crystalelemental

[crystalelemental]

Elise!!! I posted this one twitter but I wanted to share it on here too bc I LOVE how it came out! (: I luhhh this game soosososo much!!

also I havnt ppsted my art here in like a million years 0_o

[crystalelemental]

I knew you could customize the summoner, but “single game mode” implies that they’re not a normal playable unit like any other character. I mean, I say “any other character,” but I know there are bosses and whatnot.

Yeah, they're not. It's just in the one game mode. Also a lot of bosses do become playable. I actually can't think of any OCs that aren't, aside from like. A few current book faces. I'm actually anticipating Vali either this month or next. Perhaps "hoping" is more accurate. I kinda like the little shit.

[crystalelemental]

Is it me, or is FEH pushing its OCs more heavily than the actual game characters lately?

Lately? This has been a trend since like. Book 3, when they introduced damn near every OC as a mythic, interfering with main series options. OCs have always been prolific.

My best guess is that you think they're pushing the OCs more because of CYL results, where this CYL is three OCs to one (1) main series character. Who is Byleth, one of the least interesting characters in the series. But I don't think it's FEH doing that. FEH has always presented its OCs, and they've always done well because it's the game being played. I, personally, think the OCs are dominating more often these days because the game's player base is dying. Back in CYL4, Edelgard won with like 74k votes. This year, Deer God won with 15k. The total votes in CYL9's top 4 is 51k. The total in CYL4 was 246k. That is a substantial decrease. And my assumption is this dramatic decrease causes their over-representation.

Notably: no one from Engage won. Despite being a more recent game, Engage's characters placed decently, but didn't out-perform the old standbys like Sigurd and Azura, and obviously lost out to OCs. Meanwhile, Male Byleth won, with the second highest vote total. My assessment is this: older players are dying off as the meta's powercreep accelerates them out of competition, and newer players aren't sticking around because lacking the 9 years of accumulated seals and resources makes it really unappealing to start now. So you have the really invested whales that maintain the game's slowing income, and some die-hard players who stick around because their favorites keep getting modern alts, but little else going on. Those who do show up are likely less familiar with Fire Emblem as a whole, since anyone who knows the series likely already knows about FEH. So they come in with minimal knowledge and pick favorites based on who they see: the OCs.

However! Even though it has been years, I am still Big Mad about Bravekeeper. So I will also posit that CYL is an illegitimate contest run by memelords who pick stupid options for funny. Gullveig won ins CYL6 off very little dialogue, and now Baldr won with I believe no dialogue at all by the time of the event's voting. So I don't really think anyone takes this seriously. I mean for fuck's sake, Deer God won. Deer God! The man is nothing! He does nothing interesting, holds exactly no emotional impact in Book 8, and competes with powerhouses like Ratatoskr, Hraesvelgr, and Nidhoggr in character development, bringing nothing but jokes about his muscles to the table. And he won. You cannot convince me anyone gives a shit about CYL, it's all just memes and in-jokes resulting in stupid fucking results.

[crystalelemental]

Stupid question, since I don’t FEH: does Kiran/Summoner ever fight? I mean, if he does, he probably sucks eggs, but is he actually playable in maps outside of summoning other characters?

Actually yeah, they introduced the ability to customize a summoner for a single game mode ages ago, copying skills from other units you have. I legitimately can’t remember what it’s called. It sucks ass, by the way.

[crystalelemental]

As noted, I’m back in FEH for the moment. New account, continuing my “delete when you get bored/run out of resources” approach. Here's what we've gotten so far, and some thoughts on game modes.

These are my prized units. B!Sharena is a delight, and Teatime Veronica's Reposition into second action is amazing. The two of them have incredible synergy, because the extra actions stack. Vero repositions Sharena in, Sharena nukes, Vero nukes, they both get actions, and either nuke what remains or get themselves out of danger, with Vero being able to Repo again. Team Gal Pals is tremendous.

Young Camilla is disgustingly good. This is so silly, I adore her. Obscene damage, tremendous range, field effect for debuffs, it's all excellent.

The Hraesvelgr are because she might be my favorite OC. She's just fun to me. Divine Talon is hilarious, granting extra movement to a few categories, but most notably, to other beasts. Enter my girl Spring Eitr. Four movement range on her is hysterical. Ratatoskr also gets that mobility, and you can get Brave Deer God up to two movement as well, which is huge mobility for an armor with Swap Gait.

