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smilingperformer · 3 years

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Discussing the good and bad of Pokémon Journeys: Part “Rocket Gang”

It is no secret that the handling of Rocket Gang in Journeys is quite different from how the fans and audience have come to know them. Even I have tons to say about how I feel about Rockets in this series, so let's get started!

TLDR; Their handling in this series isn't exactly the best kind as it has removed one of the beloved aspects of them (having own Pokémon they bond very closely with) and is showing less often how they are RIGHTEUS evil, not evil evil. More under the cut, Journeys abverted to JN.

So. How do I begin. Let's start with saying: I am a Rocket Fan. A huge one. Ever since I started watching Pokémon couple years ago during Sun & Moon's first year, I fell in love with these buffoons, and I absolutely adored how the two bonded with their Pokémon and showcased that they're not that different from the brats, just on the villainnous side. Kojiro is a loving and caring man, Musashi has gone through lots of stuff and Nyarth has deep understanding over Pokémon's feelings due to his past experiences. Oh, Sonansu's there too, I love that blue blop so much. Honestly, the main reason I love these four so much is because they're such lovable villains who tend know what is right for their Pokémon, or other Pokémon they manage to bond with. And it was shown really well pre-SM as well.

Like, one of my favourite episodes of all time for Rockets is actually JN019, and it's because of how the Rockets end up helping a Ditto/Metamon who wants to be a proper actor, but thus far tended to fail in transforming into Pokémon perfectly. Musashi, as a actress herself, really bonds with this Metamon, managed to help it perfect the transformation with the help of Kojiro, Nyarth and Sonansu, and despite having the job to pokenap Pokémon... they actually end up helping Metamon to get back its job, to make sure it doesn't have a reputation of a Rocket 'mon. And they do SUCH a good job at acting like they're not intending it.

Like, during this acting performance, they really want to get blasted off! They don't even hide it. They keep provoking Satoshi to use Pikachu's Thunderbolt to blast them off and save Metamon that way. And I just fricking love them for this asjhgsjhgfs.

But aside from this episode, there really hasn't been that many episodes focusing on this aspect of Rockets. Another good episode for them JN is JN024 thou, where Rockets are on vacation and, are NOT on their villainous acts.

They're mere citizens in that episode, enjoying their free time in Sinnoh's Resort Area. And even when the brats come around, they fully ignore their need to capture Pikachu. For Sakaki-sama's orders. Akjhksajfh I just, really love how this ep managed to show that, even if they are part of Rocket Gang, it's merely their job, not who they are fully. They're not like Matori, they're not like Yamato and Kosanji- oh it's Kosaburo. They're merely doing the villainous stuff because they believe it to help make the world better. And when they're not working? They're good citizens. This was such a good episode for them because of this because it really showed that they could easily just be friends with the brats if they weren't on the opposite sides.

They even helped foil Matori's team's plans on kidnapping every single Pokémon in the Resort Area and sajghsjhgf. These four really hate Matori now do they. They're on her side, but they also keep foiling her plans. Even in Sun & Moon they foiled Matori's plans to pokenap Nuikoguma, because they knew their lovely Kiteruguma mom bear would be upset. As I said before: They're villains, but they're not evil evil. They do the evil stuff for their own rightful reasons.

Now that I've discussed the reasons I love Rockets and what I've loved in JN, let's talk about what it is that makes me feel iffy about their handling in JN, one of them being the lack of own permament poketeam.

In the past seasons, Rockets would always catch themselves one of their own 'mon that would willingly join their causes, and end up bonding with them deeply. In JN, this is... pretty much non-existant. We have the recurring 'mon of Kamukame/Chewtle and Morpeko, but the first one appears in such a rare rate, and latter one has been used as a... abuse comedy. When the Morpeko started following Rockets, I had hoped that it would end up bonding with the Rockets and they'd find some common ground, but so far, there's no sign of it, and Morpeko is more like a leech in their base instead of a powerful asset, and like. I feel like this was the show's way of trying to recreate Kiteruguma but with an opposite twist of it eating their rations instead of feeding them like Kiteruguma did, but it's not working as well as Mama Bear's gimmick did. At least in my opinion.

Now let me just say that, I don't really mind the Rocket Gacha machine. I feel like the concept it has is pretty cool, and seeing what kind of Pokémon Rocket Gang has managed to capture for using is super cool to witness. They also have been able to switch up it's results in unique and fun ways and seeing it sometimes fail is kinda fun and relatable to anyone who's played gacha games, sajhgfs. However, it feels like the Gacha completely replaced Rocket Quatret's ability to capture Pokémon of their own and, it hurts my soul to say it.

I think one of the reasons they did this route was due to how in Sun & Moon, Musashi and Kojiro ended up leaving their 'mon behind, due to knowing that they won't like it at the Rocket Head Quarters and leaving the cozy family that is Kiteruguma and Nuikoguma. So, maybe the writers felt like the Quatret would now feel bad about capturing 'mon they would bond closely with after this, and then ending up having to send them to HQ. So in a way, I get the possible intention behind this decision. Yet it still hurts. And I feel like most Rocket Fans feel the same way.

Their writing is pretty much the same throughout the show (which imo is kind of an average, as it doesn't hit the nail the same way I came to love them in Sun & Moon or OS to DP era, or even XY and Best Wishes DA! Arc), so it doesn't make sense for me to recite every single appearance of theirs, but I really have to discuss what irritated me a lot:

So. JN059.

I'll just say it straight away: I did not like how Rockets were written in this episode. At all. While their personality was spot on, their motives and actions weren't. Like... the fact that Grookey/Sarunori was a Rocket 'mon is a unique concept and I honestly like it. However, the way Sarunori ended up switching sides was so bad for me. So bad.

No. I am not one of those who think that Gou stole Sarunori from them and doesn't deserve it. No. That ain't my problem. It's more like the issue in how Rockets weren't allowed to learn more about Sarunori, bond with it, learn that it's not the one to want to join the villanous side and feels happier with Gou. The idea of the story for Rocket 'mon to switch sides is great. Excecution however is not.

Like... this line where Musashi says that Sarunori needs to be sent back to HQ to be re-educated specifically ticks me off in bad way and I hate to feel ticked off like this. And this line is all because they weren't allowed to learn more about Sarunori's motives. Because the plot had to be in one episode. I feel like the motives, Rocket Gang's handling and side switching would have worked better for me, if it was a longer built arc. Sort of like how Mijumaru/Oshawott, Hikozaru/Chimchar and the likes of them were done.

And this hurts more because of JN019 where they WERE allowed to bond and perform an act of helping Metamon get back its job. These buffoons KNOW when the 'mon deserves to go to the non-villainous side. And it's all because of JN019 that I feel so strongly ticked off for this line. "We'll... ...have you re-educated". That's not what they were gonna do with Metamon. Like. God damn it.

Rockets were there when Hikozaru switched teams from Shinji to Satoshi. They came to care for the lil monkey before this switch and after this switch. They KNEW it would be better off with Satoshi, and they kept rooting for it from afar, despite constantly trying to steal it. That's their job. Same with how Nyarth comes to like the Honcho Nyabby, due to its background, and finds peace with knowing that Nyabby will find a happy life with Satoshi. All of these examples are exactly why I strongly dislike how Jn059 handled Rockets, and I so god damn wish they would have ACCEPTED that Saruroni should join Gou, but make it so that they'd have to rescue Sarunori instead of giving it to them just like that. They're not heartless.

Unless this was an act from them. Which I doubt since Nyarth learns about Sarunori wanting to go with Gou late into the episode and then trying to deny it having been said??? Uuuugh. This episode really could have used more build up and different handling with Rockets.

Another option that would have made me like Sarunori's capture was if it had been some other Rockets it escaped from, like Matori Matrix or sudden return of Yamato and Kosaburo, or something else. I LIKE the idea of Sarunori being a Rocket 'mon, so I wouldn't change it. I just don't like that it was OUR beloved Rockets that had to be treating it this way.

Sigh. Now that that's out of the way. What else is there to say. Well. How would I try improving Rockets in JN? Simple: give them their own Pokémon to care for. Make them bond with more than just Chewtle. Let them have Pokémon they can bond with and show their loving side with. It's severely lacking right now and I feel like most Rocket fans are really missing this aspect a lot. Also please don't make them act like they don't understand Pokémon's feelings. They do. I'm glad that Satoshi still knows that Rockets care for Pokémon of their own and wouldn't treat them badly, but it still isn't showcased that well in JN. So I wish it would improve on that. I would also seriously love it if some of their old 'mon from past shows would come up from the Gacha Machine, as I'd imagine them being put inside there as well. It did have tons of Gulpin inside for some reason.... Sakaki, wtf.

Well. I guess there's not much else to talk about regarding Rockets. In short, I love Rockets, but I'm not happy with how they're handled in JN fully and despite there being couple really good episodes for them, and some of the episodes have excellent usage with them (like JN038 where Musashi just casually says "Evening" to Satoshi when he discovers them hiding in bushes, sajhgshfsghjf forever love that moment). I just want better handling with their righteus evil.

So. What's up next? I'm thinking about compiling a post of COTDs and supporting cast next time, which would include the likes of Kikuna, Renji, Sakuragi, family casts etc.

So, thanks for reading if you got this far, hope you enjoyed it despite possibly disagreeing with me, and I hope you'll all have a fantastic day.

Til next time! Aleira, aka Smiling Performer, signing out!

#pokemon #pokeani #anipoke #pokemon jn #team rocket #rocket gang #discussions #character discussions

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kawaii-chronicles · 3 years

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Current state of Genshin Impact and some personal thoughts

First things first major spoilers, leaks etc of the new story of Inazuma and possible upcoming stuff that was leaked. It could be false so don't take it to seriously. All right so....besides the disaster that is the anniversary. Currently on Twitter the genshin fandom has been heavily divided and only seams to get worse at every update. And i wanna share some of my own thoughts and hopefully not get canceled because of it XD 1. Inazuma was like game of thrones...it had a amazing start only to get worse till the end (insert drawing horse meme). Usually i can excuse when stuff is rushed. But when is PLAIN in your face, how rushed and how things went form A to B...then there is a problem...And i believe those who have seen reviews, analysis videos and such know what I'm talking about. I don't wanna write an entire novel so ill keep going to the next thing. 2. Baal only got popular and got more money than any character, BECAUSE OF A MEME !! People did not liked Baal IN TILL BOOBA SWORD CAME TO BE ! I still remember when her design was leaked ! People called her bland and boring, that they will skip her banner and shits but lord and behold the trailer dropped and ,,YO BOOBA SWORD HELL YEAH !! BAAL WHEN ?! WE NEED BAAL !!''. *face palm*.....I like Baal don't get me wrong...her fight animation is awesome and i did enjoyed her backstory. But using her and how her banner managed to top everyone as a excuse on why Mihoyo prefers to to make more female characters and such.....was nothing more than a desire to get a meme, it was not for the gameplay it was not for the story or personality at least in my opinion....and same might be for Scaramouche...If he did not do the fandango in that event I'm very much certain that most people might have not been desperate to have him playable. And btw. 3. How the hell can Mihoyo make a evil , psycho character like Scara playable....Childe is a special exception. But Scara not only has the motives to be like this but also many times now in both the event and the story that he is evil, and it might get worse if the leaks are true. Unless Mihoyo dose a FGO move and just makes a evil character playable no need to details or even a redeeming quality. Once again Scara only became popular because of the meme. Yeah his design is cool but we already saw a few example of amazing character designs and they are dead ! My only theory that might work for Scara is that we get to somehow reprogram him ? Since he is a puppet like the shogun. Personally it will be a bad move in terms of story telling to have Scara redeem himself in any way but if the devs managed to properly make him playable then i have nothing against it. 4. Racisms , misogyny , misandry, shipping etc. People are at each others necks when these subjects and genshin come together and hell that i will explain this here because i already lost to many braincells reading trough comments and threads but this time the most recent drama this is on the translations team's fault. Pretty much...we now have to travel to Sumeru to find the dendro archon. It all started whit Yae mentioning about a god of flowers named lesser lord Kusanali a female deity that right now is in charged of Sumeru. People already jumped the bandwagon and speculated that the dendro archon is in fact a female. I might do a separated post theory about that but in shorts...the translation team messed up big time because in previous dialogues when the dendro archon was mentioned, it was gendered as he but now and only now they change it to she....while in the Chinese version the dendro archon's gender was left ambiguous but that did not stopped the players to complain once again of the ratio between female and male characters and is far worse now that the Archon ratio is 2:5 now aka only Venti and Zhonlgi are the only male archons while the Cryo, pyro and Hydro are confirmed to be females. And people really hoped for the dendro archon to be male so that we can have the balance of 3:4. Seams reasonable and logical right ? But again i will not go any longer intro this. Case

in point...devs did a opsi and now people are at war. 5. The aniversary.....my dude FGO has the worse gacha rate up and a non existent pity system and yet they make better anniversary gifts than you. Phew this rant could have been much worse people i was yelling whit a friend about my frustration whit the genshin fandom and the stupid decision the devs are making so this was the most watered down version i was able to do. Again don't take my rant to serious. Things can still change either for the better or for the worse. If you still enjoy the game good on you. Everyone has the right to enjoy whatever they want as long as it not bothering those around them :3

#text post #rant post #genshin impact

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nissakii · 3 years

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"You can be a hero!" - The Strongest Hero BNHA Game Review

We’re so used to watching our favorite characters fight their battles and anime as we cheer them on relentlessly. We are always on the sidelines and hope they succeed in their endeavors, but we are never in the stories ourselves.

That has now changed with the new mobile game that came out recently based on the popular anime Boku no Hero Academia by Kohei Horiskoshi.

Welcome to: Boku no Hero Academia - The Strongest Hero.

Today, a week after the global release of the game, having played a little and explored some of its features, we will dive into what the game brings to the table, the mechanics of it and what you can expect!

Makii and I worked together on this, especially since we are both fans of BNHA and love to delve deep into these kinds of reviews.

So to start off, this game has had its global release on the 19th of May 2021 and was published by Sony Pictures Television for the US and by A PLUS JAPAN for the EU already on the 18th of the same month.

Many people have pre-registered for the game release beforehand in hopes of snagging rewards, and only quickly enough the first million downloads were established in a matter of days. No wonder at all, since BNHA is one of the most popular new generation anime. There is a huge fan base surrounding it who are eager to play the game.

Before the global release was initiated, it was released by the chinese studio Xin Yuan on December 3rd 2020, which resulted in many people using VPNs and emulators to experience the charm of ‘The Strongest Hero’. No wonder the game downloads skyrocketed when it was released globally in english (more languages such as german and french coming soon), it was recorded that the players had problems getting into overloaded servers, but those problems were quickly managed.

If you have no idea what the anime or manga of BNHA is about but are still interested, let me give you a quick synopsis.

In a world where 80% of the population are born with mutant abilities called “Quirks”, the job of the superhero became more than just a fantasy in comics. Now, the police are second rate as everyone looks up to the heroes who support and save the world.

