteries to perform at a high level, but of course, welcomes them.

Liskarm - Very sturdy Physical damage tank that can cycle her S1 VERY quickly and has an S2 with good utility for when you need it. Can function as an SP battery for other characters as well, enabling some goofy meme strats (that carry a lot of potency).

Kjera - Great Caster with Freeze on S2. Nothing much needs be said, she's simply lovely, a caster, and can deal good damage with crowd control. Straightforward and simple.

If a 5* isn't here, it doesn't mean they are bad, there are plenty of good ones out there like Iris and Bibeak to name a few, but I consider this list a pretty integral "core" roster, from which you can then expand towards your preferences.

#arknights #inb4 ''you forgot--'' I didn't

[desertleviathan]

I've included every Job I've heard people mention as speculation, no matter how unlikely I personally find it. Propaganda after the cut is all just my own feelings, and includes some very minor spoilers for recent MSQ events, Astrologian Job Quests, and the Shadowbringers patch 5.3 Dungeon:

CALCULATOR PROS: They have had some fun with Math Bosses, haven't they. It is a theme present in the game, and with precedent in earlier FF games. CONS: I can not imagine any configuration of this job that would function within the timing of FFXIV's combat. Applying simple Astrologian buffs is already tricky enough. Also, this was a real balance-demolisher in its main prior appearance.

GAMBLER PROS: FFVI has proven fertile ground for Job design concepts, between the Monk and Machinist revamps. And Setzer's armor is already in the game. CONS: Even more RNG dependent than Dancer? I don't much like the sound of that. And Astrologian has already claimed Cards as a primary tool.

GEOMANCER PROS: It canonically exists in setting. And it is on the dwindling list of Jobs in FFXI that haven't been reinterpreted in FFXIV. Probably a pretty strong contender, except... CONS: The Astrologian quests kind of ate its lunch, explicitly stating that they are heavily overlapping arts. That will be a common theme with entries on this list, Astrologian seems to be made of pieces of a ton of prior Mage jobs.

GREEN MAGE PROS: The presumptive favorite in most of the chatter I'm reading, because of a symbol on a thing in a very "we're teasing new content" feeling MSQ cutscene that matches the design of Green Mage in one of the Tactics games (I think?) CONS: Ok great but what the heck even is a Green Mage? Their whole shtick appears to be long-duration buffs and debuffs that would have been categorized as Black or White Magic in other games... and FFXIV has been very steadily removing those kinds of powers, aside from a handful of DoTs. If they crib this aesthetic, the actual mechanics will likely be something entirely unanticipated, or possibly overlapping with one of these other options, rather than a Buff/Debuff Mage. Or maybe they've just been removing long duration powers from other classes to... consolidate them? I really doubt it, but maybe.

NECROMANCER PROS: It's a solid concept, an RPG classic, and the Necromancer Boss in the Heroes' Gauntlet dungeon looks sick. Rumor has it that all the bosses in that dungeon were concepts once considered as alternate branches of base classes in the same way Arcanist splits into Scholar and Summoner, before they ditched that design. In which case it probably would have split from Thaumaturge? CONS: Rumor also has it that cultural considerations in certain key markets made this something SE didn't want to pose as a heroic archetype. Also, pet jobs. They've been pretty steadily gutting the pet mechanics of Scholar and Summoner, and I can't imagine they'd be in any hurry to add another full scale Pet Job. Maybe a Limited Job though. Also, in FFXIV the art to animate and control the dead seems to be closely related to the summoning of Voidsent, and Reaper is already doing the Demon Magic thing in a big way.

ORACLE PROS: I'm gonna be real with y'all, can't actually think of any. I see this as having zero chance. But the name keeps coming up in conversation. So maybe I'm wrong, and the apparent fan support will keep the idea afloat. CONS: Like Green Mage, it's mainly been a place to dump debuffs that originally belonged to other magic types. And the theme of prediction and prophecy has been thoroughly raided by Astrologian.

PICTOMANCER (A.K.A. Artist, Painter, Ink Mage, etc.) PROS: As I mentioned under Gambler, raiding FFVI has been a solid move, and Relm Arrowny's power set deserves a less-buggy reinterpretation. Also Ink Mages are the only common enemy in the Heroes' Gauntlet that doesn't match a job we have available. Also Yoshi P's TMNT shirt at the first fanfest may have been hinting at Leonardo's dual swords and a Ninja's scouting armor sets for Viper, but it could also have been a reference to the Renaissance Masters that the Turtles were named after. He's clever like that. CONS: The only reason this isn't my #1 guess without hesitation is that pesky Green Mage emblem. I have a theory though that Green Mage and Pictomancer might get combined and have the "green" be about painting landscapes, in which case it might also be borrowing from Geomancer turf a little. Who knows!

PUPPETMASTER PROS: Also on the short list of FFXI jobs that haven't been reinterpreted. Mammets are a big part of this setting and there would be a lot of cool aesthetics to potentially draw on. CONS: Pet jobs. I just can't see them ever doing another full Pet Job. Also the FFXI version was a blend of technology and martial arts, not a caster per se.

TIME MAGE PROS: One of the missing FF classics, with a lot more potential spells than you expect, since it also usually deals with Space Magic. CONS: Haste powers and traits became a huge balance headache in FFXI and I can't see them rushing back into that. Also, once again, Astrologian already swiped several key ideas.

#ffxiv #ff14 #final fantasy xiv #final fantasy 14 #Fanfest 2024 #Caster DPS speculation

[shuttershocky]

Re:your recent post about Eyjafjalla breaking Core Casters forever: You know, I knew that Eyja and Ch'alter were busted in theory.

I did not understand how busted until I got spooked by Ch'alter on the Gavialter banner, E2'ed her, took her and a support Eyjafjalla into IS2, and instantly got my first win. Holy shit. They just destroy everything. I'd never even killed Lucian before, let alone clear the stage, while sitting on some really strong DPS ops like Pozy and Kal'tsit. Then these two come along and delete him in two skill cycles.

I'm just...at a loss for words.

The worst part about Ch'en Alter isn't that she's broken (we've got a lot of broken operators), it's that she's boring, the worst crime one can do in a video game.

Her Skill 3 is completely busted unconditionally. It expands her range. it applies a slow. it hits twice in one shot. It has an armor debuff. It uses ammo so you don't even have to time its skill duration. Ch'en can randomly shoot for free without spending ammo. Its SP cost is reasonable. It is a skill with no true weaknesses and makes her first and second skill appear completely worthless, at least even Silverash sees occasional S2 meme usage from the ridiculous survivability it gives him.

There's no real play to be made other than pressing Ch'en's S3 and watching her go to town. Surtr drains her own health which leads to meme clears with 8 medics around one Surtr like a TF2 Octo-Heavy. Mlynar doesn't attack or even block unless his skill is active. Reed the Flameshadow's S2 has the highest Arts damage potential in the game, IF you happen to have two operators you can drop in to "sandwich" an enemy between them, making her absurd damage potential conditional.

Even more important to game design than balance is fun factor, and something being fun in a game requires some level of interactivity or decision-making, and Ch'en the Holungday doesn't offer any of that while her regular form offers plenty.

#Arknights

[i-can-even-burn-salad]

Halls of Torment

[ID: The name of the game, Halls of Torment, in big, red letters next to a sword fighter and a person with a bow, surrounded by a horde of undead monsters. End ID]

A while ago, I couldn't scroll 5 min on reddit without coming across Vampire Survivors. Luckily, I really don't like vampires, so I blissfully ignored it, until the day I found this one instead. Now the problem is, I really do like Diablo, and that's how I lost several weeks of my life.

I mean, it's obviously not Diablo. But the artstyle reminds me of Diablo II, which was one of my first video games, with the isometric graphics and character select and flashy spells and big health bubble.

[ID: Main screen of the game, with the Halls of Torment logo above 9 characters standing around a large campfire. Text below reads Choose a hero! The rest of the area is blacked out. End ID]

I don't usually play roguelikes/lites, so I can't compare much, but the game consists of 30 min runs (+ menu time, + final boss) through procedurally generated maps with waves of monsters to be defeated.

When you start out, you are a warrior and have nothing, and the amount of different upgrades you can unlock is a bit overwhelming. There are:

New classes

New maps

Stat boosts

Items

Abilities

Traits

Potions

Everything is tied to achievements, and most of it has to be paid with gold. Beat a certain boss, unlock the next character or map. Deal a certain amount of damage with an ability, unlock a new upgrade for that ability.

Find and save the wellkeeper, and you unlock the ability to send the gear you find up one at a time, where you can purchase it with gold. Find and save the alchemist, then gather potion ingredients and then retrieve (and purchase) bottles to unlock potions that allow you to reroll traits, abilities, and gear, or to remove traits from the selection from this run, or even apply them twice.

[ID: Level up screen, showing a selection of 4 different traits that will increase movement speed, crit chance, area or block strength. Next to it is a box with several different potion options. End ID]

Does it have some annoyances? Sure. The randomness of the abilities and traits can be a pain when hunting for certain achievements — one is to inflict 100k slow stacks, for which I wanted two certain abilities and their upgrades. If I don't get them that run, tough luck, 30 min wasted.

The game is in early access, so things still change regularly, and your overpowered favorite item might get a nerf, or the requirements for an achievement you almost reached change. For a while, I also had some crashes with some of the new skills, annoyingly after 20 min of a run, but those were quickly fixed.

[ID: The game screen, with the left side showing a round health bubble and a blue experience bar, and the right side showing all active abilities, blessings, the agony IV (4) rank, as well as gold, monsters slain, and remaining time. In the middle, the map is basically covered in monsters, with many bright red debuff effects over their heads, as well as fire, and floating damage numbers. End ID]

The effects can be a bit much. You have pretty much every variant of flashing, blinking, glowing, moving lights. Luckily, a lot of the effects can be turned off, and a lot of the abilities you don't have to use ever again once you unlock their achievement.

There is a demo available, but the worst offenders are pretty late unlocks. One item, for example, is a pair of boots that charge while moving and then send out a circular shockwave.

[ID: The item stash, showing the equipped gear of the Sorceress, with 4 fields for loadouts below, and all available items to the right. They're sorted in categories of helmets, amulets, rings, armor, boots and gloves. A note below reads: You can buy new items from the Wellkeeper, once you've retrieved them through the well. End ID]

The maps aren't spectacular, but visually very different, and two of them have fun gimmicks. Some of the quests/unlocks require specialized builds, some brute force, and you can always farm more gold to unlock all items. One thing I love, there isn't only one valid build. I was able to kick ass on pretty much every class.

