#and frankly i love the characters ive created for that slot

[caterpillarinacave]

i should warn everyone ahead of time that if Cassie starts giving the newer Fairchild kids names and personalities, i will be totally disregarding them

[nebuvoid]

BASED ON CLEAR'S VERY EXISTENCE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN AN OPTION FOR REN TO JUST GET A NEW HUMAN-SHAPED CYBORG BODY WHY DID THEY DECIDE ON THIS SEI'S BODY THING

I've been over here trying to rationalise it like "ok maybe romancing the robot dog isn't THAT bad he does have a human form in cyberspace, and questionable power dynamics aside falling in love with a service/support robot is a common sci-fi trope" BUT THEN THEY MADE IT debatably SELFCEST BUT ALSO PHYSICALLY INCEST??????????? NEBU WHAT??? I feel like I'm having a breakdown from this

THANK YOU THANK YOU FINALLY SOMEONE OF LIKEWISE MIND

honestly i have this whole headcanon of making things less unsavory im just. not exactly good at things beyond spark notes :( like it would be so easy to say theres some scifi method to give ren a body. hell for clear too tho frankly i dont see any benefit to it beyond "dying with aoba" which. um. not to mention how considering aobas powers he also couldve easily helped sei as well.

hell, once you find out how exactly aoba and sei were created, anything you can think up becomes possible in-universe.

nitro+chiral has a history of really fucked up stories and dmmd is unarguably the most tame and happy one. one thing you notice especially in reconnect is that they give character development, just to blatantly ignore it to fill a kink slot (looking at you noiz), making their OWN characters in their OWN work ooc.

idk if youve been around for my devilman stuff but im not beyond ripping canon from its creators and shaping it as i see fit. some might say "just make some ocs this isnt the og work then" but to that i say: long fart noise. with reverb.

as far as i can tell, both the og 2014 fandom and the now fandom mostly just like exploring the warm and healthy parts of dmmd. im sure theres people that are into the more fuckery parts but i barely see any. hell almost all the bad ending fics ive read revolve around saving the characters and having them health from it.

so what im saying is if theres some canon part you dont like because it makes no fucking sense, congratulations, heres some scissors. fuck em.

[acradaunt]

EON Playthrough - Week 4

As suggested by last week, ever since getting subclasses, the rotation pool has grown ever larger. Perhaps too large, slowing down levelling to where I'm well below what it expects. This resulted in me making the rather dubious decision to fight the 9th stratum boss at a meager level 50-53, when I imagine the recommended is about 58-60, as all three regional FOEs remained as red.

Still, my stubbornness made me take four attempts to kill the guy, trying different tactics of varying offense and defensive. In the end, Laura frontline Combat Medic-ing beat out actually trying to block his nasty moves with Protector or Zodiac. I don't think Protector was by any means a bad choice, it's just that when the assface panics four of the five party members, your options are to use Healing Touch or to just wipe.

My reward for that was to be greeted by another full-on boss within about twenty minutes. So my efforts to get better gear before doubling back and taking out those FOEs was punched right in the face. Barf. Honestly, I've spent the majority of EO-time this week running around and cleaning things up and getting those awkward tiles on the map in FOE territory, so forward progress has been fairly minimal.

Iris the Protector/Imperial: The main idea with her is that she can use free turns to use a Drive attack and use that Heat Guard make her even better as a meatshield. Also, she was literally in EOIV as an Imperial, so it's only fair. However, the fact is, I didn't even HAVE a Drive Blade until like minutes ago. It's definitely a good fit for her, but things just haven't worked out that way yet, partially because I'm a cheapass. Doubly poor for her, both 9th's boss and 10th's midboss suffer from extreme quickening, getting radically more difficult as the fight goes on. Protection just cannot keep up with bosses who suddenly start taking multiple turns per turn midway into the fight. The only viable option is to carefully whittle them down to about 40%, and then just blow the everliving crap outta them in 3-4 turns. Slow and steady just can't mitigate enough or do enough damage. It's annoying because quickening isn't really a thing often in EO; apart from both Nexus' 4th stratum boss and side-region boss both having it to lesser, more reasonable degrees, the only real instance I can think of is friggin' Star Devourer. Possibly Undead King did? He didn't unlive that long to really know what he could do. It's fine when they take a second action after a set amount of turns (5th boss did this), but when they start doing it every turn, with stronger results? Not really fair.

