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lazzledazzler · 3 years

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Lazzle's Rune Factory 5 Review

Alright so here are my thoughts and experiences with RF5! This is a big boy so buckle in earthmates...

Obviously this review will contain spoilers, read at your own risk.

Initial thoughts upon playing...

Great opening! I enjoyed the jazz music~ I did feel like it leaned a bit more towards the male player though. It definitely feels like a rune factory game. It's familiar, and controls are easy to get accustomed to for the most part. The mold is there and rf5 doesn't stray too far from its predecessors which is comforting for veterans. That being said, I'm not going to pull any punches and will critique this game harshly. Keep in mind as updates for the game are released not all things discussed in this review will be as relevant overtime!

Let's hear some thoughts on...

The story/plot. The plot is enjoyable overall. I'm not crazy about the whole Seed organization thing but it was a neat idea. They address the Sechs Territory and it is confirmed that the game takes place some decades after RF4. But by the end of it, I didn't feel like I really accomplished anything because it felt like I barely did anything really. Also they left a lot of stuff unanswered. I'm not even sure I understood the message they were sending, if they were trying to send a message at all. The main story is too short, and it doesn't involve enough of the townsfolk. You're basically doing everything yourself in secret the whole time and the townsfolk barely know what's actually going on. Out of the love interests, Lucas plays the largest part in the story, followed by Priscilla and Scarlett. The story feels targeted at male audiences--at least that's how I felt. You, the player, have a larger role in the game, much like in RF3 and I was glad to see this. As of right now there are only two arcs. Praying for DLC 3rd arc...!

Protagonists. The latest protagonists to join the crew of Earthmates are...decent. Their designs are nothing special unfortunately, though I appreciate Alice's more than Ares's. Appearance-wise they lack personality and creativity. Personality wise I am pleasantly surprised with how sociable they are. They're not exactly quick witted and sassy like Lest/Frey were in rf4, or as endearing as Micah in rf3, but they have a certain realness to them that makes their reactions to things believable. I'm certain Xseed will see to making them a bit more sarcastic in their localizing efforts, so let's all look forward to that. Overall though, while I appreciate their mannerisms, they don't really measure up to all the previous amnesiacs we've grown to love over the decades.

Characters. Overall I enjoy all the characters introduced in Rune Factory 5! I feel like there is someone for everyone in this game on some level. The voice acting was pretty good for every character. The designs are very much Rune factory. Like OG runefa, compared to rf4 ( 4 kind of strayed from their usual style) which I like. Characters still have their own signature quirks that you find endearing. Although I would have liked to see more variety? Like we've had mermaids, univir, half monsters, vampires, etc in previous titles but rf5 only gives us the usual (half) elf, dwarf, and then a succubus (physically she doesn't have unique features aside from the ears and heart eyes), and some were-people. I was hoping for something more unique to really give that classic runefa vibe.

Dungeons/Battles. I'm pretty split on this one. On the one hand, the dungeons have more depth due to the 3D aspects. They've included more contraptions that are very fun to see even if they aren't executed that well. So I'm grateful for that. On the other hand, the dungeons are insanely short imo. It doesn't take long at all to get to the boss. The puzzles are also pretty subpar and few compared to RF4. Fighting monsters is similar to the other games. You can lock on now but I only use it when I'm trying to use my Seed Circle. The lock on feature is actually counter-intuitive and makes it harder to dodge. Weapon mechanics have shifted a bit. There’s a feature that makes you invincible to damage if you time the R button dash correctly. Axes and Hammers are significantly slower than in older games? Like. I thought I was in slow motion it was so slow. Lances are also harder to use as well? I'm questioning my sanity here. I don't know if it's a bug or intentional either.

Farming. Not much has changed from previous games mechanics wise. They added new types of special crops which is neat. The camera view changes to overhead when you go near your fields though, and it can make you dizzy/uncomfortable. It actually makes it a bit difficult to see at times so I wish there was a way to adjust the angle. If you are tilling corn or dried weeds to improve the soil, you need to place them separately if you don't want to use the entire stack. Otherwise, it will till the entire stack on the land if you place them all down at once. The flower shop is unlocked late in the story. Weird thing to do considering you need flowers to make medicine. Not to mention the fact that you wont have access to the fertilizer that increases defense against typhoons? During typhoon season? Thinking emoji...

The town. I have to say Rigbarth's design is poor compared to Sharance, Selphia, etc. It's too big and it takes too long to get around. Everything is too spaced out and there aren't enough warp points to make it easier on players. I don't want to walk an entire mile up a hill to talk to one person and then walk all the way down to the beach to speak to another. It doesn’t really feel like a ‘town’.

OST/BGM. Music was good, though nothing really stood out to me where I'd go "damn this slaps" or something. I think they might've had some old soundtracks from rf2 or something because it felt really nostalgic at times.

We need an exterminator. (Bugs Bugs Bugs)

Marvelous, I don't know how to tell you this buuut...your customers are NOT your testers. When you release a game, you need to make sure it's not littered with glitches because customers don't enjoy dealing with them and will drop the game!

Here are some of the types of glitches I encountered:

Crashing. Game would randomly crash or freeze and close at any moment. Sooooo frustrating! Sometimes you get lucky with the autosave feature, but the autosave only activates every morning at 6am in your room and then when you warp to a dungeon level/floor. So when you're in the middle of your daily tasks in town and it crashes, you have to start all over. Marveloussss no one enjoys losing their progress in a game I promise you that much.

Lag. The dialogue bar is seriously slow, especially after loading your file. Crafting/Cooking screen lags. When you press the Y button to skip through dialogue it lags like hell. Pretty much after every time you load the game will lag, the audio will lag if you're in a battle, everything is just. so. slow.

Repeating dialogue. So if you close your game entirely (or if it crashes) naturally you'll reload your file to continue where you left off. There's a bug that will cause all NPCs to repeat the last dialogue that occurred from whatever plot related thing you did last. So for example, if the last thing you did in the story was unlock Ludmilla, everyone in town will naturally have some dialogue about her. But even after seeing all this dialogue and even saving, if the game is closed and reloaded you'll have to read all that dialogue again from townsfolk. It got really annoying after a while.

Monster taming. One time I tamed a monster but once I named it and hit 'ok' the monster never showed up in my barns? Just. gone. Okaaaay then...? Additionally, I expanded one of my monster barns but all of the monsters I tamed wouldn't appear in the added room. You get 4 monsters for each room but the monsters I tamed would show up in the original room. Meaning I had like 7 monsters in one room! I tried to bring them into the newly added room but they would just warp back to the other room. Sad.

Pond Glitch. I fished in the pond located in Sasayaki Forest and left the fish I caught but didn't want laying around the water's edge. If you leave fish around the pond's edge and go to sleep, the next morning you will be teleported to the pond and trigger the fairy dialogue as if you had thrown all of the fish into the pond??? So the dialogue of her telling you she wants 'X item, not this!' will trigger over and over for all of the fish you left at the water's edge. RIP.

Party member Bug. I had Martin in my party and I made him leave. Then when I went into my monster barns to get a monster pal to join me instead it showed me Martin's portrait???? Also I've encountered a bug where I can no longer ask anyone to join my party for some unknown reason. The R &L button prompt was just gone when I reloaded.

Errors. When cooking or crafting, the dialogue box shows up sometimes...

Typos. Random average typo here and there. Not a real biggie but there is one instance where the heroine will use the japanese male pronoun "boku" instead of "watashi" which really convinced me that this game was completely intended for men lol.

Let's talk about Pros

The good stuff. The stuff that makes you all warm and fuzzy inside.

Plot Advancing. Now I'm gonna put this as a pro because I'm certain the average player will enjoy this even though I do not. There are now markers on the map to show you where to go to advance the plot. This is all well and dandy, but it also made the story less appealing for me because you don't need to go around town and speak to residents for clues or assistance to advance anything in the story.

3D Graphics The 3D models are all amazing. The interior designs of the houses/buildings are also incredibly detailed and realistic.

Collecting items. Now there's a feature that will allow you to collect items into your inventory just by walking over them. This is pretty neat and welcome for the most part. Once the item is sparkling, you can walk over it and it'll go into your rucksack automatically. This also makes lumbering and mining go much faster. Yay!

The miraculous L pocket. Now you can customize the categories that appear in your L pocket by going to the rucksack tab in the menu. This is a super neat feature that makes things easier on players who want to manage their items in a format that suits them.

Weapon/Tool Toggling. You can now toggle between your equipped weapon and tool by pressing the left or right buttons on the trackpad.

Collecting lumber/material stone. Oh lord this is probably the most welcome improvement moving forward from the previous game. You can now put all of the lumber and material stone from your inventory into its storage at once. This also applies to fodder for tamed monsters. Well done Hakama.

Autosave. This feature is a welcome addition to the series. The game will save your data every morning and every time you enter a dungeon. Autosave has really saved my ass a few times when I made a huge error in judgement so I'm incredibly grateful for this feature. And it doesn't save over your actual save file--there's a separate autosave file at the very top. So if you messed up something but already saved on your main file, you can still salvage your mistake by reloading the autosave! I just wish it activated a bit more often sometimes.

Warping. Now we can warp to each level in a dungeon as well as certain places on the map in town. It's pretty convenient for the most part.

Increased party members. Now you can have up to 3 members in your party! Hooray! Party members act more intelligently than in older games. Scarlett can use the Seed circle to assist you in fights. I think she also tosses healing potions at you occasionally. So far, no one has tossed a dish at me if I haven't eaten like Kiel and Clorica did in rf4. But I have been hit by a failed dish (from reinhardt?) and a healing potion (from scarlett). Scarlett, Priscilla, and Reinhardt are the most helpful when dungeon crawling in my experience. Some of them however, (looking at you Doug) don't shut the hell up with their one line of dialogue they have and repeat it constantly.

Seed Circle. This neat feature allows you to capture monsters. By charging it and releasing you can capture monsters for the bounty system or add them to your party temporarily. If you throw it without charging it, you can stun monsters in place momentarily or grab things from far away. When stunning monsters, it can also give you the monster's drop item occasionally. Unfortunately it uses a lot of RP so it can be difficult at times.

Combo attacks. This is a neat feature that I appreciate and use often for boss fights. They do some serious damage so it's good to save them for the bosses. The actual cutscenes aren't that impressive, and feel kind of subpar when you get down to it but I think it's a start in the right direction.

Farm Dragons. I'm listing this as a pro although I really just see it as a new feature. Farm dragons have fields on their backs that you can place monster barns on and farm on. Giving them certain crystals will give your fields boosts in certain criteria, like length of growth, soil quality, you get it. I personally don't use the crystals because I couldn't give a shit lmao I have men and women to woo here. But if you're into this kinda thing then it's a pro.

Storage. When opening your storage box, fridge, etc. you can actually hit the R & L buttons to switch between ALL of your other storages. Looooove thissss. Great addition. So much faster to put items away in their respective places.

Crafting/Forging. Now we can also use the R & L buttons to alternate between the different weapon types/accessory/gear types instead of having to exit the menu and going back in each time you want to make something different.

Cooking. More recipes have been added. Yay!

Days are longer now. More time to get shit doneeeee ayyyy

Fishing. They've added many more fish to the game! Now the player will shout something when you get a bite, making it easier for you to hit B at the right moment. Nice. Also if you fail or press B too early, the fish doesn't vanish most of the time. Also nice. There is now a feature to fish with another person's assistance. Once a day you can investigate the sign near the fishing station and someone might offer to lend you a hand. Press the B button at the right moments on the slider and you can get a rare fish that can't be caught normally.

Monsters. New types of monsters! Love the designs. Even the monsters that are the same but just have different skins are really neat. They look great in the 3D format too. You can even ride with up to two people on certain monsters! Some bosses had awesome designs while others...were bad.

New Types of Furniture. The carpenter store has a wide arrange of furniture you can buy for your home. It also has wallpapers and stuff which is really neat. Though unfortunately you can't even sit on some of the furniture so that's a shame.

Events. Now there is a system where events are triggered by approaching an icon on the map. This is probably an improvement to RF4's randomized system, though personally I found it annoying because it meant that I had to see the events before I could just enter a building normally. Sometimes I just wanted to get shit done and not have to read through walls of text for someone's love event when I just want to buy something.

Voiced Lines. The protagonist seems to have more voiced lines, as do other characters. Good!

Let's talk about Cons

Not including glitches. Oh boy. So many cons. Where do I start?

Dialogue. Probably the most notable con in the entire game. The dialogue is drastically minimal in comparison to previous games, especially rf4. There is probably a quarter of the amount of dialogue compared to rf4's insane amount of content if not less. Townsfolk repeat themselves. Often. Too often. Am I playing Harvest Moon? Originally I thought it was because the dialogue is randomized, but I think it's actually because more dialogue is unlocked as you raise townspeople's FP. Despite this, there's no linear build up where you start off as acquaintances and eventually become very close like in rf4 because of how sporadic the LP/FP is. Townsfolk don't even talk to each other. One of the greatest perks about runefa is the conversations townsfolk can have with one another. Residents randomly gathering in small groups to talk about anything. Previously you could add someone to your party and sometimes a dialogue will occur if you speak to the right person at the right time with that person in your party. This is nonexistent now. The only time they do this in rf5 is during the festivals. But, it will only trigger if you have unlocked all the characters in each marriageable lineup and they can't be in your party. The residents will talk about one another but that's pretty much it outside of town events. They got rid of all the minor dialogue that occurs too. Trying to sleep in someone's bed while they're right there? They wont comment. Inspecting objects in stores while the shopkeeper is present? Wont say anything. Take a character with you to a dungeon/boss fight? Their lips are sealed. Where's my sense of community? :(

FP/LP This ties into the dialogue issue. The rate at which LP/FP increases is sporadic as hell. You can go from 1FP/LP to 4FP/LP just by giving a gift sometimes. I wouldn't even speak to people and their affinity increased by like triple for no reason. Then it increases by like 2% for the longest time. Argh!!!

Graphics. I don't consider myself very picky when it comes to graphics. I don't really mind that the foliage and scenery are at the level of a ps2 game at best. I tried playing on my television initially, but the lag and camera operability was too much so I fully switched (haha puns) to handheld. One thing that sucked is that I literally cannot tell the difference between medicinal herbs, antidote grasses, and green grasses without the captions because the graphics are so indistinguishable. So when you're trying to pick up multiples of those items by holding the A button, you're just randomly walking over anything green in the hopes that you'll get the right ones...

Lack of Sound Effects. Something I noticed is they got rid of the sound effects that will play when you complete a puzzle or add someone to your party. When you try to brush a monster there's no sound for the '♪' they make when you successfully brush them. So it was hard for me to tell if I had actually brushed them or not. I was a bit saddened by the lack of cute sounds.

Too much free range. From the very beginning of the game, you're allowed to go pretty much wherever you want when leaving town. It was too easy to stumble into high enemy level territory without knowing, so when I was like level 5 so I got KO'd immediately.

Artwork. The portraits seem to be lower in quality somehow. Runefa has always had shitty portrait art imo but this time it's even worse. Many character's eyes looked fucked up. Though the 3D models are insanely good for mostly every character except Terry. Terry's 3D model looks Terryfying and I prefer his portrait.

Festivals. They've added some new festivals. Some I enjoy. Some not so much. They changed the format of the eating contest. It's horrible. Good luck with that one.

L pocket + R button? They got rid of the feature that lets you skip to the other end of your items when opening the L pocket by pressing R button. I really liked that feature because it made it faster to reach my items so I was bummed that they got rid of it.

Gotta go fast. Now when you speak to someone, it doesn't 'stop time' as you might say it did in previous games. So people are still moving about as you speak to someone, making it harder to catch up to people! Annoying!!!

Catch and release? Not in my farming simulator! Say goodbye to being able to toss a fish you caught back into the water. In fact, say goodbye to tossing anything you don't want anymore into the water. Now you just have an army of fish flopping on the ground around you. And with the auto pick up feature, they're probably going to end up in your inventory anyways once you try to move. There are still certain ponds with fairies that you can toss stuff into, but you'll have to deal with the fairy harping at you for giving her something she doesn't want.

Shop Hours. Oh god. The shop owners don't even open their stores at the correct hours? It says open at 9am. If you speak to them they won't open their store until like 9:07??? But Priscilla and Lucy will show up to work their part-time jobs at around 8:30am and you can buy stuff through them before 9am. So the actual shop owners (for the bread shop and general store) are pointless usually. Additionally, if the store is empty (but open) you can no longer add a shopkeeper into your party and then enter their store with them to buy things from them. Why. Just why. When you want to buy something that only a specific person sells (Only Hina sells fish, only Heinz sells misc items) you have to wait for them to finally decide to work in their own store. Wonderful.

Monster Item drops. Maybe I'm crazy but the monster drops are seriously a lot harder to get than in previous games. Especially boss drops. It's almost impossible to get the rare drops now. I don't even want to try anymore. And as far as I know, the only place to buy monster items is through Heinz, but his items are actually misc. items, not specifically monster drops. So you'll be lucky to check his store (whenever tf he decides to actually work) for any monster items you might want instead of farming for the drops. Sighs.

Difficulty. This game is too easy. There is little to no challenge whatsoever. I had to increase the difficulty setting to hard mode and it was still too easy. I beat it at level 139, never once did I need to grind or level. In fact, your character levels up way too quickly for the pace of the story. I had zero trouble with any of the bosses and even the final boss was a breeze. Quite sad. Though because I am not new to the franchise, it's likely that newcomers would have some trouble in the later parts of the story.

Fishing cons. Idk how you fck up fishing but they sure did. You have to stand further back now because the pole is so long that you'll miss the fish you're aiming for. In fact, it's seriously hard to aim period. You'll end up recasting more often than not. Fish come in the various sizes but they don't seem to have the darker or faded characteristics that can indicate whether it's a rare fish or not. The graphics make it hard to tell. The pros that i've already mentioned are welcomed but it doesn't negate the fact that I do not enjoy fishing like I did in previous games.

Mining/Lumbering Cons. You can no longer strike three times consecutively when mining/lumbering. This sucks lol. Even when you upgrade your axe or hammer, powering up the tool does nothing for getting wood and material stone--it only expands the area of your strike. So it takes longer to get wood/stone from stumps and rocks now since you have to strike the full 9 times but it's not too bad. It's also harder to aim now as well so that's also unfortunate.

Seasonal Fields? Kiss them goodbye! That's right, there are no seasonal fields in rf5 because devs are insane! You instead have the farm dragons that seem to look seasonal based on the fact that they are designed after elements like earth, water, and fire. But no, these dragons are simply extra fields for you to use. Here's a spoiler: you're not going to use those fields. You're just not. They're kinda useless unless you're obsessed with farming. Now you have to grow your crops out of season like the sad farmer that you are.

Farming cons. Seeds no longer tell you how long it takes to grow the crop. Why. As of June 29th, they fixed this with an update. But I still had to play the whole game without it so fuck you marvelous. The joystick is really sensitive? So when you're trying to use a fertilizer or something on your field you're likely to place it on the wrong 4x4 tile, wasting your fertilizer. So it’s best to hold down the R button when farming. Also the crops look uglie as hell.

Sleeping and warping cutscenes. Just like in rf4 there's a cutscene when you go to sleep that can be skipped easily by pressing A. In rf5, there's a cutscene to sleep and a cutscene when waking up. It takes a bit more than a second to skip these scenes so it gets annoying after a while. Warping is this new feature that replaces our beloved escape spell. Overall I appreciate the feature but I hate it for two reasons. One: there's an annoying ass cutscene for it each time you use it that could be much shorter. And Two: townsfolk now use warp even when inside the town. In previous games, someone exiting your party in town would just manually run to wherever they need to be. So you could easily chase after them if you need to talk to them or give them something. Now, party members use warp regardless of where you are at the time. So say you have someone at 7 hearts and you want to try confessing to them. You would have them join your party, save your game, and then have them leave your party and immediately speak to them and confess before they can run off. If it doesn't work you reload until it does. In RF5 this wouldn't work anymore because they will warp. Now you would have to save, run around town trying to find this person and hope they accept the confession. Otherwise you'll have to play hide and seek again because reloading your file will randomize the resident's locations (if they are not working in a shop)!!!! I often just waited until a festival day because then they will be at the plaza for most of the day and it has a warp point there.