Izuku Midoriya, also known by his nickname ‘Deku’, is one of the few Quirkless humans but still admires hero-work like nobody else.

Until one day the tables turn and he ends up with his own new power, now ready to go to renowned U.A. highschool for heroes to become what he always wanted to be: someone who saved lives with a smile on his face.

Now in this game, you are the one who steps into the shoes of a young aspiring hero who wants to climb up the ladder of success and defeat all villains in your way while protecting your people.

Are you stoked now? Let’s find out more!

The Game:

Advertised as an action MMO-RPG, The Strongest Hero brings not only one but multiple different player modes that you can enjoy alone or with friends online!

Firstly, it’s an immersive story-telling game that lets you relive the actual plot of the anime Boku no Hero Academia so spoiler alert for the ones who haven’t watched it yet, this game will be dealing with the Deku’s story throughout it all.

It starts off with the first episode of the anime, showing us recaps and recreations of the anime but in the game-animation with small bits of interaction to refresh our memory on the fateful incidents that made Deku a true hero. With this retelling of the story, avid watchers of the anime can enjoy everything again from a new perspective, and new people with no knowledge of BNHA can still enjoy the game just as much.

It was even mentioned that the story campaign will be dealing with the contents of season one to three so far, with more already in planning.

So the developers made sure that the game is not only catered to its original fanbase, but to everybody out there!

Now with Deku as the first person you play as, we fast forward to Izuku who is more advanced in his skill set, as he already uses his original ‘shoot-style’ and One for All Full Cowling. You’re now a provisional Hero who just got his license, working for your own agency and completing missions all around town, meaning there is a little skip between the beginning of the game and where you actually start in Honei City.

The open-world is huge and leaves all sorts of possibilities to explore as you not only defeat villains, but also talk to the citizens and maybe even collect trash to fulfill your duty as a hero. Not only Deku is at your disposal, but currently a lot of other class 1-A students will soon fall into your hands! As Toshinori was released as a hero in the last update on May 26th we can assume that there are more to come.

Game modes:

Single player: As previously mentioned, the game will immediately lead you through the single player story campaign, as you try to keep the city safe and sound by defeating villains and completing missions.

There are next to the main-story missions the daily missions in which you ensure the city’s prosperity to get more rewards daily.

With this mode you can play with a multitude of skills and combos and the handling on the phone is very pleasant. With a left joystick on the touchscreen and skill buttons on the right you can activate the swift and powerful attacks that we already know from the anime.

There are also multiple things to do as a single-player as you can collect your daily supplies in several missions which you will need for training your hero, enhancing your gear and more limited to 20 runs for each supply with several difficulties.

Hero trials, commissions and even more features are all available despite being alone keeping you busy for a while, as some don’t even need stamina to fulfill since stamina limits the player in the missions they can do.

And if that is all too much action you can simply explore the city on your own and search for special items on your way.

This is extremely interesting for the ones who like to play at their own pace and alone to enjoy a mix of story-telling and hack n slash combat.

PvP: Contrary to the first mode, if you’re more interested in actually playing against others, ‘The Strongest Hero’ won’t disappoint in its Player vs. Player mode.

Even here we have multiple ways to play, as the Arena takes on a more classic 1 vs 1 feel in which you can defeat other players similar to other fighting-games, or the Super Co-Op battle which allows you to play 3 vs 3.

Soon we will also know what the mysterious War Zone Co-Op entails, as that feature is still to be launched.

Other Co-Op features are also the Agency assessment, the joint operation and Emergency.

Emergency shows us more of the work of a hero, in which you suddenly trigger an event that is of urgent matter and has to be completed with a team of other players quickly. Time runs out, and it is all about the true work of a hero where you have to act quick!

There is truly something for everyone in here

Not just an MMO:

Truly, this game is a lot more than just an MMO, even though its open-world is a huge part of it all.

To get your preferred heroes and play them, the game has a gacha system in place for you to pull for your luck!

Deku is in the player’s repertoire from the start, and his skill-set is very dynamic and swift with less damage but a lot more speed. His comments are just as loud as in the anime, and if that doesn’t give you any satisfaction do not worry! Every hero has his own fighting style and can be explored by playing the missions in which you will quickly deploy Denki Kaminari and Kirishima Eijiro.

The game differs between three types of heroes: Speed, Power and Technical as the three examples Deku, Kirishima and Denki already represent each respectively.

There is also knowledge that there will be Pro-heroes and even some villain characters in the mix.

The skills range extremely from heavy handed to swift or long to short range attacks. Just as varied as the fighting style is, we have beautiful animations that display the Quirks and many possibilities to use them.

Done with all the fighting? Look at the adorable dorm feature in which you can earn more stamina and organize a dorm room for your heroes. You can even make their chibi-versions run around in that room and catch a break from all the hero work.

Although the story might pester you with it’s orange glowing button in the upper right corner, you can just ignore everything and explore the gorgeously crafted open world environment(in most cases).

Yes, you can even walk up buildings!

Of course there is an autofinding feature to briskly get you to where your missions lead you, but if you so desire you can look at the urban starting world and walk around.

Since everyone else will have Deku as their first hero as well, it is incredibly amusing to see all the other Deku's running about.

The starting setting is true to the anime and shows us urban and modern Japan, with a strong hint of technological advancement.

The preset graphics on SD will give you the ability to walk around smoothly, but if your phone can take it, I urge you to at least try to up the graphics to a better resolution. The scenery is truly mesmerizing, and the art style as well as the visual effects have a huge appeal.

It’s even nicer to look at for the ones who haven’t seen enough of the BNHA universe in the anime, because now there are an abundance of regions to explore and the developers have made sure to give us a lot of eye candy.

“You” can be a Hero!:

After all this technical talk, why should you play this game?

First of all, from what I have witnessed as an excited anime watcher and manga reader, the story is catered to include the player.

It’s a lot more different than just watching Deku go through the world, you are actually responsible for how the mission turns out. It’s exhilarating to see characters from the anime like Kamui Woods and Mt.Lady talk to you and ask for help, as they are characters we didn’t see all that much in the anime. It gives the impression to be needed and included which is a great asset!

A hero doesn’t stray away from any work, so yes you will have to pick up trash from time to time or just talk to people to assess situations! Still, there are a lot of cameos of other characters like Hatsume Mei who takes care of your support gear.

Second of all, there is a lot of freedom for you.

From all the different game modes and mechanics to the story and even the split up Co-Op modes, you will have a lot of possibilities to explore and find why you want to play the game.

One thing is for certain, the gameplay has something for everyone and gives adequate rewards to you for every mission or task you clear. Features get unlocked gradually through playing the story and leveling up, which keeps the player on their toes.

One mission quickly leads to another, and it seems there is no end to what you can do, especially in the beginning of the game.

Sadly, that is also one of the drawbacks I will have to mention.

Due to the immense freedom and possibilities, the game bombards you with a lot of information. As a first time player, it’s probably that you will get overwhelmed by the forceful approach of the tutorial, but after a while it definitely gets a lot better in my opinion.

My personal highlights are the gacha system as I love to collect and work to pull my favorite characters, the story as a fan of the franchise and the co-op because I love to play the game with friends. So far I haven’t had the ability to actually play with others, but from what I’ve seen it all has a lot of potential.

Even though we’re talking about a free-to-play game, since stamina is one of the necessities to play missions etc, it is very scarce and often drives one to want to buy it, which is why the game leans towards a pay-to-win game. Still, with a bit more patience and some hard work everything is playable for free.

All in all, I shall conclude that The Strongest Hero is an honest and great attempt at making an anime based game which held a lot of expectations from the fanbase.

The immersive factors are amazing, the animations are top tier and the possibilities seem endless. At the end of the day it’s a game that is playable regardless of how much time you have due to the auto-play-function in many features and can be enjoyed in your personal way.

I hope you enjoyed our take on reviewing the game and give it a shot! If you have played it already or are planning to, please leave your personal impressions in the comments!

What a Co-Op teatime! Hope to see you again!

SUUMASHU!!

-Nissa & Makii

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riskeith · 3 years

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good morning love! (or afternoon for you hehe)

deku vs kacchan part 2 is my favorite ep of the entire series actually. i’ve watch that ep so many times as well it’s just perfect. i got into them when i watched that episode actually! the voice acting god..... literally shivers. now that i think about it it might even be my favorite anime ep of all time help. i just love how bakugou lets it all out and we get to see that side of him.. the insecure scared child he tries to hide. god i could ramble about it forever idk just love it. OH YOU WATCHED THE MOVE RIGHT AFTER? a scene with bakugou and todoroki is guaranteed a good time.. and they work so well together. haha that’s such a nice coincidence tho their dynamic is great in that movie even if it’s mostly kiribaku sjsksjk. what do you think about kiribaku btw?

RIGHT!!! at least we have a couple days to decide hihi.... paimon no longer emergency snack.. only seelie. 🥴 oooh? what kind of thing have you envisioned? (if you wanna share ofc!)

i’ve seen so many people mention that!! like one of the worst parts of the game is that in the higher level you get the less there are to do.. ssjksjdk at some point all you can do is grind domains and try to level up shdkdfhdj

LEVEL 40 INTO A LEVEL 70+ FIGHT ok that’s honestly hilariously brave doesn’t she like die right away 😔 oh yeah you’ll be leveling up Again soon *praying for you*... can’t believe they don’t keep the easy bosses anymore sjdkfh that’s so rude. this game is just grind grind grind. WE NEED A BENNY STORY SO BADLY. like imagine a story with him wanting to seek out diluc because he wants to learn how to fight from a master or something like that. i saw it in a comic and i can’t stop thinking about it 😭 all of them deserve stories!!! there’s so many ways they could make it happen pls mihoyo... chongyun x xingqiu story... <333

shfkjdskdjhf nope right now i’m playing with noelle as my main damage dealer, traveller, lisa and barbara actually. so i think i have a pretty good balance atm.. 2 long range 2 short range-ish. i usually trade out barbara for another character if i have to tho, hehe. that’s only combat though ^ benny is with me when we explore. mood is me having a 5 star and not even using her... i still need to think of ways qiqi could fit into the group yk. is your group still looking the same as before? ooooh if you could rank the elements what would your ranking look like?

172!!!!! that’s a bit short though when you said tall i thought like... 190 or something sjksjdxk. wait how tall are You?

oh i just meant like... people bashing others for spending too much money on the game vs those that bash people for not spending money and complaining that they don’t get 5 star etc? idk yt comments can be so ugly though so it’s a good thing that you don’t read them sjdjdjdkd

that’s super smart!!! you just follow along the plan and delete when you come to the part. must feel so satisfying too i imagine. haha, what little notes i have i put in the notes app and just check up on when i need to. sometimes i even forget they’re there shdkdhsks. my notes are filled with half-assed dialogue or random one words notes that don’t make any sense to me anymore.. nskdhddjdj

you’re right!! so you write at night? sometimes i just open docs on my phone and write a bit before i sleep and when i wake up it’s either a grammatical mess or just... super bad hskshd the brain is simply too tired to create anything shakespeareian

nooo i’ll def check these out and let you know what i think. i’ve seen halsey being in pretty much every klance playlist on spotify so i imagine she portrays their vibes pretty nicely. doesn’t she have a song she sings about being blue and red or something... shdjfhdj such a bad description but i see it being used in edits a lot. also now that i think of it melanie has a song called pacify her that i really like!! do you like it?

THATS SO CUTE YOU ARE A CRYBABY. 🥺 same here tbh i actually like crying sometimes... sjskdjdjd like you said it just feels nice to get it all out. i cry to almost movie or series or book i read i’m a super emotional person but i also think it adds to the experience? you feel more immersed in it that way.

RIGHT??? ITS SO BEAUTIFUL!!! and it’s our boys 😭 and they’re cuddling 😭 under the sun 😭 ssjdjdhdjdj 😭

can’t wait to hear from you again <3 yours, ma <3

good night! more like ahhah

:o!! that’s so legendary of them wow.. <33 and yeah honestly the voice acting is phenomenal.. and all the implications behind the fight too? bakugou finally opening up? midoriya understanding that what he needs is to fight him? ugh. kiribaku is fine! fhdsjfks my brain is so full of todobaku that any other ship is really just... in the background hfskjfs but i can appreciate the relationship they have! with kiri being the only one bakugou has really acknowledged and seeing as being on the same level, that iconic hand clasp when bakugou was being rescued... i have a kiribaku fic in my drafts but idk if i can ever get to it ahha. you like them a lot right?

ikkk also i didn’t know we had to wait until the very end to buy? i have more than enough to buy it rn but when i clicked it said ‘must explore area 14 first’ and i was just... bruh. AHAHAH. okay so in my mind it’s like.. chongyun at a funky angle we’re kinda looking up at him and his body is like bent down towards us fhsdkjs idk how to describe it but i can picture it very well but i also cannot put it to paper/screen. and then his clothes are just black instead of white! HAHAH. tho i kinda wanna see if i can draw a xiao first to offer up to the gacha gods hfsdjkfs (and if i can i’ll do a version w a dark outfit too for u hehe)

legitttt im literally just logging in and grinding the talent domains every day fhsdkjfhskfhjd there are some artifacts i want as well but the domain is literally SO difficult for me fuck.

i just go in and use her skill then heal a bit and switch right away fhsdkjfsd it going alright! and then i go ham with my other 3 charas and switch back to her to heal again fhskfjd. OMGGG that’s so cute please... i miss diluc too... come back!! i wish we had a way to replay the old quests even if we get nothing out of them like i just wanna experience it again ya know.

oooo! that’s pretty nice. hfskjd you could switch barbara out for qiqi! since she’s a healer as well. omg wait you have lumine right? so your combat team has no males? legendary 😩 we love fighting queens! ya! traveller, chongyun, xiangling, fischl. and then i switch depending on the domain/boss i’m gonna fight. hmm elements I think would go: anemo, cryo, electro, pyro, hydro, geo, dendro? LMAO i reckon if i had diluc tho pyro would be higher... i also almost forgot to add geo to that list lmaooooooo oops, hbu??

I JUST SAW THE LINK.... AAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! the bestest boys look how cute they’re sjdkfjdjjdd i’m obsessed. the picture where benny has his back turned sjdudjdjddnd stop. 🥺 they’re so neat. 🥺 also NO ARE YOU SERIOUS? that’s so upsetting are you gonna try it out nonetheless or do you think it’s too risky?

they’re SO neat!!! and bennett facing the other way was so fhskjfd yeah cute <3333333 I KNOWWW IM SO SAD :((( and no...... im not gonna try 😭😭😭 i told my brother about it too and he asked how many rolls i was at and i said 70 and he was straight up ‘you can’t try then’ and i was like ‘i know 😔😔’. @ xiao... i am giving up xingqiu rate up for you 😤😤😤😤 ugh i hope i can still get xingqiu in xiao’s banner tho even tho the chances will be shit. are you gonna roll ganyu’s banner?

