#so them being so overleveled is on purpose

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Heya, this is a somewhat specific Glitchy Red x GN! reader request (romantic or platonic; I don't really have a preference). Feel free to ignore this if it happens to be overwhelming.

So, Glitchy Red. We all know him: a vengeful sentient glitch designated wrong by his creator and left to be forgotten and replaced by the next generation. He's nothing but a lone sentient trapped in the endless sea of mindless NPCs whose purpose is to be controlled by a player.

And then we have a streamer!reader who acts like Failboat: a chaotic, happy-go-lucky, and slightly unhinged individual whose humor can be described as morally questionable. It doesn't help that their chat relentlessly takes (light-hearted) jabs at them and gives them Ls every time they mess something up in the game, as well as having a random obsession with Gex the Lizard.

What if Glitchy Red somehow faceplanted into the Pokémon Violet game and meets streamer!reader, who was doing a Nuzlocke? Maybe Red has a one-sided dislike of them until he grows to tolerate them without realizing it.

I got inspired by this video and one of the works you did, fdgdrsgdgdrg ( https://youtu.be/DQsfj3gvd9I and https://clanwarrior-tumbly.tumblr.com/post/702954957291372544/been-binge-reading-your-poke-pasta-stuff-i-dont )

Omg I wish I discovered Failboat sooner bc that nuzlocke video you showed me was hilarious

THANK you for it <333333

.........

"Yes! We caught the Salandit! Sorry I took you away from your family, bud..but you're mine now. This one's a male but it's fine. He doesn't need to be a Salazzle to be strong and beautiful. All he needs is a name..any ideas, guys?"

Looking to the chat for a brief moment, you saw new comments already flooding in, your viewers throwing out several names you could give your newly-acquired companion (who was likely going to be "sacrificed" at some point).

You've been doing livestreams of the Nuzlocke challenge throughout your gameplay of Pokémon Violet. And while you finished the main game without having to start over, you decided to try your hand at the Teal Mask DLC.

You were still early in the story, but you wanted to take your time with it, focusing on catching one 'mon in each area.

With Salandit as the first you came across, you allowed your viewers to name him, and fortunately an overwhelming majority of them already had one figured out:

"Gex!"

"Gex the lizard!!"

"Who tf is Gex???"

"OMG haven't heard that name in years!!"

"IT'S TAIL TIME!!!"

"I like Gex"

"Okay, Gex it is!" Grinning from ear-to-ear, you named Salandit before sending him out to "kill" all the other wild unsuspecting Pokémon. You just laughed, happy to see your son going out and wrecking havoc and destruction...

Until you accidentally made him target a stronger Pokémon that sent his health into the red zone.

"Gex wore itself out and came back to you!" The message popped up as the poor lizard scurried back to your side, and you restored his health.

Your viewers, meanwhile, were spamming the comments with a single letter.

"L"

"L"

"L"

"L"

"L"

"Oh stop it, you guys." You shook your head, amused. "I misclicked.... you gotta give me a break."

They kept coming regardless, so you put your strongest Pokémon as the first member of your party, deciding to battle a nearby trainer: one of the festival kids, as they were called.

Never before have you had an easier time doing a Nuzlocke run in this game--considering it's entirely free roam and you weren't forced into battles by making eye contact. The only issue was that the level-scaling was odd, and you've lost some treasured Pokémon along the way due to being so unprepared.

Of course, this challenge didn't come without you having to make some sacrifices.

Luckily you only ran into that issue with one gym leader who was more overleveled than you expected, but even then your viewers were relentless with their Ls, skull emojis, and the like.

Now that you've accomplished becoming champion, defeating the titans, besting Team Star, and saving all of Paldea from ecological doom.....you got to relax a little in this DLC.

Hopefully you wouldn't lose anyone by the end of it.

.........

"Oof I definitely could use this Pokémon...and the XP candies. What do you guys think? I'm in a new area so it counts."

"Do it!"

"YESSS"

"No they have to be in the wild!!!"

"What about no overleveled pkmn?"

"Oh, c'mon..it's three stars." You huffed at the last comment you read, shaking your head. "That ain't overleveled. Lemme see who can knock them out in one hit, hang on.."

Backing out of the tera raid menu for a moment, you looked at your roster, before checking your boxes for any "living" Pokémon who could take out the raid boss instantly.

But right as you found the perfect one, you noticed the sky glitching in the background, and after closing out of the menu....something rather bizarre happened:

A brief flicker of light in the sky, followed by an unknown entity falling to the earth. It looked like a person surrounded by glitchy particles--like the ones you'd see in old video games.

Of course, you knew Violet was notorious for its many broken animations and whatnot, but that was new.

You've never seen an NPC glitch like that before.

"Did ya'll see that? I'm gonna check that out really quick.."

Now completely ignoring the comments of confusion, you called out Miraidon to go investigate.....whatever you just saw. You had it speed towards the location, thinking that the mystery entity would despawn by the time you got there.

Luckily, it didn't, but you quickly realized it wasn't some Pokémon or even a trainer who belonged in this DLC.

In fact, he resembled the very first Pokémon protagonist:

Red, although this one had black spiky hair and didn't look anything like the lean kid trainer he was in previous generations.

Even so, this certainly gave you a whiplash of memories..as you recalled doing a Sun/Moon Nuzlocke challenge and were pleasantly surprised to see Red in the game.

And even before that, you did a Gold/Silver/Crystal Nuzlocke and almost lost horribly to him.

Yep..fun times, indeed.

"No way...it's Red again, guys! This is--oh shit, whoops."

A cutscene was triggered, although you swore that you didn't press any buttons. But you passed it off as your excitement over the thought of unlocking a hidden secret in this DLC getting out of hand.

Yet that happiness wore off and became replaced by a feeling of....nervousness.

Especially when you saw "Red's" expression.

He looked nothing short of menacing. Of course, he was usually a silent trainer and held a stoic demeanor...however this iteration of him almost appeared angry, for some reason. A dark shadow was hiding both of his eyes, even as he stared directly at you.

No, not at your player character who was standing off to the side.

But you, the player themselves

For a few moments nothing happened, and you thought the game was broken.

Then a dialogue box popped up, with "Glitchy Red" being the name above it, outright confirming your suspicions.

"Where am I?"

Normally, you would be able to respond with one of two prompts. But the box on the right side of the screen only had blank spaces in them, so you didn't know which one to choose.

You had no time to pick, as they quickly glitched out of existence, and Red shook his head.

"Forget it. I already know the answer...I'm in another goddamn prison." He stared at his hands with a bitter-looking gaze. "Why was I brought here? Why am I....in 3D?"

Besides from his swearing catching you off-guard, you were genuinely perplexed by everything else he was saying--especially the fact that he seemed self-aware, apparently speaking directly to you and able to influence your game.

"Is anyone else seeing this? Chat...?" You muttered, briefly glancing to the chatroom, knowing your viewers HAVE to be freaking out over this-

But there were no comments.

They've all suddenly gone offline due to an "internet connection" issue, and the viewer count was at zero. Even though you were still recording, nobody else was joining the stream.

It was just you and him.

"Sorry, I don't like to be watched."

Looking back at the dialogue box, your eyes widened as you read his response. 'How did he know I was doing a livestream? Is this something new from Gamefreak...? Did I get a bootleg copy of Violet?'

"I can't believe this jerk sabotaged my stream-"

"I can hear you, y'know."

"....w-wait..seriously??" You adjusted your headphones and the mic, seeing him nod. "How can you do that? And why are you in my game?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out."

"..I feel like I'm going crazy. Am I going crazy-?"

"Enough questions. I'LL be asking them from now on."

Without warning, Glitchy Red turned to your character and put his hand around their throat, as though attempted to strangle them. Much to your horror, they didn't react with any emotion whatsoever...although upon making physical contact with them, their body began glitching.

It was the same particles he had around himself.

For some reason, you began feeling an intense pressure on your own neck, and you put a hand to it, eyes wide.

'What kind of voodoo shit is this?!'

"So this is what they replaced me with, huh?" He cocked his head to the side, grimacing. "It's bad enough that brown-eyed kid did, but...what generation is this?"

You snapped out of your shocked state, fearing that he'll end up corrupting your whole save file if you made him any angrier. 'I better play it cool and just answer him...'

"You're in um...Generation 9. Pokémon Violet."

"....Gen 9? I've skipped over that much? Interesting...who the hell is this, then?"

"M-My player character. Pokémon's come a long way, so now we can uh...customize our protagonists and change their looks entirely."

"...I see." He let go of your character, who thankfully stopped glitching, before his gaze went to Miraidon. "What the hell...this thing is a Pokémon, too?"

"Believe it or not, yeah. It helps me get around the map waaay faster" You chuckled as he stared at the futuristic dragon type with curiosity. "If I can tell you one thing about it...it loves sandwiches. Just say "sandwich" and see how it reacts!"

He just scowled at you, not appreciating your sudden cheeriness. "Does it look like I'm in the mood for jokes?"

"What? No, it's not a-"

"Then tell me everything about this game, and don't give me any useless crap."

.......

Glitchy Red ended up tagging along in your character's adventures throughout Kitakami. But it was really just him listening to you explain the game in further detail, alongside showing him how battles work.

Obviously, he was very much new to this generation given he was from an ancient bootlegged version of Red, so you had a lot to share. He seemed flabbergasted by fairy types, tera raids, etc..although you did remind him that he wanted you to tell him everything.

His only response was a scowl and making the Pokémon you wanted to catch flee, but you expressed no hard feelings.

In fact, you became less terrified and more thrilled that you were actually speaking to a video game character--and what luck you had for it to be Red, of all people! (despite this version being a grumpy sentient glitch who acted like YOU put him in here)

At some point, the chatroom came back online and your viewers returned, expressing concerns about why you went offline out of nowhere.

However the tone immediately shifted to Glitchy Red the moment they noticed him on-screen, and the comments practically exploded..or at least for a short time:

"Red????"

"Is that Red?"

"Did u unlock a secret character??"

"OMG GLITCHY RED FROM FNF???"

"Wtf hes not from fnf bro"

The flood didn't last long as he forced the comments to switch off, and he made it clear that he didn't want them on again. And he demanded that you stopped recording, too.

He accused you of trying to "use" him for entertainment...which spiraled into him ranting over being in a similar situation back in his old game where he had no choices and was forced to see things he didn't wish to (and even projecting onto your own character a little, too).

It caused him pain and nobody cared, he said.

But now?

Now that he has more power, free will, and the knowledge that he's no longer any player's character to control, he felt liberated.

Of course, he was angry about not being totally free from the video game realm..but this was better than being stuck in that broken cartridge.

He'd rather die than go back to it.

With all that's happened, he thought you would've been more scared of him and what he could do, or even angry that he sabotaged your livestream and messed up your experience with the DLC.

Yet you seemed totally unbothered by his presence now.

You were actually....happy to talk to him, and he didn't know what to make of this. So he just acts completely disinterested, his scowl never leaving his face as he judges pretty much everything you do.

He does, however, start to see the slightly "darker" side to your cheery attitude as you explain the general rules of Nuzlocke challenges--and the ones you've set up for yourself in Violet.

All the while, you're letting Gex mercilessly crush an outbreak of Cutieflies, laughing and praising him for his "kills".

As Glitchy Red watches, he suddenly wonders if you really have gone crazy...and it amuses him a little.

After spending some time progressing through the story, you began to notice that he disappears during the normal cutscene and doesn't disrupt them in any way. He could have easily ruined your first experience with the DLC.

Yet..he stayed out of the way.

His excuse was that he kept "fighting with the code", but you didn't buy it.

He was growing soft...although obviously you weren't going to say that to him.

............

After attending the festival of masks and meeting Ogerpon, you decided to set up a picnic somewhere near Oni Mountain. It was the perfect spot where you could see the other areas of Kitakami.

With your character wearing a jinbei and their own mask, you called out all six of your Pokémon, allowing them to run, play, and sleep.

At that same time, Glitchy Red showed up on-screen. And you were surprised to see him wearing his own red jinbei, along with a Pikachu mask.

Of course, you should have expected that.

"Nice outfit, Red." You chuckled. "I'm stuck with the green one, unfortunately."

"I had to datamine for this..and yet you tout about "customization" like it's the game's best feature.." He scoffed.

"Never said it was, but anyways..." You pressed ZR to summon a ball for your Pokémon to play with, smiling as they did so. "I gotta take care of these guys."

"Is that what you're doing?" Sitting on the bench at the table, Glitchy Red looked all around, watching your character interact with each of them. He noticed the hearts over their heads, prompting an eyebrow raise.

You didn't answer him, instead cleaning the dirt off Miraidon and watching the electric/dragon type shake itself dry, looking happy before it went back to taking a snooze.

Then he notices your character scrubbing soap onto Miraidon, before washing it off with a showerhead. The electric/dragon type growled happily as it shook off the water, a little music note over its head.

"What's the point of doing all of that?"

"To restore their HP, gain XP, and boost friendship levels." You explained. "I try to raise that as much as possible, because if you're best friends with your Pokémon..there's a chance they can survive a fatal hit. The game likes to say they don't want me "feeling sad"."

"...but if they were burned or poisoned, it would be useless." He remarked.

"True, but it's saved me a lot during my Nuzlocke run of the main game's story."

"I suppose it did...why do they name it after a Nuzleaf, though?"

You shrugged. "No clue. I just saw the challenge trending again and decided to hop on it."

".....you've been taking my presence rather well." He pointed out, his eyes becoming more visible now that his shadow wasn't as prominent. "At this point, they usually abandon me, or try to destroy the game...or send it to someone else begging THEM to destroy it."

"Well rest assured, I don't plan on doing any of those three things." Leaning back in your chair, you sighed. "I'll admit, I read a story like yours once as a little kid and it scared the hell out of me...."

He scowled darkly, which was a rather humorous contrast to the smiling Pikachu on his mask.

"...but now that I've gotten to know you better, I..do wanna say I'm sorry you've been treated that way for so long. It must've been lonely for you."

Then his gaze softened, and he looked down at the ground, shoulders slumped. "It was...hearing the same NPCs repeat the same damn lines over and over again was like torture. I kept wondering...why me? Why did I have to be the only one to wake up?"

"I don't know, Red..." You frowned slightly, hating to see him this way, although you perked up after getting an idea. "But I do know what'll cheer you up."

Glitchy Red looked back up at you. "What could you possibly have in mind? Don't tell me it's a stupid sandwich-"

"Agiaaas?"

Hearing the soft growl of Miraidon, he turned to see it now sitting in front of him, staring as though patiently waiting to be fed. And for a moment he seemed genuinely startled, still forgetting that he could be perceived by the Pokémon in this world.

It was actually kinda nice.

Although he abstained from petting it, fearing that he could accidentally corrupt it with his glitches, the legendary didn't seem to mind it one bit.

Instead, it just curled up at his feet, little bubbling z's floating over its head as it fell fast asleep.

'I guess it really does like the word 'sandwich'..'

"Why don't I show you the art of sandwich-making in this game, Red?" Your character went over to the table. "I'll tell you how this makes Shiny hunts easier...but you gotta promise not to laugh at my stacking skills."

For a second or two, he didn't say anything.

Then he stood up and put his mask off to the side of his head a little bit more, allowing you to fully see his face.