Crafting/Forging/Cooking. They've removed the feature where you can press Y on the ingredients in the menu to add more of that particular item. I miss this feature :'(

Lacks incentive. There is no trophy room from my knowledge. The final dungeon that is meant to be like the sharance maze/rune prana isn't that hard to beat for skilled players and is only 20 floors. After you beat the main story and this dungeon there's not much else to do really.

Request Board. Unlike in rf4, you need to make sure you have accepted requests before you complete them or else it will not count. Previously, you could complete all sorts of tasks and Eliza would still recognize your work even if you accept their request after the fact. ie, shipping goods, harvesting crops, etc. So make sure you don't harvest your special crops before accepting the request it's for!

Return of the "Loli" Dragons... Yeah you read that right. We got more dragons in children's(???) bodies with skimpy clothes. I don't know anymore????¿¿¿

Can't marry the Milfs or Dilfs. Tragic.

Still no homo. Grow up Marvelous.

Reverse Proposal? Reverse Uno card-- Laid low by the patriarchy. You now have to buy the double bed and craft an engagement ring to propose to your man if you're playing as Alice. Marvelous this isn't what we meant when we said we wanted equal rightsssssss This can be seen as a pro if you're a softhearted babey who doesn't like rejecting bachelors' proposals because you feel bad :'( But this is a con for me because I don't want to spend money and materials on a double bed dammit!!!

Misc. Still can't stack dishes or fish. There's no green elemental fairy???All the other elemental ones are there except the green one? why??? Still can't tame the giant Wooly. Some bosses that have insanely awesome designs cannot be tamed and makes me wanna eat glass.

Let's talk about Love~

Relationships. We want them. And half of us only play these games for them. I've only played as the female heroine so far but I'll be updating this review as soon as I finish with the bachelorettes as the male hero.

Confessions

As usual, we must raise the love points of our beloved to 7 hearts before we can attempt to date them. However unlike in rf4, if you fail at a confession once, you will need to raise the LP up an entire level before you can try again with any chance of success. It's imperative you save before attempting a confession now.

Love Events

Each love interest has two love events that must be seen before you can date them. They're reminiscent of older game's style but I felt they could have been a biiiit more interactive or so? Or involved the town a bit more for some of them.

Dating

Once you get your honey to be your bf/gf, you get to choose the nicknames as usual. Then you can go on dates. The first three (non-festival) dates are actually events. You need to see all three events to get married.

Marriage Event

The final event you need to clear before you can marry your sweetie. In my honest opinion, so far for the boys, these events were rather disappointing. They lacked the drama and angst that sort of 'test' the love between the two when compared to rf4. Also this is a huge con for me personally and a minor spoiler but there are no special cutscenes at the end of the marriage event like in rf4. Instead, the cutscene takes place during your actual wedding. I was saddened by this because it took away the depth from the marriage events and the actual character? As it is just a cut and paste type of thing instead of an original cutscene for each person. They lack individualism this way. Also it kinda felt like a way for devs to avoid gay relationships and cut corners :^/....sus.

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes...

Children!!!!!! This is actually one of the coolest additions in the game. Just like in rf3, you can have up to 3 children again! Your first child will resemble you, and you will have the option to choose its gender as well as its personality. There are 6 different children, (3 boys and 3 girls), all with different hairstyles, mannerisms, and seiyuus. Your answers will determine which child you get. A year after your first child is born, you will get the option to have a second child. You'll end up with twins, both resembling your partner. You won't get to choose the genders (it will be a boy and girl) but you will get to choose the personalities once more. The children all have canon names too and each kid is incredibly cute. And of course, you're still able to take your kid with you in your party~ ...Though you can only take one kid with you at a time.

So is RF5 good?

Yeah it's a fun game! My theory is that Marvelous forced the devs to release the game earlier than they were ready for, and that's why it's so lacking. But that doesn't mean it's not worth playing! I'd rate it 3.5/5 stars hehe. Not nearly as good as RF4 (full stop 5/5), or RF3 (4/5) but enjoyable nonetheless. I wouldn't recommend it as a first game to play from the series for newcomers though, I feel it's best for vets who can overlook all the cons thanks to loyalty and nostalgia. By the time it’s released in the West, the bugs should all be dealt with too.

So! Definitely buy this game! We want the series to continue and we want RF6 to be better than this--and hopefully Marvelous will make sure of that next time. If you're not a picky person I think you'll enjoy rf5 a lot. If you're like me and have high standards then, well, still pick it up and let it run its course. Then dust off rf4sp and cleanse your gaming palette >;^)

#rune factory 5 #rf5 spoilers #rune factory #rf5 #spoilers #review #rune factory 5 spoilers

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 4 years

Text

In the Neighbourhood

Warnings: nonconsensual sex, very lightly edited

This is dark!Andy Barber and explicit. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: After your grandmother breaks her hip, you volunteer to look after her as she recovers but her neighbour is a bit too friendly.

Note: @lokislastlove thinks I won’t call her out anymore but I’m calling her out and you should too. Always blame her.

Thank you. Love you guys!

As always, if you can, please leave some feedback, like and reblog <3

Your grandmother’s house never changed. Nestled between two larger homes and with grass as green as the next, it was as perfect as any along the suburban sprawl. Inside, the same framed pictures of your mother and your aunt and uncle, those of you, your siblings, and your cousins, and family members you only saw at reunions. All of them far away. All of them keeping her company only in the still images. None of them coming to care for her; none but you.

You didn’t mind so much. With two degrees under your belt, you were ready to start your novel as you pondered a third. Your online transcription job was easy enough to travel with and you loved your grandmother. The least you could do was help her out in her recovery. A broken hip but otherwise okay. She couldn’t do much from her wheelchair and you feared a worse injury if she tried.

You moved in on a Sunday. The family next door, the Barbers, were the perfect picture of a suburban clan. Andy introduced himself and his wife, Laurie, and their quiet son, Jacob. Then they asked if your grandmother, Lucille, was coming to their barbecue that afternoon and invited you along with her. Your grandmother confirmed that she didn’t want to miss out on Laurie’s potato salad because she’d tripped on a rug.

So you wheeled her over, careful as the grass slowed the chair, and you angled her through the open gate. You seemed to be the last to arrive. The air smelled of searing beef and swirled with the buzz of voices. You stood behind your grandmother’s chair as you looked around nervously and a plump woman with short curly white hair approached.

“Darla!” You grandmother greeted. “You’re back from your little getaway.”

“Arn was keen to come home,” The woman smiled up at you and back to your grandmother. “I heard you had a bit of an incident.”

“Oh, still spry, but the damn doctor has me ‘takin’ it easy’,” You grandma sneered. “I’ll be up at it before long. This is my granddaughter, you remember her, don’t you?”

“I do,” Darla smiled though you barely remembered her. “So sweet of you to come down to look after our Lucille.”

“It’s nothing,” You said. “I owe her. I spent too many holidays on campus.”

“That you did,” Your grandmother chided. “But do go on and socialise, dear. There must be someone here your own age. Or closer to. You can’t be lettin’ yourself get caught up with us old biddies.”

“I’m fine,” You chuckled. “Really.”

“You go. Get something to drink.” You grandmother snapped her fingers. “Mingle!”

You huffed but left her with Darla and another woman, you were certain her name was Betty, passed you on her way to join them. You looked around. The wives were in their clusters and the men drank from brown bottles as they laughed and talked about sports. You didn’t know about children or baseball.

You went to the end of the table, just by the barbecue, a cooler open and waited as a young boy claimed a can of Orange Crush. You reached inside and took out a grape soda. The lid of the barbecue closed and you turned to face its master; Andy smiled as you blinked at him.

“That’s the kid’s cooler,” He said. “There’s a mini fridge in the garage if you want something stronger.”

“I’m good with this,” You cracked the can.

“I thought you were a college girl,” He said as he set down his long spatula.

“Graduated.” You assured him. “Never was big on the scene though.”

“Really?” He lifted a brow. “I kinda miss it.” He stepped around the barbecue, closer to you. “It was a while ago now but it was fun. You know,” He put his hands on his hips as he looked across the yard. “I was in a frat with Carson over there,” He nodded to skinny man holding a bottle of water amid the sea of brown glass. “We got in quite a bit of trouble. Maybe I wrote a few of my exams drunk but didn’t do much harm.”

“Oh yeah?” You said dully. “What do you do now?”

“Law. Assistant district attorney.” He preened. “But don’t worry, I can still have fun.”

He winked and you squinted at him. He was an old man trying to relate to a youth. There was what, ten, fifteen years between you? Wasn’t that much, really, and yet it was.

“Legal fun,” You suggested.

“Well, the immoral isn’t always illegal,” He mused. “So… Miss Graduate, you have a job lined up?”

“I work online for now but I’m writing, too.” You shrugged. “Nothing fancy but it’ll do for the time being. Until my grandma’s better.”

“That’s a nice thing you’re doing,” He said. “You know, not a lot of people I know my age would drop everything to go care for family.”

“Least I can do,” You sipped from the can. “She always did make the best lemon meringue. It has its perks.”

He chuckled and backed up as he grabbed the spatula again and opened the barbecue.

“Offer stands,” He called over the smoke. “Beer’s in the garage.”

“Thanks,” You smiled and slowly walked away. This was like that party you’d spent hiding on the porch; awkward as hell.

🏡

The first two weeks passed swiftly. You woke up, made breakfast for your grandmother, her usual oatmeal and tea, then you spent a few hours working online, then lunch, an hour of writing, a walk through the neighbourhood, some alone time, dinner, and then some nightly crime dramas with your grandmother. Each day was identical to the last and you felt the vaunted slog of suburban life.

It was Saturday. You needed to get out. Your grandmother even encouraged it. A few hours at the bar, drinking, dancing, you returned with a guy, Gabe, you met there, hushing him as you snuck him in the front door.

The house was dark as you climbed the stairs carefully and ushered Gabe into your bedroom. You closed the door and grabbed him as you stumbled to the bed. It was messy, hurried, and desperate. Entirely regrettable as you laid staring out the window at the sky after. You didn’t have time to ask him to leave before he started snoring.

You slept for a few hours and woke as the sun began to rise. You poked the stranger you knew as Gabe until he woke up and you threw his clothes at him before you dressed. You peeked into the hall and waved him out behind you. You led him down the stairs and to the front door. He left you with some empty nicety and you hid your wince. It wasn’t your first one night stand but it was definitely the worst.

“Fun night?” You turned as Andy descended the steps of his porch and opened his car door.

“You work on Sundays?” You grumbled. You hoped he hadn’t seen your regret walking away.

“Not usually but I got some hours to make up.” He dropped his briefcase in the back seat and closed the door. “I know that guy. Pretty sure he’s still on probation for the molly he was dealing at the mechanics.”

“Ugh, no.” You covered your face. “You saw?”

“I got a bit curious as I was finishing my coffee.” He pointed to the window with lacy curtains. “Great view just above the sink.”

“So you’re one of those neighbours?” You crossed your arms.

“I seem nosy but really I’m just looking out for you.” He opened the driver’s side door and planted his hand on the roof of the car. “Look, you don’t know the people around here. I’m just trying to help.”

“Well, I won’t be seeing him again.” You retreated to the door and stopped there. “Boring, to say the least.”

“Heh,” Andy scoffed. “Really?”

“Not that it’s any of your business.” You rolled your eyes and stepped inside, closing the door with a snap. You went to the bottom of the stairs and looked up. “Hey, grandma,” You called as you began to climb. “You ready to get up?”

🏡

At the end of the next week, you took your grandmother to her check up. Her recovery was on track but she had a long way to go. The doctor was optimistic that at her next appointment, she’d be ready to use her walker more often.

As you helped her out of the car and got her settled in her chair, you ignored the roar of the mower in the next yard. You’d seen Andy as you drove up. He was pushing the machine back and forth across his already perfectly manicured yard; shirtless. As you turned to push your grandmother up the walk, you couldn’t help but notice that he was in great shape for his age. For any age, really.

“Hey,” He yelled over the motor and shut it down. “How’s it going, ladies?”

“Andy,” Your grandmother chimed. “Great! Doc says I’m doing well.”

“Mmhmm,” You mumbled, still slightly embarrassed over your last interaction with the man.

“Well, seeing as I’m already out here and you already had such a busy day, I could do your lawn while I’m at it?” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and you quickly tore your eyes away from his chest.

“Oh, you’re too sweet,” Your grandma giggled. “It’s so hot out here.”

“I don’t mind,” He insisted. “Laurie’s gone to see her parents with Jacob so I’m just trying to keep myself busy.”

“Twist my arm, why don’t ya?” Your grandmother shook her hand. “Fine! Sweetie,” She reached back and tapped your hand. “Let’s go make some lemonade for this young man so he doesn’t overheat.”

Andy smiled and you nodded at him awkwardly. You wheeled your grandmother up the newly installed ramp and inside. She ordered you to the kitchen and directed you to the lemons hidden in the crisper.

“The juicer is just under there.” She pointed to the cupboard, “And you’ll want to add some sugar.”

“I know how to make lemonade, grandma,” You said as you pulled out the pitcher.

“That Andy’s a nice man,” She said. “So helpful… handsome too. It’s too bad you’re so young… and he’s so married.”

“Stop,” You warned. “You said the same thing about your doctor.”

“Yes, but he’s a doctor. He’s rich.” She snickered. “And not married, just not into your type.”

“Grandma,” You snipped. “Really.”

“I don’t know how your mother ended up with you.” She said. “She was such a little troublemaker.”

“Trust me, I’ve heard,” You said as you washed the lemon juice from your hands and added water and sugar to the pitcher. “I think her stories were more a warning.”

“Too smart for your own good,” She tutted as you mixed the lemonade.

You went to the cupboard and grabbed some ice cubes from the freezer as you set a glass on the counter. You poured the lemonade and gave her a sour look.

“You think you can look after yourself for a few minutes?” You asked dryly.

“Girlie, I was taking care of you while you were in diapers,” She narrowed her eyes.

“Oh, how the tables have turned.”

“I don’t wear diapers,” She hissed as you neared the door. “Yet.”

You went out the front door as Andy pushed the mower across the yard just along the walkway. He stopped and looked over at you. He shut down the motor again and neared you as you came down the steps to hold out the glass. He thanked you and took a big gulp before he handed it back.

“You know, I didn’t mean anything,” He said. “The other day. Sometimes… I say stuff without thinking.”

“It’s… whatever.” You shrugged and set the glass on the rail of the porch. “No hard feelings.”

“I just got a hot tub. Just gotta hook it up and it’s ready to go.” He said. “You should stop by later. Get a soak in.”

“No, I don’t think so.” You stood at the top of the steps. “I don’t wanna leave grandma all alone. She wants to watch Casablanca tonight. I promised we would.”

“Maybe another night.” He offered. “You work so hard. You deserve a break.”

“Maybe,” You said evasively as you turned and crossed the porch. You glanced back as you opened the door and he was still looking at you.

“Lemonade’s good.” He smiled. “Thanks.”

🏡

You finished lunch and left your grandmother to her puzzle at the dining room table. You went upstairs to change the shirt you’d spilled mustard down; it was all you could smell. You tore off your shirt and tossed it on the bed. You rounded the bed to the dresser that sat just below the window and opened the draw. Movement caught your eye and you looked up across the space between yards.

Andy’s eyes met yours through the windows. You’d never realised they were adjacent, let alone so easy to see through. He wore a towel around his waist, freshly showered and his gaze strayed for just a moment. You blanched and pulled out a shirt and covered yourself with it. He smirked and tilted his head. Then he winked and a shiver went through you.

You grabbed the curtain and closed it so forcefully you nearly bent the rod. You backed away and put the shirt on properly. Surely, he was being funny. A tense, awkward moment. What else could he do but make a joke? Well, it wasn’t a very good one.

🏡

You stayed inside for the better part of a week. Aside from your walks with your grandmother and a trip to the grocery store, you kept your curtains closed, and hid yourself away. Maybe you’d built it up in your mind but you were just set off-kilter by the wordless interaction. Since, you felt as though you’d been walking a tightrope, too afraid to look down.

But that night, your grandmother wanted to sit outside. It was warm and the nights were shorter; later. You wheeled her out, a book on her lap, and as you made to skirt back inside, he appeared. Andy had impeccable timing. It made you wonder if he was watching you; if he had been for much longer than you knew. Well, now you were just being paranoid.

“Hey,” He stood at the edge of the yard. “Beautiful night.”

“Sure is,” You grandma replied. “I’ve got a new book and I’m ready to enjoy the breeze.”

“Oh, a new book? What’s it about?” He asked as he neared tentatively.

“Another scary one.” She cracked the cover. “Or so I hear. Skinwalkers taking over a whole city.”

“Ah, spooky,” He commented and looked at you. “And you?”

“Writing. Inside.” You said evenly.

“I figured since it was so nice, I was finally gonna try out my new Jacuzzi,” He said. “I just… I did promise you a soak so I thought maybe--”

“Eh, I don’t know.” You neared the door. “I really should try to get some writing done.”

“Nonsense, dear,” Your grandmother intoned. “You’ve been on that computer all day. You should go, relax.”

“Really, I--”

“Laurie might join us. She’s inside doing some work.” He piped up. “She wouldn’t mind the company.”

“Go on! I’m getting sick of ya anyway,” Your grandmother snorted. “You could stand to loosen up.”

“Grandma,” You huffed.

“Go get changed,” She ordered and smiled at Andy. “She’ll be over shortly.”

You blinked and tried to hide your irritation. You went inside before Andy could notice and you stormed upstairs. You weren’t even sure you’d packed a suit. You searched through the dresser. The curtains were still drawn tight. You found your old pink bikini with the white flowers. Really? It had to be that one?

You changed, reluctantly. It couldn’t have covered less of you. You found a tee shirt and pulled it over. You descended the stairs again and stepped out on the porch.

“Thanks for that, grandma.” You scowled.

“I can see why you were never popular,” She laughed. “Go. Have fun. This old lady can handle herself.”

You stomped down the steps beside the ramp and stopped at the border of the yards. You sighed and went to the gate, it was open in expectation of you. You heard the whir of jets before you entered. Andy was just beside the hot tub, testing the temperature with his hand as you stood across from him. He looked up and gave a crooked smirk.

“Andy,” The back door opened and Laurie appeared. “Oh, hey.” She smiled at you before turning back to her husband. “I’m gonna pass. Gina’s not going to make it in tomorrow so looks like I’ll be up all night.”

“Damn, that’s too bad,” Andy said. “More tub for us I guess.”

“Yes, love you too,” She said dryly. “You enjoy yourself. And don’t leave that thing on all night.”

“Yes, honey,” He said before she shut the door. “Love you.”

You swallowed. Your mouth was dry. Maybe you had been a bit presumptuous. Andy climbed into the jacuzzi and lowered himself into the warm water with a sigh. You hesitated to get closer but you did. He watched you, expectantly. You grabbed the edge and tried to will yourself in.

“You’re wearing that?” He nodded to your tee.

“Yeah,” You lifted your leg over the side.

“You don’t gotta be shy,” He grinned.

You paused and frowned at him.

“I’m joking,” He said. “The other day. That was… funny. Bad timing.”

“Mhmm,” You drew your other leg over and carefully sat.

“You met any more cute guys?” He asked suddenly. You squinted.

“What?”

“Not much to do around here, you know? Pretty boring.”

“No. I don’t--” You sputtered. “I don’t think it’s a very good idea. Once my grandma’s better, I’ll be going.”

“Still, it’s lonely.” He said softly.

“What do you care?” You asked, harsher than intended.

He was quiet. He leaned back and looked over at the house then back to you. He exhaled and spread his arms over the edge.

“So… that toy you hide in your night table? You always use it or you ever just… feel yourself?”

Your heart sank. You felt as if you would choke on air. Had you imagined his words?

“What did you just--”

“Took you long enough to catch on,” He said. “Got a good view of you when I can’t sleep but… not anymore. Too bad.”

“Andy,” You stood and the water splashed around you. “You-- You’re-- Laurie, she--”

“I haven’t fucked her in months. This is what she does.” He sat forward and caught your hand. “She works. All the time. I try and she… just doesn’t want to.”

“Let me go.” You struggled with him. “You’re disgusting. You’re married!”

“Me? Fucking awful some young girl strolls into town and tries to seduce a married man? What would grandma think? And Laurie? She’s not one to sit back and be humiliated.” He tugged on you. “I have a reputation around here. You’re just a stranger, and apparently one, who fucks strangers.”