FHSKJFSD NOOOOOO don’t tell me 172 is average for you wtf... (apparently the average male height in japan is 160cm! for reference ahah) and i myself am. one hundred and. fifty something cm hfsdjfhskjdfhskdjfhw9uehdsifhwsdkjfhsdkfhsd 😔 big sighs lmaoooooooo. how tall are you? (im assuming much taller 😔😔😔😔😔)

ooh notes app? nice ahaha. fhdkjfhskfsk hdthat’s the mood tho! if i don’t have my laptop with me i’ll write out everything on notes first then transfer to my laptop~

AHAHAH yeahhh i think mostly i do? bc during school times i’ll only write after i’m done with my work which = night time. for a while Peak writing time for me was like 1am lmfao but i do that in a like half-asleep half-conscious state so when i come back the next day at a “normal” time i run into the same issue as you fshdfkjshfs

she does!!! it’s called colours 😩 but i think the one i related to voltron most is control! there was this really good shiro edit with that song i still remember it to this day <3 yeah i do!!! i like most of melanie’s songs actually ahahah. i think my favourite for a while was show and tell~

it totally does!! like it’s satisfying as well you know... like the characters have gone through so much and you experienced that with them so it’s natural to get emotional about it. that reminds me, what kind of books do/did you read? did you read all Those YA novels ahah talking about crying has reminded me how i cried reading those..

<333 i wanna be there with them 😩 actually no i want to BE them 😩😩😩

eager for your response <33 love, c.r.

#marriage anon #wowclunaanswers #long post

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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I wasn’t exactly planning on doing any real summoning on the dragon banner or the gala remix since I still want to be able to spark on the next Halloween banner at the end of the month [if we get one], but I’m an extremely dumb idiot with no impulse control so that didn’t exactly go as planned, lol.

I’m pretty sure I already talked about my Gala Zena banner summon session before, but I can’t remember if I said how the Ilia banner went after that, so just to put it simply I only did my free summons on it and I got absolutely nothing of note, lol. I don’t think I even got any platinum prizes. The most noteworthy thing I got was a dupe Laranoa, I think.

Then we got to the dragon banner, which is where my hoarding plans started to really go south, lol. Dragon banners are usually easy skips for me, but GC was on rate-up and I wanted them so much I was genuinely contemplating dream summoning them [but I still don’t want to use any dream summons on dragons], so I decided to see how my free summons went, but I pretty quickly became resigned to the possibility that I’d end up chasing GC.

Which is pretty much exactly what happened, since my free summons didn’t get me GC, but I did get three whole Ariel dupes, which was mostly just three separate emotional rollercoasters of agony for me, lol. It’s not like I didn’t want Ariel dupes, since before this I only had one 0UB copy of her, but still. The first dupe I got came from my first daily tenfold, and then the second one gave me two Ariel dupes almost back to back, so that was just agonizing in a lot of ways. So yeah I ended up using tickets and wyrmites to chase for GC, and I ended up having to spend 60 extra summons to get them, so that was extremely painful, but I at least got them in the end. Specifically I got two copies of GC and a fourth Ariel dupe all on the final tenfold I did.

So I ended up with a MUB Ariel just from dupes, and a 1UB GC who I just decided to use stones on to get MUB. Which I don’t really regret, since I still have like 10 sunlight stones left after this anyway. Funnily enough I didn’t get any copies of Summer Sakuya, but I’d say that’s a good thing since I already had her MUB from all the copies I got of her when she came out, and she’s not the sort of dragon I want to have multiple copies of. So at least this banner ended up working out surprisingly well for me in spite of me spending a lot more resources on it than I probably should have.

I was actually planning to do the platinum summons to try and get GC instead of dipping into my vouchers and wyrmite, and I even got some diamantium to prepare for that, but then I found out that the platinum summon wasn’t actually for the three focus dragons on that banner, and was literally just ‘you get one 5-star dragon at random in each platinum summon’, so I just decided to pass on that entirely and use my regular summons instead.

I also got a dupe Xuan Zang at some point but I can’t remember if that was in the dragon banner or the gala remix.

And on the note of the gala remix, oh boy this whole pair of banners was just a one-two punch of me going through the exact same process of going “I’m gonna be smart about this and only spend my free tenfolds and save all my resources for the end of the month :)” and then using my resources anyway because I’m a dumb idiot baby. But like with how GC was the only dragon that was able to genuinely tempt me to spend resources on a dragon banner, I ended up being unable to resist the temptation of this gala remix because it had Gala Alex on it, who was the only gala unit in the whole game that I didn’t have at that point, and I was specifically hoping to be able to get her at some point. She was one of my main priority targets along with Halloween and New Years, so I honestly don’t even regret it that much, but it kinda sucked because I didn’t care about the Akasha and Melsa alts at all, and i already had a MUB Cat Sith, so Alex was literally the only unit on the banner I wanted, and I was hoping she’d be on a more exciting banner than this, lol.

Anyway, I still did all my free tenfolds first, and let’s just say that the very first one gave me a dupe Albert, which felt like divine punishment for my hubris with the dragon banner. I figured something like that was gonna come around to screw me over for spending on that banner, but I wasn’t expecting something so immediate and so specifically designed to mess with me.

I also got a Liger dupe from that summon as well, which was enough for me to get him MUB. Beforehand I wouldn’t have really cared since he’s not a very good dragon for the most part, but he’s apparently one of the best dragons for Gala Zena, so that’s cool.

I don’t think I got anything noteworthy from my other free tenfolds aside from a Siren dupe, which I’m just keeping in my inventory as a random copy now since I already had her MUB before this.

So then I was stuck with the lingering question of if I should go out of my way to chase Gala Alex, and if it was even worth it. I did some full on mental calculations about what my current stash was like, and how many more summons I expected to be able to get between now and the end of this month, to see how far I was wiling to go before I ended up with too few summons to be able to spark by the end of the month. I don’t remember exactly how many summons I had in my stash at that point, but I guess I figured I was willing to take the risk, since I decided to do an extra 20 summons on the banner, which got me . . . Catherine, lol. Because this banner really decided to pull the old ‘you think it’s one of the focus characters but it’s actually some random character of the same weapon type’ switcheroo two different times. I didn’t have Catherine, though, so at least she wasn’t a useless dupe like Albert. I’m probably not gonna use her in the long run, but I’m putting her in my water team for the moment along with Eugene.

After that, I decided to just cut my losses and call it quits. But as the rest of the day went on I kept thinking back to the question of how many summons i’d be able to have by the end of the month, and how many I could afford to spend on this banner while still being able to spark. Which included me taking into account how paid diamantium pulls give double wyrmsigils, because I’m not above taking advantage of that at this point if I need to, lol. So anyway I ended up opening the game again to do another summon session, at least until I got my next pity break.

And after an additional 20 summons, I actually somehow managed to get Gala Alex, lol. It honestly kinda doesn’t feel real yet, but I actually got her. The emotional rollercoaster of seeing that rainbow sword after having been spooked by Albert at the start of this banner was on a whole other level to just about anything I’ve experienced with summoning in this game, but at least it all worked out in the end.

Now I have every single gala unit in the game, including a MUB copy of every gala dragon, so that’s neat. Honestly half of the reason why I wanted Gala Alex was just to complete my collection of gala units. I’m not sure how much I’ll even use her at this point. But I’m still happy I got her after all this. I remember spending like 300 summons on her debut banner without getting her, so it’s a relief to finally get her. Same with how I recently got Gala Elly after also unsuccessfully spending like 300 summons on her debut banner.

I guess now I have to actually grind out a 6-star shadow sword for her, since I didn’t have one before this [since I don’t really use shadow swords often], and I also have to finally get around to figuring out how the fuck her kit works, lol. At least it gives me a reason to grind Kai Yan again, right in time for co-op double drops.

I’m honestly not even sure if I’m gonna be able to spark by the end of the month at this point, at least after seeing how heavily they nerfed the wyrmite and ticket rewards for the Accursed Archive rerun. At the end of the last banner I had like 200 summons left over, and I have a little over 2.4k diamantium, so even taking into account the double wyrmsigils for diamantium summons thing, it might be very tight. Especially since I’m planning to get the dream summon at the end of the month as well. Though I do have like a million adventurer stories and stuff to read, since I’ve only read like three or four in the past, like, six months, so if I really need to I could probably just go through a lot of that, but we’ll see how it goes.

Technically I don’t even know if I’ll be interested in sparking on whatever banner we’ll get at the end of the month. I’m expecting it to be another Halloween banner, maybe bundled with a new gala dragon, which would all be pretty tempting. But we don’t really have any idea what to expect from it, so for all I know I might not even be interested in summoning on it, which would be a bit anti-climactic at this point. But if we they give us a new gala dragon, I want to get at least one copy of them. And new Halloween units have a good chance to be really tempting, at least since they’re limited. I know the Akasha and Melsa alts were also limited Halloween alts, but I just didn’t care that much for them. Which might end up happening if we get another Halloween banner, but I hope not.

Personally my main hope at this point is that we actually get Halloween Euden as a gacha alt and not just a story costume. I know he’s gotten other event-only story costumes before, but I think this one’s different since it’s a lot more unique and detailed than the other ones, and this is also the first time we’ve ever seen it. It’s also kinda weird that it doesn’t even show up in the event’s story itself, which makes me also wonder if it might be more of a tease for a follow-up Halloween event. If he does end up getting released as a unit, I’m guessing he’ll be a shadow wand or healer going by how his design looks, which would be kinda unfortunate since those are some really competitive areas, but I’d still want to get him just because I love his design, lol.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if we get some combination of Shion, Delphi, and Shishimai alts, to go with their new wyrmprint art. I know we’ve gotten all sorts of seasonal alt designs that only show up in wyrmprints, but we did recently get Summer Amane who was first teased via a log-in bonus, so who knows. It’d at least be nice to get any sort of playable version of Shion, but I also really like how Shishimai looks in his Halloween costume.

Maybe we’ll finally get playable versions of mummy Luca or werewolf Ranzal, but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

That’s basically all we have to even vaguely go off of, but I also like the idea that maybe the new Halloween event will be a third part to the Accursed Archives event series, which might mean we’ll get Halloween Heinwald, or a story-based alt for him like with Xuan Zang.

Also, while I remember, my current dream summon candidate is Mitsuba [mainly because there’s barely anyone left in the permanent pool who interests me that much, lol], but I’m holding out until the free tenfolds end just in case I get her from one of them. If I do, my backup option would probably be Yurius. Like I said before, GC was an option, but now that I have them they’re not an issue anymore.

Anyway these two banners feel like they dragged me through all seven layers of Hell, and now i think I’ve made a contract to sell my soul to Big Chungus.

#murasaki rambles #dragalia lost #these banners were an Experience [tm] y'all

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moistwithgender · 5 years

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Anime I think I remember watching this year

I need to keep better track of this I guess.

Aggressive Retsuko: Great! Very likable characters (even the bastards), just the right amount of millennial cynicism. 9/10 Aggressive Retsuko Christmas Special: It's not about Christmas, it's about instagram. It's great and extremely real (watch the series first though). Digimon Adventure tri 1 & 2: This is actually very boring so far. I planned to jump back in with the english dub, which is honestly how I should have been watching it from the beginning. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten around to it. Kado The Right Answer: If this show had not been sabotaged from the inside out in the last 2-3 episodes, this would have probably been up there with classics like Bebop. WEST WING: THE ANIME, we would have called it, or something. I haven't watched West Wing, but it's all bureaucracy, right? 8/10 in this universe, 10/10 in the alternate universe where it didn't shit the bed. Angolmois: I got halfway through this before the low budget and my own exhaustion had me drop it. Unfortunate, since anime never adapts the mongol invasion. Planet With: In the running for series of the year, probably. A super robot show where the ultimate moral is that, actually, rehabilitating your enemies is better than killing them. Will rewatch in the future, I'm sure. 10/10. Asobi Asobase: Hina Kino (Hanako)'s is going to go down as a legendary voice actress if I have any say in anything. Which I do, because I'm in charge of the industry now. Which means we're taking out queerphobic jokes, wrap it up people. 8/10, would rank higher without the bad takes. Cells at Work!: Really fun concept, has *implications* of a deeper narrative to be had built into the worldbuilding, but ultimately the whole season is just "oh I bet this irl thing would translate like this in my setting" on repeat. Still, an easy watch. 7/10. Hanebado!: There's a lot that could be good about this. Themes of toxicity in competitive spaces, overwork, abandonment, and trauma. Ending had a lot of people upset because it either miscommunicated how the protagonist moved past her trauma (best case), or just completely dropped the entire arc because...I don't know why. I rated this 9/10 on myanimelist, but it probably deserves lower. I'm still over here wanting to believe I missed something in my interpretation. Hoping for either a second season or a faster manga translation. My Hero Academia S3: This season had some high points but I felt it was considerably less interesting overall than the second season. However, Deku vs Bakugou was genuinely one of the best moments of the series thus far. My Hero Academia The Movie: Pretty standard shonen series movie for the sake of having one. Nothing groundbreaking here. But hey, I got to listen to "You Say Run" in a theater, which was almost worth the price of admission on its own. 6/10. Ushio & Tora: Both seasons, thirty nine episodes. Waste of my time! Maybe this series was just meant to be consumed bit by bit, but I just found it really shallow in the end. 6/10. Chio's School Road: Another *brilliant* comedy that is ultimately brought down by the occasional queerphobic humor. Get it toGETHER, guys! In any case, I care about these stupid children now, and hope for a season two soon. 8/10. Angels of Death: It took about 14 out of the total 16 episodes before I suddenly stopped hate watching it and started laughing at its unwarranted self seriousness and paradoxical writing. Still, kind of frustrated I stuck with it anyway. 4/10. Night is Young, Walk On Girl: Gorgeous movie that has to be seen, but. I wonder if it's Yuasa or the original writer of these books that insists on the resolution to all conflict being "heterosexuality". 9/10. Haibane Renmei: I got four episodes in before the Funi/Crunchy split happened ;__; it's really good tho Dragon Pilot: Definitely gonna rewatch this one one day too. There is a density of theme and execution here that I cannot yet fully unpack and it's just so good. Also the english dub is good, and is how I preferred to watch it. It also has a lesbian and isn't afraid of her, even if her role is very small. It's something. 9/10, maybe 10/10. Mirai: I fucking love Mamoru Hosoda's films. 9/10. Zombieland Saga: I have the sneaking feeling that they wanted a few more HOT PROGRESSIVE TAKES to be fit in before the season ended, but restraints got in the way. We had a sex worker idol who never got her backstory episode, and actually Tae never got hers either. It's still a 9/10 for me, but I'm hoping for at least a followup OVA. And a movie. Granblue Fantasy: I finished the full season, save for the "omake" episode that I assume takes place in the alternate universe where Protagonist Is Girl. This was somewhat throwaway cozy saturday morning nostalgia for the old days of Final Fantasy before that game series became more grounded in contemporary and sci-fi settings. It was also something I watched as a primer for the incoming Platinum and ArcSys games, because I'm not gonna play two gacha games at the same time. Hilariously, the--like--twenty new characters from the gacha that showed up in the last episode were all more interesting than the cast of the full season. 7/10, 10/10 for having a race of hot girls with horns (there are also guys but who cares). Hi Score Girl: This show is a love letter to growing up with arcades in 90s Japan and also struggling with making friends and ohhh my god every time the idiot main boy stops paying attention to important interpersonal plot and just starts infodumping about a game, I tragically see myself. It's very good, the girls are GOOD GIRLS and deserve better and the writing seems fully aware of that. The series unfortunately ends on a stock romantic plot beat cliffhanger that I have to wait until March to have ultimately resolved in THREE EPISODES. Despite that, it's easily a 9/10. I list a lot of 9/10s but it's been a good couple seasons and there's just...a lot of range there. Number scores are bullshit. Watch anime. Shin Getter Robo: Probably the last show I'll have finished before the year end. It's my second exposure to Getter Robo (my first was reading Getter Robo Go, which actually takes place after this), and it's still good, but oh god. These guys are dumb bastards but there's a note early in that has aged particularly badly in the MeToo era. Not sure if the show got better because I switched audio tracks to English with VAs I have nostalgia for, or because they broke through the bottom of a lake and wound up in alternate history Heian era Japan, stranded for multiple years. With a giant robot. I liked that part. 8/10. Shows I took a break from due to burnout and need to pick back up: Run with the Wind, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai, Vento Aureo, SSSS.Gridman, Hinomaruzumou, Ms. Vampire who lives in my neighborhood, As Miss Beelzebub Likes It., Devilman Crybaby, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san. SO MANY!!

