#... what is it with level-5 and rpgs where you beat the game at a fairly low level compared to most rpgs lkdsfjsdjkfskj-

[oh-meow-swirls]

batshit insane statement but part of harrisville's theme sounds kinda like part of uhhhhh. one fantasy life song. i don't remember which part but it has fantasy life vibes. they probably had the same composers honestly sfdlkfjlksfjkfkjsf-

[theminecraftbee]

I’m so interested in the persona au but SO confused,, if you haven’t already, would you mind doing a quick little summary of what persona even is??? is it a game???

i think if you go through the tag i have also already answered some terminology questions, but yes, i can explain on a higher level what persona is! (this post is now under a cut because i use way too many words here, whoops.)

persona, the game series, is a spinoff of SMT. it uses the same demon designs, general affinity/element system, and "one-more" turn-based combat system as the SMT games. SMT isn't that important in this conversation other than that they're known for being relatively difficult RPGs that like talking about philosophical ideas of order and chaos and humanity and also jack frost is there, hee ho.

(note to self: this is my reminder to actually beat SMT V, i was having so much fun with it then i did the thing that's always a risk when i play long RPGs, which is that i got distracted and the fact it was no longer the cart that was in my switch meant that it no longer existed to my poor ADHD brain. i was only like, two bosses in i think, and only like one MAIN boss, i need to. pick that back up. anyway if you want vague thoughts on "designs that inspire my monster designs", SMT demons, actually. like some of them ARE just fairly standard but some of them are really weird. also when i was writing stuffed bird i was playing SMT III on and off so. there you have it.)

anyway, persona is a spinoff of SMT, so like SMT, it has a battle system that heavily focuses on knowing your opponent's elemental weaknesses, using buffs and debuffs to take down bosses, and of course, as mentioned, jack frost is there, hee ho. however, it is set apart from SMT both by the fact you have a defined party (as opposed to recruiting demons to be your party members, sort of except for the protagonist we'll get to that) and by various plot aspects. in addition, "modern" persona games (so persona 3 though 5) have a social simulator aspect along with the RPG that sets those games apart from other RPGs and is one of the most interesting parts of the game.

generally, this au is based on 3 through 5, not persona 1 or 2. i need to... actually play or watch those at some point but stuff about 3-5 is more accessible and more of the vibes i'm going for. (this au is like, ESPECIALLY persona 4 influenced, because i really love persona 4 golden, even given all of its flaws. probably less inane anime bullshit than takes place in persona 4 but listen it's about the VIBES.)

so, what typically happens in a persona game? well, your protagonist, for some reason or another, is moving to a new town, where a supernatural phenomenon is happening. in three its the dark hour, in four its mysterious unsolved serial murders, and in five its the mental shutdowns. there, relatively quickly, your protagonist gets roped into the supernatural phenomena by discovering the other world that shadows live in, and forms a team to fight those shadows and eventually prevent Bad Things from happening. also at the end you fight god. it's been a different god each time! but like. you know. this is an SMT game at the end you fight god,

(persona 5 being my first SMT game left an impression given that it's a game that ends with your persona evolving into literal satan, it giving you a giant gun, and then you SHOOT GOD IN THE HEAD. say what you will about persona 5 the style points here are off the charts.)

the party members in persona games have a "persona". this, like any SMT demon, is a mythological or literary figure. this "persona" gives the party member wielding it magic powers while they're in the other world they do their fighting in. to fight, a persona user summons their persona to use its powers. all of the party members but the protagonist have a single persona that can learn up to eight moves. the protagonist, however, has a special ability - the protagonist can get new personas by recruiting shadows. in 3 and 4, this is done via a minigame involving tarot cards, and in 5, they use SMT's demon negotiation system. the protagonist can switch between these personas on the fly, gaining that persona's skills, strengths, and weaknesses.

in addition, there is the velvet room - a mysterious place only the protagonist can enter, manned by a guy called igor and an attendant. with this, the protagonist can "fuse" two personas to get a new, stronger persona, which inherits skills from its predecessors. the fusion system is complicated and there are many spreadsheets about it online! for our purposes the important thing here is "the velvet room exists".

however, this rpg half is not the only part of persona gameplay. persona, at its heart, is actually a time management game. see, each persona game takes place over a single year. every day that isn't a day you do some plot event, you're given the ability to choose what to do with your day. while "go to the dungeon and fight things" is an option, it shouldn't be what you do most days. most days, you are doing the protagonist's high school life. this is because, to become strong in a persona game, you must form bonds with the people around you by spending time with them. this is known as the social links (or confidants in p5).

each "social link" has its own story with ten ranks, during which the protagonist gets to know them and their deal better. in order to do this, however, the protagonist needs to have high enough "social stats" to do this, which are also raised through activities in the game. (for example, a particular confidant rank may require your character to have high enough "guts", so you go to do activities that raise your "guts".) getting fully ranked-up with a social link gives you benefits in the actual rpg part of the game, but is also important to get the full story out of the game!

all of these activities take time, and you can normally only do like, two activities that pass time during a day. plus, there are additional time-passing activities in the real world that do things like create healing items, raise your stats, or get things that will give you good gear. so one of the key game mechanics of persona is normally "there are a lot of things you want to be doing, and you need to manage your time well to get as many of them as possible done". certain confidants or activities are only available at certain days, but on rainy days you study better, so which do you do?

persona as a story is normally both about the supernatural phenomenon and the demons you fight and about the protagonist and their friends growing up in the real world as well. both the real world and the supernatural world affect the story and the "vibes" of a persona game, to me, have a lot to do with the real-world setting - almost more than the supernatural setting that you do most of the RPG gameplay in, honestly!

(part of why i love persona 4 so much is very directly "inaba feels like a real, specific place to me, and i care for it".)

anyway, if any of this sounds appealing to you, persona 5 royal is now out on PC and basically every console, and persona 4 golden is now out on PC! additionally, persona 4 golden and persona 3 portable have been announced to be out for console and PC this january, if i remember the date right. honestly do highly recommend persona 5 - you'll see a lot of arguments over it being "overrated", but it has so much style and is very, very good at being highly playable even if you don't normally like its style of turn-based RPG gameplay. there's a reason it became so immediately popular. also, as stated, i love persona 4, but that one's a bit less flashy/polished if you don't already like long RPGs. if you DO already like them however... i highly recommend it it's a fun game.

so yeah hopefully this helps!

[repentantsky]

The difference Between JRPG’s and WRPG’s, and why we should stop comparing them

If you’re like me, you love RPG’s of many different genre’s. Whether they cover fantastical realms like Skyrim and Final Fantasy, or more technologically advanced ones like Borderlands or Star Ocean. 

Like all genre’s most RPG’s of different genre’s also suffer from different problems because of tropes and reused settings that people can grow tired of, but talking about RPG’s from two different parts of the world, is a whole other problem. Japan for example, is mostly marketing itself to Western players, while Western RPG’s, are mostly marketing themselves to Western players...uh wait, why does that make them different? 

It’s all because of style choices. See, Japan like most countries, has a lot of traditions that make a lot of it’s products fairly same-y. As I said that happens with everyone, but Japan has to try harder with smaller series to get western appeal, which is required to have a successful selling game, unless it’s a mobile title, since those all do really well in Japan, because people can just game on their way to and from work. I digress, but Japan is so rooted in tradition, that you can watch an episode of Gigantor, the anime that is considered by many to be the first anime ever created, and Demon Slayer, and notice a lot of similarities in the way the characters are speaking, because Japan has always made their shows where actors talk like they would in real life, which isn’t always true in other acting platforms around the world, which of course means, this translates to video games. 

Specifically what it means, is that Japan has to hop a cultural barrier that Western games don’t, and they have to rely on a lot more tropes, because there are only so many ways to translate the same basic plot of a JRPG, for Western audiences, before things become too cliché. A lot of RPG’s are successful in doing this, like the aforementioned Final Fantasy, and other JRPG’s are coming through with successful games to, like Fire Emblem. Persona and Shin Megami Tensei, Atelier, and several others. All of the games coming through lately, lead people to believe that JRPG’s are a thriving genre in the west, but that’s not really true. 

If you were to ask any random person what the most successful JRPG of all time was, a lot of people would probably think of a Final Fantasy game, but not even Final Fantasy 7, has come close. In fact the only JRPG that even made it to the top 10 best selling games ever, is Pokemon Red/Blue/Green/Yellow as a collective, with four different versions. The next best selling one is Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal, and in fact, only 11 of the top 49 best selling games of all time, are RPG’s, and all of the JRPG’s are Pokemon titles. Final Fantasy 7 has still been wildly successful, as the original has sold over 11.8 million units, and the remake over 5 million, but the fact of the matter is, that even though RPG’s as a whole are the biggest genre of the top 49, the few that made it are exceptions to the rules. In fact, of the top 10 best selling games of all time, 6 of them are by Nintendo. The other 5 excluding Pokemon, are Wii Sports, Super Mario Bros. Mario Kart 8/Deluxe, Wii Fit/Plus and the original Gameboy version of Tetris, which itself is on there twice because EA’s version is number 3. so you’re actually better off in Japan, not making a JRPG. 

There’s a lot more that can be gleamed from looking at the list, so you can check it out here if you want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games 

The point is that JRPG’s, aren’t always as successful as people think they are. I mean sure, you don’t have to be on the top best selling games list to be successful, but Persona 4 Golden on PC is considered a massive success for selling only just over a million units since it’s release, and the Tales of Series, which is one of the longest running in gaming, as recently as April of this year, had it’s sales numbers made public, and Tales of Symphonia, the undeniable Final Fantasy 7 of the series, sold a total of 940,000 units in the United States, and the game, easily the most successful title from Tales of, only managed 2.4 million in total. None of this is to say, that JRPG’s are struggling, because most of the ones I brought up are shining examples that they aren’t, but going back to that top 10 list, Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto V,  just the top two of that list, have sold 345,000,000 total units. That not only beats the entire mainline series of Pokemon, it’s only about 2.5 million short extra, of beating the original 151′s total sales, with how many spare units the two games over Pokemon’s  300,000,000 million total sales mainline games, which means likely, the two of them will beat the series out at some point in the future. 

Western RPG’s, don’t often suffer from as many problems, because they don’t have a border to hop, and it shows with Elder Scrolls, which has sold 58 million total copies with only five mainline games, and 30 million of those came from Skyrim alone. It took Pokemon, the undisputed champion of JRPG sales, 20 mainline games to reach 300 million, which means arguably, by the time Elder Scrolls reaches it’s 10th installment, it will have caught up to Pokemon’s first 20 games total sales. Borderlands, which is arguably the Tales of to Western RPG’s in most people’s eyes, has actually outsold Elder Scrolls with only 4 mainline entries, one of which is considered bad by many, with a total of 60 million total units sold. The better comparison, surprising for many I’m sure, for a Tales of comparison, is actually Fallout, which has sold 13.51 million units, to Tales of 23.5 million units. 

Enough about numbers for a few minutes, 3 paragraphs about it is a bit much, but the fact of the matter is, Japan struggles more overall to make successful RPG’s in the West, than the West does in the West, and it’s all due to how much of a challenge it is to hop that border. 

Outside of sales numbers, the other major difference between JRPG’s vs Western RPG’s is how they are classified. Generally, when someone thinks of a JRPG, they think of a fantasy world, with leveling, where rare items can be won off bosses, but your main way of improving stats is to level up, and have enough money to buy the best equipment at each new town you enter with a shop. However, a lot of games have been getting that label slapped on them by their marketing teams or fans, and some of it is just wrong. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one such game, despite the drops from enemies being the only correlation between BoTW and JRPG’s. The correlation was made by fans, which might seem like an innocent mistakes, and in fact could be nothing but that, but then there’s Monster Hunter, which actually does have two JRPG’s attached to it, in the Stories 1 and 2 games, but who took the reigns of JRPG to market, calling Monster Hunter World, a JRPG. despite it having few differences from other Monster Hunter action games, outside of having a story, and having nothing more to do with JRPG’s than Zelda. A lot of fans of Japanese games will classify simply playing as a fake character an RPG, which normally would be fine, but in games, that’s not how genres are defined. If that were the case, all of Yakuza’s games would be JRPG’s, instead of just Like a Dragon, and in fact most games would be RPG’s, and they obviously aren’t. Bubsy 3D RPG anyone? No? Ya sure? Yeah I didn’t think so.   

The west has the exact opposite problem of under classifying it’s games as RPGs. While sure, you wouldn’t call Halo an RPG, unless you know, Master Chief was shooting an RPG, you absolutely should call Ratchet and Clank one. Think about it, your main playable characters all have HP, most of them have weapons that can level up, and the action setting of these games, basically should make Ratchet, a response to Level 5′s Dark Cloud series, which did all the same things for combat. However, it’s just seen as series of action games, despite it also being a lot like Borderlands. 

The point is, there are a lot of things that differ JRPG’s and WRPG’s from sales, to marketing, to style and so many other factors, I would run out of characters available to me, before I get through them all. There’s nothing wrong with these genre’s being different, but people classifying them as similar, could harm either since they don’t often jell that well together. So please, think before you compare, and for those rare RPG’s, where you can’t tell the difference, makes sure you find out where they were developed, because a lot of games you might think are JRPG’s, could in fact be Korean or Chinese. 

[digi-tama-in-your-pocket]

Sloppy little v-pet guide

It feels like the virtual pet community on tumblr is super small and mostly favors Tamagotchi, I feel way unqualified to do this, but here’s a quick, super basic guide to the modern Digimon virtual pets that I know of ( I say modern but I use the term loosely because they’re all very much nostalgia bait )

If you really don’t know anything about virtual pets at all... they’re little LCD key chain games, pet simulators, you feed them and train/play with them to fill up their heart meters, clean up their poop, put them to bed, treat injuries and sickness, watch them grow into new forms, and try to keep them from dying, Digimon sets itself apart from the rest by connecting to to other Digimon V-pets to do battles and more. 

One thing to note is that Most, if not all V-pets can connect to each other even if they’re not the same version. They have a very basic battle system in place if they’re different versions, but it’s slightly more involved if they’re the same version. ( There’s even a fan made device that can connect them to battle online and play in an online digimon game )

Last thing i’ll say is that if you are thinking of getting a Japanese v-pet, all the ones I mention here  are in english, with the exception of the digimon’s name, but that can be looked up by looking over one of the evolution trees on Humulosmon’s website, Digitama Hatchery. 

Perhaps I should move this to it’s own FAQ section on my blog but who even opens people’s blogs anymore? With that out of the way, let’s get this started under a read more!

Digital Monster Ver. 20th ( AKA the DM 20th )

This is the most accessible and affordable Digimon V-pet on the market right now. So affordable that even though Bandai has issued slightly improved versions in Japan for twice the price, most Japanese fans prefer to import these from overseas to save money. Some people have sighted them at Target for $5 but you’ll typically find them for $20.

They look just like the original Digimon virtual pet, but they are actually a special 20th anniversary edition that has some new features... new features that, for some reason, Bandai are not advertising at all, and I don’t know why.

New features not in the original virtual pet include:

Choose from all 5 of the original digimon eggs on one device

Battle the AI opponents in a Colosseum mode 

Raise two digimon at the same time

Your two Digimon can tag-team battle, and some can even fuse into a new digimon ( this is called Jogress, short for “joint progress” )

Put your digimon down for a nap for up to three hours hours in case you’re busy

Keep a log of all the different Digimon you’ve raised, giving you a goal to fill it out

New forms that were not present in the original virtual pets

New unlockable eggs with special digimon inside

You can actually load your save data, so if you need to take a break from your v-pet or you have a low battery, you can just pop out the battery without fear of losing your digimon or your log book progress.

This is the v-pet i’d recommend to everyone who’s interest in Digimon V-pets. It does have it’s downsides though. This v-pet is programmed to poop a lot more frequently than other v-pets for some reason, which becomes a real problem if you’re busy or you over sleep ( pro-tip, set your digimon’s clock ahead a bit so it wakes up when you do. All Digimon wake up at 7AM ), there are also some exclusive eggs locked to certain colors of the device. You’ll have to do a little research on that. Digitama Hatchery has all the info you need on that subject.  It’s also fairly basic compared to other virtual pets, but not by a lot. And lastly, you cannot pause this pet. ( Pro tip, actually you can, but you have to press the reset button to do it )

As mentioned earlier, there is a new version of this device called the Digital Monster Ver. Revival, exclusive to Japan. It lessens the poop frequency, and has a proper pause funtion instead of naps. But it’s twice the price, so I’d say you just put down $20 on the western release.

Digimon Pendulum Ver. 20th ( AKA the Pen 20th )

These are a lot like the Digital Monster Ver. 20th. But instead of being a special reprint of the original virtual pet, they’re a special reprint of the Digimon Pendulum, which didn’t come out in the west as far as I know. The main difference here is that instead of button mashing to battle and train, you shake the device repeatedly.  You have to get to know the rhythm and number of shakes your digimon requires to get the best results.

The key difference between this v-pet and the one above:

They poop a lot less frequently than the DM20th, even when there’s two digimon

The sound is very different

You still get multiple eggs on each device, but with far more exclusives.

You can pause them by putting them to sleep when it’s not their natural bed time

Device makes a subtle sound when the Digimon poops so you know when to clean it

They wake up at 8AM instead of 7AM

A lot more of the digimon can Jogress, in fact most of them can

The eggs are somewhat themed ( beast, aquatic, robots, evil, good, ect. )

These Digimon are very desireable, but they’re also unfortunately very overpriced compared to the DM 20th, as they only came out in Japan. I don’t even want to mention how much I paid to get two of them...  They come in four colors, Silver black, Silver Blue were wave 1, and Beelzemon, and Dukemon themed devices were wave 2... The wave 1 and wave 2 devices share a lot of digimon, but they do have some exclusives.  On top of that, I hear these are prone to losing their save data, so it’s recommended to reset it every time you change the batteries, and handle with care.

Digimon Pendulum Z ( AKA the Pen Z )

This is a lot like the Digimon Pen 20th, but it’s not a special anniversary reprint. It is actually a continuation of the original Pendulums.  So sadly, you only get one egg in these devices. But, the Digimon you can obtain are mostly new Digimon that have not featured in a virtual pet before, and some even make their debut on these devices.  They’re also a tad bit more nuanced. Here’s the key differences between the Pen Z and the Pen 20ths.

One Egg per device like the original 90′s v-pets, which means no tag-team battles

You can only raise one Digimon at a time, but you can “Back up” your Digimon, essentially preserving them in suspended animation where they won’t age or get sick, so you can raise another Digimon. You can have up to three Digimon on your device this way.

Evolution trees are slightly bigger

Hearts fill up and deplete in halves now, and older Digimon can have more hearts than older v-pets

The device tells you how many times you need to shake it for battles, removing the guess work and making it easier

New close ups on your digimon’s face when they perform strong hits

Digimon went back to waking up at 7AM

RPG elements added to the Colosseum, your Digimon now has a level and can earn EXP to get stronger, and to effect what they evolve into. You get a congratulations screen when you beat this mode.

In Colosseum mode you fight three digimon in a row, with the third one being a stronger “boss” digimon

Single use items that can completely fill digimon’s hearts, change their performance in battle, double EXP, and more

Your digimon can have a random event trigger, usually it finds an item or an enemy worth lots of EXP when this happens.

