#pretty satisfied with the titans return version though but most cause the one I got was the one with her sword

[super-saiyan-rose]

ALSO IS THAT WINDBLADE IN YOUR PROFILE!!! MY FAVORITE!!!!

It is Windblade, won a raffle from neorice and picked her as the character to get art of. She became one of my favorite characters when I jumped back into transformers a while ago.

[m00nslippers]

Jason is a clever bitch and I love him, in RHATO Issue #32

Okay now we’re finally moving Jason closer to the Winick version that I think is most people’s favorite Red hood--it’s not there yet, but we’re seeing the hints. The cleverness, the charm, the unrepentant sass. Oh yes, we are going places, I like what I see.

Let’s dive in here.

Whoever made that post about Jason not even needing a cover story about being dead to revive his identity was kind of prophetic because here his cover is basically, “So I wasn’t actually dead. no more details, that’s it.” Which is pretty dang close.

And I’m not sure how he managed any of this without Bruce or Alfred finding out but that is damn impressive. We know they didn’t know because we see Alfred’s reaction shot to seeing him on TV. If we don’t see him interact with a few of the other Gotham vigilantes, (or at least see a reaction shot of them all like, “What!? Jason?! The guy we had to physically blackmail to attend galas is running a casino with parties every night? That Jason?!) at some point I’m going to be pretty disappointed, to be honest.

Also, as we already knew from the solicitations and previews, Jason is taking over the Iceburg lounge and looking fancy while he does it. I love it. Jason can put on an act with the best of the batboys. Look at this well dressed man! And his hair! He has hair again, praise the Lord, hallelujah!

Completely unrelated note, that reporter has some really fancy cuff earrings or something and I’m jealous.

I’m validated for noticing Suzie Su was behind Jason in the previews. She and her sisters are part of his crew basically. It’s actually nice to see villains/characters return, too often they are just one-shot or one-note baddies but Suzie has been there since New 52 RHATO and she got a bit of humanization in the Annual when we meet her sisters. She’s not just some creepy fat lady that creeps on Jason, she’s a big sister who is trying to do her best for her family and I like that Jason acknowledges that and brings her and her family in on his scheme and even gets them out of the crime business sort-of by giving them mostly legit employment.

The way he has a bunch of ladies following him around kind of reminds me of Dick with the girls from St. Hadrian's a little bit. But they were all super into Dick and these girls don’t seem interested in Jason at all except as like a boss, which I like.

Jason, this is the kind of thing you should ask about! Ugggghh ~

Wingman looked older in the last page of the previous issue for some reason, maybe he’s died his hair or something. So we still don’t know what’s going on with him. I was hoping we’d get something, a hint but we’ve literally got nothing to go on here. I honestly think he has some kind of direct relation to Jason. Either he’s his dad’s mind in a different inmates body, or maybe a lost cousin or brother or something, or has something to do with the future like he came from there. It’s got to be one of those things, nothing else makes sense that I can think of.

LOOK AT MY BEAUTIFUL BOY! JUST LOOK AT HIM. LOOK AT THOSE EYELASHES AND BLUE EYES AND THAT SMILE.

Anyone would be charmed. I think Jason is too much of an introvert to like this kind of public job exactly, but I also think he’d be good at it. Dick might be better, because he’s just a natural extrovert, but Jason is still up there. He’s a good actor, and he really cares about people so he’d take care of those he’s in charge of. Jason would be a good boss.

“Started from the bottom now we’re here,” that’s a Drake lyric.

Could these guys be bigger dorks?

Notice that Jason didn’t kill the guys that were causing trouble, he had Miggs (his nickname for Miguel) roll them off to the docks in a ball made with his powers and those dorks were totally right, the room he made was pretty gucci. You got taste, Miguel.These weren’t necessarily real bad guys, they were just punks, and Jason might be killing again but he doesn’t just kill any idiot that gets in his way or causes trouble.

Also, technically they might have been right about Night cheating, we don’t actually know how ‘legit’ the Su sisters are playing things.

I’m sort of torn on the way the colorist is depicting Miguel’s powers, like I miss the glowiness a little bit from New 52 Teen Titans. These look a little too much like normal bricks? But technically that might be better for Miguel, they can pass as normal bricks instead of a power when they have to. They looked clear or white before when the guys walked in there so maybe he can control their color/transparency and glowiness? I still would like to see them look glowy though.