NY!Heidrun is just a cute alt. I really like Ratatoskr too, so I like the pair. They're really strong, too. I'm kinda tempted to give them a C Bonus Doubler build if I pull that one guy that hates Merric. You know. That guy. Arlen! They have good mixed defenses, and I think it'd be fun to have a strong mage with that potential. We'll see.

V!Edelgard is unhinged. I really love her offensive ability, getting an easy three moves per turn with 3 move range as an armor. I have no complaints, but also nothing interesting to say. Meanwhile, Teatime Lysithea is pretty standard? Just big damage dealing flyer mage. I just think the teatime alts are cute, and I like Lysithea a lot.

My Brave picks were Sharena, Bernadetta, and Corrin. Felix and Robin showed randomly on pulls, and I pity pulled Baldr and Deer God. Alear is already dead. I fed him to Panette for a build I'm just weirdly attached to. We'll see how it goes.

Speaking of, common builds. I have Linoan there, intending to build her up as my healer. Wrazzle Dazzle remains significant, especially in the era of Nidhoggr. I'm going to build up Panette, I like her set and I liked her a lot in Engage too. The big focus is on Halloween Sophia. I have a set that seems to do some tremendous support work for her, while giving her enough offensive potential to be a nuke in her own right. Halloween Sophia is one of my favorite seasonal designs, and I'm invested in making her work out.

So okay, game modes currently.

Arena at low tiers is pretty simple, because I can bring Sharena/Vero and just annihilate everything we come up again. They're insanely good in everything so far. B!Felix remains really common there, but to be honest, the instant you know he has six range not 2, you can keep out of his way easily, and dancers won't catch up to him, so you can retaliate pretty easily. B!Robin is also really excellent at stopping him cold. So far, Arena is fine.

Aether Raids sucks generally, but Sharena/Vero is really making things easier to get in on more aggressive comps. I'm still really early, this may fade with time, but they've proven themselves pretty competent. I still don't pay attention to defense.

There's some mode now where you constantly swap what unit you're using? And it pulls from others' sets? It's cool to find other sets for units you're interested in, but it's otherwise not my favorite. There's another where you get new skills and just stack broken nonsense. That one's okay. Not that Sharena/Vero needed help.

Summoner Duels was around at one point when I dipped my toes back in. It's...okay. This is kinda my focus mode right now. Mostly because I'm currently really good at it.

B!Sharena, Tea Vero, Young Camilla, B!Deer God, and NY Hraesvelgr. The current map is really kind to this set. Vero Repos Sharena, then does it again to get her on the impassable terrain for horses. Sharena then gets to blitz at enemy lines and canto out. Camilla's movement support gets B!Deer into position to protect both Vero and Sharena from physical threats, which is most of them. B!Baldr is nigh omnipresent in this mode, but she's honestly the easiest one to beat. I have lost one (1) match out of like fifteen. It's because of Duo Marth getting the Magic Savior effect from B!Deer, rendering Sharena and Vero kind of obsolete, and it just gets really ugly from there. I like my offensive set, it's getting a lot of wins, but I feel like consistency in Summoner Duels is based on good defensive merit.

All in all, Sharena and Veronica are really carrying, and I really enjoy the combination. So we're sticking around for a little while, at least.

[crystalelemental]

Comic by: Suzuka

[crystalelemental]

Revenge!

[crystalelemental]

Top 6 Pokemon From Each Gen

This is @patchun's fault. I guess there's something going around the social media, and she pulled me in. I am opinionated so I was already aiming to do it before I noticed she tagged me. Anyway, the goal is supposed to be Top 5, but she did Top 6, so I'm doing it too. I will say this is not perfectly accurate. I decided to keep it to one (1) legendary Pokemon per region (yes, UBs and Paradox count). This is more in the spirit of championing smaller things, and it made deciding on Gen 7 much more interesting. I also opted for only one Eeveelution per region, or they'd like all be on here. Lastly, I opted for only one of the evolution line, or certain lines would be crowding out others.

Generation 1 At this point, I have to admit to myself, I love the pre-evolutions. Dragonair is better than Dragonite, this is not a question. Seadra I love because I like seahorses a lot, and Vileplume is just a cool flower thing. Big fan.

Generation 2 Actually one of the most contentious regions, so much of Johto makes me happy. This is what we went with, with apologies to Azumarill.

Generation 3 I feel like these are just objective picks, but I will draw attention to the one oddity. Yes, though it may seem strange, I am currently a bigger fan of ballerina Kirlia than I am of Gardevoir.