Watching my weakling warrior grow from dying in 5 min to standing still killing everything on screen with his hands tied behind his back was very satisfying. So far, I got 70 hours out of this, and the last level isn't even out yet. I played all of them on the steam deck, which it fully supports, even if the text is a bit small, and the overcrowded effect mess severely affects the performance.

Best 5 Euro I've ever spent.

#salad-games #Halls of Torment

[matrioshka]

I played through the pixel remasters! Here’s my ranking

A little prelude - while I have some interest in RPG systems and have tried to get into JRPGs many times, I’ve rarely finished these games start to finish. I get annoyed pretty easily by a lot of the things I’m sure you’ve heard brought up before and I’m easily overwhelmed by progression systems.

This list might seem a bit weird but it’s purely based on my subjective experience with the games - I probably didn’t appreciate story moments much if I was feeling generally frustrated with game, and I might feel differently if I ever go back and play them again.

2 > 1 > 6 > 5 > 3 > 4

FF1 

I ended up enjoying this game a lot. You get a really good sense of progression (probably because the PR plays a lot faster than the famicom version? 30 hours of gametime cut down to 10 hours makes the game feel pretty tight!). So many different modes of transportation, and you unlock them at a pretty steady pace. I like how the world opens up, and getting a boat or creating a new canal to sail out of feels a lot cooler than finding a key or something. Some things were a bit rough starting out - I don’t really like how debuffs work in these games, and when you use them and they don’t work it’s not really clear why, whether you got unlucky or the target is immune. I don’t think the combat is ever really engaging on its own, and the dungeon crawling is this odd mix of being grueling and also kind of trivial with quick saves. It’s mostly overarching progression that’s fun. 

The story was something I ended up enjoying a lot - it feels really creative and ambitious. A lot of the story beats I can imagine being little D&D adventures, you know, but there are some moments that really stood out to me. A kid in a town says they saw a meteor land in a waterfall. You go to cave behind the waterfall and find a broken down robot. Later, you go to the hidden city in the sky and realize this is where it fell from! It’s really cool foreshadowing while being evocative. This one moment and revelation has stood out to me more than any other moment in these 6 games and I’m not completely sure why. Maybe I ended up getting a lot out of the storytelling with this game because I chose to view everything through the lens of it being an NES game, but that’s me!

FF2 

This game has really stuck with me. It’s been a year since I started playing these games and I still like thinking about it, and when I finished the game I wanted to talk about it with everyone I could. The story landed with me like none of the games after really did - you get this really profound sense of sacrifice and loss running through the whole game. Every tragic moment is executed really well, especially considering that this being made for the same system as 1. I think it’s partially because of the text limitation that gives the game a sense of restraint and focus, but talking to a child who was waiting for their town hero to come back and seeing them realize that he never will hit me really hard. The rotating party member mechanic ended up working great throughout the game and I like how the designers were intentional with how each party member was designed - Minwu is a great character to have at the beginning, as a powerful support character that will make fighting a lot easier without killing everything for you. Gordon, however, as a character struggling with his courage and living up to his brother, is kind of dead weight when you first get him. 

Like the first game, I might have enjoyed this game’s story more because of how I engaged with it. The gameplay, battle to battle, is not any more fun than FF1, but I enjoyed the sense of customization and growth. Casting spells feels better because even when they miss you know you’re getting better with them and it doesn’t seem like a wasted turn. When I ended the game I had a lot of ideas about how I might have set up the characters differently, which is a good feeling. Also, there was a moment in the game I found really funny - you find these random, empty ‘trap’ rooms throughout a bunch of the game’s dungeons. Late into the game, you go to the dragoon castle, which has no random encounters, and it also has these random empty rooms. It feels like a gag? I don’t know.

FF3

I really enjoyed the scale of this game. The sense of progression is great, and I loved exploring all of the initial island bit by bit before revealing the wider world. This game has fun story moments, and the cutscenes are definitely more animated. The overarching adventure didn’t end up really sticking with me - maybe I would appreciate it more if I revisited the game, but not many of the emotional beats landed. (One of my favorite moments was finding the retired Dark Knight town, which is really sad and kind of sweet in concept and is a really good example of Final Fantasy’s charm).

The class system is neat, but my favorite thing about it is that the class designs are visually very cute. I don’t know if I actually enjoyed playing around with it all that much in practice - I would get used to it as the games went on but I didn’t like rearranging my characters over and over again and I didn’t feel a desire to experiment more than necessary. This is a weird case where I think I enjoyed the previous games’ gameplay more because I had to think about it less, which doesn’t seem like a good trait for a game to have!

FF4 

I really don’t like the ATB system, and this kind of spoils the rest of the SNES games. My experience with it is harshest in 4 because it was my first time with it, which is probably unfair to this particular game. But it gave combat a really odd and unsatisfying feeling, where there are moments where the system rushes you and moments where you’re waiting for things to happen, and the way the system interacts with the combat animations gives everything a start-and-stop pacing. The thing I like the least about the combat in these games is the general combat speed (how long it takes to go through a turn of combat, the animation speed for each character, etc) and 4 makes it a lot worse.

This game has some great setpieces and story moments. The way characters move around gives all of the cutscenes a lot of energy, it’s very fun. The story didn’t end up resonating with me very much - the storyline you have with Cecil, as well as similar arcs in 6, feel to me like the most simple version of this kind of “morally complex” character arc. There’s a feeling I get when I play certain games or watch certain shows where I think, this would seem really deep and revelatory if I was a teenager. Sometimes that feeling is endearing, sometimes it’s not! I enjoyed the presentation a lot, there was a lot of fun spectacle, but it didn’t leave any kind of impression on me.

FF5 

I liked the story in this one more. There seems to be a pretty big benefit to the restrained party size - lots of variety in gameplay, but characters get more time to develop interconnected bonds over the course of the entire game rather than have that development spread out. And each character gets a lot of their own emotional beats. (The moment where Faris’ dragon dies really hits hard. Really good presentation, it keeps getting better!) I don’t think any of the characters are all that complex but I liked spending so much time with them. None of the funny moments did anything for me but I think this game more or less strikes a pretty good tone. The overarching story gets less interesting to me as it goes along, though.

A big problem I had with these games, particular 4 onward, is that the process of trial and error is kind of broken. I don’t necessarily think it’s bad to have to try things out in order to discover what works, but these games are kind of bad at making it clear when you’ve made an error and when you’ve done something that works. Did I miss or is the boss immune to this? Does the boss just attack a lot or is it counterattacking, and if so, does that mean I’m meant to find some other way to hurt it or do I just push through the damage? The liquid flame boss was super egregious to me because I repeatedly came to the wrong conclusion about how the boss works due to the shifting mechanic. In most of these fights there is *a* logic to how the boss works, you only feel that logic in retrospect - it’s not like acting on your intuition or trying to apply real-world logic is going to work in most cases, so the moments where it’s necessary feel more like point & click puzzles than creative combat challenges. 

This is really weird, right? I enjoyed the gameplay in 1 & 2 way more than this game even though they’re infinitely less complex, and in retrospect the reason why I enjoyed them more than this game is that it was much harder to get confused by bosses with no mechanics.

The class mechanics were fun. I played around with it a lot more than I did with 3.

FF6

Really good presentation! I’d played a bit of chrono trigger before starting this one and so I couldn’t help but compare, and this is not nearly as well put together visually or in terms of spectacle, but it’s still fun. The first half of the game feels almost like a (kind of random?) collection of fun scenarios and set pieces connected by cave crawls. The humor still didn’t do anything for me but the story has a nice mix of goofy stuff and serious plot - out of all of these games it feels like the first game to successfully emulate the feeling of a fun adventure comic or cartoon aimed at teens, and it reminds me a lot of the kind of games that I got really into as a teenager.

By this point I’d come to terms a bit more with ATB. After 6 games though I can’t say I’ve come to a point where I enjoy the combat - it’s mostly something I push through in stride. The progression is fun - I don’t know how I feel about espers and I’m kind of glad I only realized how the stat boosts worked until the second half of the game because I would have wasted a lot of time on it earlier if I knew I could have been optimizing it. My biggest revelation by far though was that, rather than me not understanding how the class mechanics work, most of them are actually just useless and I can just ignore them. It’s odd because there are definitely times where the game definitely, definitely does want you to use them (like with Celes’ runic ability), and it seems to make sense that if there’s a unique action to a character that must be key to how you use them, right? I don’t know.

Overall, I feel good having played these games. I’ve heard a lot about them over the years - I can’t say I’ve gone into them blind, even though I tried to take each game on their own terms. As much as I’ve complained here, I have to say that I’ve played a bit of 7, 9, 10, 13, and 15, and I even mentioned Chrono Trigger - but I haven’t beaten any of those games! There’s something about these ones that made me want to see them through. They're special!

#final fantasy

[kapanbenernya]

Back 4 Blood -- It is Now Literally Left for Dead

As I have touched in this post, this is one of the games I still play, and for good reason. It has huge replayability, it's easy to pick up, it can fit all of my friends, and most importantly: it's fun. Yes you heard it right here folks, I like Back 4 Blood despite being aware of all it's faults and imperfections because it's still fun. And because of that, I will spend what free time I have to talk about this game and what I appreciate from it.

First, let's talk about the apocalypse

As we all know from the Left 4 Dead comparisons everyone throws around, the setting to Back 4 Blood is a plague apocalypse. Notice that I use the word "plague" instead of the straight "zombie" apocalypse because there are almost no zombie apocalypse in mass media anymore. Ever since the year 2010-something everyone just shied away from it like last month's fast fashion.

"LOOK AT HIM STILL USING CONVENTIONAL UNDEAD ZOMBIES! LOOK AT HOW MUCH OF A SIMPLETON HE IS!"

And with the traditional undead zombies declining in popularity, rose the new hotness that I can only describe as scientifically induced zombiefication, in which the "zombie" is caused by a scientific phenomenon like fungus, virus, bacterial infection, etc. Popular examples including 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead, and of course, Left 4 Dead. In the world of Back 4 Blood, the cause of the zombie mutations is an entity called the Worm which is said to proliferate in the waters and could mutate human flesh into all sorts of malformed abominations. And it's up to us, the cleaners of Fort Hope to thin their numbers and save the future. Or at least our group's future

But who is our group? And what are the Cleaners?

