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My only take on the KHML news is that I'm really surprised they even tried to make another mobile game while UX was dying and DR didn't even get to finish properly, if I recall correctly? (Of course correct me if I'm wrong — my memory is hazy.) Obviously UX saw a decent amount of success for a while but I just don't think the odds were ever looking good for the future of another KH mobile game by the time it was announced.

I hope they put what they've accomplished so far into a new project, in whatever form. Because I really do want to see what they cooked up. But also Kingdom Hearts has been one of my favorite series for 20 years and I have to admit the mobile games era has not been my favorite. I love their stories, DR especially, but the storytelling always feels really limited by the mobile format.

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Thoughts on Natlan

I want to preface this by saying my entire Genshin map is 100%, I have completed all hangouts and character quests including all the new ones for Natlan and I'm someone who has played Genshin since 1.0 so these thoughts are coming from a longterm and dedicated player.

Music

I think that once again Hoyoverse has done an excellent job with the soundtrack of the new region. I would say the music is on par with Sumeru's which is by far my favorite genshin nation by far.

Environmental Design

Going to be honest, I don't really like the design of the new region. I think Ochkanatlan is the most interesting region visually out of what has been released so far. Many of the other areas bleed together so closely that there's not very much distinction between them, while in past nations there were clearer 'zones' and areas of interest. In Natlan it feels like the only areas of true interest are the Tribes themselves but those are such limited areas that it's not very satisfying to explore.

Also, I'm not really a fan of making the area difficult to traverse in order to push players to pull the limited characters but I'll get to that in a bit.

Another criticism I have of the region is the "Yellow Paint" direction they have used heavy handedly in the region. While past regions used more subtle ways to direct the player or used lighting and the environment to guide players in the wanted direction, Natlan uses what's commonly described as 'Yellow Paint' in Natlan but quite literally. As you traverse the area there will be actual painted arrows to direct the player towards the end goal.

As one of the core aspects of the game is exploration and puzzle solving, I feel it's rather lazy of the design team (Rather than using good environmental design such as lighting and spacing) and also takes away the magic and satisfaction of solving puzzles.

Chests/Puzzles in Natlan

On the topic of puzzles, there's a distinct lack of them in this region. Judging from the Genshin survey we got in the mail last week where one of the key items it asked it seems they're wanting to move away from puzzles and exploration in general which is sorely felt in this region.

Overall it felt like the chests were fewer in number or required no puzzle solving skills in general. With the way tribe reputation was set up for this region, the treasure compass is extremely accessible.

In other regions I would have felt that this was a non issue as the areas felt larger and more complex, thus the treasure compass would have been nice to have earlier. Natlan would be the first region where I 100% completed the exploration aspect before even getting the compass.

As someone who heavily enjoys exploration in Genshin, this was somewhat disappointing for me.

Exploration in Natlan

I think Exploration is okay. I enjoy the use of the saurians in order to explore the region. What I dislike about it is the fact that this is a core mechanic implemented only to sell the limited characters.

Some might disagree and say that you can complete the content without the use of the new Natlan characters, and I agree that it is doable as I have not pulled any of the Natlan characters. Outside of having Kachina who is free, that is.

However, the saurians are more frustrating to use compared to the limited characters as anything involving combat means having to exit the Saurian while being attacked, etc. You're also prevented from exiting them while in the air and if you want to climb or use your glider you are also prevented from doing so which is annoying.

I also feel there's not as much intrigue as past areas and areas that do have interesting ties to the lore have their exploration obstructed by NPC's guiding the player rather than having you explore yourself which I find frustrating.

Natlan Lore/Questlines

The Lore? Good. The Questlines? Could be better.

We're getting a lot of information from the characters themselves which is nice. Ochkanatlan also had a lot of interesting lore provided to us and in a rather straightforward way.

I appreciate that the character quests are built into the reputation quests and they seem to focus more on the characters themselves with less dialogue bloat compared to past regions. As someone who played all character quests this is a large improvement I feel was sorely needed. For once I didn't feel like doing these character quests was wasting any time and included the player in a way that let us experience the world of the limited characters quite well.

My main criticism so far is actually for the archon quests. So far they have been some of the most lackluster parts of the update for me. While there have been some cool moments I'm not very attached to Mavuika. This is the first time I have found an Archon so boring. I also feel like the way they delivered the aspect of war was poorly done and though in theory the air balloon thing was okay, I feel that there was not enough emotional investment.

