#hater mode

[cobcannonfan1997]

The real issue of calling games "metroidvanias" is not that it is a stupid name, it is that "metroidvania" as a genre does not exist. There are Castlevanias and there are Metroids and everyone's trying to make a Metroid because none of the game dev youtubers they watch as their only source of game design knowledge have ever played a castlevania game. (They've all only played Hollow Knight)

The only real similarity that Metroid and Castlevania have is that the old games had a map UI that looks almost the same if you ignore all the details beyond the map squares themselves. Castlevania is an action RPG franchise first and foremost with a focus on combat encounters and smaller tighter maps with a variety of weapons and where the actual progression is a minor element, whereas Metroid is almost solely focused on making the progression feel smooth and generally much more designed around the platforming challenge of it all and actually finding your way around. Finding your way around in castlevania isn't generally all the challenging, the challenge is mostly in the enemy encounters.

With indie metroidvanias, you'd think they would be taking more cues from a variety of sources and thus making it less clear-cut and adding meaning to the genre, but no it's all hollow knight or super metroid. When you say metroidvania those are the only games that people think of because, frankly, nobody has made another good one yet because they're all stuck on these two.

Hollow Knight DOES have good combat, however that does not make it a Castlevania. It doesn't have that sort of character customization that symphony of the night and the 'vanias after it did that I think is crucial for the vibe of those games. Neither do any of the other indie metroidvanias really, cause we're in an age where tightness in design is above all else. If you have like 30-40 weapons that act slightly different that makes things difficult to balance this enemy type to work exactly the way you want it to work for every player! If a player's moveset is smaller then by default it's going to be much easier to design things that are way tighter and impressive for that one exact moveset. God forbid there is a sequence break or, even worse, a bug that lets the player play the game in a way that is unintended by the developers.

In conclusion: Super Metroid gives you a wall jump that you're never required to use, people (read: youtubers) praise this as good design. If you did it today, those same people would call it bad design. And thus "metroidvanias" cannot afford to be inspired by neither Metroid nor Castlevania, because people just want Hollow Knight 2. Well I want a good version of Order of Ecclesia

[boccher]

random nonmutual im following posts some stupid shit twice in a row, we shall mindfully unfollow and not engage any deeper

[cookiethebirddoll]

one issue i had with baldurs gate 3, apart from having not the best story and being broken worse than many bethesda games, is that the cutscenes are terribly uninteresting with awful cinematography. i mean i guess its not that unusual in the genre, but with how much of the game is cutscenes, it kinda sucks how its always character's face at an angle, other character's face at the same angle, back and forth. thats it. and its just like character idle animations

[leori-the-unlearned]

sad to say but sometimes i am a hater (and in this post the thing i am a hater of is specifically the neo diamond cutters in da idw comic of sonic)

now i dont MIND them as a team and i was hyped at first! but thats kinda. decayed. under the readmore are my thoughts on them (long & rambly)

theres a few reasons to it: the visual designs next to each other, the team dynamics, the way tangle is treated in those dynamics, the reason the team even formed, the way they had tangle take the diamond cutters name so insensitively… i really *don’t* like them as they are that much, although i still dont ‘hate’ the team as a concept

visual designs: their color schemes overlap so much and not necessarily in a good way. every color used on one is used on the others in some form, which kinda blends them together instead of building separate identity. looking at other 3-man sonic teams highlights this: not just sonic tails knuckles being distinct primary colors, but even team dark that overlaps in black and reds is still distinct thru shadow and omega’s body shapes, rouge having pink instead of red, AND having different concentrations of each color. the neo diamond cutters/NDC have two majority white characters, both of whom wear yellows and browns and warm tones, and then one character who is yellow and brown and warm and wears cold gray tones. their shapes do stand out with tangle’s stripes and tail, lanolin’s puffs, and whisper’s angles, but still all the white is super same-y (and it gets worse when silver teams up with them). and the character designs aren’t bad on their own - but they’d work so much better together to be tweaked imo, maybe by working more purple into tangle’s design with her eyes (which is a color neither of the others use), and finding a way to give whisper a bit more of a peppy outfit (her extreme gear fit works SO well for this, the blue is cute on her and works great with the gold in a different way than it works with tangle’s white and purple with gold), and then lanolin can kinda stay the dusty down-to-earth tones, maybe work in green somewhere..

then my next point….. why does tangle stay with them i know the reason they gave her is she wants to stick close to whisper, but why is she back in a team with authority over her and responsibility and specific missions? isn’t that why she left the restoration - besides to be free to go find whisper, to be able to go where she wants and be helpful where she feels she’s needed? i can’t see tangle being content with this setup for very long, especially as it is where lanolin is clearly like their commander/boss. seeing that scene with lanolin slapping the paddleball out of tangle’s hand instead of asking her to stop - based on what they show in the comic, lanolin went right to smacking around instead of communicating, and based on what tangle says, didn’t even communicate to tangle that she wanted her to stop. tangle, who HAS been shown to be fairly good at self-correcting and staying within boundaries with whisper. it’s sure not the only part of their dynamic but the fact it was there is, man,, additionally tangle herself is getting slandered this arc, particularly by recharacterizing her as a rookie who hadn’t done any fighting until sonic showed up - issue 4, tangle’s introduction, explicitly contradicts this by showing tangle already easily handling badniks before sonic and her even first see one another!!!