He seemed more relaxed, barely holding back a smile.

"I can't make any promises, but show me. I'd like a Shiny Pikachu."

[a-bit-too-much-of-a-pokemon-fan]

My Thoughts on Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

Uh oh, someone else's take on these controversial ass games. I'm sure everything that can be said about them, has. But as is my custom, I need to vent. For a bit of background, I have never played Diamond or Pearl. I got Platinum for Christmas in 2008 and have only ever played that for my Sinnoh experience, up until this month when I borrowed Brilliant Diamond from the library and hardcore Nuzlocked it.

First, let's talk about the ways BDSP is better than DPPt, because it would be flat out dishonest to pretend that they offer nothing to Sinnoh and are completely horrible.

HMs are gone. Thank god. HMs have always been bad, but with 8 of them in Sinnoh, it's especially bad in DPPt. It actually fundamentally changes how you can build a team when you don't always need to have a Surfer and Flier with you.

EXP All. I love to see it. Majorly cuts down on grinding. I really wish I could turn it off just for purposes of not accidentally overleveling, but that's kinda okay because of...

Access to your boxes anywhere. Honestly probably the best contribution that SwSh made to the series. I love this feature. Aside from when you're in gyms, overleveling isn't always a problem. It's easier to switch up your team to try out new mons and experiment, too. If you liked the difficulty of having to make it through a dungeon or route with the team you went in with, that's the best part: it's optional. Options are never a bad thing.

The music and sound effects are in higher fidelity. There's a charm to the Nintendo DS sound font, but the remastered soundtrack sounds great (I generally prefer Zame's remasters though). Don't get me started on the unpatched Day 1 soundtrack, though.

The Grand Underground is neat. It doesn't do much good for me in a Nuzlocke, but I can appreciate its value for vanilla runs. There's more to do on the singleplayer side, and Scarlet and Violet have me totally roaming-encounter-pilled. For all purposes besides making encounters straightforward in Nuzlockes, fuck random encounters.

You can register four key items instead of just one. Switching between fishing and cycling was never easier. They took the Gen VI approach of directional registration, which works off of muscle memory instead of Gen V's list. I like it.

Boss fights are now harder. They have better held items (including super effectiveness nullification berries), better abilities, and trickier coverage moves. They're harder to plan around and I like that minor bump in difficulty.

The town map moving from being a key item to a button on the pause menu, and being able to fly from the town map screen. Both things just make navigating Sinnoh a bit easier (which you know it needed). Also a welcome addition from SwSh.

That's it. From here on out, it's just complaining. Those complaints fit into two camps. 1) Quality of life updates aside, BDSP is a poor remake of DP, and 2) BDSP is a remake of DP, not Platinum. The direction of the game seemed to be "make it as faithful as possible to Diamond and Pearl, but also make it worse in random and baffling ways." I can go off about the Platinum problem later, so let's go over the ways BDSP is just a bad remake.

The friendship rework. Gen VI introduced Pokémon Amie, and anyone who bothered to put enough time into it would find their Pokémon randomly doing better in battle. Having high affection created a chance that your mon will either dodge an attack, tank a fatal hit with 1 HP, or land a critical hit. This has been folded into the friendship mechanic, so now any Pokémon who hits the newly-raised friendship cap will now have these buffs. I'm of two minds with this one. I think it's neat that the Pokémon you spend the most time with can do better in battle. It rewards sticking to a team of your favorites, which is what NPCs usually encourage you to do. Thing is, I think this should be optional. Anything that makes the game easier or harder via RNG should be in the player's control, and this isn't. Where this becomes a real nuisance is that once a Pokémon reaches the point of using these buffs, using them is battle is a slight but cumulative time loss. Every time you send them out, the game takes the time to shake them back and forth and put up a dialogue box with pointless flavor text. Every turn you do an attack, there's another useless and repetitive dialogue box. Every time the buff PROCs, a little heart animation plays. Bro. Just shut up and let me play the game. It's actually very annoying, especially during grinding sessions when I. Just. Want. To. Kill. My. Opponent. Jesus Christ.

As a side effect of the friendship rework, the friendship checker Pokétch app is now tuned to the higher cap. That means it's just about useless when checking on your friendship evolution mons. Your Golbat, Budew, and Buneary will all evolve before they show two big hearts. Now they'll have two big hearts when they have access to the RNG buffs, but you'll know that anyway because every battle just got several seconds longer.

The art direction. I won't spend too much time on this because it's been torn to shreds already, but I do need to mention it. Come on. The chibi style worked in DPPt because the DS required it. At every opportunity, they showed characters at true scale. They were intended to be life-size and just appeared small when they had to. I'm sorry, I just can't take Cyrus seriously when he's talking about his plan for recreating the world because he just looks like an angry little Funko Pop. And that little waddle that everyone has... ugh. Gross.

This is truly a tiny nitpick, but it looks like chibi Lucas's textures were applied to the T-posed model without consideration as to how they looked when he is standing normally. Look closely, his vest looks like it has tiny sleeves that come over his shoulder. It probably wouldn't bother me if I felt better about the game as a whole, but now every little problem sticks out like a sore thumb.

The bicycle has some weird problems. In high gear, it can't move just one tile at a time. It has a long windup time on low gear. It can't maintain speed when making a 180 turn on one tile. It's just weird and functions worse than it used to. The cycling outfit is also not as stylish as the defaults, but that's not major.

Registered key items are activated with Start, not Y. Uh-uh, no. Not having it. DP took advantage of the new buttons on the DS and functionally replaced Start with X and Select with Y. This was the format all the way up through SwSh, and they just randomly decided to fuck it up. They didn't even map something different to Y! It's just a useless button now! Sure, it just means I have to move my thumb a bit further, but it's frustrating that they threw away over a decade of precedent for a less convenient system. (P:LA and SV get a pass for changing things because they alter the whole control scheme)

Pokémon have their Gen VIII movesets. Some of the changes are non consequential, like how Zubat now has Absorb because Leech Life got buffed. Some are sucker punches, like Jupiter's Skuntank having Belch at Spear Pillar. Others fuck up how Pokémon function. Mime Jr needs to know Mimic to evolve, meaning it is now a useless baby until Lv 32 instead of 18. Infernape used to learn Flare Blitz at Lv 57, giving it a powerful STAB move in the very late game. Now it's at 68, making Flame Wheel its most powerful Fire move by level up until the post game.

That's all that comes to mind right now. I'm sure I'll pile more nonsense onto this. I just want to be done with this game but there's so much grinding before the Elite Four. Psh.

[idkimnotreal]

aita wrath classic version.

i was running scarlet monastery, i think the last one of the dungeons (highest level), as a level 38 disc priest. tank was a level 45 prot paladin, a bit overlevelled for that dungeon. right from the start they were pulling the entire hall and then courtyard on the lower level. i didn’t struggle to keep them alive but i ran out of mana after the fight, one of the dps had dc’d (a warlock) and we were left with a feral druid and a rogue, which are not great for aoe dps in wrath. so the fight was rather slow and i had to use up all of my mana + potion + inner focus.

after the fight, i sat down to drink. the tank went on ahead. now, i should clarify that i am a bit on the silent side of things, i don’t usually say much unless people direct a question specifically to me, so i just let the tank (and the 2 dps) go without saying anything. i had two things in mind about this: that we’re probably all adults and i don’t need to tell people what to do in a low level dungeon, so that the tank would be mindful of the fact they’re without a healer and pull smaller packs until i caught up; and that the tank should watch my mana between pulls (not during combat) as that’s just part of their job.

so he pulled the entire upper courtyard again and he didn’t backtrack until the fountain thing so i had to run until the monastery door to get the tank within the reach of my heals, i popped up a shield on them and tried to cast slow heal (i could have cast flash heal, like maybe this was on purpose, to let them die, but maybe they would die anyway), but they were losing like 1k health every 5 seconds so they died. immediately after they told me to kms and left the group.

maybe i had a traumatic childhood or something, maybe i didn’t, but the fact is i’m trying to figure out whether or not i’m in the wrong here. i know just by telling me to off myself the “tank” (if they can be called such a noble title, respect to all tanks) is already in the wrong, but had they simply complained without being toxic, maybe i would be in the wrong, and maybe i am. so idk. i may or may not respond to any answers offered.

[noblestofnobles]

Shout out to Hubert who right before the Battle of the Eagle and Lion told Ferdinand that he was going to be absolutely useless and a waste of space on the battlefield.

...

Ferdinand was the MVP.

[mrslittletall]

After I played through Pokémon Shining Pearl, I can finally write my review which I completely forgot... Under a readmore, because this is getting loooong:

First, if you get into the games looking for something new, this game isn't for you. This game is there for Sinnoh fans or people who never played Sinnoh. It's very faithful. However, I absolutely loathe all the review bombing the game got. It's NOT a lazy remake and I can feel the Sinnoh love in it from every nook and cranny. Okay, so a little story time. In 2007, when Sinnoh first got published, I was very very sick with a tonsilitis. I couldn't swallow without intense pain, being awake was nothing but torture, eating made me cry. I could only eat ice cream so I ate a massive amount of ice cream. At least it was summer and it was readily available... Then, I got a package. Pokémon Pearl. Because I was so sick, I put it to the side, I completely forgot it was out and I preordered it. But after a few hours, I got curious. I mean, I didn't had anything else to do and maybe playing the game would distract me from the pain. And... I quickly fell in love. I played the game daily, finished the story and caught the legendaries and did the post game. During that time I also had a bad relationship with my family, so the distraction helped me as well. I have a very very soft spot for Sinnoh, so I got Shining Pearl and put it into my Switch. Only to be right back in 2007 (without the hurty throat), taking the same starter again, bopping to the music. Fourteen years later I still loved it to bits. Okay, but of course the remake isn't perfect. Let's talk about the bad first. The contests have been dumbed down. That is a major disappointment. Instead of the whole attack thing to garner attention it is merely a rhythm game now. That isn't very interesting. The next one was a problem that was already in the originals. The roster is too small. There was no excuse to not use the updated platinum roster. Yes, they could have left the two versions intact by still leaving the exclusive Pokémon in, like Skuntank and Purugly. There is no excuse for the usage of the far too small D/P roster. And speaking of that, no Battle Frontier. That is also a decision that has no excuse. The duel tower is there, yeah, but it wouldn't have been one problem to add the update platinum content. TMs are single use again... that is just dumb. Please just give us the forever use TMs that they introduced in Gen. 5 back forever. Now stuff that I have mixed feelings about: I loved it that Pokémon could again follow you like in HGSS! BUT! It is implemented poorly. The Pokémon often are too slow and fall back and just get teleported back to you and they also are objects and sometimes I had to put them away so that I could interact with hidden items. They also don't follow in caves. Also, some of the big ones are TINY in the overworld. Of course I don't know a real life Wailord, but Onix being as big as Zubat was... strange. But overall, I liked that the feature was back and I often had a Pokémon out that desperately teleported behind me. The EXP share. Listen, I am a big enemy of the forced EXP share. I just wish that we could get rid of it and just get the button back to switch it off. Why is that so difficult? However, I had to learn that it is once again forced and then I made a decision when I noticed that a QoL option of SwSh made it back, PC boxes everywhere. Around the second badge I decided to train up a B team. And... actually... That was one of the most fun things I ever did in Pokémon! I never had a team consisting of 12 Pokémon. I normally would switch them out when they got too overleveled and sometimes my A and my B team were mixed and sometimes I used them mixed on purpose to tackle a gym. I could use ALL the Pokémon I wanted and even MORE and honestly? I loved it! That would NOT have been possible without the forced exp share, because without it, I would have just switched it off and only trained up six Pokémon. So, I kinda feel like I made my peace with it, because boxes everywhere work excellently with it. And now to the good! The WORLD! I just LOVE the world of Sinnoh. It is kind of a maze to traverse and it is

so cool. That is always what I loved in Pokémon, just to go to a cave and find the Pokémon there and maybe a rare TM (though that would be nicer if it wouldn't be single use). But just... I love the world of Sinnoh so much. It's a joy to traverse, it's a joy to find so many new areas when you can surf. It's what I missed so much in SwSh, next to no exploratin and Sinnoh is FULL of exploration. The underground. Because they fixed two of the most glaring problems in my book. The first, the sphere levels. They were just ugh to me, you had to check and then if you didn't get the exact right level, you could start over... now we only have S and L, that is better and makes unearthing spheres a lot more fun. The underground now also has these mini wild areas with Pokémon and the good thing is... Pokémon from the Safari Zone equivalent appear there. I HATE safari zones in Pokémon, so that I could catch them there was so good for my B team. Difficulty. What?! With the forced EXP share and everything? First, like I said up there, training up a B team was a good idea to prevent overleveling and next, the gym trainers are a legit threat! Their Pokémon are clearly EV trained and have IVs and items and balanced comp movesets. I actually lost the battle against the first gym and it was very close a few other times. But the cake takes the Elite 4 and Cynthia. I tell you, that will be a Nuzlocke NIGHTMARE! My Pokémon were around the same level as Cynthia's Pokémon and I legit sweated against some of the E4 members, having to use a LOT of revives and potions. I legit only won against Cynthia because her Garchomp has a fairy counter and I put in my Bronzong, which made two of her moves useless (poison attacks don't effect steel types). Yeah, that were some of the most difficult battles in Pokémon EVER. The AI also knew what it did and I am sure it only was programmed to not boost the hell out of the Pokémon to make it a bit fairer for the player! The love to Sinnoh! One of my most loved things was the way the trainer battles happened. They actually used the poses of the trainers from the DS games before they get transitioned to the 3D style of SwSh and I squealed everytime I recognized it! Aaaah, I love little nudges like that in remakes or remasters! And, like I said, the world of Sinnoh was largely untouched and I loved it. HMs are now an app for your Poketch, so you don't have to put them on your Pokémon anymore. Makes it far better to make nice movesets and you don't have to have a flying or water Pokémon in your team for story progression anymore. Also, pretty much every HM was used by Bidoof or its evolution, that was such a nice nudge to its HM slave status in the DS games xD The music! The music of Sinnoh is fantastic and the remake left it largely intact, it just got tweaked a little! It just is a joy to listen to ^^ Route 209 my beloved. Okay and now a thing for all the haters. "Waaah, the rival still has a Starly at Level 20, why didn't it evolve?!" Did you even PLAY the game? I thought the same as you, why wasn't the Starly evolved? And then that Starly completely obliterated my team! Really, I had a full team alive and almost all Pokémon down but Starly and that fucking Starly was a MONSTER! It used a tactic that completely caught me off guard and I barely managed to land the last hit. Honestly, I am convinced that 90 % of the haters haven't played the game longer than two hours.

[1863-project]

I’m at the end of my first-ever Omega Ruby run, and I’ve honestly had a great time getting to know Hoenn. I just have to evolve some Pokemon and catch the Regis and Deoxys before I move along (I’m waiting to trade with folks to finish the Dex properly, but I can do that at any point), but I think it’s worth doing a retrospective on the characters and Pokemon I met along the way.

As a region, Hoenn is unique in that it has a LOT of water routes. You spend a large portion of the second half of the game traveling via Surf. The Azumarill in my party, Pikablue, ended the game knowing Waterfall, Surf, and Dive (it also carries Play Rough), and it was one of the most crucial members of my party for transport purposes.