As mentioned before, we play as Cleaners. Essentially a ragtag group of survivors from Fort Hope sent out to execute missions such as community outreach, resupplying, and more often than not, blowing shit up. The characters available to us ranges from a soldier, a doctor, a delinquent, a prepper, two war veterans, and two nutjobs each with their own unique craziness. The variation is more than just salad dressing mind you, as each character comes with their own character and party skills. Such as the doctor that affects how well you can heal and how resistant the party is to long-term health damage, The prepper that can somehow turn the zombies into pinatas of ammo and grenades, and a young man whose only purpose is to annoy me every time he opens his fucking mouth.

"No seriously, Jesus Christ, just shut the fuck up Evangelo"

On top of the skills that comes with each unique character, you also have to build your own personal skill with the Skill Card system. It's essentially buffs in the form of cards that you form into a 15-card deck filled with multiple buffs and/or debuffs that will combine to fill a certain role within the team. The cards are unlocked via an in-game currency called copper (boy am I glad they didn't charge us micro-transactions for those) and you earn copper by playing the game. The system sounds pretty okay on paper, since you unlock your skills quite organically and slowly build yourself up as you play. But as you know things that sounds alright on paper might just be fairy farts in the real world, and the skill card system is no exception. The downside is that the skill cards are unlocked via packs that will randomly spawn on the shop. So if you're in a hurry to unlock certain cards, you can take a cactus up the arse and get fucked.

Wait. We've veered too much into gameplay territory now. Let me actually switch the topic to gameplay

It's no secret that the gameplay is very much similar to Left 4 Dead, so any attempt to explain the gameplay is a waste of time because everyone knows Left 4 Dead at this point. Its simple formula of "move from the starting point to the finish zone while dodging obstacles in the form of zombies" has been tried and tested for so many years now that it can almost vote. Attentive readers might have realized that I didn't put the words "killing zombies" in there because it wasn't really the main objective in L4D. They're more nuisance in the form of very bitey assholes, not unlike a teething baby that just learned to run.

"Yeah, not so tough now are you?"

Aside from them however there also the special infected that are so famous that they don't need an introduction. What I need to emphasize however is how good their designs are. I'm talking about each of them are so visually and audibly distinct, and how their roles are so synergistic with each other that they are still downright terrifying to face even with a tight 4 man group.

As the self-proclaimed "spiritual successor" of Left 4 Dead, and how the tagline for the game is "From the creators of Left 4 Dead", one would rightly assume that the game would at least maintain such quality. A thing that they unfortunately, did not manage to do with this game. Dishonorable mention goes to the special infected that can be very hard to discern unless the game spells it out for me. Not to mention that their roles aren't very distinct from one another that they all just blur out into "collective nuisance" for me. Overall, such a letdown from the people that made L4D.

Before we go to the final say, let me list the good things I really like from this game

Oh my god, it's the weapon system. The way the weapons handle, the customizations, the brutal melee weapons, the satisfying OOMPH some of the weapons have, and aiming down the sights? Good lord killing zombies haven't been this cathartic since COD Zombies. This is one of the reason why I think this game is still fun despite all it's shortcomings. The other reason? Nothing else except the fact that it's very much competent. It already has a satisfying gameplay loop that could carry the game by itself. All we need it just for the devs to keep this putrid ball of cadaver rolling.

And as we are now in the current future of 2024, we know that the Developers have pulled out like a couple of teenagers fucking on a risky day. This post by the Developers (almost exactly a year ago, by the way) has cemented the death of this game. The lack of community modding means that the game will stay the same as it was until the servers inevitably close. It truly has been the final nail in the undead coffin. The devs did say that they were gonna "be Back, bigger, bolder and better than ever!", but seeing how they treated this promising IP? Might as well get the phone ready to call CPS

In Brief

I'd still play it. No matter how much shit the community says about this game, I'd still play it given the chance. I still truly believe it's a competent game that just need a few fixes. I dare the developers to get off their ass and actually put community modding and/or map maker to the game. If that happens, I'm willing to bet one of my testicles that the game will re-flourish and we're going to start seeing a lot of new fan-made content and fixes it sorely needed.

But we will not get it of course. Not because the devs are lazy or incompetent, but I'm thinking it's because there is no money to be made in implementing it. We still remember the backlash about "Paid mods" back in 2015 so monetization is a very tricky issue. Apart from that, the devs will just look greedy by doing so. And trust me, Turtle Rock Studios cannot afford to tarnish their reputation any more than this. Not after Evolve

22/02/2024

#left 4 dead #left 4 dead 2 #l4d2 #back 4 blood #pc games #xboxone #ps5games

[demifiendrsa]

Street Fighter 6 Showcase

World Tour Gameplay & Avatar Battle Trailer

Year 1 Character Reveal Trailer

Demo Trailer

A demo for Street Fighter 6 is now available for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, and will launch for Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam on April 26, 2023. Additionally, Capcom announced that Rashid, A.K.I., Ed, and Akuma will make up the game’s first year of post-launch downloadable content characters, due out in summer 2023, fall 2023, winter 2024, and spring 2024, respectively.

Latest details

Welcome to World Tour

We showed off an all-new location in World Tour called Nayshall, a developing nation tucked away in a remote corner of Asia. You’ll meet iconic Masters and experience the world of Street Fighter with your own custom avatar as you hit the streets of Metro City, Nayshall, and other locations around the world in this new single-player story mode.

We introduced a number of RPG elements as well. You can consume items and food during battle or at eateries to recover Vitality, acquire buffs, or inflict debuffs. As you level up your avatar, you’ll earn Skill Points to spend on a Skill Tree to further customize your tailor-made move set.

Become a student of your favorite Masters – including all 18 launch characters – by Enrolling in their style and learning their Special Moves! Increase your bonds with Masters by giving them presents and completing Missions. Combine all of this to unlock new cutscenes as you form personal connections with these legendary fighters.

Show Off Your Style with Custom Avatar Battles

Build up your unique character in World Tour and then head into Battle Hub to join custom Avatar Battles against other players online! Use your avatar with Dhalsim’s fighting style, Zangief’s Screw Piledriver, and Ken’s Hadoken, or any other combination of abilities you’ve learned in World Tour to show off your own personal fighting style. Be wary because your opponent might have come up with an even wilder palette of moves.

Innovation in Accessibility

Street Fighter 6 is committed to supporting increased accessibility with innovative sound design that tells you how far away you are from your opponent, the height level of attacks, whether an attack is a cross-up, how much Drive Gauge remains, and more.

For newcomers and veterans alike, there are fleshed out Tutorials, Character Guides, and Combo Trials, which provide a solid foundation for each character.

Our third Control Type to go along with Classic and Modern is Dynamic, where you can unleash a character’s flashy moves by pressing the Auto-Attack button and having AI assist your attacks and combos!

Classic Fighting Game Experiences with Some Extra Spice

Arcade Mode is a single-player mode where you’ll face off against the computer and learn more about each fighter’s story. Complete Arcade Mode with each character to unlock and view beautiful illustrations in the Gallery. Your scores can also be uploaded to online leaderboards!

Play against other players or the computer by creating a team of up to 5 characters and customize the Match Format to your liking such as Single Elimination, Doubles, and Teams.

Extreme Battle introduces rulesets you’ll need to follow, along with fun features like Running Bulls or our own special version of hot potato. Play in Extreme Battle to learn more about the basics of the game or to unleash pure havoc at a party.

Play online against other players by creating a Custom Room. The four virtual cabinets in the room can be set to One on One, Extreme Battle, or Training. Custom Rooms can now include up to 16 players at a time and makes Online Training and Match Spectating easier than ever before!

Compete Against the World

Ranked Matches return and we’ve taken steps to reduce the pressure of losing a match in certain Ranks. First, we’ve added a one-time Rank-down protection feature for those in Diamond rank and below. Next, Rookies will no longer lose League Points upon defeat to encourage online play. Finally, Iron-Gold and Master rank players will not incur League demotions. Each character also has their own individual Rank, so trying new characters in Ranked Matches is more approachable than ever.

Wait—There’s More!

As a celebration of the entire Street Fighter series, we’re introducing the Battle Damage Feature! During fights, characters will get sweatier, develop cuts and bruises, along with other signs of heated battle appearing on their faces and clothing. This is only available in certain offline modes and can be turned off in Settings.

We showed off how players can create a Club in the Battle Hub to play with friends and find like-minded players. Customize your Club emblem and design a uniform that only your Club’s members can show off.

Get Ready for Year One with Four New Characters!

Rashid of the Turbulent Wind, who debuted in Street Fighter V, returns in summer 2023. The enigmatic A.K.I. struts into the roster in fall 2023. Ed, the Young Commander from Street Fighter V, also strikes back in early winter 2024. And finally, the legend himself, the beast, the transcendent Akuma will rage into Street Fighter 6 in spring 2024! All four of these characters will be included as Masters in World Tour following their release and are also included in the Deluxe and Ultimate Editions of Street Fighter 6.

Demo Available Now

Power up your PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 4 and play the demo now! Players on Xbox Series X|S or PC will have access starting on April 26 at 12am PT. You can learn basic battle mechanics from the Tutorial and practice Luke & Ryu’s moves and fighting style in the Character Guide. Dip a toe into the first few moments of World Tour where you can experiment with the deep avatar creation feature. Custom avatars can be transferred over to the full game on the same platform once it releases!

Street Fighter 6 will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam on June 2, 2023.