It would have had a stronger delivery if those dying were characters we had more attachment to. Unfortunately, those that died were NPC's that only shared a few lines of voiceless dialogue with the player only minutes before their deaths. If Genshin had used the PC's to kill off after we had spent multiple updates getting to know them, then that on top of seeing the numbers of deaths would have had more gravity to it. The closest we had to this was Chasca's sister.

In general, I feel like they have gotten somewhat better with this over time. Where more and more we see PC's actually being involved and seen together more but there's still a heavy reliance on NPC's in even important world quests. It's as if they're scared to use the PC's to deliver actual lore sometimes.

Character Designs (Skip if you don't want to see my opinions lol)

They're not my favorite. I do feel there's a lot of 'misses' in the current lineup of characters.

The colorism is something that has been heavily discussed and we all know it's an issue. I'm not an expert on the cultures referenced for Natlan, but even if I were to only talk about the character designs divorced of the cultural references, they're unappealing to me still.

I acknowledge that all the characters have some issues with their design. That said, so far the characters I like the least are Mavuika, Kinich, Chasca, and Ororon. Though I dislike most of the Natlan cast for one reason or another, these characters stick out to me the most. I should say that personality wise, I don't hate most of them, it's mostly their designs that irk me.

Mavuika: I'm sorry, I'm on the team that thinks the motorcycle is completely immersion breaking for me. If they had made it some kind of actual dragon type saurian I would have liked it a lot more and it would have tied in more with the use of saurians in Natlan. I understand that it's technology passed down from the dragons. However, Waxaklahun Ubah Kan the DRAGON SAGE who showed how to use phlogiston to humans doesn't even have legs!!! WHY WOULD THE DRAGONS INVENT MOTORCYCLES. Sorry, it's just so absurd to me. I won't even get into the whole Mavuika's nipple rings on her biker onesie or the crotch to ass zipper. I just hate this design.

Kinich: He's supposed to be a rock climber/bungie jumper which is interesting in theory but I can't stand Ajaw. I think that there's only room enough for one annoying floating companion. But the fact that Ajaw is actual pixels is really odd to me. I get they were maybe trying to modernize the sharp historical artstyle but it's just so... out of place for me.

Chasca: I just think her design is bad. I don't think the color palette goes very well with her skintone, I think that the long purple bangs clashes with the fact that her hat already covers that part of her face, I think the one bare leg facing the camera while using her is both blinding and jarring. The flying gun is so damn stupid. Once again, like at least there's an explanation for Mavuika's stupid bike, but the gun is also just... stupid. At least make her ride one of the birds that shoots out elemental attacks....

Ororon: I quite like this character's personality and story... but I do feel he was a 'gap moe' type character that took the gap too far. I also think his design is just bizarre. The design on his scarf and cloak are so crisp and modern AND BRIGHT that it's hard to look at. I feel like if they had taken a more painted or woven aesthetic it would have looked more natural for the area they're in. The ripped jeans... well, if Xilonen can have jean shorts it's whatever, I do think it's a bit weird but at the very least some characters from Flower Feather Clan wear them so it's not exclusive to him... except he's not even in that clan.

The Natlan Gimmicks

Overall, I can't lie. It's leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I really dislike how 'exclusive' Natlan characters are to the region. The fact that they basically has an expiration date is quite bad, and the fact that the Archon only works really well but only with Natlan characters means that she will be unable to fit in with future teams in the future. It also means that for a long time her best team with stay static in nature as fewer and fewer Natlan characters will be released after we leave the region.

As a core feature of the game is team building, the fact that her longevity relies so heavily on her region is... bad. Not to mention it's not even limited to the characters, but the artifacts as well. Some artifact sets from 1.0 are still BIS for a lot of characters, however in Natlan this is the first time where the sets are only good for the region.

I even pointed out to some people in discord that even the limited weapons aren't worth pulling on because they're nearly only good for Natlan characters. The low crit stat is built into Mavuika's weapon because they made a crit artifact set that's expected to be used together with it, therefore making these weapons lose significant value if not paired with Natlan characters.

Weapon banner is already enough of a scam as it is, but if I pull for a weapon, you better believe I will be pulling for one that I think has longterm use not for one that is going to be unusable outside of anyone but the signature character its designed for.

