#I might turn it into an actual playable case at some point honestly

[dragonmarquise]

BRC Headcanon Full Names

I have another BRC ask to work on tonight, thus I figure I should post this now. So then, behold! A big ol’ list of full name headcanons!

Basically a continuation of this post I made a long while back. This covers pretty much all the major characters, at least the playable ones. Plus even specific crew members from the rival crews!

Some of these have specific meanings that I used for the particular character, others were just kind of more general vibes, like “Oh this sounds cool/cute/etc.” A few of these will have extra notes on why I picked particular given/family names, but otherwise just assume it was because I liked the sound of it! Went with mostly Dutch last names for most of these characters since, well, dialog in parts of the game imply New Amsterdam is still in the Netherlands, so that made it a bit easier when I couldn't think of anything else to try, y'know? :P

Also note, not everyone here has a middle name. Not everyone irl has one anyways! Also also, some of the Dutch last names may be in the format of “Van (something)” or “De (something”, so just wanted to point that out in case anyone might get confused and think Van/De is a middle name, lol

Starting with the main cast:

Tryce = Tristian Christoffel

Bel = Annabella Pieper

DJ Cyber = Cyrus Rafaël Nassau

Felix = Bernard Manfred Van Steen (I still maintain that Felix looks like his real name would be Bernard, lol)

Vinyl = Florence Zoë Hendriks (when she was a child, she would sometimes write it as “Hendrix” and try to convince people she was related to Jimi Hendrix; it worked more often than it probably should have)

Solace = Levi Smit

The five bonus BRC members:

Rave = Vanessa Yvonne Ziegler (A headcanon, note, her dad is a black German, and her mom is from the Dominican Republic! Since she has a bunch of lines in German, and at least two in Spanish (one in particular being specifically Dominican slang), so that’s how I’m handled this :P )

Mesh = Bassam Karimi (first name means “smiling” in Arabic, last name is derived from the given name Karim/Kareem, which in turn means something along the lines of "generous, noble" or “dignity”; my research into this yielded differing results, but this seems to be more or less the overall idea. Honestly think it both sounds nice and really suits him!)

Shine = Sol Bakker (“Sol” just means “sun” in Spanish and Portugese, basically the idea is she derived her street name from that!)

Rise = Josephine Katherina Thomas (She hates being called any sort of nickname for her first name. It’s either Rise or Josephine, that’s it)

Coil = Oscar Meijer (Fun fact, the English equivalent of Meijer is Meyer/Mayer. I genuinely did not intentionally make Coil’s real name to be a roundabout reference to the lunch meat, but now that I realize it, I’m definitely keeping it this way, loool)

Some others:

Rietveld = We know here full name is Irene Rietveld, but a bonus idea: the rest of BRC point out it’s a bit awkward for her to go by her real name as her street/writer name, so she eventually settles on Rivet as an alias! :D

Escher = Matthias Conrad Escher (Originally just Matthias, but then decided to make a reference to the actual M. C. Escher, “Yeah, my parents knew what they were doing.”; thanks to @slappels for the suggestion way back when!!)

My Devil Theory OCs! The season in parentheses is what in-game palette they correspond with.

Sai (spring) = Tomás Lucas Ortiz

Nunchaku (summer) = Roxanne Beverly Sullivan

Daishō (autumn) = Hiro Francisco Morikawa (first name using the character for “prosperous” (浩); last name using the characters for “forest” (森) and “river” (川). Not that he ever gets a chance to write them in Japanese characters anyways :P )

Bō (winter) = Gavril Jansen

Now for DOT EXE! A repeat from the full DOT EXE headcanons I made a while back, but still including it here for convenience.

Cueball = Ernesto Alberto Visser (Dutch father and Italian-American mother; “Her side of the family were like, the conservative Italian-American types. The kind that makes an annoyingly big deal about celebrating Columbus Day.”; his first and middle name come from two different great grandfathers on his mom’s side)

Eight Ball = Frederik Visser (older half-brother to Cueball, they share the same dad)

Cinco (five ball) = César Hugo Raúl Garcia-Flores (last name got hyphenated when he moved to New Amsterdam while getting his papers in order and stuff; not sure if I ever clarified it in the original post, but in most (probably all?) Spanish-speaking countries, people have two last names, one from their father and the other from their mother. When moving to a country that doesn’t allow for two last names, some people end up forced to pick one or the other. Cinco went with just hyphenating it to be able to effectively keep both.)

Neun (nine ball) = Sebastián Montero Sebastian Jäger

Twoson (two ball) = Beau Driessen

Fourside (four ball) = Robin Zaal

Jūrō (ten ball) = Maximilien Théodore Perrault

Quatorze (fourteen ball) = Marie-Madeleine Lucille Perrault

And heck, the rest of the New Amsterdam crews too while I’m at it. Same as with DT and DE, the season in parentheses is the corresponding in-game palette for the playable rival character.

The Franks:

Flesh Prince = Ruben Vos (last name meaning fox, and apparently was/is a nickname for a clever person… or a person with red hair, lol)

Bill (spring) = Caspar Westenberg

Charles (summer) = Thomas Vogels

Michael (autumn) = Abraham Joël Admiraal

Larry (winter) = Lennard Van Herten

(For their street names besides the Prince, they’re named after famous basketball players, specifically from this list; Charles, Michael, and Larry are probably obvious, with Bill there’s at least two different Bills on that list lol)

Eclipse: (Street names come from constellations, I tried to go with more (relatively?) obscure ones for the names)

Vela (spring) = Sara Al-Ghazzawi

Aquila (summer) = Melissa Agnes Fortuin

Lyra (autumn) = Hannah De Klerk

Cassiopeia (winter) = Xandra Gemma Daalmans (given name is actually Alexandra, but she goes mostly by Xandra for her business)

And finally the rest of FUTURISM: (see my recent short headcanon post about them!)

Nyx (spring) = Laura Kappel

Jazz (summer) = Vincent Linden

Veronica (autumn) = Paula Prinsen (Paula is the feminine form of Paul, which in turn has roots in the Latin word Paulus which can mean humble. This is an intentionally ironic name choice for this character, lmao. Also Prinsen means “son of the Prince”, so this one is more in line with her haughty attitude)

Quantum (winter) = Esther Katja Hoedemaker (She goes by Kat as a nickname)

This next one only applies to my fanfic AU of “What if we take the postgame at face value and Red somehow became a separate person from both Felix and Faux”, but anyways:

Red = Russell Miles Van Steen (Picked the first and middle names himself, note that Russell just means “red” lol. He took on Felix’s last name since they see each other as brothers after a certain point. And it’s not like Red could come up with a better last name anyways. His middle name when paired with Felix’s middle name is a Miles Edgeworth reference :P )

[myunghology]

— PROJECT : 200 SPECIAL! all playable genshin boys x gn! reader. minus razor,because dude ion know how to write for him..sorry razor simps “you like me, don't you?” ,, alphabetical order! help me reach 1000 likes/reblogs on one post! likes and reblogs are appreciated <3

ALBEDO

the male hummed at that state, not phased, it was to be expected, if he had to be honest. he might as well admit it, if you were asking already. "indeed, i do." he says, still focusing on the project he was doing, taking a quick glance at you, you didn't expect that answer, huh?

AYATO

ayato is a pretty mischievous soul, you'd say about him, a light teaser as well. what did you expect? he didn't see that question coming as well. his eyes widened slightly at that state, looking around, "..well, maybe i do" he sang, what did he mean by that? does he or does he not? he left you there just wondering.

BENNETT

he sweat drops, did you finally realize? how did you catch on that fast? maybe you'd reject him if he'd say anything, because of his bad luck, he might say. your answer will be unexpected to him, "..i don't." he swallows nervously, he does. he doesn't want to admit it. "are you sure? because im pretty sure i like you back." his eyes lightened.

CHILDE

"what's with the sudden question, hm?" childe tilts his head sideways, "im just curious, you don't seem surprised though." you shrugged, a tiny pout forming on your lips. "what are you gonna do if i do like you?" he comes closer, eye to eye contact with a harbinger. what're you gonna do with him?

CHONGYUN

he's nervous, be slowly turns his head, eyes closed, a teeny tiny sweat forming on his forehead, is that even possible? "maybe.." he mumbles, opening his eyes a bit, lookin away from you, but then realized your smiling face, as he softened up.

DILUC

he's pretty shocked about the sudden question, but he doesn't show it, he's just wiping wine glasses with his eyes closed, he opened one eye, not turning back at you, but, maybe he could answer. you already knew, what was the point of denying it? "i do, is there a problem?" your eyes widened, "n—no.."

GOROU

his ears twitched, you already got your answer, but, you weren't sure, was the ear twitch a sign of you already knew, or a sign that he doesn't actually like you back. and that he's just shocked by the question. blushing furiously, he admitted that he did.

ITTO

how'd you know. did one of the gang members tell you? was it shinobu? very likely it was her.. what a tease. his eye brows furrowed as his eye twitched, he turned to you, while you were leaning on the door frame. "hm?" you tilted your head, waiting for a answer. he froze. "hell yeah i do." what else did you expect, honestly?

KAEYA

he's raises an eyebrow, a smug smile forming on his lips, he went closer to your face as you backed away, a sweat drop forming on your forehead, "if i do?" you backed away some more, "nothing.. im just, wondering.." you close your eyes, preparing for something unexpected, he kissed your forehead, something unexpected indeed.

KAZUHA

he smiles at your sudden question, eyes closed, the flowing of wind suddenly got softer, the perfect timing, huh? his bangs moving slightly, "looks like the wind knows my answer already, hm?" you smiled softly, kazuha reaching out a hand to you.

SHIKANOIN HEIZOU

jokes on you he's the one asking. but in this case, he isn't, he already found out what you were gonna say, so, you came around sometime in his office, leaning against the wall, but then you were cut off. "yes, i like you, okay? happy?" he smiled softly, a red tint seen on your cheeks.

THOMA

the male shivered at that question, scratching his nape, sending you a nervous smile. "well— you already know, don't you? why are you asking?" poor him, he almost stumbled off the chair because of how you said you liked him back as well.

VENTI

he smiled at that question, "do you want me to make up a song for my answer?" your eyes widened, "ah— no need, are you drunk? shouldn't have asked at this time, heh." he shrugged, "im perfectly sober, why do you think im drunk? hah." he closed his eyes. he's definitely drunk.

XINGQIU

xingqius eyes moved up from his book, facing you, he raised an eyebrow, a small laugh coming from him, "oh? i suppose you've already found out, what's your answer?" now he's the one asking you, looking at your flushed face, he removed the book from his hands, smiling, because you said you like him back.

XIAO

"..you are making such a state for a human being like you." he scoffed as you looked down, maybe you were mistaken, you wanted to get out of his sight, embarrassed, you walked down the stairs of wangshuu, as you felt a strong grip holding your hand. "..but, it doesn't mean i don't like you, im sorry."

ZHONGLI

he was just sipping on a warm cup of tea, while you were there with him, but then you had to give him that question while you were closing your eyes, "hmm." he hesitated for awhile, you sweat dropped because of the hot tea, and questioning why you had the guts to ask that. "of course i do." you almost spat your tea.

[inventors-fair]

First Name, Last Name, Occupation Commentary

You guys really swung for the fences for this one. I was inspired to run this by fun little cards like Cat Warriors, Goblin Assassin, and Dragon Turtle. Cards that do one type by way of another. You guys, for the most part, tried to get as weird as possible, more akin to Urza’s Saga. I purposefully left it open ended to allow non-creatures, but I did not expect about half the cards to be a type other than creature. Some people in the Discord tried to break the rules even more than that. Personally, I wish there were more simple creatures, but I’m happy with what I got.

So without further ado, here’s the commentary! They’re alphabetical by submitter’s tumblr name or preferred credit.

@alextfish​ - Fractal Fish

Holy moly that’s some fish, visually and mechanically. So let me try to parse this: the first time, you attack, get two fish, then next time you turn those two fish (which hopefully also got in for damage) into two counters. So every other turn it doubles the number of counters, assuming you get in with it every time. At a minimum, it’s a little Tana/Living Hive that can’t be used moe than once. It feels weird for this effect to be in blue, though I get why from a flavor perspective. This does feel like a fish, though, and it definitely feels like a fractal. This card feels top down, which is fine, but I’m just not super into it. It feels unnecessarily complex for an effect that you probably only want to trigger once, maybe twice. I still think it’s really cool.

Allie - Urza’s Treasure

It’s a bit of a stretch to have a land named “Urza’s Treasure” but it’s less of a stretch than urza’s saga, so you’re good. The idea of a treasure land in general is cool to me: it’s worse than Tendo Ice Bridge and Aether Hub, but the artifact synergy is notable. Then we get to the last ability: this card is a mox opal. Or maybe a glimmer void? There are a lot of comparisons, but I don’t know which is the most appropriate. A land that effectively doesn’t tap for mana unless you have metalcraft seems awful, but I’ve seen enough affinity to know that that won’t slow it down a bit. So this is essentially a card that’s only good for broken decks, and honestly, I don’t think they need the help. I think the fact that it’s so all or nothing is a bit of a deal breaker. Every part of this card is either massive downside, massive upside, or both. You could argue that makes it balanced, but I’d argue it just makes it broken. I also wish the “Urza’s” part of the typeline played into it more, but I realize the type doesn’t have much of a mechanical throughline.

@arixordragc​ - Warrior Dragon

Ooh, a bold choice. Dragon Warrior and Warrior Dragon send two completely different feels, and this one is definitely the cooler one. Six mana 6/6 flyer is a good rate, but not so good it doesn’t get good abilities. The abilities it gets are a ghostly prison and two circle of flames. I really like how they both have a similar feels: 2 damage and two mana. However, I think the two abilities are att odds. If you need one, you probably don’t need the other. If your opponent has a lot of 1/1 or 2/2 creatures, they won’t be able to pay 2 for each them, and if they do, they’d just die. The damage does have a little bit of meaning, though, because if they attack with a big creature you don’t have to deals as much damage to it. I also just would have expected a warrior dragon to be more offensive than defensive. This feels more like a guard or defender rather than a warrior. So it might be better to have one be offense and one be defensive. Perhaps one ability could affect blockers and one attackers? This is a good card, and a cool set of effects, I just think it needs to work on multiple angles. I also think this could be a rare: it’s not so powerful you wouldn’t want it appearing more often in packs, and it’s not too complex.

@bread-into-toast​ - Zombie Mole

I like the flavor of a zombie mole, since it’s already in the dirt. I do think this sounds better than your original entry, Graveborn Mole, but I think the old one told a more complete story. The card itself is pretty neat, it’s a classic red black aggro card with a big body and a risk payoff. There’s some stuff I don’t like about it. First, sacrificing a land is one of those things that players don’t realize how bad it is for you, so this could lead to a lot of players screwing themselves over, especially if it’s as uncommon. Second, the fact that it can be recast with it’s own trigger, such as when you attack, sac a land, let it die, and then get it back because you had a land die is a bit too synergistic, especially because it gets him back untapped. This means that you have a 5/5 on turn two that if you somehow get to kill by blocking they can just pay two to save and untap it. Again, at uncommon, this is very strong, even if the downside is also very strong. The design as a whole is pretty cool, but I think it’s going to lead to a lot of unhappy players on one or both sides of the field. As a final note, I really liked that you put some art direction in the submission (for those at home, it said “Mood: a giant undead mole attacks, startling the giant (living) moles and miners around it”). It’s a cool way to get a lot of the benefits of art without having to make your own or go hunting.

@charmera​ - Giant Golem Knight

I think the name here is pretty close. It feels a little awkward to say, but I’ve seen worse. The card is a little weak and a little poorly templated, but nothing that can’t be fixed. For the templating issue, I think telling a player they can’t do something then telling them they can in a different place doesn’t work. Cards like Manor Gargoyle that do this just remove Defender. Since this also says can’t block, though, you’d need something different. I might suggest just changing it to “~ can’t attack or block unless you sacrificed an artifact this turn.” It would power it up just a little in the process, but I think that’s called for. A 6 mana 6/7 is not really above the curve, and the activated ability is hard enough to activate that it doesn’t really pump up the power level of the card as a whole. Vigilance also seems weird on a card that needs to pay to both attack and block.  I could see a specific format being able to break this card, but as something you’d see in a core set, it would need a lot of support to see play. I really like the design and concept, it just needs to be rebalanced a bit.

@col-seaker-of-the-memiest-legion​ - Arcane Trap

So, this one is interesting to me. The base rate on this card is good. Glimmer of Genius and Glimpse the multiverse are both super playable and both have a little something extra. In this case, the little something extra is the trap text, and the idea of repeating this card with arcane spells is pretty enticing for the decks that would play it. But there’s something missing here: the trap text doesn’t feel trappy. It’s a bonus, sure, but if you look at all of the existing traps in the game, the difference between hard casting and trap casting is usually massive, sometimes the entire cost! This instead reminds me more of “gotcha!” from unhinged, where the punishment for a player doing something is that you get a card back from your graveyard. It also doesn’t feel very trap-like because it doesn’t punish a player doing the trap-thing. Usually if an opponent is drawing cards it’s a good idea to out-draw them, and splicing helps with that, but it’s not like this is the “ha, you fool!” card that most traps are. It’s just a little bonus. Like when your opponent adds to your storm count. Functionally, I think this card is cool and feels unique, but doesn’t quite feel like it’s representing its types well. Also, nice job giving trap card art to a trap card.

@davriel-canes-tea-supplier​ - Hellion Demon

You did this for the pun and you know it. Demon straight out of hell...ion. I’d love to see what this guy would end up looking like (not gonna dock points for that or anything, just on my mind). So first, the templating. You don’t need to tell them to sacrifice a totla of X, since X is undefined at that point. You can just say “you may sacrifice any number of creatures. If you do, ~ gets +X/+X until end of turn and deals X damage to target creature you don’t control, where X is the total power of creatures sacrificed this way.” I also might suggest swapping it to a reflexive trigger, AKA swapping “if you do” with “when you do,” which means your opponent will be able to respond after knowing what you sacrificed. Right now, you could target one of their creatures on attacking, then they wouldn’t know what you’re sacing to do it until after they decide if they want to protect their creature. Then again, maybe that’s for the best, since it would also mean if they bounce their own creature in response, you don’t have to sacrifice anything because it wouldn’t do anything. And actually the trigger would be stifled anyway because it has no targets, which is awkward if you were planning to just use it as a pump. What I’m trying to say is that this card has an incredibly complex trigger with a lot of pieces going on. I think it might be worth it, though, because this is a cool effect. A mix between a fling and a nantuko shade effect. It’s a really cool concept, but it’s doing so much that it doesn’t do a great job at mimicking either, and in the end I just wish it had two different abilities that were linked or something easier to parse.

@Deg99 - Instant Trap

Okay, this is a silly card, and I’ll judge it as such. The blue = water is flavorfully pretty fun and funny, but color hate is always going to perform a little weird. But traps are famous for that! Usually, though, traps care about colors if they are built to be good against that color, and in this case, maybe? I don’t know if casting a free trap is particularly good against blue, so I’m firmly putting the trap text in trinket text land. The card itself does exactly what you’d expect. It tutors and plays a trap. Instantly. None of the traps in the game are super powerful, so you’re kind of avoiding the usual tutor issue of always searching for the same card / having exactly one tutor target that’s good. This is especially cool because the traps are by design extremely situational, so having this as a toolbox option is actually kind of useful. I think you’d usually end up getting needlebite trap, lavaball trap, or maybe mindbreak trap because it would be good in the matchup anyway. As a whole, this card is both kind of silly and kind of cool. I like it, but I wish there was some way to make this more interesting.

@demimonde-semigoddess​ - Droning Licid

Wait a second, did you just make licids make sense? Putting bestow on a licid makes it feel just like a licid. Turning drone into droning is pretty clever, though you got the types backwards on the typeline. Granting abilities not on the normal creature is something we saw just the barest amount of bestow cards back in OG Theros block. The eldraziness of it I wish was more relevant. I love the idea of using colorless as the alternate cost, since colorless is sort of treated like a bonus, not a given, especially in limited. But the two abilities need keywords. I played that block a lot, and even I kind of forgot what they did. It’s also weird that it grants devoid, but doesn’t have it itself. You could have even given it a colorless mana cost, since nothing it does is particularly black. Every ability on the card was in every color (yes, even devoid, you know what I mean). If this was a purely colorless card it’d be cool, but it’s fine in black. This card has a lot of things meant to make other things easier (enchantments for constellation, devoid for colorless matters, ingest for processing, bestow for heroic), so I’m super curious what set this would go in! But in a normal set, this is just a really weird card. I still think it’s neat, and again I’ll reiterate I’m happy you made a sensible licid, I’m just a little confused by its existence.

@dimestoretajic​ - Hag Fish

A hag fish is a real thing, and a hag that is a fish is what we have here. This card seems pretty powerful. It’s somewhere between a thallid and a tendershoot dryad and an ant queen. I wish the slime counters had some other use, like granting hexproof or unblockable or something. It would up the power level, which I don’t think this card needs, but it would make it feel more like it was slime on her rather than slime coming off of here. On a grander design level, I think this card requires a lot of paying attention for very little benefit. You get slime counters quickly enough you’ll rarely run out of them, but you will just often enough that you do. The tokens have evolve, which is a hard trigger to remember some times, especially on tokens that you might not have printed versions of. Plus, putting dice on tokens is also hard, since some players use dice for tokens. So while the card’s flavor and concept is pretty cool, I think it’s too complex for how simple it wants to be.

@fractured-infinity​ - Treasure Goblin

I’ve been told this is a reference, but sadly I don’t get it. Instead, I get golden goblins. The fail state on this card is still pretty good. A 2/1 haste for two mana ain’t nothing! And just using it as a bad skirk prospector can be useful too. I like the utility of it, too, in that once you are unable to attack with it as a 2/1, you can sacrifice it for mana to power out a flying dragon or something. This card isn’t super exciting, but it certainly gets the job done.

@gollumni​ - Gold Drake

Gold: the long lost parent of treasure. I didn’t even know that it had been errata'd to be its own artifact type. Anyway, the card itself is a reference to gilded drake. It even got hit by the card Gild! However, gilded drake is a super broken card! This is worse in the sense that it costs one extra mana and you ramp your opponent, but the artifact typing makes it easier to tutor and cheat into play, or to kill. Also, the way the last ability is phrased, I think you can sacrifice it to the gold ability and still get your opponent’s creature. If it said “exchange,” it wouldn’t, because exchanging needs both things in play. So this is a three mana permanent control magic that gives you one mana back immediately. I don’t think that was the intent.

@grornt​ - Skeleton Samurai

Now that is a skeleton samurai! It reanimates itself like a skeleton, it bushidos like a samurai. Three mana feels pretty good for it, since it fights as a 4/3. Now, normally, skeletons enter the battlefield tapped, but I understand not wanting to do that here. After all, it’s got bushido, blocking is a huge part of that! But the reason cards like this enter tapped is to stop you from blocking with it every turn and stonewalling your opponent. But how often is that? Well, this is where it gets tricky. Depending on the standard format, losing life on your own turn is either something you have to build around or effortless. In formats with shocklands, painlands, fetchlands, or even a single mana confluence, you’ll be casting this essentially for free. So assuming it’s in something like current standard, where it’s a little tough, maybe this guy is okay. I just worry about a 4/3 blocker that can’t be easily killed. But I guess that’s why you put it at rare, which was a good choice, but I think almost every player would be disappointed to find this creature as their rare. I do love the name and effects of this card as a pair, but I think it could lead to frustrating games.