When I won the Hoenn League, the team May (named ‘Hatshepsut’ in my playthrough because we love cool historical figures in this house) had with her was her evolved starter, a Blaziken named Cluck You, along with Pikablue the Azumarill, Pangaea the Groudon, Charles II the Shiftry, Friendo the Latios, and the team anchor, Bastet the overleveled Skitty. I beat Steven because Bastet dodged a Zen Headbutt from Metagross and gave me the time I needed to revive both Blaziken and Groudon in the back, and their fire moves handled the rest. Bastet went on to become the first party member to reach level 100, way ahead of everyone else. She was absolutely incredible and I love her. Her final moveset: Heal Bell (surprisingly useful, especially in Doubles), Thunder, Ice Beam, and Play Rough. She’s a Dragon Slayer.

As soon as I got my hands on the Eon Flute I started running around to check every Mirage location that came up in the hopes that it would be a Mirage Cave. I knew that was where Tynamo was, and I needed Eelektross to complete the Submas team I was building (the other nine members are in SwSh at the moment; Eelektross will hopefully someday join them). On November 30th, my persistence paid off, and I went and caught three Tynamos so I could have the entire evolutionary line in my National Dex in Pokemon HOME. As it turns out, Eelektross still hasn’t been added to HOME because Third Rail has become a vital member of my party in postgame and I love him and he loves me. (I’m just Emmet, really.) The Eon Flute is also really nice in that using it allows you to literally fly in real time over the entire region, and I prefer doing that to using Fly because it’s just so aesthetically nice. Friendo just swoops down and picks me up, and we have a nice time exploring together. It’s especially pretty at night when everything is all lit up. It’s a lovely little feature exclusive to Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, and it’s so great.

Character-wise, Hoenn has produced some notables. Magma and Aqua are two of the most beloved villain teams in the entire franchise, and the reboots gave them so much more personality and gave the leaders and admins some excellent updated designs. (Years ago, when the remakes were first released, my dash was filled to the brim with Hardenshipping.) I had OR, so I had Magma to contend with, and one of the single most entertaining things in the entire game is Maxie’s losing animation. It’s perfect, it suits his character so well, and it’s just really funny. Also, shout-out to the Team Magma grunt that I met in the Extremely Obvious Hideout who told me how proud he was of kicking his soda habit whilst standing next to the vending machines. I love that guy. In terms of reformation, Magma and Aqua come around very easily when they realize that they’ve had a very bad idea - they ultimately were well-intentioned but made a really horrible mistake and set out to set things right (with the player’s help, of course). It ultimately makes both teams very likeable.

In terms of other characters, not every Gym Leader from Hoenn is a complete standout, but a few are very, very popular. Flannery is a perfect time capsule of 2003 fashion and I love that so much, and I don’t think I need to say much about Wallace. He’s just Wallace. He’s so freaking entertaining. Steven is also a very popular Champion, and he plays a pretty big role in the plot, so you see a lot of him throughout the game. (He and Wallace are also a very popular ship, with Originshipping - named for the Cave of Origin which Wallace has to grant you access to - actually being referenced in Pokemon Masters on, of all days, Valentine’s Day. Make of this what you will, but I’m here for it.) The Gym Leaders all received redesigns as well, with a lot of them benefiting greatly from it - I like Roxanne’s new school uniform so much better than her old one, for example, and once again, Wallace outshines everyone with an ensemble that would go wonderfully at the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. I wish we got to know the Gym Leaders a bit more as people, because they don’t get to stand out as characters as much. Galar actually did this very well by allowing us a lot of interactions with the Leaders outside the Gyms and as teammates and rivals in the Galarian Star Tournament. A big part of the reason Wallace is so popular as a Gym Leader here is that you see him outside the Gym multiple times and can even compete with him in Contests. You get to know him as a person more and not just as the eighth Gym Leader, and it makes him a much more interesting character.

In short, here’s how the League stacks up for me:

Roxanne: Benefited massively from her character redesign, which gives her a lot more personality. Would like to see her and Steven interact since they’re apparently friends, which I imagine revolves around going out and licking rocks together or whatever geologists do with their geologist friends.

Brawly: He still isn’t very distinct. He’s a surfer who trains Fighting-types, which is a bit of a subversion since you’d expect Water-types from someone like that, but nothing about him really pops for me.

Wattson: Gives off Grandpa Vibes. Wattson actually gets a lot of expository development via his work on New Mauville and Sea Mauville, where you find out he halted the projects to protect the Pokemon ecosystems in both locations. A lot of employees were angry about this and he was even investigated briefly for stopping the projects, even being called a traitor to the company (which appeared to overwork its employees and prevent them from unionizing), but it was apparently evidently clear that he did things out of environmental concerns, and the employees were able to find work on other projects elsewhere. This actually slots nicely into the themes of the game involving environmentalism and how to ensure the livelihoods of people and nature both.

Flannery: Time capsule from 2003! I was, of course, around in 2003 (I turned 14), and Flannery was at the peak of fashion back then. Flares were in, and I miss that trend so much. For that alone, she’s one of my favorite Gym Leaders in this generation, but I also appreciate that she’s shown trying to find her footing and figure out who she is instead of pretending to be someone else. There’s a certain performative aspect to being a Gym Leader, but it needs to come naturally from them and be an extension of their own personality, not be artificial. I would, however, love to know who her grandfather is. It’s still never been confirmed. (As a side note, a lot of people headcanon her to be Kabu’s niece, since he’s from Hoenn, which is cute.)

Norman: A Dad. More specifically, the player character’s dad. There’s really nothing that stands out about him except for that damn Slaking, which gives a lot of people trouble. I did, however, appreciate the conversation he had with Wally’s father as Wally and the player character departed together, because I’m actually pretty close to my own father (who I’m very similar to in many aspects). I’m 31 years old and I still get emotional every time my parents tell me they’re proud of me. Notably, Norman is the only player character father we have ever seen in Pokemon, though, which is odd.

Winona: In-game, she doesn’t feel like she has much of a personality, although she goes off on aesthetics pretty well. It just weirds me out that that’s her hair coming out from under the helmet and not wings attached to it. She could have been really cool but she gets the short end of the development stick.

Tate and Liza: The two of them intentionally playing up the ‘weird twins’ angle by completing each other’s sentences actually comes across really cutely because they’re kids. You can also run into them in the Lilycove Department Store being children and buying toys, a good reminder that they’re still very young and evidently very skilled for their ages. Battle-wise, my Azumarill knew Surf by this point so I ended things quickly because I’m into Doubles as it is and like using spread moves when I can.

Wallace: I’ve discussed him a lot above, so I don’t need to say much else, but he really is the most notable Gym Leader in the region, and not just because he’s the last one you face. He has a lot of personality and development, you meet him outside the Gym several times, his niece Lisia is also out and about in the game and the family resemblance is notable, and you find an old magazine in Sea Mauville featuring a woman on the cover who looks like Lisia - likely Wallace’s older sister, Lisia’s mother. The entire family gets more development than a lot of the other Gym Leaders in this region.

Sidney: The first member of the Elite Four you face...I’d actually like to know more about him. He seems like an interesting person, and I personally enjoy Dark-types myself so I always appreciate seeing Dark-type users not being portrayed as evil. His upbeat nature is nice, and it’s a pleasant surprise to run into him at the Battle Resort, even if he was only there to track down Steven.

Phoebe: I love how much her appearance contrasts with her Pokemon typing. She’s a Ghost-type trainer and you’d never guess that from her outfit! Her grandmother is the old woman on Mt. Pyre, which is why Phoebe has an affinity for Ghost-Types, and I’d love to see more interactions involving them together. You can run into Phoebe on Mt. Pyre after you beat the League and talk to her briefly - she was likely visiting her grandmother - but sadly she doesn’t get much development outside of that.

Glacia: An Ice-type trainer who we learn next to nothing about. Glacia is mentioned outside of the context of the Elite Four by an NPC in the Mauville Food Court who says she was slurping down ramen so intensely that she broke a sweat, but that’s all we know about her aside from that she’s originally from a different region, and she tells us that herself. Not very memorable.

Drake: Yet another Dragon trainer late in the game, and not one of the more notable ones. Lance and Clair are remembered for being cousins and for being the first Dragon trainers you really come across in the series, and later Dragon-type trainers like Iris (who becomes Champion of Unova in B2W2) and Raihan are carried by their personalities and distinct looks. Drake is just an old sea captain with Dragon-types, and he doesn’t really jump out at me much either.

Steven: A major player in the plot - one of the most active Champions we’ve had in the franchise - and a perpetually popular character. I never minded running into Steven out and about in Hoenn, even if it meant I’d have to listen to an infodump about rocks, and his Champion battle was actually fairly difficult for the team I brought in despite having two team members with Fire-type attacks to handle the Steel. As I mentioned above, it was my Skitty that made the decisive dodge to allow me to bring in the team member I needed to deliver the final blow, meaning this is now the second time in my life I’ve beaten the Champion with an unevolved house cat. (Rick Pratt the Purrloin is a vital member of my beloved Young Ones Galar Championship Team.) Overall, Steven’s a very likeable Champion, and I did enjoy the little detail of the rocks on display in his home - he has them labeled so you can see where he found them, and they’re from every region featured in the games up to that point.

Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire also have the Delta Episode, which features Rayquaza (which you’re forced to catch) and a character named Zinnia, who isn’t in RSE at all and is new to ORAS. Besides being named after my favorite flower, Zinnia’s personality is actually very interesting because although she comes across as cheery it’s clear she feels the weight of a massive responsibility and that the cheeriness is covering a lot of pain. Her Whismur named Aster is evidently named after someone important to her who is no longer around, and it’s never revealed in-game who the original Aster was. Whoever Aster was, though, Zinnia misses her deeply. In a 2015 interview, Ohmori Shigeru stated that the original Aster was the person who held the position of Lorekeeper before Zinnia, but we don’t know anything more than that - a shame, really, because that makes for some interesting backstory.

Overall, I had a lovely time in Hoenn, and I’ll be moving on to Kalos in the next few weeks once I finish up this Dex business first. I just wish I got to get to know so many of the characters I’ve met a little better, but I adore the team I put together and I’m super proud of them and all they’ve accomplished.

[scoutception]

Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand review

The SNES was a console with many great RPGs. From popular classics like Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and Earthbound, to hidden gems like Live A Live, Terranigma, Secret of Evermore, and Shadowrun, it’s a library with a lot of enjoyment to offer. Of course, not every RPG on the system fared so well, with quite a few mediocre and forgettable games scattered about, and unfortunately, Ys V, Falcom’s second attempt at revamping their classic series, after Ys IV backtracked to using the original bump combat system, is among these. Even today, about the only notable thing about Ys V to a modern fan is the current lack of any remake, unlike IV, or the similarly flawed Ys III, which was enough to rouse my curiosity and drive me to give it a fair playthrough. While I did have some fun with it, there’s certainly a reason there were no new Ys games for nearly a decade afterwards, and the specifics on why that is is what we’ll be looking at today. Note that while Ys V was never released outside of Japan, it does have an English translation patch, courtesy of Aeon Genesis, in what was apparently one of their most difficult hacking jobs ever.

Story: About 4 years after the events of Ys I & II, Adol Christin, or, as he’s come to be known, Adol the Red, arrives at the port town of Xandria on the continent of Afroca (yes, literally just fantasy Alexandria and Africa), rather suspiciously without his constant companion Dogi, and on an intact ship, at that. The normally aimless Adol has been lured to Xandria by rumors of a mysterious Phantom City, said to contain amazing riches. After being contacted by a wealthy merchant named Dorman, however, Adol is given the truth: the so called Phantom City is actually the lost city of Kefin, a prosperous nation that wielded tremendous power five hundred years ago through the power of alchemy. Recently, the Kefin desert has been expanding, consuming many towns within the area, and monsters have become numerous and aggressive, leaving Xandria at threat of becoming a barren waste. Wishing to gain access to the secrets of Kefin’s alchemy in order to halt this desertification, Dorman hires Adol to find six elemental crystals that are said to have the power to unlock the way to Kefin. Unfortunately for Adol, he really has his work cut out for him this time; many of Afroca’s citizens are fearful of him, due to ancient legends telling of a red haired man that will bring great havoc upon his arrival, and he’s harassed by a band of thieves called the Ibur Gang, who are out to take all the crystals for themselves. Though Adol makes several allies as well, such as Niena, the adopted daughter of the great adventurer Stein, who disappeared three years ago looking for the crystals himself, Massea, a woman who possesses knowledge of alchemy matched by few others, and Stoker, the spirit of a man who lived five hundred years ago, he also comes to find that several other forces are conspiring to use Kefin’s alchemy for their own destructive purposes, and that his client may be less trustworthy than he initially seems.

While most of the classic Ys games had quite cliche stories, if understandably considering their age, Ys V is actually a fair bit more original, with some pretty decent moments toward the end of the game. Unfortunately, before that point, most of the story just consists of just wandering around finding all the crystals, with the random interferences Adol encounters being the only things spicing it up, such as being forced to undergo a series of trials, or being blown off a raft by a sandstorm and washing up in a different town, keeping the tradition of boating accidents in Ys alive and well. Despite the amount of important supporting characters around, most of them barely even show up for most of the story, which makes for a pretty underdeveloped and forgettable cast, with only Terra of the Ibur Gang sticking out thanks to reappearing in Ys VI. It also just feels very disconnected from the rest of the series, with Dogi completely missing, and a lot of plot elements that feel out of place for Ys. According to the book Ys Complete Works, a lot of plot elements had to be left out of V, which certainly explains why it feels so underbaked, and leaves a lot of potential for improvement if a remake ever materializes, but until then, while a neat step forward for the writing of the series, Ys V’s story ultimately just doesn’t fare very well overall.

Gameplay: Here’s where things really start falling apart. The bump combat system is gone once and for all now, with Ys V using a dedicated attack button like Ys III, a system that remains in place even today. Unlike Ys III, however, the general gameplay is still much more similar to the other titles, overhead perspective and all, with the change in combat instead feeling a lot more like the 2D Zelda titles. Along with swing his sword, Adol can also now use his shield to actively block attacks. There’s also a jump button, though there’s not much platforming to be done. In theory, this isn’t a bad change at all, but in practice, combat is extremely stiff and awkward feeling. Unlike in Zelda, where Link always swings with a nice, wide arc, Adol is stuck jabbing things for most of the game instead. Each sword has a different range, with exactly one that actually has a proper swing, and the ones you’ll use the most, the second and last swords, only being capable of stabs. Annoying as this is, it wouldn’t quite be a deal breaker, if it wasn’t for how frustratingly precise you need to be when attacking. If you’re even slightly off center, you’ll just whiff. Meanwhile, attacks from enemies are given far more leniency, and even using the shield, you need that same level of precision in order to block anything. Needless to say, this gets very frustrating.