“What are you talking about?” You nearly slipped as he spun you back to him. “You’ve been watching me and--”

“I’m just a neighbour looking out for you,” He pulled even harder and your feet slid across the bottom of the jacuzzi, forcing you to catch yourself on him. “Like I do all my neighbours. They would confirm as much.”

“Get--” You grabbed his arm as it snaked around you. “Andy! Laurie--”

“Doesn’t give a fuck and if she came out, well, she’d only realise what’s she’s pushed me to.”

You wriggled as he held you to him. He drew your leg over his so that you straddled his lap. You pushed on his chest and grunted.

“You keep it up and everyone will hear. Even sweet old nana.” He snarled. “I saw you looking at me that day… when you brought me lemonade.”

“No, no,” You rasped.

“I’m old, not that old,” He purred. “As you can obviously see.”

“Let me go. Please.” You begged. He was too strong and your arms only ached from pushing against him. “Andy--”

“Shhh,” He grabbed your chin with his wet hand and pulled you close until your lips almost met his. “In this town, rumours travel. It might be old news that you left a bar with that dumb kid but now, it’s evidence.” His hand slipped down your neck and squeezed. “Such a bad girl.”

“No one would--”

“They have no reason not to believe me,” He rolled up your wet shirt with his other hand. “Annie across the street, she likes gossip. She’s seen you flirting with me, at least that’s how she told it to Laurie but you know, my wife just laughs it off. And now she’s no doubt seen you come into my backyard in just this.” He pulled your shirt higher. “And her mind is going wild.”

“I can’t--”

“How long did he last? A minute? Less?” He snarled and his other hand slipped down to draw your shirt up. You kept your arms down as you tried to resist. “Bet you could wait to use your little toy.”

“Stop,” You pleaded.

“Get your arms up.” His voice was deep and dangerous. “And stop your whining.”

You stopped and stared at him. His blue eyes burned into yours and sent a shiver through you. His fingertips pinched your hips as they crawled under your shirt and he pushed it higher.

“You don’t shut up and someone will hear, sweetie,” He warned. “Up.”

He tugged until you raised your arms. A wave of bile rose in your chest and you let him peel away your wet shirt and reveal the skimpy bikini beneath. He dropped the cotton over the side of the tub and his hands grazed the triangles of your top.

“Cute,” He hummed. “You hiding this from me?”

You were quiet, sickened. With him, with yourself. You knew you couldn’t fight, wouldn’t. You remembered the barbecue and how you’d been the odd one out. Recalled how Andy had talked to almost every person there. Everyone loved him and no one knew you.

“Mmm mm mm,” His fingertips walked around your neck and he picked at the knot behind your neck. The straps loosened and he let your top fall and expose your chest.

He bent to bury his face against you and nibbled along your tits. You looked, startled, to the back door. It was still shut. A light glow from a bedroom above and the distant beat of music escaped through the slightly opened bedroom window. Another light died on the first floor and was replaced by a second on the top floor, reflecting against yours on the other side.

You quivered as Andy took a nipple in his mouth and sucked. You felt it in your core as his hand cupped your other tit. He reached beneath you and played with the edge of your bottom. He drew you back as he leaned against the side of the tub and lifted his pelvis, and you with him. He tugged on his shorts and sat back down.

You felt hollow and a cloud of panic filled your stomach. You struggled against you and he bit you. You squeaked as his teeth threatened to break the skin and stilled. He parted and looked up at you.

“Be a good girl,” He felt beneath you and began to stroke himself.

“Please--”

“Shhh,” He turned his hand and hooked his fingers in your bottoms, pulling them aside. “It’s okay, sweetie.” He rubbed his tip against your folds. “It’ll be good.” He drew you to him and angled you over his dick. “Better than ever before.”

He forced you down and your lips formed an o as he entered you. You latched onto his shoulders without thinking and he pushed you to his limit. His lips and teeth returned to your chest as he once more began to toy with you. You quivered as he began to rock your hips.

The water swished around you, swirling and slapping against your skin. You held your breath as you tried not to cry out. You hissed as you dug your nails into his shoulders and let him guide you. Despite yourself, despite everything, it felt good. It felt wonderful. He was right and you were weak.

“You like that?” He nuzzled your throat. “Is this what you think of at night, huh?”

You bit your lip as he kneaded your hips and kept your moving.

“I think of it all the time,” He muttered. “All the time. Maybe…” His breath caught and he groaned. “Maybe I could offer to take you grocery shopping, hmm? We could have some fun in the car…”

“Andy…” You whimpered. “No, we can’t-- not again…”

You grasped his wrists and tried to push yourself off of him. A semblance of sanity returned to you as you looked him in the face. His eyes were dilated and dusky. He was entranced; incorrigible. You struggled as he held you down.

“This is wrong--”

He shoved you off him as his lip curled. You stumbled back and caught yourself on the other side of the tub. The water splashed as he stood behind you and grabbed your arm. He turned you over and pushed you over the siding, a jet blowing against your pelvis.

“Doesn’t feel wrong to me.” He growled.

He held you down with a large hand between your shoulders as he pushed your legs apart with his knee. He pressed against you and searched for your entrance, swiftly impaling you. You choked down a mewl as your hips crashed into the wall of the tub. He leaned his weight on you entirely as he rutted into you without relent. You were certain someone would hear the clapping of flesh or the stir of water all around.

“You’ll do what I want, when I want,” He sneered. “And from what I can tell, you’ll like it.”

“Andy--” Your voice fizzled as the pressure mixed with the steady stream of the jet as it hit your cunt.

You held in a moan as you hung over the side of the tub, the blood pounding in your head as you panted wildly. You covered your mouth, afraid you would cry out as the coil inside you twisted and twisted. Your legs quaked as you orgasmed.

Andy’s hand gripped your hips and he pulled you back against him, again and again, using your body easily. You slid back and forth over the side and he bent over you, crushing you against the tub. He growled in your ear and his thrust jolted your body.

He pulled out suddenly, still looming over you as he stroked himself against your bikini and pressed his damp beard to your cheek as he shuddered. His hot cum spilled out onto the wet fabric and dripped down your thigh as he eased himself through his climax. He sighed and pushed himself from atop you, falling back into the water heavily.

You stayed as you were for a moment. Stunned. Shakily you stood and fixed your top and pulled your bottom straight. You couldn’t look at him. You climbed out of the tub and walked unsteadily across the grass.

“Ah, that was relaxing,” He said. “Come back anytime.”

You ignored him and continued onto the gate.

“Oh, and it’s supposed to be a cool night,” He called after you. “You should keep your window open.”

You slipped through and the gate creaked behind you and closed with a metallic click. You shivered as you kept to the side of your grandma’s house and entered through the back. You didn’t want anyone to see; you were certain they would know if they did.

#andy barber #dark andy barber #dark!andy barber #dark andy barber x reader #dark!andy barber x reader #andy barber x reader #fic #one shot #dark fic #dark!fic #Defending Jacob

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sibyl-of-space · 3 years

Text

Thinking too hard about mystery VN’s is my favorite pastime so I have some big brain extremely spoilery thoughts on Ghost Trick below the cut--

Specifically this is about Ray.

I’m replaying it again because I have brainworms to see if I might really be on to something here; I don’t know whether this is an alternative reveal that was considered at any point in the development process or not, but either way it’s interesting to think about.

(The in-game reveal for Ray is fantastic anyway so no qualms about it I just keep... Thinking.)

So, in-game, the story is that the first time around Sissel kind of dicks around not really knowing how this ghost power stuff works and ends up in a wiggling desk lamp. Lynne gets RIP’d and then Yomiel goes and attends Missile’s murder, so Missile gets ghost powers, and uses those to go to the junkyard. He fails to recruit Sissel, follows the story on his own as best he can, gets to Yomiel’s body in the submarine, then goes back in time to wait it out and use his knowledge of Sissel to get him to work with him the next time around.

That’s all well and good... except, ok, listen. In the opening cutscene, you only intervene to get Lynne away from Yomiel’s body *after* Ray calls out to you and asks you to save her.

So what I’m saying is, if that very first time there WAS no Ray, would Sissel have actually intervened with the post and the guitar, leading her away from Yomiel before getting shot? There’s an argument for “yes,” from you just dicking around with your new powers. That’s how it must have gone down in the narrative the game tells.

But I think there is also an argument for “no,” since you are newly dead and confused. In which case, Lynne would have died... on top of Yomiel’s body... and received ghost powers. Yomiel even says that he hadn’t planned for her to be killed, just framed for murder; so this was not according to his Keikaku and would throw a wrench in his plans.

(Part 2 of this is that... I am replaying the game to correct myself, but there’s no real in-game justification for why not saving Lynne would cause Yomiel’s body to be present when Missile is killed, is there? His body was missing because Cabanela bribed the doctor. Why was that different in this original timeline, that’s what I don’t quite understand, but if Lynne was “Ray” it wouldn’t matter. EDIT: although it’s been pointed out that this difference could just as easily be explained by Cabanela’s grief if Lynne had died. Have been replaying to verify, and in the timeline you play Cabanela calls the doctor for help when Lynne is shot in the Super’s office, so that checks out. ...Also, I think Missile is shot later in the original timeline, because they don’t go to Lynne’s apartment to shoot her, only to get the box after the fact.)

Anyway, I think an alternative “reveal” could have been that Lynne herself got ghost powers the first time around from dying next to Yomiel’s body without Sissel’s intervention, and SHE’S the one who failed to team up with you and ended up going back in time to wait it out. She also has motivation to want you to get to the bottom of this mystery and save Jowd.

((ALSO, Ray’s line about “if we could save ourselves, don’t you think I would have tried to save myself?” would be even cheekier if Ray were Lynne. I’M JUST SAYING, OKAY.))

It really doesn’t change much either way, since Ray’s role is literally just “hi i’m here to introduce game mechanics to you,” and narratively there’s more impact behind the loyal doggie waiting 10 years rather than Lynne; but it’s something I keep thinking about. I’m really curious if this was considered at any point and decided against in favor of the Missile reveal. I want to say that Lynne-as-Ray makes just as much narrative sense, but Missile-as-Ray better suits the tone of the game, so in any case, the right call was made.

(it would also make her line about “HOW COME I’M NOT SPECIAL” have an extra layer of irony though lmao)

((I JUST WANT LYNNE TO BE SPECIAL))

EDIT EDIT: universe brain would be if in the OG timeline both of them die and get ghost powers and they both team up to go back in time and take turns as “Ray”. It would be Lynne the first time and Missile the second, when he is doing the “tail wagging” wiggle. I’m getting way too far up my own conspiracy theory at this point but it is extremely fun to think about “what if”s

#ghost trick #big brain thoughts #spoileroonies as well

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cloudy-reverie · 3 years

Note

Hello I want to ask you something about Mars Red (I don't mind about spoilers) tell me what happened with Maeda and Yamagami-san in chapter 13 and also, do you think the anime was good enough? Thanks.

Hi there! I’ll answer both of your questions under the cut, as this will be a long post.

Do I think the anime was good enough? Well, I have mixed feelings about it, and I’ve been thinking of doing a full post of my thoughts after I’ve watched it all a second time now that it’s complete and easy to marathon. I enjoyed the anime immensely, but I’m not above critiquing things I like, either.

I started reading the Mars Red manga last year, and even now after the anime, I still prefer the manga’s version of events. I haven’t seen the stage play, the original source of material, so I can’t account for how accurately the manga or the anime adapted its events. As I understand it, the anime gained attention just for being an adaptation of a stage play, which doesn’t happen very often. Usually, it’s the other way around. That explains the interesting use of cinematography in the anime, the emphasis on drama and soliloquys and so forth. Some people might find the anime pretentious in that way, but, well, it is what it is, being adapted from theatre. Being an English Literature major, I didn’t mind it, and I also like the occasional artsy series.

Anyway, as a manga reader, I had different expectations going into the anime. The manga is more character-driven, whereas I feel the anime was more plot-driven, and the addition of anime-only characters – as interesting as they are – made the series seem crowded with only 12 episodes to pack everything in. The manga fleshes out the regular cast more (the anime didn't fully touch upon Defrott and Suwa’s pasts, left out Takeuchi’s shock over a revelation, erased parts of Maeda’s personality, left out some fun Code Zero moments, Aoi encountering Code Zero early on, etc.), and it definitely toned down the violence for a more mainstream audience because Shutaro’s manga rescue of Yamagami was far bloodier and terrifying, as Shutaro, agonizingly, begins to realize what he’s capable of and who he may become.

And one example that I still complain about (lol) is that in the manga, Shutaro and Aoi’s relationship is highlighted in the first chapter alone and emphasized in subsequent chapters. It’s clear they care for each other. It’s clear they’re among the main stage players. It’s easier to be emotionally invested in what happens to them by the end.

In the anime, Maeda takes centre stage instead, with the first episode introducing us to his fiancée, Misaki, whom he has never met in-person until she becomes a vampire. From that point onward, their what-if relationship and Maeda’s regret is frequently alluded to, culminating in the final episode.

Typically, whoever you introduce in the first chapter/episode are the characters that you’ll be going on a journey with, so it was a bit jarring for me when I realized Shutaro and Aoi and the rest of Code Zero wouldn’t be introduced until the second episode (well, Aoi did make an appearance, but they had her interact with Maeda more). We never get to see all of the flashbacks of Aoi and Shutaro, never are shown how much Aoi is determined to find Shutaro. We never even get to see Shutaro's “dream visit,” and then that silly vampire (sorry, Shutaro, I still love ya) left visible footprints in her yard after claiming he was a ghost, and she definitely noticed, so she knows something is up. Had if we had received all of that, perhaps the rescue and the finale would’ve been far more emotional for anime-only viewers invested in their relationship.

Instead, there was more feeling for Maeda and Misaki because the anime took care in telling their story. The anime was good in that aspect because they made Maeda and Misaki’s tragic relationship the focus, and so we were able to reach full circle by the end. Meanwhile, with Shutaro and Aoi practically being sidelined, I saw comments from anime-only viewers confused about why they were suddenly a main couple or getting the spotlight in the end. The anime could’ve avoided that confusion by tightening up their storytelling and fleshing out Aoi and Shutaro more as characters.

I also feel the anime focused a lot more on the politics and military, too. There were so many lengthy meeting scenes when it’s more balanced in the manga, I find. Also, just the other day, I was rereading some exchanges between Shutaro and Yamagami, and laughing, and thinking about why the anime didn’t include those because they were funny daily life scenes. There are also anime reviews complaining about the pacing, the random tone changes, and other things that might’ve compelled them to rate the anime higher.

So, do I think the anime is good? I might be biased, but I enjoyed it; it wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was good for what it intended to deliver. Also, I like series based in the Taisho era, so that was a bonus for me. The manga isn’t 100% perfect, either; it might disappoint Maeda fans, for one thing, and it does tell its story quickly (I wish it was longer). I personally prefer the manga over the anime, but I love both.

The way I view Mars Red anime and manga is like this: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009) are both favourite series of mine. FMAB is prefered by most people, and is widely considered one of the greatest anime series ever, a modern masterpiece. It adapted the manga completely – only because the manga had finished by then, and I absolutely love the manga. However, it doesn’t mean FMA ’03 is bad in comparison; it just has a different but no less unique storyline that Arakawa also liked. With the manga still running at the time, FMA '03, being as popular as it was, had no choice but to go its own way for completion's sake.

This is the case for me here: I like the Mars Red anime and manga for different reasons. I’d probably recommend the manga first due to my preference for deeper character development. But the anime also tells an interesting version, though it could’ve done with a more streamlined focus. Karakara Kemuri adapted Fujisawa Bun-o’s stage play in her own way, presumably keeping to the general storyline but also adding personal touches of her own (you’ll know if you’ve read any of her works before); Signal M.D. studio handled the anime adaptation with their own team of writers while striving for the theatrical atmosphere of its roots. They accomplish different results.

And now that there’s a game with more information about the characters, the Mars Red universe seems so much bigger in an exciting way.

Now, to your second question:

MAGComi is a monthly manga magazine, and you can read chapters online for free for a limited time. They made chapter 13 available to read while the final chapter 14, newly released, is for premium subscribers. Chapter 12 is still available to view, as well.

Since I can’t read Japanese, I will be excitedly awaiting a translation from Laughing in Quarantine scanlations until I get my officially licensed volumes in English this year and next. Thus, I can only make guesses based on visuals alone while factoring in the anime’s events.

So, in the previous chapter 12, Code Zero encounter Nakajima, as they do in the anime, though the context differs slightly. It’s more menacing, and Maeda is revealed to be inside one of those vampire unit mechanical suits, already a vampire himself, near mindless. Yamagami is enraged. A fight ensues. Then, the Great Kanto Earthquake occurs, as it does in the anime.

In chapter 13, as you can see, the fight continues, dangerously close to shafts of sunlight; the rest seem trapped by the rubble, unable to get to the two in time. Yamagami sees Maeda shed a tear, and they exchange words, and Yamagami seems determined to save Maeda’s humanity. Yamagami then pushes himself and Maeda into the sunlight. They grin at each other, exchanging more words, as they are both swept up into flames, dying together.

Then more incredible stuff happens in the rest of the chapter, as you can see! We’ll have to wait for the scanlation team to provide us more solid answers.

#mars red #ask #these are just my thoughts and opinions; no one has to agree #my post

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andrewmoocow · 3 years

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Steven Universe Alternate Future chapter 13: Bismuth Casual (originally posted on April 12, 2021)

AN: This chapter may seem innocent, and it is, but after this it'll only be two more chapters till we see Black Rutile again. But enough about her for right now, let's give Bismuth some lovin'! And a certain Rose-like human will be along for the ride too.

Synopsis: Bismuth learns how to forge relationships when she becomes Pearl's wing-Gem on a roller-rink date.

Cast:

Zach Callison as Steven

Deedee Magno Hall as Pearl, Brandish

Grace Rolek as Connie

Uzo Aduba as Bismuth, Khadijah

Lamar Abrams as Jaime, Daniel

Tahani Anderson as Patricia

Brian Posehn as Sour Cream

Dan Castellaneta as Skate Rental Guy

Featuring Kristin Chenoweth as Sheena Synstylae

And Emily King as herself

One night on a road away from Beach City, Steven was driving his Dondai Supremo with Connie next to him in the front seat and Pearl & Bismuth sitting in the back. Bismuth was dressed for a night out in a white dress shirt and her multicolored dreadlocks being done up in a ponytail. As the four continued driving, Connie began to turn up the radio.

"Oh, I love this song!" Connie cheered before she started singing along to the Emily King music on the car radio. "You can't hold me now, hold me now, ooh."

"And that was "Can't Hold Me", by Emily King." Sour Cream's voice came from the radio as the song ended. "Just one of many songs you can request your beloved host to play at the Starlight Roller Rink every night! And now a word from our sponsors."

"I'm so excited that you're coming along with us to the roller rink tonight and experience some interpersonal relationships." Pearl said to Bismuth while rolling up her shirtsleeve, causing the blacksmith to blush. "Ooh, don't be afraid to show off your gem." She added, opening up Bismuth's shirt to expose the gem on her chest. "Everyone's going to love you there."

"Hope I can keep up." Bismuth chuckled lightly. "Can't wait to meet your date too."

"Well, she's not really my date, we just talked to each other on the phone a few times in the past and now we've decided to hang out tonight." Pearl stated. "But the most important thing is-"

"Are you tired of shady mechanics bleeding you dry?!" a commercial suddenly interrupted Pearl and got her excited. "Then come on down to Cam's Camshafts!"

"Turn it up, I love this!" Pearl cheered.

"What, you mean this car salesman ad?" Steven chuckled at Pearl's excitement over a commercial of all things.

"Yes, turn it up!" Pearl answered as she reached over to turn up the volume and began singing along to the jingle. "Cam's Camshafts is the place to bring your wreck, get your car repaired for cheap and fair without risking your neck! Cam's Camshafts!"

"Pearl, you absolute dork!" Bismuth roared happily while Steven and Connie laughed just as the car drove up to the Starlight Roller Rink. "Hey, here we are!"

"You got that right Bismuth." Steven declared while parking his Supremo in the parking lot and the four got out of the car. "Come on everybody, let's get inside."

As the group made their way to the rink's entrance, Bismuth turned to Pearl with a question. "So Pearl, what's your mystery girl like?"

"Well, she's rather quiet and bears a shocking resemblance to a certain Rose," Pearl answered. "but she did like how forward I was about fighting to defend the Earth thousands of years ago and gave me her number."