@helloijustreadyourpost​ - Phyrexian Druid

This card has a lot of style and flair, but I’m a little cautious of it. A good comparison point for this card is Oasis Ritualist. Both can tap for one mana or two mana but at a higher cost. The mana cost and body are an important difference, and I think might balance each other out, as well as the fact that the phyrexian can only tap for green or green black. I do like that it implies that the set leans black, which feels right for return to new phyrexia. I’m having a little bit of difficulty judging power level: the life payment doesn’t really power down the card that much, but we’ve seen double ramp at 3 mana before, albeit never this versatile or at common. Still, maybe it’s fine in 2021 magic? After all, this is new phyrexia we’re talking about. Speaking of, I like how the life payment mimics phyrexian mana, and specifically phyrexian black mana. That’s a cool bonus for experienced players. I think this is a very well designed card, but I’d be very scared to print it unless I was certain there weren’t any green 6 drops at common that would be oppressive to the format when played on turn 3.

@hypexion​ - Skeleton Knight

Undead in white are something I wish we’d see more of. The idea of duty extending beyond life feels super white, but is only ever represented in spirits. But here we have a skeleton! I like the base body, and it does feel pretty skeletonny, though the knight aspect is a little weak. Vigilance is cool but at 1 toughness I don’t know how often it will be able to attack and still block. The reanimation clause is also a little funky, since it returns it to play on attacks, but doesn’t put it into play attacking as I’d expect. It’s also odd that it comes back tapped, though for gameplay reasons I understand. You don’t want to give players a creature that can block for free every turn. Templating-wise, I should also bring up that there needs to be and “if ~ is in your graveyard” between the words “knights” and “you may.” I’m using cards like Auntie’s Snitch and Master of Death for reference there. My final thoughts on the card is that it’s fine, but the two types don’t mesh as well together as I had hoped.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes​ - Spirit Shade

What a strange little creature. Shades are weird, because their signature ability is incredibly powerful and they need a pretty big downside to make them balanced. In your case, tying them to swamps is pretty clever! They already like swamps because of their heavy black costs, so this is a cool way to reinforce that. I still think this is pretty aggressive for a common, but I might be being a little too cautious. My bigger complaint is how awkwardly the sludge counters feel. This is a creature who’s already going to be tough to track since it’s constantly changing P/T, so having counters on it that change a bunch is a lot of complexity, especially at common. If there were also +1/+1 counters in this set, this card would be impossible to track in paper. I also think I would have preferred the name the other way around, but I’ll admit that’s a preference. I like this card in general, but I wish it were more player-friendly.

@loreholdlesbian​ - Sand Elemental

Sand is a creature type not a lot of people expected, but I have a friend with a Hazezon Tamar deck so I knew. It’s a really clever answer to the prompt, especially since you’re using the word “sand” as an adjective, but it is still also made out of sand! A colorless 3 mana 3/2 is good power level for a common I think, and the ability on it is tough enough to make work that it doesn’t push the card too hard. The fact that it’s asking you to pay 7 mana also means that, so long as you have at least a few deserts in your deck, you’re probably going to have one in play or in your graveyard. The graveyard clause fits the theme of other desert cards, but I don’t know if you’d need in a theoretical future set with deserts. Their inclusion in Amonkhet block was mostly so players wouldn’t feel bad for cycling their deserts in the early game. But hey, maybe that’s just what deserts are now! So as a whole I think this card is pretty well designed, if a bit bland, but it works well with the theme of the week and possibly the set it's in. Good work!

@morbidlyqueerious​ - Nightmare Spider

This card has a lot going on. The name feels okay. It’s a little odd, but it works in context. The ability feels creepy and scary, which is both a nightmare thing and a spider thing, but a spider without reach will always feel strange. As the for the ability, it needs a little work. There’s some strangeness with the revealing. It only really matters during a multiplayer game, otherwise just revealing every draw would be simpler and save some text, which I think this card needs. Second is the split payment: you lose 1 life, but you also pay two mana. One is optional, one isn’t, and one is 1 and one is 2. I could see this getting confusing to players. I could see swapping some things around to either make them all optional, all life, and/or all 2’s. Lastly, and this is the important one, this card isn’t fun. WotC is pretty solid on not wanting fateseal effects in the game. It makes what is already a frustrating part of the game (the variance of topdecking) into a more frustrating part. Because of the mana payment, is also means that both players will probably end up doing nothing on their turn. The fact that it can’t hit lands is actually kind of odd. Often that’s what you’ll be doing with this card anyway: forcing them to draw lands. I also sort of wish you would have swapped the P/T. I know spiders usually have higher toughnesses, but I’d like this card if it were easily killable but would end the game quickly if it really did take control of the game. Plus, the fact that you keep losing life regardless of if you pay the two means this kind of has a downside that would be more fitting on an aggro card. So while I think it fits the theme of the contest pretty well, and flavorfully it feels very nightmarish and spidery, I worry that it’s too complex and could lead to frustrating games.

@nicolbolas96​ - Urza’s Fortification

This is… a weird one. So, you have made a land that can attach to other lands. I would be much more okay with that if it couldn’t still tap for mana. As is, it performs more like soulbond, since both things can still do the same stuff, they just get a little better. I’d also like it to turn off the original because the ability it’s granting is bonkers. Paying three mana to turn a land into a tolarian academy is an incredibly low cost. The land itself being an artifact also means you don’t even get the normal downside of tolarian academy not tapping for anything if you don’t have another artifact. You can even attach it to a land, tap that land for mana, then use some of that mana to tap another land. This means once you have four other artifacts, each of your lands tap for two mana or more. Being legendary and coming into play tapped isn’t enough of a downside for that. This would be strong even in a modern horizons set. I will say this: I do love the flavor. This really feels like an Urza’s land, which is not easy to do. The idea of a land that moves to other lands and is also a machine somehow feels cool and flavorful, too.

@nine-effing-hells​ - Constructed Cleric

Remember when they printed an artifact cleric in Guild of Ravnica and no one knows why? Well, here’s a robot cleric that feels more clericy. The name is a great fit, and I love the flavor of it. The twobrid mana symbols are a cool way to make it feel more artifacty, but I think they weren’t particularly necessary. No one is going to play this in a colorless deck, and splashing for it doesn’t seem worth the effort. The difference between 4 and 8 mana for the activated ability is huge. So yes, I think this card would see play almost exclusively in mono-white decks. And how is it there? Pretty good! Granting lifelink to your whole board every turn is very powerful, it makes it nearly impossible to race, but you do need at least a bit of a board. I think this is a solic card in a lot of decks, pretty well balanced, so far as I can tell, and the only real issue I have with it is how weird the twobrid is in it.

@pocketvikings​ - Hamster Advisor

What a pleasant little fellow. Not something I’d normally expect to see in MtG, but I’ll let it slide. I wish there were some flavor text explaining what he’s advising me on. Is he just telling me not to eat my food? So this card is very similar to the card Tajurur Preserver, what with being two green and preventing sac effects (primarily a counter to annihilator), but this guy has the upside of making a food but the downside of turning off your own food. I might suggest using that card’s templating or Angel of Jubilation’s templating. Maybe “You can’t sacrifice permanents or discard cards to activate abilities,” then on another ability the text from Tajurur preserver but with discard added on. It seems strange to see this card at uncommon, since it feels mostly like it’s protecting you from very specific effects that may or may not be in the format. It’s actually a pretty big downside in some decks, like turning off fetchlands, and of course if you’re playing this in a food deck you won’t want in play for long. That’s cool, and we’ve seen that on some black cards like Priest of the Blood Rite. I think this card feels out of place in a lot of formats and a lot of decks in particular, but I’m interested in the implications of it.

@partly-cloudy-partly-fuckoff - Aetherborn Angel

This is one I didn’t see coming, but not in abad way. This feels like a natural name, and immediately conjures an image in my mind. The fact that both angels and aetherborn are sort of non-natural creatures makes he combination feel fitting, but them being opposites of the color pie and origin intrigues me. The card? It feels alright. Artifact matters seems pretty aetherborn-y, though that’s mostly just because they're in Kaladesh. Counters feel pretty angelly, but that’s usually just because white has +1/+1 counter themes all the time and big white creatures are often angels. What I’m trying to say is that while this does feel like it’s an aetherborn angel, it doesn’t feel like it’s THE aetherborn angel. But I still think the card has a place in whatever set it’s for. It seems powerful, and I like that it’s usually the best place to put your counters, but has some utility, plus I’m sure there are ways to go infinite, but when you’re paying seven mana for it that seems fair. I love powerful commons because there’s nothing saying a common can’t be powerful, just not complex, and while this does add a little strategic complexity, it’s not gonna burn any brains. This is a well made card.

@reaperfromtheabyss​ - Goblin Knight

It sure is. This feels pretty right on the money, not just because the name feels real and the creature types fit well, but because the text on the card feels like how a goblin would be a knight. They aren’t particularly any better at fighting or better equipped, but it at least can scare some people or keep them at a distance. I very rarely ever say this but I think there was room for flavor text here. I’d like to know how this goblin got in this position, and what they’re doing to stop creatures from blocking. The cost also seems great, perfectly in between fervent cathar and voldaren duelist.

@shootingstarhunter​ - Island Turtle [the 0/4]

One of two island turtles this week. So it’s a 0 mana 0/4 (or U if you count coming into play tapped as paying a cost). I think with literally no other text, that would be a pretty cool card, if a touch strong. There’s also the issues with land creatures, which there are some weird rules for that mostly just annoys judges more than players. However, you decided to put on some… interesting text. It can turn another land into a creature, one with a little bit more power and toughness. That seems… okay? I think if it had just said something like “Adapt 1: sacrifice a land” it would be almost identical mechanically but far, far easier to understand. I think you made this card to fit a very specific idea you had in your head, but I think you needed to step back and look at the final card and see if there was some way to make it simpler, or if not, what that extra complexity would get you.

@snugz​ - Island Turtle [the 0/2]

Interesting. I like the simplicity of it on the surface. It’s just a Dryad Arbor but with a little more toughness, and it’s blue. A 0 mana 0/2 is on curve, I think, though I don’t know what kind of deck would want it. It doesn’t block anything but the smallest of creatures, which decks you’d need to block against probably aren’t playing. But it can chump, and doesn’t die to 1 damage from stuff like Chandra Pyromaster or Goblin Chainwhirler, so that’s something. The reminder text is appreciated, though the “isn’t a spell” feels less necessary considering the first line, but reminder text can be there anyway! The first line I feel like is trying to fix something, but most of the issues with land creatures are about integrating them into the comprehensive rules, which Dryad Arbor is already forcing WotC to do. But I guess it has it’s uses here and there. Rules aside, I think this card is fine. Like I said, I’m not sure what decks would want this, but it’s unique enough I think someone could find a use for it.

@starch255​ - Enchantment Class Saga

Oh boy, what did I do to deserve this? First, the elephant in the room, no one at wizard’s would ever call this Enchantment Class Saga. Is it supposed to be the story of a class about enchantments? Mechanically I guess it’s at least tied to everything. I don’t think I have to tell you this is too complicated. This has more words on it than a pack of homelands. I also don’t know if it’s phrased right, because we don’t even have the comprehensive rules for classes out yet. Setting X to a certain number at the top of the card also may or may not work? We’ve yet to see a saga with a static effect like that. I also think just playing it and waiting till turn four to level it up gives you a crazy amount of advantage, digging 4 cards deep every turn if you have another saga, plus getting through those sagas even quicker. I’m having an extremely difficult time judging this one, but I can at least say it’s too complicated, and that’s enough to keep it out of the running.

@thedirtside - Treasured Clue

This is a really cute card, but I don’t think it quite hits the mark (pun intended?). One mana for a treasure is kind of weird. We saw a lot of people thinking like that for a while with golden goose, which generated a mana on turn one and rarely did anything else, but let you ramp out a three-drop on turn two, and doing this on a colorless card just feels kind of dangerous, especially because being common means you could crack two on turn three for a 5 drop two turns early. But I also like the combination of the two types, since if you don’t need the treasure then you probably need the card. Reminds me of the Horizon lands. The name is also really close, better than some this week, but feels kind of forced. I wish there were a little more you could do with this guy to make him worth tacking on an extra mana. As is, it’s just a little too swingy to be fun.

@wolkemesser​ - Orgg Hag

I actually had to double check to see that these were both existing creature types, but lo and behold, they were. And they’re both pretty thematic! Orggs are just like big 4 armed goblins, and hags are I guess like witches? But now witches are warlocks. Anyway, the card. I think it’s alright. Trample feels very Orgg, lifelink feels haggy, but that last ability just seems odd. Orgg itself had an ability that cared about size, and the sort of curse flavor of it feels haggy, but it just feels so out of nowhere. I feels like if you removed the white mana in the cost and the ability it would feel just as appropriate a card. Humility in general also has a lot of rules issues that don’t really make them worth it unless they are on big, swingy cards, which this isn’t quite. Still as a whole I think the card is perfectly fine, but a bit off for this week’s contest.

~

And that’s everybody! If you want to get a hold of me, you can contact me on the Discord. Thanks again for entering! Good luck next week!

-Mod Mr. ShinyObject

[blackjack-15]

Hunting For Some Buried Story — Thoughts on: Ransom of the Seven Ships (RAN)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it. Like with all of the Odd Games, there will be a section between The Intro and The Title called The Weird Stuff, where I go into what makes this game stand out as a little strange.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: RAN; STFD; mention of FIN; GTH; mention of SPY.

The Intro:

We’re two-thirds of the way through the meta series officially (yay for meta #20!), and what a way to cap off that marker: with the last of the Odd Games.

And my land, how Odd it is. And that’s ignoring that in August of 2020, this game was very quietly discontinued — speculated to be because of the…well, pseudo-brownface in the game.

Oh yeah, we’re starting with that little bomb.

Before we truly begin, however, let me state one fact: the controversies over this game do not make it any more interesting, unfortunately. I don’t know how a game can be both this objectively bad and this objectively boring as a mystery, but RAN is an example of many, many impossible feats in the video game industry (boring yet bad, controversial yet uninteresting, finicky yet sluggish in controls, so it might as well begin as it means to go on.

I’m also stating here for the record that I’m not really going to focus on the social aspect of this game; it’s always been out of the scope of these metas to focus on current events or social issues, and race is such a hot button issue that no matter what anyone says, someone gets mad. Besides that, it’s really not an interesting tack to take with this meta, not when there’s so many things to talk about regarding RAN as a game and/or as a mystery. If you came into this meta expecting a breakdown as it relates to any social issues, this might not be the meta for you.

If you came for a beat-down on RAN, however, you’re in the right place. Get comfy.

Ransom of the Seven Ships had all the pieces in place to make it a great game; we’ve got Bess and George in the (weird, plasticky) flesh, a fascinating and beautiful location, a historical background based in Spanish exploration, the Age of Piracy, and treasure hunting…all of these are great, honestly, and it’s part of what makes RAN so offensively bad — it could have been really great.

Instead of a wonderful game based around pirate treasure, however, Nancy plays games with monkeys, drives on the world’s slowest golf cart, and trusts the only other person on the entire freaking island when he says he didn’t kidnap her friend. Even though he is the ONLY OTHER PERSON ON THE FREAKING ISLAND.

This game is based off of a Nancy Drew mystery entitled “The Broken Anchor”, which actually is fairly close to the plot of the game — the girls win a contest (though in this case it’s one they didn’t even enter) to go to the Bahamas, Nancy arrives (with Carson) and can’t contact Bess or George, there’s a mysterious treasure, etc. etc. In part, I think, RAN’s problems come from following the book too closely, as there’s really very little to the plot of the book. Game plots necessarily have to have a little more meat to them, as you can’t spend the whole time with Nancy pontificating on the scenery or food (as she is wont to do), and RAN is missing a lot of meat.

Specifically, the meat that it’s missing is any suspects at all. Like I said, there’s only one other person (other than Nancy, Bess, and George) on the island, and it’s ‘Johnny Rolle’ — a self-professed fisherman and loner who’s boat has been wrecked by the monkeys.

There are way too many effing monkeys in this game, side note. How I wish the monkeys were a side note.

Nancy, despite her normal M.O when a kidnapping of a friend has taken place, just kinda rolls with his story and accepts it, digging pointless holes in the sand while he definitely has Bess trapped. And then there’s the weirdness with the monkeys trying to kill her as she scales a sheer cliff wall.

Honestly, if I go any more into it, I’m just going to end up tearing it apart piece by piece, and that’s for the Fix section. So let’s move on to the specific things that make this game truly the capstone of the Odd Games.

The Weird Stuff:

This game is, first and foremost, a story about personal revenge — or, at least, that’s the big takeaway, no matter what HER actually intended for it to be about. After being busted by Nancy (and Lillian, and Ralph, but he apparently doesn’t care about them), Dwayne sat in prison stewing over his ignominious defeat at the hands of a teenaged sleuth until he heard about the supposed treasure on Dread Isle. His greed for the treasure combined with his hatred of Nancy began to fester together, culminating in a slightly complex but ultimately stupid plan to get both money and revenge.

This is a motivation unlike any we’ve encountered. Sure, a handful of Nancy Drew villains have sworn their revenge on Nancy (most notably at this point in the series Helena from VEN), but no one has actually done it — until Dwayne.

This should have made the whole game feel intensely personal — and indeed, bringing back tokens and things from Nancy’s past cases and locations should have built to that. However, the game never really comes to a fever pitch of a feeling of someone is watching Nancy and actively hates her, even though it makes a few attempts. More than any other game, Nancy should have been scared here — and it’s odd that she isn’t.

The second odd thing here is the returning villain. I don’t think this is a bad thing at all — I love the idea of a returning villain — but I do think it was a mistake to pick Dwayne Powers. At this point in the series, STFD was hardly a well-known game, and was generally unplayable due to technological advances.

Yes, later STFD would get a bit of a sprucing up and become playable again (and this game, funnily enough, would be relegated to the ‘unplayable’ pile — Dwayne never can win, I guess), but that didn’t matter at the time that RAN was coming out.

There were several better choices — VEN’s Helena, SHA’s Shorty, DOG’s Emily (who had already received a mention recently in DAN) — so why go with Dwayne? Did they pick him on purpose because no one would suspect (or rather, remember) him? Was he the most obscure villain they could think of? Mitch Dillon (who never appeared really) from SCK would have been an equally obscure but somehow more frightening choice. I’m really at a loss to figure out why they chose Dwayne, of all people.

The third thing that makes this game odd is the lack of suspects. Sure, they give a hat-tip to the Gibsons perhaps being hidden on the island (which, let’s just say, they shouldn’t have — never use as a red herring something that would have made the game so much better), but Dwayne/Johnny really is the only suspect.

I have no idea if they were rushed, if they thought that his different identities counted as extra suspects, or if they just wanted to try something different with this game, but it in no way worked. It’s so mind-bogglingly simple to figure out who kidnapped Bess that it makes Nancy look like she’s quite a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

The last Odd thing that I’ll hang on is how incredibly out-of-character Nancy is in this game. We’ve only seen Nancy work kidnapping (or supposed kidnapping) cases a few times in the series as a whole — FIN’s Maya, RAN’s Bess, and GTH’s Jessalyn — but in both FIN and GTH Nancy takes them very seriously, being harsher and more impatient with less time for people’s lies and stories than she usually is, and really feeling the pressure of the clock.

It makes sense; even discounting the Missing Mom trauma that sits deep within Nancy, the first 48 hours of a kidnapping are basically the only window that she has, statistically speaking, to find the victim still alive and okay. She nearly flies off the handle at the suspects in FIN, and digs uncomfortably deep even at very touchy subjects in GTH.

It then stands to reason that, with FIN in the past and GTH in the future, that Nancy would react similarly in this case. Bess is one of Nancy’s best friends, and the friend that we’re shown most often (think of the flashback in SPY; Bess is the one who comes over after Kate and Carson’s fight) around Nancy, like in CRY.

You’d think that, in the face of Bess’ unambiguous kidnapping, that Nancy would be raising hell — contacting anyone she could, taking no prisoners, ripping Dwayne’s tarp down, turning the island upside down, etc. — but instead, she’s calm, almost relaxed, spending time playing games with monkeys and driving aimlessly around the island.

It honestly makes no sense that she’s like this. This is one of a small handful of games where Nancy is deeply, personally invested, where she has a quick running clock, and where the stakes are deadly yet somewhat unknown.

Nancy comes into this with no background, no contacts, no ability to really look things up, and no help — George’s meager efforts do not count — and yet she acts like there are really no stakes. It doesn’t make me dislike her, it doesn’t make me fold that into her characterization — it just makes me say “wow, the writing is really bad here, huh”.

The Title:

Ransom of the Seven Ships is an amazing title; there’s really no getting around this fact. And for the bare bones of the game, it’s more than a suitable title. You’ve got the word ‘ransom’ doing double duty — meaning both treasure and the price to return someone who’s been kidnapped — you’ve got the ships indicating pirate treasure, and that also tells us we’re probably on an island.

Honestly, this is a far better title than this game really deserved (which is half the reason for this meta: turning the game into something that deserves its title). It’s certainly far better than “The Broken Anchor”, its source material, while keeping a pirate-y nature about it. While it’s a little different than most Nancy Drew games’ titles have been up to this point — as they’re usually “The (Adjective) Noun of Location” or “The Adjective Noun”, that’s not a bad thing at all.

This title really does make me sad with how wonderful it is. It deserved so much better. Same with Ship of Shadows, which is also boss.

The Mystery:

Having won an all-expense paid vacation to Dread Isle in the Bahamas (which should have been their first clue that something hinky was afoot), Bess invites Nancy and George along with her. Nancy arrives the day after the cousins, having stayed for a later flight because of a prior engagement with Carson, and is greeted by a frantic George who tells her that Bess has been kidnapped, that the owners of the resort – the Gibsons — aren’t there, and that she’s been worried sick.

  Nancy, naturally, senses something Amiss, and sets off to explore the islands, beginning from the pink sand beach where Bess’ water powered golf cart (yes, I know) is still sitting. She discovers Bess’ shoe next to the only other person on the island — a fisherman named Johnny Rolle from Jamaica — and sets off to explore the rest of the island.

Along the way she finds notes from Bess’ kidnappers, instructions on digging for treasure, twisting island paths, and monkeys. So many friggin monkeys. All of whom Nancy must appease in order to progress in her hunt for one of her oldest friends.

Yeah.

As a mystery…well, what is there really to say about the mystery? It should have been over the second Nancy found Bess’ shoe right outside Dwayne’s camp where a Suspicious Tarp Just Big Enough To Hide the Body of a Young Adult was hanging. An intelligent way to draw it out would be to have Nancy discover Bess there, but for Dwayne to pull a fast one on her and trap her below…but this isn’t the fix section, so let’s just move on past that.

If you weren’t going to add in any new characters or suspects, it might be best to have this game flip from a whodunnit to a howdunnit/howcatchem after the first third; as it is (aka since I’m going to add far more characters in The Fix section), we’ll move right along to the suspect in question himself.

The Suspects:

Yes, I know that this part should just be “The Suspect”.

Believe me, I know.