#curry watches anime

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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PSO2 New Genesis Will Hopefully Be Much More Than a Visual Update

July 24, 2020 6:00 AM EST

Our hopes and fears for New Genesis, a new content update coming in 2021, promising to bring game system renewals to PSO2.

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is the new update coming to PSO2 in 2021, bringing with it a graphics update and a renewal of the game’s systems. The update celebrates the 20th anniversary of Phantasy Star Online.

Sega first revealed New Genesis during Microsoft’s Xbox Series X games showcase on July 23. Seeing it’s an update, not a brand-new game, PSO3, or anything like that, it’ll obviously be coming to the same platforms PSO2 is on, meaning Windows 10 and Xbox One, with an Xbox Series X version coming. This also means that in Japan though, New Genesis will be on PC, PS4, and Nintendo Switch via Cloud gaming. Note that the Japanese version of PSO2 on PC is very easily accessible in English thanks to fans.

I always wondered why Sega finally decided to officially release PSO2 outside Japan in 2020; nine years after the game’s first Closed Alpha Test in Japan. Now we all know why. PSO2 New Genesis definitely makes the game more beautiful, all while keeping certain visual elements for which PSO2 wouldn’t be PSO2, like the uncanny valley character faces. Players who unlike me, care about graphics, will definitely be appealed. However, I’m worried as to whether they will stick with the game once the initial sense of discovery and hype dies down, and I’m skeptical as to what this update will bring to PSO2 besides better visuals.

PSO2 New Genesis Reveal Trailer

youtube

If you already play PSO2, the Japanese version at least, you know the game is currently in Episode 6. Well, New Genesis seems pretty much to be Episode 7 except with a fancy name rather than the usual numbering. The Japanese press release also sells it as a “new game”, but it’s ultimately an update. An update which seems voluminous and promising.

Besides the graphical update, new content and game systems changes will be coming. The video hints that new classes will be added. Though rather than brand new classes, it looks like at least the three original classes of PSO2, Hunter, Ranger, and Force, are all getting newer versions with fancier movements. Most notably the jet-boots like things all characters seem to possess now, which allows for quick bursts of movement. Most enemies seems more imposing than before too, with a focus on fighting a single monster instead of a swarm. The original Phantasy Star Online on Dreamcast was one of the inspirations for Capcom’s Monster Hunter, which itself became an inspiration for many others. It seems like Sega is again throwing the ball back. Thorough the trailer, the combat actually doesn’t feel that much different from current PSO2 though.

Phantasy Star Online, Phantasy Star Universe, Phantasy Star Online 2, Phantasy Star Nova, and now PSO2 New Genesis.

I’ve entered the Phantasy Star Online series with its first entry in 2000, played every version barring Universe, and ultimately kept playing PSO Blue Burst on PC private servers till 2011. As such, I was pretty eager to get into PSO2 when it was announced, and started the game with the first Closed Alpha Test in August 2011. While I quickly noticed how different it is from PSO1, I still greatly enjoyed it. Overall, PSO2 greatly improved over the years. You wouldn’t believe how slow the characters’ running speed initially was. The game is a much better and pleasant experience now compared to its beginnings. And yet my excitement and enjoyment died down over the years, only playing to hangout with online friends, but ultimately taking an indefinite hiatus from the game since late 2018.

In my opinion, PSO2 has multiple problems, and they’re quite hard to explain as they only hit you once you’ve spent a considerable amount of time with the game. But one way to sum it up well is how it ultimately feels like the game controls your play schedule. Mainly because of the scheduled Emergency Quests every week, which are the most interesting and the most rewarding content. PSO2 ultimately decides for you when do you play, what do you play, and when do you stop playing. Overall, in my last months of playing PSO2, it often felt like a chore rather than a game, even without min-maxing or when trying to enjoy the game as a “casual” player.

Min-maxing in PSO2 is also not worth it as it’s incredibly costly, in time, money, and most possibly real money. The act of “Affixing” equipment in PSO2 feels like a gacha game inside the game, and can easily screw you over. PSO2 definitely changed as I’m talking from experiences from 2011 to 2018, but at the very least back then, I couldn’t think of any content that was worth min-maxing. As long as you and all the players you play with don’t get hit much and have good, up-to-date equipment, which isn’t too hard to get, you could clear any endgame content. Which in turn made the grind of repeating the same Emergency Quests and endgame content over and over all the more pointless. It’s ultimately not worth it unless you wish to brag by uploading videos on YouTube where you solo bosses planned for 12 players. (Technically you could do that even without min-maxing, but those are always timed battles, so even if you’re skilled enough to never get hit, you won’t beat the bosses without enough DPS.)

Another issue is how PSO2 often fails to keep older content relevant, and always keep adding more and more on top instead of improving preexisting elements. This also makes it hard for beginner players lacking knowledge, who could spend hours and hours running certain quests for rewards that aren’t actually “worth” anything. With better equipment available through easier means. I’m worried New Genesis might turn out to this same pattern all over again.

It’s worth noting PSO2 also has a pretty good story mode. With the addition of New Genesis, what will happen to all the previous PSO2 main story content? Will it be rendered unplayable, only reduced to a compilation of cutscenes? This already happened in the past, and I fear it might happen again.

If there’s one thing PSO2 excels at however, and what New Genesis will be improving, it’s being one of the best cosplay games there is.

One particular aspect PSO2 is very good for is being a cosplay and fashion customization game, and that’s definitely one of the points New Genesis will focus on. PSO2 already has very extensive character customization options, especially when it comes to female characters and mecha, seeing we’re talking about a Japanese otaku game here. Most hardcore players on PSO2 I knew weren’t spending hours and hours for the rare drops and weps, but to get enough money to buy the newest clothes for their 765 years old youkai loli character.

PSO2 also had numerous collabs in eight years, adding costumes and customization options from Sega franchises like Sakura Taisen but also dozens of iconic Japanese popculture elements from Eva to costumes designed by Suzuhito Yasuda. Again though, most of these are only obtainable through real-money gacha with abyssal drop rates, or by spending gigantic amounts of in-game money, buying from other players.

In any case, I strongly hope PSO2 New Genesis will try and bring some new solutions, instead of simply painting over mold. I have high hopes for the “system redesigning” it will bring. In Japan, PSO2 regularly has live streams detailing upcoming content, so we’ll learn more soon. While we’re moving to next-gen in the middle of a pandemic, with the world being in the weirdest place we’ve ever experienced, PSO2 will stay relevant in the world of free-to-play online JRPGs with gacha-like elements. It’ll definitely be a serious competitor to Genshin Impact and Blue Protocol.

July 24, 2020 6:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/pso2-new-genesis-will-hopefully-be-much-more-than-a-visual-update/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pso2-new-genesis-will-hopefully-be-much-more-than-a-visual-update

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rieshon · 5 years

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Fall 2019 Preview

Hard to believe it's the last season of the year already, this year has been a pretty wild one for me.

Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai 2nd season: More of a highly competent rabukome with adorable heroines is always welcome. Furuhashi best girl.

Azur Lane: As far as shitty gacha phone games go, Azur Lane is about as good as an actual game as you can hope to get. Of course, that won't have any bearing on whether the anime is good. Like most of these games, Azur Lane is full of godlike characters rotting away uselessly in a shitty game, so I hope they can free them into something worthwhile. Yandere Akagi gives me life. It's being directed by Tenshou so let's just hope he doesn't put it in 21:9 aspect ratio.

Sword Art Online Alicization War of Underworld: As much as the first half of SAOA tried to be as boring as possible, I'm still excited for this for some reason. It will probably just make me want to rewatch the first season though.

Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne!: This is that isekai show that fucked up by making the main character way cuter before she gets isekai'd. But it is an all-girl cast which means it's probably going to be right up my alley. project No.9 carrying two projects this season makes me nervous, though...

Ore ga Suki Nanowa Omae Dake Kayo: I always get my hopes up for LN anime and this is one I've seen decently well-reviewed for a while. It has those stronk Buriki character designs and a stellar cast so my boner, at least, is ready.

Aikatsu On Parade!: I'm devastated that Friends, my favorite joji anime since Pripara, is ending, but at least Aine and Mio will still be sticking around for this new series I guess... Unfortunately, the nostalgia act doesn't have a lot in it for me because I still haven't watched all of the old Aikatsus.

Kandagawa JET GIRLS: They made Wave Racer into a real thing. I wasn't overly interested in this but then I looked at the character tab and saw the ojousama character and gah DAMN. GAH DAMN. And then I saw the rest of the characters. BRUH.

Houkago Saikoro Club: Cute girls play board games? Hell yeah. The glasses girl looks especially good.

Kataage! Kemonomichi: Holy shit, an isekai written by the author of Konosuba about a pro wrestler going to the isekai and suplexing everything? And the original character designs are by based Mo-suke? If this is even half as funny as Konosuba it'll be godlike.

Val x Love: A sci-fi anime where the only way to save the world is ichaicha with a bunch of cute sisters? Yep this is my jam. Some of the girls look extremely good and there's a nice diversity among the heroines. You got your lolis, your JKs, your channees, your anime moms. It's got something for everyone. 9/10 from IGN.

Assassin's Pride: It's cute girls with swords. The girls look good and it's got a sadistic-looking Ayaneru girl with drill hair, so what more could I possibly ask for?

Rifle Is Beautiful: Isn't it though? Unfortunately this show isn't about real guns but some kind of dumb laser rifle sport. But I'm all for shows about cute girls doing weird random hobbies, of course.

Choujin Koukousei-tachi wa Isekai demo Yoyuu de Ikinuku you desu!: It's all right there in the title. There is a blonde channee looking character voiced by Hiichan who looks absolutely yabai so I'm excited for this one. It looks like project No.9 have gotten their shit back together after Pasmemo and the animation is back up to par.

Fate/Grand Order -Zettai Majuu Sensen Babylonia-: First thing's first: fuck FGO, fuck gacha, and fuck everyone who supports this game financially for being the literal cancer killing everything I love. That said, we all know the animation is going to go absolutely HAM with all that Sony money, and I have lots of Ishtar doujins, so I'm still gonna download and watch it. Goddamnit.

Shinchou Yuusha ~Kono Yuusha ga Ore TUEEEE Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru~: It's never good when the title of the show makes it sound like it has exactly one (1) joke that it's going to beat to death, but it's got Toyosaki Aki as a cute blonde princess so maybe it will be good.

Z/X Code reunion: The title of this show is so generic I can't remember if this is a sequel to something or not. At any rate, I see lots of cute girls, so I'll give it a try.

Phantasy Star Online 2 Episode Oracle: Gonzo is still around and now they're making this. I can't imagine a universe where this show is good, but I do see a channee with glasses...

Nurupeta: Would be better if it was tsurupeta, but it's still cute robot anime. Probably will be a short.

Babylon: What a good show to put on right when the FGO Babylon anime is airing. Anyway, why do all these streaming shows feel the same? Like they're trying way too hard to be 'for adults.' This has no girls, but I do like a good mystery, so MAYBE I'll check it out if there's a severe lack of things to watch this season.

No Guns Life: Wow they made an anime about me. I don't actually want to watch this I just wanted to make that joke. The trailer is boring. How do you make a man who is a gun boring?

#Season Preview

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cutiecrates · 5 years

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Cutie Reviews: Gacha Gacha crate June 19

Hello! Welcome to the next review x3 I meant to do this a couple of days ago, but I haven’t been feeling well. But I’m feeling better than I was and I really wanted to get this written before I started something else related to the box... more about that on the inside.

In the booklet this month we get a page on the early history of Gachapon/Capsule machines. There is also a page about a contest the box is doing, where you take a creative picture using your most favorite gacha from the box so far. You can win a full set of said gachapon if you win!

As soon as I saw this I had a really cute idea, so I’ve been wanting to get this done before I put that together. I’m not sure when the contest ends, for all I know it might already be done- but I just got this box like a week ago. But I still plan to at least make the picture because I thought it would be a lot of fun :3 it has to be posted elsewhere, but I’ll be posting it here too.

But for now let’s focus on this box and it’s contents!

Inflatable Neck Pillow

Our first item is this creative travel companion, based on various food items. Like a croissant, shrimp, an eggplant/cucumber (not actually sure...), a banana, sausage, and a decorative chocolate.

I got the banana, as you can see. I think they all would have been cute, but if I had to choose I would have waned the chocolate.

I’m just glad I didn’t get the shrimp <3< I would have been too weirded out to use it... maybe.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

For travel or just around the house it’s nice to have a neck pillow once in a while. It’s very comfortable -surprisingly- but at the same time, it’s a bit strange. Like, it feels nice but at the same time the material feels odd and sticky. I don’t think that would bother everyone though.

It could also be used as an inflatable Frisbee if you don’t care for the neck pillow idea. Or maybe a fun toy for the pool or bath because it should float on the water without much applied pressure.

Doggo Desk Buddies

I was very excited to finally get one of these; these types of practical Gacha where the character or animal works as various useful desk ornaments. I love them!

This specific series features 6 ceramic puppies, each one a different species with their own function, including: a paper clip holder, a pen stand, a stamp holder, masking tape hanger, a post-it note stand, and a message holder.