Aside from just attacking physically, magic, or to be more accurate, alchemy, is also available, with spells being made by collecting elemental stones and having an alchemist combine three at a time, with six different elements and eighteen possible spells, which can then be attached to Adol’s weapon and slowly charged up until the magic meter reaches 100, at which point attacking will cast the spell and drain MP and spell charge. While a neat idea in concept, in practice, almost everything you can make is downright awful. Not only are many spells nearly identical to each other, but most of them are just really, really bad, with absurdly long casting animations, during which enemies are free to continue moving around and out of the spell’s range, wasting both your time and MP. About the only useful spells are the ones that hit everything on screen, which take an absurd amount of MP, and the basic fireball, which has no casting animation, and is mandatory to get anyway. Several enemies will also just absorb magic entirely and gain HP, so using it can often be an outright detriment. Even worse, the game basically forces you to use magic by separating EXP into two different types: physical EXP, obtained from defeating enemies with the sword, or from bosses, which boosts physical power and defense and magic EXP, which is gained from killing enemies with magic, and boosts magic power and defense, meaning if you ignore magic, any enemy using magic attacks will quickly wreck you. The stones needed to make the spells, along with a few other items like coins to be sold, are also mostly hidden across the different areas, and can only be found by rubbing up against every wall and object in sight, which is really annoying, and you really can’t afford to miss any of them if you want to make most of the available spells.

Bosses are pretty dumb too, with a lot of them just coming down to standing in one places and stabbing until they die, chugging heal potions until they die, and considering the most basic healing item heals 60% of Adol’s HP, it’s not hard to do, either. In general, the game is overly forgiving. While still pretty annoying, the level system means it is pretty easy to end up overleveled with physical and magic levels combined, and rather than just dropping a set amount of gold, enemies instead drop gems, which can be sold to merchants for varying amounts. While this wouldn’t make much of a difference on paper, the gems are worth so much, and certain merchants have high enough exchange rates, that you can make a lot of money pretty easily, and considering the third and second best weapons in the game are sold in the first two towns, it’s even easier to break the game wide open. Most areas are also really short, with several dungeons literally just consisting of three or four small rooms, so you’re rarely ever in serious danger traversing them, with most of their length just coming from forced backtracking. While an improvement from how grind heavy most of the early Ys games were, the easiness just makes the experience even less engaging, to the point Falcom had to make a second version of the game, titled Ys V Expert, due to complaints.

Graphics: The visuals of Ys V, to put it bluntly, barely even resemble the rest of the series, to the point it’s basically indistinguishable from any other SNES RPG. It doesn’t look outright bad, but whereas Ys usually uses a super deformed style with lots of colors, Ys V uses a more realistically proportioned style with really dark, dull colors, to the point that Adol’s usual distinctive bright red hair looks more brown than anything. Most areas are pretty forgettable, with pretty generic caves and ruins, but there are a few neat areas, like the rainy marshlands, which actually carry a pretty strong atmosphere, and the bosses look kinda cool, if a bit samey. You also get to customize Adol a bit, being able to change the color of his clothes and armor in the menu, along with his hair color, if you find a hidden NPC fairly late in the game, with the default option actually giving him his usual hair color. Overall, though, the visuals are still pretty unspectacular.

Music: In yet another change from series tradition, Ys V forgoes the usual rock style of the soundtrack, and instead takes a much more orchestral approach, again making it stand out even less from its competition, only retaining a few traditions like the item collection music and the Theme of Adol. In this case, however, I can’t complain that much about the change, because the resulting soundtrack, in usual Falcom fashion, is still fantastic. From the peaceful Foresta Village, to the melancholy Misty Lake, to the mysterious Oasis, to the dark Sand Castle, to the adventurous Wilderness, there are a lot of great tracks to be found, and it’s absolutely worth looking up the soundtrack even if the rest of the game would drive you away.

Conclusion: Overall, Ys V is not recommended. It’s not an outright bad game, and can still be decently fun. It’s short enough that it’s not much of an investment to play through, and it was still an important step that allowed Ys VI to fully modernize the gameplay of the series. As a whole though, it’s still a pretty underwhelming and clunky experience that’s almost completely divorced from the rest of the series. You’re not missing much by leaving it alone, and perhaps with the release of Ys IX, a remake of V could be next on the schedule. Either way, that’s about all I can even say about this game. Till next time. -Scout

[atsushishelteredinmoonlitjasmine]

Fire Emblem: Awakening Thoughts

As of the date May 20th, 2020, I finished my playthrough of Fire Emblem: Awakening on its one year anniversary of when I got it. It is now June 5th of writing this. This post will be my thoughts and feelings on Awakening, much like the KH3 Grievances and Blessings post last year. Let's get into some history between me and Fire Emblem before I go into Awakening.

As I've said before, Awakening was both my first Fire Emblem game and my first Tactical RPG. Smash Bros. was where I had heard of Fire Emblem but it wouldn't be until Ultimate came out that I would start to get interested. It was because of my friend's preference for Lucina that got me into playing as her in Smash and that's pretty much how she became both one of my mains and a favorite. It honestly wasn't till I listened to the Smash remixes of Id, Conquest, and Lost in Thoughts All Alone that I decided to play Awakening and then Fates. So thanks go out to both Smash and my friend Eric for converting me to Fire Emblem trash!

Much like the KH3 Grievances and Blessings post, I'll be going over every aspect of Awakening I can think of, from the graphics to the gameplay to the story. I'll even include a Best/Worst Girl and Boy of both generations because that kind of thing seems to matter to some people, along with my reasons for why X is Y. Keep in mind that whoever I choose as those categories, it is just my opinion and you're free to disagree with me. I say this because I know that, no matter what I say, some diehard fans will get pissed at me and come at me for daring to shit on their favorite character. I already know some people are gonna get mad because they think X should be Best/Worst and that'll be fun to see (You can interpret that as sarcasm if you want).

Listed below are Awakening spoilers, so if you want to play the game and don't want to be spoiled, now's your chance to stop reading. I know Awakening came out in 2013, meaning 6 or 7 years ago, but there may be some people who haven't gotten around to playing it yet so I want to be courteous to them. Here are my thoughts on Fire Emblem: Awakening!

First off, the graphics. I think they looked really nice for a 3DS game that came out in the early 2010's and I believe this was Fire Emblem's first fully 3D game as well so that's really impressive. The in-game models were nicely detailed, the in-game sprites were nice looking, and the prerendered cutscenes were beautiful. This doesn't mean they're not without their faults, though. I wish the in-game cutscenes were more animated because it's easy to tell when an animation's been used over and over again, I feel as if the in-game sprites have some dissonance with official art, and there are times where expressions or animations for the prerendered cutscenes have looked pretty awkward. In terms of the first and last point, I'm giving IntSys some slack because, as I stated earlier, they were developing a game for the 3DS, a powerful handheld device but it's still a handheld, and this was FE's first 3D game so there may have been issues transitioning from 2D sprites to 3D models. I'll explain what I mean by my second point. I've looked at Cynthia's official art and when I see her face, I tend to see what I'd call a baby face, pudgy cheeks and all. Her in-game sprite, however, her face is sharper, more mature, if that makes sense. Maybe it's the pigtails throwing me off or it's just a difference between two art styles, I don't know. I'm not an artist so there's not much weight behind this but I'm just saying there's somewhat a dissonance between official art and in-game sprites.

Secondly, gameplay. I loved how easy it was and how I could switch between a simple and complex UI if I wanted to see which attacks could hit or what the enemy's stats were. This may sound stupid but I honestly thought it'd be way more difficult due to this being a Tactical RPG. I know strategy's a big part of Fire Emblem but strategy's not a big problem if you're like me and you grind to hell and back. Speaking of which, I played on Easy Casual mode so that might be why it seemed so simple from the get-go. Just to give you an idea of how much I grinded, I put in 200+ hours and that mostly consisted of buying a shitton of Reeking Boxes, spawning Risen on some of my favorite grind spots, and fighting them over and over again. I went through the 3 basic classes each character could have, maxed out their default class one last time, promoted them to their advanced class, and maxed out those classes 2-3 times over. I have a video on my Twitter that shows the stats of these characters and most of them are over 220 (The shapeshifters 300). Needless to say, I loved each and every fucking crit I got. Cordelia even got what I call a miracle crit, which means she got 2 crits in one round and after the enemy attacked, she got another 2 crits. Level grind ain't a joke in this game.

Thirdly, the music. Considering it's part of why I got into this game in the first place, I loved it. As I'm writing this, I'm listening to the OST and it sounds so much better when you don't have the ambient sounds and you're not listening to it through the 3DS speakers. The song that hit me the most and just gave me the overwhelming feels was Id~Sorrow as it played in Chapter 21. It fit so well with the tone of the scene and I just sat there for a few minutes, letting it play in the background as I did shit. Other notable mentions are Id~Purpose, Destiny, Conquest, and the song that is just ellipses. If the music is this good in Awakening, I can't wait to see what's in store for Fates!

Fourthly, the voice acting. For a game where most of the voices come in forms of clips, I thought they were good. Each of the actors tried their best to convey their characters in the clips they were allowed to have and I think it shows. The only critique I have, and it's not the actors' fault, is that some of the characters' voices don't fit them. I'm not saying they miscast these characters, it's more like the direction was off, if that makes sense. Let me bring up Cynthia, Kjelle, and M!Morgan as examples. I don't think it's a stretch to say that, sometimes when you look at a character, you kinda imagine what they'd sound like before you hear their actual voice, right? I already brought up Cynthia's looks so I imagined her voice to sound very high-pitched and maybe a little childlike. I hear her voice and, while she's high-pitched and some of her voice clips do go into that childlike territory, she's nasally sounding and more mature. Kjelle is a complicated case in that, her voice fits her appearance (minus the armor) but not her personality. Her personality is similar to Sully's so I figured her voice would sound gruffer and not...cute, if that's the right word. M!Morgan's, I think, everyone can see the problem with. He's supposed to be the youngest of the kids, right? Since he's the only third generation character and all that? I think he just sounds a little too old for the supposed baby of the kids. Again, I'm not saying the voices are bad or that the delivery/emotion was bad, I just think the direction in which they were voiced don't fit some of the characters. Maybe I'm just thinking in terms of archetypes or something.

Now we move on to the story. I can't say as to whether it was good or not, mainly because I spoiled myself on it way before I decided on playing Awakening, so I don't think I can say much to the quality. The least I'll say is it's serviceable. I'll admit, the one thing I was shocked by was the appearance of the Grima Avatar because I thought Grima was inside Robin the whole time and I didn't think he'd have a separate vessel. I straight up thought Grima!Robin was either my mother or a twin I wasn't aware of so I'm giving credit to the writers for surprising me. Anyway, I think the only flaw I have with the story is with the pacing. I thought the first half was fine, it wasn't too fast or too slow. It was the second half that the pacing couldn't find a middle ground. Now I'm going to say that this half was stretched out over months of my playtime so whatever I say next might be exaggerated because of my procrastinating ass so... I feel like the Valm arc was way too slow and the Grimleal arc had so much trouble finding a middle ground. The beginning of the Grimleal arc was quick but Grima himself decided that I had to finish 2 and a half chapters before I finally got to beat him and you have to deal with constant reinforcements before you kill off the target. I think if it weren't for my overleveled as fuck units, I wouldn't have finished Awakening in time for my birthday.

Just for shits and giggles, I'm gonna say what I picked for my choice with both Luce's judgement and Grima's fate. I picked the self-sacrificial choices, which means I accepted Luce's judgement and allowed her to kill me and I dealt the final blow to Grima so Chrom didn't have to. While I knew the outcomes of both choices and them ultimately not meaning anything, I wanted my Robin to reflect what I would've done and I'm a very self-sacrificial person. Because I made Chrobin happen in my playthrough, which meant Luce was my daughter, I believe that, if my child who came from an apocalyptic world told me I was the reason for that happening and that she came back through time to stop that future from happening so she and the others wouldn't suffer, I would've let her kill me. Parents would and should do anything for their kids and if my death possibly gave my daughter the chance for a better life, I'd take it in stride. As for me dealing the final blow to Grima, if it was to save everyone I loved, I would've done it. Although there's some feelings of wanting to give a big "Fuck you" to Grima and to permanently end the problem so any future descendants wouldn't have to deal with it. This section may sound more philosophical and personal than I usually write but I think it deserved it.

Now we're on to Supports and who I chose to be together. I don't think it's wrong to say that this is where the characters really get to shine and it's because of the Supports I love these kids and how much I'm going to miss them when I move on to other FE games. As for the "canon" couples, I mainly went with characters that I thought would complement each other and this was one of the few things I tried to choose for myself. I tried my best to go for pairings that weren't fan favorites but I'm also not very connected with the fandom as of writing this so I may be completely wrong in which ships were favorites or not. So here are the pairings I got for my playthrough!

Chrom-Robin

Frederick-Sumia

Virion-Miriel

Vaike-Nowi

Stahl-Sully

Lon'qu-Cordelia

Ricken-Lissa

Gaius-Maribelle

Gregor-Cherche

Libra-Panne

Henry-Olivia

Lucina-Inigo

Owain-Cynthia

Brady-Nah

Kjelle-Laurent

Severa-Yarne

Obviously, there are some characters missing from this list and I can explain why. I didn't recruit Kellam and Tharja and it's because your girl is a dumbass. Kellam, I thought, was already on my team, he was just labelled as an ally so I didn't need to recruit him. They really should've made that clear. Tharja, on the other hand, was an even bigger dumbass than me because she decided to charge after Robin, who happened to be in front and was way overleveled, and got her ass promptly beaten with a crit. I regret not getting Kellam but after hearing how awful of a person Tharja is and how many fans are willing to put aside emotional abuse and stalker-like tendencies to have a chance to fuck her, she can stay buried in the sand where I electrocuted her ass. Unfortunately, this does means Noire didn't pop up in my recruitment list and that fucking sucks. The only characters left I didn't have a pairing were Gerome and Morgan. I think Gerome wouldn't really care for a romantic partner because he's all about not wanting to create ties in this time and shit and, since I see Morgan as the baby of the kids, I figured he'd be a little too young to be in a relationship. Despite that, I wish I got him and Nah together because I found out after she was shipped with Brady that Morgan's the only S-Support she'll say "I love you" to and I was immediately filled with regret.

Before I move on to the Best/Worst contest, there's something I need to bring up because I can see what sensible fans have shown now. This game is HELLA gay. Like, holy fuck, how many instances are there where you have two characters of the same sex and they have dialogue that seems to have been written with romantic intent but the writers decide it's meant to be platonic? Maybe I just have this weird line of thought on how straights are because there's no fucking way some of these gay moments would be a thing with even the most accepting straights. Maribelle calling Lissa darling and other pet names, Robin blushing from some of the girls and even mistaking Flavia's proposition for a marriage proposal, Severa looking at Kjelle's abs, the list goes on. I'm not straight because I'd be doing some of this shit with a potential girlfriend if I could! Why did it take IntSys until 3 Houses to implement LGBT+ pairings when this game is right here?! At least this game doesn't have the weird student/teacher relationships 3H has and believe me when I say that, if it weren't for the fact I could give less of a fuck for 3H, I wouldn't play that game for that reason! Anyway, Awakening is hella gay and it should've been the first LGBT+ FE game instead of 3H.

The Best/Worst contest... As I said in the beginning, there'll be a Best/Worst Boy and Girl for both generations because that's fun and it seems to matter a lot to some people. Repeating what I said, this is just my opinion and you're free to agree or disagree with me. One rule I'm putting in is I will try my best to not pick fan favorites. Don't get me wrong when some of the crowd pleasers are good but there are other characters that deserve just as much love as the fan favorites so this is why I'm putting in this rule. Without further ado, here are the rulings!