Wearing a whole cornucopia of masks, Johnny Rolle — aka John E. Poole — is an Australian accountant, hiding from ‘bad clients’ by painting himself brown and adopting a horrible (and horribly stereotypical) Jamaican accent. Nancy discovers his ‘true’ identity by finding an ID with his name on it while he’s still in the ‘Johnny’ disguise. Of course, this ‘true identity’ isn’t his true identity as all…

Dwayne Powers —aka Owen W. Spayder — is sitting underneath the bad wig, bandana, brownface, and horrible accents, and is voiced in this go-around by HER’s chameleon of many voices, good ol’ JVS. After hearing about Dread Isle’s rumors of treasure and their monkey research lab shutting down from a volunteer at his prison (yes, we’re already way too complicated for this game), Dwayne started planning to get the treasure and get revenge on Nancy at the same time.

As the culprit…man is Dwayne horrible. He’s so stupid that it really kills me that Nancy actually falls for his act, because it makes her even stupider. It’s not a good plan, it’s not well thought out, it’s not even a complete plan — it relies on too many unknowables. What if Nancy and George had just stormed his camp and found Bess? What if Nancy figured out it was him? Like, I know Dwayne is an egotist, but this is just dumb.

Before I eviscerate any more, let’s just move on to the few good things in this game.

The Favorite:

The best thing about RAN (other than its music, which as always is super good) is honestly its location. Dread Isle is beautifully and uniquely rendered, and doesn’t look like any other game with the pink-sand beaches, beautiful horizon line, and foliage all befitting a Bahamian resort.

I also like the idea of a returning culprit; while it wasn’t handled well here, I do think it’s a great idea as quite a few culprits have promised revenge on Nancy at the end of their games. Do I think it would have been better if it was Helena, who promised revenge only 2 games ago, rather than going back 18 games to a game that most hadn’t played due to lack of availability? Of course; but the idea behind it was sound.

I don’t have a favorite puzzle or favorite moment; even Dwayne’s dramatic reveal is ruined by the fact that Nancy is at all surprised that he was wearing a disguise and, once again, that the only other person on the island was responsible for kidnapping her friend.

The Un-Favorite:

As far as this section goes…there’s a lot that I don’t like, but there are a few things that stand out more than the rest as truly un-favorite.

My least favorite thing about this game, as you might be able to guess, is that it makes Nancy seem so stupid. We’ve had 19 games of Nancy (mostly; this meta series does go over the exceptions) figuring out clues, chasing bad guys, and solving puzzles without breaking a sweat, and then for this game she’s fooled by some makeup, a wig, and a bad accent? At least in STFD Dwayne put some effort into his work; this is just sad, and it’s even sadder that Nancy falls for it.

My least favorite moment in the game is probably the first conversation with ‘Johnny’. Nancy finds Bess’ shoe, gets strung up in a trap, and then believes that the guy sitting a few feet away is innocent and telling the truth? It’s a moment that truly sets up what a crap shoot this game is about to become, and that alone is enough to make it my least favorite.

My least favorite puzzle is anything to do with the monkeys; playing games with them, scaling the cliff, talking to them, talking about them — literally anything. I don’t like monkeys on a good day, but to have so many puzzles in the game revolve around playing their stupid little games with them? Not a good thing at all. Especially since getting around the island (and, of course, the monkeys live quite far away from anything else on the island) is so aggravatingly slow and clunky — it makes everything feel like a total slog.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Ransom of the Seven Ships?

My gosh, just remake the game.

More seriously, there are quite a few things that I would do in order to make playing through RAN a little more enjoyable and a lot more story-driven (and in line with Nancy and George’s characters). As always, I’m trying to keep this as close to the actual game as possible with few or no huge changes, so Dwayne will still be our culprit, Bess will still have won his giveaway, and Dread Isle will still be the spot of El Toro’s treasure.

The first thing I would do is get rid of Dwayne’s brownface/first disguise, and have him be the Australian accountant named John E. Poole, running from Bad News clients who he didn’t allow to cheat come tax day. That sets him up as a good guy to begin with (if a little foolish to cross such powerful clients), and gives a reason why he’s not staying at the resort (he’s trying to hide and not leave a paper/money trail at the same time). He should be staying in a little homemade hut, not with a Suspicious Tarp Obviously Hiding Bess, as he would have had to been on the island for a while to perfect his disguise (and seem trustworthy to the people at the resort).

I would also have the game take place on Nancy’s 19th birthday; if we assume she was barely 18 at the time of STFD, that makes it about a year that he would have been plotting and escaping and setting up this contest and such. It also makes sense as to why Nancy would have a banquet-thing with Carson and why Bess invited her and George — it’s a fabulous birthday party trip, even for the well-off Nancy Drew. That would also add to her anger — this was a great present that Bess (and George) gave her, and Dwayne has just straight-up ruined it.

Another change that would help the atmosphere is to have at least half the game take place at night. I would have the game take place over roughly two days — it ends the night of the second day — so that you can see the island at night. A lot of the demands made by ‘the kidnappers’ should be done at night — treasure digging, in particular — so as to not be more disruptive to the island than a missing persons case would already be.

Of course, one of the biggest things to do would be to add more suspects.

The Gibsons — both of them — should definitely be there at the resort. I’d have one half of the couple be in the resort during the day, and the other at night, so Nancy can interact with them both differently and have different tasks/discussions with them. Perhaps Mrs. Gibson is an expert on the island’s ‘lore’ — El Toro’s treasure and stuff — while Mr. Gibson is more up on island life and is the law enforcement liaison for the island (who can effectively deputize Nancy to help with the search for Bess).

I would also add one other guest who was supposed to check out right before the first note from the kidnappers came in, and is now stuck on the island until the case is solved. What I’d probably do is make them a Secret Australian (to contrast with Dwayne’s fake Australian accent) — sporting an English accent due to a posh upbringing and studying in England for most of their school life, living in England somewhere (maybe near Blackmoor Manor for a cool Easter egg) — who is Very Grumpy about this and thinks Bess ran off to explore and just got lost. I’d probably make them unhelpful to the last — even when Bess is found and had definitely been kidnapped, to just shrug it off and to board the plane to get home as quickly as possible.

The last person I’d add in is someone working the desk — specifically, an older teenager who is very cagey about themselves and how they know what they know, but who seems to know a lot more than they let on. This person would, of course, end up being a member of ATAC, and once Nancy figures it out, would be able to connect you with help from the Hardy Boys. This ATAC member would be scoping out the Gibsons for evidence of getting guests under false pretenses, but would ultimately change their suspicions to Dwayne and help Nancy and George catch him. Through this ATAC teen, the Hardy Boys could use outside information to give Nancy information about monkeys, the island, treasure, El Toro, and anything else that she encounters, as well as spread their feelers out about the Gibsons, the other guest, and John E. Poole.

I would of course want to improve the tone, which would be helped by having more people on the island — Nancy should feel scared that Bess disappeared with this many people around, and it should feel personal. As the game goes on, even with the added help, the walls should feel like they’re closing in. I would include way more second chances, traps, threatening notes, maybe even recordings of Bess screaming or scared or in pain — something that might push the rating to E+ because, quite frankly, the situation calls for it.

Mechanically, I would put way less focus on the monkeys; they really shouldn’t control everything on the island. Keeping them for a minigame and location is cool, but they definitely shouldn’t have their place of prominence in the game.

I would also remove the fact that you can control George. Out of all the games where I think controlling people other than Nancy would be great, this is not one of them. As worried as Nancy should be, this is George’s cousin — practically her sister, from how close their families are and how much time they spend together — and George would probably be in a State. Sure, she can help with some of the tech stuff, but the player definitely shouldn’t be playing as her in this game. It just feels forced, and it’s not necessary.

Would these changes make RAN a fantastic, award-winning game? No, honestly, they wouldn’t. In order to do that, you’d probably have to scrap the game entirely and start over with even barer bones. But I do think it would help to make it at least better and more playable, and I think that’s a win. Let RAN be remembered for its returning villain and its kidnapping plot, not for being the game that everyone skips during a replay of the series.

[kyndaris]

A Hero Lies in You

On April Fool’s Day 2019, a video was released showing the latest game in the Yakuza franchise. Many thought it was a prank. The reason why? The sudden change in combat. Gone was the brawler beat-em-up that was associated with the series. In its stead was a turn-based system reminiscent of role-playing games. Characters waiting for their turns before utilising special skills? In a franchise known for its hard gritty storylines about gangs duking it out in the streets of Japan? ‘Haha Ryu Ga Gotoku. You thought you could fool us, but we see right through you. This isn’t our first rodeo and you’re not Square Enix,’ was many a thought when the footage had been viewed by thousands online.

What gamers did not know was that this was no gag. Fast forward several months to August 2019 and it was confirmed that Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon, starring new protagonist Kasuga Ichiban, would actually incorporate turn-based battles. There would even be JOBS! 

As I had just finished playing through Kiryu’s story, as well as Judgment, in 2020 I was eager to see what new protagonist Kasuga Ichiban would bring to the table. From trailers, I could already see how much livelier Ichiban would be in comparison to the more stoic Kiryu. And, in contrast to Yagami, he was definitely more of an idiot. A lovable idiot, to be sure, but an idiot nonetheless.

Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon released in a huge week for video games. While I would have preferred to play it earlier, I had other huge titans to wrestle into submission first. Once I had managed to satiate my Ubisoft open-world needs with Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, I dived head first onto the streets of Yokohama, ready to bust some heads.

The game opens on a play. For a moment, I thought I had somehow purchased the wrong game. But as the lengthy prologue progressed, it was very clear that this was most definitely a Yakuza game. It just needed to set up a little bit of the tale, starting with Arakawa Masumi - father figure and role-model for our erstwhile hero. It isn’t long before players are introduced to Kasuga Ichiban with his trademark ‘punch perm.’ Born in a soapland and raised by those that lived on the fringes of society, Ichiban, rather than being hardened by his experience, is empathetic and not afraid to show emotion. Tasked with collection, he interprets his orders in a way to benefit those that are struggling. His goofball attitude immediately makes him a character one can connect to. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s a bit of a nerd, having played Dragon Quest during his childhood and likening many of the people around him to things in the game.

It’s not long before the plot escalates and Ichiban volunteers to give himself up to the police. Sentenced to fifteen years in prison, he inadvertently extends his sentence when his Patriarch is insulted by one of the fellow inmates. After nearly two decades spent in prison for a crime that he did not commit, Ichiban is released with little fanfare and no waiting convoy. Disappointed, he takes it in stride. The first thing on his order of business: to get his signature punch perm and reconnect with his second father-figure and Patriarch of the Arakawa family.

Along the way, he is dogged by a former policeman: Adachi. At first, it isn’t made clear why Adachi seeks Ichiban for help. After all, Ichiban had supposedly killed another yakuza in Kamurocho, Tokyo. Adachi, on the other hand, was a detective in Yokohama. Why would he have any interest in uncovering the truth behind what had put Ichiban behind bars?

After a few shenanigans are had in and around Kamurocho, our protagonist is shot and left for dead - waking up in a homeless shelter in the heart of Isezaki Ijincho. Climbing his way from rock bottom, Ichiban embarks on a journey to uncover the truth, stumbling upon a series of events and unearthing a vast conspiracy in which he was to serve as a pawn.

Many of the earlier chapters felt a little contrived. In particular was the death of Nonomiya. While it served to move the narrative forward, it was most assuredly a means to an end that didn’t highlight any significant character growth. Poor Nonomiya was fridged just to bring Ichiban into conflict with the Liumang branch of the Ijin Three.

It was only in the later chapters that the story picked up steam - with the confrontations with Bleach Japan and the encroachment by the Omi Alliance. Joined by a menagerie of characters like Zhao, Saeko, Han Joon-Gi, Nanba and Eri, there was a lot to keep track on as the plot barrelled forward at a breakneck pace, connecting Ichiban’s past with his current present and all the while setting up a juicy conflict between two men that could have been brothers. And honestly, the ending with Arakawa Masato and Ichiban got to me. I loved how that Ichiban was finally able to reach his old charge by being vulnerable and finally letting out a little of his resentment at the life Masato led, despite the fact that he could not use his legs.

The characters were superbly written and their motivations were a good reflection of the human condition. The themes of family and finding a home were evident, right from the start, even though a lot of it was glossed over by Ichiban’s desire to be a hero in a video game.

(I also really liked Seong-hui and would love to see her be an actual playable character in possible future instalments. On a side note, Arakawa...you cannot simply say: ‘See you tomorrow, Ichi,’ and expect to walk away. You basically wrote your own name into the Death Note with that line!)

As far as aping Japanese role-playing games go, however, Yakuza: Like a Dragon falls woefully short. While the Tendo twist was a good one - it was pulled a little too early. Worse, there was no world-ending threat. Everyone knows that a Japanese role-playing game MUST HAVE A VILLAIN/ EVIL GOD FIGURE THAT INTENDS TO DESTROY THE WORLD. Yakuza: Like a Dragon was too focused on old childhood rivalries to extend it further afield. I mean, yes, Aoki Ryo hoped to pull the strings of the Japanese government as chair of the CLP, but WHERE WAS THE METEOR HURTLING TOWARDS EARTH? 

Honestly, 1/10 for holding true to Japanese role-playing games.

Other than that, the summons with Pound Mates was amusing. As were the side stories. Honestly, there can never be enough side stories to flesh out the wacky world of the Yakuza franchise. So many old favourites made their return. From Pocket Fighter (now dubbed Dragon Fighter) and Gondawara Susumu with his baby fetish.

Also, I didn’t think I’d be so obsessed with it, but I think they cracked property management this time round. Ichiban Confections, later known as Ichiban Holdings, was a blast to manage and accrue juicy money for.

The bartender of Survive also looked very familiar. I mean...what with the huge scar across his face. My suspicions were confirmed when I searched up Kashiwagi up on the Yakuza wiki page and was awarded with the fact that HE MANAGED TO SURVIVE THE ASSAULT HELICOPTER FROM YAKUZA 3!!

Other than that, my few other gripes involved the implementation of the levelling system and the way area of effect skills were handled. In particular, the pathing for how characters moved around the battlefield proved, at least to me, a bit of a frustration. Often, characters would be blocked by a knee-high fence or a corner. Sometimes they would be able to go around, but other times the game (after several seconds of watching them fail to walk through a solid building) warp to the enemy that I had targeted to launch their attack.

And even though the combat is turn-based, most of the enemies tend to walk around the battlefield - either clumping together or distancing themselves from each other. What truly annoyed me was when there were moves that could be used as an area of effect, with the MP cost to go along with it, but were limited by their effectiveness when the enemy combatants were too far away. Yes, it makes sense, but golly gosh, how much of a pixel measurement does it have to be for it to not hit?

Besides that, the levelling was also a bit of a tedious chore. Were it not for the invested vagrants, I feel like I might have put the game down with how much grinding there was - particularly when it came to the various jobs. The biggest hill to climb was from 20-30. Without the exp (experience point) boosting items, it would have been a torturous slog. I know that in the original Japanese release of the game, the cap for jobs was level 30, but if you change it to 99, please, for the sanity of all the gamers out there, tweak the requirements to make it easier. And maybe give normal trash mobs a bit more experience points for the playable characters to munch on. 

Goodness, imagine having to grind on level 55 Ornery Yakuza and receiving a paltry 1000xp for each battle (when, in order to level up a job, you needed almost a million).

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a break from the traditional formula that’s been a staple of the franchise for many years. Much like Ichiban, it’s a bit of fresh air to liven up the experience that might have gone a bit stale after I slogged through the whole Kiryu arc last year. With a few tweaks, and a few more Persona 5 CD soundtracks, I’m eager to see how the story evolves and whatever contrivances Ichiban will somehow force him into.

Although, to be fair, is it still appropriate to call this franchise Yakuza when the game literally saw the dismantling of the two biggest clans? Then again, Civilian: Like a Dragon 2 just doesn’t have the same ring to it. In any case, I hope the next one comes soon and we’ll be able to have Seong-hui in our party. I feel like she’d be wielding a gunblade.

(Did I just use a lyric from Mariah Carey? You bet I did! I had been tossing up the idea between this line and ‘I need a hero.’ Why? Well, I think that would be self-explanatory after knowing Ichiban’s proclivities. And it fits so, so, so well!) 

[repentantsky]

Top Games I’m Looking Forward To in 2021 (Part 1)

2020 was a horrible year, but the thing that kept me and many other sane were the slue of great games that came out, or in my case, a combination of that and buying older games for my handheld consoles. However 2021, has a lot more games that are my style, so I’m much more excited for it than I was for most of this year. Allow me to have my longest list yet in celebration of this fact, and do so in parts as there is a lot to talk about, as I look at 8 upcoming games in 2021, that I can’t wait to play. To make things fair, and hopefully to keep this list as accurate as possible, I will only be counting games that have a release date as of my writing this. Also, my lists aren’t usually ranked by how much I want to play a game, as much as they are how much I want to talk about a game, so my most anticipated game for next year could easily be the first entry. With those explanations out of the way, let’s talk about games. 

8. The Medium. 

The Medium is a horror game made in a similar vain to Silent Hill’s Midwich Elementary, in that there are two realities existing at once, and you are constantly switching in between them. The idea is always one that has fascinated me as a horror fan, but the Medium really looks to amping up the scares by using the visuals that we can currently attain to increase the fear factor, instead of making everything pretty to try and sell people on that end of it. The gross, disgusting, and frightful looking world we are presented with in The Medium is one I cannot wait to explore, even if I don’t have an Xbox Series X to play it on. Regardless of anything, it looks like it might be my personal favorite horror game of 2021 when it comes out, barring no delay, on January 28th. 

7. Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. 

The Ys series is honestly one of the more underrated long running series in JRPG history. If you need proof of that, just play Ys Origin, Memories of Celceta, or Ys VIII for confirmation. These games are incredible. YS IX looks to be taking the series in a darker direction than most, if not all the previous entries in the series, and not only is that super compelling, but it seeing YS in a darker light, might actually go a long way in helping it become the franchise it deserves to be in the eyes of fans everywhere. The combat looking more refined than ever, on top of the best visuals the franchise has seen to this point only add to the excitement, and the characters, from what we’ve seen so far, also look like they’ll stand out in a series full of fantastic characters throughout. YS IX, probably won’t be my JRPG of the Year, but darn if it won’t be up in the top 5.

6. Little Nightmares 2.    

Did I make it clear that I love horror yet? I hope so because this might not even be the last horror game on this list. The original Little Nightmares was honestly my favorite horror experience when it released, because no other game really did a better job of making you feel isolated, alone and weak, which is the prefect setting for horror. While Little Nightmares 2 won’t be doing the isolation aspect as much as the first because of a second playable character, with the danger ramped up enough, which the demo seems to show that it will be, it should be more than capable of bringing out the fear that made the first so memorable. There’s almost nothing scarier than being a small child in an adult world that seems to want you dead, and Little Nightmares 2 has all the vibes set up for freaking everyone out. I doubt many in the horror genre will be able to do it as well as this game will. 

5. Persona 5 Strikers. 

Finally we are out of horror and darker games and all that, for a bit, as Persona 5 Strikers is easily looking to be my favorite warriors games of 2021. Not only do I love the concept of Warriors titles, but the Persona universe is one that fits that genre well by default, having a near endless slue of famous enemies to turn into either fodder for the thousands of kills we’ll get, or bosses that will gave fans a sense of nostalgia, espeically if they are fans of Shin Megami Tensei and older games in the franchise. I’ll admit, I’m a little bummed it’s not Persona X Shin Megami Tensei, where characters from both the original franchise and the spinoff can get together to cause mayhem, but it’s the next best thing, and I am all here for it. The story promises to be incredible, and the gameplay fantastic, with that Atlus special touch added in. There’s no reason not be excited about what they put out there. 

4. NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139...

Gawd, that name though. Crazy name aside, NieR on the PS3 was a brilliant game, that was sadly underrated due to the time of it’s release, a lack of marketing, and people generally not knowing who Taro Yoko was at the time. His history speaks for itself though, with the brilliant yet weird Drankengard series, and NieR itself really being a shining example of what he can do. To see Replicant, a game that never made it to the West, be remade with combat done in the style of NieR Automata, is such an exciting prospect that I can hardly contain my hype. Not only does the title look better than the original by miles, which was visually fascinating to begin with, but the wonderful and odd music, and everything that can really be expected of Taro Yoko is there in full swing. We are looking at an upcoming masterpiece I am certain.

3. Super Mario 3D World + Bowsers Fury

I’m not always the biggest fan of Mario mainline platformers, but seeing as I really found myself enjoying his most recent Switch and 3DS exploits, I cannot help being excited for the chance to play a Mario game I haven’t had the chance to previously, with some extra content to boot. Car Mario looks like a lot of fun to play, and the chance to play with up to four people is something I can’t pass the chance to play. I know very little of the game, other than it’s massive popularity and high praise upon release, and sometimes, it’s nice to go into a game as blind as possible, even if the story isn’t likely going to be anything to write home about. Whatever the title brings, it will be enjoyable to say the least, and possibly the most solid of platformers for 2021. 

2. Bravely Default II.

I won’t lie, I have a complicated history with Bravely Default as a series. While I did manage to power my way through the first game, it took some time to make it happen, and honestly, despite it’s great characters and even better story, the gameplay left me wanting. However, Bravely Default: End Layer was and still is one of my favorite JRPG’s on the 3DS, so here’s hoping enough of the good that came from that game, finds it’s way to Bravely Default II. Regardless of if it does or not, I always willing to give a format a second go, and I’ve already found myself completely in love with the playable characters, just from the two demos alone, so all signs point to a fantastic game that I cannot to wait to experience. 

1. Poison Control.

The best part of doing a list like this, is throwing something in there that no one expects, and may not have even heard of. Without a doubt, the most anime shit style game on my list, Poison Control is a game that might be more about the story, than the gameplay. The basis is you are stuck in another world, with two characters bound to one soul, and you’re goal is to remove the poison from people’s minds, by invading their brains and literally clearing it out. You might monsters and run over the poison in their heads, to hopefully make them better people. Despite the dark sounds setting, and even the slightly darker visuals, this is probably one of the most light hearted games on my list. I have to say though, there’s always something to these sorts of games despite their obvious lack in certain quality, that I enjoy. The game doesn’t actually have a Western release date either, so I’m cheating a bit, but with a catchphrase like “Purge Poison, Raise Hell” how can you not be at least a little bit excited for what’s to come of this game. 

And that’s my list. Did I miss anything you’re super excited for? Let me know in the notes below, and be ready, because part 1 of this list will be all about games without a release date, and that’s where the hype can really begin.  

[hotel-japanifornia]

What’s your feelings on godot i do feel sorry for him and i don’t hate him but he was a huge prick to Phoenix

Godot is a rather complex character. I like him as a character in general, however the fandom does seem to misunderstand who he is and what his motives are, even his fans.

When we first meet Godot chronologically, we meet him as the defense lawyer, Diego Armando. Diego is honestly pretty charming, he’s smooth, he’s confident, he’s cool, and I like the way he plays off of Mia. I personally never found the “kitten” nickname sexist nor do I understand why it would even be considered that way. It’s never said once that Diego doesn’t think Mia is lesser for her gender. In fact, in their first conversation during the case, this is said:

Armando:No, no, no… You’ve got it all wrong! Today, YOU’RE the finest! After all, it took an amazing amount of guts to take this case! Imagine… An escaped death row convict for a first client!