These things are expensive, but not as expensive as the Pen 20th, and are some of the newest virtual pets you can get. In fact, wave 2 of the Pen Z has not even been released yet. You can only get them by pre-ordering through Premium Bandai, they ship out in April, so act while supplies last. You can only pre-order them in packs of three unfortunately. No individuals.

Digital Monster X Ver 1-3 ( AKA DMX, DMX2, and DMX3 )

Here’s the last modern Digimon V-pet I have any kind of experience with. The Digital Monster X. These ones are the most nuanced yet in my opinon, and they have my favorite mechanics.  Also, they come with lore I guess?  If you slip your hands in between the cardboard packaging, you’ll find a tiny comic... of course I can’t read it. But it goes something along the lines of... “ King Drasil, the king of the Digital World, created some kind of virus to kill off Digimon and solve an overpopulation issue, but the Digimon mutated the “X-Antibody” that makes them resist the virus and are rebelling against King Drasil”, it’s wild and weird and I guess there’s more lore that I haven’t dug up yet and a TV special I’ve not seen yet... anyway, onto the pet..

This one no longer has the shaking mechanic and goes back to button presses. But it adds in a new mechanic of it’s own called the X Antibody Indicator...  Actually... this is technically a continuation of the Pendulum X, which introduced the X antibody, but I don’t know much about that v-pet, so I won’t go into it.  And once again, we only choose from one egg this time.

They came out in three waves, each having two devices in each wave, and those devices have some exclusive digimon, but a lot of shared Digimon, so you’ll have to make your own call on weather or not you want more than one v-pet per wave. 

This thing is a lot like the Pendulum Z, so I will use that as a basis, here is what makes this different from the Pendulum Z aside from the shaking mechanic going away

XAI rolls, a new mechanic that involves rolling dice. You do this once daily to determine the random events for the day, you do it before the colosseum to determine how difficult it will be that day, and you do it before each battle to effect how easy it is to land a strong attack.

Colosseum mode battles are now called “areas” and have pixelated Landscapes to make it feel more like a Quest mode rather than a series of battles

Colosseum mode will eventually start throwing more than three enemies at you. Your digimon’s hunger will deplete in the Colosseum, if you make it far enough, there are rest areas in which you can feed your Digimon.

Even larger evolution trees

A lot of evolution trees are locked until you advance far enough into the Colosseum

Most of the Digimon are “X-Antibody” counterparts of existing Digimon ( this won’t mean much on the little pixelated screen, but if you look up their key artwork, you’ll find that they look very different with much more intricate designs than their original counterparts. Think “Alola Pokemon” )

These things are great, probably my favorite mechanically speaking, however, I don’t much care for the X-antibody Digimon, or the Rosters of each V-pet.  And while I did follow an evolution guide on Digitama Hatchery, I often didn’t get what I was aiming for, so maybe I didn’t know what I was doing, idk, it was my first Digimon V-pet outside of the DM20th, so I was still learning.

These ones are also fairly expensive, I probably spent more than I needed to just buying one of these, when I paid the price most people sell two of them for. Only other major warning I hear is that the wave 1 devices have very bad screens that display things way too dark. So keep that in mind...  BUT, before you buy, these things are strongly rumored to be releasing in the west. Meaning they’ll likely be sold for a cheaper, more reasonable price.. the rumor was that they’d be announced early this year, so i’ll give it until March.

And there you go, a little  guide to modern Digimon V-pets. Hope it helps someone, anyone, make a decision if they’re interested at all in these little things. 

These are only the modern V-pets, there’s loads of older pets that likely go for obscene prices, you’ll have to do your own research on those. I really don’t know much about the upcoming Vital Bracelet, and honestly I don’t know if i’m going to get it if it’s tied to fitness. Seems like a poorly timed release during the pandemic if you ask me. And the “Digivice” that looks closer to the devices you see in the anime is not so much a virtual pet as it is an LCD mission mode game.  I have ZERO experience with those but I have ordered one recently, i’ll come back and talk about it when it gets here.

And remember, check out Humulosmon’s website, Digitama Hatchery for tons of resources. At the very least, it’s a good way to see what your Digimon is meant to look like instead of trying to interpret the pixel art yourself.

[baconpal]

Bravely Default and BD2

Here it is, the partially prompted bravely default rant/retrospective/whatever the fuck!

With the announcement and demo of bravely default 2 out now for a bigger market than the original game ever had, I feel that as a massive fan of the original I should put some amount of effort into explaining what the appeal of the original is, why bravely second missed a lot of the appeal, and why bravely default 2 has been very, very worrying so far.

If you care about any of that, come on in and I'll try to actually avoid spoilers this time and make this a more legitimate recommendation of a game than usual.

THE APPEAL OF BRAVELY DEFAULT The games obviously have a beautiful art style, especially when it comes to the backgrounds. Every city is like a painting, a beautifully composed shot that you see from just one direction to give you one very strong impression. While the overworld and dungeons are fully 3d and do not have as strong of an artistic impact, they are still very competent and have good colors and cohesive elements. The character design, including the job outfits, the monsters, and all the villains are just top notch. Simple, evocative designs that make the most of the 3DS' limited hardware and build upon the teams skill in making handheld games look good. (its the same team that did the ff3 remake and 4 heroes of light, which looks absolutely kino on original DS) The music is also consistently excellent, with great use of motifing, a full and varied orchestra, and many good slow paced tracks for most of the non-combat segments. Shit like "Conflict's Chime" being the main battle theme, "Infiltrating Hostile Territory" being a common dungeon theme, and "That person's name is" as the rival boss themes makes even the seemingly repetitive songs a constant joy to listen to.

The story is pretty decent, it's not the best part of the game, and there are definitely some aspects of the story some people loathe, but the characters (specifically ringabel fuckin love him) are pretty good and the make for an enjoyable experience. The side material like D's journal are really well done and integrate into the main narrative well for how tucked away and ignored it is.

The gameplay and systems are also some of the best of any RPG I've played, and I've played far too many. The job system from ff3 and 5 is brought to an even greater depth with the addition of universal job abilities, allowing any character of any job make use of another jobs features to create an endless depth to strategy. The way various jobs can mingle together, and how no job is completely perfect on its own makes for very compelling team composition and unit design. The extensive amount of jobs helps as well for replay value and for assuring that no easy winning strategy is found by all players.

The BP system makes battles take on a very unique pacing as the player and enemies can choose to save up turns or blow them all at once to make more complicated strategies possible, or to make the most of an enemies vulnerabilities. This powerful option gives the player a meaningful way to capitalize on their knowledge of the game, while also allowing them to make truly detrimental mistakes. That may sound not good if you're a fucking baby, but nobody wants an RPG you cant lose, but losing because you fucked up is much better than losing because the enemies are just stronger than you or anything to that effect.

But the single greatest part of bravely defaults, which creates the games wonderful balance and unique design philosophy, is that the player is expected to hit the level cap long before finishing the game. Reaching level 99 should occur somewhere just after the middle of the game, at the point where the player has access to almost every job and has encountered almost every type of threat. Reaching level 99 brings with it a certain security, the implication that from then on, all enemies will also be level 99, and that any failure to defeat an enemy will be a result of a bad strategy or the players own mistakes. The game is not easy, and is certainly intended for veteran final fantasy players used to the games with job systems and changing up your entire party to combat a single encounter. Leveling up is not a slow grind part of the game, as you have a lot of control over the speed and frequency of battles, and it is not difficult to keep up with the games level curve.

The other layer to this unique design is that the game expects you to "cheat", or use strategies that would be overpowered and frowned upon in most other games. Bravely default easily expects you to know or discover strategies such as: applying a status to all enemies and killing every enemy with that status using another spell, cycling a counter move over and over to have a nearly invincible party member, applying a healing attribute to a self-damaging character to get huge damage at little cost, casting reflect and dangerous spells on your own party to bounce them at the enemy, or duplicating a move that does maximum damage 15 times in a row. The game builds all of its encounters with the knowledge that your team will be the maximum level and that you will be using the most vile tactics you can come up with, and the game will do the same. Bosses and even common enemies will employ equally vile tactics using the exact same moves that you have access to, meaning you can learn from your enemies or quickly grasp the enemies strategy through your own experiences. One of the late game dungeons is entirely optional, but involves several fights against parties of 4 just like your, using the same jobs and skills you have gained during the game as a perfect test of your ability to develop counter-strategies, instead of relying on your own overpowered tactics. This type of design is really not something you find in many games due to the prominence of grinding or the lack testing strategies, and it is the most true appeal of bravely default to me.

BRAVELY SECOND EXISTS I GUESS So bravely second, a direct sequel to bravely default, definitely is a video game. It uses the original game as a base to generate more content, but completely misses the appeal of the original, and the new content added makes the experience even less focused. Overall, it's still a fairly alright RPG, but it fails to follow up on bravely default in a meaningful way or to provide as compelling of a gameplay experience. Here's some of the things it fucked up.

The game reuses almost everything the original game had, including the same music, world map, and most of the original's towns and dungeons, while adding a few of it's own. Going through areas you've been before never feels good, and the new areas lack the quality or brevity of the original game, leading to uninteresting areas that overstay their welcome, despite being the only break from repetitively reused content.

This extends to the classes but in an even worse sense. One important trait of the original jobs is that they were not perfect by themselves. While every job provided some useful abilities to be shared with other classes, or provided a good base with which to make a character, no class was without flaws. The new classes in bravely second are a lot of the opposite, they are closed loops that think of everything they could have to make a good standalone character. The 4 starter classes you get in bravely second are all brand new, and there's almost no reason to use any class besides those 4 as they are just insanely good. The priest and magician specifically augment magic in a way that makes spells infinity scalable into the end game, completely trampling on any other magic classes territory without needing the extra effort of grinding a new class out. Many of the new job concepts are actually really interesting, like going back in time to return to a healthier state, or a class that changes the stats and attributes of all units in a battle, allowing for all new kinds of strategies; but these classes lack any opportunity to be used to their full potential since they don't mesh well with other jobs and are limited by their self-centered design.

Another completely missed aspect of the original is the level curve discussed before. Bravely second only really requires you get somewhere in the ballpark of level 60-70 to comfortably beat the final boss, and getting too leveled up is really hard to avoid if you are plan to try out various jobs.

Second also fails to account for how many incredibly strong strategies the player can come up with, and even introduces some of its own strategies that it has no way to counteract, such as halfsies (the first skill the first class gets) pretty much splitting the game in two by tripling the value of items like phoenix downs, and allowing for fool-proof strategies by making 1 character focus entirely on defense, effectively making the party unkillable. Essentially, if you play second after having played the original (like any sane person would) then you will absolutely destroy the game with no sense of satisfaction.

The story is also a large step down, enough to become an annoyance, as the writing style changes to a strange romantic comedy situation with, for lack of a better term please forgive my sin, anime writing, but like bad anime writing, ya know the kind of shit that makes people write off all anime cus a lot of it is awkward and unpleasant to listen to. The story tries to mess with some big concepts like "what if new game + was a real thing???" and time travel and shit like that but it doesn't mesh with the tone the rest of the game has and that tone doesn't mesh with the world or art style and it's just a mess.

BRAVELY DEFAULT 2 SEEMS KINDA POOPIE SO FAR So unfortunately, the big appeal of bravely default being part of it's end game makes it hard to judge how 2 is gonna go given we only have a demo of the beginning, but given that the original team behind bravely default has slowly been stripped out of the series as it goes on, the outlook is bleek.

Most immediately obvious is that the artstyle has made a horrible transition from handheld to console, somehow even worse than pokemon. The areas are all fully 3d and lack the style or compositional excellence of bravely default, and the outside environment look like asset store products. The small proportioned characters with simple features to be readable on a small screen have been replaced with identically proportioned characters with excessive detail and ugly features, and look horrible up close on a big screen. Only the negatives of the art style have made it over, and everything good has been made unsavory. The character and enemy design overall is much worse as a result, everything is messy, unclear, and clashes with everything else. It's an absolutely shocking downgrade.

The characters themselves are overly hammy and feel like shallow attempts to have a similar party dynamic to the original without having identical character types, and the writing as a whole doesn't seem to have improved from second, which was already quite a step down from the original.

The gameplay also has not done anything different or interesting yet, and seems to be selling itself to people haven't heard of or gotten enough of the BP system. Enemies being on the overworld as opposed to random encounters shows they have dropped the player agency over encounter frequency, which is dumb. The battles lack any of the flow the original had, especially when using the battle speed option, as the camera does not present everything very well and changes position often as a result. Overall, I have not enjoyed the bravely default 2 demo and feel it shows nothing but a continued decline in the series that likely should have just been a single game. With the release date being set for sometime this year, I feel there is no chance any amount of player feedback could save the game or even begin to pull it in the right direction, as it seems to be fundamentally flawed with an inescapable feeling of shovelware.

SO WHAT? Basically, all I wanted to say here is that the original bravely default is a very unique experience I think every RPG fan should give a good chance (and just do all the optional stuff during the "repetitive" part of the game, it's where all the best content is you bozo) and that the sequels are NOT the same experience. I guess it's kind of mean to just say "hey don't buy or like this new thing cus its not like the old thing" but people should know why there's a bravely default 2 in the first place, and should fight for what made the original great. I worry that BD goes down the same sad path that FF did, becoming a completely hollow, middling series that strayed so far from it's home that a whole new series had to be made to give the fans of the old style a place to go.

Thanks for reading, and hope you got something out of it.

[kittenfemme27]

Bastion: What it means to truly move on.

“Someday, your bird is gonna fly.”

Bastion is the first game released by what is now the critically acclaimed Supergiant Games, makers of other games like Transistor, Pyre, and most recently Hades. But back in 2011 they were a nobody. 7 developers from various backgrounds within the industry came together to make games that could focus on storytelling first and foremost more than any of their previous studios would allow. Bastion was the result of that. Starting out from the idea of a top down isometric RPG, Supergiant realized that they wanted to portray a world that was fractured and broken, and wanted to show the vast and empty sky as a contrast to that destruction, but realized the camera angle wouldn’t allow this. So they came up with the idea that the ground would come up in front of the player as they walked forward, allowing the empty sky to show beneath them since the groundwork would not originally be laid until the player walked towards it. To explain this choice and why the world reacted this way, a destructive event known as “The Calamity” was created in the game's story. Thus, Bastion found its ethos.

Bastion’s a masterpiece. Plain and simple. It's been ported to nearly everything under the sun for a reason, being playable on literally 3 different console generations as well as every OS a PC can run, but coming back to play this game for the first time within the current political and geological climate that we find ourselves within as time goes on only makes it more and more apparent how much the story has to say. Even if you could somehow ignore it’s absolutely incredible music, insanely varied and addictive and yet delightfully simple gameplay, jaw dropping art direction and set pieces, Bastion’s storytelling is at its core and the story it has to tell is one that I think a lot of people didn’t fully appreciate back in 2011. From what I could find online, most people either ignored it in favor of the gameplay, or let the meaning of it glaze over them. And that's really, deeply a shame. Because Bastion is one of the best games I have ever played. And I’d like to talk about why.

Gameplay:

“Kid just rages for a while...”

I want to start first and foremost by talking about the gameplay and how you engage with the world. Combat in Bastion is simple and not exactly groundbreaking. An isometric hack ‘n’ slash with 2 weapon slots and a single ability, with a shield that has a parry mechanic and a dodge roll with fairly lenient invulnerability frames. Player movement is very, very slow which encourages you to very quickly become proficient in dodging and blocking. It’s fun, for sure, if just a little bit easy. But it’s nothing to write home about at first. As you play, though, you’ll begin to uncover Bastion's hidden depth and variety within its combat. A lot of that depth comes from the sheer number of Weapons, Upgrades, Passives, and Skills you can equip in any combination. 

You are given 11 weapons, each of which can be upgraded with collectibles found within the levels for a total of 5 times per weapon, and these upgrades form a loose “trees” of upgrades that you can switch between at will. You can make the Spear better at critical hits and critical damage and faster thrusts, or make it better at throwing with more spears per throw, for example. Every single weapon has a 2 distinctive upgrade “Trees” in this way that clearly make it better at one specific aspect of the weapon, but you are free to mix and match these upgrades as you see fit. Maybe you want the Spear to have a high critical hit rate, but also throw 2 spears per throw, you can do that. It’s also worth mentioning that there are no restrictions placed upon you on what type of weapons you want to take. You can take two melee weapons, or two ranged weapons, whatever combination you desire is up to you. The narrator even has a line for literally every combination you can have that you’ll hear upon exiting the armory. Some compare you to legends of yore from the game worlds past, others point out just how plain silly it is for the Kid to carry both a mortar launcher and a rocket launcher.

Each weapon also comes with two skills that you can use during gameplay, ranging from protective skills like one that makes you block all attacks for a few seconds, to damage based skills such as the Bow’s skill that fires a ricocheting arrow between enemies. Even then, there are other Skills that are tied to no weapons at all which brings the total of skills in the game to 30.

In addition, there’s the Tonic system in which each level up confers a slot that you can equip a drink from the bar, for a total of 10 at max level. These function as passives applied to your character that allow even further customization. Some are basic things you’d expect, such as overall more health, or more restoration or ability potions, a flat 15% damage resistance, and so on. A number of these however offer a very very strong benefit in exchange for a side effect. Werewhiskey, for example, gives you a 100% crit rate but only below 35% health. Doomshine offers a permanent 10% crit but takes away 10% of your health permanently. Or Leechade, which allows you to gain health from striking enemies, but makes your health potions only 1/3rd as effective. These can all be stacked upon each other in any order or combination. You choose and be changed at any point between missions..

All of these systems together enhance the very simple hack ‘n’ slash combat to be something with infinitely more depth than presented to you at first glance, and something that you can experiment with as much as you want, since no choice is permanent. Part of the way it encourages you to experiment are the Weapon Challenge missions that crop up each time you obtain a new weapon. They ask you to complete some sort of challenge related to that weapon with no Skills, no other weapons, and in some of them not even the ability to dodge or block. Besting these will net you 1 of 3 prizes, depending on how well you did, With the first two prizes being upgrade materials and the last being a Skill for the weapon the challenge is based on.

Beating Bastion unlocks a “Score-Attack” version of New Game+ that keeps a running overall score during the whole game and during stage specific score for each mission, with a multiplier and a timer to keep that multiplier up. This effectively turns the game into a leaderboard chasing isometric arcade game. Every enemy adds 1 to the multiplier, and resets the timer, so it's up to you to run through each mission as fast as possible and challenge yourself to see what kind of score you can get, and since it lets you replay any mission you want, you can always find ways to get a higher and higher score. One of my playthroughs of this game was on the PS Vita and even since beating it, I've found myself trying to one-up my own score while i’m just sitting around since each mission only takes about 10-20 minutes. The most challenging content in the game is a set of 4 different repeatable combat arena’s with 20 waves of some of the toughest enemies in the game. You can make this even harder by invoking each God within the games Pantheon and raising the difficulty of every enemy you encounter. Doing this raises how many points you get per kill, and in these combat arena’s I’ve regularly topped a million points in just a single stage from precise gameplay.