A few things about Miguel: I think these panels illustrated pretty well what their dynamic is supposed to be. I know Jason called Bizarro his ‘friend’ but let’s be honest here, Bizarro isn’t Jason’s friend--he’s his little brother.

Jason compares Miguel to Bizarro and I think that’s key, he sees Miguel as like a little brother that he wants to help. He’s got powers that he doesn’t understand and people keep coming after him for them. I think with Miguel and Tim it was closer to a friendship of equals at least as far as Miguel saw. He admired and respected Tim as a leader and how he always seemed to know what to do, but in the end Miguel was older than Tim, he didn’t feel like he could completely lean on him. It looks like Miguel may have latched on to Jason in that way, since he has the bat-authority too and actually is older than him and a genuinely caring guy. And look at my boy Jason! He comforts and accepts him immediately, it’s so sweat.

Goddamn it, Jason is a good older brother! He’s the best freaking older brother, damn Bruce and the whole family’s bat-morals, man! You’re all missing this! He could have this with Tim and Damian and Duke and even Steph and Cass! He would love that! He would be so good at that! It’s a goddamn tragedy, is what it is.

Also it’s interesting how Miguel acknowledges the reboots, so are his powers related to reality-warping or something so he can sense it? Or it could just be more of this suggestion that a lot of people in the DC universe right now have memories from the previous continuity, so like it all kind of happened even if it technically didn’t type of thing. I kind of thought Miguel’s powers were energy projections made with his mind, like psionically, but maybe they are literally creating matter or something? I don’t know. I really need to read more New 52 Teen Titans to understand him and his powers.

And that line, “A loaded weapon in the hands of a confused teenager. What could go wrong?”

Wow, Jason, you really went there. Referenced you’re own crazy head-state when you went after Bruce in Under the Hood.

Jason is so self-deprecating, you guys.

“When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer. “ This is apparently a quote from Die Hard, because of course it is. Jason is literally Jake Peralta from Brooklyn 99 confirmed.

Ugh, Lobdell’s version of Bruce is just such an asshole!

First of all, Jason hasn’t ‘betrayed him’ not even once, he was emotionally compromised and broke their agreement because he was acting on those feelings. He made a mistake. And Bruce cared more about his rules than Jason’s intentions or feelings or any of the good will they’d fostered in the last year or two. He acts like Jason sold him out or lied to him, when he never did any of those things.

Also, I don’t think saying, “stay out of Gotham and never come back or I’ll throw down and toss you in Arkham” is another chance, okay? It’s not like Jason got anything out of that deal, it was just Bruce not wanting to go through the trouble of hunting him down outside of Gotham because he straight-up knew that he wouldn’t be able to!

That Pretty Woman reference...

The funny thing is, Jason is more like the character who says that line than Bruce is. Bruce, kicking Jason out of the bat-family, is the one who is making the mistake. He could have had an ally, had say in what Jason did, had some limited control over him if he’d just forgiven him or talked to him at all, but because of his pride now he has none of that.

Now this, this is my shit right here. JASON HAS BRUCE BY THE BALLS. By going public with his identity he’s effectively made himself untouchable by Bruce. He’s got the identity of every Gotham vigilante in his hands, and honestly I really doubt Jason would ever give them up, even out of spite or hatred, he never did before when he could have, (he didn’t tell Hush Bruce’s identity, he just didn’t deny it when Hush figured it out, and we’re not sure if that’s even canon anymore anyway.) but it’s partly Bruce’s own doubt in Jason that is keeping his hands tied! That and the fact that if even one of his kids is outted as a vigilante it really puts the suspicion on him.

But seriously guys. Smart Jason is what Iive for.

God, Jason calling him dad, but only because he’s ‘playing up the act’ of civilian Jason Todd, has got to hurt Bruce. Assuming Lobdell’s version of Bruce has any actual feelings of affection for Jason, otherwise it probably just grates.

Lol, okay, so the situation seems to be that Jason dropped in to the Iceburg lounge to pay Penguin a visit. Cobblepot went, “Oh no! That damned Red Hood is here, hide me!” Ran into his panic room and locked it and Jason was just like, “Well, isn’t this convenient,” and made it so he couldn’t get back out.