Klein the Hero/Imperial: Regiment Rave is without a doubt absolutely nuts in terms of damage, but thinking about it, it's somewhat fair. It's a turn-end move, AND its damage comes largely from the rest of the party piling on. If anything goings wrong with anyone, it does fairly blah damage. In those regards, it's basically a stronger but more easily stuffed Link. Like Iris, the Drive Blade hasn't come into play yet, and for him, not sure if it will. Regiment Rave might be all or nothing, but when it is, it's likely stronger than a subbed Drive could hope to be. Its upside and downside is being fire-based, and I'm guessing both 10th's midboss and boss are gonna be wholly immune to that. So he's probably taking a break for a while.

Juri the Survivalist/Harbinger: Apart from her usual job of running nighttime gathering jobs (so you can immediately re-harvest those points when midnight strikes), after taking a good hard look at the 9th's enemies, Juri was a perfect fit to counter nearly every last one of them. Adept at avoiding hitting particular (frontline) targets and the toughest two enemies being easily crippled by Leg Bind and Blind made her exemplary towards the end of the stratum. Not to mention nearly every quest as of late has been simply gather crap from resource points. If you have a Survivalist and dumped them when stratums 5/7/8 were awful to them, look at bringing them back for the 9th.

Kahna the Landsknecht/Harbinger: Yeah, she squarely cracked into the main rotation. Linking is great for quickly subduing random monsters, but she's been performing questionably during bosses and FOEs. Yet I still keep using her. Hmm.

Coral the Landsknecht/Protector: Honestly, hasn't seen too much use since subclasses arrived. Dunno why, as while Kahna is definitely better for randoms, when I've taken her to bosses, she always seems stuck using her subpar Shield Breaks to keep things open for Erika and Olga, barely having time to contribute herself. Coral's at an unfortunate position where she's not as strong as Erika/Olga, and not as versatile as Laura. Landy's Force skill is decent enough, but it sure lacks the oomph of perfectly restoring everyone or killing just everything on screen or completely stealing a foe's turn. It's the same 'slow and steady isn't good enough' problem Iris has.

Laura the Medic/Landsknecht: It seems like in pinch situations, she's going to basically be a frontline debuffer, while Leon runs the healing & buff duty. While she's not as good or as durable as Coral, the potency of Healing Touch is somewhat ridiculous, having torpedoed the two brand new bosses strategies utterly.

Adam the Medic/Zodiac: Unlike Laura's reckless nonsense, Adam does so-so damage in the back, and has multi-hit options. Better for random encounters and those with massive physical resistance, but kind of a waste of TP during FOEs and bosses. They both fill niches, so I'm actively using both. Never at the same time, though. Two Landsknechts work great together, but two Medics sure don't.

Leon the Sovereign/Ronin: As mentioned on Laura, Leon tends to do more HP healing by buffing than the Medic actually does. It's not enough though, as he can't do a thing about ailments or binds, outside of the tremendously unreliable Prevent Order, and even then, it's too late to actually remove the ailment. Or take a mortally wounded character from almost dead to full health. He's more keeping things between okay and good; any critical situation and he's absolutely useless. The idea of Ronin was for him to Air Blade or Arm Bind or at least have SOME kind of offensive move, but he rarely ever has time, and I've also been too much of a cheapass to buy another quality Katana, so he's usually not even using one. He also can't revive at all, which sucks, but I guess not as bad as in IV or V, where Nectars required ultra-rare materials, which are now handed out daily on the world map. By the way, I LOVE map-gathering points. It saves time and money, and actually lets you get useful materials and rare drops without spending weeks running old points and fighting harmless enemies. It just cuts out needless tedium, and you get them only after you're done with the area, so it's not really giving you free stuff until after the prime-time has past, so gathering runs still do have a time and place. Just a lot more dangerous a time and place.

Kagura the Ninja/Ronin: Giving her Ronin suddenly made her do alright damage. Actually, genuinely great damage. Her array of ailments makes her pretty ideal for randoms and getting conditional drops. She would be really good now, if, ironically, Erika hadn't gotten over her own crippling frailness and there wasn't a fight for the back-row slots, with Laura, Leon, and Klein all being row-hoppers. Still, conditionals mean better gear, so I think she's keeping a spot in the rotation.