The characters also lose much of their key selling point, mobility, outside of their region. Are they still usable? Yes. But now they're practically worse than older units outside of Natlan if you compare the distances they can traverse with other units.

They've significantly lowered the rewards in terms of Mora in Natlan. Not only do you not get mora from bounties, but now they effectively cut you off from getting rewards once reputation is capped. The "tree" also gives very little mora compared to older regions. The only good sources of Mora are now through the paid battlepass and from doing leylines.

Fishing was delayed heavily in Natlan, but has little rewards to it this time. Fishing to get the rod doesn't mean anything because there's literally only one thing to buy besides the fishing rod and it's so cheap and doesn't even use the same fish as the rod meaning you don't need the rod to grind any fish at all.

It just feels like a lot of content was overly simplified or removed entirely in Natlan and the design of the limited characters just gives a lackluster feeling.

For some people I'm sure they're enjoying Natlan because it is "easier" but as a longterm player it feels like some of the aspects I loved so much in Genshin are being gutted to appeal to short term goals and players. MHY gets to make characters they can comfortably market knowing the longevity of the characters is limited therefor not worrying about how these characters will behave in the meta longterm, and casual players can complete all the content with little to no effort.

However, I'm still rather disappointed and I really hope Snezhnaya isn't like this.

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finished FF15....... I miss the homies............

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started playing FF15 on a whim the other day and ngl the combat is pretty much exactly how I wish combat in Xenoblade was like

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I think the whole argument about Natlan's design isn't because "Natlan is too modern" cuz some little fcker would say:

"but Fontaine has cameras and robots!"

"Sumeru literally has an internet archive!"

Which is true, but they still did it so well. It still feels like Genshin. Fontaine doesn't have robots like those AI piece of shit, it actually has a steampunk vibes and cool mechanics. Sumeru's archive is actually a great and appropriate set up with how the academia works it uses a mechanic on how it actually works and doesn't just show us a goddamn computer accessing the wifi.

Fontaine is the most advanced civilization because of its hydro power and really by lore while Sumeru is the Nation of Wisdom of course people are gonna build intense shit in there.

I think its more because Natlan is TOO REAL.

Like its so close to our reality, the fantasy aspect is just gone. Like aesthetic is literally one of the biggest selling point of Genshin and they decided to fuck it up smh.

Also I fcking hate Mavuika's design in my opinion. Like you're an Archon, where's the vibes, the authority, the aura. And people will say "well she was a human before an archon", bitch she still an archon.

All that celestial power and authority and you can only afford a damn body suit? I just HATE that goddamn body suit. And don't tell me "well it makes sense since she fight". A tight one piece body suit is NOT an appropriate thing to fight with.

Just a thought, teehee :3

And before people say "y'all complain abt anything" fcker this is the first time I'm actually irritated by the design.

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I'm officially releasing this blog from its NTWEWY roots and allowing myself to post thoughts about other games. I've tentatively tried this before but it always feels wrong. But I don't care to make a whole new blog every time I have a new interest, and I always intended for this one to be multi fandom, so here we go. I've had drafts of my thoughts about other games sitting around for up to 2 years, too nervous to post, and it's a bit silly.

Anyway, this is all to say that if you follow this blog expecting more NTWEWY, you probably won't get much until I replay it — whenever I get around to that. I still have one more meme set I wanna post, eventually... if I finish putting it together... 😅 But who knows when that will be.

Lastly, the game constantly in my brain these days is Genshin Impact because it had some major updates recently and I've been wanting to talk about it for weeks without much of an outlet. So if you don't like that game, unfollow me now, because I may be annoying lol.

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life is too short I wanna replay SO many video games

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got some more red-hot memes for ya

Part 1

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Recently beat Legends Arceus (finally) and I’m obsessed with these little guys.

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KHX is SO funny bc the player meets Ephemer once, they break into private property together, promise to do it again, and then he stands them up the next day. And when they finally do see each other again the player breaks down sobbing. Meanwhile the player meets Skuld, they also break into private property together, continue hanging out and being friends for months, and when they reunite on the battlefield player's just like "oh nice it's Skuld! this is amazing — AAAAA IT'S EPHEMER MY LITERAL DREAM BOY EPHEMER AAA"

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Shibuya syndrome’s only redeeming quality was serving as a pretext for Operation Awakening.  