#Street Fighter 6 #Street Fighter VI #SFVI #SF6 #Street Fighter #Capcom #video game #PS5 #Xbox Series #Xbox Series X #Xbox Series S #PS4 #PC #Steam #long post #late post

[peemanne]

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (or just yakuza 7) Review: My Life is Like a Video Game

Hey, it's Pee again! So there's this site called Backloggd that's basically just letterboxd for video games and I've been writing a bunch of reviews there, with a bunch of longer ones for RGG games because of course so. I've got one currently cooking for 0 and in the meanwhile, I've decided to put them up here too, for archiving or whatever. I also get to put silly captions on them now. So with that out of the way, here's the first big review I did: Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

Also might as well plug my backloggd in here if you wanna see the rest of the stuff I've done hehehehehe

This review is spoiler-free! Reviewed on Jul 12, 2023 Completed on the Playstation 4 Rating: 10/10 (5 Stars)

(spoilers you're gonna be seeing perfect scores for a bit i can't tell you just how much i love this franchise)

if you play the dub one of the first things you'll hear is the word "cumstain"

Very necessary "review funnies" aside, I adore Yakuza 7. I don't even typically like turn-based RPGS, but Yakuza: Like a Dragon had me in a trance that lasted the entire game and then some. Let's talk about the main gameplay first. Even as someone who doesn't have a lot of experience in this genre, even I can tell it's not exactly the deepest out there. The elements system is either more or less just an extra thing or strictly needed depending on where you are in the game, and in both it just feels kinda tacked on. The environmental system with the characters using the stuff around sounds cool on paper, but in reality it's barely utilized because of either DE physics destroying everything your character touches with their pinkie toe, or because you can't reposition your characters to actually pick it up. This is a shame, since it was a really cool way to integrate a big feature from the beat-em-up games. With these being said though, they're ultimately just small nitpicks. The gameplay is still pretty fun with the MP management, the perfect block system encouraging more active gameplay, and the various buffs and debuffs you can utilize. And the main thing that makes the gameplay here is the sheer spectacle of it all. Ichiban's imagination cranks everything up to 11, and if I'm being honest, that justifies the gameplay switch by itself. Yakuza has always had it's goofy elements, but amplifying it tenfold to differentiate your new protagonist was a great way to introduce this little soft reboot. Thanks to the Job system, there's countless amounts of these different, joyfully imaginative attacks. There's a chef job which has you whacking your opponents with frying pans and throwing kitchen utensils at them. The mage archetype in this game is "Homeless Guy", who uses pigeon swarms and breathes fire by drinking then spiting out alcohol. If you do the business minigame, you gain access to an attack that has you pimp slap the enemy with excessive amounts of cash. And the heat actions are the peak of all of this insanity. I was actually introduced to this series as a whole through a gif of Essence of Orbital Laser with the caption "I don't agree with your opinion". It gets very crazy, very fast, even for this series, and I love all of it. And I must reiterate, I'm not usually a turn-based RPG guy. But I could tell this entire game is just a sweetly written love letter to JRPGs. Even with me only understanding some of the references, I could feel the love that RGG put into this game. And if you're someone who's already an RPG guy, this love letter's gonna get even sweeter for you.

And then there's the story. Yakuza 7 has, in my opinion, the second best story in the entire series, second only to JE. It has a very strong emotional core, which made me cry a few times throughout the story, and finally had me BAWLING at 12:30AM when I played the finale. The themes of fatherhood and found family really come through here. You feel for Ichiban, and you root for him the entire time, as he goes through struggle after struggle. And the characters themselves are amazing, even for the high standards for this series. Ichiban is amazing, but his party members are too. The main 4 bounce off of each other super well and I love their dynamics. And the other 2 party members (no spoilers) have pretty distinct personalities as well which compliment the main 4 some more. Eri is also there, I guess. I like to imagine she's the camerawoman for all the cutscenes. Man, poor girl. The thing that really makes these character dynamics are the little party chats and table talks. They feel like a real friend group with all this really cutely-written banter. I actually just sat down and listened to all the table talks one day and I just had this big dumb grin on my face the entire time. I care so much for these characters just from the main story, but all the side stuff just made me really fall for them.

Let's talk about the rest of the side stuff next. This series is known for it's fantastic side content, but Yakuza 7 goes the extra mile for it. This title's jampacked with both new and old minigames to enjoy. Dragon Kart serves as the "main big minigame" for this one, and it's a fun distraction with all the customization, tracks, and the storyline. The Karaoke selection is strong in this one, which is probably what you wanna hear. Mahjong's not required for completion in this one, therefore I don't have to hear about people complaining about it, which is a plus. I like how the bonuses here for completing the minigames are helpful stat boosts for Ichi, which encourages playing different stuff around the map(s) without it feeling strictly needed. The substories in 7 are pretty good. Not the series' strongest, I'd say, but there's a decent selection here. A lot of them do a good job at characterizing Ichiban, and some of them have the funniest "goofy substory fights" in the series. You can fight a giant out-of-control roomba, a chimp riding a crane, and a "Piss Wizard". The poundmates system is also a really cool incentive for doing them, and has the bonus of reminding you of all the cool stuff you did while you're in combat. Also also, it serves as a "friends we made along the way" thing, which is pretty funny to think about.

Let's finish things off with the soundtrack. 7's OST focuses mostly on electronic music, moreso than the other games. This might be against some player's tastes, but personally, I think it fits really well. It gives a sense of this new generation, and of passing the torch while still keeping some of the sound of the old one. There are some amazing tracks on here that come out of this. To give some examples, Receive You the Hyperactive and Rolling Eyes Fall Down the Dragon Wall are some of the best tracks in the whole series, embracing the past while weaving in a new, crazy spin on it. Tracks like War Maker, Answer From Geomijul, and appassionato are basically rave music. Brutality and Triplet after Triplet are some very heavy sounding tracks which fit their respective boss fights perfectly. Enter the Tiger is a very underrated track and has a pretty unique sound compared to the rest of the OST, almost like it's straight out of a Hong Kong kung fu movie's score. And ism is a beautiful sendoff to it all, and a fantastic final boss theme. The soundtrack's full of bangers, that all fit their respective places well. Fun little tidbit, the track "From Today I'm a Dragon Racer" was meant for a the third fight with Ozaki in Chapter 11 of Judgment, but was scrapped, then reused here, so now the funny racing minigame just has this super badass main theme song.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is just an amazing game, and another fantastic addition to the Yakuza series. This was a wild direction to take the franchise in, but in my opinion, that risk definitely paid off. Fantastic story, fun and imaginative gameplay, lovable characters, a boatload of side content, and a bopping soundtrack. It has it all. I cannot overstate how much I love this game, especially as a fan who's already familiar with the past games. I can't wait for Gaiden and LAD8. It's definitely a great time to be a Yakuza fan right now. Even if you're someone like me who wouldn't consider themselves an RPG fan, I would highly recommend giving Yakuza: Like a Dragon a try.

#rgg #ryu ga gotoku #yakuza #like a dragon #yakuza like a dragon #yakuza 7 #ichiban kasuga #ramblings of the pee-man #game review

[thefirstknife]

I feel like the descriptions of the other supers is willfully oversimplified given we're talking about the fantasy end of things. Hunters have a bow that lays traps, that's pretty Hunter to me. The other part of the Hunter identity has always been Cowboy, so a six shooter, especially one with a fan fire animation, absolutely fulfills that. Warlocks, i'll give on because their identity is more elaborate in ways that can't totally be shown in game, however I'd still argue they get at least close enough for the Wizard part, summoning raw energy rather than filtering it through tools like the other two classes do. Titans already have something that, even if not Literally laying out plans ahead of time, makes you feel like that "front line tactician" in the form of Bannershield and Ward of Dawn. Sunbreaker is still a roaming super and yet feels more interesting than punch-supers if only for the simple fact that you have a weapon that elevates the brutalism from Hulk to Warrior, especially in its Burning Maul alternate. It's really less the effect in gameplay, and more the presentation, and even then I think a different presentation can in turn inspire more fun gameplay.

True, I definitely oversimplified, but I also feel like people are oversimplifying Titan supers a lot. Your breakdown is much better and shows that there's plenty of different fantasies baked into the class.

I'm pretty sure Fists is still here only because it's a remnant of the ancient days of Destiny and just kinda stayed here with barely any updates on how it works. And that is the only mindless punch super that has nothing else going for it. All other Titan supers are different. You'd think with how people are treating it, it's as if 90% Titan supers are just different colour punches.

I think the simplification is coming just from the visual idea of having an element on your fists and using a button to make punching motions, but that ignores everything else that Behemoth and Berserker are doing. Also I guess the major issue is because Behemoth and Berserker released so close together with no alternatives that we're used to with Light subclasses. I feel like viewing it in that superficial way and ignoring the effects in gameplay for purely presentation is counterproductive. If we do that, then my oversimplification of other classes would also stand. But when you think about it, it really doesn't.

Weapon-based super is also not a Titan fantasy primarily; it's a Hunter one. All Hunter supers are based on pulling weapons out of the element (gun, bow, staff, knives, kamas and now rope dart). Titan has a hammer and maybe shield sometimes in some circumstances. Titan is definitely half tool/half energy class with a high emphasis on melee combat and a lot of abilities that give benefits for melee. Naturally, supers will follow that and we see it with strand gameplay with how seemlessly it blends the melee charges into a super for maximum movement and battlefield control.

But as I said, I would definitely love to see more. There are a lot of activities where I am really not encouraged to go in with a close range build, which I think is more of an issue with the activity and enemy design than anything else. Because I genuinely enjoy the close range builds on Titan and the gameplay loop of it. Being able to feel like I'm leading the charge and to be indestructible in combat is the reason I hop on my Titan. Unfortunately, with a lot of bosses floating in the air out of reach, various buffs and debuffs in raids which make it impossible to move, stomp mechanics, map sizes and other stuff, it can be really tough to take that type of a build into anything but strikes.

I really hope that the mobility and damage resistance + crowd control on strand will mitigate some of these issues. I feel like a lot of the disappointment is built on the idea that close range builds are simply not "meta" and the idea that they will be useless. Titan mains don't want to be forced to switch off the newest toy because it's not good in a GM or raid while the other two are enjoying theirs. That's one thing I am in full agreement with everyone who is upset, because we know how the game plays and thinking that you won't be able to use strand outside of messing around in Dares of Eternity can be a bummer before the thing is even out. So hopefully the utility side of strand will be helpful.

#destiny 2 #lightfall #strand #ask #btw i don't know if i sound angry or not HFKSJHFKJS I am not #i enjoy this discussion as long as people are not being nasty to developers. we're good otherwise! #also why i write a lot about it lmao #actually thinking now how sentinel shield is a mix of both ranged and melee. that would be cool to see again #you can throw the shield and it bounces and there's even an exotic to help with that. but you also have to go in and punch #they said strand will also have some sort of a ranged option though we don't know how that will work or feel #we'll just have to wait and see. but once again i am hoping for a second super at some point. two per subclass is peak for me #i switch between supers often depending on what i'm doing so i would love to be able to do that with stasis and strand as well #i would use stasis hunter so much more in GMs if not for the super being locked to the tornado which randomly tracks the wrong target #the amount of times.... i wanted to super the boss or a champion to save my life. and it went to a random dreg on the side of the map #super frustrating and unreliable. would love to see a second super

[lilyblackdrawside]

Komachi has been modded into Slay the Spire for a long time now. When I saw her, I really liked the ideas behind her. She has a bunch of potentially fun mechanics and the flavour is great. I finally got her through all the ascensions, so I���m going to talk about her. Long post ahead.