1st Gen

Best Boy-Lon'qu

Best Girl-Panne

Worst Boy-Virion

Worst Girl-Miriel

2nd Gen

Best Boy-Owain

Best Girl-Cynthia

Worst Boy-Inigo

Worst Girl-Severa

Let's see how many people I piss off with these judgements. So, my reasoning: Best Boy for 1st gen was a big toss-up. I kept wanting to choose between Chrom, Frederick, Stahl, and Lon'qu because they really endeared themselves to me but I chose Lon'qu in the end because he's honestly such a dork (I mean, all of them are) and I gotta admire how he tries to overcome his fear of women and try being there for his wife and daughter if he happens to have one. There's also the fact he has to literally psyche himself up to talk to women if you check in with him in the Barracks and I'm just like "Fucking hell, that's adorable and I GET it". Best girl is Panne because believe me when I say that the moment I see this woman and hear her voice, I'm immediately gay for her. Then she transforms into a giant rabbit, kicks so much ass, and I'm in love. Funny story, I'd talk to my friend about my progress in Awakening on Discord and the moment he asks me who best girl was and I answered Panne, he called me out for being a furry. Granted, I would've automatically said Luce but I'm trying not to pick fan favorites so I get his criticism. If a woman like Panne existed in real life, bunny ears and tail and all, I'd probably become a furry for her, no questions asked. As for worst boy and girl, Virion and Miriel are characters I honestly don't give much of a fuck about. Not that they're bad, I just don't care about their archetypes, if that makes sense. Miriel I found to be boring and Virion's of the Casanova archetype and I've always kinda hated that archetype so that's why they're on the ranking.

Oh boy, 2nd gen. So, best boy being Owain. This boy is going to kill me. He's so adorable and sweet and he's just a good boy. There are literally Tweets on my Twitter where I just gush about him and he deserves so much love. He's just a sweet boy who loves his parents so much and is so proud to be their son and how he manages to rope his cousins (Luce and Morgan) into going with his fantasies and how they just go along with it! Owain is a cinnabun and I want to protect him and love him. Anyway, best girl being Cynthia is sorta the same reason as Owain. She's just so bubbly and happy and just adorable. Yeah, she may get carried away with showboating but I just love her earnest desire to be a hero. I think everyone can see why I paired Owain and Cynthia up. Now for the worst. Inigo and Severa are probably the only characters in this whole game that straight up got on my fucking nerves and for different reasons. Outside of his supports with Olivia and Henry, Inigo's constant flirting with the girls and Robin and inability to take no for an answer just rubbed me the wrong way. I actually put out a Tweet saying how Inigo's like an r/niceguy and I still think he is one. Course, this doesn't mean I didn't have my fair share of laughs from him. I fucking died at his and Gerome's A-Support where he ends up pathetically crying after the emo loner got more game than him and Gerome has to comfort his ass, that was hilarious. It also helped the fact that Liam O'Brien, who I've only heard him as the brooding emo loner role, voiced Inigo as the complete opposite of that and I had a blast. Severa, on the other hand, was...really unpleasant. There's a reason I hate Tsunderes with a passion and it's because they're unnecessarily bitchy towards everyone they know, even if they have no reason to be. Severa, however, was somehow worse because she went out of her way to be horrible to people. My dislike for her was cemented the moment I saw her and Cynthia's C-Support and she chose to make fun of her, despite Cynthia minding her own business and Severa just going "fuck it". However, I should express that I understand why Inigo and Severa are the way they are and that's why I'm not being as harsh on them as I could be. They still have their good moments and I can appreciate them while also raking them over the coals.

So that concludes my review/experience of Fire Emblem: Awakening! Despite some moments of frustration and annoyance, I had fun playing this! I mean it when I say I'm gonna miss these kids but I had plenty of time to spend with them so it's time to move on to newer lands. Next up on the list is Fates and I think I'm siding with Hoshido first. It's funny how, despite me spoiling the story for myself 3 separate times, I still can't remember much, if any, of it so that may say something about the quality. I also know Fates is pretty divisive among the fandom but the thing I know it for is the weird pseudo-incestuous ships it has so that's going to be fun! Hopefully, I'll get around to playing as one of my other mains in Smash, my water horse dragon Corrin, sometime soon and I'll be sure to let everyone know when my journey will start!

[langwrites]

Lang Plays Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I’m playing them in this order: Blue Lions, Black Eagles, Church of Seiros, and then Golden Deer. (I organized them by how likely it is to have a true final boss who is actually as relevant to the lore as the opening cutscene. And also because I thoroughly spoiled myself about that.)

So, after sinking what the game tells me was eighty hours into a single playthrough, here’s my thoughts on the first thing I tackled.

Spoilers below the cut.

Very Early Game (Blue Lions):

It’s the Fire Emblem Dad! (I played Path of Radiance. I’ve seen this dude before.)

Hi Claude. Sorry, I’m gonna steal every single one of your peers I can catch. Same to you, Edelgard.

Dimitri is so awkward it’s almost palpable.

Aww, Ashe and Annette are adorable. Mercedes has that dead anime mom hairstyle that sets my teeth on edge, but she’s super nice. It’ll take me longer to warm up to the boys, I think.

Felix is the token “I MUST BECOME STRONGER” myrmidon character. Gotta have at least one per game, apparently.

Sylvain = Sain. Token womanizer cavalier. His support list is pretty odd, though.

Dedue = the guy who done punch things. And he *has* to punch things, because he’s slow as hell and his speed growth isn’t great.

What the fuck is that strength growth, Dimitri. What the fuck is that Charm growth.

I was so close to making him my team’s designated Dancer unit, you guys.

Beleth is gonna be their teacher and somehow I don’t imagine this going super well.

Pre-Timeskip School Life:

Once again, I regret not being able to support with characters who’ve firmly attached themselves to the other two houses. (Which is only like three people in my “gotta catch ‘em all” playthrough, but whatever.)

But I can support all the recruitables, which is...something that took me a long while to do.

The first person I stole for the Blue Lions was Caspar. The first person who straight-up joined was Flayn. Yay, auxiliary punchers and auxiliary-auxiliary healers!

Ashe, your adoptive father really didn’t need to die. You were right. It was all bad all the way down.

Flayn gets kidnapped and I fuck around for a month raising everyone else’s supports and realizing Seteth’s too distraught to train my Lance level. Dangit.

I missed the opportunity to support with Leonie entirely because her personality put me off for the first few in-game months, and it turns out you can only start her support chain while Jeralt is alive.

Dammit. Now I’ve gotta train with lances.

What’s-his-fuck over at the village sure did do a thing, didn’t he. And if he hadn’t dropped his disguise just then he could have gotten away with it.

Their scheme would’ve failed faster if anybody around this fucking monastery could apply logic to shapeshifter shenanigans.

Seriously, no one should have trusted Monica.

You vanish over the course of a year, and come back with your personality totally inverted.

Tomas/Solon had just demonstrated what it looks like when these dickbags drop cover, and then everyone subsequently failed to make the correct deduction. If they hadn’t, Jeralt would’ve lived.

Dad-stabbing: A theme of Fire Emblem games. Seriously. Check out the huge list of dead dads (which goes all the way back to the first game in the series.)

Also dead moms, but for some reason moms are less prominent in the series as a whole.

For the purposes of this analysis, we are also including every single boss who had kids. Which isn’t most of them, but god damn there are still a lot of dead dads.

Dorotheaaaaaa be my frieeeeeeend

Yoinked Linhardt after finally showering him in enough gifts to get his sleepy ass to sign transfer papers.

Swiped Marianne, Bernadetta, Petra, Ignatz, Alois (kinda), Shamir (sorta), Manuela (iffy), Hanneman (yoink), Catherine (see previous), Hilda (how), Lorenz (woop woop), and Leonie (sigh).

The Death Knight remains, for the moment, unpillaged for his Dark Seal drops. This time it was an accident: I killed everyone else in the room except for him and a priest/mage, but then that last dude squared up with Felix and died.

All the points I poured into their associated skills and their supports, however, left one big gap:

DAMMIT FERDINAND, I’M TRYING TO SAVE YOUR LIFE. WHY DO YOU CARE SO MUCH ABOUT HEAVY ARMOR. RAPHAEL JOINED UP DESPITE THAT.

(I got a B-rank support with him and he popped into my office to say he was transferring, nbd. Ferdinand’s B-rank is locked until after the timeskip.)

tl;dr: The only recruitable character I missed was Ferdinand.

Seteth and Gilbert don’t do shit until post-timeskip and Rhea isn’t playable, so w/e.

As soon as I say that, Seteth and Flayn have a paralogue. It’s a beach level. I hate beach levels and desert levels. Seteth gets to be MVP because he’s the only jerk who can fly.

They have a little speech after the paralogue level that reveals that they’re actually father and daughter, not siblings. And the whole story of this little subplot basically confirms that they’re dragons.

Neither of them transform over the course of the game, and that’s okay.

Ruh-roh, Raggy. Let’s see who’s really under the Flame Emperor’s mask--

“AND I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT TOO, IF NOT FOR--oh wait teleportation exists. BYE!”

Dimitri proceeds to thoroughly lose any chill he ever pretended to have, and I’m 99% sure the villain in question isn’t actually old enough to have caused the Tragedy of Duscur. Unless the biographies in the notes were lying.

Now, the backup dancers over there sure as shit are, but logical reasoning has its time and place.

Whatever. Time for stabbing.

WE ALREADY KNOW THESE PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF MAKING THEMSELVES LOOK LIKE ANYONE, MASKS TOTALLY UNNECESSARY. THE VICTIM ONLY HAS TO DISAPPEAR FOR A WHILE.

WHY AREN’T WE CHECKING THAT AS A BASIC PRECAUTION.

THERE HAVE BEEN THREE OF THESE CREEPS ALREADY.

Their name is too long and I should call them Morlocks.

But seriously, check for infiltrators.

What passes for strategy around here: Take Paladin Dimitri, plunk his overleveled ass down on a corner where all the enemies’ targeting reticles converge, and wait five minutes for all the counterkill animations to play out.

If I wanna try the same with Sylvain, he needs to be backed up by at least Annette and probably Felix. Maybe even Mercedes if she’s not already busy slinging Physics around.

Dimitri’s fine with just sitting around with a forged Steel Lance and poking holes in everything.

Beleth can do the same, but is much more reliant on dodging and not just facetanking axes.

The little “no damage!” sound effect is still very satisfying. Yes, game, my Defense/Resistance has escaped the bounds of your damage curve.

Dorothea became my Dancer unit, because despite Dimitri having twenty-eight Charm to her nineteen, he begged me not to and also is better sitting on a corner and killing everything.

Huh, the monastery is sure being invad--you know, Edelgard, if it wasn’t already really obvious that your faction is basically the “villain route” in Samurai Warriors parlance, using giant mop-headed demonic beasts as shock troops would probably give it away to observers. If they weren’t already running away in abject terror.

The principle from How to Train Your Dragon still applies: A downed dragon is a dead dragon. If Rhea didn’t want to basically get mobbed, she should’ve stayed in the air and acted as flying artillery for the Knights of Seiros with her mouth laser. She could’ve sat on top of a wall and fired with relative impunity.

Sure, some demonic beasts can fly, but there weren’t any in that cutscene and the flying ones have, mechanically, one less health meter than the landbound ones.

Also, they’re pushovers.

And there’s the washed-out creep brigade! They look like the Grimleal, but with more feathers and less of a tan.

...And there goes Beleth, off to have a five-year nap.

Welp.

Post Timeskip:

Oh good, it’s been five years. Beleth, I hate to break it to you, but you’re probably at least slightly dragon at this point. Check your ears if you have a chance.

Tiki canonically napped for like 99% of her three thousand years in Awakening, ironically enough, so it’s not like dragon-people are exactly early risers.

Poor rando gets asked “what year is it” like that question is ever used outside of fiction. Beleth doesn’t read time travel books, I take it.

“oh you probably shouldn’t go to the monastery, it’s like super haunted and shit”

“sorry what was that i couldn’t hear you over the sound of me climbing up to the monastery”

Eyyyy, it’s a lance-wielding pirate.

...Hi, Dimitri. Where’d your macaroni hair go.

You know, it’s not surprising that Dimitri would think Beleth was a hallucination. He spent a lot of time yelling at his inner demons even pre-timeskip, after taking a couple of severe psychological shocks.

But he absolutely should have walked into her and been surprised when he knocked them both on their asses.

He’s been spending the last five years stabbing people, hasn’t he.

Yep.

He looks like he fell out of Game of Thrones.

Blue Lions! Rah rah something team chant. Rah rah Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen~

None of you people trained any of your skills. In five years. Dimitri you were a paladin. Did you eat your horse.

You are all getting sent to boot camp.

Hi, Gilbert. Why are you playable now all of a sudden. Why is your speed a fucking two.

THIS IS WHY MIKLAN HANDED YOU YOUR ASS.

Once again, the “plunk Dimitri’s overleveled ass down on a corner and watch people die” plan is still a valid strategy. I still don’t know where he gets all this strength (and charm). Like, goddamn.

Annette got cornered for like five turns because I was too cowardly to put her in range of a Brawler.

Then she killed him with a critical Fire.

So, I guess Felix’s remarks about Dimitri’s issues make some sense now, but he should still stop making them. I know he’s a tsundere par excellence, but still.

STop TalKing AboUT KilLing PeoPle

Warning: Sympathetic Boss Approaching.

Look, most “sympathetic” bosses in Fire Emblem kinda fall flat. The better ones are placed in the way of the player characters while they’re in the middle of a low point in the emotional arc and get utterly wrecked in a flurry of misdirected fury. Sometimes the characters even feel bad about it afterward. The worst ones are the ones who are just utterly devoted to someone who’s earned everyone’s ire by being a utter fucking asshole.

Good: Mustafa from Awakening and Shiharam from Path of Radiance. Good people forced into bad situations. Or just cornered. Henry talked up the former long after he got a Chrom to the face, and the latter was probably the best-written of the “aw, I wish I didn’t have to kill him” bosses I’ve run across.

Bad: Levail from Radiant Dawn. There is no getting around the fact that General Zelgius was a bad dude. Levail holding him up as a paragon of knightliness and swearing to serve him out of sheer admiration did not make him even marginally better.

We sure did kill Caspar’s uncle, didn’t we. I’m sure that won’t come back to bite us square in the ass. Not after he had that “this guy is a person who cares about stuff” cutscene to remind us of his pixel humanity.

I’m sure it’s fine.

Bwoop, bwoop, everyone say hello to Ferdinand and Lorenz! And say goodbye to Ferdinand, because he didn’t allow himself to be recruited pre-timeskip, isn’t recruitable post-timeskip, and then I had Felix kill him with Thoron.

Lorenz can rejoin us, though. He doesn’t count as an enemy commander once he’s been smacked down to 0 hp.

HI, DEDUE. WHY ARE YOU ONLY LEVEL TWENTY. GET IN THE BACKLINES AND DON’T TALK TO ME UNTIL YOU CAN ACTUALLY DAMAGE ANYTHING.