for the purpose of this NDC team layout where lanolin and whisper are Good At Things and tangle is the rookie who needs their training and doesn’t even know how to fight, they’re scratching out the parts of tangle that made her so cool and fun! and it’s so frustrating seeing the character i like being written so wrong, i want to make a separate analysis post just for how recent issues contradict or build friction with recent tangle vs how she was in earlier issues.

additionally, if whisper’s trying to move on from her past and the diamond cutters, the better way to show that narratively isn’t by forcing whisper into another team, it’s letting her function outside a team, with her friends - the way tangle does. so instead pushing tangle into whisper’s box having a team, it grates all that down into ‘but what if they were secret agents sorta’. (oh, and all had wisps except tangle. is she allergic to wisps or something, or are they trying not to give tangle anything else special because she has her tail, despite whisper having *5* wisps not being too many?)

i guess i dont really have a conclusion besides ‘i hope tangle realizes she isnt having a good time here and that adhering to the standards other people hold for her instead of playing to her own strengths is holding her back and goes and spends time with literally anyone besides whisper and lanolin’, but i really wish this team hadn’t started at all, or at least ended up as a one-off instead of a recurring unit that isolates each member from anyone else in the comic unless they join the team. it pulls tangle and whisper away from potentially more interesting situations and interactions with other characters and pushes them into a structure, even ignoring what the writers had to break (ie tangle) in order to force them into that structure. and tangle clearly came out the worst among the three of them, but i think they all kinda hurt for it.

and hey, if you disagree- well first, why did you read all this if you knew i was just gonna be hating on the thing you like?- you’re free to share your standpoints! i’m not committed to thinking of NDC as Bad and Awful, but the things done with them have made the comic less enjoyable to me, so i’m not inclined to like the team very much. and i don’t dislike the characters themselves, just this specific way they’re stuck together. even lanolin, my least favorite, still has good points but is kinda kept in her ‘unlikable’ state by being stressed and put supervising the other two when she doesnt like it.

[powderflower]

netflix IS a joke

[cowboysmp3]

not to be a hater but this badge is. CLUTTERING my notifs tab like i get it but MOST PEOPLE who interact with my posts follow me i dont need this

[outta-trouble]

i hate when you ask for "how much do i leave it in for?" and they say "a little bit" LIKE HOW MUCH IS A LITTLE BIT™ 5 MINUTES OR 15 SECONDS

[dieletztepanzerhexe]

I hate pin up so much its completely unreal

[sassyshin]

I wish I could just remove some starting relics from is2 hard mode tbh

The one that makes operators cost more and the one that gives me less command exp from fights

I just reset when I get those so it would save me some time

[appleboxdog]

I love these fools so much. I hope in the end they stay together or keep in touch. I heart them its like the dad who didn’t want a cat but loves the cat

[foreskin-dealer]

This guy really just has ONE idea and just runs with it

[girlwithlionmane]

I know I sound pretentious when I say this but ohhh my god can people stop saying “whenever” when they mean “when”

[disgracefulthings]

One of my favorite tropes in SVSSS fics is Shen Yuan's inability to understand that not everyone finds Luo Binghe hot. Like Luo Binghe will commit atrocities and after Shen Yuan is like 'i don't understand why everyone isn't falling at his feet. He committed war crimes? Yeah, and he looked good doing it so where's the problem?'

I like to think that he thinks everyone who dislikes Luo Binghe are actually evil. They could be doing good things, but the moment they side-eye Luo Binghe, Shen Yuan is on to them. Clearly they are bad and they are faking being good!

On the other hand, he is convinced that everyone he likes secretly also like Luo Binghe, even if they tell Shen Yuan otherwise. Liu Qingge for example would tell him how much he hates Luo Binghe, but Shen Yuan is like 'Aw, Liu Qingge is so shy. If I didn't know better, I would think he's telling the truth, but from experience, his actions speak louder than words, and what does he do every time he sees Binghe? He fights him! Because he knows about demon culture and is trying to make Binghe feel at home!'

Basically I love Shen Yuan being as obsessed about Luo Binghe as Luo Binghe is about him

[vebokki]

they're judging you unfortunately

[shvroyism]

idgaf about the changed lyric discourse because better than revenge is my least favorite speak now song anyway and I only listen to it every 74 years

[outta-trouble]

nah nah fr, there's def good people here but there will be that one (1) person saying they're canon x or y, or that "they would not say that",

have you ever read crack fanfiction honey, it seems you haven't, i kindly invite you too, maybe it helps getting the stick off yo ass

most oldgen sonic fans are so annoying like bfr why can't people have ships or hcs have you ever been in a fandom