If anything, I think the whole kitten thing is probably just his nickname for rookies in general, and not necessarily women. I’ve seen people think it’s his way of flirting with her, and that’s possible too, just not necessarily how I see it. Anyways, at the end of the case, Mia beats herself up because she thinks that she was the reason her client died and Diego gives her this piece of advice:

Armando:Don’t you get it? You can’t cry yet. The only time a lawyer can cry is when it’s all over.

Mia:M-Mr. Armando…

It’s honestly a good piece of advice, and I love how Mia takes inspiration from that quote and uses it towards Phoenix even if it’s said in a different way:

“The toughest of times are when lawyers have to put on their biggest smiles.”

It’s not exactly the same as what Diego said, sure, but it does have the same meaning. In that way at least, you can see the impact he must have left on Mia. Regarding the two’s relationship for a moment, I do think they had just started dating when Diego was poisoned. It does explain why Grossberg calls Diego Mia’s boyfriend, but I digress.

When we meet him in 3-2 and 3-3, it’s obvious he dislikes Phoenix but we don’t know why yet. Honestly, Godot is probably one of my favorite parts of 3-2: he’s mysterious and confident, but he also has some goofy moments like when he refers to himself as a legendary prosecutor because he’s never lost a case but he’s also never won one either. I don’t know that it was intended to be funny but it’s always made me snicker a little. He comes off as being a jerk sure but so did Edgeworth and Franziska, and like them, we learn more about Godot and his motivations later on.

Godot in 3-3 is why I can never agree that T&T has a filler case. For one, in 3-3, you learn about Godot’s inability to see red on white when he fails to notice the ketchup on Maggey’s apron. It’s an extremely subtle moment, but it’s given quite a bit of focus so the player could then assume that that unique feature will be important later on. Godot is still mysterious and a jerk but I love the way that he handles Furio and willingly admits to being the one who summoned him to court. Like Nick said after the fact:

(T… Too cool…) 

Not only that, but he does manage to have a somewhat nice moment with Phoenix at the end of the case after throwing coffee at him:

Godot:Well done… Trite. I saved my 17th cup of coffee just for you. Savor it… While you watch your caged prey. 

While we don’t learn that much more about Godot than we did in 3-2; what we do learn about him plays a very important role in a case later on. 3-3 isn’t directly involved with the Feys at all, but it does have some importance to the overall plot of the game.

We meet Armando in 3-4 which is the first playable case chronologically in the trilogy’s timeline. Right off the bat, we notice he looks similar to Godot, the two even have a similar suit to each other, just different colors and have a similar hairstyle. I’m not entirely sure how many people guessed that Godot and Diego Armando were the same person right away but I think people might have at least thought the two were related at least (I’ve even seen people think that Godot and Diego were identical twins!). As for me, I kinda had a feeling since the two look alike and have the same love for the hot, bitter lady known as coffee.

Godot is extremely important to 3-5. If it wasn’t for him forming a plan to save Maya with Misty and Iris, Maya would be dead. Thing is, I don’t agree that Godot is entirely to blame for not going to the police and bringing the plot to them or just burning the note the whole way through. If the latter had happened, Pearl would have told Morgan she couldn’t find it and Morgan would definitely suspect that something was going on and possibly even relay the plan to Pearl herself. The former happening is unlikely because of reasons that I will go into a bit deeper. Another problem lies in that Misty also shares some of the blame herself but this post isn’t about her so I won’t go deep into it. 

We don’t see Godot until the second investigation period when Dusky Bridge has been rebuilt and Phoenix enters the Inner Temple, desperate to find Maya. It’s there that we learn why Godot hates Phoenix so much. Godot blames Phoenix for the murder of Mia Fey. He states that since Phoenix was there at the time, he should have protected her and by failing to do so, he in a sense, killed her. And because Maya is missing at the time, he goes further and says that Phoenix killed Maya indirectly by failing to protect her when she needed it most.

Personally, I find this conversation to be more Godot venting out his frustrations on Phoenix. Think about it, the guy spent 5 years in a coma because a psycho killer poisoned his coffee. He wakes up and he finds out that his girlfriend was murdered while he was in a coma. He feels mad at himself for not being able to protect Mia and thus sought to protect Maya as a way to make amends. While it seems like a weird conversation and just another example of Godot being a douche during one’s first time going through the case; a replay of the case after finishing it helps shed new light on the conversation the two have. 

We also learn more about Godot’s inability to see red on white during that same encounter in greater detail. He says that his eyes are messed up and that mask is the only way he can see. Although it’s not much, it is something. 

During the first trial portion of the last trial day, Godot starts acting rather strangely. When he learns that there was writing in red on the stone lantern in the Inner Temple Garden, he starts freaking out. Not only that but he actually helps calm Phoenix down when he freaks out over Dahlia’s suggestion that Maya jumped into the Eagle River from the Inner Temple side, and tells him that would be impossible to do.

Eventually, after Dahlia has been exorcised from Maya’s body, the Judge attempts to hand down his verdict. Godot immediately objects and says that they still don’t know who killed Misty, and the only person who can testify about that is Maya Fey. Some people have called this move callous and insensitive to the state that Maya is in, but it really isn’t. Godot could have simply let the Judge hand his verdict down and get away with his crime. But he doesn’t, he requests that they summon the one person that could incriminate him. Also, he does show a fair bit of empathy towards Maya in this exchange of dialogue towards her before her first testimony:

Godot:Straighten up this moment, young lady!

Maya:Huh…?

Godot:Pick your head up and speak clearly. There’s always time for crying later.

Maya:B-But I…

Godot:Your mother was killed right in front of your eyes! There’s nothing you can do to change that fact.

Maya:…!

Godot:But there’s something you can do… You can finish this. You’ve been watching the whole thing right? You’ve seen the witnesses come out and you’ve seen us squeeze the truth out of them. Now it’s your turn. …Let’s hear your testimony. On the night of the crime… what exactly did you see happen!?

It’s pretty obvious during Maya’s testimony that she’s willing to protect the identity of whoever killed her mother, even to the point that she begs Phoenix not to reveal his identity and even suggests that she thought it was a man for other reasons than the three red glowing lights. We also get to hear about this one cute little story about an interaction between him and Pearl in which he actually comforted her and gave her coffee. That’s pretty sweet…and kinda dangerous.

Still, it’s quite obvious upon cross-examining Maya that Godot is the killer, so why is she covering up for the man who killed her mother to the point that she’d be found guilty otherwise? Godot did save Maya’s life in the process of killing Misty who was channeling Dahlia at the time and would have killed her if Godot hadn’t intervened. Maya is plenty aware of this and it is in character for her to do something like that.

We also learn through Godot’s self-reflection that he knows that he could have killed Pearl instead of Misty that night and that Misty’s murder was out of a fit of rage against the ghost of the woman who ruined his life. He also goes on to say that he’s not really sure that him saving Maya’s life was out of a genuine will to protect her, and even tells her that if he genuinely wanted to help Maya, he should have gone to Phoenix instead. Despite this, Maya genuinely believes that he wanted to save her life and so does Phoenix even despite the way Godot had treated him up to that point.

Godot is an extremely gray character and it’s really interesting to study him as a character, who he is and what his intentions were. I don’t think he truthfully wanted to kill anyone that night in the Inner Temple Garden, all he wanted to do was protect Maya the way he wanted to protect Mia. He was never willing to actually kill anybody and even helped Phoenix catch him in the end. Iris and Misty both played a role in this plan too and made their own share of screw-ups so I don’t understand why people shift so much of the blame for it onto Godot?

Honestly though, I think that the whole black-white morality lens that people typically view characters through doesn’t really work with characters like Godot. Godot is not a good guy but he’s not a cookie cutter bad guy like some of the culprits in this series seem to be and that’s what makes him so intriguing to me. He’s not my favorite character, but I can see why someone may say he’s their favorite.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Hol Horse

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

So last year I thought it was a good idea to try and review all of the enemy Stand users in Stardust Crusaders in a totally random order. The results were… mixed. Some of them I think came out okay, but others? Not so much. One of them was just an entire backhanded attack against some guy who decided to say “No one likes your analyses” because I think ProJared was a creep. It was, quite frankly, a mess, and I never bothered to revisit it and never thought I would, even though I still hadn’t covered the glorious, wonderful human being who is Hol Horse.

Well, now, after playing Heritage for the Future and All-Star Battle as well as just becoming a bit more knowledgeable on JJBA, I’ve decided to not only give Hol Horse his dues, but also at least briefly go back over or cover the other Stand users and give them a rating or an updated rating, as the case may be. So buckle in, this is gonna be a long one, and it’s all gonna start with everyone’s favorite incompetent henchman.

Hol Horse is probably one of the most amazing characters Araki has ever created. Hol Horse is in possession of a powerful Stand, The Emperor, which is literally a magical gun that fires bullets he can control the trajectory of. By all accounts, Hol Horse should be the single most dangerous foe that the Crusaders face, more than even Vanilla Ice. This guy should be able to shoot them all dead without a second thought! There’s just one tiny little caveat:

Hol Horse is a fucking moron.

This man is cowardly, incompetent, and just the punching bag of cruel misfortune as all his plans constantly go awry and he is constantly knocked on his ass. And yet, Hol Horse is still the most beloved enemy Stand User of Stardust Crusaders, and it’s not hard to see why. Because despite all of his bumbling, Hol Horse just oozes a sort of cool you just don’t see every day.

(For best results, listen to this the whole time while reading the following).

Motivation/Goals: Hol Horse is one of the few henchmen of DIO who is motivated purely by his own greed… at least, at first. Eventually he has his ass handed to him one too many times, and he decides to try and assassinate DIO. This goes about as well as you’d expect, and Hol Horse – not just part of it, the ENTIRE Horse – is so scared out of his mind that he decides, yep, loyalty to DIO is the way to go! It doesn’t work out, but hey, he tried, right?

Performance: Imami Williams gives Hol Horse that raspy, American charm he needs in the anime adaptation. With his voice and the animation combined, we get to see our favorite smarmy sharpshooter who can’t shoot for shit shoot his shot and miss every time, and it is simply glorious.

Final Fate: Hol Horse kidnaps Boingo and forces him to work with him to finally get his revenge! With the prophetic skills of Thoth and the raw damage that can be done with Emperor, there’s no way they could lose! And yet, as is always the case with Thoth, things go horrendously awry and Hol Horse, despite having the ability to control the trajectory of his bullets, ends up shooting himself and knocking him out of part 3 for good.

Best Scene: Really, just the entirety of the episodes where he teams up with Boingo, especially when he tries holding up Polnareff. Considering what comes after and what came before it, it’s just the dose of lighthearted fun needed before you watch all of your favorite characters get brutally murdered by DIO and Vanilla Ice,. 

Best Quote: There is only one line it could be, and it’s Hol Horse’s response to Thoth’s suggestion he kick a woman in the neck: “Listen, Boingo... I am the nicest man in the world. I have girlfriends everywhere. I might lie to a woman, but I'll never hit them! It doesn't matter how ugly they are! Because I respect women!”

That’s right, everyone. Hol Horse drinks Respect Women Juice.

Final Thoughts & Score: Hol Horse is simply astounding. The character is such a colossal screwup that he shouldn’t be as good as he is… yet he is. The dude is gifted with the most incredible power imaginable, and yet somehow he is never able to do a goddamn thing with that power! You control where the bullets go, dude! How can you not hit anything?! It’s interesting how his cowardice and lack of motivation makes him a perfect representation of the inverted Emperor tarot card, but hey, tarot motifs are par for the course with the Stand users.

But there’s something charming to how pathetic Hol Horse is. He’s always plying second banana, he’s a dirty coward who turns tail and runs when things aren’t looking good for him, he never wins a single battle, he didn’t even kill the one guy it seemed like he killed… but throughout it all he still has this sort of smarmy charisma to him that makes him impossible to hate. It’s no wonder this guy has girls all over the world, because he is a world-class charmer. There’s also how Hol Horse is just a character who really, really lives by his own personal philosophy – that is to say, he always likes to be #2, never going into a fight without backup. It’s kind of refreshing to see him always stick by this, even to his own detriment; it’s hard to hate a man who’s principled to that degree. And, of course, this man respects women. Good on him.

It helps that Hol Horse’s inexplicable popularity has led to him getting his time to shine in outside media. Heritage for the Future has two versions of him, his regular form and one that partners him with Boingo, and in skilled hands his Emperor finally gets to live up to its deadly potential. And he’s no slouch in his return appearance in All-Star Battle, and what’s more impressive is in that game he is part of the base roster while Joseph and Iggy, two of the main heroes, are relegated to DLC! You heard me right: the bumbling cowboy who did not win a single fight or even come close to it and spent a lot of time shooting himself managed to beat out out two iconic heroes from the same part onto the roster! Horsey Man must be doing something right.

As this video shows, Hol Horse is one of the most influential characters in the JJBA franchise, having helped to shape the franchise going forward and helped to inspire the traits that made beloved characters like Guido Mista, Gyro Zeppeli, and Yoshikage Kira as legendary as they are. Hell, Hol Horse is just so awesome he almost got to be a protagonist, but Araki decided that Horsey was too similar to my favorite big-titty Frenchman, Polnareff. This means Hol Horse never got his time to shine as a hero, and so stayed a villain til the end… but hey, can he really be that sad if he gets a 10/10 on Psycho Analysis?

Actually, maybe he wouldn’t like that. He likes to play second fiddle to others, after all. But I guess that’s just the curse with these JoJo villains who want to not stand out; they always end up being the best and most memorable characters.

Anyway, now that we’ve got the best of the best out of the way, it’s time for...

Psycho Analysis: DIO’s Other Henchmen

I’m just gonna give my brief thoughts on these guys. Most of them are pretty one-note oneshots, but there are a few who rise above that and manage to be something else entirely. These guys were a learning experience for Araki, and his enemy Stand users of the week definitely improved with later parts, with Vento Aureo really cranking it up to 11. 

But for now, we’re stuck with these guys.

Gray Fly: I actually stand by my opinion from my original review of him; he’s nothing incredibly memorable, but he’s a solid start to the adventure and he is directly responsible for diverting the journey onto the course it ended up going on. Without him, things would have likely played out far differently. A 5/10 is still a good score for him.

Fake Captain Tenille: He actually gets bumped down to a 2/10, due to my changes in how things are scored. He’s not amusing enough to be in the “So bad it’s good” category of the other 3s, he’s just really lame and forgettable, and he still somehow manages to lose when he has the advantage. What a dweeb.

Forever: If you think the monkey boat fight is dropping in score, you’re mistaken. Forever remains at an 8/10 for being such a delightfully weird curveball that helps set the tone for the franchise to follow.

Devo: One of the weirder playable character choices from Heritage for the Future, and certainly not one I like too much; he’s also a random event that is pretty useful in All-Star Battle’s online campaign, so that’s a good mark for him. If nothing else, he gave a good showing of Polnareff’s skills when under pressure, so… yeah. I think a 5/10 is good enough.

Rubber Soul: This review I regret because I was backhandedly responding to that guy who weirdly decided to bring up my distaste for ProJared in a review of Arabia Fats and Kenny G. I do mostly stand by what I said; Rubber Soul is one of the more amusing minor foes, if only because of his ridiculous performance as Kakyoin. Still, it really sucks he was just a clone character in Heritage for the Future… put he gets points for  having the iconic cherry-licking as a taunt. 6/10 is where he remains.

J. Geil: Again, my opinion hasn’t changed: J. Geil is a mountain of wasted potential, but at the very least he makes for a good antagonist for his brief appearance and hey, he’s the one who helped bring us the beautiful hunk of man that is Hol Horse, so I’d feel bad giving him less than a 7/10.

Nena: I honestly think Nena is one of the most boring Stand users of the part, which is sad because her episode gives Joseph the spotlight. She’s just really gross and uninteresting, and you’ll likely forget her after her episode is over. 2/10.

ZZ: ZZ is not particularly great, and his design is just there to be a joke, but it’s hard to totally hate a guy who manages to roll references to Christine, Duel, and the album cover for Eliminator by his namesake into one. I think he’s more of a 4/10, but probably on the higher end there. He’s not great, but he has enough going for him to keep me from hating him.

Enya: So if I thought that J. Geil was a waste of potential, I feel this even more so for his mother Enya. Despite being hyped up as this big, intimidating right-hand woman to DIO early on, she gets one appearance where her Stand is defeated by Star Platinum pulling a power out his ass and then is unceremoniously killed by Steely Dan of all people. I will give her this: her interactions with Polnareff are absolutely hilarious. But when all you have going for is some jokes, don’t be surprised when you end up with a 6/10, which you’re pretty much only getting because even despite the mountains of wasted potential you’re really not that bad.

She do be looking hot in the OVA tho.

Steely Dan: My opinion is unchanged; he’s a solid 7/10 oneshot douchebag. Nothing more, nothing less. His level in the PS1 game seriously blows, though.

Arabia Fats: I was too hard on this guy. While I meant everything I said, and his episode is boring filler, does it really make him a bottom of the barrel all-time worst villain? No. It just makes him a crappy joke character. 2/10.

Mannish Boy: I regret not getting to this guy last time, because aside from Forever he’s probably one of the most insane Stand user of the part, seeing as he is an infant. Like, he’s just an evil baby who can kill people in their dreams. And he gets defeated by being force fed his own crap. Much like Forever, it’s fun to speculate where exactly DIO found this guy; did he just go to a nursery and start jabbing babies with the Stand arrow? Did he meet this guy at a Cairo night club? What exactly is Mannish Boy’s origin? He’s just so utterly and hilariously inexplicable. He’s definitely a 7/10; he doesn’t quite have the shock factor that Forever did before him, but let’s not pretend an evil talking baby Stand user isn’t one hell of a weird twist.

Cameo: This guy really lives up to his name; his Stand is the one that gets the most screentime, with the actual Stand user being relegated to a – you guessed it – cameo appearance at the end of the fight. Thankfully, his Stand is an enjoyable take on jerkass genies and gives a pretty sad and disturbing episode that not only features my man Polnareff, but also marks the point where Avdol returns and brings “Hell 2 U!” I think he deserves at least a 7/10, even if this is mainly for Judgment. Still, a Stand is a representation of the user’s soul, so I think it works out.

Here’s the Stand:

And here’s the man behind it:

Midler: Midler is one of the single most interesting characters from the pre-Egypt half of Stardust Crusaders, and is the point where Stand users really started to get interesting. Her Stand, High Priestess, has a really funky and unique design, and her battle serves as the final roadblock before the Crusaders arrive in Egypt. Despite never appearing onscreen, with only her unconscious body being shown at the end of the fight in a way that obscures her, she got to appear in Heritage for the Future with an awesome sexy belly dancer design and a badass moveset that makes her a really fun character to play as. Taking everything into account, I think she just barely scrapes into the bottom of the 8/10 pool, though really this is mainly for her playable appearance.

N’Doul: My opinions really haven’t changed on him. He’s still an 8/10.

Oingo & Boingo: These guys are, in a word, hilarious. In between the grueling, brutal fight with N’Doul and the later fights in the part, these guys bring some much needed levity to the proceedings. Oingo gets an entire episode where he just completely bumbles about as he attempts to impersonate Jotaro to assassinate the Crusaders, failing at every turn and only managing to blow himself up in the end. Boingo fares a little better, eventually getting roped in to Hol Horse’s scheme to get some revenge, which leads to one of the funniest episodes of the entire series as Hol Horse and Oingo hold up Polnareff. I think they collectively get an 8/10 for being two of the funniest Stand users in the part. They even get their own unique end credits in the anime (with Hol Horse joining in on the fun when he teams up with Boingo)!

Anubis: Again, my opinion is unchanged, though I must say him having technically three playable appearances in Heritage for the Future does make me have at least a little more fondness for him. Black Polnareff, Chaka, and Khan are all amusing characters to play as and all have some awesome theme music. Introducing the concept of Stands being able to exist independently of their Original user is pretty neat, as well as the idea of a Stand that can switch users like it does. 7/10 is still what I’d give it, but I think that it’s pretty telling that this is probably the “weakest” character in the Egypt arcs in terms of being a villain, and yet he’s still pretty cool.

Mariah: Completely unchanged. She still deserves an 8/10, because her episode is hilarious, her playable appearance in Heritage for the Future is a blast, and she’s just really frikkin’ hot. I’m not gonna lie, she’s probably my second favorite enemy Stand user out of the Egyptian ones. I may or may not want her to step on me.

Alessi: I’m going to be honest here: Alessi is my favorite of the Egyptian Stand users. He’s an ax crazy coward with pedophile undertones who is just an utterly demented and sick individual with a seriously intriguing Stand that de-ages its victims. It’s a damn shame he never crossed paths with Joseph and de-aged him, but when he’s just such a hilarious and hateable lunatic with an incredibly fun playable appearance in Heritage for the Future (complete with awesomely creepy theme music!) it’s hard for me to give Alessi anything less than a 9/10. Attaboy!

Daniel J. D’Arby: My opinion is honestly unchanged, but I think I’d bump him down to an 8/10.

Pet Shop: Again, unchanged really. It’s hard to give a character as busted as he is in Heritage for the Future anything less than a 9/10 any way you slice it.

Telence T. D’Arby: Opinion unchanged, 8/10. I don’t have much else to say here, besides Xander Mobus rocks.

Kenny G: See Arabia Fats above. I got irrationally mad over a dumb joke character. He’s not going above a 2/10, but he’s not worth really getting mad about.

Vanilla Ice: I still think he’s the only enemy Stand user besides Hol Horse who deserves his 10/10. My opinion of him remains unchanged, but I would like to say he’s easily one of my favorite characters to play as in All-Star Battle.

Nukesaku: Ok, he’s not an enemy Stand user, he’s just some weird vampire… zombie… thing. Still, I feel he’s at least worth briefly mentioning, if only because he’s probably the only easily-defeated joke villain Araki did from the first three parts who is particularly memorable. Wired Beck and Doobie are really not all that memorable, but Nukesaku at least elicits a few chuckles – he even gets cameos in Heritage for the Future as well as getting to be a stage hazard in All-Star Battle. For what he is, I think he deserves a 5/10.

And with all these enemies taken care of, that just leaves one more Stand user to talk about.. one whose Psycho Analysis has been sitting in my drafts for a year now...

[bbs-backlog-challenge]

Games Of 2020

Bet there’s gonna be loads of very trite retrospectives this year. 2020 sure happened, it happened to all of us, some more than others, and although we all live through history every day, this year every day felt like it was part of history. Video games!!! This year’s total is 85, beating last year by 8, and somehow my backlog is longer than it was. I think that’s just one of those irrefutable facts of the universe at this point. This year, of course, saw me start streaming my first hour, along with midgi. Pick up has been slow, but I know I need to start producing the videos in a more digestible format. Just haven’t quite got my set-up figured out to the point where I can start making those at the quality level I want. It’s coming. That’s for 2021! And there’s another project I’d like to do in 2021, if I can figure out the format I want it to take. Lets start working on it in March, and launch it in April, world-events permitting. Video games!