(Seriously, tho, I was waiting for Dedue to come back for two reasons. One: I did that paralogue of his way back in Part One and he did not get to die after all that. Two: Part of Dimitri’s epic slide into “spear-wielding mountain man who runs around killing people with his bare hands” had to do with Dedue “dying” during the timeskip. That jackass cracked a smile for the first time in ingame years thanks to the world’s punchiest bodyguard coming back alive.)

(Fortress Knight is still the worst class.)

I totally didn’t pay any attention to what, if anything, actually separated Master classes from Advanced classes other than my inability to get my hands on Master Seals. So Ashe is a Bow Knight now, while Felix made it to Mortal Savant (wtf is that name and why is the class model basically a samurai) and I spent a very long time level-grinding Sylvain’s Reason skill to make him a Dark Knight. I aimed for Gremory with all my spellcaster girls, but I admit to not really paying attention to specifics.

(I ended up with five Gremories: Annette, Flayn, Mercedes, Lysithea, and Dorothea. Bernadetta became a Bow Knight and Marianne promoted eventually to a Holy Knight. Dorothea also ended up taking Mortal Savant, which she didn’t ever use.)

(Seteth became a Wyvern Lord and Dedue eventually made it to Warrior.)

(Byleth qualified for Mortal Savant and used it precisely no times.)

(It became pretty clear that I just threw Master Seals at people whenever the possibility of promoting them came up.)

(Certification is a weird system.)

I stopped paying a ton of attention to supports around the time I realized that Ferdinand wasn’t going to be recruited no matter what I did in the final month before Shit Went Down.

Then I started paying attention again like two chapters from endgame, because I remembered some A-ranked supports meant that the characters could get paired endings.

I also stopped ignoring Cyril and started using him as an adjutant, though his stats never quite caught up to Seteth (also known as the only instructor unit I ever consistently used).

Cornelia is absolutely a Morlock plant. That is a face she just made, even in flashback.

I wish we could've seen Dimitri’s now-dead uncle, if only because I’m curious. Also, what did Edelgard’s mom/Dimitri’s stepmom look like?

Why is there always a fire level. I saw it earlier thanks to doing Ingrid and Dorothea’s paralogue, but it’s a Fire Emblem stock level type and I hate it.

Okay, yeah, this area totally got nuked. Magitech nukes, but still. It’s still on fire centuries later? Why??

Felix’s dad is a Holy Knight. Why do I have to keep his ass alive on a field when half the enemies are barely Advanced classes, never mind Master classes.

Oh right, because I want the exp for myself.

Rodrigue is possibly the single person here who can make Dimitri’s murder-bender change direction even slightly. He also gets along with his actual son so much worse than that. He’s like Annette’s dad, but with actual verbal confrontations.

There’s Caspar’s not-exactly-forgotten aunt, here to “secretly” avenge her dead brother. Dude, could you say something about that?

Three levels later: I thought we were done with the dad-stabbing. 

Felix has officially lost Too Many People in pursuit of keeping Dimitri alive. As has everyone else, frankly.

In other routes, Dimitri absolutely runs his campaign off a cliff.

Here, he turns his life around. More or less. Gotta make the choice to get better.

Time to take back the Kingdom’s capital, like we’ve not been doing for four chapters now. Finally.

Cornelia is absolutely a Morlock plant. This is like the fourth character who supposedly did a complete characterization 180 after a period of being actually useful to other people. Goodbye, civil engineer we never knew.

I think the only infiltrator who did things properly was Solon, but he still dropped his disguise for no good reason early in the game. That operatic level of drama is not a trait that helps him survive a month later. Just goes to show that the Morlocks don’t have more than one type of good judgment at a time, I guess.

I know I’m supposed to avoid the giant doom robots, but...

No, it turns out I can just have Dimitri and Beleth stand in the middle of the killzone and destroy them for fun and profit.

Ding dong the witch is dead.

Welp, time to go save the Alliance, which is getting schooled by the Empire.

HI CLAUDE.

I MISSED YOU AND YOUR FAITH IN HUMANITY. And specifically in Dimitri, for some reason? I think he kinda stabbed your soldiers a lot the last time you two met, but feel free to keep being the Best Character.

Your bodyguards are top-notch, man. One of them got hit with anything over the course of the entire battle.

Your general Judith, however, necessitates Flayn using ALL of her Rescue spells just to keep her alive.

I still had to send Ashe to keep a Falcon Knight off you, but no big.

And also had to send Hilda and Petra to kill the Asshole Reinforcements to nick their stuff.

Dimitri sat there and dodge-tanked all of Arundel’s attempts to kill him until the team killed everybody else. Then Dimitri poked him and he died. Dimitri OHKOs everything except monsters now, and that’s only because they have multiple health meters.

And then Claude fucks off to become king somewhere else. Okay then. It was a nice speech, though.

Killing the Death Knight for fun and profit and now Mercedes is crying. Shit.

Doesn’t this place get vaporized in every other route?

Did killing so many Morlocks by accident lock us out of seeing an intercontinental ballistic missile?

(And it is by accident, because this route is like the only one where the Morlocks are incidentals instead of the main problem, partly due to Dimitri’s tunnel vision and partly just because they don’t drop their disguises upon death.)

Well, I guess it’s time to confront Edelgard.

It’s completely valid of her to look at the guy who was threatening to rip her head off with his bare hands and hang it from the gates of the Empire’s capital a little while ago, and then go “Yeah, diplomacy’s shot.” That Dimitri stopped being quite so all-consumingly homicidal a bit ago is not actually reason to try throwing herself on anyone’s mercy. I feel kinda bad for her, since she’s been pushed into this corner and her ace-in-the-hole allies are basically decapitated, and I stole all her potential friends back during the school phase of the game.

Also, sunk cost fallacy.

Still walloped the entire roster of the second-to-last level, down to killing Hubert with Lysithea. Hilda and Cyril killed all the bird demons.

On the final level, which starts immediately after the previous one, three characters got totally destroyed by the sheer number of mages floating around: Dimitri (whose Avoid finally failed him four times in a row), Hilda (same), and Dedue (thirded). Seteth miraculously survived taking 68 points of damage from a single attack, and then later went on to take Edelgard’s last health bar off with a crit.

Weirdly, Beleth’s Avoid was just fine. Finally let her use the Sublime Sword of the Creator and she killed most of the Gremories that took out Dimitri and Hilda.

And everybody we could save per plot constraints got to live! (Except Ferdinand.)

I’m willing to save him on subsequent routes because killing him made Dorothea sad.

Next time: Lang plays the route that screws over most of these people in service of killing the God-Pope.

[ladala99]

So I accidentally found out about the fact that Pokemon from outside the Galar Regional Dex are unable to be transferred into the game. Since I’m avoiding information and thus am not going on other forums, I guess I’ll put my rant here. Because I’m upset.

For me, whose signature Pokemon is a fairly forgettable Pika-clone that is awful in battle, I can’t help but be very bothered by this. Every Pokemon is someone’s favorite. Even if it’s completely forgotten and unobtainable except by going out of your way for it (coughGlameowcough), you could still always rely on sending it up from previous games.

It’s like Ruby/Sapphire all over again. Except I started with Ruby so I didn’t experience it the first time. Like yeah, sure, your Pikachu from Ruby will still be able to journey with you, but what about your Blaziken? Your Minun? Your Latios?

The best part of Pokemon games for me is the replay value, and that includes using Pokemon from out of the region. Want to play Unova with only Sinnoh Pokemon? You can!  Hoenn with Pokemon from Kalos? In Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, you can! Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee were a huge leap in the wrong direction in this regard, but I could forgive them because it was clearly stated that they weren’t going to be what the series would be going forward.

And it’s not like they don’t have the models. The 3DS included much higher-resolution models than the system could handle, for all Pokemon, for future use. The 3DS games included walking and running animation for every Pokemon in them, including Mega Evolutions and other in-battle-only formes. If they were so crunched for time, they should delay it. I’d rather a delayed game with every Pokemon in it than a game coming out soon with only a fraction of the cast.

In Skylanders, I had stated with full intention: “The game I cannot use my Series 1 Spyro in is the game I do not buy.” I may have to have the same creed here: The main-series game I cannot bring my Ribbon Master Shiny Minun and my precious Luxury Ball Mew into is the game I do not buy.

It might just be that I’m purposely avoiding information (only accidentally ran into this and then read more into it because it’s important), but the hype is at an all-time low. First the Ultra games broke the pattern of every third version being more different from the originals than the last, then the Let’s Go games having lackluster replayability and a broken Exp system so it literally can’t be hard if you play like I do (six-Pokemon team, leveled evenly, fight every trainer, heal fainted Pokemon immediately), and now this.

But now I’m torn: I’ve never disliked a game I went blind into, and this certainly won’t effect my initial playthrough since I use Pokemon I catch in the region anyway. But on the other hand, I don’t want to encourage this behavior. The last two releases were tinged with disappointment (I was expecting “alternate story” to be, well, actually different from the original and not objectively worse in Ultra Moon, and I kept getting antsy in Let’s Go, Eevee that I was way overlevelled and my Alolan Marowak and imported-from-GO Dewgong were dashing ahead of the rest of my party without ever seeing battle). Will this one be the third strike?

I don’t know what to do, and I’m really upset about it right now.

[kingdomoftyto]

Nuzlocke SLLD liveblog, part 9

(Don’t let the long stretches of silence fool you--we’re gonna finish this game EVENTUALLY)

Four badges down. Time to head onward to the next route and the next new friend!

Who named this route? Asgore Dreemurr?

And it looks like we’ve got to fight a trainer or two before we find our next recruit.

Another neat bug in this trainer’s party

Not bad, not bad

Wait. “Deerbie”. So it’s a, uh, demolition derby deer?? Hm. 

I guess I’ll call her Rumpltezer (lol character limits) and keep her in mind if I ever need an extra Fire-type?

Moving on to some more trainer battles

Ooh, this is one of the few Fakemon I knew about before starting this run. I know the gimmick but won’t spoil it just yet.

Keira!

Oh. Oh dear

Indeed. This looks like a job for the Tyto Squad

Away, into the spooky cave!

Born ready, K.

Battling side-by-side, aw yiss. Glad that Keira doesn’t seem to mind Tyto’s penchant for crossdressing in battle

Ooh, have we seen that Darcula evolution yet?

Oh, duh! I didn’t even consider that there’d be a new catchable Pokemon in this cave

Work with me here, Keira. Kill one and leave the other for the Pokeball...

Ooh, okay. Are Solaran and Lunaro the region legendaries? Either way this probably isn’t anything I’ll use because I’m pretty indifferent to Solrock/Lunatone and that’s the vibe I’m getting from them, but it’s neat for lore purposes

Let’s call them Evangeline after Princess and the Frog.

! 

Don’t know who will need this, if anyone, but!

Wild Skrabble here! Not too broken up about missing it, as there are more interesting Bug-types to be found

SUCH AS... this Team Lunar grunt has the evolved form of Stotox and I am slightly jelly D:

owo whats this

This is a new admin, right? He doesn’t look familiar (then again, it has been a while since I last played)

Oh right, the Chaos Emeralds Crystal

Ah yes, the imposing, powerful leader of Team Lunar...

........ Derek.

KEIRA! DON’T JUST VOLUNTEER OUR NAMES

Aww, what? We don’t even get to fight Marcus himself??

And they don’t even have anything new >:P WEAK

The missing comma here delights me much more than it should

A world where the strong prosper only when they lose to children

You gonna take us both on at once??? I admire your confidence, my purple-haired friend! Have at thee!!

Ooh! Dracubat isn’t bad at all!

Oops, we may be a bit overleveled at this point

Thank.. you?

And you’re not beginning to question your philosophy at all because of this turn of events??

... So he growls something about the Chaos Emerald not being here and they run off to do more research blah blah

Well said.

Oh pffft I forgot we were on a rescue mission and thought the Pokeball the Lunar squad left behind was an item they dropped lmao

Little girl! Take better care of your Pokemon!!!

Awww. I may actually use these?

Yeah, not the worst-designed Pokeball. I’ll try to catch at least one thing in ‘em. For YOU, little girl

Ooh!!! I like whatever this is!!

And a trainer had two of these on their team!

Don’t let me forget to come back and smash these rocks when I get the ability

JASMINE

THAT WAS ONE ATTACK FROM THE DYNABALL

MOANA OHKO’D IT BUT THE ECLIPO STILL HASN’T ATTACKED HHHHHHHHHHH

JAZZ, BBY, I’M SO SORRY FOR THE SCARE

Uh oh, why is this a cutscene

Should I have healed before thIS

Rocco, from Fallrock Valley. Is your favorite Pokemon type Rock, by any chance?

Judging by this mandatory conversation and your love of one Type specifically, I assume you are a Gym Leader, small child?

Right, totally “not” a Gym Leader. Good bye, completely “unimportant” kid. Definitely “won’t” be seeing you again.

... Anyway, the rest of that route is uneventful

What’s it gonna be, lads??

And the tall grass is full of flowers. Hmmm 

From what I can tell, not counting things I’ve already caught, this is all I’ve got in the Pokedex already that lives on this route. 

And I happened to make it through the first patch of grass and am now faced with the decision of walk-through-grass or headbutt-tree. HMMM....

I’m gonna check the tree, just on a whim

goddammit

Oh, for...! >:(((((

FINE. I didn’t really want one to begin with

GASP. A trainer has this furry friend. :O Hamstar’s evolution???

CAN WE NOT?

Good GRIEF, what does everyone have against PUPPIES today????

Anyway, as if that display of the region rodent signature move wasn’t enough, here’s confirmation of this thing’s evolutionary family

Another trainer has this thing, which is. meh.

And its... evolution(?) which is equally meh

Ooh, and this Ranger team has Paracaw’s evolution!

I still can’t stop mentally comparing it to: 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Uranium is going to flavor my perception of every Pokemon fangame I ever play and there’s nothing to be done about it

Well, we made it!

Not much to do around here other than accept some gifts from NPCs and meet Burt, the region’s apricorn artisan (though I personally don’t care much for most apricorn Pokeballs :P) 

Oh, huh.

Rodney!!! :D

It’s also literally midnight, my dude. Did you run out here in the middle of the night just to hang with us? :3

>:D

Battle of the Bridge time!!

FIVE Pokemon?! I’m going to have to treat this seriously, huh?

Luckily the first type matchup works in our favor.

On the other hand, Rodney has a Weakid.

I KNOW that thing’s gimmick

I know next time we battle, it’ll be time to pANIC

Ooh!! Lee could end up looking pretty sweet!

*squints* Why would he send out his starter against Tooey

Does he have some kind of epic Poison-type attack I should be afraid of right now

THAT’S A YES

(but Tooey almost took him out with one Razor Leaf so >:P)

(For the record, switching the Battle Style to “Set” is S I G N I F I C A N T L Y more difficult, holy SHIT)

*squints even harder* Why would he pick a BUDCHERP to face Elphaba??? Is this some kind of reverse psychology to get me to switch??

Hrnngh Elphaba DID have her SpDef lowered significantly by Salanip... Surely she’s not in IMMEDIATE danger, though...

I’m gonna throw down one Lightning Strike

Pfft, see? What was I even worried about

Frick, I already forgot what type this thing is. Rock/Flying...?