And then presumably gangster-rules applied and Jason just got all his businesses because he said they were his and no one wanted to argue? I guess? Lobdell doesn’t give satisfying explanations, you guys. This is a testament to that.

I’m not going to lie though, this is pretty satisfying.

Alright, so I’m really excited for more you guys. This is not a perfect issue, a lot of things are hand waved, Bruce is acting even more out of character than usual, and we still have no dang clue what’s going on with Wingman, but there are definitely things here I like, and i’m looking forward to more.

[gamesception]

KH3 first play through retrospective, part 2

This time, about the core gameplay & combat mechanics (again putting the stickier story stuff off till I have more time).  To avoid burying the lead, KH3 has my second favorite gameplay in the series.  Not quite as good as KH2, but a big step up from the various portable spinoffs that came after.

Edit: sorry, mobile ate the read more break

Right off the bat, magic is back to the KH2 system with mp recharge, cure putting you straight into recharge, customizeable L1 shortcut menu, etc, and to me that’s just a much more engaging system than the various decks and refresh timers of BBS and DDD.  You can even freely work spells into your keyblade combos again, so you could, for instance, open with an aero to collect some enemies, land a few keyblade hits on them, and finish off with an aoe thunder finisher.  The spells themselves aren’t quite as diverse as in KH2.  There’s no reflect equivalent, and aero, this game’s magnet equivalent, isn’t nearly as effective.  But they did bring back some of KH2′s gimmick of enemies sometimes reacting in particular ways to different spells.  For instance, there’s a dandelion monster with fluffy armor that you can blow away with aero, and the game never explicitly tells you this, there’s just a scene where Rapunzel blows some dandelion seeds and the game leaves it to you to make the connection, and that’s kind of cool and clever.  Not as much of that as I would like, and honestly even if you don’t find and exploit these weaknesses most enemies fall quickly and easily enough even on proud mode that you might play through and not even notice them, but it’s cool that those deeper aspects of the spells are there again.

As for just bopping enemies with your keyblade, melee combos are mostly pretty snappy and satisfying, most enemies & even bosses will stagger letting you get in combos if you’re able to land the first few hits.  Air recovery reprisals, dashes & dodges, and blocks, parries, & counters all work well & feel good, though I’m not sure yet if they feel as good as in kh2.  There are fewer keyblades to use in this game, but they can be upgraded so they can all stay relevant to the end, allowing you to use whichever keyblade you like, and they each come with their own shotlocks and, of course, form changes, which was a big part of the hype buildup for the game.

And those keyblade form changes really deliver.  Each keyblade has it’s own form changes that you work up to by landing combos with them, and limits that you can use in their final form change for big damage.  Now, you can just pick a favorite and just exclusively use it, and that’s mostly what I did (my personal favorite being the pirates keyblade with its spear-like transformations), but you can also switch between up to three equipped keyblades at a time, even mid combo, and if you build up the combos to open the forms, you can then bank those forms by switching to a different keyblade for a while, and then when you need the power up you can switch back to a keyblade that has a form change ready to go.  Or you can enter the form and switch keys, and the duration on that form will pause until you switch back.This isn’t something the game tells you or that you ever need to do either, it’s just a neat trick there to reward players who engage with the game’s mechanics.

The keyblade form-changes also change how your magic works.  For instance, the fire spells are by default long range projectiles like they were in KH1, but in the Hammer form of the melee-oriented toy story keyblade fire becomes a close range aoe to punish enemies that crowd around you, like it was in KH2, and this aspect further encourages experimentation with both your keyblades and your spells.

Now, there are some missed opportunities with the keyblade system in KH3.  For instance, dual wielding was a really cool aspect of a few of the drive forms in KH2, and none of the keyblades in KH3 have dual-wielding form changes.  At least, not to my knowledge, there are some hidden keyblades I never unlocked.  Also, there are relatively few returning keyblades from previous games.  The oblivion and Oathkeeper in particular are kind of notable in their absence.

There is one form change that isn’t based on your keyblade - rage form, kh3′s version of kh2′s antiform, which seems to become available based on taking a bunch of damage quickly.  In kh2, antiform was basically a punishment for using drive forms too much, temporarily locking you out of spells, items & reaction commands.  You got powered up physical combos, but loss of reaction commands in particular made it difficult to actually fight in antiform and you mostly just had to ride it out.

