#does that boost my player status or not

[ozzgin]

may i hold your hand?

❤️‍🩹 anon

Lewd! But alright, what am I if not a daring soul.

[algebraicpizza]

If the Straw Hat Pirates were on social media:

this has probably been done before but idc

Luffy doesn't have an account (he doesn't know how to use a phone) but Nami and Usopp run a tiktok where they take videos of him getting into street fights, climbing on top of statues in public, or running all-you-can-eat buffets out of business. He has no idea he's become popular online. There's a subreddit that compiles every sighting.

Zoro streams his workouts on insta but often forgets to turn off the stream, leading to everyone seeing his completely empty apartment. His chat is full of simps but he doesn't actually know how to open it and never connected it to his bank account to receive donations. He's been invited onto various podcasts but has never responded to any of their emails. Most of his workout advice is just to lift heavier weights.

Nami is actually not a hot tub streamer, but she constantly jokes in her just chatting streams that the next stream will be one. Clips of her raging in Valorant have gone viral several times in spite of how she preaches kindness and respect, but she's always managed to get away with an apology video. She secretly posts on 4chan to argue with her haters.

Usopp is a variety streamer who's an absolute god in every shooter he plays. He trash talks like crazy in voice chat and several of his questionably true rants about how he's the best player ever or going to show up at his opponent's house have become memes. Sound clips of his terrified screams while playing horror games have become memes as well, and he hates it. He's actually active in his community discord, and frequently reacts to its meme channel.

Sanji posts recipe videos, clips and screenshots of which regularly do numbers on twitter for how amazing they look. The restaurant he works at requires reservations six months in advance because of how much he's boosted it's profile. A reality show once did an episode on him that revealed not just the way he belittles chefs who fuck up, but the biased treatment he gives to women. He can't shake that reputation, but is trying to be better. He's recently moved to tiktok and gotten a brand new boost of fans.

Chopper first appeared as an expert guest on various podcasts, and then started youtube videos explaining basic medical concepts. But somehow, fan comments convinced him to start making videos like "Doctor Plays MINECRAFT for the first time?" He believes every single fake rumor about Herobrine.

Robin posts her history lectures online and is beloved by students around the world for how understandable she makes complex topics. Her videos are very popular as unintentional ASMR. Otherwise, she mostly avoids social media, but you'll occasionally see her networking on academic twitter and vagueposting about how hard she works and how much she wishes things were easier. Secretly, she's active on AO3 and is known for her hundreds of angsty hurt/comfort fics in just about every fandom you can imagine.

Franky runs a DIY engineering youtube channel where he posts the most insane inventions. His titles are all along the lines of "POLICE SHOWED UP AT MY HOUSE? SUUUUPER TRUCK WITH MOUNTED CANNON BUILD!!!" He does AMAs on reddit every year and ends every single comment with SUUUUUUPER.

Brook is a popular musician online, but doesn't have a youtube channel of his own. He's known for rock covers of classical pieces and his concerts sell out completely, but the only videos of him are posted by fans. The only way he actually communicates with fans is on facebook, where he's active to this day, mostly to post puns.

Jimbei hosts a political podcast where he talks primarily about minority rights, but he takes on guests with a variety of views for the sake of open debate. He's ratioed political figures on twitter many times. He travels frequently and posts about it on his blog.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

My Thoughts on Santalla

lul bad just use Eyja instead

Are they gone? Did I bait them into trying to find the upvote button on tumblr? Good good.

Now I'm going to do a lot of work arguing Santalla from a position of general good faith and wanting to encourage others to experiment with her. That cannot be done without acknowledging that her class, the Splash or AoE Caster, is one of the worst in the entire game. They have very high DP costs, limited range, and pretty low attack speed. This results in a pretty poor DPS even for a class that's meant to manage crowds of enemies. I'm sure we can all post funny numbers about how Eyja does like 8 billion damage. Let's push past that for now. Splash Casters still have their perks. Santalla HP: 1,640 (+155 from Module) ATK: 770 (+90 from Trust) (+32 from Potential 4) (+70 from Module) DEF: 123 RES: 20 Redeployment Time: 70 seconds (-4 sec from Potential 3) DP Cost: 33 (-1 from Potentials 2 and 6) (-8 from Module) Attack Interval: 2.9 seconds Talent: After being deployed for 20 seconds, this unit gains ATK +15% and Status Resistance (+3% ATK from Potential 5) (-5 seconds and +5% ATK from Module)