As you can see I got the adorable post-it stand pug. It also comes with a kawaii little set of pink sticky notes. The puppy is put into bubble wrap to ensure it won’t get broken, which is a detail I really like. The post-its were in their own, separate tiny zip-lock bag.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

First of all, I really like the care put into this set. I’m guessing that if the capsule was jarred too much the puppy could risk breaking or damaging the sticky notes, or opposite. It’s really nice to see this type of consideration.

Meanwhile, as I already gushed, I love the concept as a whole when it comes to these. I would have been happy with any of them. I do find the tiny size of the sticky notes to be a bit of a let-down, but they can still be used for a lot of things, like bookmarking pages or “last-second emergency tape”. I also noticed that mostly the entire sheet seems to be sticky, but they still easily peel off the pad. Plus you could swap them out with other, smallish sets of sticky notes too.

Fish Game

I grew up with this game, and I’m sure a lot of you will recognize it too :3 in fact I still have mine. But if you’ve never seen it before, this toy is based on the electronic game that includes multiple people trying to catch the moving fish using their fishing rods.

It’s available in Purple, Blue, Pink, Green, and Yellow. It requires very minor assembly, you basically just connect the piece included with it that works as the “brain“ of the game. You then put the fishies into the slots and you can set the rod on the stand when not in use.

Rating: ♥

I fell in love with the adorable miniaturization of a beloved childhood game- I’ve really liked these game gachapon we keep getting as of late, I hope we get more~

I’m also delighted I got pink! It’s my favorite shade and everything!

But in saying that... my game is either wonky, or everyone’s is like this. For some reason I can’t get it to work, it barely wants to move/spin around like it’s supposed to. I also noticed one of my fish has 2 magnets in it’s mouth while the others only have 1, but that has nothing to do with it. It’s pretty disappointing.

Pikachu/Eevee Trainer

I think these might be “balancer“ gacha, due to the various poses they’re in. In a set of 6, we can get 1 of 2 Pikachu or 3 Eevee, all dressed up and ready to join up with their Trainer for an adventure! This series is by Takara Tomy Arts.

This one looks exactly like my Eevee from the game, so I was very happy :3 but mine is a girl, while this one is oddly a boy. I mean that isn’t to say guys can’t like flowers too, it’s kind of cute how the boyish looking Eevee in the set is a girl. Both Pikachu are boys.

Now, by this point I was beginning to have difficulties trying to get pictures. As soon as I would snap one, this happened:

Fluffy really wanted to play with them, he kept trying to carry off the puppy!

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I think these are very cute, especially if you played one of the Let’s Go games x3 Getting the flower Eevee was perfect for me, since I usually used them and the bow accessories on mine.

I wonder if the people who make this box saw the screenshot I uploaded of my Eevee months back...

Game-Box Mini Genesis

We’ve already established that I play video games, so this gacha especially caught my attention! This tiny, adorable glittery device (that Fluffy also went after) has 26 games in it! Ranging but not limited to shooting, driving, block destruction, puzzles, and image adjusting games.

Besides red, it also came in purple, black, white, green, and orange.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Definitely one of my favorites from this box, I love it~ It works perfectly, it has sound, of course the images are all made from pixels due to the retro nature of the device, but it’s really fun. The only problem is that as you can see from the instruction page included with it, and the game itself... it can be really hard to understand and use if you don’t understand the writing system.

But it’s not hard to turn it on and start playing, even if you don’t know what’s going on like me :P

Retro Gachapon Machine

This is kind of a spoiler but not really, because I will be covering this in a separate post! Only because like our previous Gachapon machine capsule, it has to be assembled and I thought I could get a handful of pictures from it. It’ll also serve as a comparison piece between the two gachapon machines I have.

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Total Rank: 8 out of 10 cuties. As usual there isn’t really a theme behind these so I can’t really point it for that. I liked every capsule we got, and almost every single one features a form of practicality or use. I was especially surprised by the size of the inflatable neck pillow, it’s the biggest thing we got yet!

I’m pretty much only removing points from this one because of the possibly broken fish game. I don’t know what it’s problem is. I also think I might have liked last months a bit better than this one...

♥ Cutie Scale ♥

1. Dog Desk Buddies - Being a ceramic figure, it’s obvious the detail would be there. What I like about these is that if I really didn’t want to use it for a desk item, it would be a cute figurine to put on a shelf.

2. Pokemon - Mine would have been spot-on if it was a girl eevee, but I love him regardless of gender. The detail is very well done and they all have flawless paint jobs.

3. Gachapon Machine - What’s cuter than adorable Gacha than a put-together model of the machine? It’s perfect for re-ment.

4. Mini Genesis - I love sparkly translucent things~

5. Fish Game - Even though it behaves weird, I think the fishies are still really cute looking. They have different expressions, which is a cute little detail.

6. Neck Pillow - It’s cute in a really silly kind of way. Realistic-looking food goods always look kind of silly though, don’t they?

Okay, so that will be doing it for this review :3 I plan to be focusing on my “possible entry” for the boxes contest, then I’ll be doing my review/put together of the retro gachapon machine. Then we can finally begin the January boxes!

Until next time~

#gachagachacrate #pokemongacha #dog gacha

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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I’m still a little salty about how few units actually got mana spirals this month, but the ones we did get were surprisingly powerful, and the new banner also introduced some surprisingly meta-changing units, like the sentient potato who just wants to be vored.

There’s a lot to talk about so I’m gonna put my rambling under a cut, lol.

OK so first of all. Pipple. This fuckin’ non-limited 4-star water wand built with defense and energy buff skills, who is LITERALLY A TALKING VEGETABLE, is somehow the actual meta-changing start of this banner. After waiting more than an entire goddamn year for our first 5-star water blade, he ends up getting overshadowed by a goddamn potato. And as much as I love Valerio as well, I wouldn’t have it any other way, lmao.

It feels insane to even say it, but with the way his kit works, he honestly feels like a lite version of Gala Cleo. He can probably do just fine on his own in a normal water team, but if you get four Pipples together and give them something like Odd Sparows, they become a group of tanks who can deal surprisingly high damage, while sustaining themselves with healing doublebuff.

When I first saw his skills I thought that he was basically just a slightly better version of Pia, and that he’d basically just be a meme character, but honestly his passive abilities are enough to make him genuinely great. They give him a really unique play-style, especially with how he approaches energy.

I wasn’t sure what to make of his first ability at first since it’s description is super vague, but apparently it makes it so that his basic combos are 120% or so better than those of a normal wand unit. Which is pretty insane on it’s own. But then you have his third ability, which is basically just the one Yaten already has, where he gets buffs along with his energy level, up to a maximum of 40% strength and 15% crit rate when he’s energized. But unlike basically any other unit in the game, who wants to dump their energy stacks into an attack skill or a heal, Pipple doesn’t do that at all. He doesn’t even have any attack skills or heals, so if you ignore weapon skills and dragon skills, he doesn’t have anything to use energy on like that. Instead, he’s meant to basically stay permanently energized so that he doesn’t lose the buff that comes along with it. So once you get him energized, it basically means that he has a 40% strength and 15% crit rate buff for the entire rest of the fight. Plus he can trigger strength doublebuff with his S1 to give him even more strength.

I don’t think the DPS charts do justice to his true potential because of how weird and indirect his kit is, but I think he’s genuinely really strong. He’ll probably work really well with the eventual water element 6-star weapons, since the skills on those are just buffs, so he can use it without losing his energy buffs.

People have already cleared expert and master HBH with 4 Pipple teams, and apparently it’s not very difficult at all, and it’s basically impossible to get killed with that comp. It’s probably slower than other water team comps, but it seems very tanky.

I think he does enough damage on his own to be very good in a team with other units, but I’m not as sure about that. You’d probably end up designing a team around him like you do with Patia, to make full use of strength/healing doublebuffs.

At the very least I think he’s immediately better than Lily. Which probably isn’t a huge achievement, but still, lol. If he ends up being good for regular teams and not just 4-Pipple teams, I think he’ll help let Gala Elly run without Chocolatiers, which could be nice.

I was thinking that, until Thaniel eventually gets a buff, I might use Xainfried for HBH now that he’s gotten his own mana spiral, but once I get a HDT1 water wand, I’m kinda tempted to just play Pipple instead, lmao.

In general i really like units like this who have weird and unique play-styles, and it’s really fun to get some silly and non-human adventurers like this. And since he’s a non-limited 4-star, it’s not a bad thing if he ends up being really meta-defining. Overall his existence is just a net positive for the game and I’m wuv him :) I’ve been kinda bitter lately about how the non-limited water roster as a whole just doesn’t stack up well against limited water units like Gala Elly and MH Sarisse, but Pipple [and Xainfried getting his mana spiral] really helps with that. I feel like Pipple might end up being a popular budget entry point into HBH.

He also might be basically the only unit in the game to make good use of The Petal Queen in order to immediately energize himself, which is fun. I like how these sorts of units who don’t use attacking skills end up benefiting from some weird and niche wyrmprints that you usually don’t use otherwise. It seems like Chocolatiers is better for HBH, but for basically any other fight I think The Petal Queen would probably be better, since the immediate jumpstart on his offensive buffs would probably be better than the immediate defense buff.

And on the topic of the mana spirals we got, I’m still super salty that Norwin didn’t get one, or even any of the other gacha 4-star shadow units, but at least the three mana spirals we got were really great.

Xainfried’s probably getting overlooked by Nefaria and OG Cleo’s mana spirals, and also by Pipple being the hot new water unit everyone loves, but his mana spiral seems like it’s really helped him, and I don’t regret getting him up to around 64MC immediately. I think the DPS sims put him at around the level of Victor and Kirsty, which is a pretty big deal considering how underpowered he was before this. There’s also the fact that we don’t have a frostbite punisher wyrmprint or dragon yet, so his true damage potential probably hasn’t been reached yet. I think he’s probably going to end up being readily accepted into all levels of HBH after this, which would be great. I think he’s always been perfectly viable for HBH, but never ‘meta’. But he seems really strong now. And once we get a frostbite punisher print, he might become a really meta unit since he and Valerio are currently the only frostbite enablers in the game, though I think Mitsuba will probably get frostbite too, and they’ll probably give it to some of the existing water units through their mana spirals. He’ll probably be one of the better frostbite enablers, though.

OG Cleo getting a buff wasn’t exactly a surprise, and it mostly went the way I expected, but her getting buff dispel was a surprise. I think she’s probably the best healer for Kai Yan, but I dunno if buff dispel will be a huge deal in HJP. But since Nefaria also got buff dispel, I think S-Verica is still gonna have a space in the Kai Yan meta. People probably won’t want to run much with Heinwald in that fight, sadly, lol.

Nefaria, on the other hand, was a huge surprise, since it looked like they’d just skipped over her entirely. But she got a mana spiral out of the blue, and apparently it’s made her extremely powerful, maybe second only to Gala Cleo herself, lol. I’m still annoyed at how their approach to fixing her was just ‘slap the poison meta on her existing kit’, but oh well. It did the job with making her extremely good, I guess. I’m happy that she’s finally a good unit, even if I wish they had been a bit more creative about it.

Since they have basically the same kit, and wind also has it’s own poison meta, they’re probably just going to give Hawk the exact same buff [maybe without the buff dispel, though], and hopefully that’d also lead to him being extremely strong.

The Kai Yan fight also came out, which is it’s own whole thing. I’m currently just grinding standard to get the materials to max out the shadow tree, but from what I can gather, both difficulties are apparently a lot easier than Volk, which is . . . kinda surprising. Maybe it’s just because the shadow roster is stupidly powerful, but it sounds like the requirements to get by in Expert aren’t very high at all. Which probably means that the meta surrounding it will probably be more accepting of a variety of units. But probably with a preference for the 70MC ones.

I was worried that they’d tune the fight too much around Gala Cleo and just make it super punishing and impenetrable, but it feels more like they just didn’t even bother putting effort into designing the fight in a way that shut her down. Which is probably a good thing in the long run, since it makes the fight more accessible. I thought they’d at least make the satellite things absorb some of Gala Cleo’s S1 hits, but apparently not, lol.

I’ll see how expert goes when I get to it, but I wonder if in the long run, it’ll be easier to break into Kai Yan and get a MUB 6-star shadow weapon to take into HJP, instead of doing HZD first to get a shadow HDT weapon. That’d be interesting.

The shadow 6-star weapons also seem to have some interesting effects. I thought that all the 6-star weapons might just get alternating strength and regen buffs, but the shadow ones have attack rate and defense. I guess it’s probably designed with each Agito fight in mind, since healing is important to Volk, while Kai Yan has more unavoidable damage.

I have no idea what they’ll do with the other element types, but one way or another I think, as I said, Pipple’s gonna really benefit from a water Agito weapon, since it won’t have an attack or a heal [hopefully] for him to waste his energy stacks on.

I kinda hope the wind one gives a crit rate buff, since wind needs more of that in general.

Oh yeah, and Valerio also exists, lmao. I still really want him, but I can live without him at this point, especially with how much I’ve come to love Pipple as a character. I do like how unique and interesting Valerio’s kit is, though, and I’m glad that he seems to be pretty strong overall. I wish they’d stop designing blade units that are dependent on high combo counts, though. It’s just not a good weapon type for that, lol.

I don’t think Nimis is particularly amazing at the moment since there’s not many water units who can reliably get high crit chance in the first place, but since Pipple can pretty easily get a more or less permanent 15% crit rate buff, Nimis might be pretty good on him. Basically water needs a unit like Ezelith to really make use of him. And thus far we don’t really have that, but I still feel like Laranoa might end up getting basically the exact same buff that Ezelith got when she gets her mana spiral, in which case she’d probably use Nimis. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mitsuba ends up being based around crits when she comes out, as well.

And on that note, the second part of the current banner should be starting in the next few days, and it’ll almost certainly give us Mitsuba as a 5-star water dagger, and Picaro as . . . some sort of 4-star. Unless they invent an entirely new dragon for the banner, I think they’ll just have Nimis on rate-up for it again, or feature an existing water dragon like Leviathan. In general I’m just not very interested in the idea of the part two banner at the moment. Mitsuba’s a fun character, but I like both Pipple and Valerio more, and in terms of burn res water daggers I think I like Orsem more, too. I also just kinda hate Picaro so I have no real interest in the idea of getting him as a playable adventurer, lol. I’m not even sure what type of unit he’ll be, honestly. I think he’ll be a flame 4-star, going by his character design, but I’ve got no clue about his weapon type. He doesn’t really seem to be holding a weapon in his art like Valerio and Mitsuba are, so it’s hard to guess. I’m also not even sure if the flame roster has any notable gaps that can be filled by a new 4-star. I guess it might be neat if he’s a sleep res healer that has sleep cleanse, but I guess we’ll see.

I still think Pipple’s gonna end up being the real star of his banner as a whole, lol.