"Wow, sounds like she could be nice to hang with." Bismuth laughed.

"Here we are!" Pearl exclaimed as she, Steven, Connie, and Bismuth stepped inside the Starlight Roller Rink and looked around at the humans and Gems skating around the very 80s-like establishment.

"Wow, so humans can pay to have wheels attached to their feet for fun?" Bismuth wondered. "That is really something else."

"Hey, there's Sour Cream over there!" Steven pointed over to the Cool Kid running the DJ booth.

"I don't know about this you guys." Bismuth said uneasily while Pearl began looking around the rink. "I've never really skated before."

"That's okay Bis, I never skated before either." Steven comforted his mother's old teammate. "Once I discovered my powers, I never really had time for all these popular human activities myself. But hey, I'm sure it can't be that hard, right?"

"Yo Pearl, over here!" a woman's voice called out to Pearl.

"Oh, there you are!" Pearl exclaimed as she skipped over to four human women awaiting her. One of the women had dark skin and a pink Mohawk, another had blue hair and a punk style of clothes, the third looked like an elderly hippie, and the fourth bore a striking resemblance to Rose Quartz.

"So that must be Pearl's little fan club, huh?" Bismuth asked as Pearl gave the mohawked girl a roll of toilet paper from her gem and the Rose lookalike a kiss on the cheek. "They seem so friendly and interesting."

"Steven, Connie, Bismuth, I'd like you to meet some of my human friends." Pearl called her three friends over to meet her human pals. "This is Khadijah, Jaime, and Brandish. And Steven, I think you might be familiar with Sheena here."

"Yeah, you were at the Big Donut when Pearl made a fool of herself trying to hit on me." Sheena chuckled as she shook Steven's hand. "Yeah, the name's Sheena, Sheena Synstylae."

"So, you guys have known Pearl long?" Khadijah asked Steven, Connie, and Bismuth.

"I've basically known Pearl my entire life." Steven answered.

"Pearl taught me how to use a sword." Connie added.

"And I've known Pearl for like, a few thousand years." Bismuth said.

"That's right, Bismuth's an architect!" Pearl exclaimed in response.

"A builder, huh?" Jaime asked with great interest as she and the rest of Pearl's human posse took Bismuth to the rink, leaving Steven & Connie by themselves.

"Anything you've built that you're proud of?" Sheena added.

"Little Homeworld for one, with a little help." Bismuth answered.

"Ooh, tell us more!" Brandish said excitedly.

"Come on Steven, let's get our skates." Connie said to Steven as she walked him to the skate rental desk.

"Okay." Steven replied before they turned to the man handing out roller skates.

"Welcome to the Starlight Roller Rink. Can I get anything in your shoe size?" the squeaky-voiced young man asked the duo.

"Um," Steven muttered as he looked down at his feet, trying to think about his shoe size before picking up one of his shoes to hand over. "Got anything in this size?"

"I'll see what I can do." The teen at the desk answered before he turned to Connie. "And as for you young lady?"

"Same for me." Connie replied, handing over one of her shoes as well.

"Alright then, enjoy your night." The teen said before he handed over some pairs of roller skates that were just the right size for Steven and Connie.

"Okay, are you ready?" Connie asked Steven after they laced up their newly rented skates.

"Yeah, I'm ready." Steven replied, then the two stood up as two other kids around their age skated by and noticed Connie.

"Then let's get skating!" Connie declared before one of the kids called out for her.

"Hey, is that Connie?" a girl in a pink hijab and red-framed glasses exclaimed before she and a boy skated over to Steven and Connie.

"Patricia, Daniel!" Connie exclaimed, then she turned to Steven. "Steven, I'd like you to meet Patricia and Daniel, they're some friends of mine from cram school."

"Hi, I'm Steven." Steven introduced himself to Connie's friends. "Uh, how's it going?"

"Going good." Daniel smiled at Steven.

"You should've seen Daniel earlier," Patricia smirked. "his mom really tore into him for some bad scores on a test, and he's all bent out of shape about it."

"Augh!" Daniel groaned. "I was doing real fine until you brought that up."

"I know what that's like." Steven laughed awkwardly. "One time, White Diamond tore into me by taking my gem out of my body." Patricia and Daniel just stared at Steven, having no idea what he was talking about until he revealed his gem on his belly. "I'm part-Gem by the way. When I mean she took my gem out, I mean she pulled it out like a splinter."

"Ooookay then." Patricia replied with a raised eyebrow. "So, what grade are you in?"

"Grade?" Steven, having not been given a proper education like most humans his age, began getting grades mixed up with age. "Uh, I'm sixteen!"

"Sixteen?" Daniel gasped.

"So you're taking AP classes then?" Patricia guessed.

"Uhhhh, AP what now?" Steven asked, now having no idea himself.

"You want to skate with us?" Connie offered Patricia and Daniel.

"Heck yeah!" Patricia laughed and the three friends rolled to the rink, leaving Steven alone and embarrassed.

"You really blew that one Steven." Steven groaned to himself. "I bet if they were Gems trying to kill me, we'd treat it like water under the bridge after a fun song or an inspiring speech."

"Hey Steven, you're missing out!" Connie called for Steven as she entered the rink, where she started laughing and hanging out with Patricia & Daniel.

"I'm coming!" Steven replied and tried to skate himself, but he unfortunately slipped and fell on his face.

"Are you okay?" Connie asked comfortingly while skating over to her half-alien friend.

"Yeah, it's only my first time." Steven reassured Connie while trying to get up. "But I'm sure I'll get it right somehow. Just go on without me."

"If you say so." Patricia said while she and Daniel skated away.

"Call us if you change your mind." Connie added as she followed the pair.

As his friend departed, Steven slowly got back up again and tried to skate. This time, luckily, he was finally able to take it slow.

"I'm finally getting the hang of this." Steven muttered happily to himself.

Meanwhile, Bismuth was skating with Pearl, Sheena, Khadijah, Jaime, and Brandish, and started showing off some skating moves of her own, to the humans' excitement.

"Dang Bismuth, you're already, like, a natural at this." Khadijah complimented Bismuth's grace.

"I love your flow." Brandish added.

"And you said this was your first time!" Sheena chuckled in response before she turned to Pearl. "Though she's still not as graceful as you are."

"Oh stop Sheena!" Pearl blushed at her human lover's comment.

"Well, y'all ain't seen nothing yet!" Bismuth yelled before she picked up Pearl and began swinging her around on the rink, cackling all the way.

"Bismuth, you're a natural!" Pearl yelled happily as Bismuth put her down. "Here's another thing you should know. When humans want to see each other again, they exchange little codes called "phone numbers". You should try it yourself sometime, it's fun."

"What you talking about Pearl?" Bismuth laughed. "I'm having fun already."

"That reminds me." Pearl realized before she plucked a roll of toilet paper from her gem and placed it in Bismuth's big purple hand. "Every human has at least one of these in their homes. Sometimes it's even used for vandalism."

"Oh Pearl, you're so bad!" Bismuth chortled just as Pearl began skating away with Sheena. "Hey, where are you going?"

"I've taught you all you need to know for the moment Bismuth, now go out and have fun!" Pearl exclaimed as she skated with Sheena to a nearby old man. "Sheena and I are going to make some connections of our own!"

"Excuse me, sir," Sheena tapped an old man's shoulder and presented him a toilet paper roll from Pearl's gem in her hands. "could we interest you in some TP tonight?"

"Uh, okay?" the old man reluctantly accepted the offer before skating away. "Dang young people these days."

"Um, I'm actually thousands of years older!" Pearl corrected the gentleman.

"Have fun?" Bismuth muttered while watching the happy couple skate around and hand out toilet paper to other attendants of the rink. "I mean, Pearl's friends already love me."

"Hey Bis, wanna show us some more of your moves?" Jaime asked as Pearl's human friends skated over to Bismuth.

"Well, if you insist." Bismuth shrugged and began to show off more moves for the humans to cheer about.

Back to Steven, he had just made it back around the rink to the entrance, and he stumbled back onto the shooting star-patterned carpet in exhaustion. "One lap around the rink. I think that deserves a break."

"Hey, Steven." Connie greeted as she skated back to Steven.

"Hey, Connie." Steven responded tiredly while grabbing onto the edge of the railing to pick himself up. "Hey, where are Daniel and Patricia?"

"They're still out there on the rink." Connie answered, thumbing back to her cram schoolmates having fun. "Did you want to hang out? You know, we could just return our skates and chat."

"No, you're here to have fun." Steven wheezed. "You're so busy studying, so you should just take this time to be with your friends."

"You're my friend too." Connie comforted Steven. "You want to sit down to some tater tots?"

"No, this is your night." Steven rejected the offer. "Just forget about me and go have fun."

"Okay then. Catch you later." Connie replied as she skated back to her friends.

"What am I doing?" Steven groaned in defeat before Bismuth saw him depressed.

"Something the matter, my lil' lion?" Bismuth asked Steven.

"Can't believe I'm saying this Bismuth," Steven responded. "but I think I've forgotten how to talk to humans. Crazy, right?"

"Yeah, that is pretty nuts." Bismuth agreed before she presented Steven with toilet paper. "You want one of these? Pearl and Sheena keep handing these out cause they say they're supposed to help."

"Maybe later." Steven responded sadly.

"I mean, how could you say that?" Bismuth asked. "You're so dang great at talking to everyone, like your dad or Connie for instance!"

"Greg's my dad, so he doesn't count." Steven stated while looking at Connie, Patricia, and Daniel from afar. "As for Connie, I was perfectly fine when it was just us. But now that's she got those two with her, I have no idea how to talk anymore. You know what I'm talking about, right?"

"You got that right." Bismuth replied. "Sheena, Khadijah, Jaime, and Brandish are all great, but they're not what I'm here for."

"Then who are you here for?" Steven asked. Bismuth just answered by shifting her pupils over to Pearl, which gave Steven a good idea of what she was talking about. "You're here for Pearl?!"

Bismuth shushed Steven by covering his mouth while waving over to Pearl, who merrily waved back before she started slow-dancing with Sheena. "In case you're wondering, I am a bit jealous! But I don't wanna admit it because Sheena's a great gal and I'm happy Pearl's found someone."

"Are you trying to hide this from them?" Steven asked as he moved Bismuth's hand off his mouth. "Why can't you just join in on their relationship? I mean, I saw a few couples like that around here made up of more than two people."

"I just don't want to take away from what Pearl's got." Bismuth answered morosely while spectating on Pearl having the time of her life. "She's got her own thing going on, perfectly happy with her life with lots of human friends and even a girlfriend. She's like the Pearl I remember, but a bit happier. I just needed to catch up."

"Yeah." Steven sympathized with the Gem veteran. "When Connie and I fought side by side to save the universe from the Diamonds, things were a lot easier between us, barring some infractions. We were fighting the same fight, but now it's like we're living completely different lives now. I wonder if she even wants to be my best friend anymore."

Bismuth slammed her arm on the edge of the rink in shock, giving Steven a little fright. "How long has this been going on?"

"Past couple of months." Steven revealed. "I think it started when she went to space camp before Spinel came to Earth."

"Listen, Steven," Bismuth comforted her former leader's son. "Pearl brought me here to set me up with her friends and to be with her girlfriend, but Connie came here to be with you. You got nothing to mope about."

"But her friends probably think I'm weird." Steven admitted. "You should've seen their faces when I told them about what White Diamond did to me."

"Of course you're weird, you're a Crystal Gem!" Bismuth declared. "The Crystal Gems were all a bunch of Gems deemed too weird by society to fit in, and the same goes for you! Connie's known that, she's always known, but that never stopped you two from being buddies!"

"You're right." Steven began taking Bismuth's motivational speech to heart. "Connie knows who I am. She's my friend, and she always will be!"

"So what do you want to do?!" Bismuth kept on pumping the boy up.

"To spend time with Connie!" Steven answered with determination.

"And what are you gonna do?!"

"Skate with Connie!"

"Well, what are you waiting for?!" Bismuth roared triumphantly. "Don't let your dreams be dreams, so JUST DO IT!" With that, Bismuth shoved Steven back onto the rink and he skidded rapidly towards Connie. "Gotta thank Peridot for showing me those motivational vids later."

"CONNIE!" Steven screamed as he zoomed towards his human friend, but then he skidded past her and began to trip & fall flat on his face yet again.

"Steven?" Connie heard Steven call her name and raced over to find him on the ground. "Steven, are you okay?"

"I'm sorry Connie, I just didn't want to hold you back." Steven apologized while he was helped to his feet.

"I don't mind, I just wanted to hang out." Connie replied earnestly.

"You've got cram school and new friends." Steven admitted. "You're going places and I'm proud of you for how far you've come since that time I got us stuck in the bubble, but I feel like we've been drifting apart. I wish we could reconnect but," Then he started to get nervous and abruptly changed the subject. "I don't know how to skate!"

"Skating's what you're worried about?" Connie laughed in disbelief just as Sour Cream turned on his microphone.

"Alright skaters!" Sour Cream announced. "It's time for our nightly skate contest. The skater with the sickest moves in the rink will be crowned skater of the night! Any takers?"

"C'mon, I know just what to do." Connie declared as she took Steven's hand, causing the pair to glow pink and emerge as Stevonnie while Sour Cream prepared some music for the competition and turned the lights from blue to pink.

"In the night, in the middle of the day." Emily King's voice began singing as Stevonnie handed over Connie's skates and got some new ones that were just their size. "Used to tell me we should leave it up to fate. I call you over, but you always hesitate. Now I know that I'll never have to wait."

Despite some initial stumbling, the fusion found their footing and began showing off their moves with utmost grace & style. "Close my eyes, let down my hair. I'm thinking 'bout what I want, gonna take me there.”

Patricia and Daniel gasped in wonder as Stevonnie whizzed right past everyone else at the rink and towards Bismuth. "Turn the dial, on the on the stereo." When they reached Bismuth, Stevonnie leaped over the Gem and gave her a midair high-five. "And I'm thinking 'bout who I want, and I won't let go."

"Who's the new kid?" Sheena asked Pearl before her alien lover was spun around by Stevonnie as the chorus began. "You can't hold me now, only I can do that. You can't hold me now, only I can do that. You can't hold me now, only I can do that. You can't hold me now, hold me now, ooh."

With a split by Stevonnie that would make an entire gymnastics team blush, the other skaters applauded loudly at their skill while the lights returned to normal. "I know them!" Pearl cried out to the crowd.

"I think we know who the winner is," Sour Cream declared from his booth. "unless someone wants to one-up them."

"Who can possibly top that?" Sheena commented as the crowd shook their heads.

"Well, guess that means the winner, by default, is Stevonnie!" Sour Cream congratulated the fusion of Steven and Connie before they defused into the two youths, each of them wearing a skate on one foot.

"Thanks, Connie." Steven said gratefully. "I really needed that."

"Steven, Connie, that was amazing!" Patricia exclaimed as she and Daniel skated over to the two.

"What the heck was that?!" Daniel inquired excitedly.

"That?" Connie responded with a blush. "That was fusion. It's kind of our thing."

"Just something I got from my mom's side of the family." Steven added.

"The one thing I got from my mom was tons of stress!" Daniel joked.

"Same." Steven laughed.

"Yo, Steven!" Sour Cream called for Steven. "You and Connie get to pick the next song as your prize for the contest."

"Next song?" Steven wondered while looking Bismuth's way as she skated over to Pearl and Sheena. "I think I got an idea. C'mon Connie."

As Steven led Connie away, Bismuth stopped to talk with Sheena. "Hey, Sheena was it? I know you might find it weird, but I have a bit of a thing for Pearl too, though I've had it longer than you have, but I'm just a bit jealous of how happy you two are together yet I didn't want to admit it. Hope you're not mad?"

"Eh, at least you're taking it better than some of my last dates." Sheena laughed. "Maybe we can make room for one more."

"Excellent idea." Pearl agreed with her human girlfriend and let Bismuth sandwich herself between the two just as an announcement was made.

"This next song is a request from Steven and Connie." Sour Cream declared. "And they're dedicating this to some special friends of theirs." With that, a certain commercial was played and brought a smile to Pearl's face.

"Bismuth, it's my favorite song!" Pearl cheered, causing her two loves to laugh at her taste in music.

"Cam's Camshafts is the place to bring your wreck, get your car repaired for cheap and fair without risking your neck!" Bismuth started singing along with the ad.

"Cam's Camshafts!" Pearl and Sheena added in harmony before the three gazed lovingly into each other's eyes and skated off with Khadijah, Jaime, and Brandish following behind.

Once again, the music changed as Steven and Connie began skating arm in arm, followed by Patricia & Daniel, and they began laughing.

Well, that's one relationship taken care of! After all, Pearl has two hands and has the power to make more of them. But with that out of the way, next chapter will also feature a certain relationship, but this one is a little more controversial. Can you guess which it is? If you already looked at the episode list on my DeviantArt page, you already know what's coming. See you next week!

#steven universe #steven universe future #fanfiction #steven universe alternate future #steven quartz universe #bismuth #pearl #connie maheswaran #mystery girl

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pokedash55 · 4 years

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Acronix X Coffee Robot Crack AU

SUGGEST READING MY ECHO MEETS ACRONIX FIC BEFORE THIS

IT BUILDS ON THIS WACKY WORLD OF MINE

Click for Echo Meets Acronix Fic

To summarize//TL;DR: Acronix falls out of the time vortex at the light house a befriends Echo Zane, learns empathy and put Echo on Social media so everyone knows he exists now.

-After he leaves echo zane with a borg watch he finds himself back in Ninjago

-Stalks borg and his fam like a creep

-Jay introduces Echo to the dyer family

-Echo and unagami are siblings now

-Acronix is kinda like Echos big brother

-But no one else accepts this

-Zane and Pix give skeptical and menacing, “if you touch him” glares

-Unagami is confused babi and likes their new brother echo

-So Like One day it’s Borg, Pix, Zane, Jay, Unagami, Echo, and Milton dyer, and Acronix in a room together (Fic on that later :3 )

-The whole fam

-Nixie just lingers around borg tower saying random junk sometimes

-Acronix : “You either die a villian or live long enough to see yourself become…”

-Pix: “A very annoying customer who is about to be escorted out of the building?”

-“UH NO. Wrong answer Pix (“dont call me pix”). REDEEMED. Cause I’m like… totally redeemed now”

-Just holds up a high five for the room and left hanging by everyone

-Jay’s like :Yeeeoree not part of our group”

-So like Acronix and Echo Zane are bro’s now cause I said so??

-Everyone: Nix is part of the Borg Family

-Me: Well YES, but actually no

-This isn't really a Future thing

-In this they're mostly frenemies kinda??

-But Acronix does really like him and borg tower and Borg is too nice to throw him out XD

-Acronix has zip money and doesn’t FEEL like looking for Krux rn

-Gets his morning coffee everyday bro

-Starts crushin on the Coffee manager (naming her shannon after the voice actor)

-His routine is basically wake up, coffee, Shannon, stalk borg, watch memes, think about looking for kux than fall asleep on phone

-Posts bout his lil bro alot (echo)

-Posts about Shannon ALOT

-Many many selfies of him an his coffee

-Realizes he may need to get someplace to live since he had yet to venture for krux

-Shoot money is a thing he doesn’t have

-Borg be super kind like, “You can stay at my Newly renovated highly advanced Borg Hotel but you must get a job.”

-Acronix gestures at being one of those technology intern clerks at borg industries. “Is for me?”

-”Must get a job AND leave my family alone…. For now… please?”

-Borg is too nice to the guy who kidnapped him and is infatuated with living at borg tower

-Does borg live in borg tower?

-Gunna say he does

-Cause Acronix just LOITERS in borg tower 24/7

-Like its like hours after closing of the downstairs shop and Pix is like getting her suit on and forcefully escorting Nixie out of the premises

-So anyway Nix has to get a job

-Ugh entry level Jobs are SO beneath him.

-Pouts uwu

-Gets a job as a barista to at least have fun with someone cool

-Ronin notices that sales have gone up in the coffee shop since Acronix has started hanging around there, because the girls think he’s pretty and he posts a lot on social media.

-Ronin wants this, but doesn’t want to have to actually pay Acronix for being a faceman.

-Hires him “as a barista”. Basically he hires Acronix to sit at the counter and look pretty, while giving the joint free advertising.

-Acronix totally doesn’t notice this and is fine with being completely exploited and underpaid.)