Let's start with a discussion of the basics. The stats. While not super notable, she is the bulkiest of the 5-star Splash Casters, having better HP and DEF than all of them. She's a little less bulky than either Mostima or Dusk (and considerably less if its Module X Dusk, which it won't be), but this isn't a tanking class so its not a major deal.

Her offense is the key part of the show here. Her ATK with just her trust bonus is 860, which doesn't stack well against Lava's 888, Leonhardt's 863, or Skyfire's 874. Mostima's 939 and Dusk's 1,028 ATK seem to have pigeonholed Santalla into a bulky, unoffensive position.

Santalla's talent is an incredible saving grace here. It's easy to activate and will always be active when her skill is up, and the resulting 15% ATK boost puts her effective ATK at 989, making her more comparable with the 6-stars. The key here, when compared with Leonhardt's, Skyfire's, or Dusk's talents is the general ease of this talent. 20 seconds sounds like a lot, but at Mastery Level 3, her S2 has a 20 second charge time on deployment, so its downtime that's already covered.

If you were to push Santalla to her peak performance, here is how her ATK would compare to the others:

Santalla: 1,183 Lava the Purgatory: 950 Leonhardt: 1,013 (He will always have one stack of his talent due to how video games work: with 8 enemies in range his ATK is 1,351) Skyfire: 977 Mostima: 1,055 Dusk Module Y: 1,144 (Potential max of 1,556 with 18 kills) Dusk Module X: 1,142 (Potential max of 1,690 with 24 kills)

Truthfully, the raw attack stat isn't the most relevant thing on the block. But it does give a decent indicator of what exactly Santalla is working with, and the fact that she can hang with the 6-stars while off-skill is genuinely really impressive, although Leonhardt is probably a little bit better than her at that.

Also worth noting that she gets Status Resistance from her talent. This is cool. Not like, the most insane thing in the world but getting less owned by status occasionally comes up.

From this point forward, I will be discussing what I consider Santalla's base (Max Level and 100% Trust) and near max power (all the goodies, except for potential BUT you get whipped cream to use as you like), and that her talent is always active. This is to give players who maybe are a bit worried about investing her module some idea of how much it impacts her. For the latter, keep in your head that her ATK with her talent up is 1,116.

Her base DPS, assuming she is attacking an enemy with 0 RES, is 341 damage per second. With her module, this increases to 384.

Skill 1

I'm not going to go over this one in detail. No one is wowed by Swift Strike gamma. But to go over what it does to her DPS briefly: +45 ASPD is enough to reduce her attack interval to 2 seconds flat. At base, Santalla's ATK will go up to 1,376, giving her a DPS of 688, about a 102% increase. With her module, she will have an ATK of 1,534, resulting in a DPS of 767, or a 100% increase.

This makes sense. Since Santalla's talent already gives her a decent ATK buff, the improved ATK buff from her module will create a little bit more diminishing returns, and on the whole, the DPS increase is than the expected amount at 210%. On a whole, if you raise this all the way up, Santalla does double damage over 35 seconds. Probably not jumping out of your seats on that one.

Skill 2

Oh boy, this skill. This skill has a lot to cover, let's start with the description.

[Attack Range expands, Attack Interval shortens massively, and attacks now summon icicles over random areas within range. When the icicles fall, all enemies in the area are inflicted with Cold for 1 seconds and dealt 90% of Santalla's ATK as Arts damage.]

Going over it in detail: -Santalla's range expands to include the 4th row, identical to Marksmen snipers -Her attack interval is reduced by 2.4 seconds, all the way down to 0.5 seconds. This means she will attack twice a second, getting in 30 attacks over her skill duration. -Randomly is both correct and not correct. It's time to bring in diagrams.