Anyway, for the time being, I’m gonna keep grinding Kai Yan, and I’ll probably do a few runs of HMC to get Pipple his HDT water wand. After that I’ll see if that’s enough investment to let me break into eHBH with him. I’ll probably end up having to max augment Odd Sparrows first, but I’ve at least started on that already. I at least have Xainfried as a good alternative option to get into that fight, but I just really really like the idea of taking a sentient potato creature to fight a flame dragon :v

#dragalia lost #LONG HAVE WE WAITED. LILY INVALIDATED. PIPPLE ACTIVATED #although on the other hand *cries in dy-xander being even more useless*

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years

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So I was planning to just wait until the big end of summer banner in GBF to spark, but then they decided to put Summer Mimlemel and Kumbhira on rate-up in this banner, so one thing lead to another and now I’ve sparked on this banner instead and I have to hope I don’t regret it too much, lol.

TL;DR: if water’s first grand in over 1000 days ended up being the boss from an event that came out like six years ago would that be fucked up or what

On top of the fact that Mim and Kumbhira are the summer units i’ve been wanting the most [and this would be the last chance to get Mim until like the next annitix or something], and the fact that fire GW is coming up next month, this was an extremely tempting banner for me because basically all the tools to set up an agni grid have been falling into my lap recently, so I figured it’d be a good idea to just keep leaning into that.

Like, I got four Ixabas in my Nehan spark, I have a Rein fist and one or two copies of Benedia, I have two Agnis, and one Wilnas. So in terms of grid pieces and stuff I have basically everything I need to set up a good Agni grid, and I have a huge amount of good flame units, with Mim and Kumbhira being some of the main ones I was missing. I don’t have Alanaan, Fraux, or Tien yet, but they’re a whole different story.

Anyway, long story short, here’s what I got:

-Summer Mim [three times, lmao]

-Grand Poseidon [I’m honestly not even sure how much use I’ll get out of him but it’s nice to have him, lol]

-Yukata Yuisis

-Summer Farrah

-Summer Lowain

-Summer Ippatsu

-SR Jeanne

-Water Yuel

Then I sparked Summer Kumbhira.

Also I got Yukata Yngwie from the recent summer star premium, and SSR Therese from the PG ticket we got from the new summer missions.

So at the very least I got the two main units I wanted, and the new grand, but I was kinda hoping against hope that I’d get both of them during the spark so I could go for Grand Narmaya instead to prepare for wind GW. Oh well, lol. Even if I had waited to spark until the end of the month, it probably would have been even more likely that I’d have had to spark for Kumbhira or another new summer unit instead of her anyway, I guess.

I’m also a little sad I missed out on Summer Meg, but I have enough good dark units that it’s not a huge deal, and all of the other new summer units that I don’t have by now don’t interest me much. I know we’re gonna get one more batch of summer units this month, which is part of why I was scared to spark here, but ultimately I think the ability to get Mim from this banner outweighed the possibility of those unknown units being worth saving for.

At least I avoided the worst case scenario of getting neither of my two targets during my summons, lmao. I’m not entirely sure who I would have prioritized sparking in that case.

Anyway I guess now my plan with my next spark is to just start hoarding for the end of the year. We should get roulette during the gala banner that introduces the next zodiac, so that’d be a good time to spark, especially if I want another chance to spark Grand Narmaya. I’ve exhausted most of my farmable crystals and tickets at this point, but there’d be like five months between now and then, so surely that’d be enough to save up enough to spark, especially since we should get roulette over new years, lol.

In the slim chance that I actually get one of the Tier 2 or 3 prizes from the summer lottery event thing, I might end up using that to get Grand Narmaya. Assuming that you actually get to choose which reward you want, Tier 2 includes a free spark worth of crystals, and Tier 3 includes all the grand weapons, so I could either just do a spark at the end of this month [or a later month before wind GW I guess] to spark Grand Narmaya, or I could just directly trade for her, depending on what I win. I know Tier 3 also includes Belial which would probably be a way better choice, but it’d be really hard to motivate myself to choose a summon over a grand character, lol. But on the other hand if I somehow get a Tier 1 reward and get the Sierotix from that, I’d probably just use that on Belial.

Either way I’m not actually expecting to get any of those rewards in the first place since the chances of getting winning tickets for them seems pretty low on paper, but honestly I just have a lot of questions about how the heck this entire event works. Like, one thing that seems kinda odd to me is that the rule about the tickets being rigged so you get at least one ticket for every ending digit from 0-9 seems to imply that the chances of getting a Tier 2 prize is actually around 10%, unlike how the Tier 3 prize is still probably a 1% chance since the first two digits on each digit are pure RNG, which sounds kinda strange and backwards. I think it’d also imply that Tier 1 would be a 1% chance, rather than a 0.1% chance, since one of the digits would already be there no matter what. It also seems like, outside of the more or less guaranteed Tier 4 winning ticket everyone should get, the other ones would have the same 10% chance as the Tier 2 winning tickets, since they both effectively just boil down to one digit being correct.

In general it just seems like a kinda bizarre and overly complicated event with weirdly skewed probabilities, considering the sorts of prizes each tier contains.

Mostly it just bugs me that last year everyone got a guaranteed 30k crystals from treasure rush, but it seems like the only guarantee with this event is that everyone will get a Tier 4 prize, but the only worthwhile items in that tier are like . . . two gold moons or a few damascus crystals, lol. The upper ceiling on the rewards you can potentially get from the event is pretty crazy, with stuff like the 100k crystals, the Sierotix, the unticketable summons, and even the uncapped gold moon weapons, but those all seem to be pure RNG.

Part of me’s hoping that maybe in the summer stream they’ll announce that everyone will also get a guaranteed Tier 3 prize as well, but I kinda doubt we’d get two layers of guaranteed rewards like that. And I kinda doubt that they’d effectively give everyone a free Belial.

I’m also still super unclear about how the winning numbers system works, and how many of them we’ll actually get. But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

So anyway I guess I have basically all the tools I need to set up a good Agni grid. To recap, before this banner I had 4 Ixabas, one Rein fist, one or two Benedias, two copies of Agni, and one Wilnas. I also have some other random fire gacha weapons that might be worth using in certain situations, and now I have a copy of Kumbhira’s spear. I also have three copies of Mim’s weapon now, but I don’t know if it’s worth using.

I don’t have Alanaan, Fraux, or Tien yet, so that’s kinda awkward, but I still have a lot of good flame characters. In particular I have Athena and Christmas Nemone, which was a big reason why I’ve been wanting to get Summer Kumbhira since she came out. I also have Metera [and now Therese] who can fill out an auto-attack team comp once I get Alanaan. And other than that I have some generally good flame units like Siegfried, Yuisis, Zeta, and Yuel.

Even without Alanaan, I think Mim will still be pretty useful, especially for stuff like OTK in fire GW. And if I still can’t do a 2-button OTK by that point, Summer Kumbhira’s third skill seems very useful for OTK.

In terms of OTK, I suppose at this point I have the option of suptixing Shion when I next get a chance, since I can set up an Ixaba grid, and I have all of the main fire katana units I’d need to make her work. I feel like it’d probably be a waste to use a suptix on her at this point when I can presumably set up a fine OTK team as it is, though. I also really want to get Vane from the next suptix instead, lol. And in terms of fire suptix options, Michael is also kinda tempting since I don’t have her yet.

I’m kinda curious to see how much of an impact setting up an Agni grid has on my flame team’s damage at this point. I imagine it’d be pretty big, since right now I’m using a super basic M1 flame grid. I think at the moment I only have enough bars to uncap three Ixabas, but we’ll see how that goes.

So yeah I think this went pretty well. Better than my last spark in Dragalia Lost, at least, lmao.

EDIT: Since I don’t wanna make another whole post about this, I did the new fire/dark star premium, which ended up weirdly similar to my last one, since even though the actual guaranteed SSR I got was Veight, I randomly got a Summer Kumbhira dupe during the bonus tenfold, and I was trying to get a dupe of her weapon from this in the first place so I’d have two, lol. Since I just got it from the normal gacha part it’s not fully uncapped like the guaranteed one would be, but oh well.

#murasaki rambles #let's see how salty I get about the summer lottery event results in two weeks lmao #this got kinda long but most of it wasn't even really spent talking about the spark itself

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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I wasn’t initially going to summon on this banner since the idea of a Nefaria alt didn’t interest me much, but then we found out that she’s a flame wand, AND Gala Elly got put on rate-up, who I’ve been waiting like nine goddamn months for another chance to get, so at that point I figured that this banner was more tempting to me than the idea of the anniversary gala giving us, like, Gala Zena or whatever, lol.

Also I may as well use this as an excuse to talk about the upcoming changes to crafting and storage that we’re getting for the anniversary.

Even after summoning for Gala Thor like two weeks ago, I managed to get back up to around 270 summons going into this gala, and this is what I got from spending like 230 of that, lol.

Dupes:

-Sakuya and Long Long [I already had MUB copies of both of them so now they’re just sitting in my inventory as extras. I could sell them, but I know we’re getting updates to how dragons get upgraded soon so I want to hold onto them]

-Liger [I think he’s at 3UB now]

-Andromeda x2 [yes I got two copies of her, lol. Now she’s at 2UB]

-Summer Celliera [why do I keep getting so many summer units from galas, lol]

-I might have gotten another dupe adventurer but I can’t remember

And anyway the new stuff I got was:

-Gala Elly x2 [!!!!!! I’ve waited so long for ths, and now I dunno if I’ll even actually use her, lol. But I’m glad I got her. I probably should have stopped after getting the first copy of her after like 150 summons, but I wanted the Nefaria alt]

-Incognito Nefaria [it took nearly all of my stash but I finally got her. I know she’s not even a limited unit and I could just dream summon her later, but I don’t regret chasing her now. Especially since she seems designed for these kinds of wave-based events, and I’m already having fun using her for it]

-Summer Mikoto [Like I said, I just keep getting summer units for some reason. I felt kinda bad about skipping his banner when he came out, and he was actually my main dream summon candidate before this, so I’m really happy I got him. This also makes up for me getting spooked by a Summer Cleo dupe in the last gala, lol]

-Horus [I have like four or five different MUB 5-star flame dragons so I’m never actually gonna use him, but he’s nice to have. I hope they make more attack rate dragons like him for other elements]

-Hastur [the less said about this dude, the better]

I could have just stopped after getting Gala Elly [especially since I’d already pulled Horus and Summer Mikoto by that point], but I really like Incognito Nefaria as a unit, so I’m glad I got her. I also read OG Nefaria and Nadine’s adventurer stories recently to prepare for this event, and it made me really like both of them, so there’s that. I’m really glad I managed to get Nadine a while ago even after skipping her banner, since now I can use her and Nefaria in my flame team together. I honestly think that if I didn’t have Nadine already I might not have been as compelled to chase Nefaria here, so I guess that’s a bit of a double-edged sword, but I’m happy about how it turned out, lol.

At the moment I’m also running Naveed and Verica in my flame team with them, since I saw someone point out that you can now make a full flame team with PoC characters, and I just think that’s neat. And they actually work really well together for an event like this.

I feel kinda bad about more or less benching my Xania, but I hadn’t used her in ages after she started to fall out of the meta, so there’s that. Wands are one of my favourite weapon types, though, and I’ve been waiting for a new good flame wand for ages, so that also made me excited about Nefaria. I know Student Maribelle’s actually pretty good now for various reasons, but I don’t like her as much, lol.

I do appreciate that she and Nefaria aren’t actually as identical as they seemed at first glance. I mean, they’re still really similar in a lot of ways, but I think S-Maribelle works better in single-enemy boss fights, while Nefaria is designed more for wave-based content.

Nefaria’s also just a surprisingly neat character in terms of how she plays, specifically because she’s designed for wave-based content. Both of her skills feel really unique in how they function, and it feels like you really have to think about your positioning and movement in order to maximize her damage, with how her S1 creates a zone that sucks in enemies, and her S2 locks her into a super long casting animation and makes her move really slowly until you successfully set it off.

Her getting stuck in a nearly six second long casting animation for her S2 that also makes her move super slowly is kinda annoying, but I like that it forces you to be careful about when you do it so that you don’t get knocked out of the animation before it ends. And honestly I just think it’s really cool that she does a full-on spell chant, and you see a magic circle slowly expand under her as she charges up her big nuke spell. It’s extremely satisfying, lol. Especially since even with a 0UB Agito wand, I can easily hit like 500k+ damage with it by using it on a big crowd, so that’s just really cool.

It’s also really convenient that if your S2 gets canceled, you can immediately start it again after you recover, so you don’t have to charge it up again. It makes it feel a lot less punishing when you get hit during the animation, but it’s still enough of an issue that you’re motivated to avoid having it happen. Also, even though her skills are really powerful, their SP costs are pretty low [almost identical to Xania’s, for reference]. It also makes it easy to get into a pattern of using your S1 twice before you use your S2, which is enough to make sure your S2 is energized since you get three energy stacks from each S1.

All in all, I just think she has a really cool kit that all fits together with itself really nicely, and it’s super satisfying to use her in wave-based events like this. In spite of her new modern-day outfit, she actually feels like a fairly old-school caster type of character, with big crowd-control skills and long, dramatic spell chants and magic circles and stuff, which I really love.

Sadly I think she’s probably kinda bad for stuff like Volk and maybe even HMS, but I really like using her.

Also, I do really like her new outfit, and how well she fits with Nadine. It’s just really cute. Not to mention her having a shareable skill where she takes a selfie with her, lol. This recent trend of characters getting shareable skills with really cute or funny animations that you can see other characters do if you equip the shared skill on them is really great. Apparently if you use that shared skill on Nadine, it changes it so that the animation has Incognito Nefaria show up to take a selfie with her, which is a cute touch.

And even though I hope they make some new maps for these events soon, I really like how they’re using these defense/onslaught events to focus on existing gacha characters and flesh out their stories while also showing how they interact with unrelated characters.

I do feel kinda bad about how Nadine got her own whole story connected to an OG 5-star, and a whole new event based around it just a few months after she got introduced, while Linnea had to go back to her home planet or something, lol. At least she gets to hang out with Laranoa and Linus in Wyrmprint Land [tm].

Anyway, all that aside, we also recently got a glimpse of what the upcoming weapon/crafting/inventory system overhaul is gonna entail, since they had to make a separate alert in advance about how it’s going to impact microtransaction stuff, and how they’re gonna reimburse people for that.

Basically it sounds like weapons and wyrmprints are gonna get changed so that we can only have one copy of each one, but through some sort of upgrading process we’ll be able to equip one weapon/wyrmprint on multiple people in the same team. Which sounds like a really convenient change that’ll remove so much clutter from my inventory. It’ll also make it a lot easier to use multiple characters of the same weapon type on a team together, since usually the hassle of dealing with how they use similar weapons and wyrmprints just makes me never want to bother. I dunno how often I’ll actually use units like this together after this update, but it should be convenient for characters who have the same weapon type but different roles [like how Gala Elly and Tobias are buff units with weapon types mostly used for DPS units, or how Heinwald is a hybrid DPS/healer while Grace is a dedicated defense/shield buff unit].