I think that’s what I find amazing about Bastion’s combat is that despite 3 playthroughs, I never once found myself bored or annoyed by any of it. All 3 of my playthroughs had me switching up Weapons, Upgrades, Skills, and Tonics between every mission just to experiment and see what crazy builds I could make. Every challenge was always a delight and a real test of skill, every mission a romp where I got to find a new weapon and play with it each time. Often, I would die, but that was fine! Losing in Bastion is fun. It’s part of the experience, because you can always go back and change your build to whatever you desire to try again. In a way, it’s fitting for the entire theme of the game. It’s the End of the world, and there are no more rules. Do whatever you’ve gotta do. Might as well have fun with it, while you do. 

Art & Sound:

“I suppose all that's left... is to try'n remember this moment.”

I think the other reason that I didn’t get bored on any of my 3 playthroughs of Bastion was the absolutely breathtaking art and music the game features. The soundtrack, composed by Darren Korb, clocks in only at an hour and while that does sometimes mean that there are repeats of songs, I'd be lying if I told you there was a single song on that score that I didn’t absolutely love. Or that I thought was out of place during any section of the game. Each and every song is its own radically different soundscape that, in songs like “Brynn the Breaker”, invokes a feeling of complete and utter destruction around you and a sense of leaning into that destruction. It’s fitting that the first time this song plays, you are almost assuredly going to hear the line “Kid just rages for awhile...” as you wreck each and every enemy and object around you after waking up on a floating rock in the sky.  Meanwhile, in other songs such as “Build that Wall”, it's clear that Supergiant was acutely aware of the impact their music could have on a scene. In Caelondia, the games world, “Build that Wall” is a jingoistic anthem meant to inspire the Cael by noting the danger they face from the outside world and from the Ura, a people who live to the east, and implores them to build walls to keep everyone else but keep themselves safe. But the first time you hear that song, you’ll be rolling through the dilapidated ruins of Prosper Bluff, a place overrun by birds ready to rip you apart and barely hanging together by literal boards between each floating island, and not a wall in sight. Guided only by the simultaneously soothing and haunting voice of an Ura girl singing the theme of the people who hate her. In that moment, it sounds much more sorrow and sad than any anthem for a nation ever could.

Darren Korb has stated that the point of Bastions music was meant to invoke a sense of the “American Frontier”, of exploring new and uncharted land, but it’s interwoven with melodic and slow moments of tragedy and despair, featuring lots of slow acoustic guitar and lots of slow vocals when there are any at all. I really cannot praise enough this choice of frontier-ism interwoven into the music itself, as it sells the entire theme of the game perfectly.

The art of the game is just as fantastic, too. Supergiant set out to make sure you could see the sky in a top down game, which sounds a little absurd and like a nearly impossible feat, and yet they succeeded with such aplomb it almost seems like it was easy. Below each stage is a blurred barrage of trees, nature, clouds, sky, sometimes ruins within those things, it reminds you constantly that the world has ended and nature has reclaimed it. Progressing further and further down the set of missions and further away from the Bastion and Caelondia sees you going more and more into what's left of those wilds and away from the ruins of civilization, before reaching the icy peaks in the east of the Ura. It creates this feeling of loss and tragedy at what's lost, a sense of exploration into this new and unknown world, before finally getting to it's cold center as you get closer to the truth of the Calamity.

In general, the art style of Bastion feels like a living breathing oil painting. Features on people are exaggerated with small bodies, yet large heads and eyes and hands or feet. Making them feel like something out of a children's book. Every single thing in the game is full of color and life, down to the animals and the foliage, with the only notable exceptions being the ruins of buildings that are oppressive and gray, and the final cold reaches of the Ura’s leftover ruins. Because of the oil painting aesthetic, the narration, even the surreality of the world coming up before you, Bastion feels a lot more like playing a fairy tale than anything else I've ever played, even things that have tried to emulate that same effect. Bastion reminds us that the presentation of a game, in both its art and its music, tell just as much about the story and the world of a game as the actual story itself does.

Story: (Spoiler Warning)

“Now here’s a kid who’s whole world got twisted, leaving him stranded on a rock in the sky.”

Bastion is a game about a lot of things, but at its heart, it’s a game about Tragedy. A tragedy you can’t prevent no matter what you do, because it has already happened. Setpieces in the game constantly remind you of this, like going through the Hanging Gardens, a place where people used to gather and finding nothing but ashen corpses. Rucks, Bastion’s narrator, will even tell you the names of these people. I remember playing this game in 2011 and being upset at this. I wanted to know about Maude the Tutor, I wanted to hear the life of Percy the Snitch, but I couldn’t. That was the tragedy. It didn’t register with me at the time, but that was the point. I was supposed to be upset I couldn’t know these people, that they died in a tragedy I couldn’t prevent. 

The core story of Bastion revolves around a war that took place some 50 odd years ago. Caelondia and her people, versus the Ura. In the modern day, before the calamity, the war was over. There was an Ura named Zulf who was trying to broker peace, even. But the Caelondian’s military-science division, the “Mancers” had a secret weapon. One they intended to use to get rid of the Ura for good. It would cause a genocide of the very land the Ura lived in and cause it to literally fall into nothing, ripping apart the physical earth where it stood before. Worse yet, this weapon was being created by an Ura inventor that lived within Caelondia named Venn under threat to his daughter, Zia. Venn couldn’t stand to aid the destruction of his people and sabotaged the weapon that ushers in the Calamity with vengeance in his heart, so that it would backfire and take Caelondia down with it. Imagine Venns shock, then, when the mancers asked him to pull the trigger.

Turns out an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Just like that, the Calamity has already happened. The Ura who were discriminated against in every part of Cael society and the racism and cycle of vengeance and violence within the Caels and the Ura reached a boiling point that caused the literal end of the world.. And that’s where you wake up. In a world already torn apart and crumbling before you. On a rock in the sky.

Tragedy permeates everything about the game. In the Hanging Gardens, you find Zulf as he’s about to kill himself after watching his Cael wife crumble to ash right before his eyes. When you meet the second survivor, an Ura singer who just so happens to be Zia, Venns daughter. She’s mournfully singing the tune of Caelondia that was the anthem used to inspire the Caels to oppress her own people, and her sweet voice sounds like the dying breath of an entire nation. Bastion makes it very clear that these people's lives as they knew them are over. But then Bastion asks you a simple question: You have to keep going, so what are you going to do with that world?

Before you get to make that choice, though, you’re asked to decide the fate of a man who hurts you. Zulf at one point reads the journal of Venn that he obtains from Zia and learns everything about the Calamity. He learns about the Mancers plan to genocide his people. He learns about Venns sabotage. Zulf spent his entire life advocating for peace between the two peoples, and this is what he’s met with. Unable to stand it, he attempts to destroy the Bastion and flees after injuring Rucks. As you chase him, he lures you far from the Bastion and sends the signal to an entire army of Ura survivors to attack the Bastion, even persuading Zia to come with him to try and convince her to abandon the Bastion. In the end, though. You chase him all the way to the heart of the Ura nation and as retaliation for bringing someone so powerful who kills so many Ura, the Ura forces attack Zulf and leave him for dead. You come across his body and are given a choice to either leave him and carry on, or take him with you and abandon your weapon. You’re asked right then and there, can you forgive someone who hurt you and your chance at fixing the world and break the cycle of violence? Or will you press on, like Venn, with vengeance in heart. If you choose to save Zulf, you walk forward with zulf on your shoulder through multiple Ura archers shooting you nearly to death. It’s only once they realize that you’re trying to save Zulf do they stop trying to attack you. This moment of compassion, this breaking of the cycle, inspires the Ura to let you pass. If you choose not to save him, you must battle an entire army, which isn’t even hard for you at that point. It’s a bloodbath. You, a Cael kid from nowhere, end the last of the Ura outside of Zia who knows so little of her culture that she can’t even read the journal her father left over. You succeed where the Mancers failed. The cycle of violence remains unbroken within you and within your heart.

You’re given two options upon returning to the Bastion at the end. You can use the power of the Bastion to reset the world to where it was before the Calamity. You’ll lose all your memories, but everyone and everything that died will be okay and alive again. There’s a risk, though. Rucks has no way of knowing if this plan will work. If it will prevent the Calamity in the end. “Problem with a machine that sets things back to a bygone time,”  he says, “Is that you can’t test it.”

Your other option is Zia’s choice, though both her and Rucks support whatever decision you make, they know it’s not an easy choice. Her plan is to turn the Bastion into a floating island ship that can travel anywhere. To forge a new world and look for survivors on other floating islands and carry on in this destroyed world and find hope within that tragedy. Make something new, and beautiful, from the ashes of something dead. Maybe that’s not possible, she thinks, but it’s better than recreating a world with institutional violence, with cycles of hate and vengeance, a world where something like the Calamity could happen in the first place.

Supergiant knew what most people would pick, though. Resetting seems like the only real choice, at first. Maybe the Calamity will happen again, maybe it won’t, but you can’t just let all those people die. The whole game has been building up to fixing the Calamity. Rucks, old and clinging to the past, is sure that resetting it will work and that things will be okay again. He’s a bit like a father figure to you, too. He’s narrated every action you took, made sure you were never truly alone in this ruinous world. So of course you trust him. An overwhelming amount of people chose to reset the world the first time they play. I did, too. I knew that maybe the Calamity would happen again, but I couldn’t just let everyone die. Maybe things would be different, I thought. Maybe this time people won’t let something like a genocide happen again. Maybe Venn won’t pull the trigger. I didn’t know, but it was better than letting everyone die, right? It had to be. I had to hope that I made the right decision. So with trepidation in my heart. I chose to reset everything.

Rucks comforts you when you choose to reset that “No matter what happens next... you done good.” Credits roll. You see pictures of the lives of each character in the reset Caelondia. The lonesome Kid continues his work as a mason on the wall built to keep the Ura out, where he isolated himself after losing everyone in his life. The only person to ever sign up for 2 tours on the Wall. Rucks continues his work on the Bastion, refining it for the future, meaning that there’s still a need for a safeguard like it in the first place. Zia plays a concert on her harp with a mournful look on her face, she found comfort in music but that comfort was equally as isolating and lonely, what with her being an Ura girl in Caelondia. Zulf gets married to his fiancee, blissfully unaware of the impending genocide on his people while he fruitlessly brokers peace. Upon seeing these credits, these images of the lives of these characters, I knew I made a mistake. History is going to repeat itself. Sure they were alive, and so was everyone else, but the cycle of violence remains unbroken and eventually, even if the Calamity that befell the world the first time doesn’t happen again, another will. Rucks final words in this ending are a simple forlorn goodbye. “So long kid... Maybe I'll see you in the next one. Caelondia... We’re coming home.”

Choosing this ending left me feeling anxious at first, and then hollow and empty. I didn’t save anyone, I just clung to the past. I expected things to be different in a world where something like the Calamity could happen in the first place. I knew, then, that for there to be any hope at all I had to move on from the old world. I had to do right by Rucks, by Zia, even by Zulf. They were my friends. They deserved better, they deserved more. They deserved a world without the conflict and violence that Caelondia brings. I understood even more clearly what I had done when, upon starting a new game, Rucks final words echoed over the loading screen. As far as I could tell, the Calamity had happened again. Rucks even makes comments of feeling a sort of deja-vu while retelling the story and is much less confident resetting will work the second go around, for a reason he just can’t quite explain.

Bastion is a story about tragedy, about generational trauma left over from a war, about the cycle of violence and all that it perpetuates. It’s a story about waking up in a world that has already crumbled and fallen apart through no fault of your own and being told there is nothing you can do about that destruction. And there isn’t. Climate change is a bigger problem now in 2020 than it ever was in 2011. People are going to die, it’s just an awful fact at this point. Those in charge continue to ignore that fact and these issues while also continuing to stoke the fires and flames of the impoverished and destitute more and more every day, bleeding them dry for any pennies they might have. 

But that’s not all Bastion has to say. It’s not fair for the next generation just like it wasn’t fair for the Kid, to wake up in a world already destroyed, and yet still, people like the Kid and Zia found hope. Within Bastion, you can save Zulf and end the cycle of violence, you can choose Zia’s option and set out on a world that is better for everyone in the end, as ruined as it is. Even in the end of the world and everything you knew, there is hope. Bastion doesn’t just ask, it begs on hands and knees for the next generation to take up this dying world and make it better. Bastion, and Supergiant, believes in the next generation. that it's possible to move on from the past and make something better, to seize control and make a better world while purposefully never forgetting the cycles of violence that led us to the end of the world in the first place. Our great Calamity is already unfolding before us and there isn’t anything we can do to stop it, only delay it. Bastion tells us that it's okay, that we can make something beautiful, and new, and better from those ashes. 

In the scene for the Evacuation ending, Rucks tells us that he’s not sure how to live in a world like this, but he’s willing to learn. And excitedly offers to help teach you how to fly the Bastion through the skies. The very first image you see during the credits then, is the Kid finally collapsing of exhaustion and resting while Rucks tucks him in. The next is Zia looking forward on the deck of the Bastion, a smile on her face and hope in her heart. You get to see Rucks later teaching the Kid how to fly the Bastion, finally giving the Kid the family that he so desperately needed, and finally you see Zulf. He’s got a frown on his face, he’s still lost everything in the Calamity after all. More than anyone. But he’s chopping food for everyone else still, helping out where he can. I couldn’t help but think upon seeing his expression that he might hate me for the rest of my life, and that was alright. I’d always just be happy he was alive. Seeing the smiling faces of everyone in the Evacuation made something very clear to me. In the Old World, Zia was an outcast, Zulf was a fool, Rucks was nostalgic, and the Kid was alone. In the Calamity, they found friendship, they found happiness, they found love and family in each other, they found adventure and they found hope for the future. Zia’s final words to the Kid echoed in my head:

"Any moment I'd want to live again... happened after the Calamity. Not before."

And I was at peace. I knew I had done the right thing I had chosen to move on, accepting the world for what it was and not looking for miracle solutions to fix it or change it, but to forge on ahead with what I had and make something better. 

Bastion’s story is not directly told to you, especially after the ending. There is no epilogue that tells you exactly what happened, just a few lines of dialogue that you can make of what you will and some pictures of the lives after your choice. it’s never explicitly stated that the Calamity happens again if you choose to reset things. It’s meaning is in between the lines that Rucks has to say. It’s In the subtext. It's in the art, it's in the environment, like the tragedy of finding nothing but ashen corpses around a lone peace talker right before he’s about to jump to his death. It’s in the music, like the haunting melody of an outcast’s voice singing the song of her oppressors while never realizing how much the very city she was raised in tried to exterminate her. But more than anything it's in the feeling you get while you play. Bastion’s story plays out in your heart as much as it plays out in your mind and on the screen in-front of you. What you feel, what you make of it, that’s just as important to the meaning of the story as what you’re hearing and seeing. Obviously this can be said of all stories, but Bastion is maybe the one that’s resonated most in my heart and in my soul more so than any other story. It offers no simple answers, no painless choices, and no easy ways out. Move on, or cling to the past, those are your only two options and Bastion forces you to make a choice.

In the end, I chose a new world. A better world. A world with my friends that would never let the cycles of violence and the generational trauma that caused the Calamity to happen again. Sure, resetting technically brings everyone back to life, but it wasn’t until I chose to move on and move forward that I felt I could even say in my heart that I’d saved anyone at all. 

Conclusion: 

“I dig my hole, you build a wall.”

“Build that wall, and build it strong, Cause we’ll be there before too long.”

Bastion is, and I'm not saying this lightly, a perfect game. The gameplay loop and combat is phenomenal and addicting, the music and art and aesthetics are so top notch you could honestly create an entire art style out of them all on their own, the storytelling is amazing and has so much to say that I cannot believe something this important was just thrown out by an indie studio nobody had ever heard of while it was only 7 people strong, and how many people slept on it or completely missed the point of the tragedy of Caelondia and the Ura. 

This game will live in my heart for a very, very long time and its music and messages it conveyed will stick with me even longer. My only regret with Bastion is that I’ll never get to experience it for the first time again. But, even with the spoilers here, you can. Play it, Kid. You won’t regret it.

“We can't go back no more. But I suppose we could go... wherever we please.”

[smash-64]

Ok so I typed up a super long review of Starlink: Battle for Atlas, and I spared nothing in what you might call a scathing review. It’s below the cut, but if you’d like the TL;DR part, I’d summarize it as follows:

The Starfox stuff is fun, but the rest isn’t. 5/10

Starlink Battle for Atlas review

Being a huge fan of Starfox, I’ve had my eye on this game for a very long time. However, the whole “toys as games” thing was a huge turnoff, coupled with the fact that apparently even getting the physical version meant you needed to devote 15GB of storage space to the game, which makes no sense to me. 

Anyway, I watched the reception closely, and it was pretty lukewarm, at best. People generally had very little to say about the game, so I only ever occasionally looked into whether it was on sale or not. Luckily for me, I got my hands on a 400GB microSD card for my Switch at the same time that the digital version went on super sale at 70% off, so I decided the time was right to try it out.

The Good

The Starfox team is at their graphical best in this game, by far. They looked great in Starfox Zero, but they look exactly how I pictured they would in my most fantastical dreams from when I was little. They all move smoothly, have perfect fur and feathers, emotive expressions, and they just fit so well with all the other characters in Starlink. There is a wide variety of allies and NPCs in this game, and they all have just as wide a variety of races and species. One guy looks like he should be a grass type Pokemon. I really think the character design is fantastic in this game. The fact that the entire inclusion of Starfox was an afterthought, yet they all fit in so perfectly is really a huge victory for Starlink. 

In addition to how they look, the Starfox team also sounds great. They got the original voice actors back for Fox and Slippy (and I do mean the originals from Nintendo 64!), and the rest of the squad, plus Wolf, came back from the 2011 remaster of Starfox 64 for the 3DS. That game was a great remaster, and the voice work was phenomenal. The characters and their personalities all shine through just as you expect them. They banter slightly less than on the N64, but part of that might just be because sound bytes were at a premium on that system, so they had to pick and choose what lines to include more carefully. So, I don’t think you can really count that against Starlink, which is a game that can include just about as many lines of dialogue as it wants. Fox, for one, has a TON of dialogue and I loved every bit of it. I kind of wish I lived in the Seattle area so I could hear Mike West’s radio show (and hear Fox’s voice all the time), which is how Nintendo discovered him for the original voice of Fox McCloud way back in 1997. Another great piece of work here.

In what very well might have been the source of the “Star Fox Grand Prix” fake leak a few years ago, there is a planet called the Crimson Moon where you can take part in what is essentially pod racing with your Arwing. Now, I really did not enjoy the pod race scene of Star Wars Episode I, and aside from Mario Kart 64, I really don’t find racing games very rewarding. However, these racing levels are actually pretty fun. There are hidden shortcuts you can take, plenty of obstacles, and the computer racers are actually fairly difficult. I honestly found myself getting really into these races. The only downside is, there aren’t very many of them. They’re also kind of long, which is no problem for a veteran of N64’s Rainbow Road, but I was a bit surprised at the length of some of the courses.

The Meh

The music, which I have come to believe might be the element of games that really determines whether I just like a game, or love it, is fairly generic. It sounds like your average Marvel movie soundtrack, except without any real bangers. The Corneria remix is too short and not often played, and the Star Wolf theme is the same deal. That’s just about it for Starfox music, and the rest of it is just so generic that I can’t even comment any further. A real letdown for me, although it doesn’t particularly take away from the game or produce any grating tracks.