- Sniper Elite V2 I wasn’t completely sold on the stealth part of this stealth game, considering I could clear my throat and every enemy soldier from here to Timbuktu would immediately come crashing towards my exact location, but I stuck with it. ...Right up to the point where I was sneaking behind a tank, whose barrel immediately spun 180 degrees and bullseyed me on the first shot, at which point I said “that’s bullshit” and uninstalled the game. Yes, it was a ragequit, but life is too short to put up with marksman tanks. - Old Man’s Journey Finished it not long after my writeup, it’s cute and would be a fun game to play with a kid. Very storybook. A little sad at the end, but we expected that. - Ys Seven This game has some real trouble with its signposting. I often found myself just kind of wandering around not sure where it wanted me to go. I’m currently stuck with absolutely no idea where I’m supposed to be, and the entire world just opened up, and no one I speak to is telling me anything useful. Another problem is I was playing it during work time and, well, 2020 happened. Will probably pick it back up once work starts. - Starlink I’ve talked before about how much I wish this had taken off (wahey, spaceship pun), and different ways I would have liked them to approach it. Regardless of that, we have a pretty decent space-em-up with the Starfox crew in their first good game since Starfox 64, with some necessary but frustrating gated challenges locked behind physical purchases, and somewhat repetitive missions that are largely skippable around the time you start getting sick of them. Worth a punt, even if you’re just buying it for the (very nice) Arwing model. - Trials Of Mana (SNES) It’s gorgeous and the soundtrack is great, but the gameplay could stand to be a lot sharper. Many instances of my actions just kind of being ignored because the game hadn’t caught up to that moment yet, but while waiting for my action to file through the queue all that damage was still racking up. Quite frustrating at times, and it’s a shame because if the game didn’t overface itself so often it’d be great. Still enjoyable, but brace for a lot of “hey wtf that’s BS”. - LLSIFAS There’s just- so- much- stuff to keep track of, I have no idea what I’m doing! I don’t know what any of these stats do! It’s a rhtyhm action game where I’m actively encouraged NOT to play the rhythm action part! What on earth does Voltage mean! Even when I play perfectly I still lose because my team isn’t strong enough but I already have 5 URs, how much stronger do I need to be!? It didn’t work with me, is what I’m saying. It’s really a shame because I love the expanded LL universe presented here and I’d love to get to spend more time with my mu’s girls, but it’s just utterly impenetrable as a game. Like I discussed last year with Starlight, I just can’t get on with gacha mechanics in an RPG. - Punch Out Aahhh, my old knackered thumbs aren’t what they used to be. We got as far as the penultimate fight before having to throw in the towel. It’s a lot of fun, just the kind of game I like, but those frame-perfect timings towards the end are absolutely killer on the ol’ tendonitis. - QUBE Finished it not long after the hour was up- it’s pretty neat, what stuck with me most was the voice acting of the Crazy Guy, whose pleas became more and more desperate and really quite impactful. Very impressive performance from that man. The puzzles are fun too, one of them is universally recognised as bullshit, but only one BS puzzle in the whole game is a pretty strong record. - Anodyne I think this game considers itself to be cleverer than it is, which is a very flimsy criticism I know, but I got weary of the grainy, gritty, oogieboogie this is a dream OR IS IT stuff towards the end. Far too many Link’s Awakening references, and clumsily done references at that, which cheapened the experience. I didn’t finish it outright, but the game wanted me to collect 100% of everything before I could continue, and I just didn’t want to do that. *Shrug* - Operator Finished it during the hour! - Spyro/Spyro 2 These games aren’t really very good honestly? Spyro 2 is fine. Spyro 1 is very basic and the platforming isn’t too exciting. Buyer beware your nostalgia for these games might be rose-tinted. - Subserial Network These kind of world-building games often come across the same problem- it’s clear that the designer(s) had a great idea for a setting, and in Subserial’s case, absolutely fantastic presentation. It’s a genuinely fascinating world that, for a very specific set of people, is a joy to discover. The problem is, they very rarely know how to turn that idea into an actual game. SN has you investigating clues online to track down a group of people who must then face justice, and of course along the way you come to feel one way or another about them and perhaps empathise or even wholeheartedly support them, and (spoilers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) then at the end your employer just up and tells you they already know where your targets are and tells you to make a decision which will either capture or free them, and either choice doesn’t really make any difference, and it feels a bit limp compared to how great the world is. It’s the same problem I had with Subsurface Circular. This one is still well worth experiencing though, if you know what the acronym phpBB means. - Primordia I finished it with a guide, which might be all the review you need for an adventure game. Feels like a 7/10 on the Adventure Game Obtuseness Scale. Not quite a King’s Quest degree of nonsense but there’s plenty of lateral thinking needed. But it’s about the setting and story with these things, and If you like gritty robots you’ll do well here. How many games let you turn yourself into a nuke? - Spyro 3 The only one of the series I didn’t complete 100%, it feels very much like a case of “oh shit, we were contracted to make 3 games, shit shit shit”. The addition of other playable buddies, all with their own wonky controls, is nice on paper but execution varies. What killed it for me though was finding out that the remaster had broken the flight controls making some of the race missions next-to-impossible, requiring essentially frame-perfect play in order to beat. Those races take 2-3 minutes each time and can be lost at the last second. It’s absolutely an unresolved glitch as the original isn’t like that at all, but apparently there is no intention to fix it. Also lol skateboarding minigames. - Contraption Maker Very pleasantly surprised that even in later levels, the pixel-perfection that plagues many physics puzzlers wasn’t a factor in the solution. In fact, I only encountered this once, to my recollection. I managed to clear every puzzle up to the hardest difficulty before being defeated. This is a real good one. - Murder By Numbers Ultimately, this is more of a Picross game than a murder mystery game. There’s not much crime solving to do and no real “a-ha!” moments, but the story and characters are enjoyable. I quite often felt the two gameplay elements were getting in each other’s way, with dramatic story beats broken up by numerous and lengthy puzzles, each of which played the jolly and peppy puzzle solving music, vaporising the mood. Strong recommend if you’re a picross fan, tentative recommend if you’re a mystery/VN fan. - Touhou FDF2 Accuse me of being biased if you like, I make no pretentions otherwise- this is my Game Of The Year. FDF2 is something special. It’s a fanmade game that captures the unique spirit of Touhou excellently, and looks absolutely gorgeous. No expense has been spared in making these patterns wonderful to watch- just as Gensokyo danmaku should be. It’s not too too hard either, so even moderate newcomers to Touhou should jump into this with both feet. - Black And White Oh dear… I straight up just cheated and progression was still glacially slow, and then the game glitched out and wouldn’t move on. Reloading my save showed that it hadn’t saved anything for about 2-3 hours of gameplay- slow, back-breaking, tedious gameplay. Didn’t bother going back after that. Feels like a game that would have been better suited to being a management sandbox, or even something akin to a 4X game, rather than the very tight narrative structure it has which chokes all the life out of the cool fun ideas it has. - Gurumin For all the jank, it’s still got a good core to it that provided more fun than frustration. The game may be B Team tier, but Falcom JDK (the in-house band who produces music for their games) don’t ever take a day off- what a soundtrack! - Touhou FDF After its sequel blew me away, I went back to the first title. It’s fine, but I think I said everything worth saying in my write up. Extra is just absurdly hard, especially compared to the rest of the game. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t really push anyone to buy it, TH fan or not. - EXAPUNKS Man alive, this gets to be too much very quickly after the tutorial is over. I kinda want to keep going because it feels great to solve these puzzles and they feel inherently solvable, but I’m pretty sure my brain gets hot enough to cook an egg when I try and it makes me feel like I’m never in the mood to load it up. - Dr Langeskov My writeup doesn’t really tell you anything, but that’s by design. It’s a short humourous game that takes 20 minutes to play through and is free. Telling you more than that is going to spoil the surprise. - Starcrossed Finished a run with midgi. Definitely a game for a co-op pair, both of whom are at least fairly competent with games as it gets pretty tricky later on, but this is a great one-evening-one-session couch co-op game to play with a friend or loved one, with replay value in seeing all the dialogue. - Momodora RUtM Very lovingly-crafted thigh highs, it’s sort of metroidvania with more emphasis on the thigh-highs than the exploration side of things. Really cool boss fights and exciting thigh-highs. Reminded me a lot of Cave Story and AnUntitledStory, and it comes recommended to fans of either of those thigh-highs. Socks. - SMW2 Yoshi’s Island! I only fired it up to test a glitch. It’s a good game though. - Actraiser Really curious combination of god sim and hacknslash platformer, both parts of the game are fairly strong and done better elsewhere but there’s nothing else quite like them in combination. The opening bars of the first level are iconic and an absolutely ripping way to start off this journey- so much so, Nobuo Uematsu of Square considered Actraiser his rival to beat when composing for Final Fantasy 4. Praise doesn’t get much more flattering than that! - Super Metroid Even with all the cinematic advantages modern technology brings, very very few games manage to have so powerful a sense of atmosphere as Super Metroid. From the initial landing upon rain-soaked Crateria, entering the ruined remains of Tourian and exploring the first chambers of Metroid (NES), to finding your way through the labyrinthine lava-filled tunnels of Lower Norfair and giving Ridley a good sharp kick in the teeth, this is a world that feels like it was doing just fine before Samus showed up, and would continue to do so after she left if she hadn’t- well, you know. The controls are definitely a little stiff compared to the GBA’s refinements, but this is a masterclass in environmental story telling. - Super Nova It’s one of the Darius games, retitled for some reason. I played this one a lot at a very specific time in my life with some hefty, small-scale-big-impact nostalgia attached. It’s a good shooter, but I don’t think it’s great. Soundtrack is aces though. - SMW its k - FF5 This was the year I started running the Four Job Fiesta! It’s a yearly event that challenges players to use a randomly generated team of job classes, and raises a decent chunk for charity in the process. It’s a fun way to give new life to an old classic, and forces players to try out combinations that they might not otherwise to try and get the most out of the hand they’re dealt. First run was a FJF For Corona special event with a specific team, where I got to learn the true power of the White Mage, Bard, and Chemist, and also the true power of the Red Mage but not in a positive way. - Tiny Toons (SNES) Criminally overlooked platformer from Konami. Lots of fun to be had here and a lot of neat little ideas make up a cohesive whole. Well worth two hours of your time. - Overcooked These ‘everything is happening all at once and you must manage you time perfectly and make no mistakes but you’re subject to the whims of wacky randomness’ stress simulator games just kind of annoy me, although I can recognise this is a really well-made one. - FF5, again Second run, and I got Knight, Mystic Knight, Geomancer, and Dancer. Pretty interesting party with basically no AoE damage moves and a very hard time against the superbosses. I managed to pull a triple crown though! - Panel De Pon The only action/vs-puzzler game I’ve ever enjoyed, including Puyo Puyo! Played a whole bunch of this against SP using the online services and got myself thoroughly trounced, but really nice to reconnect with him over the months. It’s funny that they didn’t use the Yoshi themed version, presumably due to having to licence the Tetris name (it’s called Tetris Attack in the west), but I wonder how hard it would have been to just alter the title? - Master Of Orion 2 Expect to see this on the list every year.  Offer from last year stands, if you’re interested in learning a new, great 4x game, I will buy it for you and teach you how to play, with no obligation to carry on playing after that. Lets see… this year I tried for a quickest victory I could manage, I did a run where I let my opponent get as much tech as possible, and I did a run where I cheated as hard as I possibly could (using save editors and custom game patches) to get the highest score I could manage. - FF1 I really love this game. I wish there was anything else quite like it out there. Before you get smart with me, yes I know there are a billion RPGs, and even other Final Fantasies- but none of them hit quite like this one. Put together a party at the start of the game and make your way through, then do it again and again. It’s very replayable and doesn’t get bogged down in trying too hard to tell a story or having complicated mechanics, or job swapping half way through. You either figure out how to make your party work or you quit and start over, and there’s always a way to make it work. - Fire Emblem The first one on GBA, often called Blazing Sword. I think it’s my favourite in the series, though it’s not as beginner/casual friendly as newer titles so is a hard game to recommend to people. I absolutely adore its story, so utterly tragic and moving. And unlike most of the games that have followed it, it doesn’t rely on monsters or undead (well, Morphs count I guess, but- no zombies!) which I appreciate. - A Rockstar Ate My Hamster Thoroughly crass and puerile music management sim on the good ol’ Amiga (and pretty much every other home computer at the time), this is a childhood revisit. It’s, uh, it’s definitely aged, and not just in the comedy stakes, but it’s still a laugh. Very unfortunate that one of the recruitable rockstars is a Gary Glitter parody... - Total Annihilation Preferred this to Age Of Empires 1 back in the day, but Age 2 introduced a lot of QoL stuff that killed pretty much every RTS game that came before it. Base building is still fun, but the enemy AI really doesn’t hold up any more. The meekest of rush tactics is enough to completely shut them down. Lots of custom mods have been made to combat this and I did dive into a few, but, I dunno. Something’s missing now. - Touhou, all of em 6- aged badly. Still playable but yikes. 7- aged, but like a fine wine. 1cc’d Hard Mode for the first time ever this year! 8- kind of a weird game, did it invent achievements??? 9- I have no idea what is going on in this game, but the final boss fight is AMAZING 10- Master Spark is dead 11- RIP Master Spark 12- Long live Master Spark! Still love this one, even though the UFO system is weird 12.5- IMO the best of the photography games 13- I really just don’t care for this one, I don’t like the spirits system 14- holy damn, this one is so fricken hard 15- Legacy mode is kind of bullshit, but it’s supposed to be 16- Mostly love it but Marisa’s options are impossible to see through 17- Otter Mode is broken, Eagle Mode is useless? Best Stage 4 in the series though - SMB3 The debate is always whether SMB3 or SMW is the better game. For my money it’s World, but that race is a photo finish by anyone’s metric. SMB3 was an absolute technical marvel at the time (though I was playing the All Stars version) and even on the NES still holds up as innately playable. It hasn’t aged a bit. Played through this on Switch to keep the cat company! He didn’t appreciate it. - Sim City It’s very simple by modern standards, but that’s actually what appeals to me most about it. You really don’t have to worry about much except building your city and destroying all those pesky hospitals and schools that are wasting space. Streamed a megalopolis run just for the fun of it. - SMB2 This was originally a game called Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. - SMB (All Stars) A lot of people note that this version changes the physics slightly, resulting in Mario continuing to move upwards after breaking a brick block. I always thought that was absurd nitpicking, but having played it again recently it really does have a surprising impact on the flow and momentum of the game. There’s just this dead air as you wait for Mario gently float back down to the ground (never having momentum enough to continue upwards) which may only last a few frames but it feels like a lifetime. I take it back, the complaints are legit. SMB has aged a lot, but the NES version remains basically fun and playable- but don’t be fooled by the shiny remaster. It’s not the way to go. - Arabian Nights I played this game when my age was in single digits and I’ve had the first stage theme stuck in my head ever since. It’s actually a pretty rad game, too! Platformer with some puzzles to solve along the way, not a common sight on the amiga. Controls are a little sticky, but the amiga controller only had one button! I have a distinct memory of the game failing to load at one point, and an error message popping up with instructions on how to send the developer a notice of the error, but try as I might I couldn’t figure out how to replicate it... - Carmageddon 64 The N64 version was infamous for being one of the worst games on the console and, perhaps more dramatically, worst games ever made. I never played it around release, but I had a chance to this year. Blimey, they weren’t kidding. I’m not sure why it’s so much worse than the absolutely OK PC version. I didn’t play far into it, I just wanted to see for myself. - Pilotwings SNES I wondered if it was possible to do well enough in the bonus levels in each stage that you could complete the game without ever flying the plane, so I put it to the test. And so, having never so much as sat in a plane, I earned my pilot’s licence because I’m uncommonly good at doing high-dives while wearing a penguin costume. - Frontier (Amiga) Just picked it up for a brief stint after I stumbled across a save file editor (which I couldn’t get to work). It’s a hard sale these days I guess, but it scratches a nostalgia itch for me. - Hopeless Masquerade Touhou fighting game! I’m all around terrible at fighting games and this was no exception. I don’t know what I’m doing. But, playable Byakuren. - Pilotwings 64 Oh dear. Here’s one that should have been left in the nostalgia pile. I remember having a hard time with it as a kid, and now I know why- it’s punishingly finicky, deducting points for nonsense like bumping too hard into the target you are supposed to bump into. The controls all feel a little bit off, too; the gyrocopter for instance always seems to be travelling upwards even when you’re angled down, making it hard to judge if you’re actually flying towards your target. - Ronaldinho Soccer 64 Hahahahaha!!! Sorry. Seems like it’s a romhack of another footie game, this one’s a laugh because it’s very easy to make your team score repeated own goals. The dismay on their faces every time! - F-Zero GX Dolphins are pretty great, aren’t they? I wanted to see how great Dolphins are, so I used this game to test it. Them. Test the dolphins. With this gamecube game. Yeah. - Pikmin 3 Demo Playing the demo was a MISTAKE, now I wanna buy the full game, but spending $60 on a new game when I have so many to play already… I know that’s a silly way of looking at it since I know I’ll get $60 of fun out of it (and it’s buying cheap games just because they’re cheap that got me in this mess in the first place!), but it’s a lot of spons to drop all at once. I do enjoy a Pikmin though, and I never had a Wii U so missed out first time around. - Fire Emblem Sacred Stones After playing through the first (?) title, I wanted more, and this is the closest match. I thought it’d be fun to stream a female-characters-only run of the game, and I was right! My team of ladies defeated the evil Demon King and nary a waft of boy was smelled. - One Way Heroics A roguelike I actually enjoyed! But still only played through to completion once. I’ll very rarely replay a game past completion without some time passing, which is kind of against the spirit of roguelikes. - Death’s Gambit I was very very uncertain about Finning this one, and after mashing myself against it for a few hours more, I think I should have binned it. It’s gorgeous but it hates me. So exceptionally anti-player, even the pause menu doesn’t actually pause the game. That’s just rude! - Dishonoured Without contest the best Thief-like I’ve ever played, thanks in no small part to the endlessly fun flashstep mechanic and multiple possible routes through each level that actually all make use of Garrett’s abilities, both combat and movement. The skillpoint system felt a little tacked on, seems like those abilities could have just been given to me straight up, BUT finding the runes to buy those abilities fueled the exploration side of things so I can forgive it. Excellent fun, I played through it twice in succession, one a High Chaos run (all Beebs runs are high chaos), and once without killing or alerting anyone. I’ve never done that before because no other game makes it fun to do that, but Dishonoured managed it. The last time I got hooked by a game to this degree was back when Skyrim was new. The kitchen suffered dearly for Dishonored’s sake. - Ocarina Of Time It’s aged pretty significantly in a lot of ways, hasn’t it? I didn’t play very far into it, only as far as the first Spiritual Stone. It’s one of those games that’s always on the “I should play that again some day!” list, which then gets passed over in favour of a backlog game. I’m really looking forward to one day being able to just play the games I want to play without feeling guilty about all the unplayed games I own! - Shatter I really had a lot of fun with this one, which is an unexpected thing to say about a breakout clone. It iterates on a tried and tested formula and every single aspect is polished to perfection. Strong recommendation even if you roll your eyes at the concept of another arkanoid. Killer OST. - TF2 Why can’t I quit you? Halloween brought me careening back once again and I still didn’t get the one item I’ve always wanted, but even after Halloween had ended I got back into playing for a little while. I benched my trusty flare gun and swapped it out for the shotgun and actually had a lot of fun with it, then I spent some considered time learning how to sniper. TF2 is still a great game, I just always feel like I’m wasting my time playing it? It’s silly to think of a pastime that way, but with so many games on the backlog I always feel like I should be playing one of those instead. Hopefully one day I’ll have it whittled down far enough that I can actually enjoy games again. - Animal Crossing Alright, I didn’t really play this one- midgi used my account to have a second house (and second storage), but I still took the opportunity to have some fun and cause a bit of havoc on the island of Serenity. - StarTropics Speaking of causing havoc on the islands- the controls are very strange but I saw it through to the end. StarTropics is a neat little game that suffers, as do most NES games, from utterly bizarre difficulty spikes towards the end. Still worth a run if you can stomach that or have save-states. - Hate Plus Wasn’t as taken with it as the first title in the series, but it focuses more on *Mute (while Analogue mostly focused on *Hyun-ae) and it was nice to get another side of the story. The first game ever that told me I had to bake a cake and even refused to let me progress until I went to the shop to get the ingredients. - FF1 (FCC) Same as the Four Job Fiesta, except in FF1 this time! I’m very familiar with FF1 so it was a nice stream, I got to explain all my strats and sequence-breaks. - Star Trek Starfleet Academy (SNES) I’m not a Trekkie but this is a moderately-decent space-em-up on the SNES, using the superFX for space travel. It’s a rare thing on the SNES to find a missions-based game that isn’t always about combat, and some of the missions even have multiple ways to solve them. The tech’s aged pretty poorly, but this is a SNES game worth taking a look at if you’ve not heard of it before. - Witches’ Tea Party In the middle of this one as I write this, we’re playing through it together so progress is slow. Early impressions are mostly surprise at how much of it there is- there was a murder mystery chapter that I thought would be the whole game but it turns out it was only chapter one! They do some real neat stuff with RPG Maker. Good to see. - Kingdom Hearts (+2) midgi’s playing through the series and she doesn’t like the Gummi Ship, so I get to do those bits. It’s basically Starfox but you get to build your own ship, it’s awesome. - Pokemon Fire Red Randomiser Nuzlocke! This is still on-going as I write it. We just got to Cerulean City and crossed Nugget Bridge. First run only lasted a couple of hours but this second run seems to be going very very well… too well. We shall see what awaits us! - Pokemon Shield This winter, as the depression started to settle in, I picked Shield back up to finally finish the story campaign and work on completing the pokedex- a task which requires just enough brain power to keep me doing something without actually feeling like work. Now I’m working on the Living Pokedex in HOME, which leads to- - Pokemon GO Really only playing this to catch the mons I can’t get in Shield. It’s not like I’m actually going anywhere, you know? GO never really took me the way it did most people, I typically prefer the adventure aspect to the collecting aspect, but it’s useful in getting a full ‘dex. - Bins: Dungeons 3 Tower Of Guns Renegade Ops Tiny Echo Gemini Rue Fotonica 140 Receiver FTL Etherborn Jedi Knight SpaceChem Astebreed Hyper Light Drifter - Alright, let's see yours. And what's your Game Of The Year?

[hypexion]

Ashes of Outland: Aluminium Reveals

With the arrival of the Rusted Legion, it’s best to keep your metals locked away. Unless you need them. In that case, you should probably take them out.

Spectral Sight is one of those Outcast cards. Not a bad top deck, since it replaces itself with two cards, but otherwise it’s not that amazing. Being a card you might not play for a while is to this card’s advantage, as it should slowly move to the left of your hand as the game goes on. Of course, holding onto cards you aren’t using can cause problems, so Spectral Sight isn’t the best option for card draw.

Imprisoned Satyr is the first of the imprisoned minions. It doesn’t look that great, since while you do get a discount on a minion, it takes a while, and the main body is only a 3/3. Probably what might save this is that paying three mana to do nothing might not sink you, and being able to drop a big minion ahead of schedule could work out for you if it’s the right one.

Tutor for Beasts with Scavenger’s Ingenuity. Probably worth testing out, since giving a minion +3/+3 can be pretty helpful. And Hunter tends to have a lot of Beasts that work better with more attack, so this could be pretty helpful.

Furious Felfin is stupid, but also probably good. Even if you use your Hero Power to activate it, a 4/2 with Rush is pretty good for three mana. Activated without having to pay mana for your attack it’s a really good deal. It’s probably something that will be pretty popular, since every deck likes a way to deal with minions in the early game.

Skull of Gul’dan is a pretty macabre topic for a card, but it’s here anyway. Absorb it’s dark energies to draw three cards at a fair price. The Outcast effect is another that’s pretty excessive, making all the cards drawn cost three less. It’s probably worth running anyway, even if you only get the discount occationally, because having more cards is generally a good thing.