Icicle falling is semi-random. One icicle will fall in column B (the left column), followed by an icicle in column D (the right column), and finally by an icicle in column C (the middle column). Using the diagram as a metric, you can consider it like this:

Random(B1, B2, B3, B4) THEN Random (D1, D2, D3, D4) THEN Random (C1, C2, C3, C4). (Yes, she can target her own square, this is a reminder to always double check your thinking lol) -Her icicles explode with a radius of 1.5 tiles. To explain what this looks like:

Here is an Attack on "C2". Fortunately, Santalla's effects make it really easy to visually confirm this. Even as she is slaughtering Originium Slugs.

-Cold for 1 second might initially give the impression that Santalla needs to chain together back to back hits with her skill in order to inflict and sustain freeze. This isn't true: she does however need to score a hit within the next two hits.

I would watch the first six seconds or so on 0.5x speed and count. Santalla is allowed to miss one of her hits and still keep her cold and freeze going. This is going to be really important once we talk about how her probabilities work.

-Each attack will deals damage equal to 90% of Santalla's ATK. This is a modifier applied after her attack buff from her talent, but BEFORE Res is applied. We'll be talking about her damage primarily in 0 RES situations, but this will be important later on for an example. For now, at base, Santalla's icicles will do 890 damage, and with her module they will do 1,004 damage. This is an 11.1% decrease in damage.

With all of that out of the way, phew, let's talk about the skill as a whole. This is a crowd control skill that looks to freeze enemies with multiple icicle hits. This is a pretty nice idea actually. Freeze is a really powerful source of crowd control and an enemy could theoretically be pinned down for the entire 15 second duration. Critically also, being Frozen reduces enemy RES by 15, giving Santalla some sneaky extra damage. This naturally relies on quite a bit of luck though, and enemy position is really, really important.

In particular, you might have been clever and noticed a connection between her attack pattern and how many hits she needs to land to Freeze an enemy and sustain the Frozen condition. The initial hit needs to land, and then one of the two next hits also needs to land. This means that, for any given enemy in her attack range, they need to be hit by an icicle from a different column in order to be frozen.

This also plays very weirdly with enemies outside of her attack range. Since the icicles have an explosion range of 1.5 tiles, she can hit enemies outside of her attack range, but whether she can freeze them or not is actually dependent on where exactly they are outside of her attack frame.

Geometry is fucking sick y'all.

Due to the rules of how this works, Santalla cannot actually freeze enemies outside of her attack range if they are on either side of her attack range. The only icicles that can hit those areas are all from the same column, so it's not viable. Only at the very front and directly behind her attack range are viable options, and its pretty specific both in location and which icicles have to fall. But it is technically possible.

Since we know the rules and can properly map out how each icicle will impact the map, we can do something really interesting: we can calculate a general probability as a guideline for how likely an enemy is to be frozen when in any specific tile. Do note for this I am assuming the enemy is in the center of the tile and not moving. This is a guideline, I am not smart enough to brain out every possible solution and factoring in movement is about my brain grade.

We can discount the middle tile of icicles because those won't factor in here. Assuming out helpful little enemy in C3 was hit, what are the chances that Santalla will freeze him with her next two attacks? Well the left column and the right column have three viable options out of four, so this is pretty simple to figure out. We only need one to hit, so we can include all solutions that include a positive left and right hit (56.25%), all solutions that include a positive left and negative right (18.75%), and vice versa (18.75%). The only solutions left are two negative hits (6.25%) which is out failure rate, giving us a success rate of: 93.75%!

(This is assuming all squares are weighted equally.)

Since the spread is symmetrical, we only have to test for 8 different locations. B1 and D1 are essentially the same but flipped after all.

B1/D1: Only hits in C1 and C2 are positive. This gives us a 50% chance. B2/D2: C1, C2, and C3 are positive. 75% chance. B3/B4: C2, C3, and C4 are positive. 75% chance. B4/D4: C3 and C4 are positive. 50% chance. C1: B1, B2, D1, and D2 are positive. 75% chance. C2: B1, B2, B3, D1, D2, and D3 are positive. 93.75% chance. C3: B2, B3, B4, D2, D3, and D4 are positive. 93.75% chance. C4: B3, B4, D3, and D4 are positive. 75% chance.