Generation 4 Sinnoh is tough because the legend game is so strong, and the new evolutions are so bland. I really do not vibe with almost any of them. I will say I love Finneon, I think the butterfly tail is super pretty and Lumineon loses a lot in the evolution. Also I do love Purugly, but Glameow is like Peak Cat Energy.

Generation 5 All I have to say is Female Frillish specifically, and if you don't love Swadloon get the fuck off my blog.

Generation 6 Gourgeist is one of the best Pokemon ever created. Braixen is perfect, I wish Delphox has a bit more of its kinda magical girl energy instead of forest witch. And I really like Spritzee. Cute plague doctor bird.

Generation 7 This was by far the hardest gen. Taking out the legends made this challenging, but I think this really highlights what I like, and why Gen 7 is my least favorite. The cutest first-stage starter has the worst final form. The worst first-stage starter has the cutest final form. A bunch of pre-evolutions are adorable, but evolve to look like crap. Lurantis is perfect, except for the part where it's slow, weak, and awful to actually play. Nihilego is the perfect being. If anyone wants to know what this list would look like with evolutions, drop everything but Nihilego, add Celesteela, Lunala, Tapu Fini, Magearna, and Tapu Lele. Gen 7 is hard carried by its legends.

Generation 8 Gen 8 is honestly worse off than Gen 7. At least Alola has a good legend game. Gen 8's main roster has a couple things that are fun, but not a ton. On the plus side, this made it real easy to choose. Note that Gossifleur is a perfect design, and Eldegoss is up there with Toucannon in my "love the base form hate the final stage" list.

Generation 9 Now you may think the Paradox Pokemon rank higher, and I had to be selective to get to Iron Valiant. First off, no, Iron Valiant is far and away the best. Second, no, this is actually just the list. I don't hate Gen 9's legends, but they're similar in rank to the earlier regions: mostly strong but not my top picks. Yes, I am a Sprigatito fan specifically, though I am a Meowscarada Apologist. Dolliv is one of the cutest things ever made. And I adore Espathra, I love you Lady Gaga Sun Bird that got banished to Ubers for being too huge.

Mega Evolutions Tough competition. Haha...hah, no. No not really. Can we all just admit that Gen 3 dominated the Mega Meta? Most of the best came out of Gen 3. Audino and Lopunny are really good though.

Regional Variants The overwhelming majority of these variants are Kanto, and let me tell you, picking from them is like pulling teeth. This is what I opted for. Yes, Hisuian Lilligant makes the cut. It is an inferior Lilligant, but all Lilligant are good Lilligant. Sneasel and Ponyta are super cute. I like Sneasler but that's new, not a variant. Rapidash, my wife and I agree, looks too much like a real horse to be cute. It's the eyes. Rapidash has the mad eyes of a horse and it is unsettling.

[crystalelemental]

Absolutely imperative to me that everyone knows that Three Houses has a lower score as an individual game than the series does as a whole, an observation that may only be hilarious to me.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses has a Yuri Index of 0.433

Read more about the Yuri Index here

Suggested by @nyam-nyam-nyam-nyam-nyam

[crystalelemental]

Forgot to add the developers also trolled the fan base by implying they had something big to announce back in January, only for it to be a literal “The cake is a lie” punchline

I think I would've started demanding money back if I had contributed to the initial kickstarter for Hollow Knight. Like you have time for jokes, but not to do your jobs?

[crystalelemental]

The amount of bootlickers I’ve seen on the game’s subreddit is ridiculous. Anytime someone was disappointed by a missed announcement or a fake out (looking at you SGF) they’d start yelling that this is best marketing strategy and you shouldn’t get that worked up over a game

If a game I was excited for spent 6 years silent and compared to half-life 3 I’d be pissed too

So, again, I don't go here, but Silksong is something I've been following a bit through Castle Super Beast's talks about it. And I'm in very strong agreement with them that the problem isn't the length of time it took, nor even the silence itself per se. It's the fact that the silence was pervasive, including at one point announcing a release date that got redacted, for a game that is effectively their expansion of a kickstarter stretch goal they met. People effectively paid for this up front, and got to experience YEARS of delays with absolutely no announcements or notifications on where they are, only for the game to finally arrive alongside an article that's basically going "yeah there were no problems we just kept making new stuff and not talking about it to anyone lol." The whole "we never had to worry about money" thing is especially tonedeaf because yeah, I bet you didn't after your first game met all its stretch goals and was a breakout hit, shame you haven't delivered anything on what was paid for in all this time for basically no reason.