She's quite unbalanced and, unlike many other mod chars, feels very underpowered in a terrible way. It all comes down to her basic cards:

Her basic Defends are 4/6 instead of 5/7 and her basic Strikes are 5/7 instead of 6/9. This is just miserable. The game is balanced around the basic Defends and Strikes being what they are and messing with them makes everything terrible. Having such weak strikes draws fights out more than you'd think, since you struggle with breaking through block and can at most deal 15 damage with them at the start, instead of 18. Upgrading them is even worse, too. You don't usually want to directly upgrade your Strikes and Defends, but there are a number of events and relics that give random upgrades, so you'll end up with some semi frequently.

Playing her Defends also just feels bad. The one good thing is that a 4 block Defend still gives 3 block when Frail, just like a 5 block one, but using either of these when Frail never feels good anyway. You have to hope to get some at least decent cards in the first few fights and even then you'll still constantly be bleeding health because your damage isn't what is being expected and you can't defend yourself as well as is expected.

All of her issues come down to these cards being weak.

I should probably go into the basics of her character. She borrows the orb system of The Defect. Her orbs are spirits, which inflict 1 random debuff at the start of turn and when "bound" (channeled).

Some cards summon spirits, some "consume" (evoke) them. Consuming a spirit has no immediate effect, but in return you get something when binding them.

Komachi has very little ways of gaining Focus. No relics and just one Rare, which gives 1 Focus for 3/4 turns for 1 cost. She can't naturally gain Artifact, but has a card that cleansies debuffs, so that and the Clockwork Souvenir can be used to keep the buff.

However, 3 or 4 turns are usually just fine anyway.

It is quite potent, since it doubles the effect of her spirit triggers, but no dealbreaker.

The set of Bound cards already delivers Komachi's three best cards, and a number of runner-ups.

Bound Lonely, Earth and Sinner Spirit are enough to build an entire deck on. I've done it a number of times. Lonely goes to 0 cost when upgraded, Earth gives 5 block per and counts Dexterity per spirit. Sinner is Komachi's best damage card. I'll go into Karma a bit later.

Fellow Traveler is also quite good.

Human Spirit Bassing By, Bound Child Spirit, Modesty and Bound Floating Spirits are pretty good, Human Spirit especially early on where you'll be glad for any extra effects you can get for "free".

Floating goes to X+1 on Upgrade. It's the same as her basic Bound either way, just more flexible.

Komachi has a few cards that work quite well with Chemical X, so it's a worthwhile pickup.

Offerings, Bound Greedy Spirits, Faith and Higan Retour are fine. Offerings gives 2 slots when upgraded, Modesty gives 3. Offerings is probably the better card, but I tend to prefer Modesty, if I pick up extra orb slots. I said that Bound Earth and Sinner Spirit are her best cards, but you don't even need extra slots for them to perform incredibly well.

Bound Vengeful Spirit is kinda bad. If it did more damage, then maybe, but binding a spirit usually doesn't give enough of an immediate benefit to justify taking a Strike.

Bound Hungry Spirit is usually not worth it, especially since it suffers terribly from Weak (goes to 2 damage) and has a so-so upgrade (goes to 4), but it has the potential to hit really hard if you can stack some strength. Higan Retour with some Bound Lonely Spirit, extra slots and such can make it really big. It's fun to use.

I've sorted the Consume cards into 3 groups: Good, Situational and Bad.

These evaluations are not just predicated upon the assumtion that you already have the necessary infrastructure to always be able to use their Consume effects, but also that you can sustain enough spirits to fuel Bound Earth and Bound Sinner Spirits. Keeping up the performance of these two is more important than any Consume card could ever be. None of the Consume cards are worth it without their extra effects.

And that is the problem of the Consume cards and all of their synergies. You need a lot of specific parts to make them work and even then they'll be just alright.

Double Cut and Wide Swing are good. 12 damage "for 1"is good and 9 aoe "for 1" is also good. Good for Komachi standards anyway. Wide Swing being single-target without Consume is insulting, but you take what you can get.

The situational ones either need other consume-related cards or relics (especially of the energy-kind) to be good. Memento, Spirit Energy and Shortcut work well together, Wandering Spirits is a good card on paper, but not in practice and Final Judgment is good early on, but is also a 3-cost so it's just so inflexible.

Full Swing and Ghostly Chains are good with Chemical X. Ghostly Chains is aoe and goes to X+3 on upgrade, which is really good to play on 0, but there are also a lot of cases where it'll be a 0 cost 6 block that eats a spirit and that's just not worth. Especially when you play it when there's no enemy attacks coming, just so it doesn't evaporate.

Spirit Blade does too little. If it was on Bound it'd be an amazing card, but on Consume it's awful. Behead takes way too long to get going, Inner Soul burns you out too quickly, Shorten Life does nothing unless you upgrade it and Ghostly Barrier, Premonitive Strike and Ghostly Slice look really good on paper. Like, these three look so amazing, until you notice that the copy they place doesn't get used up. It goes into your discard (Unless it's an Exhaust or Power in the case of Premonitive Strike).

Ghostly Barrier goes to 9 block on upgrade and I'd love to play an 18 block for 1 and a spirit, but if it starts clogging up my draws with copies of itself that's a different matter altogether.

Ghostly Slice is a similar case, but it has the special property of making boss card drops worse.

Shorten Life is the only Haggle card and all that means is that whenever you Consume its cost goes down by 1, no matter where it is. When upgraded it costs 3 and reduces Max and Current hp of the target by 25%. At that point it looks pretty alright, but it's too much effort for how terrible it is against anything but bosses. and even gainst bosses it's not even outstanding damage.

All in all Consume cards are just not worth it. Between how excellent Bound Sinner and Earth Spirit are and how little value Consume cards have unless you somehow magically conjure their entire support structure they tend to be actively detrimental to have.

Komachi's few gold-related cards are all pretty whatever. She has some that spend gold, she has a bunch that generate it, but since her basics suck you can't afford to use cards that do nothing in the moment. The extra gold caps at 16 per enemy but you'll never stack it that high. It also doesn't count as a debuff (this is important) so there goes that potential utility.

Yesterday's Money deals 9/12 damage but I don't even know if it does so in a single hit or multiples. If it deals 3 hits then it's pretty good, but even if it doesn't, getting 9 damage for 1 on Komachi without setup almost makes you salivate.

Throw Away deals 1 more damage for 2 more gold. Upgraded it throws 8 gold for 16 damage and all in all it looks like it should cost 0 energy. You're already spending gold on it, what's the big deal.

Both cards are identical. They do damage and nothing else.

Collect Tip and Fare are whatever. Fare is at least free and you only have to draw it once and since the extra gold isn't a debuff it even goes through Artifact. Woohoo.

Just like the Consume cards, I've grouped her miscellaneous cards into 3, but this time they look overall quite a bit better.

Fast Break is a really good card with a slightly misleading description. It looks like it'd basically give you the Ice Cream effect for a turn, which wouldn't be worth drawing a card for, but it actually gives you energy equal to how much you generate each turn minus what you spent on Fast Break. So an extra 2 if you're on the default 3/turn. It upgrades to cost 0, at which point it just doubles your energy. This is really good. Fast Break alone can make me not take an energy relic, depending on the size of my deck and how much draw I have.

Flow of the River is just a good card. It upgrades to 5 block, but I'd play it it if gave 0.

Life Swap is situationally amazing but also often does nothing. When it sets an Elite to 12 hp you'll be really happy to have it.

Bound Unseen Spirit is kinda out of place here, but it's pretty much Komachi's best "generic block" card. It isn't here on its own merit, but because of how bad its peers are. More on that later.

I've labeled Change the Route and True Meditation as "Alright". I don't like them, because I don't like either of their effects, but they're not awful. CtR upgrades to cost 0, True Meditation copies the next 2 powers. Komachi has a lot of good powers that you like to stack, but it's just too slow for my liking. A win-more card, but Komachi isn't winning.

The last group are the "Whatever" misc cards. Awaited Rest is an anaologue to a Power that Defect has. It's both better and worse in some ways. The few times I've picked it, it has provided noticeable sustain.

River's Mist is Bound Unseen's big sibling. I don't like picking it, but sometimes you have more energy than you have draw for, sometimes you're just really hurting for any kind of block. It's not a card that you feel good about picking, but it gives more block per energy than Komach's Defends. Pretty sad. The debuffs are fine. I have more to say about her random debuffs later.

Ease Rest is the kind of thing that you can't afford at the start of the game and that you don't need at the end. It upgrades to 7 block/2 draw, which is fine, but early on you lack the energy, and later on you'll already have other draw.

Drowning and Boat of Sanzu are just sad. Komachi already spams mass random debuffs passively through her spirits, so chances are, your enemies are already weak and vulnerable. I have taken Boat of Sanzu on occasion, because times can be bad.

I'd rather be drowning than find myself having Drowning in my deck.

Both upgrade to inflicting 2 layers of their respective debuff and a damage number that's as sad as their unupgraded versions'.

Before I get into the good parts of Komachi, let's talk about block.

These are a problem.

Bound Earth Spirit, Flow of the River and Fellow Traveler are great.

You can build a deck on these.

The next row is alright.

Third row is questionable.

Fourth row is bad. Ghostly Barrier looks good, but isn't.

The issue with Komachi is that she has exactly 1 block card that gives her big block, and that's Bound Earth Spirit. But that needs setup. You start with 4 orb slots and unupgraded it gives 3 per spirit, including the one it summons, so unless you already have 2 spirits bound, you're not looking at a good number there either.

12 block plus a random debuff for 1 is good, 20 is amazing.

If you can pick up a bunch of Flow of the River you can kinda chain through them and get some good block going, which is fine, but they're not your premier blockers either. They're nice to ease some damage, but you pick them for the draw.

The issue is that Komachi can't easily put up strong block on the first turn. Fellow Traveler and Bound Earth Spirit both need setup and everything else is just insufficient.

All of her block cards in the 2nd and 3rd row aren't strictly block cards. They all spend a lot of their budget on other effects that don't necessarily help your survival.