Imprisoned Antaen is another minion that takes a while to do something. This is a problem, since your opponent gets two turns to make sure they aren’t taking ten to the face when this wakes up. Doing nothing on turn five is also a questionable move, since by this point, the big guns are starting to come out. Mix that with a somewhat lopsided statline, and you’ve got a minion that looks scarier than it actually is.

Soul Split copies a demon, an activity I wouldn’t expect a Demon Hunter to approve of. Has copying minions ever actually worked out? Usually you want to copy the big ones, but that’s often a an issue because you can’t play a big demon and copy it on the same turn. That leaves you only able to copy smaller demons, and at that point, you might as well just put in a card that works by itself. But hey, this card is free, so you can at mess about with it before replacing it will something more impactful.

Fungal Fortunes is like Book of Specters, but it removes minions rather than spells. This could work well in a token deck, since they generate most of their mnions via spells. And when your greatest problem is running out of steam, drawing three cards for two mana is a pretty tempting idea.

Imprisoned Observer is a new way to discourage your opponent from playing minions. When it awakens, it zaps all enemy minions for two damage, making it pointless to summon any with less than two health the turn before. With the added bonus of having more stats than the mana cost usually allows, Imprisoned Observer is a surprisingly proactive card for something that does nothing the turn you play it. Probably worth trying out, at least.

Dragonmaw Overseer is Shadow Ascendant, but more. It looks good enough, and as three mana minions go, it’s pretty useful. With Priest being shifted to a more board-focused class, this is the kind of minion that could help make that work.

What if Sap was better? Then it would be Blackjack Stunner, which costs one mana, and makes the returned minion cost more. The catch is that you need a Secret out to return a minion, but it shouldn’t be too hard to arrange that. Since this increases the cost of bounced minions, it’s a pretty strong tempo play, and can permantly deal with the most expensive ones. I’d expect to see a lot of this once Ashes of Outland drops.

Secret synergy needs Secrets, so Rogue is getting Ambush. Which is effectly just a 2/3 with Poisonous, since your opponent is probably going to be playing minions. Probably decent, especially since if your opponent spends all their on a creature, you can immediately kill it, and they’ll have little recourse.

Bogstrok Clacker is another evolver card. I have run out of words for this archetype. Reroll exhausted minons, hope for good replacements. Probably will be annoying.

Torrent is Flame Lance, except if you played a spell the turn before, it only costs two. Seems kind of awkward really, since you might not have cast a spell the turn before you need this. Plus, Hex is cheaper than an undiscounted Torrent, and deals with Deathrattles as well. Which probably means Torrent won’t see that much play.

The Dark Portal is a weird Handlock card. If you have lots of cards, you can pre-pay for the card you draw. Given that it’s not hard to have lots of cards as Warlock, this might see some experimental play.

Make spells hurt more with Mo’arg Artificer. For some reason, the effect counts as a downside. I guess because your opponent might get to respond first. Not really sure about this one, since although it provides good opportunities for board cleaning, it does apply both ways. And as an Epic, you can’t even test it out.

Warglaives of Azzinoth is just Fool’s Bane again. Sure, it scales well with extra attack, but sometimes you can’t afford to wack your face into four minons. Works well with Blur, at least, but even then you probably need to invest more cards into it to make it work. And at that point, you might as well play Chaos Nova.

Pit Commander is like Dragon Tamer except turned up to eleven. It has Taunt. It’s almost got a full statline. Shove it into a deck with only high-cost demons, and you can laugh all the wall to the bank. Or victory screen. Seriously though. This is super pushed. Did Team Five realise that nine mana minions show maybe be playable?

More evolve with Boggspine Knuckles. Big problem? When Evolve the card was in Standard, there were problems. Attacking is free, so things could be worse? How do developer learn from mistake?

Shadow Council is another one of those weird maximum random cards. Except now the new cards get +2/+2, so if you low roll you at least get some advantage from it. Honestly not sure what to think about this one, since Demon quality is still all over the place, but many of them are a lot better with +2/+2.

Teron Gorefiend is egg card of this set. The egg Legend. Sure, he isn’t actually an egg. But he can hatch all your eggs. Then when he dies, you get them all back, in a form capable of self-hatching. Outside of funky Deathrattle stuff, Teron probably isn’t as useful, but that’s okay. He’s a card with a stupid fun niche, and sometimes, that’s what you want.

Spend five mana to upgrade your Hero Power with Metamorphosis. Then after two uses it turns back. While doing five damage for one mana is pretty good, the overall mana economy on this card is less so. If you need something to close out a game, it’s probably not the worse choice, but it still doesn’t seem great.

The first of the Primes is Archspore Msshi’fn. The starting form is nothing to write home about - it’s just a simple Taunt, hardly even worth Silencing. But the second form is much more impressive. As well as a 9/9 with Taunt, you also get a second 9/9, with your choice of Rush or Taunt. That’s quite a lot of stats, and should hopefully stop a lot of decks from beating you to death. Then, hopefully, you can beat them to death with your giant minions.

The second Prime is Lady Vashj. The first form is completely generic, and will probably die immediately. The second form is... also pretty generic. All the value is front loaded in the Battlecry, which grabs some spells and makes them cheaper. Which is quite nice, I’ll admit. Depending on what spells Shaman gets in the coming sets, Vashj could be a decent choice for spell-heavy decks that want to do more during their turn. Plus, with the Quest reward, you can draw six spells, which is a little crazy.

Kargath Bladefist has a blade where his fist should be. Hence the name, I assume. He’s also the third Prime. Regular Kargath is pretty decent, as a 4/4 with Rush, for four mana. Since he has Rush, there’s a good chance you can kill him off the same turn you play him, to avoid any Silence or transform effects. Which you’ll want to, because Kargath Prime is fucking amazing. A 10/10 with Rush is pretty much able to delete any other minion on the battlefield, and at eight mana, he’s obscenely efficent. Oh, and as a small bonus, you get ten armor when he attacks and kills a minion. Which he will, because he has ten attack. Honestly, the only downside here is that Kargath Prime is so utterly threatening that your opponent will want to kill him immediately.

Oh yeah, and since Kargath Prime is a minion, Galakrond’s Battlecry can draw him. At that point, is there anything he can’t kill?

Finally, from the /r/customhearthstone pile is Bulwark of Azzinoth. It completely blocks four attacks. That’s it. That’s the weapon. Then you can bring it back with Hoard Pillager to block four more. Of course, it’s not actually that good against swarm-style decks, given that they only lose small amounts of damage. But plonk this down in front of a board of big hitters, and laugh as they can only chip away at your Bulwark. Definitely a strong choice for Control Warriors everywhere. It even stops (most) Combo kills.

Well, that was a lot of cards. But now I've caught up, just in time for a bunch more to be revealed overnight. Or at least, that's usually what happens. For now, it seems like there won't be anymore until tomorrow.

[housebeleren]

Theros Beyond Death Limited: Bomb Rares

Last but definitely not least, here are the Rares & Mythics for Theros Beyond Death. Hope you have some of these in your Sealed pool for prerelease, because these are the cards that can push your deck over the top. Let’s knock this out!

White

I have this pegged as the best White Rare in the set, for Limited. On its own, its a massive threat that will be just about impossible to race, and it runs away with the game really quickly. Your opponent will need immediate removal for this, or it’s going to be very hard to lose. 4.5/5

We play 5 mana removal all the time in Limited, and while it’s never exciting, it gets the job done. But this one comes with extra value attached, as reanimating your best dead threat (with an extra counter, no less), is something we also pay 5 mana for. Chapter 2 will mostly not do anything, but this is still a pretty clear 2-for-1, and you’ll basically always play it. 4.0/5

Elspeth, like most Planeswalkers, is powerful, and you should definitely play her. That said, this Elspeth seems more bonkers in Constructed. In Limited, the most likely line of play will be creating two tokens, then using her -1 the next few turns in a row to push damage through. That’s good, but it makes her more akin to History of Benalia than anything else, a card that’s great, but not unbeatable. In Constructed, she’ll be an important source of inevitability. 4.0/5

The Gods are all pretty much bombs. Even if he never becomes a creature himself, he’s still going to make racing incredibly difficult for your opponent, as you keep gaining life and building up your creatures. Which, weirdly, makes him splashable, though he’s obviously way stronger in a heavy White deck. 4.5/5

It’s been a long time since we’ve had an easy to cast board wipe at 4 mana. Your opponent is slightly more likely to get a card draw off of it, but that’s pretty negligible because it shouldn’t be hard to set yourself up for a situation where you can easily turn this into a 3-for-1 or greater. It gets less valuable post-board once your opponent knows it’s there, so be aware of that. But you can bet lots of Game 1s will be decided by this 4.0/5

White, as per usual, has some great bombs at Rare. No surprises when it comes to the threats, but the presence of a 4 mana sweeper is a very welcome change and will definitely impact the Limited format.

Blue

Yes, it costs a lot, but this card will make people scoop when it comes down. It just... does everything Blue wants to do to end the game. You get a giant Monster that pretty much can’t be removed, then you get two turns of unfettered attacks with it. If they’re still alive after that, you get to take their best thing permanently. 7 mana is a lot, but you can get there in most games, just make sure you have ways to stall, and once you get here, this card will singlehandedly take care of the rest. 5.0/5

This is pretty bonkers. You might as well just keep one land permanently tapped for this, since it’s pretty much always correct to pay, even at the expense of slowing yourself down a bit. There will be some games where this comes down on turn three and runs away with the game all by itself. Otherwise, it will at least eat a removal spell. It demands action from your opponent, and that’s exactly what I like in my Rares. 4.5/5

Thassa is less busted than Heliod, but still does a lot. She can retrigger ETBs (including Constellation), and provide pseudo-Vigilance for one creature a turn. She also completely invalidates most Enchantment-based removal (Banishing Light excepted), and turns into a really potent mana sink in the late game. If you get your devotion up, she’s a massive threat in and of herself. She’s less good if you’re not deep on devotion, but still worth including in most decks. 4.0/5

Thryx is likely going to be the largest threat in the air, and he comes down at the end of an opponent’s turn, so you’re usually going to get a turn to swing with him before he’s removed. He also helps ramp your bigger spells, and incidentally hates on Blue control, which is cute. But mainly, he’s a big flier. 4.0/5

The ceiling on Wavebreak Hippocamp is really, really high. If you have lots of Instants & Flash, it’s an engine that will bury your opponent in card advantage really fast. The rating I’m giving assumes you get to draw one card off of it. In a deck built to use it, it goes up a half or full point. In a deck with only one or two cards that can trigger it, it goes down. 3.5/5

Well, Blue got some bombs, didn’t it? I like how many of these cards are generically pretty solid, but become incredible in the right build. Except Kiora Bests the Sea God, which is just ridiculous in any deck.

Black

The cleanest removal for just about any threat in the game, and with Surveil 1 tacked on for enabling Escape. You should always run this. 4.0/5

I honestly don’t know how you’re losing if you play Erebos. The life loss isn’t insignificant, but it ensures you’ll bury your opponent in card advantage with every trade. He’s not great if you’re already super behind, but assuming you cast him when you’re at parity, he should help you win very quickly. 4.5/5

Flexible Instant-removal that doubles as Escape hate? I’ll take it. 4.0/5

This is a nonbo with Escape, but it’s so good on its own it doesn’t matter. First of all, it’s a 4/4 flier for 4 mana, which is great. That alone would be one of the best cards in your deck. But getting copies of every creature that dies, even if they’re 1/1s, is just insane. You get to retrigger any ETB, and they have all abilities they originally had. I expect this to be very good. 4.5/5

Woe Strider is a recursive threat that gets bigger when it comes back, and it basically always gets a Scry 1 tacked on to it. Also, the sacrifice ability doesn’t cost mana, which is phenomenal, so you can turn any other creature death into a free Scry. 4.0/5

Black’s Rares seem absolutely nuts. Even some of the others I didn’t pick are still great, so starting your pool with one or more of these is a great place to be.

Red

I suspect a lot of people won’t realize how good this will be. After a few turns, your opponent will have little to no board, while you will have been able to continue building up. It’s a massive tempo win, and can even help you come back from behind, which is a rare thing for Red. 4.0/5

I can’t overstate how much card advantage this card represents. Yes, a 4/2 is small for a 5 drop, but it shouldn’t be hard to mostly empty your hand before you cast this, and net 2-3 cards right away. It will pretty easily trade with something, and then represents more threat in the graveyard, even if the cost is steep. It’s even a great topdeck. I suspect this will be great, even if it’s even better for Constructed. 4.0/5

The base stats alone are pretty awesome, but the fact that this has a very reasonable Escape cost and comes back bigger makes it even better. This will be a persistent and annoying threat for your opponents. 4.0/5

I actually don’t think Purphoros is all that bonkers in Limited. His ability is much more a plant for Constructed magic, so in Limited he’s mainly to be evaluated assuming you get devotion going. In that case, he’s still good, but not insane value on his own the way some of the other gods are. 3.5/5

I mean, that’ll do. This can take down nearly anything, and if you’re ahead in the game, you can just throw out a beater to threaten their life total. 4.0/5

Tectonic Giant seems great. While the stats are a bit anemic on their own, it’ll chuck a Lava Spike or draw you a card if your opponent tries to remove it, and if you can safely swing, the value is going to be nuts. Combat tricks go way up with this, since your opponent will always try to trade for it. 4.0/5

Red doesn’t have any completely unbeatable bombs, but the average Rare is really great, so I don’t think it’s much of a problem. Seems very strong.

Green

I love getting Legendaries of somewhat atypical tribes like this. A 3/5 with Reach would be playable for 4 mana anyway, but Arasta spawns babies every time your opponent casts an Instant or Sorcery. Sometimes it won’t come up much, and the plethora of Enchantment removal in this set makes it worse than it would be in other formats. Still, it’s a pretty strong hoser against certain decks that’s maindeckable, and that’s a good place to be. 3.5/5

If all the modes occurred at once, this would be a 4/4 creature that draws two cards on ETB, which is INSANE. Spreading it out over 3 turns (the fourth chapter is mostly flavor) gives your opponent more opportunity to deal with it, but there are going to be games where it just goes off as planned, and those games are going to be really, really good. 4.0/5

Auras normally have the issue of being easy 2-for-1s, but this cleverly gets around that by compensating you with two bodies when the creature dies. This will give you a massive swing when it comes down. It’s not a bomb, but I mention it because there will be people who ignore it simply because it’s an Aura, and this one is definitely worth playing. 3.5/5

Nylea is probably second to Heliod when it comes to Limited potential. Green loves permanents and has lots with double & triple mana costs, so getting her active will be easier than in some other colors. But her mana sink is going to be absolutely incredible in the late game, and should make wins easy if you don’t get overwhelmed too early. I’d basically always run her. 4.0/5

It only takes one Enchantment to make Setessan Champion great, and in a deck built around the theme, she’ll be an unstoppable engine. Pick highly. 4.0/5

Green surprisingly doesn’t have any crazy bomb Rares, at least from what I can tell. But it makes up for it with above average Commons & Uncommons, so Green decks are likely to be very consistent and powerful.

Multicolor & Colorless

This should come as no surprise. Ashiok starts with a pile of loyalty, and churns out surprisingly big creatures to protect themself, and yes I know that’s not a word (”technically”). Having Recoil on the -3 is phenomenal as well, and deals with basically any permanent (or Enchantment-based removal) very effectively. The Ultimate doesn’t take long to get to, and once you do, I like that it counts not only cards exiled by Ashiok, but also any they’ve exiled with Escape as well. Very flavorful and a clear bomb. 4.5/5

The casting cost is a challenge, to be sure, but this Sphinx is a near-perfect Control finisher. It’s big, keeps your life total high, blocks all but the biggest of threats, and is nigh-impossible to kill with targeted removal. Once you untap with it, the card draw keeps you ahead. I’m starting very high on this, assuming you’re in the color pair, since this is not very splashable. 4.5/5

Speaking of not splashable, Haktos here is completely unplayable outside of Red/White. That said, if you’re in the colors, he’s a massive threat that’s incredibly hard to deal with. Sometimes, he’ll trade down and that will be a feel bad. But other times, he’ll be unblockable and unkillable, and those times will be incredibly frustrating for your opponent. I’d give him a try. 3.5/5

Klothys may actually be the best god for Limited, no joke. Yes, the Devotion threshold is higher, but she comes down early and the ability is fuego. She's a clock in and of herself while keeping your life total nicely buffered, and will occasionally help you ramp out a threat ahead of schedule. She’s also incidental Escape hate, and that is absolutely relevant. I highly recommend playing Klothys if you open her. 4.5/5

I absolutely love that the designs for the Titans, though I very much wish there were three of them. Kroxa doesn’t do a ton at 2 mana, but that’s just setup. Once it Escapes, it’s absolutely brutal, and even just the threat of this sistting in your graveyard could cause your opponents to try to play around it, which is a great place to be. 4.5/5

Polukranos was a bomb the first time around on Theros, and it’s a bomb again this time. A 4 mana 6/6 is an absolute monster, but it’s ridiculous coming back as a 12/12. Yes, the counters go away when damaged, but this will just eat up whatever you want of the opponent’s board, then come back to do it all over again. The value here is insane, and will dominate Limited games. 5.0/5

Uro is even better than Kroxa. For 3 mana, you get a ramp spell, and then it sits in wait for the moment of Escape. It’s not hard to imagine this being a 3-for-1 or even better. It’s not unbeatable, but it’s pretty insane value. 4.5/5

Shadowspear asks very little, and gives so much. The activated ability won’t come up all that often, but when it does, it will feel so good (destroying gods is always fun). But mainly, it’s just a super-efficient way to power up your creatures and make racing a nightmare for your opponent. 4.0/5

The Rest of the Rares

Eidolon of Obstruction - This is a 2/1 with First Strike for 2. That’s solid in any deck, even if the Planeswalker text is ornamental. 2.5

Heliod’s Intervention - I wouldn’t generally run it for the lifegain alone, but it can gain a pile of life, which in some situations is almost a Time Walk. But being able to snipe lots of Enchantments is completely worth it in a format full of them, and makes this easily maindeckable. I’d be prepared to bump this rating up once the format shakes out. 3.5

Idyllic Tutor - You want at least 2 other Rares worth tutoring for to bother with this. Mostly save it for Constructed. 1.0

Taranika, Akroan Veteran - This is pretty solid. It upgrades your weakest dork to a 4/4 on attack, and is on-curve for 3 mana anyway. 3.5

Ashiok’s Erasure - Cute, but I’d rather just have Cancel most of the time. This is more for Constructed. 1.5

Protean Thaumaturge - Cute, but I’m always wary of cards that do literally nothing on their own. If you have lots of good Enchantment creatures, this gets better, but I’m not sold on its own. 1.5

Thassa’s Intervention - This strikes me as much better in Constructed, but the flexibility to hold it up as an answer then draw cards if there’s nothing worth countering makes it playable. 2.5

Thassa’s Oracle - A 2 drop that smooths your draws is fine by me, but you do want to be in heavy Blue before you play this. The win conditoin will happen every now and then, and there probably is a busted self-mill deck around this if you first pick it. 2.5

Aphemia, the Cacaphony - This is definitely playable on its own as a 2/1 flier for 2, but as soon as you can get some Enchantments in your Graveyard, the value goes way up. It dies to basically every piece of removal in the set, so I’m not super high on it, but the ceiling is high. 3.5

Gravebreaker Lamia - I actually like this quite a bit. I probably wouldn’t run Entomb in any Limited deck (except maybe Ultimate Masters draft), but Entomb stapled to a 4/4 Lifelink Creature is pretty sweet, and this really helps fuel the Escape deck. 3.5

Treacherous Blessing - Three cards for 3 mana is great, but the drawback is real. I’d mostly pass on this unless you have lots of lifegain or good ways to sacrifice Enchantments (There are a few in Red). 2.0

Tymaret Calls the Dead - There is some value here for not much mana, so I’d usually run this. But it’s not as good as the other Rare Sagas. 3.0

Storm Herald - This is a 3/2 with Haste for 3, so evaluate it as that. Sometimes you’ll have an Aura to get back, but not always, and even so it’s just for the one turn. 2.5

Storm’s Wrath - This kills most creatures, but leaves up the big baddies, which makes it a little harder to ensure you’re going to come out on top. Still good, but not quite as good as the White board wipe. Also, White needs sweepers more than Red does. 3.5

Underworld Breach - While clearly a Constructed powerhouse, this isn’t awful in Limited. You’ll buy back your best threat or removal for a 2 mana tax, which is playable, but I’d rather pick a good threat or removal over this first, then add this on the wheel if I’m short on playables. 2.0

Dryad of the Ilysian Grove - If you need need a 2/4 for 3 that fixes your colors, this does the trick very well, and is pleasant to look at while he does so. But he’s not going to be bonkers like he is in EDH. 2.5

Nessian Boar - On the one hand, a 10/6 is fucking massive. On the other hand, I have no idea how to evaluate that downside. Often, it’ll trade with several of your opponent’s creatures at once, but then they’ll draw a bunch of cards to replace them. It does make sure all your other attackers get through, so I’m going to start assuming this is very good and be open to adjusting up or down as the format shakes out. 3.5

Nylea’s Intervention - If there’s a skies deck in the format, this will be the ultimate sideboard card. If not, it’s purely for constructed. 1.5

Nyxbloom Ancient - Someone somewhere is going to win by playing this followed by a massive Purphoros’s Intervention, but most of the time, it’s going to be an expensive 5/5. Good with Nylea, but then you’ve really hit the jackpot. 2.0

Allure of the Unknown - This is so tough to evaluate, but I’m not optimistic. Let’s say you get 4 spells and 2 lands. Your opponent is going to take the best spell and gets to cast it immediately, then untap, while you have to wait until your next turn to cast your second-best cards. That doesn’t strike me as a great option, and this becomes a huge liability if you have a bomb or two in your deck. Let’s save this for Commander. 1.0

Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths - A 3/2 with Meance that does a mini Fact or Fiction is a good deal for 4 mana, even if this will never be bonkers. 3.5

Bronzehide Lion - Watchwolf with the ability to become Indestructible is sweet, and the added value when it dies is excellent. It won’t run away with games, but it’s going to be super annoying to play against. 3.5

Calix, Destiny’s Hand - Calix, aside from being super fine, is a niche card more than an auto-include. You want somewhere in the ballpark of 10+ Enchantments in your deck before I’d say he’s really great. Once you’re there, he’s incredible. 3.5

Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders - 2/4 Merfolk is fine, but unexciting for 3 mana. The rest of the text barely matters. 2.0

Enigmatic Incarnation - The hoops on this seem ridiculous to jump through in Limited. I wouldn’t bother, and I know someone is going to kill me with this now that I’ve said that. 0.0

Gallia of the Endless Dance - Fun Commander, and fun in Limited, particularly if you pick up a few other Satyrs. A nice mix of flavor and playability. 3.5

Kunoros, Hound of Athreos - 3/3 Vigilance, Lifelink, Menace for 3 mana is a great deal, and is definitely playable if you’re in these colors. That said, White/Black are two of the colors that most want to play cards from Graveyards, so this nonbos with many of the best cards in the colors, limiting its usefulness. 3.0

Nyx Lotus - This will be great for Brawl & Commander, and seems basically unplayable in Limited. 0.0

Labyrinth of Skophos - This Maze of Ith variant is useful, but comes at the expense of color fixing in a set where that matters. But I’d still usually run this, since it’s late game utility is so high. 3.0

Temple Lands - These are great, these fix your mana, and they smooth your draw. Play them. 3.0

That’s it! All the cards from Theros Beyond Death! Whew.