Like...the game is coming out. People who paid are getting what they paid for finally. But Team Cherry feel like the most out of touch, up their own ass motherfuckers on the planet to me right now. I'm not surprised Reddit is acting this way about it, and I've seen some pretty defensive posts here on Tumblr about it too, but like. No, I don't think them being a smaller studio makes this any less stupid and awful. Yes, "smaller games that cost more and take longer to come out," I know the Sonic meme. But this isn't about the Sonic meme stuff. It's not the time, it's not the cost, it's not about whether they hold up to Triple A industry release cycles. It's about them literally owing people who paid for this content its completed development, and failing that, updates on progress. And they didn't do it. And apparently didn't do it for literally no reason. Which is scummy as hell.

[crystalelemental]

honestly though. anyone else think that the "oh there was no development hell at all they just kept iterating and enjoying the process but didn't feel like they had anything they wanted to share" somehow makes this release cycle even more of an unparalleled PR disasterpiece than it already was

[crystalelemental]

New Mega Pokemon thoughts?

It's dopey looking. I kinda like it. Unfortunately, another Kanto mon. Consider me concerned about the new Mega distribution by region.

[crystalelemental]

Shoutout to Viola’s Surskit for totally spitting in Fennekin’s face, by the way.

Took me a minute to realize you meant only three first Gym choices. If we’re talking Flying weaknesses, then we should throw Fighting into the mix. I’d raise a Butterfree just for that fight.

OR! Ghost! Because Normal moves can’t hit Ghost-types, so you have to beef up your starter for this fight!

Okay so I'm going to talk a lot about game design off this one. Hope you're ready for this!

I've already said my piece about the first gym, but there's are some other aspects to consider in all of this. One is gym difficulty flow, one is Pokemon availability, and one is intentional design.

Imagine a situation where the hardest gym is the first one, because you have limited tools, and your primary solution is grinding up your starter's level. This would not be good. The introduction to a game is the hook, if it fails to land because it's grinding to solve a problem, that is objectively a bad thing. Moreover, Ghost is a powerful type in general. It has few weaknesses, two immunities, and good offensive matchups across the board. In terms of delivering a proper difficulty curve, removing a type as strong as Ghost that early is generally detrimental. It's why they get rid of the easy ones first, like Bug and Grass. We've had plenty of Grass-type specialists, and they all show up by Gym 4 at the latest, because they're defensively and offensively shit. By comparison, Dragon specialists also exist in nearly every generation, and are almost always Elite Four, with the lowest ranked being the Dragon trial in Gen 7 that maps to approximately Gym 7, because they're offensively nigh unstoppable and defensively powerful as well. But that's largely off of starter types; Fighting tends to be higher up but can be seen as low as Gym 5, because its offensive ability is tremendous, but most players have a bird for Fly, and thus a Flying type to take out Fighting. The types are not made equal, and that's by design: it permits the difficulty curve to exist in Pokemon.

Now, it doesn't necessarily have to be this way. One could argue that, rather than making difficulty based on an unequal type chart, they could design it around each gym teaching something different by using different mechanics - weather/terrain, Trick Room, status play. Except they already do that. It never goes well. Raihan is not particularly challenging, and his Championship match is a joke because he keeps burning turns to change the weather, letting you get free hits. Erika has plenty of devastating status, not that anyone ever notices because Grass has so many common weaknesses that just stomp her into the dirt, leading many to consider her one of the easiest gyms. Pokemon's design is not built for that kind of approach, and short of a complete, massive overhaul of mechanics that would guaranteed remove the ability to transfer Pokemon across generations, it isn't something that can be fixed.

There is one catch, though. Recent generations, particularly Gen 9, make it incredibly easy to overlevel. And when you can easily over-level, it kinda doesn't matter what the opponent is doing. To add on to it, more open exploration and a much wider variety of type access in early game permits you to basically always have something with a super-effective matchup, rendering the problem even more trivial.

Given this, how do you make a gameplay experience that is active, meaningful, and designed to facilitate a challenge? Not a difficult one, but one in which considerations have to be made literally at all? I'd argue you can't.

So by modern day, sure, throw any type anywhere. Players are universally overleveled and have every type covered, there is nothing to worry about regardless. Even Ghost or Fighting wouldn't matter. But in the older games, a major focus was on counterpicking by type, and to allow players to always have that access, counters to each gym tended to exist right outside of said gym. I always use the examples of Oddish/Bellossom near Misty and Diglett near Surge, but it was kept that way through every generation, and a decent example of what you're talking about is Morty.