Rage form is similar in that you lose spells, items, and situation abilities while using it in exchange for powered up melee combos, but since you have to activate rage form voluntarily, and entering it fully heals you, and situation abilities aren’t critical to combat the way reaction commands were, this is a risk/reward choice rather than just a punishment.  that aspect is enhanced by rage forms own triangle command, risk charge, which ups your damage but cuts your health in half.  activate this three times to unlock the finisher which deals a bunch of aoe damage and ends the form.  Of course, you could just play risky, risk charge three times, and ride out the form’s duration doing stupid melee damage and save the finisher for the end, but since you can’t heal while the form persists doing so is obviously, well, risky.

As a result, where antiform was cool but frustrating, rage form is cool and fun, and I used it almost every opportunity I got, even if doing so did cause me to suffer a few extra deaths along the way.

Keyblades, forms, & magic make up the bulk of your fighting kit, and all are great, making for a very positive overall experience.  There are other tools as well, but they’re a bit more of a mixed bag.

Flowmotion & its related attacks are back from DDD, but, perhaps responding to complaints about flowmotion being overpowered in that game, they seem underwhelming to the point of not really being worth bothering with here.  Maybe I’m missing a trick and further experimentation with the system will show it to be more engaging and rewarding than I’m giving it credit for, but I barely used flowmotion myself, and almost never in combat.

Summons are in a similar boat.  They eat all of your mp - not just putting you into recharge like cure, you can only even use them when your mp bar is full and then they put you straight into recharge.  they fully heal you along the way, but with magic in general being actually fun and good in this game, if not quite as good as in kh2, i never found the summons worth giving up a full bar of spells, and that was me playing as melee oriented a build as possible.  Maybe if they didn’t heal you, but could be used at any mp level?  Or if they used an entire different resource, maybe an alternate use of the shotlock meter?  As it is, I couldn’t be bothered, and the few times I tried them out they seemed to fall woefully short of justifying the resource cost.

speaking of shotlocks, those are back from bbs, and similar to flowmotion they’re much reduced in strength from their debut appearance.  Mostly it’s a way to squeeze in some extra long range damage without burning mp resources, though different keyblades have different shotlocks and some try to be more short range oriented.  I found them good enough to use, but not quite good enough to get excited about.

Shotlocks also have a movement function now, in that you can push square while focusing a shotlock to basically teleport sora to a locked target.  This is used, albeit rarely, to reach some distant platforming target, and also is occasionally used in huge arena fights to teleport up to a distant enemy, though the game is inconsistent about when it lets you do this, and requires you to do this so infrequently that some players will probably forget it’s even a thing during the final boss encounters, which...  hurts.  I’m one of those unlucky players who forgot this was a thing, and you can beat the xehanort fights without it, but it makes things a lot harder.

Of course, the big new combat mechanic - apart from keyblade forms, and even those are mostly just an evolution of drive forms - is the ‘attraction commands’, basically disney world rides as attacks, and I’m sad to say that I mostly don’t like them.  They’re big and slow and long, they have you stopping the engaging combat to play much less engaging minigames, they have their own music which is generally less good and certainly less thematic than whatever battle music they temporarily replace, and they’re generally so strong and powerful that not using them kind of feels like a punishment.  And I feel bad for harping on them, because they look cool and impressive, there was clearly a lot of effort put into them, and for a disney game incorporating the disney world theme park aspect was just a great idea.

I think my problem with them can best be explained by highlighting the two times that they really do work, one towards the start of the game when you use a big flying train attack against the rock titan, and one towards the end of the game when you have a huge fight against an endless swarm of heartless & nobodies with opportunities to use all of the attraction attacks, including the return of that same train.

In these huge spectacle battles, whether against one giant monster or an endless swarm of smaller monsters in a spacious arena the attraction commands really work well.  They add to the spectacle of what was mostly spectacle to begin with, and had attraction attacks been reserved for these sorts of spectacle battles I’d probably really like them.  But they’re not reserved for spectacle battles in huge arenas, they trigger in almost every single fight, regardless of arena size or number or threat level of the enemies and it gets super old and super awkward super fast.  You can choose not to use them, but since they come up as triangle commands it’s easy to use them entirely by mistake

Which segways into the triangle/situation command system, which is similar to 0.2 except that multiple situation commands can arise simultaneously and you can pick the one you want to use by cycling through with L2.  This is mostly fine, but imo too many different kinds of attacks are triggered this way.  Keyblade form changes, keyblade form finishers, ally team attacks, super-spells like in 0.2, attraction commands, and contextual environmental actions like opening chests are all implemented as situation commands that you cycle through with L2 and activate with triangle, and it’s super easy to activate the wrong one by mistake, going into a theme park ride when you just wanted to open a chest or prematurely ending a form change by triggering its finisher when you wanted to use an ally attack.  It’s honestly a little frustrating at times.  I wish at least some of those - say team attacks and form finishers - had just been left in the menu.