-Acronix X Coffee Bot! (In this she’s named Shannon)

-Shannon is like… chill and rude, but never offensive

-Cheats in chess

-Smug about it too like deamn she mean

-Epic moves (Both spinny sign and juggling. And makes epic coffee)

-Unflinching at a fire

-Complete apathy

-Throws "Floyds" teapot plan away immediately cause she doesn’t get paid enough for this sh*t

-Says she doesn’t drink coffee but than is seen drinking coffee that lier

-Bad habit of Ignoring stufft. Ignores the upgrade, ignores her lie detector, ignores the fact the -machine is literally ice frozen

-She wears a miniskirt and a crop top/bra thingy to WORK. On the clock! savage

-Nixie is confirmed to get crushes easily and like powerful/ mean woman (Machia)

-Also he has no shame in liking nonhumans

-Love technology so would totally vibe with her

-Robotsexual for sure

-Powercouple

-Since she is still A.I, so Nix’s outgoing and I don’t care i'm great loud personality would really surprise her and she’d be inspired/impressed by his lack of chill and lack of care

-She has a bit of sass and goth hot topic to her but also still has that robot innocence that would blend nicely with Acronix since he is also Abrasive and rude on the outside, but is a tad of a softy coward (He hugs his bro and cowers behind him and gets adorably defensive when he snarks at him)

-He’d teach her so much about being more alive… maybe a bad influence but she’d dig it

-He calls her Shay almost constantly

-He hates being called Nix

-Like he is a prideful warrior who expects people to use his full name in respect

-But Shannon is too cool for that

-Calls him Nix sometimes anyway

-Respects her boldness

-The audacity to do so without permission!

-Shannon owns a motorcycle because come on

-Ridin home on a sick bike together

-Stealin stuff when people aren’t looking

-Banned from Ronin thrift shop for sure (they're lucky they weren't fired after that night. But he literally can't fire shannon)

-Chill on friday nights at Laughys karaoke.

-Not singing, just laughing at how stupid other people look singing drunk kareoke

-So a jock dork egotist and a apathetic punk bot walk into a bar

-Dareth honestly doesn’t know this guy was the one sending snakes after his trophies so he just treats him like a normal costumer

-Neither of them care about Dareth’s attempts at small talk.

-Too busy loving themselves like idiots

-She kicks his ass in strategy video games and he destroys her in battle royal stuff

-Both are equally bored by like Animal crossing and other fake life games YAWN so much work

-Shannon enjoys the thrill of racing games

-Nixie plays em but it’s not his best game

-Both GEAMMERS (but in a frighteningly cool way. They somehow both avoid nerd status… nixie still a dork tho. Jock dork)

-She makes coffee art of her hubbies face.

-He gives her so much social media attention

-Acronix gives her coffee shop media rep and he loves the petty feeling of beating Wu at something

-She doesn’t quite get his excitement in it (cause she’s on neutral terms with Wu) but loves the media attention

-She doesn’t get his phrases and he finds that both aggravating and endearing

-“Um I’m Aconic”

-Shannon: “So you’ve been lying about your name this whole time?

-Acronix: “...?”

-“That's honestly sick”

-Acronix “… “

-One day they joy ride on a motorcycle

-End up loitering around borg tower

-Borg officially meets Shannon and is interested in her origin

-Her design is not like he has seen but it also seems familiar

-She says she doesn't remember much other than working for ronin

-"Ronin" borg mutters spitefully

-He has a history of y'know.. Messing with his tech (dismantling pixal and selling zane hmmm)

-Does a diagnostic code scan

-Acronix worried bout his bae and hyped he was actually invited in for once.

-Progress on that "friendship"

-He discovers her model and general code is similar if not almost exactly the same as pixal’s code

-Ronin scrapped together with some mechanical help from his friends the walkers to make a functioning robot manager with borg tech he scrounged up and a stolen copy of pixal’s blueprints ( maybe he took pictures of them when he sold her to chen) and specs so he wouldn't have to pay for multiple employees. Just having the one really efficient one would save him thousands

-So shannon is pixals sister

-And her parents are The walkers, Ronin, and borg

-The family tree only grows people

-So Acronix is apart of the ninja family now if he marries Shannon

-Here's a chart if you're as confused as I am here:

-Anyway Shay doesn't really care much

- Her expression doesn't change

-She had never really gone out of her way to worry where she was from so it wasn't a huge revelation

-It was to nixie tho

-As the extravert he was (and has extensive experience of being a sibling) he had to make sure she got to know her new family NOW

-Like in the middle of the night now

-He never waits for things to happen

-Pix is first and she is about to power down for the night when...

-DOOR SLAMS OPEN

-"Hi SIS!!" Acronix just screams

-"hey. I'm like your sister now." Obvi shannon is more lowkey about it

-Shannon and pixal mildly get along

-Questions her taste in men alot

-Acronix chills in the back already bored and ready to move on.

-Although he's annoyed by them, the ninja were next up

-Zane and Jay are both family now

-Shannon starting to think he's using all this to fill the void of his brother being gone.

-Cause she has no interest for or against meeting these people but Nix sees it as urgent

-But he seems happier than usual so she'll let him throw her name around for a while. She did mooch off his social media so it was only fair

-Anyway eventually Acronix does find his brother, and tries to explain this whole mess to his less-than-thrilled twin

-God once Krux gets back tho

-“Hey bro! I married a robot she’s amazing!”

-He’s just taking selfies with her in hot topic outfits both of them

-“God no my brothers Robotsexual. My worst nightmares have been realized”

-Krux can only stare in horror at the people his brother now considers “family”

-Wu’s students?!, Robots!?, what EVEN IS AI?!?!?

-He eventually gets over it

-eventually maybe

-At least he can admire her attitude

-Will still mess with his bro tho.

-This is the worst timeline imaginable.

-But I can't apologize for art

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fnlrndcllctv · 4 years

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THE YEAR IN FIGHTING GAMES: 1994

As the original release of Street Fighter II turns 30 this year, we are taking a look at the landscape of fighting games between 1991 and 2021 on a year by year basis!

This week, Shaun Eddleston takes a look at 1994…

1994 was an eventful year for video games.

Nintendo was starting to wind down on its production of NES games, while celebrating the success of games such as Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo. SEGA’s Sonic The Hedgehog series was going strong with Sonic The Hedgehog 3, and games such as DOOM II and Warcraft were making their way onto computers all across the world.

It was also a year where Germany placed Mortal Kombat II on its index of media works deemed harmful to young people by Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons effectively banning the game from sale in the country (and remained that way all the way up to 2005!).

Let’s take a look at 1994 in fighting games...

One of the more obscure Neo Geo titles, Aggressors Of Dark Kombat (known as Tsuukai GANGAN Koushinkyoku in Japan) was an interesting title that felt like a bit of an experiment in the genre. The game’s movement feels more like it would fit into your standard beat ‘em up game such as Final Fight and Streets Of Rage, and even drops weapons into the stage for fighters to use.

The game also includes a fun comeback mechanic, the “GAN GAN attack”, which kicks in once a player’s health bar drops below a certain point, and their power bar is full. Once one of these mega attacks connects with an opponent, the player automatically wins the round.

Art of Fighting 2 continues the story that kicked off in the previous year’s entry, as we immediately learn that the identity of Yuri’s kidnapper, the tengu masked Mr Karate, is none other than Takuma Sakazaki, Yuri and Ryo’s father. This is all part of a much bigger criminal plot that ends up being spearheaded by a certain young crime lord from another popular SNK fighting title…

As for the game itself, almost every aspect of the Art Of Fighting experience was rebuilt and polished. The character sprites and stage art looked better, and a new “Rage” gauge mechanic was introduced into the mix. All of the game’s characters are immediately playable in arcade mode, and each have their own specific dialogue when interacting with other fighters.

The first 3D weapons-based fighting game was also one of the earlier releases on the Sony PlayStation, and was poised to be the game that would “outshine” the impressiveness of Virtua Fighter’s groundbreaking graphics.

While it didn’t quite beat out SEGA’s franchise, Battle Arena Toshinden still had a couple of interesting aspects to it that are still worth mentioning today.

First of all, it is arguably the first “true” 3D fighting game, as it included the ability to side-step or dodge roll during a fight. This meant that the act of avoiding projectiles now had more options outside of blocking the hit or jumping over it, giving the game a little more depth (both mechanically and visually).

Thanks to the newly opened up 3D movement, ring outs are also possible in the game, where players can lose a round by simply falling off the side of the stage. This is an element that many gamers see as a bit of a cop out during a fight, but I personally see it as a fun way to humiliate opponents and even bring overly confident fighters back down to earth.

Capcom’s massive success with Street Fighter II was one of the most important moments in video game history, and the game was still going incredibly strong since its release 3 years prior (including this year, which we’ll touch on later in the article). There was a big question that lingered though; what non-Street Fighter fighting game would Capcom bring to the table next?

That game was Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors.

Darkstalkers wasn’t a million miles away from Street Fighter II in terms of gameplay. It utilised the same six-button L/M/H attack layout, and even used a Super Gauge that would be shared with the series.

The main strength of Darkstalkers that set it apart from its more famous older cousin, and that was its characters and theme. Instead of a tournament of worldwide fighters that many 2D fighting games utilised, Darkstalkers took inspiration from classic horror movies from the Universal era and offered a cast of 10 fighters that range from werewolves, sasquatches and vampires to Egyptian mummies, zombies and a Frankenstein’s monster for good measure.

A spooky cult favourite!

1993’s Fighters History was a controversial entry in the fighting game genre. Not necessarily because of any violent content or especially iffy storyline, but for just how similar the game was to Street Fighter II. It was so similar, in fact, that Capcom attempted to sue Data East for just how much of a shameless ripoff the game was.

Capcom wasn’t successful with the lawsuit, and Data East went forward with a sequel, Fighters History Dynamite.

The game, perhaps more commonly known in some places as “Karnov’s Revenge”, added more characters (including the game’s boss fighters, Karnov and Clown) to the playable roster and spruced up the game's stage backgrounds.

Other than the slightly expanded range of fighters, and a hilarious hidden character to discover, not a lot else has changed from the first title, and still feels like it can’t shake off the original comparison that it got into trouble for.

Many 2D games up to this point were trying to mimic Street Fighter and Fatal Fury’s cartoonish graphics, there wasn’t really anything outside of Mortal Kombat’s digitised graphics that truly felt “next-gen” going into the middle of the decade.

Enter Killer Instinct.

While Rare as a developer was having a fantastic year already, with the success of Battletoads and Donkey Kong Country leaving long lasting impressions on the industry, their fighting game was a revelation in arcades, bringing a mix of 2D gameplay on 3D stages, strong bloody violence and a ridiculous new combo system to the table.

The characters were memorable, the animated FMV sequences were jawdropping to watch, and witnessing the game announce blare out “ULTRA COMBO!” whenever someone nailed a particularly savage sequence of hits just felt right.

Why not check out our thoughts on the game’s “killer” soundtrack?

Inspired by the popularity of Ryo Sakazaki (Art Of Fighting’s main protagonist) and his appearance as a guest character in Fatal Fury Special in 1993, SNK decided to go all out and start a crossover fighting series that brought together characters from their library of past games.

The game, named after the fighting tournament in Art Of Fighting and Fatal Fury, allows players to choose from a selection of 3-member teams that have been designated to different countries of the world, and matches revolve around an elimination system. In addition to a selection of original new characters, KOF ‘94 mixed together the Ikari Warriors, Psycho Soldier, Art Of Fighting and Fatal Fury franchises to fill out one of the largest fighting game rosters around at this point.

The game’s music is the subject of our very first entry in the Soundtrack Sunday series, so check it out!

Of the slew of games that took direct inspiration from Mortal Kombat, very few actually left a lasting impression.

One of the exceptions to this was Primal Rage, which saw stop motion dinosaurs and prehistoric apes duke it out for supremacy in the new “Urth”.

The game, which also took inspiration from Taito’s Dino Rex from 1992, caused its own controversy with one of its fatalities. In 1996, a woman from Arizona said that her 11 year old son had bought the game, and used a strategy guide to execute the “Golden Shower” fatality (in which, as the title suggests, the character Chaos urinates all over the corpse of an opponent). She flipped out and started a grass-roots campaign against Primal Rage, which resulted in some US stores withdrawing copies of the game, including the already-censored SNES version, which didn’t even contain the offending move.

The game was also successful with its merchandise, and saw a line of toys and a board game to accompany it.

The first Samurai Shodown game was, and still is, one of the finest fighting games of the early 90’s, so SNK had a huge task on their hands when it came to creating a sequel.

With Samurai Shodown 2, they absolutely knocked it out of the park in pretty much every aspect. All of the sprites of the characters who reappeared from the first game had been completely remade, a bunch of new characters had been added in, everyone got amazing new moves and a number of new game mechanics were also introduced to make the game feel much more balanced and fun to play.

One of these new mechanics was the “Weapon break” system, which meant that if a player got hit with a particularly powerful attack, there was now a chance that it would knock their weapon clean out of their hands, leaving them unarmed until it was recovered. The sheer panic of scrambling to pick up your sword while the opponent is slashing away at you is a thrill that still feels as effective today as it did back then.

Street Fighter II’s reign as king of the arcade fighting games was starting to wind down by 1994, so the game saw a final upgrade in the form of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which added more game speeds, new animations and moves for all of the characters, a new “SUPER” gauge system and the introduction of a hidden character that would quickly become one of the franchise’s most recognisable fighters; Akuma!

While many more casual players may not have felt the real impact of these changes (this was the third update in as many years since the original release), it remains as the “definitive” version of Street Fighter II, and is still used in tournaments to this day.

Developed by Namco (and ported to PlayStation in 1995), Tekken took the 3D fighting style that was pioneered by 1993’s Virtua Fighter, and added its own spin on things in regards to the control system.

Instead of using the traditional fighting game inputs that corresponded to the strength of the attacks, Tekken utilised a system that dedicates a button to each individual limb of the fighter. In doing this, the game became more of a learning process for players that wanted to do special moves and combos. This departure was so innovative, that experienced players could now figure out special moves by studying the fighters limb movements during their animations.

Known briefly as “RAVE WAR” during its beta test stage, Tekken quickly found itself as one of the most popular PlayStation games in history, and became the first game to sell over a million copies for the console.

Take a look at our thoughts about the game’s soundtrack!

Virtua Fighter was an incredibly important moment in gaming, so following up with a sequel that lived up to its predecessor was absolutely vital for SEGA.

Luckily, with Virtua Fighter 2, they managed to not only surpass the first game in the way it looked, but how it played too. Improved movesets ramped up how authentic each individual martial arts/fighting style felt, and with things running at 60FPS in the arcade version, the game felt like it was miles ahead of its competition.

The third entry in the World Heroes series was yet another improvement on the games that preceded it, but considering the sheer amount of solid competition it was facing in 1994, it still fell to the wayside.

The game added two new fighters and added a brand new boss to face off against, but things were starting to feel somewhat dated with the series now, and it suffered as a result.

While there were many action-adventure and side-scrolling beat-’em-ups based on characters from the Marvel universe, it wasn’t until the early 90’s until we got a fully fledged fighting game. It only made sense that Capcom, one of the heaviest hitters in the genre at the time stepped forward to fix this.

Released in arcades in late 1994, X-Men: Children of the Atom established what would become a beloved and fruitful relationship between Capcom and Marvel, and laid the foundations for the successful “Vs.” series that fighting game fans have played for nearly 25 years now.

The game is loosely based on 1993’s “Fatal Attractions” storyline, in which Magneto and his Acolytes return to confront the X-Men, tempting Professor Xavier to cross a moral line to stop them. It’s a pretty insane storyline with some fairly gnarly imagery (one such example sees Wolverine getting the adamantium ripped out of his skeleton!), and the good vs. evil dynamic lends itself perfectly to the setting of an arcade fighting game.

1994’s entries in the genre saw developers starting to take full advantage of the new 3D graphics that SEGA introduced with Virtua Fighter in the wake of a new console generation, while 2D fighting games kept on coming hard and fast to try and best Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat’s popularity.

Join us next week as we take a look at the games of 1995!

Did we miss anything from 1994 that’s worth mentioning?

Let us know in the comments below!

#Aggressors Of Dark Kombat #Art Of Fighting 2 #Battle Arena Toshinden #Darkstalkers #Fighter's History Dynamite #Killer Instinct #The King Of Fighters '94 #Primal Rage #Samurai Shodown 2 #Super Street Fighter II Turbo #Tekken #Virtua Fighter 2 #World Heroes 2 Jet #X-Men: Children Of The Atom #Capcom #Namco #SNK #1994

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ad1thi · 4 years

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the one where steve discovers new york

(insp)

set sometime after tws, established relationship, harley keener and tony stark feels, fluff and crack, au where tony knows everything because he and steve are mature adults who discuss shit and don’t keep secrets. ive also aged up harley just go with it please

Tony’s excited when he finally confirms that Harley’s coming to town. So excited that he plans out the entire weekend, clearing his schedule so that he can be free to take his newly legal not-son around to the best haunts and give him the true tourist experience - and completely forgets that Steve is going to be in town for the first time in almost three months.

Which is why when he feels a pair of arms wrap around his waist while he’s in the middle of a project in his workshop, he does the reasonable thing and puts the wrench in his hand to good use.

“Ouch!” Steve stumbles back, clutching his head morosely, and Tony is caught between comforting him and looking for the closest ice pack.

Fortunately, DUM-E takes the decision out of his hands, wheeling towards Steve and dropping an icepack into his hands, which he presses to his forehead instantly.

Tony helps him over to the couch, pressing kisses to the side of his head and muttering a string of apologies everytime he winces. Once they’re both settled on the couch, he takes over ice-pack duty from it, sitting half across his lap and cupping his face with his free palm so he can angle his face just right.

“I really am sorry,” he says, lifting the ice pack intermittently to check the swelling, “I just, completely forgot that I was supposed to see you this weekend”

“It’s fine honey,” Steve says, attempting a smile but it comes out more like a grimace, “give it a few hours and it would’ve healed up. Perks of the serum. Plus, you’ve got all weekend to make it up to me”

“About that,” Tony says, stretching out his words, “So you remember how I forgot you were coming this weekend?”

“Yeah,” Steve says hesitantly, and Tony might truly be the worst boyfriend around.

“So, under this misguided belief that you weren’t coming this weekend and I was therefore, free, I might’ve accidentally made plans for this weekend. Of the non-refundable variety”

“Do you have another boyfriend I should know about?” Steve says with a smirk, and Tony pinches him in response.

“No you oaf,” he pulls off the ice pack to check the bruising again, relaxing when he sees its turned into a slightly yellow-ish hue instead of its earlier purple, “You remember Harley Keener? The kid from Tennessee?”

“The one with the potato gun right?” Tony nods, “What about him?”

“Well it was his 18th birthday a couple months back, and I promised him I’d fly him out to New York for a couple of days the first chance that I got free -”

“- and that happened to be this weekend,” Steve finishes up. Tony nods contritely, eyes cast downward as if not looking at Steve would somehow better the situation.

“Hey,” Steve tips his chin up, forcing Tony to look at him, “hey I’m not mad babe. It’s a mistake, these things happen. This is the kid that Jim swears is like your child, right?”

Tony nods, unsure of where Steve’s going with this. It would quite frankly be better for the both of them if he just got his yelling over with so he can move onto the ‘making it up to you’ portion of the evening.

“Well then I’d be happy to meet him. Who knows, it could be fun. Never really got a chance to see New York after I got out of the ice, and now I finally have a reason to”

Tony tries to keep his surprise to himself, he does, but it must show on his face because something in Steve’s gaze softens.

“I’m not mad at you sweetheart,” he says in an earnest tone and Tony would really appreciate it if his boyfriend would stop reading his like an open book, “mistakes happen. It isn’t like you purposely went out of your way to make yourself busy, and I don’t care how we spend our time together, just that we spend our time together”

“I don’t deserve you,” Tony says in a hushed tone, but Steve shakes his head in response, “you deserve a lot better than me. But I’m never going to stop trying to show you how much I love you”

Steve isn’t one to judge people based on their looks, but he definitely had an, image in mind whenever Tony described the child that he’d pseudo adopted from Tennessee. Tony had made him out to be fiercely brave and resourceful, and Steve had imagined - well the essence of it was that he certainly hadn’t pictured the stick thin brooding teenager that was currently standing in the Common Room, bag slung across his shoulder.

“You must be Harley,” he says, sticking out his hand in hello and trying his very best to not take it personally when Harley just glares at it mutinously.