No matter what these block cards may look like, in the end my experience is that you either have Bound Earth Spirit or just die. Not liking Ghostly Barrier and its brethren due to it duping itself is on me, I guess.

So instead of trying to defend ourselves, how about we just kill our enemies before they can hurt us? That's a nice idea, but generally speaking Komachi just can't do it.

She can do some really good damage, just not quickly and that's what I'll be getting into now, with her two means of inflicting it:

Crackling Soul deals 1 damage per stack of itself for each debuff on the enemy. This ignores block and goes after Constrict. It colours the enemy health bar grey according to how much of it it will eat up, which is quite nice since I hardly ever feel like doing the (actually quite simple) math of the damage it'll deal.

All of it goes away immediately when it goes off.

So if you inflict 3 Crackling Soul on an enemy who is both Weak and Vulnerable it will deal 9 damage. Crackling Soul itself is a debuff too after all. It's better for random enemies than it is for elites/bosses, since it doesn't exactly scale over time (unlike her other damage type).

I used to prefer Crackling Soul over Karma, but in my recent runs I've had more success with the latter. You can easily run both, since Crackling Soul doesn't require much commitment. Your bound spirits do all the debuffing. There are 6 in total that you can inflict: Weak, Vulnerable, Strength-down, Karma, Crackling Soul and Scared. No poison or constrict on Komachi, unfortunately.

Scared does nothing, but it lasts forever and is a debuff.

Ethereal Cut and Swipe will be your bread and butter for inflicting the status and they work well with it, since they both also cut right through block, since they inflict hp-loss instead of damage.

This also has the upside of ignoring strength-down and weak and the downside of ignoring strength and Pen Nib. They still stack and consume the latter though, so watch out.

Taste of Death is really good. When upgraded it's up to 20 aoe damage plus debuffs, but it tends to be less since it could, for example, inflict weak twice. Still good value for 2 energy.

Destroy the Hope goes to 1 energy when upgraded and is how you can get Crackling Soul to deal real damage, which is also the problem. If you have the card and a way to spam spirits you'll easily get some good numbers, but if you don't, you'll need to supplement Crackling Soul with other stuff (Karma).

On that note, let's get into that.

Karma deals damage equal to the total Karma on the target when inflicted. The damage is calculated after the amount is applied. Karma is halved, rounded up, at the end of turn.

At first I wasn't too hot on Karma. It didn't feel like it did good damage, Crackling Soul felt like it did do good damage, but Karma really is quite good.

It sucks at handling a bunch of small enemies, but it kills single big ones quite good.

Sin Recollection is to Karma what Destroy the Hope is to Crackling Soul, except like three times better while also not being mandatory for the build. It upgrades to costing 0 and makes it so that at the start of turn if you have 4 orbs you'll immediately inflict 1 karma 4 times. On an enemy that has 0 karma this deals 10 damage, which is pretty good, but if you have any decent amount pre-stacked it'll absolutely wreck them. Less good when multiple enemies are present, since the spirit debuffs are targeted randomly.

Hell Vision together with Sin Recollection is even better. Hell Vision upgrades to increasing the amount by 2 and at that point you can just play Sin Recollection and pass.

But thankfully you can run a successful karma build on Bound Sinner Spirit and/or The Endless Way alone. Bound Sinner inflicts 8/12 Karma if you have 4 orbs, which isn't much by itself. 12 damage for 1 with setup is fine. But if you have other karma sources it gets really good and since it binds a spirit, there's 20% chance for that to also roll karma and then you're already looking at 25 damage.

Remorse is also good, since it applies its karma in two steps. With Consume it deals 12 damage by itself.

Confines of Avichi is alright. It you want aoe, I'd recommend Ethereal Swipe over it. You don't have other means of inflicting aoe-karma, but it's not terrible.

What is terrible is this:

This is just unfortunate. Like, you have to stack karma without killing the enemy, have this in hand and get the killing blow.

Sure, maybe you can get an initial kill on an enemy with like 12 karma. Easy value to inflict.

Then you have 19 damage for 1 that exhausts. Actually, nevermind, this card's alright.

The first kill is probably a bit of effort to set up, but you can get it pretty big pretty quickly and then it's a good tool to quickly kill stuff with. The bigger it gets, the harder it'll be to meaningfully grow it larger, but at that point you won't need it to be bigger anyway.

Repentant Soul is alright.

#slay the spire #long post

[kicktwine]

I havent watched motor city BUT im loving this au pls tell us more about what everyone is doing im begging hfdhg

hKFGS ok o7 i dont have v much though i havent thought about it that hard

so for starters motorcity is a cartoon about the rule of cool, car gangs, and oppression from a guy who built a perfect efficient city Over the normal city of detroit on a big dome. everyone above kinda lives in a rigid perfection-oriented apple product smooth city, everyone below is Alive and also Chaotic. there are also killer robots. moving on.

my ideas start and end with the mobile games (i am SO SORRY sora you know i love you. you and roxas and xion and others are probably doing cool fun stuff too)

Ephy's gang (the dandelions) cornered one of the lakes still in motorcity and monopolized it to use as their base, they run a beachy resort called Daybreak Town that provides luxury services for cheap prices to normal citizens. People love it because it's like, a resort and a vacation spot where there aren't any more, and also they can relax and not worry abt being shot at by robots because the gang is good at what they do. obviously other gang members run a higher price than normal citizens because of the increased attack risk, and if they act up inside the resort Lauriam will not hesitate to kick everyone out. the rule is Don't Ruin It. the Dandelions trade in and out a lot of money from/to their resort business, so they're good to trade with, and also have a slight reputation as being intense when it comes to trade deals and parts salvaging. you know how competitive khux got.

Ephemer and Skuld (the bear and snake, respectively) run the front desk and manage every trade deal. They're the face members, they deal with PR, management, etc. They're very nice, customer service and all that, and also very scary because they're the most powerful people on the east side and are smiling at you. Brain (the fox) runs all the computer and tech stuff, all the scheduling and activity decisions, and he's the treasurer. Behind the scenes sort of guy, absolutely the one they send in if a trade deal is going poorly and they want to outfox (hahaaa) someone else. He also makes schematics for new weapons. Lauriam (the unicorn) is groundskeeper and security -- caring for the plants (they have water, and thus they have plants, and thus their trade extends to some edible goods as well) relaxes him, which he kind of needs, because he has to be intimidating if someone rowdy is gonna listen to him. He's a twig boy still... dont worry lauri youll fill out soon. Ven and Vani (two leopards, snow and melanistic) are part time maintenance/customer service part time external security, because they like having tasks to do and also like (and are very good at) fight attack kill. Vanitas really likes fixing/making stuff, funny enough, and Ven likes to help people; and Vanitas likes ...dealing with annoying customers. I like 2 think Kane was experimenting with cadets + cyborg stuff and they ended up down in motorcity discarded and glitched out at two separate times, and now they work together. Elrena (no animal) does a lot of mechanic work because she hung around for so long and bothered Lauriam so much that they became friends, so she's ours now. Player (no animal) is head of kitchen crew because that's me and I like cooking and we were missing an important role in the hotel! So!

Ephemer has a car that looks ancient but has a whole harpoon on it, called Polaris. It's kinda star themed, kinda bear themed, kinda icy. Skuld has a whole fire snake thing going on, her car is also starry, blue fire version. It's called Ophiuchus, and it doesn't look quite as old, but it's long, and has a whip/morning star/metal junk projectiles thing. Brain's car isn't used that often, but he has a dog/wild dog theme, and it's called Vulpecula. It has a chain/traps/buffs/debuffs thing. Lauriam obviously has a gardeny mythical car, Cygnus, it is very new and shiny. it has. a lot of weapons also DUH he uses a scythe in hand to hand. Strelitzia isn't old enough to drive yet, but she's learning, and they're gonna build her a car of her own. Her animal will be the heron, and she'll help with groundskeeping until she specializes. Ven and Vani share a car, Gemini Lux, because Vani can't drive and Ven can't aim very well. Ven can drive extremely well and Vani likes to shoot things (they were pilot and combat cadet experiments respectively). They have a tank of a musclecar with two cannons on the back, wing/claw motifs, and a b/w theme.

Ephy and Skuld started this effort, it was ephemer's idea to built a resort in Motorcity. After it really started working, though, they were both in. Brain popped in because a) he prefers not to fight so often and wanted somewhere quiet to work but b) he likes the message and is REALLY good at what he does. Which is important, since the next person they found was Ven, glitched out on the side of the lake and trying really hard not to hurt anyone even if his programming was yelling at him to attack. Brain fixed him up :] after which Lauriam joined, searching for his sister, who turned out to be doing a weird rogue thing with a broken H.O.U.N.D they have all kept and named Chirithy. She tried to attack Ven on sight but it's chill now. Vani joined the main group last by doing pretty much the same thing as ven, just a lot more violently (everyone needs to STOP ATTACKING VENTUS he is NOT made of STEEL. MOSTLY.). They're a legitimate company family at this point.

Daybreak Town as a resort is pretty beachside typical, very relaxed, everyone has soft hawaiian shirts and shorts. They managed to rig some cables and controllers up for a warmer temperature and soft wind from the lake, even if they can't have the sky. They also RIGOROUSLY clear out pollution so people can swim in it, they have constant beef with a certain deluxe garbage chute. It's also: pretty big!

listen to this song

I stick this in here and say hesitantly,,, no.,,,, because I want the khdr kids +aqua/terra to be in a samurai themed gang LMAO-- I think it would be cool if there was a bit of rivalry/comraderie between the Dandelions and these guys, or if the dandelions broke off from them and that's why all their cars have latin names, or something. Xehanort and Eraqus run their gang after usurping it from their previous leaders, who were extremely strict and had led their subordinates to infighting and sabotage. They vowed to do better, but running a business is hard, and they can't see themselves trending in a similar direction...

idk what their name would be. But they're very much samurai-jedi-apocalyptic car gang members, meticulously clean, down to murder. Good outfits. Cool base building design. I... also want to either keep Baldr as the final straw from their last leaders (he snapped and killed a lot of people allowing xeha and eraqus to take control) or keep him here as a berserker in a cool battering ram swords car. JFHKSD

that's it i think, its cool cars

#i kinda lied but i kinda didn't i just started typing a lot and because my brain works the way it does it got long #i don't say a ton of extra info i just like being wordy #ask #anon #blueskyheadleft010 #khux #khdr spoilers #ok i think i'll use khdr spoilers as a tag until the end of this week. is that cool? #dandelions have a day/night thing going on... you know #motorcity au

[kara-knuckles]

Since the game doesn't really explain what Command Codes are, I interpret them as extra modifications to Saint Graphs that are possible thanks to the way the Chaldean summoning system works. They are a result of cooperation between Da Vinci and Sion, hence why in-universe they weren't available until the story got to its second part. Every Servant can get up to five Codes at a time, but they can switch them around. The ones you can get in friend gacha are standard Chaldean Codes that can be used by any Servant, but the event Codes are custom and are based on individual Servant's affinity with different people (or some other link).