The difficulty was a mixed bag as well. I played about 70% of the game on Hard mode because I’m very experienced with Ace Combat and Starfox games, so I thought I’d be fine with the air/space combat. But, the difficulty slider didn’t really make the game more difficult, it just made it take a lot longer. I guess that could be seen as a good thing for people who get upset about dying really quickly on harder difficulties, but it felt like a way to cheat at padding the game’s playtime. I ended up lowering the difficulty just so I could finish faster.

The Starlink characters are a really big missed opportunity. They all have very distinct personalities, but I was shocked at how little content actually featured them. They each have a backstory cutscene that highlights them, but those scenes are so short that it’s more of a 30 second elevator pitch than anything else. None of the characters have more than a sentence or two to comment about said cutscenes, and none of them ever show any growth. Even the “main” character of Mason is basically the same by the end of the game. Although, I do think their designs are excellent and their personalities stand out from one another well enough.

The Bad

Spoilers ahead for the next three paragraphs! The story itself is pretty crappy. I’m still not really sure what was going on or why the Equinox (the main ship) was where it was. In more than one of the character-specific backstory cutscenes I already mentioned, they talk about Earth. So, ok, we understand that almost everyone on the Equinox is human, that’s fine. But...how exactly did they get here and why do they want to recapture the solar system of Atlas? As you play, you essentially claim territory in the name of Atlas, but it’s not clear at all who that exactly is. Does that mean the Equinox is in charge? Is there a government somewhere? Military affiliations or alliances? Because plenty of territory seems to be independent, in addition to enemy-controlled territory. Maybe there was a single line of dialogue I missed somewhere.

But, ok, we just want to fly spaceships and shoot stuff, who cares about politics! Well, there are still issues with the story because I honestly could scarcely care less about any of the plot in this game, which makes it tough to get into any of the battles or things at stake. The entire Starlink team was so unimportant that I literally never used ANY of them even one time, and the game never encouraged me too, either. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the unparalleled writing and character development of the Kiseki series of JRPGs, or maybe I just really don’t like the storytelling methods and style of western RPGs, but I feel like the story should make you WANT to learn more about characters. Instead, I was just constantly asking questions like “Why does any of this matter?” 

Now, that would be a totally unimportant question if the game was all about space battles and explosions and pew pews, but it pretends to have this really deep, engrossing story with characters wracked over the (spoiler!) kidnapping and death of their leader and captain. We barely even get to know who this dude is before he’s kidnapped, and then the rest of the story is so bare-bones that most of what we’re “supposed” to be feeling has to be completely assumed under the guise of “Well, I guess he was the captain so we’re supposed to feel bad, right?” He did apparently act like a father figure for many of the Starlink pilots, but we are only briefly told that in those previously mentioned 30 second elevator pitches. We never actually see it.

Ok spoilers done, but I’m not. The enemies that you fight in this game are also horribly boring and repetitive. We get about 10 enemies in total throughout the entire game, and most of those only have very slight variations. They try to spice it up a bit by adding in “elements,” but about 70% of what I fought ended up always being the fire type anyway. Sure, we get five or so “boss” type enemies, but they’re not particularly special, either. Most of these enemies are copy-pasted all over the planets you visit to give the impression of a planet full of activity, but really it’s just the same things over and over. 

The real issue here is how the Big Bad, a bird guy named Grax, is supposed to be really feared but we only get like two cutscenes about him. His army is completely faceless. It’s really shocking that we got significantly more development from the Star Wolf team almost 25 years ago on the Nintendo 64, and all of that was delivered in five second one-liners spread through only a couple levels! 

All I’m going to say about the “toys as games” thing is that it’s stupid and clunky and should never be used, especially the way they make you mount the ship onto your controller. What an absolutely idiotic method. I can understand having a portal like they did with Skylanders. Still not a fan, but you can toss something onto it and it doesn’t weigh down your controller. If it was required to play, I would have never even tried this game.

Gameplay is supposed to be the real winning point here, with an honestly unbelievable amount of content available for each planet you visit. I think there were six or seven planets you could visit, so there was actually a ton to do. But I can’t imagine beating my head against the wall so many times on each planet to complete any of it. If you really enjoy grinding, monotonous, pointless gameplay, then by all means, try this game.

Conclusion

I mean, if you like Starfox, I think you’ll have at least some fun with it. The Starfox levels are fun, and it feels like legitimate Starfox content. It also shows that Starfox could branch out into something different, but I’m not sure I’d be a big fan of it going such a repetitive route with regards to gameplay. If a game like this were fully devoted to a Starfox story, and not just including Starfox as an afterthought, then I do think it could be a good game. But as it stands, Starlink: Battle for Atlas is an example of something that looks and sounds great, but revels in gameplay mediocrity and fails at story-telling. 5/10. If there was no Starfox content, it’s honestly a 3/10.

[cawfulopinions]

Persona 4 Golden and the Problem of Appealing to a Wider Audience

I’ve been questioning how to go about writing this essay ever since I first finished Persona 4 Golden back in 2013. When I first finished the game, I came out of it not liking it very much – mechanically, it felt unbalanced; and writing-wise, I found it poorer than its original. My opinions on the game have shifted somewhat since then, helped along by the release of Persona 5 and the realization that many of the game’s mechanics were testbeds for that game. However, with time, I’ve found that I can articulate a lot of the problems Golden has with its writing a lot better. What I’ve ultimately settled on is looking at the Persona 4 we were originally given, then looking at its rerelease, and seeing what changed there and why I didn’t like it. Let’s jump in, shall we?

(Note: There will be complaining about Marie. My opinions on that subject sure as hell haven’t changed in the past seven years. Also, there will obviously be spoilers.)

I. A Brief History of Persona 4 as a Franchise

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (later spinoffs would drop the subtitle) released in the west in 2008 as a follow-up to the very strange (at the time) and very niche Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Persona 3 was notable for deciding to go for an urban setting, an avant-garde aesthetic, and heavy philosophical themes, something that was rare for RPGs before 2010 (though not for its own franchise). While Persona 4 kept the philosophical focus of Persona 3, it decided to dial back some of the artsier aspects in favor of a more down-to-earth, focused story. Where P3 told a story about the inevitability of death and took place in a very modern Japanese setting, P4 decides to tell a story about the lies we tell ourselves and takes place in a rustic, rural setting.

Some of the first things that Persona 4 tells you after getting to its setting, Inaba, are that the town really only has one tourist attraction, it’s far from anywhere of real note, and its local businesses are all being driven out of business by the construction of a corporate superstore. It’s relatable, particularly to anyone who’s watched their local mom-and-pops go out of business after a Wal-Mart decided to move in.

The tone of this setting permeates through Persona 4 – all of its characters are pretty down-to-earth, and though there’s some cartoonish exaggeration in their writing, they feel more like real people than your average RPG character. Yosuke is the new kid in town who struggles with feelings of inferiority, something that’s not helped by his dad running the superstore that’s driving everyone out of business. Naoto is a girl with aspirations of becoming a detective, but hides her gender out of a belief that if she does so, she’ll be taken more seriously by the male-dominated police force. Even the game’s idol character, Rise, is someone who quit the business because the pressures of the idol industry became too much for her. Most games would take the opportunity to have an idol character written into the cast as an excuse for a pandering song and dance sequence and to play up her “waifu” aspects. Persona 4 spends the first hour after Rise’s introduced having her in and apron and slacks, serving tofu, and dodging paparazzi.

Persona 4 is not perfect in how it approaches its characters – in particular, Kanji and Naoto’s storylines have gotten a deserved level of flack for having essentially written coming-out stories for a gay man and a transman, and then immediately backing off and “no homo”-ing them. There’s a number of Social Links that end with the character deciding to go do the socially acceptable thing for them to do instead of following their own hearts, too – Yukiko’s comes to mind. But the character conflicts and stories told in the game’s Social Links are grounded and relatable.

The grounded-ness of Persona 4 was what really made it stand out in 2009, a time where RPGs and games as a whole were mostly concerned with showing off the cool things they could do with their engines (keep in mind, this was the early era of the PS3, and Persona 4 was a PS2 game). Looking back, it’s easy to realize that Persona 4 was made as grounded and rustic as it was because of budgetary concerns, but what was done with its limited budget was incredible. It looked at its setting and tone and embraced them, and that helped to make the game stronger.

And it worked! Persona 4 was easily Atlus’s biggest success in the PS2 era. Though the game was hard to find in the United States due to its short print run, it was inescapable online, and the early Let’s Play era helped keep it in the public eye. There’s a large number of people in the English fandom who only knew Persona 4 existed back in the day because of the hiimdaisy comic and the Giant Bomb Endurance Run. Meanwhile, the game was huge in Japan and topped sales charts for weeks.

Source: Gamasutra

And then Atlus almost went out of business! Oops!

Here’s what we know about Atlus at the time that Persona 4 came out: it wasn’t doing good. The PS2 Shin Megami Tensei games were all desperate attempts to try and find success, something that Persona director Katsura Hashino has been fairly public about in interviews. Dataminers examining the PS2 SMT games have found evidence that suggests every game was built on top of the previous, with every game using SMT: Nocturne’s models and basic gameplay system until after Persona 4’s release. Persona 3 and Persona 4 are so similar under the hood that model swap mods are everywhere for the two, with literally the only adjustments necessary being a reordering of animations to account for Persona 4 having a guard animation and Persona 3 not.

Persona 4 was a huge hit, but it wasn’t enough to save Atlus. The last games released under an independent Atlus were Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (one of my personal favorites) and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (a massive failure for the company). Following Strange Journey’s release, long-time franchise artist (and, more importantly, producer and creative designer for Strange Journey) Kazuma Kaneko near entirely disappeared from future SMT titles, only credited for writing the scenario concept for SMTIV and as a demon design supervisor for later SMT titles.

Soon after Strange Journey’s failure, Atlus was snatched up by Index Corporation. Very little is known about the internal culture during the Index era, but evidence suggests that it wasn’t great. The first few games Atlus produced after this point were all remakes, save for the strange, marriage-drama focused Catherine, a game that was assuredly in development before Atlus was bought out.

It was the original games and spinoffs that Atlus produced after they were bought by Index that started to show a shift in tone. Devil Survivor 2 is a notably different game than its predecessor (which was made while Atlus was independent). While I won’t get into that too much here (that game’s worth an essay on its own), it decided to trade it’s classical SMT-style aesthetic for something more bombastic and widely-appealing. Many of the characters in that game are better summed up by what anime tropes they appeal to than by their own character arcs, and the game’s plot is an unsubtle ripoff of Neon Genesis Evangelion. And it worked. Devil Survivor 2 very notably sold better than its predecessor despite being a DS game in the 3DS era.

At around the same time as Devil Survivor 2 was released, Atlus was preparing to release the first anime adaptation of Persona 4. Persona 4: The Animation was released in October of 2011, directed by Seiji Kishi (of Angel Beats! fame) and animated by AIC. I’ll leave my thoughts on Seiji Kishi as a director out of this and focus on the content of Persona 4: The Animation instead.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Persona 4: The Animation is a comedy anime.

The anime is a fairly faithful adaptation of the game in terms of plotline. It follows the game’s story to the letter, hitting every plot beat. When it needs to get serious, it gets serious, and when it nails its emotional beats, it nails them well. While I’ll go on record in saying that I flat out dislike the anime, I won’t deny that certain episodes, like the Nanako arc, are done very well. However, when it doesn’t need to be serious, the anime decides to look at Persona 4’s subtlety in its character arcs, and says, “Subtlety is for cowards.”

There’s an argument to be made that there isn’t time for subtlety in a 24-episode anime, which is why everyone’s character arcs needed to be compressed and character traits shaved down to only the most exaggerated bits. I disagree. You can easily show character without exaggeration in short-form media – the entire short story genre is built off of that exact concept. The decision to shave everyone down to their most basic traits was a decision made to make Persona 4 more accessible to a general anime-watching audience, who likely came in expecting a more action-packed, high energy deal.

And it worked.

For many people, Persona 4: The Animation was their first experience with Persona, period.  The anime was incredibly popular, and it’s clear that at this point, Atlus (or, more likely, Index) realized they’d struck gold. Persona 4: The Animation was the start of a large spate of Persona 4 spinoffs, all of which adopting the character exaggerations of the anime in some form or fashion. Any time you see a scene in a P4 spinoff where Chie’s reduced to her love of meat and kung-fu? Blame the anime. Further original games after this point seemed to take a more mainstream shift as well – Shin Megami Tensei IV and its sequel, Apocalypse, are both very different games than their predecessors, with characters and plotlines seemingly written to appeal to Persona 4’s audience.

Atlus eventually managed to claw their way out from under the hand of Index, mostly because Index got caught up in a huge fraud investigation! Oops! Sega bought a whole bunch of Index at this point, and Atlus has more or less kept on trucking under Sega since. However, the shift in internal priorities hasn’t changed much – Persona 5, while still a good game, is much closer tonally to the games that came out under Index, Shin Megami Tensei V has been AWOL ever since its first preview, and the less said about Catherine Redux, the better.

II. Less is More, and Maybe Inaba Doesn’t Need A Nightclub

Which, after a long detour, brings us back to Persona 4 Golden.

Golden is a remake of Persona 4 with additional content, released for the Playstation Vita (RIP) during the height of its popularity in Japan. Like Persona 3 FES, a previous patch/remake for Persona 3, Golden primarily exists as a gameplay patch to Persona 4 with additional story content in places throughout the game. While most of FES’s additional story was segmented off into the controversial “The Answer” section, Golden’s additional content is peppered haphazardly throughout the game. Because of this integration into the main story, Golden’s issues are more pronounced than FES’s were – in FES, you could just not play “The Answer”. Golden isn’t letting you go home without at least pushing you toward Marie’s dungeon.

Golden feels like it was developed with an understanding that anyone who’s playing it has watched the anime, and decides to lean into chasing that mainstream appeal while also throwing out the intrigue of its plot and setting. This is first evidenced when you boot up the game and watch the opening. While it hits all of the same beats as Persona 4’s opening, Golden’s opening has a much cheerier tune to it, focusing on a dance sequence and colorful visuals instead of the larger tone of the game. It’s not like the Persona 4 opening is completely absent from the game, but you have to go out of your way to watch it, and first impressions are very important.

This change in opening tone is only one example of the general tone of the changes that Golden takes. While there are big issues with the game’s writing (specifically one big one, which, whooo boy, we’ll get to her), most of the issues are in the little things – the new gameplay elements, the new areas you can visit, and the new scenes that were added to the game.

I talked a lot about how important P4’s setting is to its game for a reason: most of Golden’s changes are ones that disrupt the carefully crafted tone and setting of the original game. From things like slice of life scenes about the party buying scooters for themselves, to a winter trip to a ski resort, to a goddamn idol concert on the roof of the supercenter driving everyone out of business, it feels like the game is trying to pull away from its rural setting and down-to-earth tone to appeal to the lowest common denominator: teenage boys who live in Japanese cities.

A big sticking point for me personally has always been that you can visit Okina City in Golden. In Persona 4, you visited the nearby city occasionally in social link events, but never explored it on the whole. It gave a sense that Okina City was somewhere inconvenient to go to – someplace worth going to for a day trip with your friends, but too out of the way to visit on the regular. In Golden, the city and all of its trappings are just a loading screen away. Having a larger setting change like this so easily accessible detracts from Inaba’s setting – it makes the anxieties that several characters have about being trapped by the town feel fake. It detracts from a feeling that’s so integral to the game’s tone.

Also, the first time you go there outside of a Social Link is because Yosuke wants to pick up chicks with his cool new motorcycle.

The first trip to Okina City is ultimately indicative of a larger problem with most of the added scenes in P4G have: because they were written after the anime, they’re written to appeal to anime watchers. You can immediately tell when you’ve entered a scene that is original to P4G because the writing almost immediately drops in quality – characters become less complex, scenes have nothing to do with the plot or character development, and, to be quite honest, the jokes get worse. The Okina City sequence ultimately just ends with a fat joke and another “no homo” moment with Kanji. It’s… really bad.

There’s four more of these additional sequences throughout the game, and they’re all similar slice of life sequences that rely on anime tropes to propel them. The next after this is a beach episode with the rest of your party. After that is the idol concert on the Junes roof, which gets a hastily written tie-in to the plot when an antagonist says that the concert was how he found the party. After that is the entire winter sequence of the game, which caps off with a ski resort trip that leads into the game’s extra dungeon (which we’ll get to), which THEN leads into the game’s second hot springs cutscene, which has even less purpose than the first one.

None of these scenes have any real substance – it feels like they were just included because they actually had the budget to include them this time around. It’s possible that Okina City and the nighttime areas in Inaba were originally intended for the original version of P4, and I’d believe it – the way nighttime jobs are implemented in the original version of the game is particularly awkward, and you visit Okina City enough times in Social Links that I fully believe it was intended for the full game. As for the idol concert sequence, it 100% only exists because they got Rie Kugimiya as Rise’s VA, but couldn’t fit a sequence where she sang into the original version of the game.

The problem is that these inclusions ultimately detract from the original story. They take a game with a pretty firm idea of what kind of tone it wanted to have and muddle it because, fuck that, we have a budget this time and we need more anime tropes, idols, and tsunderes for those kids who came in after watching the anime.

Which brings us to Persona 4 Golden’s biggest issues: its additional Social Links, the winter semester, and its new ending sequence.

III. We have to talk about Marie.

Like Persona 3 FES before it, Persona 4 Golden adds new Social Links to the game. The first of which is the Jester Social Link, which deals with Tohru Adachi, a local police officer and a major character. While I’ve never been a huge fan of this Social Link (I’ve always felt like it made the identity of the culprit too obvious), it’s fairly well received by the fanbase and I can see the argument for its inclusion, so I’m not going to spend time discussing it here.

The other is Golden’s new Aeon Social Link, who manages to encompass most of Golden’s issues in a single character.

Marie is a completely original character to Golden, the first of a long chain of Atlus “remake waifus” – characters who are added to a remake of a game that are intended to appeal to the otaku crowd, rarely fit in with the rest of the game, and introduce large changes to the game’s plot. These characters rarely work because the narrative wasn’t built around them, and the retcons these characters introduce are often detrimental to their games’ original plots or themes.

Marie has all of these problems. She feels like she was written by committee – designed to appeal to an otaku crowd with a fancy design and tsundere personality. On top of that, she’s voiced by a big name seiyuu (Kana Hanazawa), and her plotline is used to fill in gaps with the game’s ending sequence, since the original game struggled with setting it up and the anime barely even bothered to touch it (Persona 4’s True Ending was shuffled off into an OVA in the anime adaptation).

From the moment you first see Marie, it’s obvious that she doesn’t belong. It’s not that her character design is bad, but it doesn’t match with the rest of the game’s tone. This is something of a pattern for her. The first time you meet Marie, it’s in the middle of a scene that was originally dedicated to the protagonist meeting his new family in Inaba. It’s jarring, disrupts a scene that was about setting up the protagonist’s larger family dynamic, and interrupts the flow of the game’s opening sequence.

Personality-wise, Marie is probably the most tropey of Golden’s characters – she’s a tsundere with amnesia, has a mysterious past, writes bad poetry as a hobby, and has a very obvious crush on the protagonist. Romancing her is almost mandated – you’re required to complete her Social Link to access the winter semester of the game, and during the game’s new ending, she calls out the protagonist on television to talk about how much she loves him. You can choose not to romance her if you want, but the game does its best to push you into wanting to do so.