The cool thing about rectangles is they are symmetric both ways, which makes the actual math part of this a lot easier. In general:

The closer to the center of the attack range an enemy is, the more likely they will be frozen and remain frozen.

There's one little quirk though I forgot to mention. While icicles will fall randomly in her attack range, they will not fall in squares that are considered out of bounds such as squares occupied by a wall. I mean come on, there couldn't be a map that could be abused with, could there?

Let's say we are sick and tired of that bastard Sarkaz Guerilla Fighter, and he's parked in the center of the first row, and we park Santalla right below him.

Suddenly the top two rows are out of bounds, so when Santalla uses her skill, she will only attack six squares. What happens to the poor Sarkaz Guerilla Fighter who is sitting in C2?

Well C2's positive hits are B1, B2, D1, and D2. Those are the only squares Santalla can hit. So Santalla will perma-freeze the Sarkaz Guerilla Fighter and hit him with all 30 of her attacks of her skill!

(2 * (Damage * 0.5)) + (28 * (Damage *0.65)) is the formula that will tell us how much damage the fighter will take.

At base, the Sarkaz Guerilla Fighter will take: 17,074 damage. With module, the Sarkaz Guerilla Fighter will take: 19,288 damage.

We did it gang. We killed the 10,000 HP Sarkaz Guerilla Fighter because this stage gives him a hidden HP buff. Santalla is the greatest.

Well...no. Even if you can guarantee all 30 hits will lands on an enemy with 0 RES, your total skill damage comes out to 26,700 and 30,120 damage respectively. It is a genuinely pretty impressive DPS, sitting at 1,780 and 2008 respectively, but this requires not only good positioning but also very intentional knowledge of the map. There will be maps where it is simply impossible for Santalla to do this.

You might be wondering what the chances of an enemy in tiles C2 or C3 are of getting hit with all 30 attacks from Santalla's skill. Fortunately, that's very easy. We take the success rate on any attack (75%) and multiply it by itself the number of times we need. 0.75 ^ 30. That can't be that bad right?

0.018%. It's pretty low. Comparatively, you might ask, what are the chances a corner tile enemy is never hit? Well we thankfully can avoid all right-side hits, as those will never hit an enemy on the left side. 10 are automatic misses. The remaining 20 are 50/50s. 0.5 ^ 20.

0.000095%. So okay, to be entirely fair, its really unlikely you will just never hit an enemy. Santalla will generally do _some_ damage and inflict Cold. If you can deploy blockers to keep enemies from leaving her attack range, chances are she's going to do decent work.

The big problem with this skill, the reason I made all the graphics and did the probabilities and what not, is that Santalla is inconsistent. Unless you're smart and use her wisely, there's a good chance that she can not perform to what you need her to do. Figuring how much of an impact she'll have on average is frankly a level of math I'm not qualified to do, but you have to construct her greatest scenarios deliberately. She's not quite plug and play.

Conclusions

There's probably an argument that whatever you want Santalla to do, Gnosis can do better. That's likely true. He's way more consistent at locking down large crowds of enemies with freeze and maintains a pretty good sum of damage on them too. But I think Santalla is the kind of operator who while inconsistent, is going to be fun to optimize and make work. Getting Santalla to work is rather rewarding thanks to the combination of her good DPS and a powerful 14.5 second permafreeze. But you won't always be able to make that happen, and I think planning around her inconsistency will also be an important part in managing her viability.

I think its actually a really good idea to pair her with Gnosis. The massive Fragile debuff Gnosis provides happens at the very end of the damage calculation, which is quite impactful. Santalla can be comboed with other strong crowd control operators too, such as Magallan (lesbians for life), and Saria.

Plus I'm sure if you do the dumbshit buffing set-ups she can take out Patriot. Chop chop. Make it happen.

[llamagirl28]

Hi!