The over-use of triangle for all these other mechanics also leads to a sad lack of kh2′s enemy-based reaction commands, which were themselves maybe a little over-used in that game, but still were quite effective in making different enemies feel unique in combat.  As is, the enemy designs are all really cool if you slow down enough to look at them, but in practice they mostly all come and go rather quickly with the same spell blasts and keyblade whacks and overlong theme park rides for massive aoe damage, so they just don’t feel as distinct and memorable.

Boss fights, which do sometimes incorporate reaction commands in some form, are also a little lacking, in that far too many of them are ‘fight against giant flying monster in over-large arena where 3/4 of the challenge is just getting close enough to hit the thing in the first place’.  These big monster fights can be cool, some of them are done well enough when considered in isolation, but some of them can repeat long combat phases if you don’t damage them fast enough which can start to feel redundant and frustrating.

More to the point, there just aren’t enough fights against humanoid foes during the game, whether we’re talking about organization members or disney villains.  At least, not until the end of the game, when there are suddenly arguably too many of these kinds of fights in a row with nothing but cut scenes to break them up.  But that’s again more a story thing, so I’ll talk about it more later.

...

Another thing worth mentioning is that your allies are a lot more useful in this game.  Donald & Goofy seem stronger and smarter in general, they have good support abilities and team attacks, and you can even tell them to reserve healing for sora if you want.  They’ll still spend a fair amount of the time dead, but they’re nowhere near the dead weight they were.  And you don’t have to swap them out for world allies either, you just get bigger parties to fight with when more allies team up.

Donald is especially nice when supporting rage form, as he can heal you after you risk charge a few times, negating the penalty and letting you spend more time beating face with your powered up melee attacks.

...

One issue that is kind of a sticking point gameplay wise is difficulty.  I died a few times in proud mode, which is good, that’s what I was looking for, but I was also rushing through the game and avoiding side content, reaching the end at about level 37 with keyblades mostly at levels 3 and 4.  And I didn’t play well, either, mostly just tanking hist and brute forcing my way through the last bosses with recovery reprisals, cure spells, and healing items loaded up on donald and goofy.  If you do go out of your way to complete side content, collect better gear, and level up your character and keyblades, then some of the later fights that are *supposed* to be difficult narratively might be lacking in punch, even on proud mode.  No-exp for a low level run is an option, but I don’t know yet if it’s a fun one, or just a frustrating chip damage slog, and in any event doing so means missing out on fun abilities and basically amounts to deliberately holding back which doesn’t feel cool to me.

Kh2′s final mix critical mode is rightly held up as one of the best ‘hard modes’ in video games generally, and it’s unfortunate that there wasn’t a similar difficulty setting here, one that might encourage me to learn & utilize Sora’s full tool set, including summons, flowmotion, & the like.  Oh, well.

If, on the other hand, you’re looking for less difficulty for whatever reason, there I think you’re pretty well covered.  In addition to normal and easy difficulty settings, there’s also a ‘kupo coin’ system that works like a sort of purchasable extra life, sort of like bottled fairies in zelda games, though you can only carry one at a time.  Some of the minigames that gate story progression - in particular gummi ship missions and the pirate ship combat - might be problematic, as I’m not sure whether the difficulty settings affect minigame content.  In general I’ll talk about minigame stuff in another post.

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finally, on the much memed subject of ‘floaty’ movement and combos... yeah, motion’s a bit floaty, and it can be a bit of a pain to get back to the ground.  However, combos are mostly quick and enemies, even most bosses, actually stagger, and while you’re in the air you can still use most of your defensive kit - you can block, dodge, heal, and even use items while in the air, so a somewhat floaty descent - while it can be occasionally frustrating if an enemy is out of reach beneath you - isn’t the same problem that it was for some of the portable games.  At least imo.