Marie ultimately becomes one of the Velvet Room’s new attendants, though a lot of the evidence suggests that she was intended to become one of your party members originally. This is partially because she has a unique Persona related to her, and partially because the game takes every effort to emphasize how much of a buddy she is to the party. Marie’s Social Link ranks are time gated, usually becoming available after a new party member joins your team. All of these early scenes are dedicated to the protagonist going on dates with Marie, and then a random party member will show up and immediately become friends with her. Probably the most egregious case is during any mid-game hangouts where you don’t rank up, because the entirety of your party will just show up at Junes at the same time as you and Marie. It’s so obviously artificially constructed and honestly feels insulting to the player.

This artificiality feels like it was a writer’s saving throw to justify why the team would go into Marie’s dungeon to save her. The problem is that it’s also an unnecessary move to take. The majority of Persona 4’s plot is about the party entering dungeons to save people that they don’t really know from a serial killer; it stands to reason that the party would decide to help Marie without that extra motivation. But no, it was important to the writers that Marie is also big friends with the party, so we got what we got instead.

Marie’s dungeon comes after the skiing trip that caps off the winter semester, a portion of the game that is only available if you’ve finished her Social Link. The skiing trip is mostly more slice of life/comedy scenes, right up until you get thrust into the TV World to help Marie. The dungeon itself is… notoriously bad. You’re stripped of your equipment and items, and can only use items found within the dungeon to fight back. On top of that, the dungeon constantly drains your HP and MP, and the boss of it can only be damaged by using items that give her elemental weaknesses, because she starts off immune to everything. Here’s hoping you didn’t bring Chie for that fight like I did!

As you go through the dungeon, it’s revealed that Marie was secretly Kusumi-no-Okami, a minor Shinto god in service to Ameno-Sagiri (the game’s first final boss). Kusumi-no-Okami’s purpose is that she’s supposed to observe humanity and suck up all of Ameno-Sagiri’s fog after the conclusion of the game’s plot, which will inevitably kill her. The dungeon ends with the party trying to appeal to Marie to convince her that she doesn’t need to die, and then beating her up to save her. It’s… not particularly well written, but if that was all to Marie’s character after that, it would be fine. Unfortunately, it’s not.

The game proceeds as normal after that point as you approach the actual final boss, Izanami-no-Okami. During the fight with her, there is a sequence where the protagonist is encouraged to keep going by all of his social links. In the original version of the game (assuming that you’ve done their Social Links), this sequence ends with Dojima and Nanako, the family he’s been staying with the whole game, encouraging him to keep going. In Golden, Nanako’s line is immediately followed by Marie showing up, once again taking a sequence about familial love to make it about Marie. It’s… kind of gross!

Then you beat Izanami, and in the scene immediately afterwards, it’s revealed that, just kidding, Marie wasn’t Kusumi-no-Okami after all! She was actually Izanami-no-Mikoto, the good part of Izanami that was shaved off so that she could do her whole evil plot. Once you beat Izanami-no-Okami, she absorbs that evil part back into her and everything is all hunky dory! Conflict resolved completely, no need to worry about it anymore!

The “Marie was actually Izanami all along” reveal undercuts the finale of the game significantly. It comes immediately after what was the final scene before the ending scene, where Izanami pledged to leave humanity’s direction to humans in recognition of your feats. It’s an unnecessary doubling down on a finale that was already pretty definitive, if somewhat bittersweet, by making it unambiguously happy. This remains a theme for Golden’s ending sequence.

Persona 4 ends with the protagonist leaving his friends behind at the end of the year. Though the killer is in jail and the mastermind defeated, Inaba is still in the same melancholy state as it was when the protagonist came to it, and ultimately, he has to leave his friends behind. There’s a bittersweet-ness to its happy ending – no matter what, you have to move on and trust that things will be okay without you. Obviously, the protagonist comes back – there wouldn’t be so many spinoffs if he couldn’t – but it’s important that Persona 4 ends the way it does at that point. It puts a definitive close on the game.

Golden, however, adds an extended epilogue sequence where the protagonist comes back a year later. In this sequence, you find out that Inaba’s businesses are recovering, Namatame (the false antagonist) is running for office with a lot of support from the town, Adachi (the actual antagonist) has been on good behavior in jail, and your party members are all making tracks toward happiness for themselves.

A theme of esoteric happiness runs through this entire sequence – it feels like it entirely exists just to tell the player not to worry, everything is fine now, don’t worry about any other points of conflict. If it was just one of these things, it would have been fine, but the gatling gun of happy endings makes every one of those little victories feel lesser for it. Marie, of course, is inserted into the ending sequence of the epilogue to cap off her involvement. The esoteric happiness started with Marie, and it ends with Marie.

Golden’s epilogue ties every conflict in the game up into a neat little bow, in a way that’s almost entirely at odds with Persona 4’s down-to-home nature. It’s a fantasy that doesn’t acknowledge the uglier parts of life that Persona 4 was all about confronting. It’s the same kind of lie that Izanami accused humanity of wanting to nestle itself into. Marie’s involvement in Golden sums up a lot of that game’s problems, but the epilogue brings them into sharp relief.

IV. So now what?

I wouldn’t call Golden a bad game – I’ve heard a lot of people call it the superior version gameplay-wise, and while I disagree with that (it’s got some balance issues thanks to its new mechanics), it’s definitely the most accessible version. But when it comes to how it relates to its original, Golden throws a lot of what makes it good out the window in favor of appealing to a more general audience with slice of life sequences, more familiar tropes, and a character who mostly exists to sell merchandise and tie up Persona 4’s ending in an unambiguously happy manner.

I realize I’m in the minority here when I talk about what I dislike about Golden – you’ll find a lot of people who dislike Marie, but not a lot who dislike the rest of the package. And if you have a Vita and haven’t played Persona 4 already, then you might as well use it as your entry point into the franchise. However, I can’t help but feel like Golden is the exact point where Persona as a franchise shifted from trying to tell philosophical stories with more grounded characters to chasing mainstream appeal. Even Persona 5, a game that tries to tell a story about very real societal problems, has a lot of the same problems as Golden does, and from what I understand, these problems only got worse with Persona 5 Royal.

At the end of the day, Persona is going nowhere anytime soon – Persona 5 is the best-selling game in the franchise period, and the influence Persona has had on JRPGs in general cannot be understated. But I wouldn’t mind if some of the things I disliked about Persona 4 Golden didn’t come back.

[bestsleepaidreview]

Melatonin Sleep Aids What Dosage Is Greatest

Most individuals don't have to be informed in regards to the significance of sleep of their lives. They perceive it. The human body provides out distinct alerts when it's beneath stress ensuing from lack of sleep. Nevertheless regardless of figuring out its importance many people aren't able to sleep properly and even adequate. It may possibly be as a result of not getting enough time because of commitments in life or simply due to an lack of means to fall asleep. In each the cases the individuals lastly get caught in a vicious cycle of sleep deprivation. That's after they flip to top-of-the-line sleep help, however what variety of of them get the quality of sleep that they require?

Sleep aids like tablets are one of the best sleep help nevertheless are a short time interval answer not a future treatment. There isn't any such thing as an alternative choice to addressing the basic rationalization for insomnia. It might very nicely be your work routine, your ingesting behavior or just the way in which the air stream is organized in your bedroom. There are in truth a number of explanation why over the counter and prescription capsules will not be a good suggestion. You may as an illustration develop tolerance to the drug and will take additional of it, for it to be efficient leading to a vicious circle. Worse you may get addicted to the drug. And in case you identify to cease you may bear from withdrawal signs.

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Sleep aids similar to capsules may match sooner throughout the transient run, nevertheless are detrimental to nicely being in the long term, and usually aren't a holistic or eternal answer. Pure finest sleep aids of the type described above, might take longer to take effect, nevertheless they'll present a permanent answer with immense long run benefits.

David is a writer. In his spare time he keeps his thoughts lively by finding out, swimming and RPG games. David believes that our properly being is extraordinarily necessary as a result of with out our well being we have utterly nothing. Do sleep well and live effectively!

I've struggled with sleep for a lot of of my life. I really feel I used to be round 10 when I first realized that sleep simply did not come easy for me. Since that point, I've made a level best sleep aid to be taught nearly the whole lot that I can about points that would assist me sleep higher.

I need to confess that I've even tried pharmaceuticals. Whereas they have been considerably efficient, I on no account favored the thought of getting hooked on prescription sleep aids. Additionally, most of the time I woke up feeling a bit "hungover". That is why I began on the lookout for pure sleep aids.

Valerian is a mild sedative that's significantly effective in helping these with nervous rigidity and insomnia fall and keep asleep. It has been used as a sleep help as a result of the times of Historic Greece. One of many key advantages is that Valerian has been confirmed to be non-addictive. Scientific studies have confirmed that Valerian is, in precise truth, a very helpful remedy for insomnia.

Melatonin is a hormone that induces sleep that occurs naturally in our our bodies. Melatonin levels are very low throughout the day after which enhance throughout the night because it's going to get darker. As we turn into older, melatonin ranges decrease. For this reason, melatonin is a particularly efficient sleep assist for older people. Melatonin also can assist any time the sleep/wake cycles have been disturbed. For instance, many individuals take melatonin to battle jet lag.

5-HTP is maybe among the greatest sleep aids that there is. It's considered by most to be as efficient as prescribed Social Network Here drugs. It increases the time spent in deep sleep by about 25%. (REM sleep) Most individuals who take 5-HTP get up feeling rested fairly than hungover.

Kava is a very effective anti-nervousness supplement. It might be used for insomnia that could be a results of anxiety. Unfortunately, it has been linked to liver failure. Really, the FDA has put a warning out and Kava gross sales have been banned within the UK.

I have used all tree of these sleep helpers at one time or one other and have discovered them to be effective at serving to me fall asleep and enhance the general high quality of my sleep.

If you might be affected by insomnia top-of-the-line sleep aids you need to use to beat your sleep disorder are undoubtedly pure sleep aids. That isn't to say you should not consult together with your physician to find out in case you're suffering from any medical problems. Should you intend using a herbal sleep remedy or an over-the-counter sleep help and any combination thereof, it's a good suggestion to inform your physician and ask for his or her advice.

What Pure sleeping remedies must you where to buy the best sleep aid use?

Firstly and most easily you must begin unwinding and gratifying on the very least an hour earlier than mattress time which is good preparation for sleeping. This may check this be achieved by a nice scorching tub, participating in some stress-free music, learning a non technical e-e book even some very gentle stretching.

What must be prevented is stimulants resembling caffeinated drinks, alcohol and actions that get your ideas energetic. Keep away from vigorous motion packed reveals on TELEVISION; ideally flip the TV off totally an hour before mattress. The thought proper right here is to get relaxed and wind down earlier than you go to mattress. Do not learn in mattress, do not watch TV in mattress simply go to mattress to sleep. Create an everyday rest routine and you'll find you may begin sleeping properly again very quickly. I know it sounds easy however when is the ultimate time you took a warmth bathtub earlier than mattress and listened to some relaxing music with the lights dimmed? It beats taking sleeping capsules that is for certain.

So what does this imply? Successfully, for starters solely use your bedroom for sleep and naturally love making. For individuals who can program your self into realizing that everytime you go to mattress it is to go to sleep then ultimately that is what is going to occur and you will note that it comes naturally to go to sleep quick.

Make sure the room temperature is cool and that it is darkish. If there may be noise try using ear plugs whether or not it is too sensible use a sleeping masks. Ensure your mattress and bedding is comfy, too many individuals try to sleep in discomfort which leads to disturbed sleep.

[pixel-cat-1]

I just finished The Outer Worlds

I don’t really ever use this blog for more than reblogging stuff, so this is probably coming out of left field for anyone who follows me, but as you see in the title, I beat The Outer Worlds not a couple of minutes ago. I have some thoughts I’d like to talk about while their fresh, and this is as good a place as any to do that lol

So, what did I think of it? Overall, I think The Outer Worlds is okay game that ultimately fails to meet up in many regards to not only Obsidian’s golden child, Fallout New Vegas, but in some departments even regular ass Bethesda games from years ago. And that’s honestly such a shame, because TOW had so much goddamn potential and yet I finished it and felt practically nothing for the entire last level and final ending sequence.

The main issue I think is that ultimately speaking, TOW doesn’t necessarily do anything different from any other RPG I can think of, and it doesn’t do anything like that super well. 

For example, the combat’s good on a technical level. The controls and mechanics are fun to use (especially the dodge system), but the enemies tend to either range from “complete curb stomp bitch babies” to “bullet sponge that’ll kill me so fast I won’t even know what happened.” Most fights weren’t particularly engaging, and I was basically handicapping myself but not using the companion abilities for about 75% of the game (I don’t know why I never tried pressing the d-pad buttons, but yet again, when I can just shoot shit and huff an inhaler, I didn’t need to think too hard). The disparity of how difficult the game can be is often confusing, and I was more often limited because of my ammo count more so than my ability to play the game.

The RP aspects can be good at times. There are plenty of skill checks that reward you for being a smart little egg, and a part of RPG’s I like is being able to avoid combat and make people happy, and generally make myself useful, so that was fairly fun. Overall the dialogue options and the performances by most VA’s left me not feeling like I was being hindered in acting and responding to situations how I’d like, so at the very least, that didn’t let me down.

The music was overall enjoyable, although very forgettable, and sometimes a bit all over the place: there’s Western-y guitar ambient tracks, also some more techno-y ones? Elevator music that sounds like they got it from a royalty free website. This kinda wish-washyness ties into multiple issues I had with the game I’ll get into further on.

The graphics are good, which isn’t necessarily shocking anymore because every game looks good. There are some aesthetic choices I liked, that being things like the Art Deco style architecture and advertisements from the loading screens. Terra 2 is gorgeous as all hell, with the skybox being particularly amazing (I’ve often fantasized about Earth having rings, so this partially fulfills that fantasy). Monarch is overall also very well done, with making it look and feel like a hostile shithole with ravenous wildlife. The looming gas giant overheard also does a good job of making me feel dread, which is about as much of that feeling I ever got. However, the game never really maintains a distinct “style”, rather it collages a bunch of them at once. Because for all the aesthetic of the Art Deco style that they do for cities like Byzantium. there’s like 10 levels/areas that are just generic as all hell “sci-fi space shit” that you’ve seen before. And then there’s Scylla, which is so fucking boring in design I don’t know why it’s even in the game.

This creates an issue where it’s like they wanted to make the game look Bioshock, but some people wanted something out of Mass Effect. But some people played Borderlands, and wanted to go for the wacky space bandit and hostile environment feel. But they also wanted to stick it to Bethesda, so they made is vaguely look like a Fallout game as well. It’s hard to describe in text, so I’m just gonna post these and show it best I can

^ It looks like space Bioshock here

^ And here it reminds me more of Borderlands than anything else (it’s a lot easier to see if you look at it from the ground, rip)

Scylla is literally just a rock. As far as I can tell, you could probably fucking avoid the damn thing if you avoid side quests. There’s fucking nothing there. Just enemies, a few side quest things, an empty town and a giant terraformer thingy that’s interesting to look at for like 4 seconds. And despite what you’d think, no, there is no low gravity. That would’ve at least made this place have some interesting gimmick or mechanic, but no. It’s just a fucking dumping ground for side quests. God. Fucking. Damnit.

All science-y buildings just look like this for the most part across all levels. It’s not bad, just very generic and same-y.

The Groundbreaker’s fairly interesting, until you realize that all it is is essentially a giant corridor front to back. Actually, scratch that, it’s two corridors! One of which is this Back Bays area overrun with criminals. How do you get to this clearly dangerous and isolated part of the ship? Well a fucking elevator smack dab in the middle of the pavilion of course! So anyone can just go up or down into this apparent no man’s land part of the ship by literally going into it via an elevator. Dear god.

^Monarch definitely has one of the best looking environments in the game, tied with Terra 2 down below

But what absolutely fucks the game overall is despite how much effort they put into making everything look nice (regardless if you actually like it or not), the overall level design in terms of function and whatnot? Mind numbingly boring.

All levels are really small maps with (at most) a handful of major buildings or towns depending on the scale, and the rest is just a bunch of abandoned buildings with some enemies, or a crashed ship or something. There's just...nothing going on with half of these dungeons.

Also the vast majority of buildings have a “Quarantine” sign out front or is locked in some capacity, which means you could have 4-5 buildings in a random batch of them along a road, but only 2 you can explore. And since all the fucking interiors across multiple planets look the exact same, it leads to an incredible feeling of sameiness in a game that has you running around an entire solar system. How the fuck even??? I’d argue fucking Fallout 3 handled this better. At least there was more to do! More overall dungeons and levels! Did I miss something? Am I just fucking stupid and I missed the all the good shit?

Combine this with the wish-washy aesthetics and music, it leads to an incredible feeling of not really knowing what to make of things. You’ll just be sprinting around, shooting all the red things on the compass just to get it over with by Monarch. And when you realize that LMG’s are just...the best weapons in the game as far as I could tell, and there’s no real downsize to them, you’ll just fucking run around gunning everything down while some forgettable track plays in the background until some enemy with a weirdly large health bar forces you to think for a bit before you get back to running around and shooting shit again. 

Despite this though? I still overall enjoyed the combat. I liked running around and becoming the 4th Horseman. Plus with the mechanics overall being fun to use, it wasn’t really that bad. But I can’t say on an objective level I think it’s good for a game to feel like that. Because despite how heavy handed I’m being right now (and will be throughout the rest of this impromptu review), I don’t hate this game. 

Sound design is overall very good. Guns make satisfying shooty shooty bang bang noises, and as I said before, the VA’s are overall very good all around. Parvati stands out as the most interesting character to listen to in general. She has a lot of informal speech patterns that makes her distinct, and is generally a treat to listen talk. At worst, you get a character like Nyoka, who doesn’t sound bad by any real means, but for a lot of her dialogue, I felt they should’ve slowed it down and focused on getting her emotions down. But it certainly wasn’t bad.

Storywise? This game wasn’t particularly interesting. I’m gonna put the keep reading thing here because I want to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn’t played yet and cares about them. Long story short, I think the game was good, but very disappointing given what it could have been. I enjoyed myself for the most part, but often found the lack of anything super special to really hold it back from achieving something I think the gaming industry needed in an era of, ironically enough, hyper greedy corporations with no morals to speak of.

So, what did I think of the story? And I guess by extension, the side quests. Overall, I think the main story was...not very good. There was a lot of good stuff inbetween though, and a lot of side quests and little things definitely were enjoyable. But the plot is just not nearly as engaging as it should be. Given how short it was though, that might’ve been a mercy.

The story, as roughly as I can summarize is, is that you’re a colonist frozen on the colony ship “Hope.” It’s been adrift for 70 years, but you’re woken up by a guy named Phineas Welles (he’s basically Doc Brown, but nicer). The Board (which consists of the 10 companies who own and run the colony/solar system) try to stop him, but they fail, and you’re escape podded onto Terra 2, near a dying town called Edgewater. The pod accidentally kills the contact you were to meet, so now you’re gonna steal his ship and use it to do shit basically.

Along the way, you pick up a ragtag band of miscreants and general shitheads and kill a lot of people and wildlife in a quest to stop the corrupt Board from running the colony harder into the dirt than they already have. It’s very by the numbers, more or less. I guess.