Just wanted to say i adore BOC, and ngl when reading chapter 5 i was slightly confused about the comment that no one would want to marry a bastard- (but also i can't remember if people know they're aruthur's illegitimate kid or not so take this with many grains of salt)

Highkey thought that morganna would move for a political marriage or at least an engagment to help get modred's foot into court for revenge purposes using her connections at court when she used to be there (cough blackmail cough) or to boost mordred's social status so less people would look down on them for well, being a bastard

idk i love the idea of angst between morganna and mordred esp with a political marriage because imo it'll reaffirm the conflict between does she see them as a tool for her revenge or does she really love them and want the best (i am projecting my mummy issues so hard)

Thank you! 💕

No, people don't know about Arthur being Mordred's father, and Mordred isn't officially a bastard because Lot legitimized them. But everyone believes Accolon to be Mordred's dad. Besides, if we're talking why no one's jumping to marry Mordred, it also has to do with Morgana's reputation, which affects them as well.

Becoming a knight is the foothold she's giving Mordred in court. By entering the Round Table, they'll be in Camelot and close to court and the big players there.

Morgana would not force Mordred in a marriage they didn't want. She's already been outraged at Gareth's engagement, which she thinks he was rushed into, and it took a lot of reassurance from him to convince her he's alright with it.

[darkfictionjude]

Etymology nonnie here!

It's a very interesting dilemma to have, the one between having specific traits or numerical stats. Although I don't know if they are necessarily exclusive.

The thing is, as someone who knows next to nothing about coding, and has relied on Tumblr and every tutorial I have been able to find, I have no idea how to handle traits. I thought about including them, but have found nothing (then again, since I don't know about coding, it makes it harder for me to actually find things about it. Unlike with Literature and Linguistics, since I studied that on college, lol).

So, the only thing I can think about, would be to have just a numerical value system (since they aren't that hard to implement, although so far I have only used it to determine relationships and not personality, so I may be wrong) and having set ranges that show a specific trait. So, for example:

There is a bar, let's say. 0 is serious, and 100 is funny. Then, what I would do, is to have about 5, or maybe more, categories. So 0-20 can show as 'deadly serious'. 21-40 is 'mostly serious'. 41-60 is 'balanced'. 61-80 is 'quite funny'. And 81-100 being 'very funny'. Or something more personalized and thought out than this.

I think that can work as follows:

1. It can easily show how the MC ends up fluctuating. Maybe they can choose to be funny at the beginning, but then just go with serious dialogue and action options, so the bar changes their status. Tracking this could also mean character may react to MC's supposed change in demeanor.

2. You can have some nuance for dialogue options. Say you have a deadly serious character, and they choose a funny option. You could use a if statement in which it indicates that everyone looks at MC as if they grew a third head. Unable to understand if that was meant to be a joke or not. Yet, if it continues happening, such reactions stop. This means more work, however.

Basically, I would just fake the traits. You don't need to show the bar with the numerical value fluctuations, as far as I know. So the player can easily think you are just using traits. But you still get the benefits of numerical values.

I think of this based on a relationship bar tutorial of @idrellegames I found. Sure, that was for how to show relationships developing. But I think you can still use it easily for other aspects of a game, like personality traits and the like.

But maybe you have a different idea of what to do that may work better. I'm just saying what I would do from my own inexperience.

This also makes me remember a question I had yet never got to ask. Do you have hidden stats on WWC? Because I know you show how a RO feels about Crowny, but you don't have visible player stats. As far as I remember. Yet, given we have choices based on personality... I would suppose you track them, right? Like, it's not hard to have some things going on the background.

For example, in my IF, I plan to have the relationship page only show once you have met all the characters that are tracked. And have two separate relationship pages because the prologue (that is more of a chapter 0, it's basically a mini IF on it's own, send help) takes place in a very remote past and the rest of the story takes place during the 80's. Because of this, the "present" relationships are going to be shown basically close to chapter 1 resolution. While the "past" relationships are going to appear during the middle of the prologue.

But I guess you already know how to do that, so I don't know why I brought it up. In any case, I'm curious about how you handle things on WWC. Of course, you are free to remain discreet about it. Having things hidden does help with the mystique of your IF, so it's not like I want to disrupt that if you aren't okay with it.