It also sounds like they’re going to straight up remove some weapons and wyrmprints from the game to go with this change, which probably at least refers to the 2-star ones that nobody uses for anything. If we can only hold one copy of them at a time, they’d be even more useless as experience fodder than they are now, so there wouldn’t really be any reason to keep them around other than as weapon skins. I’m still hoping they also remove some of the really niche and useless void weapons, though, and just keep them as optional weapon skins.

My main worry about this system is that we don’t know exactly what the process of upgrading a weapon or wyrmprint to let you equip it to multiple characters will be like, and how many resources it might take. Considering how many solo team comps involve using multiple copies of stuff like Odd Sparrows or punisher prints, veteran players should be able to do those upgrades pretty much immediately so they can get back to normal.

There’s also the whole topic of how facility events want you to get a full team of event prints as soon as possible to make the grind easier, so that’s another example of why it hopefully won’t be a very expensive system. And on that note, I guess they’ll be fundamentally changing how we obtain prints, especially from stuff like facility events. But we’ll see how it goes.

It’ll at least be interesting to see if the new system leads to us using more or less eldwater than we currently do on prints.

I also have a feeling that since we’ll only be able to have one copy of each weapon and wyrmprint after this, and since they seem to be removing the storage limit on them, they’re probably also going to completely remove the ability to dismantle weapons [and maybe to sell wyrmprints], since you won’t have to worry about things like cleaning out your inventory anymore. They did also mention recently that one big problem with the crafting system was how dismantling has always been a huge pain, so I could see them just removing it, lol. The current main endgame weapons can’t be dismantled already anyway, so it wouldn’t change much, and it’d at least remove the possibility of accidentally selling or dismantling something you didn’t want to.

Either way, this seems like a way more drastic change than I expected it to be [even if it’s more of a quality of life type of thing], and now I can see why it’s been in the works for so long, lol. I’m really happy that they’re willing to make these sorts of updates to make the whole UI as streamlined and convenient as possible, though.

I’ve been trying to get into Granblue Fantasy for months now, but one of the main things that keeps me from ever getting really into it is just how godawful the entire UI of that game is, especially when it comes to inventory management. I know some people get bored with constant quality of life updates, but it’s so much better than the alternative, lol.

#murasaki rambles #dragalia lost #I probably shouldn't have chased her so hard but I think y'all can tell how much I like the new Nefaria alt lol

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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I was planning to make a whole post anyway about my hopes and predictions for Gala Leif if he ends up happening next month, but there’s also a whole lotta other stuff to talk about now with the FEH rerun, the Ciella fight teaser, and our first gala dragon, so I guess I’ll take the chance to just talk about everything all at once, lol.

I feel like I went through every possible human emotion in the span of like ten seconds when I saw the gala banner announcement a day or two ago and then saw what it was actually about. That sure was a roller-coaster.

I honestly don’t really care about Mars that much [mainly because I’m always just more interested in adventurers than dragons], but I’m really curious about the precedent this is setting, with this being our first gala dragon, and this also happening only one month after the last gala banner.

They’ll probably talk about it in the next This Month post in a week or so, but I’m gonna just assume for now that we’re gonna get gala banners on a monthly basis from now on, rather than every two months. Which is a little bit scary to think about since it gives us less time between each gala to save up for each one, but we’ll just see how it goes.

Everyone’s predicting that we’re gonna alternate between gala dragons and gala adventurers, but I’m not sure it’ll be strictly scheduled out like that. I feel like we’re just switching to a monthly schedule and we just happened to get a gala dragon as the start of the schedule shift. I think it’s more likely that we’re going to start seeing reruns of old gala units between entirely new gala characters. I mean, it’s pretty obvious how much revenue it’d get them if they ever decided to rerun Gala Cleo or Gala Alex, lol.

Mostly I just can’t even think of that many options for what they could release in terms of gala dragon alts. We might get some of the other dragons that the royal siblings have pacts with, but we only know of like two other ones.

Mars’ introduction is bringing up the whole hot button issue of powercreep in the fandom, but honestly I don’t think Mars being really powerful is that big of a deal. He’s not exactly essential for any content, and tbh at the end of the day I just think it’d be weird if our first gala dragon WASN’T notably powerful. People already complain about dragon banners as it is because they have such low value. I can only imagine how many complaints there’d be if we got our first gala dragon and it only ended up being a sidegrade to the existing options. From what I’ve seen of how Mars changes up things on the DPS sim, I think they struck a good balance of making him powerful without him being super gamebreaking. I honestly think that Marth’s mana spiral is a much more blatant example of powercreep, and has had more of an impact on the flame meta than Mars alone.

Anyway, on the note of Marth and co, the FEH rerun has finally begun, and I kinda have to agree with everyone that the defense gamemode just doesn’t really feel good to play at all when it’s locked to solo, lol. It’s so obviously designed for co-op instead. It’s not really that big of a deal, but it does feel like more of a slog than it should, especially since you have to do it like 45 times for the event endeavors, and since there’s so many valor rewards. I’m curious to see how it pans out when this becomes a regular gamemode for future events, though. Hopefully they get better at balancing it and making it fun to play.

Even though I still don’t have any interest in pulling on any of the FEH banners since I just want to save for Gala Leif, I did decide to 70MC Alfonse, because haha bad decision machine go brr :) But I honestly do like him a lot, and I’m excited to get Sharena from the upcoming event. I hope she’s a light lance since I don’t have H-Elly or H-Vanessa, but we’ll see how it goes.

We also got some more teasers of the new FEH event and how it’ll play out. It looks like it’ll be a wave-based arena mode of sorts where you fight lots of enemies, which apparently include boss versions of different gacha characters. I think they mentioned a while ago that they’ll be introducing a new event type to the event rotation along with defense battles, and I assume this’ll be the first example of it. If they do, I hope they keep the part with you fighting boss versions of gacha characters, since that’s a neat idea that makes them feel different from the other events we get and the bosses we fight.

They haven’t really said anything about what the new FEH units will be like aside from Sharena, and I can’t really make any guesses since I’m not a Fire Emblem fan to begin with, but I’m already bracing myself for the inevitability of us getting a two-part banner for the new units, lol.

We’re also getting Ciella’s fight at around the start of next week, and they posted a preview video of the standard difficulty version of it. It seems like she inflicts a unique debuff called Vulnerability, so I’m really curious to see if I end up being correct with my previous theory about certain wind units getting debuff cleanse mechanics added via mana spiral upgrades. I think there’s at least one part in the video where Lowen heals the team and it doesn’t cleanse Vulnerability like it does with Plague, and it’d be a bit weird if you’re just meant to deal with having the debuff until it eventually wears off, so it’d be neat if they do introduce a new debuff cleanse mechanic.

Though tbh I can’t actually tell exactly what Vulnerability is meant to even do, since I don’t think it seemed to have a big impact on how much damage characters took, even though it definitely sounds like it’s meant to be a defense debuff or something. Either way, it’s probably going to be the central mechanic of Ciella’s fight, so hopefully we get tools to deal with it.

They only showed off the standard version of her fight so things will probably get more complex in expert, but it looks like her fight’s going to be built around making you move around a lot to dodge attacks. She seems to have various purple attacks, as well as homing attacks, and one move that seems to fire projectiles that bounce around the map. I don’t know how much this will really impact things, but it at least seems different to how relatively little you have to move around in Kai Yan.

It also looks like she might have unavoidable freeze-inflicting attacks, which might be interesting. They probably want you to use at least one freeze-res character. Which might not really diversify the meta much from where it is now, since Hawk has freeze res, but we’ll see how it goes.

We haven’t heard anything about us getting more wind mana spirals, but I’d be kinda surprised if we don’t get any more for this. In general wind is in a bit of an awkward spot, and if we don’t get more mana spirals for it soon, I feel like the Ciella meta is just going to be Tobias + Hawk [and maybe Lin You] again, if only just due to a lack of good options.

I’m also still really interested to see what the wind Agito weapon buffs end up being, and how much they might benefit certain characters. I think that a crit rate buff might be pretty nice, at least for characters like Ku Hai, but that sort of a buff probably wouldn’t help people like Lin You or DY-Xainfried much since they have crit rate buffs in their kits already. A crit damage buff could be interesting, but unless you’re playing as Lin You or have a DY-Xainfried on the team, it might not be as good as a crit rate buff.

Either way, I’m slowly getting a 0UB wind CT2 of each type just so I have all my options available to me, but I feel like the first wind Agito weapon I get will probably be a blade or wand, since I’ll probably end up using either Tobias, Noelle, or DY-Xainfried against Ciella most of the time. I do have a 70MC Lin You, though, so I might get an axe too.

We’ll see how it goes when the fight comes out, but I’m gonna assume that Ciella will probably be about as difficult as Kai Yan. Though since she doesn’t seem to have the same ‘you deal twice as much damage to the boss as you normally would for some reason’ mechanic as Kai Yan, and since wind is way less broken as an element than shadow as a whole, it’ll probably take a bit longer to clear. Though tbh I’m still like 100% expecting people to be able to clear it notably faster with full shadow teams than wind teams, so there’s that to consider, lol.

Anyway the main thing I’ve been thinking about recently is Gala Leif, who I’m still hoping against hope will come out at the end of next month.

It’s not like we know for sure he’s gonna ever be released at all, but with chapter 13 he’s officially joined Euden full-time, and he got a whole new redesign and 3D model to commemorate it, which really seems like blatant set-up for him getting a gala alt. Like how Sarisse has her NPC design, and a 3D model based on it for Melsa’s event, but then she got a new outfit and 3D model for her gala alt. Even Mym technically got her design tweaked a bit for her gala alt compared to her regular NPC artwork.

I wasn’t even sure at first if Leif got a new outfit for chapter 13 or if it was just a different pose, but it’s definitely a different outfit. Or, more accurately, it’s basically his old outfit but tweaked and redesigned to be more ornate and fancy and detailed, which is pretty telling. And I’m pretty sure his 3D model from the Void Poseidon fight was a new one based on his new outfit, which is also just even more additional design work to put into someone who’s currently just an NPC.

I heard that in chapter 9 he was basically given the same sort of internal coding as Albert [like how NPC Zethia in chapter 1 was apparently based on Hildegarde’s data], but I don’t really think he’s going to be a light unit, at least if he does end up as a gala unit. We already have Gala Euden as a gala light sword adventurer, and I don’t think they want to double up on that. I also feel like one way or another Leif is going to be fairly support-based, which would make him overlap with Gala Euden even more if he were a light sword. So I’m just hoping that doesn’t happen.

In the long run I think that his role in combat will be more relevant to the question of which units he’d overlap with, rather than his element/weapon combo. I mean, we could have a purely offensive gala light sword and they wouldn’t actually conflict too much with Gala Euden because they’d do different things. The various changes we’ve gotten to how co-abilities work, and the introduction of unique co-abilities, means it’s not really a big deal to have two units with the same weapon type in a team together so long as they do different things.

Which is also why I don’t want him to be a wind or water element sword unit, either. Gala Ranzal is [kind of] defense-oriented already, and also he just doesn’t deserve to get directly overshadowed by a hypothetical new gala wind sword, lol. And even though Gala Elly is a different weapon type, Leif would definitely conflict with her in practice if he was a support-oriented water unit.

Funnily enough I think him being a shadow element gala sword built around team buffs could work fine, and he wouldn’t really overlap with anyone aside from maybe Patia, but realistically I doubt we’ll get another gala shadow sword so soon after Gala Alex, no matter how different they might be in practice, lol.

So basically due to process of elimination I think I’d want him to be a gala flame sword. On the one hand the idea of a gala flame sword doesn’t really interest me at all, but honestly I think he could be surprisingly interesting and really shake things up if he’s support-oriented. Nearly all of the flame swords we have are pretty much entirely offensive, and nobody uses Karl even though he can technically be used as a support-based flame sword with the right set-up. So I honestly think that Leif could have his own relatively unique niche in the flame meta even if he ends up with such a common element/weapon combo.

There’s also the fact that Volk seems like it’s going to end up being the hardest Agito fight by a substantial degree, so I think it’d make sense to start introducing more flame units designed to let people break into that fight. And from what I know of the Volk meta [from having never actually played eVolk myself, lol], it seems pretty obvious that the big hole in the flame meta at the moment is how H-Lowen is basically the only accepted support unit, and he’s an entirely support-focused unit who does next to nothing to contribute to the team’s DPS. If eVolk and HMS didn’t have unavoidable damage and high difficulty in general, he’d probably lose his place in the meta, which I feel like is kinda already happening as a result of Hawk and Marth’s mana spirals. So I feel like what flame really needs right now, rather than more good DPS units or more good healers, is a support unit who can also contribute to team DPS.

So basically what I want is for Gala Leif to be like a mix of Tobias, Gala Elly, and T-Hope. If he wants to be an alternative/replacement to H-Lowen, he’s going to need at least SOME healing, on top of offensive/defensive buffs. I wouldn’t actually want him to have enough healing to straight up replace H-Lowen as a healer, but if he wants to be an alternative to him then he at least needs enough to deal with stuff like cleansing plague.

In general my basic idea of how I think his kit could work in order to fulfill that role is that he could have an S1 that has a big strength boost and a smaller defense boost [so like a reverse of Patia’s S1], and an ability/chain co-ability that gives Team Healing Doublebuff. Preferably on the level of 5% HP per tick instead of 1% HP per tick like with T-Hope. I think that’d basically be all that he needs to be able to work as a team support unit who can contribute to team DPS while also providing enough healing to deal with plague and recover people from unavoidable damage, even though he wouldn’t be as good of a generalist healer as H-Lowen.

For both Volk and HMS there’s also the issue of interfering with melee baiters, and needing to do ranged baiting for certain moves, so in spite of him being a sword unit, maybe they could give Gala Leif an S2 that gives him a ranged attack stance like Tobias, so he can let the melee units do their thing.

This is all just more or less baseless speculation, but this is just what I’m thinking they could do to address the fact that Volk is the hardest Agito fight, that the support role is the most exclusive and difficult role in that fight, that H-Lowen is basically dead weight DPS-wise who seems to slowly be losing his relevance in the face of 4DPS team comps, and that Emma has basically never been meta for Volk and has become way less important for HMS with how co-abilities work now. So introducing a new gala unit who provides fairly substantial team DPS buffs along with adequate healing seems like it’s exactly what the flame element needs right now. And considering that Gala Alex has poison and buff dispel it’s not exactly impossible that we could get a gala unit designed to work against Volk. It might make more sense for us to get a wind gala unit next to go against Ciella, but I still think that Ciella won’t be as hard as Volk, and wind also already has more in the way of viable support units than flame does at the moment.

The fact that our first gala dragon is also a flame one designed for DPS units, along with Marth getting a super powerful mana spiral, also just makes me think that they’re still trying to address the Volk meta and give people more options for it, so I think it’s reasonable to assume our next gala unit might be designed to address the support/defense part of the flame meta.