Erika the Ronin/Gunner: Definitely the workhorse of the entire game so far, Erika's finally getting over her frailty issues and remains a ludicrous source of damage. Gunner subclass and its Double Action is kind of hilarious, as it lets Charging Thrust and Sheath Strike hit twice and get massive Stance refills. I imagine it cuts both ways though, with Helm Splitter/Haze Slash/Horizontal Slash taking 4 Stance points away, but I frankly rarely use them, usually sticking to Arm Strike and Volt Stab and the rare risky Stone Thrust.

Olga the Gunner/Ninja: The other, far more recent, immovable pillar of the party, Ninja hasn't been quite as beneficial as Erika's Gunner, but -2 TP to all moves and better evasion have done plenty for her endurance. I initially planned on Ninja for mass backrow binding, but after learning that creating clones disables your Force meter, I dunno if it's worth it. Double Action and especially Riot Shot are amazing, with the latter being a 'free turn' button, something I'm obviously going to be needing in the extremely near future. I think more than anything though, her being the only person who can use a gun has kept her locked firmly in place, along with getting awesome guns at the exact right time.

Tate the Arcanist/Harbinger: Sorely disappointed. I expected to see pretty big numbers from her shiny new ice Scythe, but, uh, no. After demanding a leg-bind or other evasion down to hit, it still only does barely 60x3 hits. Pretty pathetic. Combined with a form of healing I don't find reliable at all, Arcanists just plain aren't my style. I think she's sitting things out from here, and'll stop getting all that free after-quest XP.

Stella the Runemaster/Protector: Seems like she might be useful for the 10th stratum. The shield helps MASSIVELY with her previously awful survivability, and her TP pool is large enough for her to have some sustain during FOEs/bosses by now, moreso with judicious use of Force. Damage is still iffy, all considered, and the Charges both take a turn and seem to absolutely suck, unlike V's Warlock.

Terra the Highlander/Protector: Like Tate, has been sucking down all the free XP but hasn't done anything since forever ago. Now that she's got ways to handle single targets, she's probably pretty good again, just hasn't found a way in. I'm probably missing out.

Yai the Pugilist/Ninja: Repeat previous statement. Pugilist needs a lot of both Skill Points and TP to be useful, and I'm getting to the point where she's probably almost there. Perhaps like Erika, she's over her ridiculous frailness by now, but I just don't see any circumstances where she'll outperform Olga. Actually, y'know, obvious answer. Olga's stupidly slow. Sure, she binds great, but after I've already been trampled that first turn. As with Terra, it's less about overall usefulness and more about not seeing a great Cestus or Spear come along that's kept them on the benches and Olga off them.

[aegisreflections]

Thoughts on the Current State of Street Fighter V

You may have noticed that I’ve been shying away from Street Fighter (particularly Street Fighter V) themed content as of late. There are several reasons for this, chief among which are my feelings about the current state of Street Fighter V as a whole. My thoughts on this topic are lengthy, so I’m gonna go ahead and lay them all out under the cut. TL;DR version at the end.

Street Fighter V had a rough start. Servers were unstable, features were somewhat slim for a $60 purchase, and the balance was a bit questionable. At it’s core though, as a fighting game, it showed a lot of potential. I genuinely like the systems they had in place, and looked forward to how they’d evolve and build upon them in the future. Hell, the first month I spent with SFV was more fun for me than the entire 7 year life span of Street Fighter IV. While the short term of the first three or so months after release seemed like rough waters, there was a ton of promise on the horizon. That’s where the key issues lie, however. I personally feel SFV has utterly failed to evolve as a game. 

Since launch they’ve added new features; a cinematic story, daily/weekly challenges, combo trials, and as of writing this a total of 8 DLC characters. On paper that all sounds great. In reality, though, aside from the DLC characters those are all features that in the end felt like they should have been there from the start. The fact that they weren’t was disappointing, and the fact that they were EVENTUALLY added in didn’t really do much for the game as a whole. On top of this, the bulk of the content they’ve added, the DLC characters, ended up being of debatable relevance as well. When you consider that, at their original time of release, every DLC character (sans Guile) was considered low or nearly bottom tier compared to the rest of the cast, it was easy to see there was something wrong with how they were balancing the new fighters against the established top tier fighters. 