“You must be the centurion that’s taking advantage of the mechanic,” he replies with a glare and Steve is saved from replying by Tony’s appearance.

“Harls!” he shouts, and Steve watches as his face changes, splitting open into a smile.

Somehow, Steve gets the feeling that the teenager doesn’t smile all that much.

Harley squirms under Tony’s embrace but doesn’t try and pull out of his hug; instead letting his hands fall to the side like he doesn’t know what do with them as he pulls him in and ruffles his hair, pressing absent kisses to his face and fussing over him like he’s truly his child.

“How was your flight?” Tony’s voice brings him out of his musings, “Did you get in okay?”

“It’s remarkably hard to complain about the flight when you’ve been upgraded to first class,” Harley drawls with a raised eyebrow and Tony looks back at him defiantly, “but the food was questionable. I think I prefer economy”

Tony pinches his sides, “you just don’t know what luxury feels like,” he says with a huff - before noticing Steve standing in front of them.

“Oh!” Tony gestures Steve over, “Harley - this is Steve. Steve, this is Harley”

“We’ve met,” Steve says with a tight smile before Harley can get a word in, “I’m glad you could make the trip this weekend, and I’m sorry for crashing in on your hands”

“I was hoping to get the mechanic to myself,” Harley says with an expression that Steve can swear he’s seen on Tony’s face before, “but I suppose having Captain America around isn’t the worst thing ever”

“Don’t be a grouch kid,” Tony says, before leading him down towards the workshop, “now let me show you all my new toys”

He’s almost towards the lift before he turns back to Steve with a frown, “Babe? Aren’t you coming?”

Steve waves him off, “you two have fun, I’m going to be cramping on your style tomorrow when we explore New York anyway”

Tony looks like he wants to argue, but the lift dings open, and Harley pulls his aside. If Steve was a betting man, he would say that he just earned a morsel of respect with his boyfriend’s not-son.

If nothing else, this weekend was definitely going to be interesting.

“Well,” Tony says as the elevator dings open, “I’m glad you like New York Harls but I swear, I wasn’t expecting Steve to react like that”

Behind them, Steve ambles in with his bags of merchandise, eyes gleaming with excitement.

“How is it,” he says with a huff, “that I’ve liked in New York for this long and never been able to appreciate how amazing it is?”

He points a finger at Tony with a glare, “I blame you for not introducing me to the wonders of this city”

“That hardly seems fair,” Tony sniffs delicately, “you don’t technically live in New York, you just visit. And when you do visit you’re too busy with, other activities to be gallivanting around New York like a tourist that just hopped off the boat”

“Too many details,” Harley says with a wrinkled nose, “I don’t need to know what you and your geriatric boyfriend get up to”

“I wouldn’t say he’s geriatric,” Tony says, smirking, “not when -”

He gets cut off by Steve cupping his mouth, and it's a testament to his strength that he manages to do that despite all the bags adorning his forearms.

“I apologise for him,” Steve says to Harley, “we’re still working on getting him house-trained. Why don’t you freshen up, and we’ll meet you back down here for dinner?”

He removes his hand with a yelp when Tony licks his palm, and Harley looks for the quickest route away from them because he no longer wants to be anywhere near them. One whole day of barely disguised flirting on the streets of New York was more than enough.

“If I may Young Sir,” JARVIS pipes up, and Harley looks up to the ceiling despite himself, “there’s a staircase on the left corner that you might find of use since Sir and Captain Rogers are currently blocking the lift”

Harley looks back at Tony and Steve, at the bags abandoned at their feet now that Steve’s hands have found other things to grab onto, and then turns back towards the stairs - sending a salute to the ceiling.

“Appreciate it JARVIS,” he says as he pushes open the door, smiling when he hears the AI demurely reply, “Anytime”

Fin

#my writing #stevetony #superhusbands #steve x tony #steve rogers/tony stark #steve rogers x tony stark #steve rogers #tony stark #harley keener #irondad and ironson #established relationship #fluff #fluff and crack #the one where steve discovers new york #i rly tag my tumblr posts like its ao3 love that for me #inspired by that one friends episode where chandler goes batshit crazy for NYC #disclaimer: i dont know much about NYC because the last time i was there i was in a pram #so all of my knowledge comes from tv shows #i would like everyone to appreciate that i made a conscious effort to not make this angsty and keep it completely fluffy #that was very hard for me #i had like 500 words worth of post tws angst written up #where harley accuses steve for sleeping with tony just so that tony will help him find bucky - which is immoral cuz bucky killed his parents #but i cut it OUT and i want that to be appreciated #i wrote the intro of my essay and then rewarded myself by writing 1.5k of stevetony

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ineffably-good · 4 years

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Prompt: Old Fashioned

Today’s thirtieth anniversary Good Omens Celebration Theme is Old Fashioned. And here’s my contribution!

Read the whole set on AO3...

Aziraphale didn’t get many chances to feel like the modern one in his relationship with the demon known as Crowley. No matter how he tried to stay on top of things, it always felt like the demon had gotten there first. If there was a new invention, a new technology, a new food – somehow, the demon found out about it and made a big to-do of introducing it to the angel. He didn’t seem to do it to prove anything; in fact, he seemed to enjoy the process of finding new things for the angel to experience and try. It was… almost sweet.

But just once, just one time, Aziraphale wanted to be the one who was a few steps ahead. Which is why, after he discovered that Crowley had dealt with their argument by going to sleep for a long, long time, he decided to take advantage of this -- his big chance to get out in front of things, so to speak.

He spent the rest of the 19th century, after it became apparent that Crowley wasn’t planning to wake up anytime soon, scanning the papers, attending lectures at the explorers’ clubs and science societies, and dropping in on technical expositions wherever he could. And whenever he learned about something new and interesting that could fit into his bookshop or lifestyle, he became – what was the phrase? An enthusiast. An investor. What would someday be called an early adopter.

He had one intention in mind through all of this. When that miserable demon got up from his fifty year sulk, he was going to walk into the bookshop and feel like a visitor from the stone ages. And he, Aziraphale, guardian of the eastern gate, was going to enjoy that moment very much.

He knew, of course, the instant when Crowley woke up. He’d been keeping an eye on him for quite some time now. What he didn’t know was how long it would take the demon to get in touch with him. He could, after all, still be angry about the holy water incident. Or he could be embarrassed about the whole thing, not sure how to proceed.

Aziraphale had thoughtfully taken care of this, however, by having a lovely upright phone installed in Crowley’s home. He’d been certain to get the one with the loudest possible ring, for maximum effect.

Which, after giving the demon an entire three days to make contact with him in some other way, he decided to use.

After going through the necessary steps to place the call, Aziraphale held the receiver of his own phone to his ear and listened to the thunderous ringing taking place on the other end.

A loud rattling noise a few moments later indicated that the receiver had been taken off the hook.

“Hello? Crowley? Hello?” he called.

He heard, instead of a voice returning the greeting, a vague and distant sound of hissing and the clatter of what sounded like a rather expensive telephone hitting the floor.

“Aziraphale?” a voice shouted from far away. “Aziraphale where are you? I hear your voice!”

“In here!” Aziraphale called out. “Pick up the – the small black handle-shaped thing on the floor!”

“Aziraphale!” the demon shouted, sounding frantic. “Have you been discorporated? Oh god, I slept too long! Don’t worry, I’m coming to find you!”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. This was not going as planned. But as long as Crowley showed up at the bookshop in relatively short order, he supposed it was all tickety boo.

The demon came slamming through the front door of the shop not twenty minutes later, looking incredibly spooked.

“Ah, awake are we?” Aziraphale said wryly from his seat at the desk.

“Angel!” Crowley said frantically. “I thought you were discorporated! Your voice… was in my apartment… but very faint… and – and what on earth is going on in here?” He blinked and looked around. “Why is it so bright in here?”

Aziraphale lowered his reading glasses and peered at Crowley over the top of the frames. “I assure you I’m quite well. I wasn’t a ghost, I called you on the telephone. See??”

The angel pointed to a large, black contraption on his desk that looked to Crowley like a combination of a very ugly vase, a few bits of yarn, and some kind of misshapen drinking glass.

It looked, he realized, exactly like the thing that had made the awful noise in his apartment earlier in the day. The thing that he had then smashed to bits on the kitchen floor when it wouldn’t stop shrieking. Right before he heard the angel’s disembodied voice, he realized.

“A – a telephone?” he asked. He shook his head trying to clear it. He always felt a little slow on the uptake after a long nap.

“Yes indeed,” Aziraphale said. “It’s the latest thing! I can pick up this bit here,” he said, demonstrating, “and click this bit a few times, then speak to someone who is in an entirely different place! Nearly everyone is using them!”

“You – you had one of these things installed in my home? While I slept?”

“Well,” Aziraphale said, straightening his waistcoat superciliously. “I know how you like to be kept up to date. And you’ve missed rather a lot.”

Crowley frowned and took a good look around. There were strange fixtures hanging from the ceiling and emerging from sconces on the wall that burned much too brightly and steadily to be gas-lit. It was all a little too intense, to be honest – it made his eyes hurt to look at some of them. Crowley’s eyes had been formed in the times when it was sunlight during the day and firelight at night – they were not meant for this – this incandescent disaster. He winced and dug around in a pocket for his sunglasses.

“Oh, my dear, does the new electric light hurt your eyes? It does take some getting used to; I do hope it doesn’t give you a headache,” Aziraphale said kindly. “But if it does, they’ve invented the most wonderful thing called aspirin! Shall I get you one? It will fix you up as quick as anything!”

Crowley blinked and looked at the angel, who blinked back at him innocently. The demon was not fooled. The angel, blast him, was enjoying something about this whole scenario, and enjoying it immensely.

“What,” he said slowly, “is going on.”

Aziraphale shuffled the papers together that he’d been working on and ostentatiously pulled out another new invention – one he was rather personally fond of, the brilliant little paper clip! – and made sure Crowley was watching as he fastened the pages together into a neat pile. Then he pulled out the newly minted fountain pen to mark something with on the topmost page – he’d made sure to buy at least ten of Waterman’s first 200 pens, as soon as they hit the market in 1885, and always kept one at hand.

Crowley continued to stare at him.

“Nothing is ‘going on’, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “You simply made a decision to sleep through some very important years! The world moved on while you were sulking – I mean sleeping, of course -- and it’s going to take you a while to catch up.”

Crowley gaped at him, starting to get the picture.

The angel capped his pen and smiled warmly at Crowley. “Don’t worry, though,” he said. “I’ll help you.”

“Ah,” Crowley said. “So that’s how this is going to be, is it?”

Aziraphale gave him a look of absolute innocence. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You’re aggravated with me about sleeping for so long so you’re going to rub my face in each and every thing I missed?”

The angel had the gall to look wounded. “Why no,” he said, seemingly sincere, “not at all! I can’t wait to share with you a few of the things they’ve come up with! Why you haven’t seen the gramophone yet – or, or moving pictures! And oh, you’ll love the zipper! So much fun, all that up and down movement! And, of course, there’s all kinds of horrible new weaponry that your side probably had a hand in; I won’t be showing you those. And then there’s the combustion engine. Why some people even say that horses will soon be obsolete, and we’ll all be zipping around town in one of these mechanical carriages!”

Crowley sat down heavily. Perhaps sleeping hadn’t been a great idea.

“Is there still wine?” he said blearily. “Or has that been improved, too?”

Aziraphale hopped up. “Of course there’s wine! How silly of me, I should have offered you refreshment right away. You sit there quietly and let me get that for you.” He bustled off towards the kitchen, then stopped and called back cheerily. “Oh, and I’ll just get you that aspirin too, shall I? You don’t look at all well.”

Aziraphale allowed himself one triumphant grin as he walked towards the back room. Time to select the best vintage from the last fifty years and begin making peace with his old adversary.

#goc2020 #good omens fanfic #Aziraphale x crowley #the long nap #Aziraphale lets his bastard out #sweet sweet revenge

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pitheinfinite · 5 years

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Experiment: We can all be Lana.

It’s been months since Lana stopped update, with more cc-reblogging simblrs, now it seems to be easier for us to find reliable sources of cc update. However, Lana’s case proves the idea of relying on a certain small group of people to update the cc is far from a sustainable approach.

To make sure every (or most of) newly-released cc to be covered, we can:

use a crawler program to monitor tumblr: with tumblr’s crappy search function, I think we can all agree it won’t be a reliable method.

find a platform for all creators to update their works, which is basically TSR & MTS, only now in this case, it’s tumblr. Tumblr also offers group blog (not the new group chatroom service) which I learned recently that it allows unlimited multiple members to make/edit/reblog/delete posts under at least one administrator. [details of tumblr group blog] It is this service I believe can be better applied to solve our post-Lana challenge.

Sharing cc among different platforms can be a pain in the a** for most creators, at least for me lol. But, as a member of this said group blog, creators can reblog their posts painlessly. The process is exactly the same with reblogging among one’s own sideblogs.

‘Course we still need admins to maintain the tagging system and monitor abuses or rule-breaking activities, but comparing to follow 200+ creators and scrolling through all the new posts daily to make sure every piece of new cc is updated, I’d say that’s a piece of cake, a very tiny one.

Besides, a group blog is not attached to any specific user, which means if the original owner of the blog left, the blog still keeps running under other admins control, or in the worst case, the only admin left, thena random member will be promoted to be the admin for the blog to keep running. However, the admin has the ultimate control, including the power to delete the whole blog, and can’t be demoted to be a member, so we must be extra careful when selecting our admins.

Other than that, we also need to set some ground rules like:

every post has equal exposure: Only new cc should be reblogged and for once only. Another point I ‘d like to stress out is that this new Lana should be designed to introduce new creations to the broader community. We have tons of awesome TS3 cc, but they are shared among many cc-finds already. Let’s give newcomers and less known creators a stage to shine.

no controversial cc will be allowed: To avoid jeopardizing the whole blog, all conversions should be reblogged with clear and detailed credit.

Whoever break these rules will be warned and even removed according the extent of violation.

I started pis3update to promote the latest cc in this February, and the past 9 months shows this is quite a burden for one person, even with the aid of powerful extensions. The stress of worrying I might neglect or miss any new cc is not healthy and very likely to force me back to fully focus on cc-creation.

We keep saying it’s vital to remain flexible and fun with the game and tumblr, but how are we supposed to do that without this daily obligation turning into a job to be done? Maybe I regard this as a task because how I started it, unlike other diligent cc-finds. In spite of that, if we don’t have a reliable system for this, we will always have another Lana disaster, only with different names.

Instead of having a certain group of people to serve the community, why don’t we share the responsibility as a community? With everyone doing their little share, we can build a sustainable mechanism, even if some of us leave.

Therefore I’d like to try the group blog idea with pis3update and its 600 followers, along with some necessary adjustment ofc, such as improvement over the tagging system & layout. There will also be a submit option for creators who has concern over joining such a group blog as a member.

I’d like to know your opinions over this proposal, please spread the word so we can get more people involved and improve the project. If you would like to support this idea as a creator, please do let me know so I can invite you when the new system is ready.

#sims3 cc #ts3 cc #thoughts and discussion #thoughts

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rafespeaks · 5 years

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Pokémon Sword and Shield, From the Eyes of a Veteran (Critique)

I want to preface this by saying I have been playing Pokemon since before I can remember. It has been a staple of my childhood since day one and is an incredibly important franchise to me. I have nothing but love for it, and I wish the franchise success and a long life far into the future. That being said... I have some big issues with this latest generation. Big enough that I’m writing out my thoughts for everyone to see for the first time.

As a note, I am not a competitive player, nor do I think I ever will be. I don’t have the patience or technical mind to focus on all the finite mechanics and breed the statistical ‘very-best’ Pokemon out there. As such, I will not be focusing on those aspects (or at least not nearly as heavily as others might).

Now, let’s begin.

As a starting point, let’s start where Nintendo always does when introducing a new region and generation

The Pokémon

Every new generation of Pokemon comes with brand-new creatures for everyone to love. However, some generations just have... more than others. The original games had 151 Pokemon total to catch, collect, and love. And from there, more were added. Here’s the count:

Johto: 100 Hoenn: 135 Sinnoh: 107 Unova: 156 Kalos: 72 Alola: 88 Galar: 81

This is not accounting for the new Pokemon introduced in Galar’s DLC, as that has yet to come out, or old Pokemon that were given a Mega Evolution or regional variant. Kalos added 30 Mega Evolutions, plus an additional 20 from ORAS. Alola added 18 regional variants, and Galar added 13 of their own (not counting the DLC Slowpoke) plus 24 Gigantimax forms (25 if you count Flapple & Appletun as separate, and 26 with Melmetal).

Numbers-wise, Galar did... okay. Not great. But okay. It still passed up Kalos, at the very least, which was a huge point of contention among fans when gen 6 came out. However, if I had to sum up my feelings towards the new Pokemon I could do it easily with one phrase: they’re very ‘hit-or-miss’. And while new Pokemon that I don’t care for tend to grow on me over time, there’s just one problem with that. They can’t grow on me if I don’t ever see them.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with old Pokemon being in the new games. In fact that’s something I love! But when you want the players to connect with the new being introduced, you have to give them a chance to do so.

This was the first region in what felt like ages where I went in without a plan of what I wanted on my team. Typically, I go with a simple, easy-to-follow formula. Grass, Fire, and Water take up three slots. Add in a Flying-type, as Water and Flying were highly important for transportation in earlier games. And for coverage, the last two spots go to Electric and Ground or Rock. Anything else, I try to cover for with getting as many dual-types as possible. Simple. Effective. Tried and true.

However, after choosing Scorbunny as my starter, I encountered a problem. There are only two Grass-types to choose from, and neither are particularly good for my strategy. Eldegoss, which I ended up going with, is a pure Grass-type and can ONLY learn Grass-type damaging attacks, unless you want to track down the single Bug-type TR it can learn, or use one of the few compatible Normal-type TMs/TRs.

The second Grass-type is Applin. And while both evolutions have better type coverage, there are still problems. One, Applin on its own is pretty bad. The only moves it knows when caught fresh from the wild are Withdraw and Astonish. While that isn’t too horrible in and of itself, the fact that its evolutionary item can only be obtained near the end of the game makes it a horrible choice. Since I was about to take on Nessa and had no access to this item, I was forced to either choose Eldegoss or something from a previous generation. And since I was trying to use all-new Pokemon, Eldegoss it was. (Though on the upside, I realized it had plenty of potential to be a competitive wall.) Now, if you are intent on getting a Flapple or Appletun, you can persevere and evolve one. Now you have your grass dragon! Great! Except... its level-up moveset is pretty bad to begin with... You will have to dedicate a lot of time to training or hunting down TMs and TRs to make up for this seemingly MASSIVE oversight.

This is just one example, of course. And while coverage isn’t particularly BAD considering all the old Pokemon included, it could be much better.

Continuing on from this topic is another that has had a lot of fans, including me, up in arms.

The Pokédex

Dexit.

Nearly 900 Pokemon, cut SEVERELY down to 400. It’s unprecedented. It’s unfair to the fans of cut Pokemon, completionists, and old players waiting on transferring all their partners from previous games. Frankly, it sucks. And I think every Pokemon fan can agree, no matter the reason.

While some similar things to this have happened before, it has never been this bad. Unova did it right - the only Pokemon available to the player through the main story of Black and White were the newly introduced ones. After defeating the Elite Four, finishing the game, and the credits are done rolling however, all previous Pokemon were welcome in the region once more. Alola didn’t exclude any older Pokemon, but for the first time in any Pokemon game, we did not get a National ‘Dex. Even so, the Pokemon unavailable natively in Alola were still transferable and usable in the new generation. And while it was a bit disappointing not to get any new entries for some old favorites, it was understandable. Coming up with new world lore is hard work!

Nintendo said that all these Pokemon were cut due to time constraints and limitations with the memory. Unfortunately, these are issues that could be fixed easily, which just... weren’t. Sword and Shield could have gone the same route that Zelda: Breath of the Wild did and simply extended production time. As Shigeru Miyamoto once said, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” And it shows in Sword and Shield in so many ways.

The memory limitations is, honestly, just a bad lie in my personal opinion. This opinion is only proven to me by the DLC reintroducing over 200 Pokemon from prior games. It’s not that Nintendo couldn’t - it’s that they didn’t give themselves the time. I had hoped for free updates in the future to remedy this, and that’s what’s happening. But not in a good way. (They also cut a plethora of Pokemon moves, which was also heavily disappointing, but the loss there couldn’t be felt nearly as much as over half of the total Pokemon being straight-up unavailable. Every one of those is someone’s favorite!)