I like to imagine which Servant gets which Code and why. It can represent friendship, rivalry, coming from the same story/pantheon or even more symbolic or obscure connection. For example, my Beni-Enma has the Ukiyoctopus CC because IRL Hokusai drew an illustration for her tale. However, other than a link, a Code also needs to have a practical effect for the Servant it is engraved to. As such, while I want to give my EMIYA Codes based on the three Stay Night and two Extra heroines, our current Codes that represent Tamamo (Stun Immune/HP recovery up) and Parvati/Sakura (effective against charmed foes) are useless to him, so they don't count.

To better illustrate my point, here is my planned Mash build:

The Nautilus Traveling 20k Leagues (gain 2 stars + remove 1 defense debuff from self) - bond with Sion and Nemo. Thanks to their field observation, Mash has better knowledge of her enemies + Sion's expertise with Ortinax reinforces her defense.

Buddy Ring (GOLD) (gain 1 star + increase debuff resistance) - bond with Roman. Thanks to his teachings and medical attention she can fight with higher precision and developed status resistance.

Lucky Beast (restore 200 HP) - bond with Fou. Mash feels better with him around, so it manifests as a healing Code. It also might be that his presence amplifies her regeneration after the events of the Temple of Time.

Buddy Ring (SILVER) (gain 1 star + increase debuff resistance) - connection with Goetia. The confrontation with him gave her the last push to connect all the life lessons she had learned so far, so it represents her will to fight and persevere through battles.

Mini Border (gain 2 stars + remove 1 defensive buff from the enemy) - bond with Da Vinci, Goredolf and the rest of the Border crew. Same as Nautilus, but more combat oriented; instead of reinforcing her own defense it helps with reducing her enemies'.

Yeah, I gave the “buddy rings” my own interpretation. I really like that they have the same effect for different reasons, and the fact they are on different cards isn't there just to mimic the fingers Roman/Goetia (presumably) wear their rings on. Roman taught Mash about the world and it represents her desire to protect it, so his ring goes to Arts, the same as her defensive Noble Phantasm. Goetia represents Mash's resolve to live and fight, so his is on Buster, the same card her skills prioritize after his defeat.

Anyway, this is why I'm always excited about the new Codes, often more than about the debuting Servants. It is a lot of fun to think about who gets the new ones! It can even lead to new headcanons when you notice an unexpected pattern: now I believe that Achilles likes animals, because his Codes include Hippogriff, Calydonian Boar, Tarasque and the Trojan Horse (shut up, it counts). But it can also be frustrating. For one, I may have a certain set in mind, but there are no Codes to complete it. For example, there aren't enough representatives for Chaldea's Kitchen, Argonauts or Gespenst Ketzer. For two, I may not have the Servant I have an idea for, like how I want Kintoki, preferably Rider, to turn him into a Gintama reference. We have Sakamoto, Hijikata, Okita and Douman inspired Codes and the fifth one can be Nobunaga's for now since he did appear in the series. Add Takasugi as a proper Servant, you cowards! For three, while rare, some Servants can have too many connections and I need to cut it to five. My Gray suffers from it. And finally, some Codes are just so specialized, I can't come up with someone who both has a connection with the character and benefits from the effect. Yu-Yu's bonus against burned foes and Nobunaga's bonus on burning field come to mind.

#Fate/Grand Order #Fate Grand Order #fgo #Mash Kyrielight #command codes are so fun! #i don't understand why some people are against them #yeah they may be situational #but they aren't completely useless or a waste of resources #theories and headcanons #Nasuverse

[crystalelemental]

Attempting to parse information regarding High Score event from absol-utely, and this is...weird.

The stages themselves have absurdly punishing conditions, like “80% of special damage reduced by default,” or “strikers have stats reduced 80%,” which is awful when you think about how time is a major factor here.  It turns out also that it is high number of attacks, which is either really weird because time, or means “use multi-strike moves” and is a check for whether you pulled C!Serena and Dojo Gloria.  Not looking good.  The bigger oddity is weaknesses rotate.  I think people expected “Oh it’s all weak to Water.”  No.  The weaknesses are entirely different.  In fact nothing is weak to Water.  This is monotype, guys.  Use Water pairs, against Water-type trainers using Water-type Pokemon.  I would adore this if it wasn’t for the timed condition and the scoring.

Strength modification apparently goes up to 1000.  +1 strength is fairly minor, but full strength investment is, I shit you not, putting sides at like 30k HP and 10k offense.  That...seems kinda like bullshit?  I’m sure it’s just to have an unlimited cap to push as far as you want, and promise you that people will use flinch and sleep chaining to lock this stuff down, but also the Misty fight is immune to status and interference so have fun with that.

The time trail condition is wretched.  Basically, you clear in 10 minutes, 8:20, 5 minutes, 1:40, or 1 minute or less.  This fucking blows, because the jump in score from 5 minutes (what most hit I expect) to 1:40 (basically impossible barring fast-ramping and AoE Max/sync nukes) is from 900 points to 2400.  There’s also a ton of convoluted calculation I haven’t parsed yet, and it’s...weird.  I legitimately don’t understand where the numbers are coming from.  The point is fuck timed trials, and fuck setting the bar this high.  1:40, from Top Speed’s own confirmation, is the exact limit at which the entire game loses all variety, and becomes a check for whether you’re fast-ramping and have an EX Striker.  That’s it.  That’s all we’re doing here, and I hate it.  The total scoring better make it easy to work with repeated intervals between 1:40 and 5:00 or this mode is literally just a whale bait event.

The buffs are interesting.  Basically, it counts what you’ve buffed, does not count when you’re debuffed, and gives you points even if the Pokemon faints.  When you buff again after a debuff, you get to buff again and it counts again.  That’s interesting.  What’s odd is that the intervals listed are 0-5, 30+, and 135 (Max).  So we’re missing data between 5 and 30.  Max buffs is 3000 points, while 30+ is 375.  Again, don’t understand where any of the numbers in the formula come from, but I do understand the final totals showing that time counts for substantially more than this condition.  Like, nearly five times the amount of points for a good score compared to good buffs.  Disgusting.

Using multiple attacks sucks as a condition too.  It does count multi-hit as multiple attacks, same as AoE counting as multiple attacks.  Basically it’s a hit count.  The only values listed are 0-10 gets you nothing, and 50 hits gets you 3000 points.  Which basically tears away all of your points in time at that point, but sure, let’s pretend.  All these calculations do seem to involve midpoints between these values and I think this one’s clear.  So, the following formula listed is thus:

stats_L  = stats_a + (L-a) * (stats_b - stats_a) / (b-a) Result = 10 + (15-10) * (3000-0) / (50-10) = 385 pts 

So if I get this right, it’s basically looking at L as your actual hits, a as the lower limit in the bracket you hit, b as the higher bracket you hit, and “stats” being the associated point range.  I think.  That first 10 should be 0 if that’s the case, but I digress.  Basically, you take your number of hits, subtract the lower bound (10), then multiply by the higher bound - lower bound’s points, and divide all that by the number of hits associated?  See what I mean about this being super confusing?  And it’s really unclear what happens if you maximize.  Like, wouldn’t that set stats_a as the top of the food chain and actually hurt score given this formula?  I don’t understand it at all.  But the point is that every possible value in between is a range, but the closer together the values, the better your score, given the division factor, so once again the timed condition is absolute fucking trash.

What scares me is that this calculation factors out to only 3,000 points.  For clarity, maximum points needed for all rewards?  180,000.  I do not know if this is “rerun it a billion times and it stacks,” in which case, annoying but fine.  But this is now a terrifying game mode to me.  The rewards themselves are worse than Gauntlet, replacing a move candy coin of each type with a 4* candy, but giving Certificates of Excellence (10) in exchange for a lot of the 5* powerup tickets.  That one’s a good trade at least.  But since this is taking the place of Gauntlet, I’m a little bothered by the 5* candy coin situation.  Unsurprised given their purchasable bundle, but annoyed regardless.

Okay, now we’re into additional modifiers.  So, listing these out:

Water Type focus. For one Water type, 1.0x points.  Two?  2.0x.  Three is 3x the points.  So if you have a full Water team, that 3000 points suggestion is now 9000 points.  We are still...very, very far from our goal.

Strength modifiers go one point at a time, up to 1000.  The first 100 points of strength are 50 points each, so a clean 5000.  If this hits the multiplier as well, which I believe it does, that’s up to 15,000.  Combined with the 9k, that’s 24k.  Five stages, we’re at 120k.  2/3rds of the way there.

Additionally, from 101-200, it’s 40 extra points.  Anything past 200 up to 1000 is 30 points per extra strength.

From before, we know the boss gets like 70HP and 10 offense, while sides get 30HP and 10 offense.  At 100 points, that’s 7000HP/3000HP and 1000 points in offenses.  Which is.  A lot.  200 points is now 14,000 HP/6000HP, and 2000 offenses.  I am not familiar with what CS reaches, but the HP values seem comparable, and possibly even a little on the low end, for anyone factoring in difficulty.

Oh, they have it listed out in difficulty, both how many points are around, and that every 100 points is approximately 100% of CS stats.  So 100 strength is even with CS, 200 is around double.  But it’s double “Hard Lv 1,” so like...to be honest, if you’re used to off-typing, I think 200 points might be manageable?  This is before you put in the 2500 point parameters, so offenses might be more threatening in CS than here.

Apparently there are bonus conditions of “use Main Character” and “inflict Confusion.”  Confusion is weird, I don’t know many Water-types that confuse with success.  But Main Character is achievable.  NC Serena, Dojo Gloria, May, Elio, Kris, SS Kris, Hilbert, Lodge Rosa, Lodge May, Eevee Lyra all hit it, as well as MU Eggmons of Gyarados and Blastoise to name two notable picks.  Each use is 1000 points.  Confuse is uncertain, no point value is listed.  Nevermind it’s in the next document, 1000 points for each successful confuse application.