It really was like one of neo’s most grating plot elements, ‘oh no this noise is eating people’s soul!’ as if that wasn’t a thing noise have been doing since day 1 without such severe effects.  Noise+ with more devastating impact, I guess, but I found it hard to buy. 

I try to give neo some credit for taking a different approach to its story instead of retracing twewy’s footsteps.  But shibuya syndrome, 3-week structure, and Rindo being Joshua’s proxy (…? For uh, reasons and purposes the game is committed to never making clear) are all places where neo hews too close to the original to its own detriment. 

A lot of the effectiveness of ‘to right the countless wrongs’ in twewy was finding the npc’s we’ve gotten to know fall under its influence.  And while Ryoji might be one such example, and kariya/ayano/kanon all succumbed to it to some degree, these were all story events.  It wasn’t a part of the world in the sense that the player could choose to run up to talk to them only to be hit with “…”.  

That’s another thing, the wonderful world mantra was both more unsettling and thematically relevant than uh, nothing at all.  You could try to extract some meaning of Shibuya syndrome reflecting Rindo’s unwillingness to speak up.  But compared to the crystal clear role to right the countless wrongs plays in twewy’s message it feels incredibly lacking. 

In terms of lore and world building, it’s also a nuisance.  There isn’t really a thorough explanation of how operation awakening even solved shibuya syndrome.  Sync up with them and send a reminder, sure, got it.  But what happened to all the noise?  The cinematic with people’s soul’s leaving their bodies is also incredibly hard to parse.  Oh other weirdness, on day 4 with the ‘zombies’, why are the wicked twisters even viewing people in the rg a threat?  I guess the noise in them could come leaping out at them but it’s still weird and disorienting.  I’d hoped the secret reports would’ve offered more clarity to all this, but in the words of coco, lol nope jk.

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Pouring one out for those who based their expectations for neo off of twewy (A standalone game and story built around the ds and certain message), and not A New Day (A different writer like a decade later tries to pull a series out of it). 

Seriously the biggest problem with neo’s story (though not its only) is that it’s a sequel to twewy and it’s sad to see people rag on neo for what it’s not instead of appreciating what it is

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I wonder if there's a difference between... having the ability to sense what's in someone's heart, and being susceptible to sensing it whether one wants to or not. Or if the ability to sense these things is something that some people are born with and others have to work towards? I could certainly see Even being able to notice that stuff due to his studies of the heart if that's the case. We've got a few examples of people just knowing when a character is tainted by darkness, while Baldr — as far as I can tell from his dialogue — was not just sensing darkness in others' hearts, but absorbing it by being around them.

KHDR definitely gave us SO much to think about 🤔

While we’re talking about kingdom hearts characters who can sense what’s in people’s hearts, I want to draw attention to this from BBS

“Stripped clean of it, at that… Very questionable.”

Not entirely sure what it’s trying to imply since it never happens again and I think it would kill me if Even of all characters could sense what’s in people’s hearts but I do want to draw attention to it

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:)

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Something new I've learned from watching KH streams: People don't know how to just accept new information into their hearts.

Because it's fictional media, accepting new info there is kinda different from accepting new info irl. Everyone I've seen will read the Ansem Reports in KH1 and start going "Huh??? What??? What is going on? What is he talking about???" And it's not that asking questions is a bad thing, it's definitely a good thing. But why is there such an aversion to just saying "Oh, okay. So that's a thing now." and adding it to your mental folder?

Like the best example I have is me going into 3D cuz that was the first game I got to fully experience as new and right when it came out. And basically when Sora started getting the infodump with time travel and stuff I was just like "Oh so he time travelled and the old version of him spoke to the young version of him. Okay then." Like, why is that apparently so hard for other people to do? And seriously, I don't mean anything bad by this, it just confuses me is all. I guess cuz my brain is built different? I dunno.

It just seems like once people get to the end of KH1 and read the reports and stuff they're all "Huh???? Okay I get why you guys say Kingdom Hearts is confusing now." And that's just. The least confusing it's ever been? Cuz it's the first game. The reports explain so much you just. Have to accept new information. I don't get it.

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Neo twewy didn’t have enough guns in it.  Kids got sent to the ug via complicated pin shit Kubo should’ve just shot Rindo in the back of the head like they did back in the day.  Higher beings of tristate areas are just too soft these days :/

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NEO but everyone is puppy.

Long post of doggo doodles because dog equal good