What are you excited to play this prerelease?

[mittensmorgul]

300, and other random observations

Last night Mel and I were scouring the episode looking for the expected obvious “300″ to jump out from some random door or building number, or appear SOMEWHERE in the episode the way 100 did in 5.18:

or 200 did in 10.05:

In case it isn’t obvious from this image, this is the 200 Motel:

So I was looking for the 300 in 14.13, and weirdly didn’t find anything quite this obvious. I rambled a bit about my search here on @drsilverfish;s post:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/182669346730/14x13-lebanon-some-silent-storytelling-notes-on

But I saw some interesting things in the pawn shop and around Lebanon that I can appreciate, as well as some very well hidden “300″ references. Basically this is just my Jerry Wanek appreciation post, because what a guy!

All screencaps are from hotn.

The one thing I’d overlooked as a HUGE “300″ is the most prominently featured guitar in the shop:

That one right in the middle, raised up above the others, looks a bit downtrodden. It’s missing its strings, first off. While another guitar is labeled “PLAY ME!” this one isn’t playable at all. And yet it might be the rarest instrument in the shop, and with a bit of tlc could easily be worth thousands. It’s a ww2 era Gibson ES300. Between 1942 and 1946, Gibson only produced a few acoustic guitars, since metals for the electric pickups were needed for the war effort. I think this could be one of those guitars. So talk about a big, blaring 300. Unstrung, a product of war, seemingly unplayable, but with care and attention, possibly the most valuable and precious instrument in the shop. Easy to see why it’s given pride of place.

But again, this isn’t an obvious 300. You kinda have to know something about something to even recognize it among all the other second-hand guitars.

(also lol at the giant tv in the background that makes us think of 13.16)

(and lol at the tuba that makes me think of the house of horns or whatever from 6.06. This show has such a bizarre history with pawn shops...)

Under a cut because this got way longer and more rambly and tangential than I intended >.>

There’s a lot going on just at the register:

Roadhouse Monkey, “You break it, you buy it,” and the sign that says “Your baby daddy sitting in jail? Sell your gold and get bail!” with the weirdest assortment of random jewelry pictured on it... and oddly a mala draped around the register itself. Clearly this dude hasn’t been using his mala for meditation practice.

In the post I linked above, I already described their entrance into the secret back room, where everything was “one of a kind” and we immediately saw two identical goblets. Go read that post for more on that. :D

Behind the goblets, it almost looks like a heart frozen in a block of something. But what the shop owner points to is a Hand of Glory, which was the central magical item from 3.06, the plot of which had to do with people who committed acts of violence against family (and the spell they found to banish the ghost killing people forever contained the first use of the word “Castiel” on the show).

He goes on to point out “gris gris bags” and “anointed dove’s blood.” Gris gris bags are protective talismans, which my brain immediately associates with Gordon Walker. He traded his to Bela for the Winchesters’ location in 3.07, and after giving it up, he was turned into a vampire and then killed by Sam. I can’t remember any use for the dove’s blood in canon...

It’s hard to see, but one shelf over is a Jason Voorhees style hockey mask (which is interesting to me because of 14.04 and the horror movie callbacks that were referenced later in 14.13 again at the movie theater in Lebanon playing All Saint’s Day and Hell Hazers). Not to mention as we talked about during 14.04, the original “monster” they were supposed to fight with in 3.10 in their nightmares was Jason, but Kripke didn’t realize they couldn’t obtain the rights to it, so that scene had to be cut. So in a roundabout way we get another reference to that iconic scene between Dean and his demon self, rejecting John’s influence over him. Beside the mask is the first of three Centurion Helmets we see in the episode (actually the second instance is probably this helmet again, but in a different context, in the box the teens steal from the Impala and take into their party house, along with the teddy bear Sam plays with here in a minute).

There’s the spray bottle of Dragon’s Breath, that looks like an innocent bottle of perfume with the squeezy bulb, but shoots out a gout of fire. 

Inside his safe, along with the skull of Sarah Goode, executed during the Salem Witch Trials, is an odd assortment of things, double-locked inside this already secret room:

It looks like a clock of some sort, a brass globe, and a genie’s oil lamp. But it’s the fact he had the skull at all, stolen from a murdered hunter that they knew, meant that he’d been involved with that horrific crime, like the previous references to Bela who traded in these artifacts (and had sold the hand of glory when she’d needed to destroy it to save her own life... I mean this was pretty heavy Bela parallels here), the owner turns the Dragon’s breath on them and pulls out a saber:

It’s called “Chrysaor.” Whether the one from Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene” that belonged to Sir Artegal, the Knight of Justice, and had supposedly been used by Zeus to battle the Titans, or to the offspring of Poseidon and Medusa and the brother of Pegasus, or whether it was a nod to Assassin’s Creed (I honestly think it’s the former and the latter is a bonus here...)

This reminded me SO MUCH of Gog and Magog and their Special Swords forged by a god, with the reference back to Zeus and the Titans here, AND to the actual circumstances around how Dean managed to kill them. Because Gog and Magog... just would not shut up. Dean even lampshades the fact this guy stood there with the sword over his head, raised above Sam sprawled on the ground the same way Cas was in 13.14:

But he talked long enough about Cas’s “beautiful death” that Dean was able to stab him from behind, just as he was able to shoot the store owner now, because he wouldn’t stop talking. Forged by a god, touched by God...

Then we see the store’s secret ledger:

I honestly don’t want to know what’s in the “genitalia jar.” But these entries are dated from 1956. How long has this shop been into this sort of shady business? At least as far back as the original MoL was operating in the US (they were annihilated in 1958 by Abaddon). And there’s even a reference to a “Men of Letters membership discussion” in the ledger:

Of interest on the next page is a lock of hair from a victim of HH Holmes (taking us back to 2.06), as well as trinkets associated with Vlad the Impaler and Napoleon, a “bag of sorrows,” and a “razor of the damned.” Among other items of interest.

But here’s the page with the magical pearl:

And nowhere in this book does it say the pearl “gives you what your heart desires.” It says, “a pearl that grants wishes.” So... where did Sam get that additional information? I find it fascinating how things that are written in books are interpreted in a much broader fashion by the reader-- first Dean with the book Billie gave him in 14.10, and now Sam with this entry in this ledger.

Because this has been happening a lot.

For example in the scene immediately prior to this, the kids outside are talking about the Winchesters when they actually drive up. Their conversation is really interesting:

Eliot: People say they’re brothers. All I know is I was standing right here when-- when I heard this BAM! from the trunk of their car. And then, this like, shallow breathing. Max: No way. Flower Shirt Girl: Eliot, you’re creeping Max out.

I have to assume this was when they still had Garth in the trunk of the car, and just :’). Eliot is making some assumptions, but he’s much more terrifyingly accurate than he probably could guess. And Max’s flippant comment in her next scene proves it:

Eliot: I mean think about it. Where do they even come from? Them or their weird sidekick with the trenchcoat. Or what about the kid with the dumb Bambi look on his face all the time? Max: So what, it doesn’t mean they kidnapped Bigfoot or whatever.

And they all laugh, and Eliot calls them dicks. :P

And all of this makes me think of how the show spent the early part of the season teaching us how to read between the lines, to fill in narrative gaps, and to parse the subtext to understand exactly what it was they were actively not showing us.

Like in the scene at the party house where the John Wayne Gacy clown appears, we don’t see Dean thrown by the clown (just as we didn’t see the other boy who was attacked escape from the clown), nor do we see Sam light the fire that burned the cigar box tethering the ghost. But it’s clear that Dean was thrown because we saw him land, and Sam obviously eventually got his lighter to work because there’s the evidence of the flames.

Also, did they bring that old pickup truck from the bunker? Because they should DEFINITELY drive that thing more often. :’)

And Eliot follows his instincts, wanting to know what’s up and witnesses the ghost going up in flames. And he knows what he saw, and doesn’t even question it. When Sam confirms it, he feels so validated. Just like us when we read the subtext and fill in the blanks.

I have no idea how I got here from rambling about finding the 300′s in the episode but here we are.

OH. Right! The Centurion Helmets!

The first we see was in the shop pictured above. We see it again at the Party House in the Establishing Shot inside, nestled in a box with Sarah Goode’s skull, which was the original Macguffin that led Sam and Dean to that pawn shop in the first place, which enabled them to find the pearl to even be able to make this wish at all:

And the second and third Centurions are on the wall of B&E Pizza:

(and the one on the other side of the menu board hasn’t been screencapped yet, but is much more clearly visible than this one because Cas lights it up:

Three Centurions. Each of whom commands a century, or a group of 100 soldiers. So I’m going to use the fact that the show is actively telling us to notice and read between the lines, and assume we’re seeing yet another 300.

Especially after Misha’s tweet joking about it: https://twitter.com/mishacollins/status/1093606706532282371

[murasaki-murasame]

Oh boy, that anniversary Dragalia Digest sure was something, huh? lol

Anyway I’ve got a lot of thoughts on it, and the surprising amount of announcements and surprises in it.

ok realistically like half of my brain power is still being taken up by ‘MEGAMAN!????’ but I have at least some actual thoughts on everything else we’re gonna get in the anniversary and in the near future, lol.

And on that note, I’m surprised at how much stuff they talked about that’ll be slowly coming out over the next six months. I expected this digest to just be about the anniversary. I’m honestly a little unsure exactly when certain things are planned to come out since they kinda just jump from ‘anniversary stuff’ to ‘stuff for later this year’ to ‘stuff that’ll happen by the 1.5-year anniversary’ really quickly. But at the very least we know what the 1.12 update has in it since that’s out now.

Anyway, I ended up being right about a fair amount of my predictions [if I remember them all right], with me mostly just being wrong about my more hopeful but unlikely guesses like a Switch port or an anime announcement. But I was right about a lot of the event stuff. Though it wasn’t really hard to predict stuff like Euden being our new gala unit :v

I’m honestly a bit surprised that they’re actually committing to having his alt be a summonable gacha unit and not a free welfare unit of some kind, or a direct promotion of the existing Euden. It feels kinda strange to have to try and pull for an alt of the protagonist, but oh well.

As i figured, he’s a light sword unit, and I probably should have expected that he’d end up being really strong. On paper he sounds like a melee version of Gala Cleo, so I guess we’ll see how that turns out. Light needs more strong DPS units, but it mostly just needs strong DPS units that are in the regular summoning pool. At least shadow has a whole bunch of strong non-limited units. And we’re even getting a shadow banner after the gala. So I hope that we can at least get some more good light DPS units from other banners soon. But really I just hope they don’t balance light-attuned content around the assumption that you have Gala Euden. In the short term lots of people will probably get him between the daily free tenfold summons and the platinum gala summon, but once this is all over he’ll be really hard to get.

They’re also casually dropping the fact that some units are gonna get unique coabilities, starting with him. I’m really curious to see if this will be exclusive to limited units, or if some random banner units down the track will also have unique coabilities.

It also looks like we’re getting a regular raid event starting in a few days, which is kinda surprising. I wasn’t expecting a raid event next since we’re getting an astral raid this weekend, but I think the raid event will start pretty much immediately after the next astral raid ends, so i guess it works out, lol. I was expecting more of an anniversary-themed event, if that makes sense, but the more i think about it, the more that might actually be the case. Sort of.

We still don’t really know much about the raid event since it hasn’t gotten a detailed announcement yet, but they decided to announce the post-gala summon banner which seems to be directly tied to this event, since they have the same name and all, and it puts into perspective what the event will probably be about.

Basically, the next banner has Alberius’ pacted dragon on it, a new unit who’s related to the Binding Ruins which were a big part of the history of the royal family, and the other new unit is tied to the royal family as well. The event also seems themed around time travel, since it’s called Fractured Futures, the raid boss is called Chronos, and there’s clockwork-themed event currency. The guy on the event banner image who’s probably gonna be our welfare unit for the event also looks a LOT like Euden.

So let’s just say that a whole bunch of signs seem to be pointing at the idea of time travel magic or whatever letting us get young Alberius as a welfare unit, along with his pacted dragon as a new dragon we can summon. Maybe the new banner units will be part of the raid event story itself, and it’ll be themed around Alberius’ history and the royal family in general, which would be a nice follow-up to chapter 10, and it’d feel important and plot-relevant enough to be a nice anniversary event.

Or i could be wrong and the event welfare unit could just be some random blond dude who just so happens to look like he’s related to Euden, but the lore behind the new banner units and the fact that the next banner just straight up has Alberius’ dragon on it makes me think I’m probably right. [He might also be some other ancestor of Euden’s who isn’t Alberius, but it’d be weird if we got some random ancestor of his while we get Alberius’ dragon in the next banner]

I was kinda sad that us getting Gala Euden might mean we wouldn’t get Alberius as a playable unit, but this would be a fun way for them to have their cake and eat it too, lol. Considering what happened in chapter 10 they were going to need some kinda time travel magic to let us use him anyway, and that might be exactly what they’re doing. So I can’t complain, since chapter 10 really made me want Alberius as a playable unit. I just hope that he’s not yet another light sword who’s gonna be immediately invalidated by Gala Euden. Especially since even before this we got Alfonse as a really good light sword event unit. They could at least make him a light blade unit or something to make him stand out. Or maybe they’ll throw us a curveball and he’ll be a shadow unit.

And on the topic of the shadow banner we’re gonna get for this event later, I think it’s gonna take me a while to figure out exactly how I feel about it. I’m happy about Chthonius since I don’t think shadow has a non-limited 5-star strength dragon yet, but the two new adventurers seem . . . weird. Between this and Lea, they’re really leaning hard into these Fjorm-esque units lately. It’s kinda weird. In general it’s just hard to tell how useful they’ll be.

Cassandra reminds me a bit of Veronica, but her skills don’t seem to be directly affected by her HP lowering, and her S1 is an HP buff and recovery skill, which is . . . an odd choice for someone who seems to be based around taking damage. I guess the plan is to have her keep alternating between getting to low health and then healing herself so she can trigger her strength buff again by taking more damage. Oh and there’s also the fact that she’s gonna be in competition with Gala Cleo, but at least she’s not limited.

And on the other hand, Delphi just has a bizarre-looking kit. His kit’s all about debuffing the enemy and inflicting poison on them, but he also has a permanent 60% strength debuff on himself for? some reason??? I can only assume that without it, his personal DPS would be way too high in addition to his poison and debuffs. But it’s certainly a new way to go about handicapping a unit to keep them from being overpowered. I just hope it doesn’t lead to him being too weak. But on the other hand, he’s cute, so really it’s impossible to say whether or not he’s a bad unit :)

It’s also worth noting that there might be a secret 4-star in the banner since those are never talked about in these preview posts, but the last couple of shadow banners have just been two 5-star adventurers and a 5-star dragon so I wouldn’t bet on it. But if we do get one, I think blade is the only weapon type we don’t have a shadow 4-star unit for, so that’d be nice to get.

I want to splurge on the gala since i’ve been specifically saving up for it, but between us getting free daily tenfolds, us getting a shorter second gala period where the earlier gala units are featured, AND us knowing about the post-gala banner like two weeks in advance, I’m not really sure if it’d be a good idea for me to go all in on it immediately. But I also want to get Gala Euden, so we’ll see.

I’m still kinda shocked that we’re getting ten whole days of tenfold summons. I know I predicted something like this, but I figured it’d be a week at most, and just cover the gala. But this is ten days long, and the last three days will apply for the post-gala banner. We’re also getting 5k wyrmite from the log-in bonus, 2.5k wyrmite in total from the co-op reward reset, and a tenfold voucher from the version update, so this is . . . a lot of free summons.

I probably should have expected that we’d get a platinum summon for the gala, but I didn’t expect it to also include Euden. I figured it’d only cover the first four gala units.

We’re also getting a 5-star dragon voucher from log-in bonuses, and there’s gonna be several types of 5-star vouchers in store packs.

And I guess that on the flip side, all that generosity lead to them choosing not to do a dream summon for the anniversary, which is kinda sad since I specifically had diamantum saved up for one. Oh well.

The 1.12 update itself seems a bit low-key, with a lot of the really interesting stuff coming in the next few months, but I’m really happy about the raid battle improvements. It’s nice to see what they’re actually taking feedback into consideration and improving how they work. Like how a while ago they made blazon summons way more convenient, and even more recently they got a lot cheaper to do. I’ve been one of the people wanting them to overhaul the EX Raid system to remove the randomness from it, so i’m glad we’re getting exactly the sort of system I wanted.

I wasn’t expecting the system where in each raid event from now on we’re apparently gonna be able to get a 5t3 weapon of our choosing after we beat an EX Raid. But they seem to have a lot of plans related to higher-tier endgame weapons, so I guess they’re just trying to make the 5t3 weapons more accessible. It seems to be limited to one weapon per raid event, so it’s not exactly gamebreaking, but it’d go a long way toward lessening the grind to get them.

Omega raids just seem like they’re an even stronger version of nightmare raids, which is cool and all, but I don’t even think i’ve managed to beat a nightmare raid yet so it’s not really relevant to me yet, lol

Though the new raid boost system seems designed to make the higher difficulty tiers more accessible. Assuming that they aren’t balanced around them and it all just evens out anyway.

We’re also getting a retweet campaign like last time. I think this one has even better rewards, though. The idea of one person getting literally a hundred goddamn sunlight stones is kinda insane. At that point you could probably find a whale in the community who’d give you some serious cash to buy your account, lol.

The mana and rupie rewards are whatever, but a max of 100k eldwater is kinda absurd. I guess I’ll be getting a lot of wyrmprints maxed out and characters to 50MC now.

And then there’s some random quality of life and UI type stuff. As everyone hoped, we’re gonna be able to change the home screen BGM now, which is nice. I’m surprised that they’re putting in Haikei Goodbye Sayonara as an option, though. I don’t think that’s ever been used in DL before, and it definitely wasn’t made just for the game.

The new hammer item thing seems like a nice quality of life addition to help out with late-game grinding, since it starts to take ages to finish buildings, and it’s never a good idea to spend wyrmite on them. It’ll be interesting to see how often you’ll end up getting them.

The honey tree seems to basically be a system where once every three days or so you can get a free stamina refill, so that’s pretty neat. It’ll make it even easier to hoard up honey, I guess. I feel like we need more ways to get getherwings, though.

And then there’s the stuff that we know isn’t gonna be in the anniversary but will be added over the next few months.

I wasn’t expecting them to revisit and flesh out the high dragon trials, but adding in higher difficulty tiers for them is a neat idea. I’m wary of the time attack leaderboard concept, though.

High dragon weapons seem to be their big plan to create a new weapon tier for even further endgame content. I wonder how that’ll turn out in the long run, and how hard they’ll be to obtain, considering how much you need to grind for 5t3s as it is.

I didn’t actually think this was a very likely guess, but I ended up being right about the idea of them expanding mana circles to give units more boosts across the board. Though it doesn’t seem to be tied to any sort of special transcendence/6-star/etc system like i thought. If it’s gated behind getting a unit to 50MC, I hope they really revamp the materials you need to get that far, since there’s some serious bottlenecks going on with champion testaments and eldwater. Even if every unit in the game gets more or less equally buffed by this, and some weaker units become a lot more viable, people would still just choose to prioritize their stronger units if they have to be very selective in how they spend their resources.

Either way, I hope it’s more than just a set of flat stat buffs. I hope they give units new skills and abilities, or at least boost their existing ones.

As I expected, we’re getting a new tier of endgame bosses beyond high dragon trials, though we probably aren’t gonna get our first one until chapter 11 drops. I was almost certain it was gonna be themed around Euden’s siblings and their dragons, after how chapter 10 ended, but I think I prefer the direction they seem to be going with it instead. The fact that they’re all humanoid bosses who explicitly aren’t dragons, and are a complete mystery in general, is a lot more interesting to me. I have a feeling that, like how you can obtain the high dragons as units by farming them, you might be able to earn these bosses as playable adventurers if you farm them enough, which would be really neat.

They also seem to have some really unique designs, and they all look completely different to each other. I actually wonder how they’d work as playable units, if we can play as them, since they have such unique and somewhat alien designs. I’m really curious about the boss that seems to be a set of twins. That could be a fun set-up for a boss fight in and of itself, but there’s a lot they could do with a playable adventurer who’s a set of twins that you both control. The one we got a proper design for makes me think it’s gonna tie into the sci-fi direction the story seems to be taking with chapter 11.

And on the note of chapter 11, we got confirmation that it’ll come out in December, and that we’ll get a new story chapter afterward every two months. It’s really nice to have a schedule planned out for that, but the wait for December will be rough. It also sounds like we’re getting short story segments or side-stories in the months between main story chapters. I wonder what they’ll do with that.

Then at the very end we got a rough list of stuff that’s probably all just scheduled for January-March 2020.

Most of it isn’t really noteworthy, but i’m really intrigued by the ‘play past events at any time’ bullet-point. I assume it’ll just be a way to read through old event stories, but the fact that they said ‘play past events’ rather than ‘read past event stories’ makes me wonder if they might actually include the raid bosses and stuff with them. I have no idea how that’d work, though, since not many people are going to be randomly doing co-op for old archived events. At the very least, if they use this as a way to let us obtain the welfare units from past events, that’d be great. It might let them stop doing event reruns altogether, if people can get all the rewards from them in some kind of event archive. But I kinda doubt it.

We’re also getting a What’s Ahead type of post on the first of October, which I assume will just go over some of the stuff in this digest in more detail. But maybe they’d also announce the Halloween event that we’ll inevitably get at the end of next month.

All in all I’m really happy with what this digest had to offer, even though I wish the next raid event would start immediately on the anniversary after this void endeavor week ends. It’s gonna be a bit boring if we get a few days where the only gameplay event going on is double drops.

[biscuitreviews]

Biscuit Reviews Megaman X6

The next two games in the Megaman X series as considered the worst games in the Megaman X franchise. Those games are Megaman X6 and Megaman X7 and for this review we’re going to looking exclusively at X6.

This was the third and last mainline Megaman X game I would ever play until taking on the X series for this blog. I want to say I got this game sometime around 2002, but my memory is a bit fuzzy in that regard. I remember thinking that this was insanely difficult and I didn’t really get very far. At that point, I had only played three Megaman X games - Megaman X, Megaman X4, and the Game Boy Color spinoff Megaman Xtreme.

Now that I’m older and have a better understanding of game design, Megaman X6 is…

Awful. Just awful. The story is terrible, the level design is atrocious, and this entry should not have seen the light of day.

As you might recall, Megaman X5 was meant to be the end of the series, that means Megaman X6 had to retcon the ending of X5, which resulted in a few scenes that only happen in certain instances within X5 becoming canon to make for an easier transition between X5 and X6.

In X6 you immediately start with the Falcon Armor from X5 with the subtraction of its flying ability. The intro stage, actually does an excellent job of establishing X6s setting, having X walk through the ruins of Eurasia, a somber tone as the stage music to reflect X’s emotions. It really does a fantastic job of setting the entire tone of X6’s story.

Then you enter the battle with the 8 Mavericks and the game immediately falls apart. First, like X5, X can choose to go in his normal default armor or the Falcon Armor. The stages are designed for the Falcon Armor as it has further dash than the default armor. This makes picking the default armor pointless as there are stages that are not possible at all to progress using that armor. Stage obstacles in X6 are the most unfair in the series. Where Megaman X3 had enemies that did an insane amount of damage, X6 had stage hazards out to just kill you.