It’s worth noting, though, that I’m pretty sure Leif had some sort of team defense buff when he showed up in chapter 9, which is basically the main reason why I’m assuming he’d be a support/defense-based unit rather than an offensive one. Patia also ended up being a team support unit so it’d just make sense if he ended up being kinda similar, lol.

Anyway this was way too many words to just say that I want my boi to finally come home :v

#murasaki rambles #dragalia lost #TL;DR: please just let Gala Leif exist and be worth getting :( I've been waiting like eight months for this bastard to be playable

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murasaki-murasame · 5 years

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Lots of stuff’s been happening lately in Dragalia Lost lately, and I’ve also been trying to get into other gacha games on the side, so I suppose it’s time for another round of gacha game liveblogging, lol.

I ended up spending way too many resources on the second summer banner and the Valentines rerun, considering how little interest I had for the units in either of them aside from Summer Luca, but at least it all paid off with me getting some absurd luck on the current wind banner. I somehow managed to get all three of the new banner units in a single tenfold summon after raising my pity rate once, so that’s neat. I ended up pushing my luck and spending another tenfold voucher which got be absolutely nothing though, so I guess that was just the universe’s way of telling me not to get cocky. So now I’m just saving for the anniversary. I’m really tempted by Lin You being on rate-up at the moment since I really want her, but at this point I’ll just dream summon her for the anniversary so I’m just gonna skip this banner now that I have the new units on it.

I did manage to at least get Summer Luca, Summer Cleo, Pop-Star Siren, Valentines Orion, and Valentines Ezelith across the two previous banners, but in hindsight I really should have just quit after getting Luca. Oh well, lol. Funnily enough I ended up entirely skipping the dragon showcase [outside of free daily summons], since even though it was way better value than the Valentines rerun, I just have no real interest in pulling dupes of 5-star dragons I already have.

It also turned out I was totally right about us getting a Su Fang event rerun to start off September, so now I have my incredibly good wind dagger boi promoted to 5 stars with 45 mana nodes. The fact that I managed to get Vayu, and that we got a dagger skill damage wyrmprint, make me feel even better about investing in him. I’m also happy to get Peng Lai since he’s at least somewhat of an upgrade over Mercury who’s currently the only good water HP dragon I have.

Once the next MG treasure trove reward batch comes in, I’m probably gonna promote Noelle since she seems really good for Water MG. Which is good since my wind team is kinda lacking in terms of DPS, although the fact that I also have Victor now helps that a lot. I’m really curious to see if we get more support units like this that buff teammates of a certain element type. It’s a cool way to have support units that are really strong without being the absolute best unit to use for every single team.

I thought we were gonna get a Wu Kong banner here to go with the Su Fang rerun, but I at least ended up being right about it being a wind banner in general, and we got a 5-star wind blade and 4-star wind wand, which were the other unit types I was expecting to go with Wu Kong since they were some of the biggest gaps in the wind roster. At this point I can only assume that they might be planning a raid event or something where Wu Kong’s the welfare unit. But who even knows. Maybe they’ll do a banner for him at some random point down the road.

We’re also getting closer and closer to the anniversary, and we’re slowly starting to get news about what to expect from this month in general. I really wish we had more specific info about what the anniversary will bring so that I know what I’m saving for in the first place, but oh well. At the very least the gala’s always a good thing to save for, so that’s my fallback option if nothing between now and then interests me.

Thankfully we at least know now that we’re getting Chapter 10, HZD, and Void Nidhogg this month, so that’s neat. After how we didn’t get Void Nidhogg last week I thought we wouldn’t be getting HZD this month, but I guess this isn’t gonna be like HJP where we got the respective void battle before it came out. I did always think it’d make the most sense to release HZD for the anniversary to cap off the game’s first year, though, so this makes sense.

I’m really curious to see what Chapter 10 brings, with how much they’re hyping it up. Plus they dropped a not so subtle hint at the fact that they’re going to be ‘adding new summonable adventurers’ in the same timeframe as Chapter 10′s release. They typically don’t just randomly go ‘we’re gonna have another summon banner soon’ without giving some details about what it’ll be, so I think they’re intentionally keeping it a bit of a secret, but the timing makes it seem like it’ll be related to Chapter 10. And since they mentioned the chapter will involve the siblings coming into contact with each other, I guess it’ll probably be a banner with some of them on it. Which would [thankfully] be an easy skip for me since I’m not really interested in any of them as characters, and I’m not really in dire need to chase after new units just because they might be really powerful. Either way, if we get a banner like that next, I think the most likely candidates would probably be Chelle, Zethia, and maybe Emile or Valyx. They’re at least the ones that are more aligned with Euden so it’d make sense for them to be the first ones of the batch we can summon. Though I could see Zethia being the gala unit.

I wonder if they’d make a banner like that limited or not, especially when the anniversary events haven’t even kicked off yet. I feel like it’d end up just being massive bait if they make it limited, lol. But it also might be weird in it’s own way to make them regularly summonable units.

Since the anniversary is on the 27th, and that’ll probably be when the gala starts, I guess this might end up being the only banner between now and then, if it starts right after this banner ends and goes for about two weeks, but there might be another banner after it before the gala. I think it’d make sense if we get a banner associated with an upcoming anniversary event, which might not start until about a week or so after Chapter 10 comes out. They mentioned that there’ll be a pre-anniversary log-in bonus/limited endeavor campaign starting on the 19th, so I think that might be when the hypothetical ‘anniversary event’ starts, so I could see the next banner maybe running until then, with there also being a bit of a downtime week between the Su Fang rerun and the anniversary event. Though for all we know they might do a void endeavor week then and spend the entire second half of September on anniversary stuff. At least that way we’d get Void Nidhogg before HZD, which would be convenient. And it’d be better than getting no new events aside from Chapter 10 from between the current event ending and the anniversary stuff starting.

We’re also getting HZD on the same day that the pre-anniversary stuff starts, so that’s interesting. I don’t think we’d get any limited endeavors related to that, though, since I don’t think they’ve done that sorta thing with the previous high dragon trials.

I think the pre-anniversary campaign will be along the lines of the half-year anniversary one, and so we might get like 2k+ wyrmite from it, but I also have a feeling that we’ll get daily free tenfold summons. A week seems like a fitting length for that sort of thing to run for, and it seems like it’s a pretty common thing for gachas to do for their anniversaries. Who knows what else we might get. I think it’d be neat if they finally update the 5-star voucher pool and give us one for free, though. Something like a free dream summon is possible, but I think a free 5-star voucher would be more realistic.

It’s worth noting that they specifically laid out the fact that we’re getting astral raid battles for the entire month after the current raid event ends, which should mean that there won’t be any other raid events this month. So if we get some sort of special anniversary event, I think it’ll probably be the same type of event as the FEH one, since a facility event would be kinda . . . boring at this point. I also never actually played the FEH event even though I started playing during it, so it’d be fun to try out that whole gamemode for the first time.

My main bet for the anniversary event and it’s associated banner is that it’ll be either a collab event with something like Granblue Fantasy, or they might focus more on DL itself and have a banner with characters like Leif and Patia. Or we might finally get DAOKO as a unit. Who knows. I feel like a GBF collab of some sort is basically inevitable, but they might not do it for the anniversary. I think the only other collab event that’d make sense for the anniversary at this point would be Fire Emblem Three Houses, since we’ve already gotten one FE collab event. And Three Houses’ whole set-up works nicely with the idea of having a banner with three featured units on it.

One way or another I think we’ll get some sort of special limited banner to go along with the anniversary event, and on top of that we’d probably get a welfare unit like we did for the FEH event. Which would probably be the GBF/Three Houses protagonist if it’s a collab with one of those games, or it might be Leif if it’s a non-collab event.

I’m also hoping that we get a new story unit from Chapter 10, but that might be pushing it a bit. But if we do, I assume it’d probably be Leif, Zethia, or some sort of Euden alt.

Anyway, aside from all the DL stuff, I’ve also been trying over the last few weeks to get into some other gacha games. Not because I��m getting bored of DL or anything, but just because I feel like it. But it’s been a bit of a rocky experience, lol.

I’m probably going to eventually get into GBF, but I’m at least waiting until some sort of gala event since those seem to be the best times to start a new account. I’m a little put off by how grind-y it apparently is, but I don’t care too much about PVP competitiveness so it might be fine.

I was thinking about maybe checking out GrandChase, but that doesn’t work on my phone apparently, and DL’s taking up all the space on my tablet, so unless I wanna emulate it [which I don’t], I’m just gonna put that one off for the foreseeable future. But at this point there’s other options that interest me more.

I really like the sound of Another Eden, since it seems to basically just be a traditional JRPG that happens to have a gacha attached to it, and it seems to have very limited micro-transactions, but I’ve heard it’s getting a Switch port Eventually [tm] so I’m just gonna sit back and wait for that to come out. It does sound like my sorta thing, though.

But the first gacha game out of the whole list I tried to get into, and the one that ended up disappointing me the most, was Food Fantasy. Oh boy, that sure is a gacha game alright. It’s the sort of game that I WANT to love, since it has really great character designs, art, and music, but oh boy it definitely seems like an example of aggressively-monetized Chinese gacha games. Basically every single gameplay mechanic can be sped up and made more convenient with premium currency [which is pretty slow to grind out for F2P players], and it feels like basically everything is designed around the assumption that you’re pretty much a whale who’s always gonna have the premium currency to spend on stuff like event items and stamina refreshes.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been doing research into the game’s history and getting more and more put off by seeing how many events it has that basically boil down to ‘spend real-life money to get stuff’, which is probably my most hated type of event to have in a gacha game. But it seems to happen super often in this game. I think the final straw that’s gonna make me delete the game entirely is how a new summon banner event started where the only way to pull on it is to spend real-life money on event items from the store. Of which there’s ten bundles that are each worth about $10 USD. Which adds up pretty quickly, lol.

Then there’s the fact that the version of the game I’m playing had apparently already gone through most of the limited banner units I would have been interested in pulling for, and since we’re like 1-2 full years behind the Chinese server, I have a very good idea of what to expect for the distant future of the game, and basically none of it interests me, and it seems to actually get more and more aggressive with it’s monetized events as it goes on. So that sucks.

I know that there’s apparently a whole cultural divide going on here and that basically every Chinese-made gacha game is SUPER heavily P2W, but oh boy it sure is off-putting to try and play one if you’re not interested in spending money. Which is a shame since I think if the game had been made by, well, a completely different company with a completely different design philosophy, I could have really liked it. But alas.

Also the main gameplay loop related to the restaurant sim is neat in theory, but oh boy it sure is a whole bunch of tedious micro-management in practice where you’re expected to play the game at fairly specific time intervals to be properly efficient.

This is definitely the sorta situation where I only feel this negatively toward it because there’s parts of it that I really like, and it could have been really fun if it was just designed differently. If it was something I entirely disliked I’d just ignore it and not care, lol. But it always hurts a bit when it’s something that you think has potential, and which actually appeals to you in a lot of ways. But then it does everything in it’s power to drive you away.

I’d totally be all over an anime adaptation if they make one of it, though. The character designs and music would make it entirely worth it. And even though the story is incredibly barebones, apparently there’s gonna be some sort of complete revamp to it eventually so maybe that’ll make it interesting.

I can’t remember if I talked about this previously, but I also tried Crash Fever twice and ended up deleting it both times, and I don’t think I’m gonna try it a third time. The core gameplay is fun enough, but there’s like no real story to feel immersed in, and the game’s visual aesthetic is so garish and intense that it’s actually kinda painful to look at for more than like ten minutes at a time. I actually like the character designs, but most of them are so overdesigned that you can barely tell what the heck’s going on with them, and overall the game is just filled with bright flashing lights and screen transition effects. On paper it sounds appealing enough that the game’s aesthetic is ‘Alice in Wonderland-themed virtual space with lots of neon colours’, but in practice it’s just Too Much.

Then there’s a whole list of gacha games that I’m aware of but which either aren’t released in my region or aren’t available on any of my devices, like F/GO, Magia Record, etc. But none of them really interest me much so it’s not a big deal. There’s also Pokemon Masters which I think is globally available but isn’t available on any of my devices [which I’ve heard is more a matter of your devices’s technical specs than your region], but from what I’ve heard that’s not really a big loss. It sounds like a bit of a shallow cash-grab all around.

Oh and there’s also Fire Emblem Heroes but I’m not really interested in that since I can just get Three Houses once I get my Switch soon.

Thankfully I ended up finding King’s Raid, which I might actually stick with for now, which is a relief. It’ll be nice when I get an upgraded phone since my current one feels like it’s screen is a little too small to comfortably play it, and it’s kinda laggy, but it’s not unplayable or anything.

Mostly I just really like the character designs, and how F2P-friendly the hero collection system is, since the gacha mechanics are only for items, and you can just directly buy heroes with in-game currency you can slowly grind up, and you can slowly work at befriending and recruiting units from an inn. Which is a neat system for a game like this. I also like that basically all of the main NPCs in the story are all characters you can eventually obtain one way or another. I really wish more games like this did that, since they tend to have such cool designs that are wasted on characters you’ll never be able to play as.

I might be in the minority on this one, but I also really like gacha games like this and Dragalia Lost that use 3D character models in-game, although DL’s art-style in general is more bright and cartoonish, while King’s Raid is closer to something like a modern Tales game, in terms of being more realistic in terms of colour schemes and body proportions, but still anime-y all around. I like both of them for different reasons. Though I also really like how KR has lots of aesthetic customization options, with how you can buy accessories and costumes for your characters with in-game currency that you can mix and match [which also reminds me of modern Tales games, lol], and each unit gets an upgraded outfit as you ascend them.

Also it’s one of the relatively few gacha games I’ve seen that has a fairly even balance between attractive male and female character designs. Which is always appreciated.

Finally, I think I might also try out Epic Seven since I’ve heard good things about it, at least now that I’m way beyond my limit of patience with Food Fantasy and I’m probably gonna delete it soon once and for all. But I don’t know if I’d want to bother playing it in addition to King’s Raid, honestly. And tbh I’m a lot less interested in the character designs and animation style as a lot of people are. It’s fine, but it leans too much toward the bland mid-ground of anime-y character designs that don’t really stand out from the crowd, and also the animation style for the character sprites, which clearly well-made, feel kinda creepy and robotic to me. But that’s kinda just how I feel about Live2D sprites in general. I also don’t like how they look in games like Magia Record. But who knows, I might still end up playing it. It at least sounds like the sorta gacha game that’s continually growing and improving and changing itself, so that’s always a good thing.

Anyway the bottom line is that gacha games are a bottomless pit of hellfire that nobody should get into in the first place :)

#murasaki rambles #this is a lot of words that just boil down to 'Dragalia Lost is Good and most other gachas games are Not As Good'#gacha games are a blight upon humanity but also I like the thrill of summoning so really who can say if they're truly bad or not

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