So, if I’m getting this right...all possible point methods are factored into the multiplicative effect.  So the big factor is using Water-types, free points exist for main characters and inflicting confuse, but mostly you want monotype Water.  Time seems to factor in harder, but that may just be because it’s legitimately easier to achieve.  All of them are listed as “max 3000,” so they all cap the same way.  Strength modification is a huge factor, up to apparently a frankly bullshit level of points, with what sounds like average CS difficulty hovering well above the 200 strength range.  The tradeoff there being, you’ll be doing all your fights off-type, and this isn’t just boosting their damage, but also their bulk, which is antithetical to how a lot of off-typing works.  The lack of control in this regard will be the determining factor.

I don’t have a clever solution yet.  This is just the info as it stands.  But depending on how hard it is to handle 200 strength, the “receives all rewards” aspect is either very easily achieved, or a fucking nightmare.

“There’s a medal for achieving Master Rank!”  It is super unclear what that means.  Master is listed as 180,000 points, which is full rewards, so...this is either fairly easy to achieve as a general player medal, or this entire mode is going to feel really, REALLY bad.

#pokemon masters #high score event

[foxingpeculiar]

Guess who's still liveblogging Disco Elysium? (Spoilers)

Played through Day 4/Thursday today.

Feel like I got some things done. I got my gun back from The Pigs, I'm now fully in both Evrart and Joyce's confidences (well, I think... more on that in a sec), AND I reported Victor Mejean's death to his wife.

Actually, I'm a bit miffed about that. I made the mistake of talking to her before poking around and, although the conversation went really well, now I can't get back in there to investigate. Harrumph.

I was trying to use Rhetoric to open the shipping container near Evrart's office. He alluded to there being something interesting in there and there's a reason I'm able to keep messing with it. Kim asked me why I'm talking to it and one of the options was "Because using my body wasn't an option!" which it literally wasn't. I dunno, I feel on the hunt for little wall-breaks like that now, after the reflections in the previous post.

Cuno's whole scene re: the locusts... something is going on with that kid, with the whole "I made myself Cuno, I can make myself something else" bit. But I can't yet pass the check to find out what. At first it seemed like Cunoesse was just kind of following him, but after her little display... I'm not sure what her deal is either.

Joyce had a LOT of fucking interesting things to say. It was almost kind of too much to digest. But the two bits that have my ears perked are 1) Revachol being a place where all the ideologies converge to "resolve" history, and 2) the entire concept of "the pale." Both of those things reinforce the possibility that this is some kind of... what? Game? (Which it literally is, so there's that.) Computer simulation? Something like that. I'm not POSITIVE that's what's going on, but I feel strongly (at least for now) that something like that is an element of it. But she also said some people think of it as the concentrated past or something, and I’m not sure what to make of that part. It’s something working in layers.

Anyway, there's something about Joyce. She seems really cooperative and forthcoming, but I can't shake the feeling there's something she's not telling me.

I think it was when I was talking to her that I passed an Espirit du Corps check, where some people were talking about Harry and how he lost his mind. What is the Valley of the Dogs? What did they mean "we always do?"

I dunno, I have more information now, but I don't feel like I've significantly advanced any of the three major mysteries (reality, Harry, the murder). It's clear the game still has some stuff in store, though. I like the check in the window behind Travis that currently has a debuff: "-12: it's not time yet." Like, ooh, what's that gonna be?

Also, Joyce was giving me a history/economics lesson and said something like "the years '08 to '19 were hell" and like... yeah, okay. Those weren't chosen randomly, were they?

I feel like I'm sort of out of clear leads at this point. I wanna advance Soona's project, but I cannot figure out how to get through to Egghead. I have tried every branching dialogue option I could. He says "we're close" but it doesn't feel like it. But I guess we'll see what new developments the new day brings.

Also, what's with the two "cops" that just showed up in the Whirling? Like, that's (the latest in a weird series of incidences which seem to establish) a similarity between Harry and the dead colonel--two companions, a man and a woman. I know at least the male mercenary is someone else--the scab guy, I talked to him (that was fun), but I don't know who exactly they are and it feels like there's some intentional parallelism there.

Oh, and what role does Cindy have to play in this yet? Pissf****t and Fuck the World appeared, so that leads me to believe the Skulls are going to factor into this somehow in the coming days. I guess we'll see.

Onward and forward, I suppose.

#personal #video games #disco elysium

[retphienix]

Finally tackling the big bad was rewarding as hell, and funnily enough I think I had an easier time with him than I did his archangels prior.

Seriously the walk up drained my resources so quickly each time, then the fights against the Grail were miles easier to manage lol

Heck, I was swapping party members due to how quickly I'd drain SP in the fights prior to him! lol

Anyways, to begin with his first phase was "fine".

It utilized that mechanic I love where you send a party member off to do a task while you keep fighting- but the Grail's strategy just wasn't that impactful.

Just AOE holy damage every turn, and sometimes he'd even give me a break and just hit one person instead.

A breeze; But not meant to be the main star obviously.

Because the true form of God was a LOT more interesting and fun to fight!

It's not a JRPG if you aren't fighting a category 10 God figure that's larger than life in the end, now is it?

His strategy was honestly pretty simple but it was fun to counter, at least for a single encounter.

He spawns a new arm regularly and each arm will equip a weapon capable of new attacks and debuffs. You only need to destroy the body, but the arms are where all the damage is coming from and letting 4 arms go wild is a bad idea unless you can seriously handle the DPS race you'd put on yourself.

I can't really say "Add control" is the most interesting mechanic on its own, but I can always say when it's done well it's pretty damn good and here- thanks to the high damage output he had going and all the different debuffs (most of which were entirely unique to this fight as far as I can tell, like doubling our SP cost) I was having to play a lot smarter than I have in quite a few palaces.

I was having to utilize my own buffs, debuffs, and items (and item buffs!) to keep myself on top and out of any risky scenarios- just like in the early game! And it was really fun!

Was definitely loving having a much more reliable full heal and buffer than my party's had up to this point in Joker.

Up til now I had been using some sprinkled skills amongst Ann and Makoto, with Haru obviously having the better options but rarely seeing time on the field.

This persona is one I made right before the final encounter and it really lightened the load.

Oh, and Morgana said the best line in the game that made me tear up (among a million other things) :)

And here's where I'd love to post a ton of our confidants praising us, Mishima being THE BEST and starting the cheers for us, my joy exploding as the phansite poll maxed out (HOW'D THEY MAKE SOMETHING SO CHEESY SO EMOTIONAL.) but I can't due to a hard crash that corrupted my video footage.

But all that happened; I got emotional, it was very very good.

And it was followed by something that blew my fucking mind and made me stifle a shout because HELL YEAH EVERY GAME SHOULD END LIKE THAT WHEN THE-

(From the wiki) YOU KNOW?

WHEN THE FUCKING GIANT PERSONA CAME OUT, WE ALL CLAIMED A DEVIL IS NECESSARY TO PUNISH A WICKED GOD, AND WE FUCKING SHOT HIM THROUGH THE HEAD???

YEAH I WASN'T REMOTELY OKAY. I WAS LOSING MY SHIT. THAT'S THE BEST.

Okay. Okay okay okay okay okay.

I'm sure due to how disjointed my process became I'm missing some things I'd like to talk on but instead I just want to talk on the rebirth of the world a bit.

Morgana being a dredge constructed from human hope is just fucking touchin' as a concept, man.

His brave call that hope is another form of desire and that it's a good one and all that jazz, fuckin' got me.

And his farewell speech talking about some truths about the world- well- to be fair to my experience- started incredibly strong and closed a bit like the writing was trying too hard for something I'm literally already on board for lol.

I've talked on the concept of our individual perceptions and truths being undeniably different than others before- usually because another game touches the concept (however well it does this) but also because I do genuinely find it interesting.

No one else will ever experience the world the way you do, and persona 5's narrative taking that for some of its own thesis was genuinely a good idea and I like what they told through that.

Morgana's talk about how that infinite amount of interpretations helps give the world infinite potential is a fun angle on the concept; One I genuinely appreciate as the core idea of the world and its truths forever being tied to perception and being a very personal thing is, on its own, a rather neutral concept.

The fact that we can both meet the same person and I can hate them for a bad thing they did to me and you can be oblivious to this and love them for the good things they do to you- this makes it so we both behold worlds with two different people who bare the same name and by itself that's not a positive or negative thing- it's just an observation on how, I don't know, non-hive mind lives work.

Rather, blunt, interpretation of the concept but it's an example.

But attaching the idea of an individual's desires such as their hope to see things better to their vision of the world and then saying that since we all see things differently this grants us infinite potential for change, that's a way to take a neutral idea and offer a positive outlook to it- I just dig it.

The "Okay, you're getting cheesy" bit was honestly still good, he already had my emotional investment, I'm just razzing on Morgana for ending with "As long as you hold hands together, see the world as one, the world will never end~ The World Exists Within All Of You!" it's cheesy.

It's a grand sentiment on combining our hopes, building trust in one another, and this cooperation being the core to enacting change in the world- but it's also silly because it's partially literal (the world almost ended so he had to specify that it'll go on forever if we hold the lessons of this journey in our hearts) and because everything before it was SUPER STRONG and then Morgana got a little sweet and spacey in what he was saying.

I razz because I love <3

Beyond that, P5 talks a lot about the good in desires, how humanity forever holds the potential and power to change the world no matter how much inertia previous systems build up, about the importance of building up and standing by your sense of justice or morality, just a lot of pretty damn good themes in my opinion.

So I don't know what to say beyond, this boss was fun, the final bit of the fight was so hype I held back a scream, and the rebirth of the world being used as a point to bring together a lot of previous lessons and combine them in some ways really did leave me happy, and hopeful.

Just. Really good stuff, man.

And I think that about wraps up the content I missed due to the computer crash.

Morgana has vanished, the world has been remade, and our team fought back the urge to cry to instead cheer this one out.

Honestly, Ryuji fucking rules for his part in this scene.

Refusing to let us treat a victory like a funeral.

#Persona #Persona 5 #P5 #P5R #Persona 5 Royal #RetPlays #I had so many little moments I wanted to talk on but this crash spoiled so much of it #This was grand- now to see what comes after this moment of reprieve on Christmas Eve