Even if the memory WAS an issue, there are so many things that were, ultimately, unnecessary to me that they could have done without. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Dexit aside, there’s another issue that needs to be addressed with the Pokedex that I’ve touched on already - distribution of Pokemon. There’s just... way too many, way too fast, and not enough of the new Galar Pokemon to go around. I am a Player who takes the famous tagline ‘gotta catch ‘em all’ fairly seriously. As I progress through the game, I am always compelled to search for every Pokemon on a route and catch, at the very least, the basic form of that Pokemon. While I haven’t managed to complete the Pokedex on my own or build a Living ‘Dex yet, those are both major goals I have.

However, shortly after first stepping into the Wild Area, I was overwhelmed. Too many Pokemon were coming my way, with too many variations in weather meaning it would take ages to catch all the Pokemon available to me in a route before moving forward in the story. While the Wild Area is a marvel, fun to explore, and an amazing way to experience Pokemon, it’s all just too much to throw at you in one huge chunk. Plus, there’s one very annoying, very artificial limitation that just feels completely out of place in a game that traditionally has had nothing quite like this. The Pokemon-catching level cap.

Now, level caps have been talked about among fans of the series, especially those that would like a sort of ‘hard mode’. This is not what they were talking about. Level caps have been used in previous games to prevent a player from transferring or trading overpowered Pokemon to the game and breezing through it as fast as possible. If you don’t have enough badges, the Pokemon will not listen to you, and you’ll be out of luck until you progress. Fans have suggested extending this level cap to all Pokemon, so that potentially even your starter will refuse to listen once it’s too strong. Personally, I wouldn’t enjoy such a change. But that’s why it’s only really suggested for a hard mode.

The way this level cap was implemented, however, was just... bad... I understand why it was done, but it can be put into practice SO much easier with one simple fix - utilizing Routes like previous generations did and closing off the higher-level areas to the player until they have progressed appropriately.

And that brings me to my next talking point.

Routes VS the Wild Area

Pokemon routes have always been included in every game, from the very beginning. They are the segue between towns, holding new Pokemon for you to battle and catch, the majority of free items to be found across the world, and a good few trainers to pit your team against once you’ve gotten past the first little chunk of story. To put it simply, routes are necessary. Without them, all the different towns would be one huge city, and specifically in Sword and Shield, there would be nowhere but the Wild Area to catch Pokemon.

That being said, the routes throughout Galar are... pretty tiny. I’d even say pitiful. What’s more, it seems that most of them have a short, straight path forward that discourages exploration and bettering yourself through battles with wild Pokemon and trainers. Sure, there’s the occasional arbitrary blockade that will force you to take the long way around, but once that’s done with, there’s nothing else to keep your interest. Glimwood Tangle in particular made me realize how far back they cut the routes. There was so much potential to make a sprawling forest out of it, and they just... didn’t. It was tiny. I wanted more, but they left it lacking in so much.

There’s an easy solution to this - making the Routes into mini Wild Areas. And, to accommodate all these huge routes, CUT BACK THE WILD AREA. Trust me - it needs to be smaller. This fixes the Pokemon distribution, the level cap issues, and the tiny routes all in one fell swoop. Instead of having one massive area with a bunch of sub-areas, have each route be bigger, with two to three sub-areas. The balance will make it much more impressive in the long run.

Speaking of balance, let’s talk about how this affected the pacing of the game. Even when I was taking my time, it felt like I was always rushing, rushing, rushing on to the next town. Not to mention, there are far too many options in the story to let you skip over backtracking through a route you’ve already been through. I’ve just finished taking on Milo. I blink. I’m standing in the Pokemon center the next town over, prepping for Nessa’s gym. I just defeated Bea. I blink. Now I’m about to take on Opal. The only time I got a little time to breathe was when I had to travel through the Wild Area to get to the next town. And then it was all just so expansive that I... didn’t want to go back to the story. There were items everywhere. There were Pokemon to catch. I wasn’t done here - I had to explore. I had to find everything. Do all I could. Because that’s what you do in a route, right? You explore and find all the goodies to help you on your journey. So what comes after...?

The Towns

While the towns are gorgeous and each have their own charm, they all feel... almost empty.

Compare to previous games, and it’s obvious to see. Many buildings don’t allow you to go inside and explore. There is a distinct lack of NPCs. And the ‘big’ cities are decidedly small as a result.

Just take a look at Castelia City and Lumiose City. Both are huge, compared to the rest of the locations in the games. They have many buildings, many NPCs to fill them... People needed a map to avoid getting lost in Lumiose! Even in cities that are smaller scale-wise, such as in Alola, they never feel empty. There are plenty of places to go, people to talk to, and things to explore or interact with. You find new things all the time.

Meanwhile in Galar, the only things that seem to give the towns any purpose are the Pokemon gyms. And that is a massive shame. Especially when in prior games, there have been places I will make my way to, just to sit there and take in every little detail of the location, or where I’ll talk to every NPC and soak up all the lore. I go back to murals and statues and unique buildings. I go back to puzzles and the homes of legendary Pokemon. I go back to enjoy the things I’ve seen in a new light and reminisce about my journey. But in Galar... there seems to be very little to reminisce about.

The Story

This is the biggest disappointment for me. If all the rest of the game were awful, as long as the story is good, I can overlook it. As long as the story is good, I can enjoy any game.

This story was not good.

As far as Pokemon stories go, they aren’t all complex, nuanced narratives. In the first games, you fight Team Rocket, who are just in it for the money. In Johto, it’s the same thing, with the addition of a rival that has a touching change of heart in the end. Things get a bit bigger in Hoenn, where the world-ending plots officially start in the form of weather crises caused by Team Aqua and Team Magma. In Sinnoh, the entire universe is threatened when Team Galactic aims to remake the world in their image. In Unova, the morals of you and the rest of the Pokemon world are called into question by PETA-- I mean Team Plasma. In Kalos... rich people want to kill the unworthy poor...? Yeah, I didn’t really get that story much either. And in Alola, you deal with alternate dimension aliens running amok. Safe to say things got quite a bit bigger as time went on.

Now we’re in Galar. Something’s going to happen. Something always happens. But when? How?

We get hints about the Darkest Day. Dynamaxing is still very new and not much is known about it. Sonia is looking into the legendary hero(s) that stopped the Darkest Day. But where’s the evil team? What’s their motivation? Where’s the action? The buildup?? Bede mentions he’s collecting Wishing Stars. Why??? We get to Hammerlocke and learn that the Wishing Stars are for the Chairman. But again, why? He mentions a problem has been bothering Rose concerning all Galar, but it’s such a brief moment that it’s easily dismissed. Where’s the action, or the stakes? Nothing has happened yet except we’re being pushed through the gym challenge as fast as possible.

Fourth gym. No sign of any real trouble yet. Except that jerk Bede just vandalized an ancient mural, just because... he wanted to? Yeah, he’s trying to find Wishing Stars, but literally NO ONE told him to make a spectacle of himself and ruin a piece of history in the process. We’re getting more hints about the past and Galar’s history, but nothing solid on what we’re supposed to be doing. Besides the gyms. EVERYTHING is about the gyms... Oh, and apparently Oleana is the one who asked Bede to collect Wishing Stars. Whatever. What does that have to do with anything?

Five gyms in now, and... Ka-BOOM!

FINALLY!!! Some ACTION!!! Something’s happening at the Power Plant, and Sonia’s detecting a Power Spot! Alright, let’s go! I’m finally going to be able to DO something! I’ll finally be able to see what’s going on and--

“You should leave the investigation on the quaking to the adults. Head to Circhester and get that Gym Badge!”

... What... No! No, I refuse! There must be something to see, even if it’s just Sonia, Leon, and the Chairman standing around after things have already been sorted out. I can talk to them and get a little dialogue on what’s going on! Except they aren’t anywhere to be found. No one around the gym, no one by the Power Plant door, nothing.

Sixth gym. More lore. Seventh gym. Heading out towards Raihan and BOOM! Trouble on Route 9! Leon’s here! NPC says I should go help! Heck yes, I will! It’s about time I got some action out here, it’s almost the end of the game!

Run outside, there’s Leon! And... he dismisses you. Again. Says ‘nope, I’ve got this, gym gym gym, see you!’

No way am I taking that laying down. I’m right on his heels - I should at least be able to see him battling or something, right? But no. In the seconds it takes to run after him, Leon has beaten the threat, he’s gone, and now Hop is waving a news article about the debacle in your face, complete with picture! How the hell did all that happen so fast?! It takes time to write something like that up, never mind the time it must have taken to battle the Dynamaxed Pokemon that Leon faced!

The game is almost over, and what little action you could have seen has been blocked from you because you are a child. And I understand, from a moral perspective, that this is what any sane adult would say to a child. But from a story perspective it is a horribly bad writing choice. It gives you a little taste of the story, a tiny hint at what’s going on, and yanks any real explanation away from you until the very end, where you’re floored by everything happening all at once. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Finally, Professor Magnolia mentions that the issue the Chairman is worried about is the future of Galar’s energy. But... why? We have seen no hints of a problem with that throughout the entire game. No mention of shortages. Nothing about global warming or sustainability. It seems there’s exactly zero reason for anyone to worry, much less turn this into a huge issue that needs to be addressed. It’s one thing if a crisis is there and people are ignoring it. It’s another matter entirely if there is no crisis whatsoever to be seen, even if you look for it. And even if there was any sort of issue, Leon once again tells you to do nothing. Nothing at all.

Eighth gym. On to the Championships. Blah blah, tiny snow route, nothing even remotely close to a Victory Road... In Wyndon now. Still bubcus about an evil team or anything that you can actually DO something about. The Semifinals happen. Leon goes missing.

Suddenly, you’re thrown into a situation you know nothing about to save this miserable dope. And when you get to him... he doesn’t even need any saving! He’s just having a pleasant chat with this jerk! Drag his butt out of there, then the Finals happen. Now you’re gearing up to face Leon himself. Only to be stopped by Rose SUMMONING ARMAGEDDON TO SOLVE A NONEXISTENT ENERGY CRISIS HE SEEMINGLY MADE UP.........

It makes no sense whatsoever. And unlike in Unova, where the interruption to your Elite Four challenge made sense, these TWO interruptions did not. Leon even promised to help Rose after he finished his Championship match against you! Why couldn’t Rose wait a single day? Or even a few hours? ... I digress.

Anyway, Rose awakens Eternatus, who is the source of Dynamax energy. (Necrozma & Totem Pokemon vibes much?) Leon goes up to capture it, just as Rose planned, and gets his butt kicked, not as planned. Meanwhile, the player and Hop made themselves useful for once, went to find the Sword and Shield from legend, and used them to call Zacian and Zamazenta. Together, all four of you defeat Eternatus! Yaaay for yooouuu!!!

...

Oh. And you finally have that Championship battle. Get that win squared away. Finally, but also way too soon, the credits role.

Perhaps I may have been a bit harsh about the story. But with very little to make up for it, I feel justified in everything I’ve said here. But I’m still not done. After all, a story can’t have no one helping the protagonist along. Or hindering them. Severely.

The Characters

Unfortunately, many of the characters were just as bad as the story. However, for the most part, it doesn’t entirely seem like their fault. There just wasn’t enough time spent on them, or the writers handled them poorly.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Hop

He’s a friendly rival. Okay, I can get behind that. But he’s also very self-absorbed throughout the entire story. Why are you even friends with him? He doesn’t once talk to you about anything other than how he’s going to be the next Champion. He cheers you on occasionally, but it’s always overshadowed by him harping on the same things over and over again - his brother is The Best and he will defeat him to become The New Best.

Many people say Hop is very much like Hau. I say that’s an insult to Hau. Hau is a laid-back free spirit who’s only goal starting out is to have fun with his Pokemon. He supports you and gives you items along the way because that’s just his nature. He’s a true friend. And when things get a bit tougher, he realizes he needs to step up and take things seriously if he wants to protect the ones he cares about. So he does.

In my opinion, Hop is more like Green in his approach to you, except a bit more friendly. In fact... I’d say he’s MOST like the Diamond/Pearl/Platinum rival, Barry. They’re both braggarts, self-absorbed, and constantly, casually putting you down even though you’re clearly better than them. Long story short, Hop is infinitely annoying like Barry is annoying. I was shocked at myself for how eager I was to beat Hop evey time, and how uncaring I was when Bede crushed his spirit. Hop’s mopiness and woe-is-me attitude felt very forced, especially since he was always smiling and still constantly talked about how he was going to beat you and Leon both.

Not to mention how his story ultimately ended... But I’ll get to that a little later.

Leon

For as annoying as Hop is, Leon is ten times worse. I can see where Hop got all those self-absorbed tendencies. He strikes a dumb pose every five seconds, goes on about how great and undefeated he is, constantly basks in the attention of his fans... Not an ounce of humility or humbleness in this man. Not to mention, he pretty much abandoned Sonia during their journey together. I couldn’t wait to ruin his whole career. But if there’s one positive thing I can say about him, it’s that his team is legitimately tough. Mostly that demon Charizard.

Sonia

She’s nice enough, and it’s pretty neat to see her on her journey to becoming a full-fledged Professor. But her progression to that ultimate payoff seems pretty rushed, probably because the rest of the story is rushed. Also, she consults with you about many of the legends she digs up, and the dialogue choices ultimately mean YOU are drawing the conclusions while SHE just agrees with them. By all rights, I should be the Professor in this game!

Marnie

Honestly, I don’t have a strong reaction about Marnie either way. She just seems a bit subdued, we don’t see her very much, and there’s no real character arc that we get to see her go through. She’s the same as when we first saw her, only now she knows she’s not going to be the Champion, because you are.

Bede

He’s a little jerk. And honestly? I love little jerks. But only if they’re done right.

Green was a jerk rival that was done right. He didn’t see the error of his ways throughout the entire game. However, come the Johto arc, he is now a gym leader, realizes he was treating his Pokemon poorly, and it’s implied he regrets his harshness towards Red.

Silver was another done right. He was a jerk from the very start, and a thief to boot. He hated you, and Team Rocket, and... all the world really. But as the game progressed, he came to realize that he needed to be kind. And by the end of the game, he has a Crobat. While his abrasive personality is still there, he respects you, and realizes you were right.

Bede, on the other hand, was pushed through the plot. First, he was working his hardest for the sake of the Chairman. Then when he was forsaken, hurt, and lost for a purpose... he wasn’t allowed to find his way himself. Instead, Opal snatched him away and demanded that he become the next Fairy-type gym leader. She even went so far as to force him to change his type preference! What happened to Gothorita and Duosion?! (Don’t get me wrong, I love Opal as a character. She’s probably my favorite out of everyone. But still...)

Bede should have come into his own by his own choice. And since he didn’t, the change seems like it... wasn’t a change at all. He’s still harsh towards you and others, and the respect he says he has for you seems insincere.

Piers

Unlike the rest of the gym leaders, Piers takes a slightly more active role in the plot once the ball FINALLY gets rolling. So I figured I’d talk about him, too. Piers seems... a lot like Nanu. Like A LOT. And that doesn’t really seem to fit with his rocker look or job. He just seems depressed and like he doesn’t want to be here. At least he’s a fairly responsible brother, always making sure Marnie is safe. I never did get past that hair though... Never liked it. But I seem to be in the minority there.

Oleana

She’s just... She seems like a Rose-obsessed Lusamine, instead of Ultra Beast-obsessed. Except her manipulation of children is more subtle. Honestly, I can see her being a formidable villain, and actually a much bigger threat than Rose. If only she was given the opportunity to actually DO more things through the game.

Chairman Rose

Rose is... Well, he doesn’t feel like a villain, if that makes any sense? He’s too placid. Mild. Calm. There’s no anger or any kind of intense emotion. Even when he’s disappointed in Bede, I don’t really... believe it. It’s like he ordered an ice cream and realized it doesn’t come with sprinkles. “Oh. That’s very slightly disappointing. But it’s still ice cream so it doesn’t really matter. It’s fine.” Even if you want to do a villain without strong emotions, there are other ways to do it.

Cyrus, jokingly referred to as having depression by the Pokemon fanbase, is a big example of this. He is very non-expressive, with a flat, almost scary look. He always talks analytically, and philosophically. He even openly scorns emotions. But when he does finally get a bit more heated and unhinged towards the end of the game, it’s a serious business. He feels dangerous.

Rose, on the other hand... doesn’t. He has all this supposed passion for Galar and its future. So much so that he’s willing to risk putting people and Pokemon in imminent danger to fix this energy crisis he seems to have made up... So then where is that passion? Where is his anger and frustration towards Leon? Where is his desperation?

It seems to me that the only energy deficit in Galar is in Rose’s behavior.

We’ve covered a lot now, but still not everything. My main gripes are over, but like every Pokemon game, there’s just a bit more.

The Post-Game

Now the main plot is over, and you’re free to do as you please all across the region. Train up your Pokemon and catch newly available ones, explore places you didn’t go deeper in during the story, get a little extra tidbit of story sometimes... And to its credit, this game did deliver a decent post-game story to follow.

You saved the region. You met the legendary Pokemon. Now you have the Master Ball and it’s implied you can go off and get your featured legendary doggo. Fantastic! But once you make your way into the Slumbering Weald... these guys show up. Oh, and Hop is there moping. And Sonia shows up too, for some reason.

But these guys... These guys were arrogant little jerks from the beginning. And it makes sense once you learn they’re a part of Galar’s royal family - the descendants of the people who supposedly stopped the Darkest Day from happening and saved the region. Of course, now everyone knows that’s not true, and they’re pissed about what this means for them. Their family isn’t anything special. They aren’t anything special. Their status and positions have been taken away and given to Pokemon! It’s insulting to them! (Though they still have a loyal following.)

So what do they do? Pumping Zacian & Zamazenta full of Dynamax energy and causing them to wreak havoc will absolutely turn the people of Galar against them! And the cost? Eh, they don’t much care. As long as the legendary Pokemon look bad and they’re able to retain their status.

Of course, their plan backfires, and in true benevolent legendary fashion, the one legendary they do manage to overload with power does its absolute best to avoid hurting anyone. It’s a touching little story to go on. And what’s more? It actually makes sense! In fact, I would have greatly preferred this story as the main one focused on, rather than the hot garbage we got with Chairman Rose! My only gripe regarding the new story is how ridiculous these two princes are... Really Gamefreak? Swordward and Shieldbert? And that hair?? Do you have no subtlety anymore?

But as for wrapping up the old story... things still fall a bit flat. After the legendaries are calm again and you have your version’s pup, you go after Hop. And he is accepted by the other legendary in the duo. Considering everything he went through to try and get the sword/shield back just now, as well as his concern for and efforts to calm down the legendary, it’s understandable. He’s proven himself in their eyes. But then... he goes and decides to become Sonia’s assistant and work towards being a professor.

How did that happen? Why did it happen? There was no buildup in the slightest before this decision, and it seems very out of character for someone like Hop. He’s not technically minded. While he takes a mild interest in the legends of his home region (who wouldn’t when they’re that fun?), he doesn’t seem interested in doing any actual research. And now that he actually owns a legendary Pokemon, you would expect him to double down on his rivalry with you or at least aspire to do something more... heroic? Exciting? Why would a legendary Pokemon want to hang around when you’re not going to be utilizing them at all?

This extra little story is over very fast. Not only that, but everything you do pertaining to the story is done without having to struggle through a route or many other additional challenges. (Hey, a lot like the main story. Lack of travel/drawn-out struggle leads to pacing issues.)

Additionally, there are no new places to explore after the main story. Which really, REALLY sucks. Every Pokemon game has had more to see afterwards. Kanto had Cerulean Cave. Johto had an entire additional region, plus Mt Silver. Hoenn had lots of legendary Pokemon homes open up to you, plus the Battle Frontier in Emerald. Sinnoh had the entire Battle Zone. Unova had several towns and routes blocked off. Kalos had it’s own last town as well as a couple places you could go for legendaries, like Mewtwo. And Alola had an entire half of Poni Island. Galar has... nothing... Everywhere you can go in Galar, you will have access to before the Championship battle with Leon is over. And that’s a crying shame. They seem to be trying to remedy this with the DLC coming out, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms. I’ll get into that later. First, there still something else I want to talk about...