Yeah I personally hate numerical stats 😭 it completely takes me out of a game as I become too focused on getting the right choices to boost certain stats and instead of having fun I’m just getting annoyed and many times they don’t reflect how slowly people change from being funny to serious and vice versa

But what you mention is kind of what I said for the traits anyway, that after certain choices repeatedly picked the traits would change and thus it could be noticed by the characters (although all my MCs have at least one defined trait, like Luce is quicker with a smile than Crowny)

I have certain hidden stats that are there but I’m waiting to finish season 1 to really add to them. There’s a very important stat that will influence Crowny’s demeanour and course of action in season 2 and the relationship stats the mostly are meant to influence the description of what the characters feel for Crowny romantically or platonically. Apart from that I don’t have anything else because to me this game has always been choice based

[raptorific]

hello can i ask what do you think about the new sombra rework? it sounds balanced to me but im interested to hear your thoughts

So, take this with a grain of salt, I fancy myself a pretty good Gameplay Analyst generally but I am not good at Sombra. I'm not a Sombra Main, I just believe in their beliefs

For those who haven't seen yet, here is the basic one-sheet for the rework:

I think the rework strikes a good balance where the stuff Good Sombra Players do is now made as easy as possible for them. The way a truly Dangerous Sombra plays is now enabled by her kit, while discouraging bad habits that have persisted ever since she first dropped in the game (i.e. setting a translocator on a hacked health pack, which has not helped you build ult or participate in the action in literal years)

Having Stealth be an automatic passive is a pretty smart idea. The Expert Sombras already play it like that, and the Novice Sombras get scared managing stealth and not being sure when to switch to and from it. Now, it just does it by itself at the opportune time.

Essentially, Expert Sombras are gonna get a lot more dangerous with this rework, and Novice Sombras are gonna build the habits that teach you how to be an Expert Sombra. I do mourn the loss of certain utilities, like the Opportunist passive

The virus ability is interesting, and I feel like my friend who's a deeply homicidal Zenyatta Main will appreciate this one. It feels like, generally speaking, Overwatch is playing around with more Status Effect/Damage interactions in their recent heroes and abilities. Junker Queen's bleed/heal, Mei's chilled/damage boost, Illari's sunstruck/Damage Taken explosion, and now Sombra's hack/virus damage combo

This has less to do with Sombra herself or what she'll be like to play, but noticing how powerful these sorts of interactions are getting leads me to believe there's something coming down the pipeline that'll specifically counter them. I suspect one of the next few heroes we get, likely one of the tanks or supports but anything's possible, will have something like Kiriko's Suzu or Zarya's Bubble that can negate the negative consequences of a status effect, or turn them against the enemy team

The TL;DR on this is that I think the Sombra rework works for lowering her skill floor significantly, while slightly raising her skill ceiling. It reminds me of when they reworked Symmetra, and suddenly everybody who sucked at Symmetra was powerful enough to play her right, and people like me who'd already Gotten Good at Symmetra were basically unstoppable for like four months

[p5x-theories]

You know I've kinda been thinking more about Cherish & Doctors personas and what their powers might be.

Like for example I've thought that maybe Doctors persona might deal Curse attacks but I thought that it would be to on the nose so I thought maybe Doctors persona would have Psychic or Wind skills

And I also thought the same for Cherish like he would probably have Bless Skills but I also thought he might have Nuke or might also have wind Skills

So what do you think about my theory you think it’s cool or do you think I might be getting a little to ahead of myself 😅

Heh, yeah, perhaps a little ahead of things here, but no harm in theorizing early! That's part of the fun.

I honestly hope Doctor isn't Curse, just because he already kind of resembles Sepia, so having Curse too wouldn't help with that. Cherish does have a bit of a Bless vibe, but...

I'd actually think about this from another perspective: P5X tends to incentivize players to use teams of the same element/type. There's a buff for having two or four of the same type on your team, and fights like the Door to Ominous Dreams boss fights encourage focusing on a specific type to maximize the points earned from dealing damage. Many characters of the same type also complement each other- Vino causes elemental status effects, which boost Queen's damage, while Key strengthens other fire attacks- which further adds to this.