The immediate issue is that, despite being able to join the Board and betray Phineas if you want, there’s absolutely no fucking reason to do that. Not a single goddamn reason, other than for the evulz. This creates an issue where I feel no reason to deviate from the Phineas side of the story. And I know what someone might be thinking “But Pixel! The Board is supposed to be evil!” And I am absolutely aware of that. But the thing is, so was Caesar’s Legion in Fallout New Vegas. And yet, that faction is often considered just as interesting and compelling a faction for the game as the NCR or Mr. House. People will, to this day, still argue over who had the best idea for solving the Wasteland’s issues. Because despite how evil the Legion is, they still had very valid points about the NCR and how horribly corrupt and bloated it was. And there was absolutely an argument to be made about how safe they made their lands for those under their ownership. Stuff like that that makes you actually consider and think about whether or not you're actually making the right choices for the whole of the New Vegas wasteland, and by extension the rest of the Western part of America.

Here? There’s no contest. There is no necessary evils. There is no good reason the Board does anything. No logic, no reason. All they can do is fuck shit up even more, and that makes them such a boring, vague antagonist that there was never a moment in my mind I actually considered working for them. Any potential moments they had to sway me or dashed aside by them constantly proving how they could never actually fix the problems they made. And if that was the intention? Then Obsidian fucked up.

People remember the villains that raise a point a hell of a lot more than they do villains that are just evil for the sake of it (there are obviously exceptions, for an RPG? you need a compelling villain). And that’s why no one will remember this game in a decade. It pales so hard in comparison to New Vegas, it’s not even funny. It’s on par with Fallout 3, at best. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing if the whole point of this game was to make a statement against an increasingly morally bankrupt Bethesda.

Let’s look at, per se, Skyrim. Paarthurnax was a supporting character with an interesting backstory: he’s Alduin’s brother, who is the main antagonist. He is a dragon that secludes himself on the top of the tallest mountain in Skyrim, who meditates and focuses on suppressing his inherit evil dragon nature. Despite this nature, he chooses to be good. And he asks a very compelling question.

"What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”

In a single sentence, Skyrim asked a more though provoking question than the entirely of The Outer Worlds. And if you played F:NV, then it’s probably weird to hear that, because F:NV was full of moral and philosophical quandaries. So where did it all go?

The thing is, people forget that the Obsidian that made F:NV is dead and gone. The actual people who made that game have all moved on from that company. This is the child trying to replicate the success of it’s parents, without entirely understanding exactly what the parent did to achieve what it achieved.

The biggest difference between F:NV and TOW is that F:NV really forces you to think. TOW just doesn’t require that, at all. 

Phineas good, Board bad. No thinking required.

I think the real warning sign is at the beginning of the game as well. Edgewater, the first town in the game, is dying. People are leaving and the town's also dealing with a disease epidemic. The town’s leader’s answer? Cut off power to the deserters, and force them to work harder despite the fact the town’s basically dying because of the overworking and disease. Despite the fact there’s not even enough medicine to heal everyone, and they have to play favorites with who lives and who dies.

What the fuck logic is this? Why would I ever choose that?

The only other choice, unless I missed a compromise solution (which I would’ve wanted) is to route power to the deserters and finish off the town more or less. The deserters wouldn’t take in everyone though, so a lot of people would die anyways. But even then, she’s still clearly the more competent leader. There’s not a goddamn contest. 

It just continues like that the whole game. I rarely had to think about who I’d side with. because the solution is obvious. The literal only reason I’d side with the corporations is if I was being evil, nothing else.

The best the story gets is when you need to make a compromise on Monarch between MSI (a corporation who got the boot from the Board) and the Iconoclasts (Religious people who are anti corporation). If you work with the second in command of the Iconoclasts, you can depose their extremist, dipshit leader and work out a truce. Which is good! It rewards the player for this too, when these factions come to help in the final level of the game (and when you see specific characters you could save helping out, that also make it feel like your decisions had an impact). You see the two factions...standing next to eachother, which isn’t much, but it’s about as much change you see in the game.

Which is also another thing that TOW fails to accomplish: a sense of longevity with my decisions leads to me feeling that, despite making the right choices, nothing really changes. 

Going back to Edgewater, you’d think after a while, I’d come back and the town would be entirely gone or something, right? 

Nope.

Some NPC’s stood outside the factory forever, as did some guards. There weren’t any lights on. That’s about it.

Well, certainly the Deserters must give me more quests to help out, which can lead to me establishing them and helping them help the Edgewaterers, right?

No. Very quickly you realize there’s very little do or talk about with NPC’s after you do monumental decisions. The only functional difference is an opinion slider, which is another imitation from F:NV that means fuck all. The only in game things it affects is: a) The prices of venders of that factions

b) Whether or not that faction will shoot you on site.

That’s it as far as I noticed. The best idea they had, that being that factions can love you, but also fear you just doesn’t do anything. As far as I could tell, at least.

I’d love to be wrong, because I was so excited to see what would happen to entire settlements and after I helped them. After I made important decisions that’d change the face of the colony. And I felt so disappointing when it became apparent little actually mattered. 

The companion sidequests aren’t too much better. The pacing is so weird, sometimes, depending on how available certain planets are. Parvati’s was especially jarring, despite it being the best written by far.

It basically is you helping her get with an engineer chick from the Groundbreaker. It’s pretty adorable overall, and without a doubt has some of the better writing character wise, but the pacing was so fucking weird. It initially starts with you getting Parvati to talk to her about engineering stuff. They say they’ll email and stuff about engineering stuff. which is neat. So I run around, finish up all the side quests on the ship as I can, then head back to my own ship. I did not go back to my ship at all during this. 

When I come back, Parvati immediately tells me that she and the engineer, Junlei, have been messaging and getting flirty and now she has a crush and it’s just like “Dude, were you texting her while we murdered all those bugs in the engine?”

It’s doubly funny as well, because Obsidian wanted to avoid the player having romanceable characters. Which makes about as much sense as you think. Once source said the reason was that they wanted you to focus on roleplay, and not trying to bang anyone you found hot (okay?). Another just said they weren’t ready for it. And I believe it. As much as I think romance would’ve been another good thing to add depth to this game, I bet you they’d have fucked it up. It’s just funny. Even Fallout 4 had pretty acceptable romances.

Granted the system was fucking basically “Kill shit together until you wanna bang” but fuck, it was something! It also doesn’t help there’s a bunch of cuties all over this game: Huxley stands out as an adorable muffin who becomes a generic NPC at the end of the MSI/Iconoclast questline, despite the fact you can even repair her journal terminal with zero indication at you can do it, which is good! Let me just do things to be nice! But she literally just sits there after you rescue her with a few dialogue options which goes away after the peace deal, and it's so fucking frustrating that I want to enjoy the characters more, but none of them seem to have more than a paragraph's worth of depth to them and it's so sad.

Even the companions are like this. At the beginning I’d try and talk with Parvati about anything, but the only dialogue options would be about getting her out of the party, and that’s it. I can’t ask her what she thinks of things, or of the current quest/situation. There’s such a weird lack of depth in a weird amount of areas, that it felt almost worse than playing a Bethesda game.

I think the penultimate disappointment of the game is, fittingly, the final level, Tartarus. Which is fitting, because it feels very hellish. Not the planet mind you, or the prison which it takes place in, but just the complete lack of anything super special. It’s just the same kind of environments you’ve already run through, but bigger and with more bullet sponge bad guys. Which is funny, because jumping around and killing an army on a purple hell planet that has perpetual lightning storms would’ve been sick as fuck, but nah, gotta run around on Scylla instead of anywhere else compelling.

In my playthrough, MSI, the Groundbreaker, and the Iconoclasts came to help me deal with all the fucking goons, which was mostly cool because I didn’t have to deal with the tediousness of killing every last one of corporate goon myself.

This is about as big of an impact your decisions come to as far as I’ve noticed. Which isn’t saying much.

You meet the Chairman of the Board here, by the way. I just shot him and kept moving. shrugs

There’s also a last minute villain in this Sophia person, who is also apparently on the Board? It’d help if there was a list of the Board people, which could’ve been on a terminal somewhere. Maybe I’m dumb and never found it, which is plausible. 

The final boss fight, (I hesitate to call it that) is just somewhat large robot. It’s a bullet sponge with respawning combat drones flying everywhere and they’re very annoying. I died once after around 10 minutes of fighting, then using Parvati and Felix’s (he’s another companion, he’s also okay I guess) combat abilities I knocked it down and layed into the robot’s weak spot. He died very quickly.

So depending on how you do it, the final fucking boss is either stupidly hard or mind numbingly easy. I don’t know which is worse.

So you go past the dead robot, gun down Sophia in one shot, and save Phineas. You basically become the leader of Halcyon, there’s a F:NV-esque slideshow and commentary about your actions that somehow is worse that New Vegas’s, credits roll, and you sit there thinking “That’s it? That’s really it?”

Yeah, that’s it. 

It’s such a let down, especially because this was supposed to be Fallout New Vegas’s spiritual successor. But all it does it make me want to play that game instead of this one.Which is probably what you should do regardless if you pick this game up or not.

There’s a bunch of other mechanics and stuff I never brought up. There’s technically a character customization screen, but you literally only see your character in the select menu, and there’s no third person. There’s a barber in Edgewater who’s also a doctor, and yet you can’t even get a haircut from him (again, failing to match up to even Fallout 3). 

There’s these Mods you can put on armor and guns, and you find them by the bucket full so you’ll always have those. Just get an aim stabilizing one for an LMG and you’ll be fine. You can also tinker your armor and weapons, making them stronger if you spend credits on it (why not the armor and weapon parts, I’ll never fucking know). You can repair your stuff at a workbench, which is advisable. Just take all the weapons and armor you pick up, take it apart for parts, and never worry about it again. You’ll get money from quests, so buying those parts is meaningless and a waste of money

There’s also hacking and stealth and stuff. Stealth is such a non...thing in the game. There’s no silencers, but since all enemies decided to put cotton into their ears, there’ll be plenty of times I shoot someone, and a guy ten feet away heard fucking nothing. Plus there’s this disguise mechanic where you pick up ID guards and get a hologram disguise that wears out as you walk (passing speech check from suspicious guards restores it), so it’s not like sneaking around was ever a priority. Just put your points into the speech. Stealth is a dump stat more or less. 

Oh yeah, Parvati’s an ace lesbian. Which is nice that they handled that way in a non-dipshit way (you can also identify as ace in certain dialogue with her in her companion questline, which is funny considering they never let you fuck anyways, so it’s weird that you even have the choice). My only complaint is that they should’ve put this representation in a better game. 

What’s funny is that, despite everything, I don’t even hate this game. I feel a remarkable numbness, followed by a desire for something better. I spent about a week burning through it? If I had more free time, I could’ve finished it sooner probably. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. It was pretty fun for what it was, but knowing that this is somehow supposed to match up to what F:NV was is sad, and a sign of how bad the gaming industry had fallen. 

The only difference here is that unlike the Outer Worlds, I can’t purge the rot of the gaming industry with a haelstrom of plasma bullets.

Would I recommend this game? I guess. There’s still some fun to be had, but don’t expect anything too major or interesting. Get it on sale, it;s not worth $60 right now. There’s apparently DLC coming out for it eventually? I might play it, and I might post an update to this review, or make a seperate post for that eventually. Depends on how well this one does? Or if the DLC makes me feel enough emotion to type something out like this in 2 straight hours.

[ozzdog12]

2019- Top 7 (And 1)

  Another year has come to an end and thus the hotly anticipated Top 7 (And 1) from your ‘average at best’ Ozzdog12 is here for you to feast your eyes upon. 2019 was an extremely odd year for me, gaming wise. As parenthood has taken the full brunt of my time, my gaming time and the choices of what games I decided to play, have changed. I played several games this year that, under any previous year I may have stuck with longer or tried again, but as time for gaming has become more and more thin, I now have less ‘patience’ to stick with a BIG RPG (Disco Elysium, one day I’ll get to you). Now I’m going to contradict my previous sentence with this next sentence. I was unemployed for a stretch of 5 weeks and in between looking for jobs I also found myself with a decent amount of time to play some games. What I did with that time is played 2 games that ultimately made the list, for two very different reasons. I also cleared out a chunk of backlog games (Finally beating Diablo 3 for one, thank you Switch) and played several, shorter smaller games in the process. If interested in my previous Top 7 (And 1) 2017 & 2018.

And now on to the And 1 this year

Favorite game that came out in 2019 that actually came out 20+ years ago: Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening (Switch)

This one was actually a hard one to decide as Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition also released this year. AOE2 is the one game I may have put the most time into ever, cumulatively. But I’m giving the nod to Link’s Awakening simply because its BRAND NEW to me. I did not play the original release and this has been an absolute joy to play and is by far, the best Zelda available on Switch. The updated graphics are gorgeous and the art style is great. I haven’t completed the game yet, but I’m slowly chipping away at it at night. It feels and plays like a Zelda game but updated properly to a modern console to make it feel like a brand new game released in 2019 and not just a reskin/up-resed re-release. The game is also structured in a way that appeals to me more than Breath of the Wild was (see 2017 And One for reference). The world feels big, but is contained in a clever way to make it FEEL bigger than it actually is.

Number  7: Rage 2 (PS4)

Rage 2 is a very weird game. I don’t mean it’s weird in the sense that nothing clicks or that its bad. In fact, it’s a joy to play (especially is you love iD shooters). It’s weird because outside of the gameplay mechanics, it’s fairly barren (intentional or not). And I mean that in terms of both story, things to do and the world itself. Having very little to do with the previous Rage (which I really enjoyed on the 360), Rage 2 starts off quick and with a bang. You choose which version of the character you want to be, learn the mechanics and then are eventually sent to a town. There are a total of 6 ‘story’ missions that are stretched out by requiring you to complete tasks for one of the 3 town leaders who you’ve enlisted for help to take down the General. Once you do this, you fight the General and that’s kind’ve it. Now along the way, you will kill a bunch of mutants and humans alike. There are 3 factions (4 if you count the Ghosts in the DLC) that are in an ever engaging gauntlet to the death and you get to play janitor by spilling more guts and blood, but none of it really matters, the Factions I mean. There are a few Crusher Mutants (BIG MUTANTS) to also fight, but they are essentially extra heavy bullet sponges. Now, I know I haven’t really sold you on it, but here’s the thing. I REALLY enjoyed RAGE 2. It was the perfect game to play during the summer. Due to a personal situation I was dealing with (the looming unemployment) it was nice to just sit down at night, turned my brain off and just kill things. It reminded me of a simpler time in my youth playing games like Doom. Same vibe honestly. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more of a story and narrative driven player, but Rage 2 scratched a nostalgia itch for me at the perfect time. 

Number 6: Concrete Genie (PS4)

Concrete Genie is a game that is honestly out of left field for me these days. Not that I don’t like these types of games, it’s just as previous stated, time is somewhat of a precious commodity and had Concrete Genie come out in any other year, I probably would’ve skipped it entirely. However, it didn’t and I’m glad I picked this up for $20. It also scratched a nostalgia itch and reminded me very much of the PS2 era of games like Sly Cooper and Jax and Daxter. You play a kid who is bullied (something I am familiar with first hand, sadly) for being a loner and an artist. His creature drawings come to life with the help of a magic paint brush and your objective to put color back into an abandon town and bring it back to life. There is a VR component I wasn’t able to play because I don’t have a PSVR. The game is fairly simply and doesn’t deviate far from that formula. There is very little combat and just enough variety in the monster’s you can make to keep you going. It’s also fairly short. I was able to complete and collect everything in around 7-8 hours. Having a complete game in a bite size package is something I long for these days. 

Number 5: The Outer Worlds (PS4)

This game should be higher on the list but I put it here simply because while I have played it a fair amount, I haven’t played it enough to warrant it being higher. I’m maybe halfway through? I love Bethesda Fallouts (And Obsidian’s New Vegas) and this is an improved New Vegas in space with a more cheeky approach. The Outer Worlds never takes itself too seriously and revels in its sarcasm. The companions are all mostly likeable enough and each planet has felt distinctive enough to entice me to keep exploring. The mechanics are improved and the overall gameplay is better than New Vegas.  Its structured just like a Fallout game, so there is a lot of comfort there. However,  just like any open world RPG, sitting down for less than an hour and trying to accomplish anything is hard. The Outer Worlds is best played in big chunks. It’s at the top of my list to finish in 2020. 

Number 4: A Plague Tale (PS4)

A Plague Tale was THAT game that was on everyone’s ‘Hidden Gems’ list. I had seen a trailer around E3 and it intrigued me enough to check it out. I completed it over a whole weekend, a rarity. The game isn’t perfect, but everything is serviceable enough to work within the confines of what it’s trying to accomplish. It has some technical flaws and the occasional hiccup, but I’m a sucker for 3rd person action adventure games. The game is mostly centered around stealth with combat as a mostly secondary option. The game takes place in France in 1348 during the rat plague. You play as the daughter of an alchemist and your brother has been sick since birth. Once your village has been raided by the Inquisition, you are cast out to find help. The plague has taken over the majority of the country, but it isn’t until later in the game where the game takes a turn into the fantasy in a major way. You meet up with some really likeable characters with different personality traits along the way that really kept the story moving in an interesting way. The story was really grim at times, but honestly kept me hooked until the final chapter. The boss battle was extremely frustrating. With a sequel being announced, I am extremely interested in where they take the next chapter. 

Number 3: Katana ZERO (Switch)

Katana ZERO rules. There is a fine line where a game is challenging and when a game is unfair. I like a challenge, but I don’t want to work (games like Dark Souls are work). KZ is very similar in style, gameplay, tone, and even music to Hotline Miami. The difference being KZ is a side scroller instead of top down. You play a samurai in a quasi-dystopian future after a war. You are programmed killing machine…or are you? The story is fairly heavy and can bring up some tough subjects. KZ is pretty challenging, especially later in the game, but never once did I feel the game was cheap or unfair. Every time I died (MANY, MANY TIMES) it was always my fault. Either I didn’t plan my attack correctly, I hit the wrong button, took the wrong path, or didn’t time it right. The game has a nifty way of dealing with ‘deaths’ in the game using a neat rewind feature. When you complete a level, it shows you a replay in ‘real time’ giving you a nice recap of your work. Every time I completed a level, I felt a sense of accomplishment. My Switch says I put around 5 hours or more into it once I completed the final level, but it honestly felt longer than that, in a good way. KZ is an absolute blast to play and you should go play it right now!

Number 2: Gears 5 (Xbox One)

I’m a fan of the Gears of War series. The first Gears of War still being my favorite of the series. As time has passed, I’ve become less interested in the series as a whole but still interested enough to play every entry. I thought Gears 4 was the Force Awakens of the series. Essentially a retelling of the same story, with a new coat of paint and new characters with the old ones sprinkled in. Gears 4 was ultimately, fine. So I was actually excited for Gears 5 was going to go and to see how they built upon 4 with a focus on Kait instead of a Fenix. Halfway through the story, the group is divided and it starts to take a different tone. Gears 5 experiments with a first of the series, a semi-open world. I thought it broke up the monotony of wall hug, shoot, reload, repeat. I finished the story in a few days and had a good time with it, though once again, the ending being kind’ve abrupt. The series has a knack for being sort’ve slow, then suddenly turning it to 11, then ending.  I wished the campaign was longer, but it’s still solid. Gears 5 introduced a new mode called Escape, where you and two other players plant a bomb and try to escape a level with limited ammo. There is weekly a revolving door of new levels, which is nice, but each level is just reusing assets. I suspect with time and each new Operation (Season) that will be expanded. Horde mode is back and the character classes are fun. New characters have been added and will continue to be added, but they are an absolute grind to unlock (But you can always pay for them!) The reason Gears 5 is this high is mostly due to the amount of time I spent playing multiplayer. As stated, I loved the original Gears of War and put an insane amount of time into the multiplayer. That was in 2007 and the older I’ve gotten, my desire to invest into multiplayer has waned, almost completely. Once again though, right time, right place. I spent almost the entire month of October, logging on every night, completing challenging and playing online. Something I haven’t done since I was a freshman in college. I had an absolute blast. While I don’t delve into online as feverishly as I did in October, I still occasionally dabble when I get the chance.