To Capcom’s credit, they did eventually realize this flaw in their balancing. However, the way they went about correcting it ended up creating more problems than it solved. Basically what ended up happening was Capcom took the two strongest DLC fighters they had made (Guile and Urien), buffed them up a ton, nerfed the established top tier characters (Ryu and Nash) to the point where they are now borderline useless by comparison, and for the rest of the cast made some minor tweaks that moved tiers around ever so slightly between them. That’s it. No buffs noteworthy buffs for the mid tiers, no major changes to the bottom tiers. Most of the cast of SFV was basically left untouched compared to the shifts seen at the top of the tier list and between Guile and Urien. It would seem Capcom’s idea of balancing the game is to simply rotate characters in and out of the top 3 slots and not really worry much about how fun it is to play against them when you’re playing someone outside of those slots. It’s fine for the people who want to play Guile and Urien, but if you want to play as any other member of the cast you may as well put your controller down against them.

Balance isn’t the only gameplay issue facing SFV right now either. I mentioned how I enjoyed the mechanics of SFV at launch, and looked forward to how they would develop over time. But, sadly, they haven’t developed. Not even a little. I had expected by Season 2 coming around we would have seen some sort of change to at least one of the core mechanics. Maybe add new sets of skills for character’s v-systems; new skills and triggers. Maybe a new way to use meter in general, hell, you could give us special cancels in exchange for using v-meter. SFV may not be receiving periodic new repackages in the forms of Super Street Fighter V and so on, but that doesn’t excuse a lack of evolution of gameplay systems over time in the manner these previous iterations gave us. I was under the assumption new seasons would bring more than just characters, and I’m disappointed to see that doesn’t seem to be the case so far.

Speaking of the new season, it is perhaps the biggest thing keeping me away from Street Fighter V right now. Capcom’s idea for Season 2 is, in my opinion, one of the most puzzling decisions they have made throughout this game’s life cycle. The idea of bringing in a cast of entire new characters, sight unseen, and expecting the entire community to A. Be excited about every upcoming release and B. Go so far as to pre-order them through a second season pass purchase is completely ludicrous to me. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of SFV having new characters. I think FANG, Laura, and Rashid are great characters (in concept, at least, and I’m not even going near Necalli) and welcome additions to the SF universe. However, to base an entire season SOLELY off of brand new faces is the fighting game marketing equivalent of New Coke. Not only did no one ask for it, but you’re taking away the thing people actually want from you (classic characters, in this case) in favor of the thing no one asked for instead. It would’ve been fine had you sprinkled it in along your line up of other products, perhaps people would have even liked it, but instead you have a package no one has any reason to be invested in at all. Characters sell fighting games, and giving people characters they know and recognize is chiefly important to selling SFV’s style of downloadable content. This approach does nothing positive for the game, especially when Capcom won’t even give us a HINT as to what each of these new characters holds for us gameplay wise. It hurts the current customers who would like to see familiar faces, it hurts would be customers who are WAITING for familiar faces, and, what should be most pressing to Capcom, it hurts Capcom. Because when you lack familiar faces, and give no cohesive details on what the new faces have to offer your customers, you end up in a situation where no one is confident enough to buy them. I guess it’s no wonder they keep shelling out costume DLC.  

Frankly it’s all a bit disappointing that this is where we are right now. I truly believe Street Fighter V has potential to be a great fighting game, but the current prospects aren’t as promising as what I had hoped for this time last year. Capcom’s complacency in regards to balance and evolving mechanics, on top of lack luster features and a marketing nightmare scenario have resulted in a game that I can in no way recommend to anyone at this point. And those are just the big points! I haven’t even touched the slew of PC specific issues that still exist to this day, lingering bugs with battle lounges, features that existed in USF4 that are still MIA from SFV, the unreliability of online matchmaking and connections, the fact that Birdie has been unjustifiably shafted when he never did anything wrong and is a precious boy who deserves nothing but the best, the list goes on into infinity at this point and it’s become too depressing to even bother. 

In closing, SFV is currently a massive source of disappointment for me, and until they sort out their mess I’m not motivated to keep up with its current affairs. The drought of SF related content will likely be persistent on this blog, at least until I inevitably pick up 3S again, or SFV suddenly becomes a good video game. In the meantime, I’m fully invested in my renewed love for Guilty Gear; a series the developers actually know what they’re doing with and only gets better and better. Good job Arc System Works, you’re a better company than the people who decided horror games don’t sell and Megaman should be exiled to Street Fighter x Tekken. Now if only they’d get a handle on their PC ports.

TL;DR - Capcom is consistently fucking up everything they do in relation to this game. It’s imbalanced, they show no interest in evolving the core mechanics, and Season 2 is a concept that is dead on arrival. My interest in the game as a whole is rapidly fading, and it will show on this blog. Also, everyone should go play Guilty Gear Xrd.