It's unlikely you have a Dark type by the time you get to Morty, and Ghosts are weak to themselves, so bringing your own Haunter is hardly foolpoof. But! There are many Normal types nearby, and you are handed an Eevee from Bill, who you meet here. But you can get Stantler, Raticate, Miltank, and Tauros nearby. And all of them can learn Mud Slap or Dig, which is super-effective against the Gastly and Haunter in that gym. The counterplay exists in a different form. Theoretically, nothing is stopping this from being done at Gym 1. Gen 3 even has Poochyena, a proper Dark type that could steamroll a Ghost-type first gym. But then we loop back to the first problem: what happens when the difficulty is set in such a way that one of the harder types to beat goes first? If Phoebe was the first gym, what happens to Roxanne? Rock is hardly a position worthy of E4 in that era; it's garbage defensively and all your moves are low BP and inaccurate. Roxanne is far more threatening as your first encounter, while Phoebe remains scary at the E4.

But what if the region had different Pokemon? What if the ghosts of this region had low BST, and the Rocks had a pseudo-level like Tyranitar, and a new Rock move with perfect accuracy and a high BP? What happens if the game doesn't have EXP all and the level scaling is high again, and E4 Roxanne has a ton of levels on you too? Maybe that would change the balance in a way that makes the gym order seem better another way.

All this to say, they could do whatever they wanted, but there's a reason they don't. Originally, it was to create a proper difficulty curve. These days, I think it's a mix of traditionalism, and the series moving away from challenges in their battle to a really laid-back system that you just kill everything you touch regardless.

[crystalelemental]

Back in FEH solely for this. Team Gal Pals. They are actually, kind of literally, unstoppable. Sharena acts and kills, Vero acts and kills, both get moves again and kill. But wait, Vero can also Repo Sharena in to close distance, and then Repo out of danger after Cantos at the end too, without losing a beat.

I can’t lie, FEH is so broken that I’m kinda having fun again. It will almost be sad when they shut down. Almost.

[crystalelemental]

So I started up Platinum, and I got a female starter, female Togepi, and female Eevee all without trying! I mean, the Eevee is Lonely, so I have to breed it, but that just means I get to save a Heart Scale for my eventual Vaporeon! Fuck, why did they drop the ball SO HARD on Leafeon's learnset! If it just got Leaf Blade at a decent level it'd be perfect!

Counterpoint: Lonely is optimal for Flareon, it's her time.

An yeah, actually, Leafeon's learnset by Gen 4 is really funny. In fact, a lot of Gen 4's learnsets are really high levels for anything good, it's kinda wild given HGSS's level curve issues.

[crystalelemental]

I mean, I get the game design element of it all, but you would think establishing Elemental Rock Paper Scissors would have at least SOME variance across the different Japanese regions, hence my earlier question!

I mean. You would if the game were perfectly balanced. But in an imperfectly balanced game for children where the elemental matchups are awkward, Rock is literally the only type that has a super-effective or not very effective matchup against all three starter types. Given that forests and bugs are also traditionally early game aspects, Fire gets its supereffective matchup there, while Grass gets its not very. First gym covers Rock to establish the inverse, Water tends to hit a not very effective a little later. While they could introduce some variance here, it does rely to some degree on players already being familiar, or having a Bad Time. Falkner is an exception, being a Flying type as the first gym, and it's pretty common for people to dunk on Chikorita almost entirely because of it. Crystal even doubles down with the lack of Mareep.

I guess my point here is, GSC got away with the shift because it was somewhat expected that players were coming in from RBY. People understood it as a sequel game that didn't need to introduce a tutorial boss again, so Falkner gets to have an unusual first gym type, and even counters his counters with Mud Slap. But in Gens 3 and 4, I think they rolled it back to "Every generation is someone's first," returning to a need for a tutorial-style boss with harder lessons than Brock, until they got creative in Gen 5 with a guaranteed weakness from your starter, and ultimately discarding a lot of this by Gen 6 when you just had a wild assortment to choose from to cover weaknesses. At which point, your new first gyms are...Bug, Grass, and Normal. Two types known for extremely prolific and common weaknesses, and another known for having zero supereffective matchups. The games are still pretty intentionally designed, just around a different philosophy: instead of starter matchups, now it's more "fight the easiest type to have super-effective matchup against first."