Number 1: Mortal Kombat 11 (PS4)

As if this was going to be anything else. I’m a Mortal Kombat mark, plain and simple. I’ve loved the series my entire life. I love the lore, I love how ridiculously violent it is, how goofy and bat shit insane the story has evolved. I love it all. But its not all gore and lore, Mortal Kombat is a supreme fighting game. It’s not a nuanced as the likes of Street Fighter, but its infinitely deeper than a game like Smash Bros. Mortal Kombat is in a good sweet spot for both casuals and hardcore fighting fans. MK11 has maybe the greatest in-depth tutorial that has ever been made in any fighting game. It not only teaches you how to play, it teaches you the terminology. The story picks up right after MKX, with Raiden upset with everyone and taking matters into his own hands by torturing Shinnok. Liu Kang and Kitana rule the Netherrealm. Raiden plans an attack where he is essentially the Trojan Horse. All goes according to plan, until Kronika, The Time Keeper, decides she doesn’t like this anymore and eventually brings back some old friends to help her change time (again) and finally eliminate Raiden from existence. In doing this, Kronika has made all those mirror matches from previous games cannon. The production level and story mode in Netherealm games are on another level compared to other fighting games and they continue that trend in MK11. They implement the gear system from Injustice 2 into MK11 and its fine. The Krypt is amazing and is full of secrets. The Living Towers have returned, this time in the form of the ever changing “Towers of Time”. The roster, which is what everyone really cares about isn’t the worst but isn’t the best. None of the new characters are all that fun (Cetrion, Geras, & Kollector) and the returning roster was missing some notable characters. The DLC thus far has been fairly underwhelming compared to MKX. It was nice to see Shang Tsung, Nightwolf, & Sindel return (all 3 should’ve been in the main roster) but Terminator is lame. MKX had the likes of Tremor, Tanya, & Predator. MK11 seems to break what was a fun tradition in DLC having new, MK characters (Skarlett and Tremor, respectively). While I do think there is another set coming after Spawn, if the leak is true, then it seems underwhelming. I played MK11 pretty religiously for almost 2 months and still play at least once or twice a week. I love MK!

[vyrerus]

Vyre’s Top 12 Games of 2009~2019 Decade

Dark Souls II was a rather divisive game in the Souls series. Most fans considered it to be the worst one in the bunch, and I’m among those fans, but to me it is at least playable. It’s got good PVP(not that I’m into that really), unique visuals, NPCs, and monsters, and it’s still fun. More fun than most other games that came out this decade.

I particularly reference the Scholar of The First Sin remaster, as it blurs the line between remake and remaster by offering updated graphical textures, different enemy placement and drop tables, but keeps the core game the same. It also included all three of Dark Souls II’s DLC expansions, and it didn’t cost very much. It’s also the version of Dark Souls II that I actually finished. I mentioned before that I don’t like Dark Souls II very much, and in the original version of the game some of the differences really made me dislike what Fromsoftware’s B team had made. 

Gameplay is action RPG style, with a magical system, and melee system oriented around stamina consumption and choosing to attack, defend, heal, cast, or dodge. IN SoTFS, changes were made to enemy placement to make certain areas more bearable/easier/manageable towards the beginning, and to reduced situations where the player is outnumbered to such a degree that combat goes from fun to chore like. That said, it’s still a fairly challenging game, as in any Souls game, any hostile entity towards the player is capable of killing them. You have an unlimited amount of retries, so the only thing preventing you from winning are glitches or loss of will. 

When you die, you lose your acquired Souls, which are currency that double as experience points towards your next level up. You can grind, and unique to Dark Souls II, all versions, eventually the monsters you encounter will stop re-spawning when you rest at a bonfire. This means if an area before a boss is giving you trouble, you can take the time to remove all impediments between your bonfire checkpoint and the boss gate, so you may face the boss with full resources. 

The game’s style departs from that of Dark Souls 1 in that spell use also consumes stamina, attempting to balance out magic in PVP, as before you could just spam it with no penalty, or do things like trap someone in Tranquil Walk of Peace and then kill them with an immediate cast of something else, like Wrath of The Gods. Healing items heal you gradually, so you have to be careful after healing, though there are more healing items and options, particularly early on. When you die, Dark Souls II harkens back to Demons’ Souls in that your maximum health is reduced, though instead of reducing it to 50% like Demons’ Souls it’s reduced at 5% intervals each time you die, or something akin to that. Your body also gradually zombifies, skin turning green, eyes go white, more and more hair falling out with each death. If you wear full armor, you won’t really notice much of a difference though. 

Dark Souls II has more bosses than any other Souls game, but most of them are glorified regular enemies or not much harder than troublesome mini-bosses. Some of the DLC/Expansions bosses are quite challenging, however, such as The Fume Knight or Sinh, a dragon with toxic fire breath.

The theme of Dark Souls II is trying to overcome the burden of being cursed to be undying. I played the game at a time where I was diagnosed with clinical depression by an Airforce psychiatrist working at the USN joint Naval-air base close to my command station. That was on its initial release in 2014, and I put it down due to it still carrying on convoluted NPC side quest design, where I lost track of Lucatiel and she stopped appearing. I didn’t go back and beat it until late 2017/early 2018 while FFXIV Stormblood was in a patch lull. At that time, I was coming out of my depression, which had lasted, at that point, for 6 years(it went undiagnosed for quite some time). The theme of the game and its story resonated more with me then, as I felt like I was finally getting back to a more stable and happy state of mind. It felt like I had found a way to lift a curse, of sorts, and it made me immerse myself in its story.

I still say, that as far as Souls games go, Dark Souls 2 is the bottom of the barrel. It’s still in the barrel of fantastic games that are worth playing all the way through, however, and that’s why it gets on this list! This very fun list!

Thanks @draginhikari​

[dynamite-derek]

My top-10 games of 2018

It’s that time of the year where you are flooded with lists of the best stuff from 2018 and I’m no different. Originally I was going to just make a list of the top 10 games I played in 2018. I even had a giant list I was updating throughout the year. But one day my phone randomly reset and I lost that list. So, business as usual this year. Maybe next year. 

Before I start with the numbered list, I’d like to note a couple of games that won’t be appearing for various reasons.

Games I liked a lot but haven’t played enough of to place on a list like this: Into the Breach, Dead Cells

A critically acclaimed game I haven’t played: God of War

I don’t want remakes on my list, but these games were really good: Shadow of the Colossus, Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Spyro Reignited Trilogy

Ports aren’t eligible but I like these a lot too: Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, Shenmue 1&2, Hyrule Warriors and the PC port of one of the best games ever, Yakuza 0.

Okay, let’s get started.

10-) Red Dead Redemption 2: Actually had to debate between this and Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu for this spot. Ultimately I chose this game because the narrative is spectacular. Well that and the fact that Let’s Go is sort of a remake. This game absolutely nails atmospheric storytelling and creates one of the most interesting protagonists in AAA gaming. This game does a lot of things well, but the actual gameplay portion is...pretty mixed. I didn’t have fun with the open world at all and most missions involved long bouts of horseback riding with dialogue or ambient music. But RDR 2 does everything else so well. It also knows when to go all out. Every major mission in the game is memorable for one reason or another, especially with intelligent usage of music. It’s a game I will never play again, but despite some problems with the gameplay I can safely say that I enjoyed my time with it.

9-) Mario Tennis Aces: This game was a lot of fun. I wrote about it earlier in the year and my opinions on it are still the same.  Even though the gameplay is fairly simplistic, every match against another human felt unique and different. You have to learn the styles of your opposition and adapt. It’s like a fighting game! The online gameplay was also pretty solid. I felt pretty damn good whenever I would win a tournament. Really, Smash Bros. Ultimate would have done well to borrow this mechanic in some way. The only real problem with the game is that there is just a major lack of content. The heavily advertised story mode is barely worth playing and the cups, well, you might as well be playing against an unmanned player 2. I haven’t touched the game in a while, so this might have been fixed via update. As I said a few months ago, this game could have been a masterpiece with a bit of extra fine tuning.

8-) Dragon Ball Fighter Z: This game feels like it was made specifically for me. I have a lot of love for the Marvel vs. Capcom games and even more love for the Dragon Ball franchise. The game is easy to approach for newcomers to this type of game by keeping the inputs simple and having very easy to pull of auto-combos. You won’t do too well online if you stick to the auto combos, but it’s a good way to start and learn how to play. I think a lot of people could start with Fighter Z and transition into more complicated fighting games, which is exactly what you want with a game like this that will attract many people who might not otherwise play a traditional fighter. Oh, and sometimes it looks like you’re playing an episode of the anime which is insane. The story mode is pretty tedious at times, which is a let down, but Fighter Z is an absolute blast to play and is easily the best playing Dragon Ball game yet. Hopefully season 2 of the DLC goes less heavy on all the Gokus. 

7-) Mega Man 11: The blue bomber returns! It’s been a long wait, but after playing through both collections last year and then the X-collection earlier this year, I was ready for Mega Man to get back into the spotlight. It’s a little hard to get into at first because the level design seems pretty tied into the main new mechanic, the gear system. Basically the player can slow things down to a crawl or boost Mega Man’s power. If you just play this game like you would any other Mega Man game, you’re probably going to throw your console out the window during Tiki Man’s stage. Once you figure this out, the system adds a unique flavor to the Mega Man experience and feels like an actual new Mega Man. I love MM9 and 10, but those did not feel like new games. The only thing that I didn’t like about this game was the music. Which, uh, is weird for a Mega Man game. Here’s hoping they get it right in the inevitable Mega Man X9. 

6-) Marvel’s Spider-Man: I don’t particularly like super hero movies and I haven’t enjoyed a Spider-Man game thoroughly since the first PS1 Spider-Man, so you wouldn’t normally think this game would appeal to me. But it absolutely does. The gameplay is outstanding and combines an improved version of the swinging scene in Spider-Man 2 with a combat system that is fairly similar to the Batman Arkham games. I recommend playing the game on hard because, while it’s hard to get used to, it makes every encounter feel unique. You constantly have to adapt to what the enemy is doing. You can’t just mash on the attack button and then press the dodge button when the dodge prompt comes up. 

The story is also interesting throughout. It has my favorite interpretation of Peter Parker I’ve seen in a while and has a pretty enjoyable cast of characters. Really Mary Jane is the only character I didn’t like and even with her, there are moments that hit home - specifically the text exchanges between MJ and Peter. The game is littered with references to past Spidey adventures and just feels like a giant love letter to fans of the hero. Can’t recommend it enough.

5-) Celeste: I didn’t know what to expect with this game. Sometimes I feel very leery of when a bunch of people prop up an indy game too much. Gone Home a couple of years ago told a pretty mediocre story that was held up as some form of high art. Just didn’t get it. So I went into Celeste wanting to not like it and came out fairly surprised. The gameplay feels like a better version of Super Meat Boy and the narrative tells a pretty compelling tale about depression and how to come to terms with yourself. I even don’t mind the pixel art. I am getting sick of indy games going for the retro aesthetic, but when combined with the great soundtrack it’s hard not to love what it’s presenting. 

The game is simple enough to complete on its own. I would argue that anybody could do it as long as they keep at it. But for those platforming veterans, the game also offers a heavy challenge. The B-side and C-side levels will test your skills and remind you of some of the most challenging bits of hard platforming games like Super Meat Boy and I Wanna Be The Guy. Basically, come for the compelling narrative. Stay for the wickedly difficult and addicting gameplay.

4-) Yakuza 6: I believe I enjoyed this game far more than most folks. It told the end of Kazuma Kiryu’s story. It had some problems along the way but my god did I enjoy the ride. The cast of characters surrounding Kiryu in Hiroshima are all great and one of the main characters is Beat Takeshi. It also has a ton of things to do and see. I love the clan wars sidequest featuring New Japan wrestlers, I love the baseball manager quest, I LOVED becoming a regular at a bar and getting to know everyone in it like I was playing some sort of weird Cheers game, I even loved the adult cam chats that came with wacky dialogue. This game is full of charm.

I haven’t mentioned the gameplay yet you might have noticed. That’s because, well, it’s a new direction for the franchise. It focuses on allowing more people to fight Kiryu at once and as a result feels less refined than recent entries Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 5. I am excited to see where they take it in Yakuza 7, but I would be fibbing if I suggested that I felt 6 plays as well as previous entries. Still, the entire Yakuza package is compelling and I never felt like I was scrambling for things to do or see. I don’t 100% games out of obligation. I’m not one of those people that feels the need to 100% every game I play. I 100%ed Yakuza 6 though. And I loved every minute of it, combat and all.

3-) Valkyria Chronicles 4: As none of you might know, I used to review games for a website called 411mania. One of the games I reviewed for them was the original Valkyria Chronicles. Nobody else wanted to do it because it looked like a generic jRPG and I was really the only person on the site who liked jRPGs so the game fell to me. And I absolutely loved it. The story was captivating, the graphics were stylish and and the gameplay felt like a breath of fresh air. It was the combination of a tactical RPG and a (very, very simplified) shooter. To this day it remains one of my favorite games ever. Conversely, Valkyria Chronicles 2 on the PSP is one of my least favorite games ever and 3 never came to the states - though it does have a fan translation. The franchise has felt dead in the west for ages. The musou-like Azure Revolution sure as fuck didn’t get me going.

4 came out this year and it felt like I went back in time. Everything I loved about 1 was back. It’s even expanded upon. The grenadier is a great new troop that feels overpowered at first, but really forces the player to rethink how to approach certain situations. The story isn’t as good as the story in 1, but I found it simple and enjoyable. I genuinely liked the main cast and wanted to see them do well. That’s more than I can say for a lot of games. I know I mentioned earlier in my blurb about Mega Man that what I liked about it was that it actually felt like a new game. The difference here is that I have 10 other Mega Man games that play like Mega Man games. With this franchise, I have 1 (or maybe 2, I hate how maps work on the PSP but I have not played enough of 3 to judge). Sometimes a franchise revival needs to go “like the one you like but more” route. I loved this game and I hope as it gets cheaper more people try it. 

2-) Dragon Quest XI: Hey you might notice this about my gaming preferences, but I really enjoy Japanese RPGs! And this sure as hell was one of those! DQ XI felt like a game from another dimension in a lot of ways. It’s a traditional playing Japanese RPG with a big AAA budget. It looks breathtaking. Big budget JRPGs feel like something out of the PS2 era, which is great because I sure love PS2 era RPGs. It’s lengthy, it has a crazy amount of postgame content and has a lot of side stuff in case you get tired of fighting down the main path. It’s a great throwback. 

This game also has the most balanced party in recent RPG memory. Usually games like these have one or two party members that you just don’t enjoy. For instance, Final Fantasy X is one of my favorite games ever. But I just don’t like Kimahri. I don’t like using him and I don’t think his character is interesting. DQ XI has nobody like that. I found everybody likable. Sylvando and Jade in particular stand out and are among my favorite characters in gaming. Really, I enjoy everything about this game. Even the music! I know a lot of people complain about the simplified score in the western version, but I honestly found it to work out pretty well for the game. Obviously the Japanese version is superior, but I still enjoy it. If you’re a fan of RPGs and you haven’t played DQ XI, you’re missing out.

1-) Super Smash Brothers Ultimate: This was my most anticipated game of 2018 from the moment it was announced and the final product delivered everything that I had hoped it would. You have a large cast of characters, a crazy number of stages and a bunch of single player content to consume in between bouts of online or local multiplayer. The single player is what ranks this game so high for me. The classic mode - think arcade mode in standard fighters - is easily the best it has ever been. Each character has their own route with their own gimmick, which gives the player incentive to play each and every one. With a roster of over 70 fighters, that’s impressive. The adventure mode can start off slow, but once you get into the groove of it I really think it stands out as something special. It’s an expanded version of event battles from past games. You face off against a fighter (or fighters) embodying the personality of a character that isn’t in the game. They range from obscure stuff you haven’t heard of to a fight with Geno’s spirit that has you do battle with the cast of Super Mario RPG (with substitutes for Geno and Mallow). It feels very creative. It can be grindy for some, but I really enjoyed my time with it.

I think the online could be more fleshed out. I don’t experience as many laggy matches as most people, but even still the options online are fairly bare bones. You don’t even have leaderboards. I want to compare how good I am with how good my friends are! I think Nintendo plans to keep this game alive for the duration of the Switch’s lifespan, so I believe there will be plenty of time to get the online situation perfect. That doesn’t really excuse Nintendo from still not getting online even close to right in 2018, but I find Ultimate to be such a complete package that I can look past these shortcomings. Ultimately, it is my favorite entry in one of my favorite franchises. So it’s pretty easily my game of the year.

[acradaunt]

EON Playthrough: Week 7

The 13th stratum's random encounters have a bit of a similar taste to the 10th; loads and loads of elemental recolours, but this time with a lot more physical vulnerability. My main game plan was for Juri to just delete a chump with Drop Shot while Iris Walls against the surviving elemental attacks. Elemental attacks can be stuffed very cheaply, but you can only do one element at most. Plus, with Chasers around, it's more vital they can take a normal hit as well. There's a lot of passive synergy in most encounters here. 13th also does a bit more with puzzles. I'd say it's overall one of the better strata, and almost certainly the best of the new Nexus-only areas. 9th being a fairly distant second.

It's definitely making me think about how lots of strata just had random mish-mashes of enemies without any cohesive strategy between them, and the Shrines were particularly bad offenders, literally stealing random enemies, especially from EOV, and dumping them in without a care. Some places at least had the 'oh, and here's the one enemy that's immune to the thing everyone else hates' to fall back on (8th was a good example of this). Is it weird that I like it when enemies have a firm plan to kick my ass? Things like the Roller-chucking Baboons and the Nightseeker-wannabe birdies provided a bit of a puzzle in what order is really the best to handle them and made them really pop out as interesting but fair threats.

The final story boss was kind of a huge pushover. Just didn't really seem to have any tricks up his sleeve compared to the 9-11th strata. Weirdest is probably the ultra-telegraphed mass-physical attack, which feels more like something the 1st-3rd boss should do, not the last guy. Maybe he just didn't live long enough to do much (15 turns), since he sure didn't like Terra's Delayed Charge + Cross Charge + Bloodlust combos, but felt pretty underwhelming, even compared to the big dopey final story boss of EOIV. Protector and Deja Vu Unbinds shut down any offense on his part pretty hard, though; I THINK the big thing is his attacks bind, trying to get you to mix strategies up, but when I auto-recover every turn, I didn't have to care.