Let’s try another Lightning Strike

Ah, so he went with Budcherp before because his only other choice was also little more than cannon fodder against Elphaba

HAHAHA YEAH, THAT WAS A LITTLE INTENSE, HUH, BUDDY *pats Tooey on her poor bruised head*

Is the right half of this town called something different from the left half? What the heck is Docking Port

Huh? What?

...Sure 

Sure

Where’s the High-Five Rodney button

Hell YEAH, I would love to see that, bro

Anyway, let’s take on this Battle Bridge, I guess

... first trainer just had a Snuffuzz, nbd, but just past him there’s this?? beach grass??? Do we get to catch someone new on the Battle Bridge of all places?

These are the only two things that show up in the Dex’s map for this spot...

Eh

Mehhhh

How about Veruca for a name because she’s a marine Pokemon and like... Veruca Salt...... do u geddit

aw MAAANN look at what else we could’ve caught here. Curse you, RNGesus

Oh! The next trainer has Rubball’s evolution. NOT what I expected from that little purple fella.

... uhhhh that Water Pulse did very little damage

Let’s keep going but... carefully

Interesting

...It just kept using Counter unsuccessfully until Moana took it out lol

And the next trainer has tHIS??

And the next has this, which I must admit is a little disappointing--I was hoping for something cooler for the little worm Pokemon’s evolution

Ooh, this is a good one, though

Not sold on this one though

And another new one

Truly! Look!!

SEYMOUR! LOOK!!

10 trainers was more grueling than I expected it to be

But at least I got a Lucky Egg out of it >:3

Next town, ahoy!

This post is getting pretty long, so let’s cut this one off here. Next time: Docking Port and the fifth Gym

[acradaunt]

Etrian Odyssey Nexus Playthrough - Week 1

I thought it would be a fun idea to record weekly my progress through EO Nexus. Why? I enjoy reading people's experiences where multiple options are available; what they chose, and why, and how exactly that turned out for them. It's something this EO has more than ever before, and it's such a central concept to my own work on DR, so in its own way, it's research. And since there is a need for people to have 100 QR codes, it serves a purpose there, too.

I'll try ultra-hard to avoid any form of spoilers, so expect me to be vague as hell about stratum or FOE names. To make the most of all these fun class options (and the extremely early Memory Conch), I'm rotating characters around as I see fit, but mostly in accordance with when conditionals are needed or interesting weapons are available. I mean, that kind of class-switching has been the norm for things like Final Fantasy since III, so why not do it here? Between these two things, I'm going to be writing about how characters are faring and where they shone, rather than going on about each stratum.

Couple general notes before character remarks; I'm playing on Expert (which is the norm for EO), and I just punched into the fifth stratum. On that, things are really coming together, as I'm now seeing enemies from three different regions of III and IV at the same time. Lush Woodlands was so aggressively a carbon-copy of its EOIV incarnation it made me really worried. Those fears seems fairly quashed at this point. Also, um, character remarks in Read More, because they're actually kinda long.

Imperial / Arcanist / Harbinger / Shogun / War Magus / Nightseeker - None of these have seen any use yet. Of 19 classes, some just might not fit in a first playthrough. The first three definitely'll show once subclasses come along, but right now aren't super-appealing for various reasons; Imperial's ridiculous TP requirements make it sound like a non-starter in early game, I don't trust turn-end heals when most random battles last 1-3 turns, and, well, I feel it'd be wrong to use my #1 Harbinger without also bringing along a certain Dragoon (Hero) and Masuaro (Ronin). That debuffer role has also lowkey been stolen by Landsknecht, of all things.

Klein the Hero - Klein has been absolutely devastating in random battles, but has generally floundered during bosses and FOEs, with Hero mostly being about multi-target attacks and a bit of a TP-hog. After netting the 3rd stratum boss' weapon, his damage output has been fairly ridiculous, and Shock Strike is nothing short of amazing. He's definitely not going anywhere, but I wouldn't say he's irreplaceable, either; that sword's nutso damage is innately amazing in anyone's hands. In a lot of ways, Hero is a remix of Dragoon, and while I definitely didn't like Dragoon at first, it grew on me quite a lot.

Iris the Protector - Iris came in strong against the 2nd stratum boss, and only got better with that boss' weapon able to shoot cheap line-piercing Fire attacks that could sweep most of the 3rd stratum. Ultimately, circumstances made her not very appealing for the 4th stratum, and I haven't seen any remarkable new spears, so she's mostly waiting for that. Or a Boss/FOE where Taunting is effective to return to the forefront.

Terra the Highlander - Terra was off-and-on for the early part of the game, trading said spear with Iris as was convenient. Veteran Skills haven't been particularly kind to her, but Master or Subclasses might still change that. She's certainly strong and sturdy enough to handle the frontline, and there's something to be said about how tricky it is to shatter a three-person front-row that doesn't need to rely on Protectors.

Stella the Zodiac - One of my starting five, Stella repeatedly died in one shot in the 1st stratum and burnt through TP way too fast, and performed similarly poorly in a brief stint in the 3rd stratum. I considered bringing her on again for a specific FOE, but ultimately didn't. After Warlock's same-turn Charge and Runemaster's Runes, this class just feels tremendously disappointing.

Coral the Landsknecht - Easily the most all-around reliable, if never the shining star. Extremely burly and with a diverse array of skills at hand, she's always useful. Primarily though, she shield bashes to cripple foes with Debuffs then Links away when they can't possibly do enough damage to kill anyone.

Erika the Ronin - Absolutely the core damage dealer for the 2nd's Boss and the 3rd stratum, primarily due to an incredibly good Katana you get midway through the 2nd Stratum. She was all about Air Blades from the back-row, then dashing to the front-row to regain her stance, drop offenses, or go for a strong arm-bind. It's a really fun class, all around. However, getting caught by a single good attack, even when in the back, is usually a death sentence for her, so it's a bit tricky, too. That said, she still came through big-time in both the 2nd and 3rd Strata Bosses, which were more endurance matches and about conserving TP more than anything, so there's something to say about that.

Laura the Medic - Not a ton to say here. Medics heal and revive; lifesavers when things get hairy during FOEs/Bosses. What is no joke is her Star Drop's ability to ruin defenses. Like Erika, she did occasional row-switching when things were safe. Not something you'd expect from a Medic. During initial planning, she was gonna be a Medic/Landsknecht, for high-speed Star Drops, but Star Drop is a normal debuff now, not a one-turn affair like it was, so I'm not too sure what her endgoal is anymore. I'm considering swapping her for Adam, who's designed to be a Medic/Zodiac, so I would at least have SOME form of normal mage (not to mention cheaper TP for heals via Free Energy). Laura's a dumbass though, and I love her for that, and right now, the Medic is hitting stuff in her free time, not casting, so she fits the bill better right now, especially as conserving TP is still a huge deal. STILL can't buy Amritas.

Juri the Survivalist - Probably the overall MVP for the first four strata. Blinding Arrow was vital against most Lush Woodlands FOEs/Bosses, and doubling all harvesting for a single skill point is nothing to scoff at. Add in cheap on-field healing, and she was good enough to kick Laura out for the whole 3rd stratum (until FOE/boss time). She's definitely starting to feel like she's falling off, though. Veteran added some nice moves for random encounters, but Master skills sound very lackluster, with only Disabling Shot sounding appealing (though Disabling Shot [Add Leg Bind to ALL Bow Skills] is VERY appealing). Master's still a long ways off though.

Yai the Pugilist - Yai wound up coming in for some conditional-drop hunting near the end of the 3rd Stratum, and with another great fist from a FOE on the World Map (making it a... WOE? MOE?), has stayed around off-and-on since then. Binds can always completely swing the flow of a fight, but they're not super-reliable, and she suffers from Erika's frailty, with none of the row-swapping tricks to keep her alive. She isn't terrible, but she's failing to live up to her EOV self. That said, she actually combos amazingly with Coral this time, as opposed to last time where she was the only one who DIDN'T play into Coral's pierce-a-thon.

Olga the Gunner & Leon the Sovereign - Neither have seen significant use but bear mention. When Bind conditionals first came up, it was an immediate coin-toss between getting Olga or Yai ready. Yai won because the current array of Guns failed to impress. However, with Yai's questionable performance and Juri's waning damage, a solid Gun could easily make Olga a mainstay. Leon, likewise, is basically waiting for more Skill Points and a weapon with a decent Skill to use to come in on. Leon definitely hasn't felt as sturdy as he did in III, which is also holding him back a bit, as I'd prefer him to be a part of the front-row wall-of-steel. Still, using the same gear as Klein and Klein's own iffy performance against bosses means he'll probably push through for the 5th or maybe 6th's Stratum bosses.

Kagura the Ninja - Brought in for a bit during the 4th stratum, when I was wondering if I was overlevelled, as upon first arriving, I was seeing yellow FOEs. I don't think I was. She actually served pretty decently in random encounters, essentially being able to mass-sleep an entire wave of enemies, which came in major handy, as the 4th just loves throwing 4+ enemies at you at once. Having her mother's (now retconned to being her sister, I guess) badass Katana to swap to definitely eased her entry into the group. Not material for FOEs, though; her overall damage output remained quite poor.

Kahna the Landsknecht - It's no secret that I'm a huge sucker for Landy's Links and especially Fencer's Chains as a primary form of team synergy. I'm seriously considering the possibility of running TWO Landsknechts; Coral on Shield Bashing debuff duty, and Kahna as a high-speed Linker. Truth is, Coral spends so much time with the shield keeping foes down, she has little time to lift herself up, and Landsknecht has no shortage of damage buffs, to boot.

[perfect-corroscience]

Wow, a lot can change in about a year, huh. I was there for TB2, but tapered off it and TB1 sometime for real-life reasons, just before the Girls Gone Astray event in 2… but I’ll leave my thoughts for the end of this (the playthrough).

With version 5.5.3, Terra Battle now has an ending. For the most part, I’m going to be aiming just to finish that. I got to chapter 36 before I stopped playing, so chapter from now to at least chapter 34 will be several versions behind. But nevertheless, onwards:

Chapter 30: Rising World – “The will of countless creatures great and small converges into a single purpose: to protect the future.”

30-1 They live solely for vengeance.

Things are coming to a head, now.

30-1 is five rounds of these two enemies. They aren't too out of the ordinary. The Oxsecian Striker’s Rocket Force move doesn’t do damage, just displaces your units.

30-2 The rancor that has festered in their souls for so long.

The Oxsecian ship unleashes its weapons en masse on Animata, intent on retribution.

This is the day they will finally purge themselves of the rancor that has festered in their souls for so long.

A new face among the two enemies seen in 30-1: sentient space junk! They appear in the second, fourth, and fifth battle alongside some other mooks. Take care of the Oxsecian enemies while hopefully staying out of range of the Space Debris’ status-inducers. 

Of the two, sleep is less annoying, so it’s not a bad idea to bring someone with Panacea (at the very least, Palpa will have it, but there’s also have Eileen and Gatz or Sheena w/ Cleansing Caper), or even just Locomotion (Palpa again, but Bonna and Kana are notable for having it while also having Paralysis Ward. Kana’s A class so most people likely have her anyway). 

Of course it’s a complete non-issue if you get rid of them first and/or stay out of the AoE, but it never hurts to be careful.

30-2 introduces this, the sword counterpart to the other.

30-3 The king does not budge.

Three battles this time: Space Debris/Oxsecian Bladebots make up the first and third battles; latter is notable since there’s 10 Bladebots to deal with.

30-4 With a subtle, slithering movement.

This introduces the Oxsecian Spearbot. Fairly self-explanatory.

There are no Space Debris in this stage; just Bladebots, Spearbots, and Strikers.

30-5 The sound of a massive explosion rips through the air.

This battle is of spear-enemies, so if you’re not overleveled like my crew, arrows are better.

This enemy is introduced here, and I guess is notable because it has Solar Wind, the at-the-time strongest Fire elemental spell (at 3x damage). Its in a cross range, so I guess be aware.

30-6 Shield with Animata.

Four battles this time. There’s another new enemy: another Elemental Spinner, this time ice-typed, with Absolute Zero, Cross (1).

30-7 Trust in me, overworlders!

There aren’t any Elemental Spinners here; just fights against Oxsecians.

30-8 Their collective will is sublimated into radiant life.

Their collective will is sublimated into radiant life that illuminates all.

“That radiance, washing over you, becomes a source of newfound strength.”

Before the battle starts, you get the message above. What this does, as you may notice, is fill up the Powered Point gauge to near-full. 

There’s only one battle in this stage; the boss is the Oxsecian Fighter EX (as noted by the 4x4 square), with a whopping 16 Oxsecian Strikers backing them up. For the most part, though, it’s not too bad: its moveset is really simplistic, with the only skill you have to be concerned about being Missile Barrage.

It helps that the mooks have a number of turns before they act, giving you time to pincer them and create some breathing room. They’re all staff, so no circle of carnage advantages. For a pack like this, you’d probably want at least one mage for their AoE attacks.

Its laser attack is column only, so just stay out of range.

It will telegraph when it’s about to use Missile Barrage, saying sth among the lines of “Missile Launchers open”; you have a turn to prepare, heal, etc. If you bring anything that has an Ice attack, this will happen, making it lose its turn. 

After that, it’s just a matter of chipping it down and any other Strikers it summons. Finally, it can drop Dark Matter and/or Mantle Helixes.

30-9 The power of will evokes a miracle.

The formidable will of the humanoids rouse an even greater power: the beasts that inhabit this world you once dubbed Planet Beastbait.

Humanoid and beast alike stand ready to confront the alien threat.

The resolve to defend their home--and the home of future generations--converges into one will, transcending ecosystems and the planet itself.

The will of countless creatures great and small converges into a single purpose: to protect the future.

As one, they raise their voices in a thunderous rallying cry to that future.

Hmm... 

After that fight, 30-9 returns to the 5-battle stage. Another Elemental Spinner is introduced. Good thing there’s no elemental mixing and matching.

Ba’gunar was helpful for dealing with them, with both type advantage + summoning capsules. If you’re not like me and have great luck, managed to pull someone like Samatha or Jennish – even better.

As an aside, there’s a chance of nabbing a Demon’s Badge otomo from this stage. Its evolved forms eventually provide Death Ward, self – which has some niche uses, I guess!

30-10 AND SO WE RETURN TO ZERO!

Everyone was too caught up in the battle to notice they vanished. But then, perhaps it isn’t a surprise they came back given what we’ve seen of them in previous chapters…

Before the battle even starts, we see each member of the Zero Series fuse together into…

6ZOO. He’ll always start the battle with Cyclone, Area (1), which does damage and knocks units back. At level 99 with those stats, he’s pretty beefy.

He has Counterattack, but it will always proc when pincered. He also summons two mooks too after using Cyclone; in fact, he follows a pattern of: Cyclone > summon two mooks matching its type > switch weapon. The weapon type switches from Sword (default) > Spear > Bow > Staff, then repeats.

The Staff form is notable because 6ZOO doesn’t summon anything, but will spend a turn preparing to use Quake, All. It’s one of the reasons I brought Gatz.