Dynamaxing and Gigantimaxing

I get why this exists. I really do. Every single region has something that shakes up the way battles are done. Whether it’s more technical, statistic-based changes or something much more obvious. Hold items, double battles, tag battles, triple and rotation battles, Mega Evolving, Z moves, blah blah blah. We all know about that stuff, right? Each of the newer regions has some gimmick to go along with it. This is the Galar version. But unfortunately... when they implemented this change, they decided to get rid of the much-beloved Mega Evolutions entirely.

Now I could understand why they would do this with Z-moves. Dynamaxing is essentially the same thing, with the addition of more HP and the flashy, massive size of Pokemon to go along with it. Though it is disappointing, it’s not really a net loss.

But Mega Evolutions on the other hand... Those were something special.

Mega Evolution could have, potentially, coexisted with Dynamaxing. All it is is making the Pokemon bigger after all, right? A bigger Mega Evolution is doable.

But then the Gigantimax Pokemon come in... and thing start to make less sense. Basically, they made more Mega Evolutions, but named them something different. Why couldn’t they simply be more Megas? People LOVE Mega Evolution Pokemon! No one would have been mad at this! Except the people who, rightfully, say Charizard gets far too much attention. Three Mega Evolutions is a bit much.

But even then, if you’re so insistent on Gigantimax Pokemon being a separate beast entirely, then there’s STILL a way you can make Mega Evolution work in tandem with the new system.

Simply make Gigantimaxed Pokemon a Dynamaxed form of a Mega Evolution.

Okay, I know that was a mouthful and possible hard to wrap your head around, but imagine with me: You’re in a battle. You Mega Evolve your Pokemon. It’s stronger now. But you’re also in the position where you can Dynamax. You do so, and... instead of getting a bigger Mega, your Pokemon changes form a second time. So for example, let’s say you have a Charizard. Mega Evolve it. It is now a Charizard X/Y. Now Dynamax it. It is now the unholy lava abomination you see when you battle Leon. If you had not Mega Evolved beforehand, then it would have grown into a normal, everyday Charizard, But Bigger.

This also takes away a completely arbitrary restriction - that not every Pokemon of a species can Gigantimax. I’m sure everyone knows by now, but let’s go over it again.

You have an Alcremie. You raised it from a Milcery, evolved it with your favorite Sweet, into your favorite flavor, whatever. Maybe it’s one of the strongest contributors to your team. But when you Dynamax it, it does nothing but get bigger. Then you see Opal’s Alcremie and wonder - how can I get my baby to do that? Is there a special item it needs to hold, or some other requirement?

Nope. Your Alcremie just isn’t good enough. It will never Gigantimax, because it was never capable of doing so in the first place.

With Mega Evolution, there is no limitation. You simply need to give your Pokemon the matching Mega Stone for its species and it can Mega Evolve, simple as that. you don’t need to find that certain special creature, when you already have a perfectly good teammate you’re attached to.

What’s more, Mega Evolution could be performed any time, anywhere, in any battle. Dynamaxing and Gigantimaxing is extremely limited to the Power Spots. Keeping Mega Evolution in would have lessened the disappointment of not being able to use the new mechanic casually. This was something that was heavily advertised when the game was first released, and to find out it’s so limited... I think it left a bad taste in a lot of fans’ mouths.

The DLC

Now... on to this... I’ve touched on this before, and I’m sure everyone can tell.

I am not happy.

First, the financial aspect. If you are going to charge $30 for a two-part expansion, make it apply to both game versions. This may not mean much to casual players, since they likely bought only one copy of the game. But to people who bought both, or share the two copies with family, this is a massive slap in the face. You would have to pay double, for the same content, so both versions are updated. That is a low, low blow.

Now, the Pokemon. I’m glad they are introducing new Pokemon (most of which seem to be Galarian forms or new Gigantimax forms), but there seems to be little reason why they held off releasing them in the first place. Legendaries, I understand. Others, not so much. And the over-two-hundred Pokemon that are being reintroduced isn’t something that should get a pat on the back. They’re fixing their own mistake. They shot themselves in the foot and now they’re trying to say “Oh look! We’re improving things! This bloody hole is going to be healed now! How great are we?” The only saving grace to this for me is that the Pokemon being reintroduced will be available to everyone (to transfer or trade over) via the free update mentioned before. And even then, there are still Pokemon missing!

The new areas now. While we have seen snippets by now, there has been nothing really definitive to go on. These new areas will be in the style of the Wild Area - that much has been made clear. But that makes me exceedingly nervous. Will they be empty, devoid of NPCs? What will there be to do? Just how big are these areas? If they are, in fact, exactly like the Wild Area... I am going to be deeply disappointed. Aside from battling/catching wild Pokemon and gathering items, there is very, very little to do in the existing Wild Area. But at the same time, if the area the DLC gives us is too small, everything will feel sparse and rushed, just like the story of the game.

Speaking of story, we aren’t really given anything meaningful about the DLC’s story, either. We were vaguely told that the two separate locations will be focused on the themes of ‘Growth’ and ‘Exploration’, and we were introduced to a small handful of characters that will be central to the story, but that’s about it. You’re training in the Isle of Armor, and you’ve been enlisted to explore the Crown Tundra. That’s all we know. Literally anything could happen. And that, again, makes me very nervous.

Gamefreak have said these DLC are supposed to take the place of the story changes a third game would make. But in this instance, I seriously believe Sword and Shield would have benefited from a second pass. Much like Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon had the “Good Ending” over Sun and Moon, I think a follow-up game could have amended a lot of the issues I’ve laid out. Though I couldn’t say if Gamefreak would have actually committed...

The biggest thing to me here is that... this is not necessary. At all. I feel as though these new locations, as well as the new stories, should have been included from the get-go in the base game. For free. Of course, if the scope of these stories is on par with the main storylines of Pokemon games, I can understand. But if it’s much smaller... I just can’t condone this.

It is a blatant cash grab. One that I can find no excuse for whatsoever. This game, and most everything that has come of it, has been such a dumpster fire that it has drained my love of Pokemon and left me with nothing but anger and a deep, dark disappointment. Gamefreak can do better. Nintendo can do better. I know they can. And I am willing to wait for good content.

They’re just not willing to give their fanbase the time to make that happen.

And speaking of blatant cash grabs...

Pokemon Home

Pokemon fans have been wanting a cloud-based Pokemon storage system for years. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. But compared to Pokemon Bank’s YEARLY fee of $4.99, Pokemon Home’s premium fee for the same amount of time is quite shocking at $15.99 a pop.

So what in the world went wrong here? Why is that price justified? While others have tried to explain it away by listing off all the different features, I say it’s not justified at all. And I’ll detail why below.

You see these graphs? Both of these contain all the points I need to make. And I’ll explain exactly why.

I’ll start from the top of the list and move down.

Transferring Pokemon is only available if you pay money for it. That means that if you want to get the additional Pokemon returning with the DLC releases, you either have to pay for the DLC or you have to pay for Pokemon Home. While transfer between games used to be free, that changed when Pokemon Bank was released. And while many people were understandably upset, the low price and additional storage space that Bank provided was enough for me to accept the change. Pokemon Home, on the other hand, doesn’t deliver enough for its price. It doubles the storage capacity Pokemon Bank had, and it introduces Room Trades. Which, honestly... don’t sound very appealing.

The number of Pokemon that can be deposited for free is... thirty. A single measly box worth. This may be enough for some people, but this, plus the box space in a copy of Sword/Shield, is not even enough to make a Living ‘Dex (if you want to include every different form of Pokemon. Otherwise it’s just barely enough). Not that you could make a Living ‘Dex anyway, with so many Pokemon still cut out. But back to the box capacity. For transferring only, this number might have been okay. But for storage purposes, this is only half a percent of the 6,000 potential Pokemon you could store if you paid up. Not even 1%. It’s 0.5%. It’s outrageous.

Wonder Trades, GTS trades, and Room Trades I’ll do together. For these features, I have little problem with the way they’re set up. The additional slots for trading are actually useful, and it makes sense to put them behind a paywall. This, I would be willing to pay for. Just not pay so much. Especially when this feature was taken out of the base game in the first place. Since the GTS was first introduced in Gen 4 (Sinnoh), it has been a staple of the game and a vital tool for completing the Pokedex, especially if you have no one to trade with in person. Many people were surprised and upset to find that the only trading function left in the base Sword & Shield games was the Surprise Trade, which is essentially Wonder Trade with a new name. However, while it is a little reassuring to have these features free to use, there is still a major limitation. It can only be done on the mobile phone version of Home.

This is something that has never existed before. You have never needed any device other than your gaming console. And to not have trades available in the Switch version as well is completely absurd. How do they expect children to use this? While tablets and smartphones have become more and more common, I doubt the vast majority of children have a device that is purely their own. They will have to nag their parents to download the app, and then further pester them each time they want to trade. Why not have that a part of the Switch version in the first place? It would be much more streamlined. I understand the practicality of having a Home app - I really do. It makes moving from Go to Home easier, I’m sure, and you now have added mobile usage when your Switch is out of range of an internet connection. But blocking features from the Switch makes no sense whatsoever.

Continuing on to the Judge function. Again, this was a feature that was removed from the main game. Not only that, but this time it is locked completely behind the paywall. When this feature came out just last generation, many competitive breeders were ecstatic. They no longer had to jump through hoops to determine that there was a Perfect IV baby in the hundreds, sometimes thousands of eggs they just hatched - they could see it right on the screen. And as a casual player, it was cool to see how many breedjects I ended up with. But it seems Gamefreak gave us a taste of a very good thing, then yanked it away, like candy from a baby.

On to the second chart. I already talked about the trading limitations, so I’ll skip over that. And it makes sense that moving Pokemon from the Switch games would be Switch Home exclusive, in addition to receiving Battle Points. There is nothing on your phone that can make use of BP. However, there are more phone restrictions that make no sense. Why can’t you receive Mystery Gifts or check Battle Data/News on the Switch? It’s certainly capable of it. Mystery Gifts in particular are another frustrating problem on par with the trading issue. The other two features I wouldn’t mind being mobile exclusive.

All in all, Pokemon Home is another hot mess for Gamefreak and Nintendo.

Conclusion

I know I’ve been rough on this new generation. Arceus knows I was pretty brutal, especially where the story was concerned. But that’s only because I know they can do better. Up until this point, we’ve been given some games that were downright masterpieces. I am highly disappointed in the creators, and I hope with all my heart they listen to their fans and do better going forward. Even if that means we have to wait a little longer.

What’s more, I seriously hope they don’t continue to financially extort their market. Charging this much for something so rushed and poorly executed is an insult. And if it continues... I’m afraid of where the Pokemon franchise may be headed.

That’s all. I’m sorry if I stepped on some toes here, but these are all my honest opinions. I hope that some of these things have validated others’ feelings, too, and perhaps that people look at some of these issues in a new light.

PS, I’m sorry for any abrupt tonal shift that might be seen between the “Characters” and “Post-Game” sections. I had to stop writing to go to bed, but then I didn’t get around to finishing until nearly a month later.

#Pokemon swsh #swsh critical #Pokemon Home #swsh #isle of armor #crown tundra #pokemon #pokemon critical

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fuse2dx · 4 years

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August ‘20

Ruiner

Ruiner frames its action at an isometric tilt. There’s a lot of red; in the game’s interface, as the prominent colour of the neon lighting that adorns its stages, and in the blood that is frequently spilled. Its cyberpunk setting isn’t anything particularly new, but as a unifying aesthetic, the glitchy effects, and out-there personalities doing their best to cope in a dystopia do well to build a convincing and intriguing world. Stages are action packed and throb with electronic noise and big loud industrial bass hits, with the play being akin to an arena shooter; enemies surging at you in bite size, minute-at-a-time waves, with each of these closing out with a grading screen serving as the pat on the back to keep that dopamine rhythm pulsing. It’s a pretty hypnotic cocktail.

These stages evolve out of a singular hub city, and while it’s not particularly big, there’s just the right level of hubbub, and it has a lovely Hirusawa Susumu track acting as an excellent, melancholic mood-setter. Based on the size of its world and the the quick-fire action being split between a very small number of stages, it’s not surprising to say it’s fairly brief - I mean, how could it get so big? But what is important is that it’s plenty of fun and and has style by the bucketload. I got a good kick out of it.

Carrion

On one hand, a horror game where you play the horror is just the kind of flip on a genre that’s needed to freshen things up a bit. On the other, it’s one straight out of the spoof ‘Peter Molydeux’ playbook. What a carri-on.

... I’m sorry. After your initial escape from a lab, Carrion centres around a hub world, with individual stages then breaking off to allow for more specific themed stages. What you’re trying to do within these is to spread your big, goopy self around, where certain spots will act as save points but also count toward unlocking an alternative path back to the hub and opening up new routes in the process. What’s unique to this particular metroidvania take is that while there are new skills that open up new routes, your movement in general is uniquely freeform - point in a direction and off you go, free of any worries about platforming and the gravity that’d otherwise bind you. While it may not be the most precise movement given the size to which you grow - and boy does this become a point during some forms of combat - it does remain responsive, and quite fun to simply shamble about like a giant congealed blob of bloody, multi-toothed sinew-y mess. Everything scales up nicely on both sides of the fighting, with distraught pistol-equipped humans turning to shielded folks with flamethrowers, all the way up to drones and mechs that are just as mobile and / or deadly as yourself, even in spite of your own upgrades that allow for more ranged, varied, and sharper extremities. It’s not especially long, and is never so taxing as to demand too much expertise of you, but it is fun and importantly, quite unlike anything else out there.

Yoku’s Island Express

Pinball continues to feel like a lost art form to me, with the nuance of skilled play being more like a foreign language than another type of game you can easily pick up. Yoku, newly-appointed postmaster, is but a tiny little bug, and as such is indebted to these skills in his efforts to travel and clamber about an environment much larger than he. Flippers are casually littered about to shoot you from one area to the next, but there’s also plenty of sections you’re led to by the story that are small yet just detailed enough to play like a neatly sectioned off area of a complete table - complete with requirements for precise shots to move forward, and those inevitable moments where you have to sit back and watch as your ball falls with miserable, exacting precision between the flippers. Failure typically sets you back a few pickups, but given these are just as quickly re-earned, you’re never punished too hard - there’s certainly no three strikes and out mentality here. It’s a very friendly interpretation of pinball’s mechanics, and there’s a decent enough story layered on top, with its characters and art demonstrating enough pleasant charm that you can definitely see this being a great way to introduce pinball to a younger audience. That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable from an older player’s point of view - just that you know what’s being presented is a wisely palatable version of a classic hobby, rather than the arse-kicking ordeal you may be used to.

Rime

I am certain that Rime would love me to compare it to a certain Fumito Ueda PS2 game. There’s the ultra-minimal scene that’s set as a boy washes up on an island; a sparse, beautiful, somewhat Mediterranean set of landscapes, and with very few ways to interact with it all that don’t involve clambering over things or shouting out in wordless desperation. But as you’ll have noted, I haven’t found it in myself to justify using that game’s name here.

As much as I wanted to give this a chance, it often felt directionless, uninspired, and at worst, slow and tedious. The puzzles are derivative of any number of games I’ve played before, and the biggest danger is that you might assume as to their difficulty and over-engineer your approach, rather than not be able to tackle them. The platforming is simplistic and regularly drawn out with ledges, ledges, and more ledges to climb across and dangle from; even if you were to find a way to fall to your doom, as is tempting, it is unlikely to take you back much further than a few seconds. Crucially, there’s really very little to sink your teeth into on any front, and even when the game does finally start to weave some plot threads into the game’s canvas, it’s well into the latter half - long after I’d already racked my brains for any hint of an allegory that’d fit, and given up on expecting one. Sadly, to the point that the actual story felt like a cheap afterthought when it did finally start to unravel. This bounced off me much harder than I’d expected - I came away wishing it had forged a bit more of an identity and a purpose rather than just an aesthetic strung together with some weak elements of play.

If Found

As far as interactive elements in visual novel-type games go, If Found has a different approach to most. The story’s primarily told by means of a diary - one that’s full of witty observations, personal reflections and enigmatic sketches - that you actively erase as a means to push events along. The diary belongs to Kasio, a trans girl returning to their small Irish hometown after a stint away at university in the city; a return that’s not met in the warmest or most understanding fashion. As a mechanic, the erasure of this diary is loaded with meaning; peeling back layers of a scene often matches a more poignant set of observations, and the scrubbing of such personal details away offers a painful reflection on an identity being chipped away at. It’s very much a story about finding one’s self, about coming of age, and as it rides these highs and lows it does an excellent job in making you ride along these alongside the characters, and it does one hell of a job to make you think about the compassion that you both see and offer in the world outside. I’ll put my hands up and say that there are some elements of the story running in parallel to this main one that didn’t gel with me quite so well, but this is a minor footnote to an otherwise highly enjoyable play through. In a short space of time, Annapurna have done a great job in winning me over with their publishing choices - particularly in holding up the kinds of voices and ideas that fit these smaller titles so perfectly.

Double Kick Heroes

It’s a rhythm game. I like rhythm games! It’s about a zombie apocalypse. Oh no. It’s... a heavy metal rhythm game? Ok, maybe we can work with this.

After a trailer name dropping a bunch of familiar artists - Jinjer, Carpenter Brut, Gojira - what surprised me straight off was that none of these licensed artists featured in the game’s story mode. They’re all sectioned off in a separate menu, and while on the bright side they’ve each given a unique stage with a visual theming in keeping with the bands in question, it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. Instead, all tracks throughout the story were composed by just one person, and with only a small handful of featured musicians being included to diversify things. It starts with more (arguably) palatable hard rock numbers, but goes up to and includes grindcore, death metal, black metal and the like, meaning that not only is it going to put a lot of folks off right away, but that it’s asking a heck of a lot for one composer to cover all of these sub-genres with the appropriate care. While it was refreshing to hear some types of music I’d normally not expect to hear in a game, some tracks inevitably grated, and while I enjoyed some others, I wasn’t ever bowled over too strongly either.

The story itself is fairly by the numbers. It sees an on-tour band fighting back against a zombie uprising, and has unsubtle references to any number of heavy artists, albums and songs shoe-horned in at every opportunity. It also bears the hallmarks of its dialogue being written by someone that has a very particular sense of humour which personally all fell very flat. While the team undoubtably do love music, the over-enthusiastic style rubbed me in a similarly uncomfortable fashion as Jack Black does regularly, with his half-comedian, half-musician schtick. The gameplay itself is based around the drum parts of its songs also corresponding to different weaponry on your car that holds the hordes back, and while this on its own can prove tricky, higher difficulties also mounts other expectations - like steering your vehicle, or alternating pedals to shoot different parts of the screen. Some of my frustration with all of this is likely my own fault for having chosen to play on the ‘Hard’ difficulty, but traditional wisdom feels a little bit lost when you can still get damaged when your combo meter is racked up well into triple digits.

In all, Double Kick Heroes presented some pretty unique gaming scenarios; like having to work out the best controller configuration to play blast beats with, or asking out loud “did I just hear the words ‘we are Genital Absolution’ coming from a Nintendo console?”, and it’s clearly a small team working on something they really care about. I respect that. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I was hoping, but I hope they’re proud of what they’ve created.

Manifold Garden

A puzzle game taking significant inspiration from the works of M.C. Escher is a pretty good starting point in my eyes. It being presented in a wonderful manner certainly doesn’t harm either; from the UI all the way into the game, it’s beautifully clean and defined, opting for delicate shading rather than messy textures, and with its intricate, recursive geometric patterns, you’ll likely find cause to stop and take stock on a regular basis.

One button looks after your basic interactions with the world (pushing, picking up, and so on), with your other crucial way of interacting with the world being the ability to approach a surface and then assign it as ‘the new down’ - spinning everything about an axis, planting your feet to it, and changing your perspective on everything. There’s a nice steady introduction of puzzle pieces as you ease your way in, but they all stem gracefully from these simple mechanics. That I - not the world’s greatest puzzle gamer - was able to enjoy this without every getting too stuck may hint at it perhaps not being as complex as some puzzle fiends might desire, however this amounted to me coming out the other side with great waves of satisfaction, and nought but positives to say. I would go so far as to say that it’s the most fun I’ve had playing a puzzle game in a long, long time, and to boot it’s also perhaps the game where I’ve used the screenshot button the most copiously. Wonderful stuff.

#ruiner #carrion #yoku's island express #rime #double kick heroes #manifold garden

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