I guess it doesn't really mean much, though, at the end of the day. There's still a full bonus stratum to go and at least eight or so side-bosses and side-mazes now available or will shortly be available. Even so, I think I'm ending this weekly thing here. There's just nothing left to say. Of course I plan on doing all that content, but if the past is anything to go by, it'll be literal years before I legitimately beat the superboss. Unless they're a dumbass and you can get them to one-shot themselves, like Ur-Child. What a moron.

I've clocked about 135 hours on Nexus, although I dunno how much of that was oogling weapons at Napier's or fussing around at the guild hall about colours or assigning skill points to the 48 or so characters I haven't yet used. If Monster Hunter's anything to go by, it's a pretty significant percentage. I like window shopping a bit too much. Also I apparently finished in exactly 100 in-game days (Tiger the 16th), so that's a pretty nifty number.

I can't say I looked at the other games as critically, but I can definitely say there's spots where Nexus stutters. Just like absolutely every other EO game, it completely front-ends its cool boss ideas, although here it's less 'this 1st boss has a cool puzzle associated with it' and more 'here, fight this former superboss before you're even level 20' and 'Have two bosses, back to back'. Some later bosses do have interesting setups, but they're exactly who you'd expect to fight when you first enter. The Shrines are 16+5 floors of fairly same-y ideas with the same music and background in a game that mixes things up completely every three floors. It's really only bad by what it's standing next to. If two of the shrines stole music and tileset assets from, say, Gladsheim and Ginugagagap and changed nothing else, I don't think I'd be complaining about them.

Ironically, I think the more prominent remark is how quickly some content in the rest of the game comes and goes. I think I fought maybe a grand total of two Cube Gels, Whorled Puffers, and Starry Slugs. It's actually kind of a great problem. There's just SO MUCH content that some stuff slips between the cracks. I unironically think the encounter rate could have been just a touch higher (and with less rewards from bar quests or events to compensate). Especially on some strata where most rooms are puzzle/FOE rooms with radically reduced encounters, you just don't get into fights much at all. I think a FOE interrupted a random encounter like four times, total. And most of those were bats, which are wimps (and my fave FOE for how different a concept that is). I suppose this falls into the 'good players go through stuff fast, less good players stick around longer' auto-adjusting difficulty RPGs have.

There's an obvious complaint to be made about an overabundance of earlygame strata being used and nothing ever from any game's 5-6th stratum, but it honestly didn't bother me. Apart from both of EOIII's 5th stratum gimmicks, I can't really think of many puzzle assets that never showed up, or at least with a close proxy. Well, I guess there's EOV's butt-golem switches. And EOV's falling pillars. Okay, so a couple.

I guess my bottom line is that I still do believe Nexus is the best EO game, as quantity really does completely wash away any lower quality areas. It is a lot of the same, but apart from the 2nd stratum, it never really felt same-y. Maybe it's because I never played EOU or EO2U (or EOI to begin with), so those areas might feel more dull if I had, but to me, they hardly resemble the same-y unremarkable regions and enemies they once were in EOII. Nexus is likely not the best game to start on; I'd say ideally the order is any one of EOIV/EOU/EO2U, then EOV, then Nexus. Spaced out over several years. A lot of the fun of Nexus was seeing how they improved old stuff, and how new and old stuff from different games intermingle, and without any nostalgia and some sense of familiarity, it might be a little bit of a sensory overload. EOV content was clearly deliberately avoided, so EOV still feels like a very different game with lots of super-weird classes.

I think my favourite parts were the 11th stratum, which I seemed to be facing death several times, but always pulled things out, and the bosses/FOEs were demanding, but felt fair after 10th's ultra-unfair midboss. Seeing, and especially hearing, the 6th stratum after like a decade was phenomenal, even if it was a bit of a breather area. The 4th likewise, especially its side-maze, seeing some real mixing of the games. And while I ragged on them earlier, the 9th and 13th stratum had some really good puzzles. Really, only the 3rd and 5th were really lacking in puzzle/FOE rooms. Maybe that's why they felt like such meat-grinders.

[eggoreviews]

My Top 10 Games of All Time

Just so I’m not talking about Smash Bros for once, here’s my top 10 games of all time that I will always think are perfect and never accept that they have flaws! Enjoy and I hope one of your faves is in here!

Probably spoilers for the games I mention under the cut

10. Kingdom Hearts II (2005)

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, Kingdom Hearts is a big weird crossover between Disney and Final Fantasy. I played this game as a kid and it was mostly exploring the Disney worlds and the really good combat system that kept me interested (I had literally no clue what was happening in the story and still kind of don’t) and I never really lost that sense of nostalgia that became attached to this game for me. And yeah I’m definitely getting Kingdom Hearts 3.

9. Life Is Strange (2015)

Life Is Strange is an emotional, cheesily written episodic series that I got into totally by accident about a teenage girl called Max who does some high school stuff and also has superpowers. What really made this game so memorable for me was the sheer emotion behind a lot of the plot and I will admit I cried several points during, which is what made the game stick with me. Plus this has one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard in a game so yeah. Go play it (and everything on this list).

8. Until Dawn (2015)

This game probably doesn’t belong here but I love it. Until Dawn follows 8 teenagers who go back to a snowy cabin where some shit went down the year before and u have to keep them all alive by making the right choices n stuff. The horror factor is good in this game, but it’s mostly the characters and how strangely attached I was to them by the end (I know they’re all tropes but I still love them). I’ve honestly lost count of the amount of times I’ve replayed this. Still probably gonna do it again.

7. Mass Effect 2 (2010)

The sequel to what is basically the space version of Dragon Age is shamefully my only exposure to the Mass Effect series, but the gameplay and characters left enough of a mark on me to give it a comfortable spot in this list. Mass Effect 2 follows Commander Shepard, overly macho space guy/gal who is a terrible flirt as he attempts to rid the universe of some massive insects. Along the way, you run into a huge cast of memorable, unique characters (and then Jacob as well) and explore a wealth of interesting and varying locations. But what really made the game stick out were the genuine lasting consequences of the frankly huge final mission; if you don’t make the right choices and buy the right upgrades, a lot of your faves are going to die.

6. Dishonored (2012)

This entry in my list is a bit cheaty, as it includes all dlc expansions from the first game as well as Dishonored 2, because all of these are just as good as each other. Dishonored puts you in the shoes of self-righteous arsehole Corvo Attano (I’m kidding btw, he’s only an arse if you make him kill everyone) as he gets framed for the murder of his lover who also happens to be the Empress, as well as the kidnap of his daughter who also happens to be the Empress’ daughter. So kind of a big deal. But all joking aside, Dishonored is one of the finest examples of the first person stealth genre, with arguably its only flaw being that it gives you a sprawling variety of fun and interesting ways to kill people and then makes you feel like a monster at the end of the game for doing it. I played this game and its sequels to death, and became especially invested in the character of Daud (who was totally butchered in Death of the Outsider. Yeah, I really wasn’t a fan of that game. Like, I love Billie Lurk and everything but what the hell were they thinking doing THAT to the Outsider?? Sorry I’m rambling)

5. Dragon Age: Origins (2009)

And now to one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played, Dragon Age is fucking amazing from start to finish. A gripping storyline, characters and companions that are impossible to forget and a combat system that’s fairly easy to get to grips with but becomes a bit of an arse later in the game. As much as I liked Inquisition (despite the fact it butchered Leliana. That’s just my hot take I don’t think anyone else thinks this, she just kind of lost that sense of fun and badassery that made her my fave in Origins. Rambling again), none of the other games in the series really matched up to the original for me.

4. Medievil Resurrection (2005)

I’ve been reliably informed that I am Bad And Naughty for loving this version of the game because it’s apparently rubbish compared to the PS1 version. But I loved this game so much as a kid that I played it to DEATH. Like more than Dishonored. The levels aren’t quite open world, but you get so immersed in them that you think they are. Honestly, I’ve never played a game with such a creative concept behind it, with humour that’s surprisingly meta for an RPG of the time, not to mention the fact that there’s a whole level devoted to carnival minigames. Are you not convinced yet? Well, you should be because Tom Baker is a voice in it and it’s coming out as a remaster for the PS4 at some point (I hope it’s soon. It’s gone eerily quiet)

3. Undertale (2015)

I know this is high for such a recent game, but it really has justified its place. I don’t care how much this game or its following has been ruined by the internet, I still hold it in the same regard I did when I first played it (and then bought all the subsequent ports because I’m a Capitalist Sheep). With an amazing narrative, some spicy retro-era graphics, memorable characters and possibly the best soundtrack I’ve ever heard in a game, there’s no way I’m ever getting sick of Undertale.

2. Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (2009)

What sets this game apart from the other RPGs on this list was that not only did it have everything I look for in a game (amazing narrative, characters, soundtrack, game design, combat and open world) but it carried it all out with a sense of emotion I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Every single character, every single detail seemed to be something else you immediately became attached to and it all comes together to make a game so immersive I didn’t put it down for a solid 3 years, even after I’d completed it. Basically, if you own a DS, you NEED to play this. Like you will cry many times throughout this game. Sometimes happy crying (I think I just get a bit too invested in these things tbh)

Before I ramble on incessantly about my number 1 pick, here’s some of the best bois I’ve played that didn’t quite make the list:

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) - I’m loving this game to bits so far. I’m only a recent Switch owner so I’m catching up on what I’ve missed and if this game carries on the way it is, it’s going to have to be in my top 10.

Rayman Legends (2013) - Fun, unique and memorable platformer that especially shines in couch co-op. I’ve played this one countless times and I won’t stop until Rayman gets in Smash.

The Walking Dead series (2012-2018) - One of the best sets of decision based games on the market and perfect if you’re looking for a game that tears your heart out and stomps on it!

Fallout 4 (2015) - Amazing open world, characters and combat. Well-designed, genuinely terrifying monsters. The ability to name your weapons ridiculous things. Heck yeah it’s going on this list.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales (2006) - A cute lil card based RPG that was a Final Fantasy spin-off no one seemed to like. But hey, I loved it and I’ll never say it’s anything other than perfect because childhood.

1. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)

Oh my god. Ohhh my god. Where do I even begin with this one? Yes, Skyrim was amazing, but Oblivion just beats it due to a combination of a storyline I prefer (oops sorry), nostalgic attachment and a lovely set of glitches and exploits that to me make the game all the more lovable. There’s nothing I’ve played since Oblivion that’s matched the experience of wandering through a forest or one of the cities with THAT MUSIC in the background. And don’t even get me started on the quests. And that Shivering Isles DLC? Big yes. I knew this segment wouldn’t make much sense but I love the game so much that I can’t even begin to tell you all the things that make it my favourite.

Thank you for reading if you made it this far! It was just me rambling about games really but I appreciate u a lot if you made it this far. Have a good day and if you get the time, pick up one or two of the titles on this list! You bigly won’t regret it.

[simul16]

Breaking the Broken Blaster

Barry is a character in the Multiverse RPG. Then he gets hold of the/a reality stone and become aware that he is in an RPG and grants himself unlimited cosmic power. Well not unlimited, he makes himself a rank 15 character. Then loses the stone. He then fights crime or does crime as the “Broken Blaster”, scourge of thematic players and characters who don’t min-max! - That70sBloke, "Marvel Multiverse: Broken Blaster - where I break the game by following the rules"

So I picked up a copy of the mighty Marvel Multiverse RPG Playtest rulebook and started messing around the way I normally do with a new super-hero game, by translating my first-even hero team dating back to Villains & Vigilantes into the new system. This proved to be a bit more challenging than usual, since the Playtest book only contains a fairly limited sample of powersets, mainly tied to the example pre-generated heroes also provided in the book. (I mean, it's a 120 page trade paperback, so you can't expect it would hold the same amount of rules material as, say, the HERO System 5E Revised rulebook.)

Then I got curious what other folks had made of the system, so I googled around and stumbled across the blog 'that70sgame', where a fellow has written fairly frequently over the past week or so about the Marvel Multiverse ruleset and his thoughts about it.

They weren't great thoughts. When I hit the post quoted in the intro above, I realized why -- dude is a wannabe min-maxer, with all the issues that implies. His fundamental argument is basically that the playtest book is weak and doesn't contain meaningful limits on characters, because you can dump nearly all your points into a single stat and dominate all your enemies.

He does have one point: the game definitely seems to assume that characters will be reasonably balanced among their stats. The book notes that the range of human ability scores ranges between -4 and +4 for each of the six ability scores, but that superhumans can exceed these normal human limits. But the game doesn't seem to think superhumans will exceed them by all that much, since none of the example characters has any ability score that even goes into double-digits, with the highest score being a 9, generally taken by the highest rank characters (with rank being similar to the concept of 'level' in D&D, though not quite as sharply delimited). Our dude, however, decides to go full-on munchkin, buying up his Agility to 20, which gives him a ridiculously high modifier (used mainly for attacks but also on checks, including opposed checks) and defense rating. He then explains that his character is obviously superior to every other rank 15 hero in the book, demonstrating with an example fight against the hero he considers the 'best' rank 15 sample character, Black Panther, and showing that Min-Max Man can put T'Challa down in three rounds while being completely untouchable.

Superficially, that seems impressive. However, there are a couple of caveats.

The first and most obvious is that Min-Max Man is profoundly helped in his mission by the fact that the powers in the playtest book focus on characters that mainly have Might and Agility attacks and aren't psychics or mentalists. If there was even one psychic in the book, even at rank 5, that character would likely wipe the floor with Min-Max Man, since MMM has chosen to have a Vigilance of 0, a Logic of -1, and an Ego of -2, which is the superheroic equivalent of mounting a 151mm howitzer on the roof of a 2004 Honda Civic.

But the real challenge comes from realizing that not only is it possible to beat Min-Max Man, it's not all that hard to do so with characters built from the existing playtest rules that are arguably weaker than MMM himself. So let's introduce you to the rank 10 character that cannot lose to Min-Max Man.

Meet the Punisher of Munchkins, scourge of min-mixers and protector of role-play!

Rank = 10

Archetype = Protector

Origin = Special Training

Profession = Soldier

AbilityCapScoreModifierDefense Might102+617 Agility167+1425 Resilience74+1122 Vigilance184+1324 Ego183+1223 Logic133+1021

Fight Damage = 3d6+7 (+7 w/Martial Arts)

Ranged Damage = 3d6+14 (+7 w/Firearms,+3 w/Tactical Mastery)

Health = 100

Focus = 125

Initiative = +7 (+edge)

Powers:

Firearms

Suppressive Fire

Return Fire

Martial Arts

Defense Stance

Reverse Momentum Throw

Do This All Day

Always Ready

Tactical Mastery

Battle Plan

Focus Fire

Traits:

Determination

Battle Ready

Connections: Military

Situational Awareness

Combat Trickery

Enemy (Min-Max Man)

Fresh Eyes

Signature Attack: Suppressive Fire

This character may not look all that impressive on paper, especially compared to Min-Max Man; MMM's got our hero easily beat in Agility, which also contributes to a massive bonus in Initiative. But that's part of the trick; our guy doesn't need to go first in order to win.

The key to the build is Return Fire, which triggers on a declaration of attack against our hero and gives him an attack against the declared attacker. The kicker is that the attack is Agility versus Ego defense, and MMM's Ego is his 'dump stat', giving him a defense of just 18, against which the Punisher of Munchkins cannot miss. (Well, that's not strictly true -- though usually a roll of 1 on the MARVEL die is treated as a 6, this doesn't actually happen if all three dice turn up as 1s, since that's treated as a Botched Roll, which would still fail. However, there are paths around this, as we'll see in a moment.) On a success with Return Fire, the Punisher of Munchkins deals half his Ranged Damage (3d6+21, as this is a Firearms power) as damage to MMM's Focus, and since MMM doesn't have any Damage Reduction (why would he, with an Agility defense of 44?), he takes that Focus damage, which causes his attack to automatically fail and causes MMM to become Stunned, preventing him from using any other actions other than Easy actions and stopping him from using Reactions. Note as well that once MMM is Stunned, our hero gains an Edge on all attacks against him, allowing him to re-roll a die in his d616 roll, meaning that if his initial roll comes up as all 1s, he can simply choose to re-roll one of those dice, failing only if the re-roll also comes up as a 1. It's a 1-in-216 chance to get all 1s on a roll of 3d6 to begin with, and the odds of the roll still being a Botch after an Edge re-roll rise to 1-in-1296. And though it is true that MMM could spend a point of Karma to negate our hero's Edge, our hero can simply spend a point of his own Karma to re-establish it, if needed, meaning that this 1-in-216 occurrence would need to occur five times in the fight before the sixth such roll might actually end up being a Botch. An 'optimized' character that requires that much good luck to escape his duly assigned fate is barely worthy of the title.

(And as a nod to That70sBloke about this not yet being a really well-designed game, tell me, based solely on the text found in the Playtest Rulebook, when the Stunned condition imposed by Return Fire ends. It's unclear, but I'd argue should at least be through the end of our hero's next turn, and arguably should be until the start of MMM's next turn, which for our purpose ends up being the same thing.)

On his turn, the Punisher of Munchkins follows up with Suppressive Fire, which is another Agility vs. Ego attack that he cannot miss with without Botching, dealing another bout of half Ranged Damage to MMM's Focus. Note that MMM has a Healing Factor, and being Stunned by Return Fire doesn't prevent him from using the Healing Factor, since it doesn't even use an action, but Healing Factor only restores Health, and the Punisher of Munchkins isn't dealing Health damage as his main threat.

This continues, round after round: MMM declares an attack, the Punisher of Munchkins Returns Fire, stopping the attack and Stunning MMM, and then following up by doing even more Focus damage. Even if MMM rolled well enough on initiative at the start of the fight to generate a bonus round, nothing in the rules says that characters who don't get a turn in the bonus round can't still take Reactions, meaning that there's literally no way for MMM to put a stop to this short of running away. (MMM's own Defensive Stance doesn't apply at all, as it only affects Fight rolls until the character is successfully attacked, and neither Return Fire nor Suppressive Fire are defined as Fight rolls.) Eventually, unless Min-Max Man disengages, conceding the fight, he will be reduced to a negative of his starting Focus and be Shattered, effectively becoming psychologically broken enough so that he needs to be retired from the campaign (although I suppose he could return as an avatar of Khonshu or, more likely, as a museum gift shop worker).

(I'll also note that I've built in another couple of 'gotchas' for unaware munchkins into this build, which I leave as an exercise for the interested reader to discover, but the best way to ensure those gotchas are effective requires a slight re-write of the character, swapping out his Signature Attack Trait for the Surprising Power Trait and swapping out the Tactical Mastery power set for Energy Absorption from the Energy Control power set.)

Note as well that, though rare, other attacks that work against defenses other than Agility exist in the playtest rulebook, and can be used in a similar way to apply strength against MMM's weaknesses to defeat him without much effort. This build is just, to me, the most entertaining, as it beats MMM by preventing him from being able to use his own strengths, which is exactly the approach I recommend to game masters looking to deter munchkins in their own games.

So That70sBloke isn't necessarily wrong when he criticizes the Marvel Multiverse RPG for not having a great design, but it's not because the system fails to put limits on characteristics; the game is instead trying to build a 'rock-paper-scissors' approach to balance, not a limit-based one, and the full release of the game will simply expand the options available to those who want to play the game of figuring out if there's a 'super-move' that can bypass all the options and counter-options available in character design. No, the actual flaws in the Marvel Multiverse game design will have to wait for a more thorough accounting in a later essay.