The mooks aren’t too bad, but their attacks can add up as 6ZOO beats your team down. As you clear them, take note: 6ZOO will use Supporting Fire whenever one of the mooks is pincered. Keeping health topped up is seriously important, and this is with a mainly B-class team that’s near his levels. (Fun fact for non-vets: levels used to be maxed out at 70.)

Once you wear it down, it says this…

Music (listen to this!): The World’s Awakening/Day of Reckoning

…and transforms again, recovering HP and becoming even more monstrous! This time around, it stays Staff-typed, but switches elements around. As it does, it not only summons corresponding Elemental Matchers, but also absorbs attacks of the same element. 

Not a problem if you’re bringing a majority-physical team like I did, but…

A few turns in, you’ll get this message. It’ll telegraph the big moves, then follow up w/ the corresponding elemental aim attack (except when its Dark-typed):

An inescapable gravity field takes hold… > Black Hole

Crackling bolts cross and spread outward… > Tempest (Cross)

An inferno blazes up on both sides… > Wall of Hellfire, 1 row

A band of frigid air descends… > Icicle, 1 column

Watching and waiting… > Terra Panic, All (occurs at ~25-30% HP)

Tempest and Icicle are explanatory: they’re strong elemental attacks. Wall of Hellfire creates flames on the rows 6ZOO is on – it’s a really damaging stage hazard, though mercifully it only lasts a couple turns and can kill off the mooks. Black Hole transports two random units away for a few turns.

Terra Panic is its big move; it affects everyone with every status effect except Ice/Shadowbind and the Solar/Lunar related ones. As a reminder:

Poison: damages units for a few turns. (not bad normally because it never kills your units, but could potentially help the boss/mooks)

Sleep: units don’t act and can’t be moved for a few turns or until they take damage. (the least dangerous, but iirc they can still be shifted)

Paralysis: unit don’t act and can’t be moved for a few turns. (You can still shift them away, though)

Demoralize: unit’s physical attack and skill proc rate drops to 0 for a few turns; buffs still proc, while demoralized units can still use skills w/ a Powered Point (though physical attacks will hit for peanuts)

Confusion: unit moves around randomly, cannot be controlled, act in chains, or be used to pincer. (This one is pretty bad because your unit is useless until it wears off, and they can put themselves in range of attacks or run through Wall of Hellfire if it’s up)

Petrification: unit turns to stone, cannot be controlled, and can’t be shifted by other units. (IMO the worst status effect because it pretty much never wears off; your units get petrified for 99 turns! By then the battle is over, either with your units dead or the boss dead.)

This is why it’s good to bring along a Remedy character or two. I had Gatz (who has Sleep Guard, Adjacent and Panacea by J3) but Bonna comes to mind because her J1/2 teach skills that cure Petrification and Paralysis while she herself gets Petrification/Paralysis Ward, but again, there’s Palpa. Just hope she doesn’t get petrified…

I was lucky to not get petrified, but this was pretty bad, too. Everyone was a sitting duck while Sorman and Zan were off who-knows-where after getting Black Holed.

Thankfully after that, things are fairly smooth sailing.

 Now, onto the epilogue…

“What is happening?”

“What are we to do?”

“I do not understand.”

“This is no fault of your own. It is simply that I have chosen a brighter future. Forgive me.”

“Father…”

 A strange sound emanates from the Oxsecian ship.

“Sire, what have you done?”

 It was 6ZOO who set the Oxsecian Ship on its suicidal course.

He sought complete and utter destruction, even if it meant his own end. He desired nothing more and felt no attachment to life.

He was the perfect weapon, destruction incarnate. This was the mission assigned him by his king.

 But the king had realized the error of his ways.

“I have changed the ship’s course.”

“WH… WHERE TO?”

“Is there somewhere you wish to go?”

6ZOO does not answer. He has collapsed into a heap of inorganic material.

Animata is a massive technological life form. Humans, lizardfolk, beastfolk, stonefolk, and the children of the Oxsecians dwell within her. 

All of these are species created from DNA plundered by Animata in her travels. Each has a home world somewhere in the vast universe.

As anyone might do, they seek out their roots to discover their origins.

There’s something really poignant about that simple message, accompanied by that backdrop.

It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it? With this, part one of Terra Battle is finally, finally complete. Though this may be done, there’s still more left to do. I’ll be putting up the table of contents for part one, and from there on it’s just catching up to my story progress in-game.

Finally: that final boss theme tho, god bless Uematsu. Fantastic track, in a game with great music. I actually remember getting some chills when I played through 30-10.

[heyoitsroart]

Solution to break my habit of drawing my mimikyu gijinka? Develop my shiny mimikyu gijinka :^D

This is Blanca! I originally hatched him in my Sun file, but transferred him over to Ultra Sun which was great cuz he was overleveled so he’d be my last ditch effort if I wanted to get a battle with over quickly lol

I don’t really have a story for him just yet. I am thinking of giving him the personality I originally wanted to give Meemo though! Which is more of a shithead that likes to mess with people lmao

Some other trivia:

He wears the mask for the sole purpose of people asking him what’s under the mask, only to reveal that his mouth is the same shape as the one on his mask

Shinies in my gijinka canon are not only different in hair/skin/eye color, but they usually also have some other physiological differences. For example, as you can see, Blanca’s a little more…monstrous looking than Meemo (who is already kind of out there, but that’s par for the course for mimikyus)

That being said, his shades actually do serve a purpose. His multiple eyes make him sensitive to light, so he likes to keep them on to help with that.

And to add context to the last image! Meemo doesn’t really know where he came from, much less what kind of pokemon he is; so Blanca bringing that up is like. What the fuck. 

I want to try my hand at doing the others on my Ultra Sun team too! but im afraid to attempt my mareanie

Commissions | Shop

[agemarkus]

I totally get criticizing the latest Pokemon games(which has become a whole fandom of its own) and I've seen BD/SP get criticized for being buggy, which is (mostly) fair criticism. I've seen multiple softlocks, all of whom I hope get patched. They have a whole month before christmas hits and their target audience of 10 year olds start playing it though so I'm not too worried.

But I've also seen people throw around cutscene skips and finicky wallclips as evidence that they're "bad games", and that feels so disingenuous. Like what, you're gonna tell me that Emerald is a bad game because you can dupe Pokemon? That Red/Blue are bad because you can catch MissingNo in them? That the original Gen 4 games were *also* bad because you could clip through walls?

12 year olds aren't gonna do speedrun tricks to skip a gym leader, and if they do then that means they're doing so on purpose for fun and getting more enjoyment out of it than they would otherwise. "Has bugs = bad" is not a convincing argument to me when we have entire massively popular gaming subcultures that owe their existence to bugs.

There are fair criticisms to make, like apparently you can't turn off Exp. Share at all but the trainers/Pokemon levels are unchanged so the balancing is off and you're more likely to be overleveled, and as much as I like bugs I've seen footage of softlocks that will ruin some kid's enjoyment of the game. I'm sure there are more complaints like that to be made. But sharing a video of someone wiggling around for 10 seconds before clipping out of bounds only makes me *more* interested in the game.

[annsparksthegmr]

Pokemon Black Nuzlocke - Part 5.5

Hello everyone, a little weird title for this part since it is kind of shorter than the others - at least in things I managed to accomplish. But there is a good reason which you’ll have to read up. But fair warning: next update might not be for awhile considering what transpires. Read more below if interested.

I thought I feared nothing, until I got into Drayden’s Gym. With a heavy heart, I switched up half of my original team in order to take down his Gym. I relied on two primary Pokemon for this Gym: Snowball the Beartic and BananSplit the Vanillish. Geartown hung in the back with the EXP Share in case I needed to switch him in. Expecting for her to be a sacrifice in case either of my main two needed to be switched out/healed. The only three remaining members of my team had a purpose. Pebbles had Stealth Rocks, which I would set up upon facing Drayden. Zigzagzop would be strictly for Thunder Wave uses and Captain was the tankiest Pokemon I had which I wouldn't mind losing. So I took a deep breath and entered the Dragon’s Den.

It was as challenging as I thought. Because even with having two Ice-Types, I was already struggling with their strength. Snowball and BananSplit were already in some pretty close calls already. I healed up everyone before finally reaching Drayden. And… our battle began. 

I started with Pebbles setting up Stealth Rock as Frazure began to set up Dragon Dances. Which started to worry me as Snowball was obviously slower. But one Icicle Crash took it out without issue. Druddigon was next, but barely survived only to hit me back with a powerful Revenge. One which almost knocked Snowball out completely. She barely managed to hang on and thankfully on the turn I healed, Drayden did as well. So the very least, I wouldn’t have to worry about him healing his true ace. 

But when Haxorus came out, my already weakened Snowball faced a tough choice. One which had him setting up the Dragon Dances and using Dragon Tail to switch out team members. And in his Gym, both Snowball and BananSplit were taken out… both dead as Geartown was the next to be sent out. And somehow, against all odds after I lost both my Ice-Type Pokemon, Geartown clutched the victory and prevented any more deaths by using Gear Grind. His Haxorus falling as I managed to preserve my original party members.

I dutifully put both Snowball and BananSplit to rest. After what they did in the Gym, I couldn’t be more proud of them. Even if seeing them made me teary-eyed for the sacrifices they made. But it only became worse when a Fraxure from an Ace Trainer on Route 10 took out Ramona without any issues. He nearly took down half of my team which was a huge problem. But I managed to skirt by with only losing one additional Pokemon. Making the death count three for this single part. Two I had planned and the third I thought since it was weakened I could manage but did not.

And then I accidentally clicked Sludge Bomb instead of switching and lost him to a Maractus. That actually hurt a little bit more than Ramona’s death. But down two Pokemon down in the beginning of Route 10 without finding an encounter was terrifying. Vowing to not let my death count go even higher, I decided to add Geartown back to the team and headed off once more.

Having Bianca and Cheren decide to ambush me on the bridge did not help my confidence at all. While I was aware that karma may come to bite me, I was already knocked down and missing two Pokemon who had stuck around since the early game. Though I struggled a little bit, I took down Cheren by paying more attention to the type match ups even though his Liepard gave me a scare. Nearly taking out Pebbles with a critical hit Night Slash out of Sturdy range.

But after defending myself from Cheren, his dialogue along Bianca reminded me to not just give up after losing them both. I needed to prepare as best I could for the upcoming battles. Even my encounter being a Sawk was giving me a hard time and nearly taking out both Odette and Zigzagzop. I really didn’t have much use for him on the team, but it would be nice to have in the PC. I named him Paul because it was generic. Though with the losses I have, some time had to be put aside for grinding. As I needed to find potential replacements. Because even though I do plan for Gracey to stick around, Geartown is just filler.

Though I did decide to head to at least grind up levels throughout Victory Road. And what was luck itself was finding a Dieno as my first encounter. A female as well - continuing my weird streak or getting mostly female Pokemon but I knew immediately I wanted to have a potential Hydreigon on my team. Because it would not only be good for type coverage but I really liked the pseudo-legendary line. So I struggled to keep my Pokemon alive while tossing a bunch of Ultra Balls at it. She was a troublesome Dieno to wraggle but I managed to snag her; even with being in red health and parazled it took some time. Then I decided to name her the most appropriate name: Grima.

I’ll cut the massive grinding session I decided to have to level up practically everyone in. And some extra routes I did not go to until now for reasons. Which may or may not involve a certain gifted Pokemon Egg found on Route 18. But while this is going on, I’m going back to revisit previous routes, get some new encounters and whatnot if and when possible. And locating any hidden items I can. Driftveil City encounter was a female Frillish I named Aqua. Mistralton Cave encounter… I decided to risk it and use most of my Super Repels to take a catch to catch Cobalion for my team. As for the other Swords of Justice, I do plan to catch them eventually. Though Cobalion is the only one I can actually use in my playthrough instead of an Axew. (And I don’t know if I can shiny hunt the Swords of Justice in this game but I rather not bother. I do like only certain Shiny Pokemon.) Though one small note I had with Cobalion: GET IN THE BALL! I WANT YOU!!

I secured Cobalion and nicknamed him the only appropriate name for the trouble he put me through: Nebby. And I’ll only catch the other swords of Justice either postgame or if I’m in dire need. But I do want to keep Nuzlocke Rules until the end of the main story at the very least. Though after that minor clean-up session I returned to level grinding. I even got some nifty TMs for my troubles. Next major update will be once I have a final team and I arrive at the Elite 4. Though right before I challenge them.

I still don’t have an exact final team - or at least for a final member. I’ll reveal what my ideal final team is going to be. Queen - my Serperior and starter who I don’t want to lose yet I feel like she deserves to stay on the team. Odette - the Swanna who has already showcased how useful she is now without Captain and one of the few Flying-Types I have. Grima - the newly caught Dieno who will most likely evolve into a Zweilous because I need a Pokemon who can use Dark-Type moves and is overall a pretty neat Pokemon. Plus, the other possible candidates for Dark-Type users aren’t ideal. Nebby - Cobalion who can easily help out with its Fighting/Steel Typing. Or at least I hope it can but I don’t have many other options. Lastly is the Egg found in Relic Castle but given on Route 18. I do plan to use Larvesta and I might just try to overlevel it a bit to evolve into a Volcarona. No name for it quite yet but might name it Hope. 

That leaves one spot open and while I love Zigzagzop and Pebbles, I don’t think they can assist me well in terms of the Elite 4. Especially Pebbles as I can’t trade to evolve her and she’s not as useful late game. Zigzagzop is most likely going to be the last member because using Thunder Wave is useful enough. But at the same time, I don't know if bringing a Zebstrika is useful for the last game. So I’m going to try and strategize a plan for tackling the Elite 4 and everything that comes after.

Don’t expect an update anytime soon because I’ll be on a massive training session to get Pokemon up to Level 50. And I do think i’ll try to do the same with some of my Boxed Pokemon for replacements if things get tough. All I hope is to not lose anymore Pokemon and maintain a decent Type Coverage overall. I hope that by next update, the team is ready to go and at the very least have defeated the Elite 4. Because for those of you unfamiliar with Pokemon Black/White, the game doesn’t quite end with a traditional battle. At least one many might expect.

I’ll smell you all later!

Team Recap:

Queen - Female Serperior (Lvl 50)

Pebbles - Female Boldore (Lvl 42)

Zigzagzop - Male Zebstrika (Lvl 50)

Odette - Female Swanna (Lvl 49)

Nebby - Cobalion (Lvl 42)

Egg

In Box/Reserve:

Ghost Girl - Female Liepard (Lvl 20)

Cassandra - Female Sandile (Lvl 21)

Trashie - Female Trubbish (Lvl 22)

Lowen - Male Cottonee (Lvl 20)

Lady - Female Minccino (Lvl 23)

Voltorb - Male Foongus  (Lvl 23)

Rouge - Female Woobat (Lvl 29)

BFG - Golett (Lvl 30)

Tim Burton - Male Gothorita (Lvl 31)

Aqua - Female Frillish (Lvl 10)

Gracey - Male Litwick (Lvl 37)

Geartown - Klang (Lvl 39)

Deaths: 6

Fountain - Male Sampour (Lvl 15)

Puppy - Female Herdier (Lvl 25)

Snowball - Female Beartic (Lv 41)

BananSplit - Female Vanillish (Lvl 40)

Ramona - Female Darmanitan (Lvl 43)

Captain - Male Seismitoad (Lvl 45)