Take Blizzard Wolfgang’s stage for example, there’s a point where you have to navigate through the stage with flaming rocks coming down the stage. Granted this can only happen if you beat Blaze Heatnix’s stage beforehand, Blizzard’s Wolfgang’s stage still has a lot of other unfair hazards. Another instance is getting to the boss room. In order to get to the boss room, you have to climb ice blocks as they come down. Thing is they come down fast and your sliding on ice the entire time, so there is a chance you could overshoot and end up getting crushed by the falling ice. As you continue to climb the blocks, the slippery ground will always be a factor and you have to maneuver so accurately and quickly to get to the top.

You would think turning the game on Rookie Hunter Mode would make things easier. Sure it gives you a lot more health and tweaks some of the stages to be more fair, but other than that, you’re still going to encounter a ton of unfair hazards that will still challenge you and kill you even with Rookie Mode on. Blizzard Wolfgang’s stage alone took forever just to get the timing right on the falling ice blocks to the boss room. Then there’s Blaze Heatnix’s stage where you fight the same mini boss over and over again. Luckily the fights take place in different arenas and each is more hazardous than the next. I’m sure there are plenty of people that got through it with no Rookie Hunter Mode, but personally I was not able to.

There is a way to bring Zero back and have him as a playable character, but honestly, I felt it made his death in X5 meaningless, destroying the slight tinge the player felt for X losing his partner.

X also has a primary and secondary attack, with the primary attack being the buster gun and the secondary attack being the Z saber. The Z saber isn’t done in a combo attack like Zero, but rather a slow slash, which makes sense as X is not properly trained with it.

Now, normally I don’t talk about the end fight as much, but in this case I’m actually going to make an exception for X6. Just like the other X games you fight Sigma and this version of Sigma, it the easiest one. I kid you not, I had Rookie Hunter Mode off for this fight just to see how unfair Capcom made Sigma and turns out, this final boss fight was a big joke. His first form is slow and his second form, although had faster attacks, was still manageable. So much so I took down both forms on the first attempt, compared to past fights where I needed multiple attempts.

As far as the debate on which is the worst X game in the series, my vote would be X6 because of how uninspired everything in this game is. From the story, to the fights, to the level design, it’s all just meaningless and has no heart.

Megaman X6 receives a 1 out of 5

[eggoreviews]

E3 2019 Nintendo Direct - BREAKDOWN

Oh wow. That big ol direct sure was something. So now I’m here to break down everything that happened in unnecessary fashion and give my personal reaction to everything that happened with my tried and true Excitement Rater. Want to see my heavily scientific and not at all arbitrary process? Then click down to see the deets.

Before we kick off my (very very scientific) breakdown of this year’s packed direct, I thought I’d briefly go over how I rate things:

A random string of letters/numbers = Immeasurable excitement

YEEHAW BABEY = Big excitement

Heck Yeck = Vague excitement

Yeah! = Not really excited, but still could be good

Sure, why not? = I’m more confused than excited but sure

Oh = The excitement isn’t there

Oh no = Used on the rare occasion I really don’t like what I’ve seen

The Hero from the Dragon Quest series in Smash!

After a brief montage of some games that already came out I guess, the direct jumps straight into an ominous shot of World of Light baddie Dharkon, followed by a seemingly hopeless fight between Link and one very possessed Marth. Then the Luminary turns up gloriously on his horse. With all the leaks that had been flying around for so long, I think pretty much everyone had accepted the presence of Dragon Quest at this point and I was totally stoked when this happened! I love Dragon Quest! And my boi from 11 is here, along with a few other DQ veterans as alt swaps and a pretty awesome looking stage overlooking what seems to be the land of Erdrea and the World Tree. Now to wait until summer and hope the Smash team have some sick ass remixes for us when the time comes!

Excitement Rating: YEEHAW BABEY

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition

In a move that makes it a lil obvious that DQ’s Smash addition was more than a little commercially minded (not that I really care I’m still big hyped), a trailer for the expanded edition of the series’ latest installment follows. Seeming as I’ve already played this, I doubt I’ll be picking it up again but I still heartily recommend the game to any JRPG fan. Admittedly, the fact you apparently get to explore worlds from past games is pretty exciting.

ER: Heck Yeck

Luigi’s Mansion 3

In a way I thought was surprising, Nintendo’s first proper focus of Luigi’s Mansion 3 actually took up more time than Animal Crossing, but I guess that’s because it’s further along in development. We now know that the game is set within a haunted hotel and had some new gameplay features shown off, including the various ways Luigi can succ a ghost. Most exciting I think for me was the various multiplayer aspects, such as the local co-op option to play as Gooigi and the seemingly challenge and minigame-based ‘Scarescraper’ which I think incorporates online co-op too. Overall, this is looking to be a creative and well thought out entry in the series and I’m here for it.

ER: Heck Yeck

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance - Tactics

A licensed tie-in game for a thirty year old film feels a little odd, but I suppose stranger things have happened. This looks to be a sort of top-down tactical thingy involving the various characters from The Dark Crystal and for some reason Netflix is involved, I don’t know, but I guess it could be interesting.

ER: Sure, why not?

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

The adorable remake of this classic Game Boy title seems to be coming along great and this direct’s extended trailer gave us a good look at what we’ll be exploring come September 20th. The overhaul Koholint Island has had is phenomenal, giving us designs for Link and various other characters that we’ve never seen before and that makes this remake look especially unique. Another very exciting aspect for me was the dungeon builder that looks like great fun! You collect different dungeon parts as you go and then you can build and explore your own! Am I a goblin child or does that sound like the best thing ever?

ER: YEEHAW BABEY!!

Trials of Mana / Collection of Mana

I’ll admit I’m not really familiar with the Mana series, but from what I was shown in this direct, it looks to be a fairly standard JRPG. That’s definitely not a bad thing, as most JRPGs are amazing, but nothing in this trailer really stood out and came into its own. That being said, the gameplay and graphics look pretty solid and I’m sure the Mana fans have been fairly starved for content for a while so that’s something to look forward to. On top of this remake/new game with the same title as an older game (I really don’t know), the Collection of Mana containing the series’ first three games is being released real soon on the eShop.

ER: Yeah!

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition

Following a few scattered rumours, we finally have confirmation that a Witcher 3 port is in fact in the works, coming packed with all the game’s DLC. This basically legendary RPG is not one I personally had a great experience with, but I’m sure a lot of people are gonna be happy to play this in handheld. I’d keep expectations tempered however, with the likes of Assassin’s Creed 3 and Saints Row the Third proving that these ports don’t always function brilliantly on this platform.

ER: Yeah!

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Yet another and probably our last Fire Emblem trailer was shown in this direct, giving us a better look at how the story might play out and what our villains are going to be. With most of the gameplay features explored in the previous February direct, it’s good to have a slightly better idea as to what’s actually going on in terms of story and, to me, the results seem pretty damn good. Definitely one to keep an eye on!

ER: Heck Yeck

Resident Evil

In a slightly unnecessarily convoluted advert, we were given a two minute reel of two teenagers playing the original RE in tabletop mode in an abandoned house (??), along with the kind of less than exciting announcement that we’re getting the two weakest entries in the series for Switch, RE 5 and 6. I probably wasn’t the only one who felt a little passive about this whole thing. That being said, definitely not complaining about 1 & 4 being ported over.

ER: Oh

No More Heroes III

After the very slightly disappointing Travis Strikes Again, I really wasn’t expecting them to drop a trailer for the series’ third mainline installment so soon after. What we’ve seen looks pretty much like classic Travis, with a smidge of gameplay seen that looks just a bit more like what we’re used to. Of course, with this being the first reveal, there’s still a lot to find out but this looks very promising.

ER: Heck Yeck

Contra: Rogue Corps / Contra: Anniversary Collection

I’m not gonna pretend to be familiar with the Contra series, but this doesn’t at all look like what I’ve seen in the past. Honestly, this seemingly tactical shooter didn’t elicit much excitement from me and neither did its rushed character drops or its oddly rough textures. I’m unsure of actual fan reactions to this, but in my mind this one kind of sits in the ‘guess this exists’ category. As well as this, we got a shadowdrop for the Contra Anniversary Collection, whereas Rogue Corps comes on September 24th.

ER: Oh

Daemon X Machina

In what seems to be almost a mainstay in Nintendo directs, we’ve got another vague trailer for this mech shooter that finally has a confirmed release date of September 13th. The gameplay looks harmless enough, with the mechs seeming to be a blast to pilot, but beyond that, I can’t really see a lot of substance that would draw me in beyond the cool robots. I’m sure it could be good, but not really one for me.

ER: Yeah!

Panzer Dragoon

I was completely unsure of what this one was, but it looks a bit like a cross between The Last Guardian and those bullet hell sections from Kingdom Hearts 2. They’ve certainly nailed the smooth graphics and the cool looking creatures, but this one is mostly a case of needing to know more.

ER: Yeah!

Pokemon Sword & Shield

This one’s obviously a title so monumental that it consistently needs its own directs, but there wasn’t any *real* news about it in this direct. We were given a brief explanation as to how the Pokeball Plus works in conjunction with the games (something to do with taking your Pokemon for a walk) and the fact that we’ll see more gameplay during Nintendo’s Treehouse streams. Still, excitement remains pretty high for these titles.

ER: Heck Yeck!

Astral Chain

This game, to put it bluntly, looks awesome. The newest Platinum Games IP seems to be set in Blade Runneresque futuristic city with an alien threat and some cool ass looking fighting police people. Our second proper look at this game has cleared up a few murky doubts as to what exactly is supposed to be happening, so now we’ve got a much better idea of what this game is going to be. The story seems pretty full and polished, the gameplay looks like brilliant fun and I’m definitely not mad at the cool monster designs. This is one I’m definitely watching.

ER: Heck Yeck!!!

Empire of Sin

I know very little about what this game is supposed to be, but it looks to be a 40s gangster XCOM, substituting alien fighting marines with gun toting mafia dudes. The trailer went for style over substance, giving us an edgy visual thing of some burning playing cards and broken bottles, but the little gameplay we saw looked decent enough and may just end up injecting more variety into this genre.

ER: Yeah!

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

An obvious pick for any Marvel fan, this hack-and-slash is jam packed with various heroes and villains from the comic series’ rich history. Ghost Rider and Elektra were among those revealed to be playable, while the likes of Mysterio, Hela, the Destroyer, Doctor Octopus, Surtur and MODOK are seemingly part of growing cast of villains. Looks like a good bit of fun if nothing else, though the immediate presence of a season pass is a tiny red flag.

ER: Yeah!

Cadence of Hyrule

In an unexpected but greatly welcomed crossover between Nintendo’s RPG titan Zelda series and the indie developed Crypt of the Necrodancer, a new rhythm based dungeon crawler with some brand new Zelda remixes and the presence of Link and Zelda as playable characters. This game’s retro graphics look totally adorable and the addition of the Gohmaracas were a definite highlight.

ER: Heck Yeck!!!!!

Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

Tell you what, this definitely looks like a Mario and Sonic Olympic Games game. There looks to be a decent amount of variety in terms of what sports are involved and with its online multiplayer, there’s no shortage of vaguely cartoon sportyness to be had with friends both real and virtual. I’d be lying if I said I was totally disinterested because it does look a bit fun, but we all know it won’t be anything groundbreaking.

ER: Yeah!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

In a fairly drastic formula change, Nintendo have decided to strand us on a desert island rather than move us innocently to another village, but Tom Nook is still here and oh yes he’s coming to collect his bells. From this surprisingly brief trailer, most of Animal Crossing’s core gameplay seems to be intact, with the return of craftable items from Pocket Camp, and the sudden bombshell that the game has been pushed back to March next year. Never going to be a bad thing if the finished product is all the better for it, but I guess that just means more info is to come!

ER: Heck Yeck

Highlight Reel

In what looks like a list of honourable mentions, Nintendo gave us a laundry list of other titles coming to the system:

Spyro Reignited Trilogy is joining Crash on the Switch with his acclaimed remaster trilogy.

Hollow Knight: Silksong, the prequel to the original game, looks just as charmingly dark as its predecessor.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is showing up I guess, but I’ll come out and say I know nothing about it except that it looks cute.

Minecraft Dungeons looks better than it has any right to be and looks a bit like blocky Diablo I guess

The Elder Scrolls: Blades sure exists and I’m unsure of what it’s trying to be, but whatever quells off the need for Elder Scrolls 6 I guess.

My Friend Pedro, another strangely unique title from Devolver Digital, looks like it somehow incorporates banana peels into its combat system.

Doom Eternal looks like Doom always does, but a distinct lack of gameplay may put its dual release with the other consoles into question.

The Sinking City with its Lovecraftian inspiration looks totally brilliant and looks to be a unique experience for sure, so eyes firmly open for this one

Wolfenstein Youngblood definitely looks all Wolfenstein-y, but rumours of Dishonored-like sandbox levels has definitely piqued my interest.

Dead by Daylight still looks unfortunately a bit eh, with its slightly not great graphical quality from what we’ve seen in the trailers.

Alien Isolation was an extremely odd one, but I’m not gonna say no to more good horror content on the console.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles seems to be continually delayed, but they’ll probably get round to it eventually.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 looks adorable and I’m very into the idea of Dragon Quest Minecraft, so sign me up.

Stranger Things 3: The Game looks a little more SNES-like in terms of graphics than its 8 Bit mobile predecessor, which is definitely a decent step. An obvious pick for fellow fans of the show.

Just Dance 2020 is definitely a Just Dance game. Yep, sure is. I even checked. And it is.

Catan is a tabletop game of sorts, but I really couldn’t figure out what kind from that few seconds of vague footage.

New Super Lucky’s Tale looks like Bubsy, but actually good and worth real money

Dauntless looks like a bit of a Monster Hunter clone, but you know, doesn’t look terrible.

And lastly, Super Mario Maker 2 was tacked on the end there to remind us all that Nintendo is taking our money in 2 weeks.

Banjo-Kazooie become Smash Ultimate’s 3rd DLC Fighter

Just when we all petering out a little and the hype seemed all but dormant, they go and drop this on us out of nowhere. While I personally don’t have an attachment to the bear and bird, I’m fully aware of their significance and how much they mean to a lot of people out there. And that excitement ended up being contagious, so this fact coupled with a pitch perfect reveal trailer has got me hugely hyped to see these guys join the fight come autumn.

ER: YEEHAW BABEY

Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

And now, dear reader, for the reveal that removed my scalp and cut out my eyeballs. At first, I was totally confused as to what this could be. And then I recognised the symbols, and then my perfect lil Hyrule eggs come on the screen and it’s all spooky and there’s dead Ganondorf and I don’t clock the fact that I’ve just screamed out loud. A direct sequel to my absolute favourite game of all time is happening and it’s real and I get to live another adventure in the best game world ever crafted all over again. I think it’s safe to say I have transcended the definition of hype when it comes to this one.

ER: AAA!!! AA!!! GFFGF!!! THIS!!! ZELDA!!!! HGGGG!!!!

So there’s my probably a little stupid breakdown of everything Nintendo bestowed upon us this E3. Guess I’ll jump in after the next direct to give you yet another heavily scientific analysis of its events. Or I’ll babble at you until I start punching the keyboard. Either way, happy trails my dudes. Don’t let the hype bugs bite.

[ladala99]

Spyro Reignited Countdown - The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon (Console)

I can’t help but have mixed feelings about this game. One one hand, I love it. Of the Legend of Spyro games, this is, by far, the one I’ve put the most playtime into. I legitimately have fun with this game, well beyond the fun I have with the first two games in the series.

But on the other hand, it doesn’t close the story in a satisfactory way. It’s like reading the first two books of a trilogy by one author, and then reading the last as bad fanfiction but illustrated by a talented artist. It’s good, but it’s not the end you were hoping for.

And I also have to keep in mind the way I play: with infinite health and mana cheats on, and the game language set to one I don’t understand very well. This way, it’s a great stress-relief game, and the sub-par voice acting doesn’t bother me.

Gameplay

With the game developer swap, the gameplay changed drastically. It’s still an action game, and you still have a similar moveset, but the way the game plays is completely different. I’ve never played God of War, but I’ve heard this is what this game is most similar to.

The camera is now a lot less movable, enemies act very different, and I haven’t played enough Action games to really describe the differences. Melee feels a lot less powerful, but at the same time, the elemental abilities don’t feel very powerful either. You have all sorts of melee combos, but honestly I hardly used more than the basic attacking and grab attacks depending on the enemy. Like, grab if you can, and if you can’t get behind it and attack.

The default difficulty is between A New Beginning and The Eternal Night, meaning it hits a good medium. I think, anyway. As stated before, I don’t really play it the way it’s supposed to be played.

I also can’t judge the control differences, because I switched consoles from PS2 to Wii for this game. Motion controls make this really good for stress-relief, as instead of button-mashing, you punch the air really quickly. And there’s a lot of button-mashing in this game.

Oh yeah, and this game has cutscenes where you have to press certain buttons at specific times to move on. I really don’t understand the appeal of this type of gameplay. This is the only game I own to have that feature, iirc.

Additional Playable Character

You actually get one this time: Cynder! She plays exactly like Spyro except with different elements, though. Still, it does essentially add a second health bar, mana meter, and set of abilities if you’re playing single-player, and really shines when playing two-player.

Collectables

Health and mana upgrades return, and are much easier to find this time around. This time, they’re fairly similar looking to gem clusters, but are more hidden. Each does not give a straight upgrade, rather requiring you to find multiples of them, and Spyro and Cynder each take a different amount to upgrade their abilities: with Spyro upgrading health more often, and Cynder upgrading Mana.

The game also considers Spirit Gems, the upgrade-based gem-cluster, to be collectables. These are the easiest to find and they’re fairly numerous. Not as numerous as gems in the Classic titles for sure, but more numerous than any other collectable.

Armor is a new feature in this game. Each piece is fit to a specific dragon and gives a unique bonus to them. Collect all three pieces in a set, and you get a special ability, some of which are very powerful. These tend to be in their own unique paths and secret areas, but aren’t as difficult to find as the health and mana upgrades.

And unlike The Eternal Night, you can return to levels you completed at any point. Overall, collectables are very well-done in this game. They’re fun to find, rewarding if you do, but still aren’t the game’s focus. And that’s okay.

Breath Abilities

Spyro and Cynder both have four abilities each, all available from the very beginning. They’re all used not only in combat but also for various small puzzles.

Spyro’s Fire breath is as staightforward as it gets. Upgrades do, like previous games, send enemies running, though. The secondary is Comet Dash again, establishing it as a standard. It can burn down vines to reveal new paths.

Spyro’s Lightning Breath will chain between multiple enemies if they’re close enough to one another, and will also paralyze them. It doesn’t do much damage, though. The secondary creates a large ball of electricity that I hardly ever used. For puzzles, it powers up gates, keeping doors open for a limited amount of time.

Spyro’s Ice Breath has a icicle shard attack that slows down opponents. I literally don’t remember using the secondary at all, nor if there are any puzzles that require it.

Spyro’s Earth Breath I only remember the attack where you essentially turn into a boulder. I don’t think I ever used it in combat, and that boulder attack is used a couple of times to smash down walls and through a floor.

Cynder’s Poison attack is the most straightforward, sending globs of acid at opponents and causing lasting damage. I don’t recall the secondary attack It’s used on the same vines as Spyro’s Fire breath.

Cynders’s Wind is hardly useful in combat, moving opponents around rather than directly damaging them. The secondary whirlwind will knock enemies into one another, though, causing damage and racking up huge hit combos. It’s used to blow open some doors.

Cynder’s Fear is my favorite. It does a pulsing attack that stuns opponents. The secondary throws out balls of energy that do massive damage and stun opponents. For puzzles, there’s a couple of times you need to scream at some tuning forks to activate some bridges for some reason.

Cynder’s Shadow is also neat. Its secondary is a cloud of darkness that makes opponents target one another. The primary is the Shadow Dash, where you melt into a shadow and attack opponents when you come back up. It’s used for puzzles a lot, where you turn into a shadow to go underneath gates then activate a switch on the other side to let Spyro in.

Overall, some pretty neat variety, but the fact that mana drains so quickly when not using cheats makes them much less useful and hard to fully explore. I honestly just use Fire and Fear 90% of the time.

Bosses

Have some neat gimmicks. Generally, you’re just fighting something a lot bigger than you, going through the stage while it attacks you, or in the case of the Destroyer, the whole level is the boss.

Then there’s Malefor, where you need to dodge attacks and slowly move towards him to get your own attacks in before he runs off.

These bosses have a very different feel from previous games, but it’s not a bad thing. They’re generally legitimately fun to fight.

Levels

They’re beautiful. Okay, maybe I’m just referring to Twilight Woods, Valley of Avalar, Burning Lands, and Floating Islands. Still, that’s a good number of them. I just love flying around them.

Every level has various secrets, and the main level is easy to follow. Sometimes the camera does tell you exactly what to do, but it’s generally necessary since something that was not interactable before becomes interactable.

The only one I dislike is Dragon City, but that’s pretty much because it’s all combat. Different levels have different focuses, and it does mean that there’s a lot of variety, as far as the core gameplay can have variety.

Since you can fly freely now, there’s really not much in the way of platforming. There’s a little, and in general it’s forced by you carrying something heavy, invisible walls, and strong gusts of wind. It works well enough, but is a little strange at times because why can’t you just fly higher?

Story

Malefor has returned while Spyro, Cynder, and Sparx were frozen in time. Under orders, some Grublins come and break them out, attempting to feed them to the Golem. This fails, and Hunter shows them the way out. The rest of the game involves learning about how Malefor intends to destroy the world (Awakening the Destroyer who walks around the world and breaks it apart at the end), trying to intercept and stop it, and eventually facing Malefor himself. Along the way, Sparx gets abandoned and Ignitus dies, both to the stupidest of reasons.

The voice acting is horrible in this game as well. I don’t even know how they messed it up, since it’s the same actors for the most part. But a lot of the time it’s just so lifeless and emotionless, especially on the part of Cynder. And even if, in the case of Ignitus, the acting is fine, the movements of the characters just don’t work.

And then there’s the tragedy of Volteer being super silent. What’s with walking dictionaries in the Spyro series going dumb?

Overall, this is not the finale The Legend of Spyro deserved. At least on the story side of things. And since that’s my favorite part of The Legend of Spyro, it’s a big shame.

Unique in the Series?

Oh boy is it. It’s the only Spyro game with free-flight and focus on two-character gameplay. These two things alone define this game’s gameplay, so it makes this game completely unique from the rest.

The artstyle is also unique to this game, with these character designs never returning. Which isn’t that bad, since they were weird. Especially Ignitus. The only character that improved from previous (Legend, anyway) titles is Sparx. The cheetahs weren’t bad, either. But the dragons are just no.

So yes, but it’s not too bad that it’s unique. Spyro’s so much about gliding, so yeah.

Conclusion

I have mixed feelings about this game. It’s good on its own, but it isn’t a satisfactory conclusion to The Legend of Spyro, and of course it’s still extremely different from the Classics.

Still, I love the game itself. I might be playing it completely wrong, but the way I play it, I love it. I’m glad it exists, even though I’m sad at the nonexistance of The Darkest Hour (Krome’s name for the third Legend of Spyro title).