So if we think about it that way, which elements are still "missing" a full team of three to join Wonder?

Fire: Panther, Cattle, Key

Ice: Fox, Soy, Mont

Electric: Closer, Bui, Chord

Wind: Mona, Fleuret

Nuclear: Queen, Leon, Vino

Psychokinesis: [Noir, eventually], Moko, Riddle, Summer Tomoko (but she can't be used on the same team as Moko)

Bless: [Crow, eventually], Yuki, Marian, Summer Motoha

Curse: Joker, Rin, Sepia

Physical: Skull

Gun: [none]

With that in mind, your Psy and Wind guesses actually start to look the most likely! Though it's also been theorized that Doctor may be Physical, and I could imagine this being the case as well.

[pokemon-dungeon-masters]

Charsheet Sunday!

As usual, post your character sheets in the replies.

There's nothing particularly pressing I want to bring up at the moment, so I'm going to go a bit more in depth into the details of the character sheet under the cut today.

Question of the Day:

"Guildmaster's getting drinks for everyone from the Cafe today! Do you want anything?"

What does your character ask to get from the Cafe?

As for Yew the Misdreavus here...

"Get me something as cold and black as the depths of my heart!"

"One hot chocolate with extra whipped cream, then?"

"NO!"

Didn't really have any witty commentary today, so instead I wanted to go through the character sheet.

At the top left are the basics of a Pokemon character. Name, pokemon species, pronouns, ability, etc. Nature in this system doesn't actually do anything mechanically - as with the Mystery Dungeon series, it's purely for flavor. I like to line my pokemon's personality with the stats that would result from it, but nobody's stopping you from having an Adamant special attacker or a Calm physical attacker.

Below that are your Level, Current/Max HP, Status, and Heal Pool. All translate directly from the mainline games aside from Heal Pool, which is our stand-in for PMD's regeneration - rather than slowly regenerating every few steps, our system has players regenerate their entire Heal Pool's worth of d6s every time they enter a new floor. No need to stall next to the stairs to make sure you're in top shape for the next floor.

Below that are the victories required to level up as well as the current number of victories your character has - our stand-in for experience points. Defeat a number of pokemon equal to your level to level up; Bosses might be worth more, while weak minions might not be worth anything at all - up to DM discretion.

At the bottom left, there's your personal type matchup chart. Mod Nines has it programmed to automatically factor in type interactions as well as Abilities, making effectiveness easy to figure at a glance. (Notably, super effectiveness actually only deals 1.5x damage in this system, so a Bisharp player doesn't instantly die from a random Low Kick; 2x and 4x are just useful shorthands. Resistance is unchanged, but super effectiveness and resistance still cancel out.)

Stats are self explanatory, with each one corresponding to a stat in the mainline games. You gain two stat points every 5 levels, but are required to put them into different stats, and can't go past 10. Most attack rolls will add a relevant stat and subtract the defender's defending stat from a 2d6 roll. Boosts cap out at +3, which is enough to almost guarantee a full/partial hit for an attacking stat or prevent incoming full hits for a defensive stat. Boosts also wear off after a few turns, so don't expect to Swords Dance at the start of a floor and then go on a rampage. Such effects are tracked in the bottom-middle area.

Both Items and Relationships are further developed in Dungeons - the former as the DM makes them available, and Relationships as your party members grow and interact with each other. Notably, most items only work within Dungeons - don't expect to demolish the guild with a One-Room Orb.

Finally, moves. Each character has Basic Attack which deals 1 damage, and can equip 4 moves available to them by level up (according to whatever generation last featured them). There are ways to gain access to moves outside your natural learnset, from TMs to Dojo training to Tutors - the more Keen Eye'd viewers might even notice Dirge, a move that doesn't actually exist in the mainline games.

There will be ways to gain access to homebrew moves, particularly for pokemon with poor levelup learnsets - after all, it'd be rather disappointing to have a Mawile character you're excited about only to realize that her only STAB move is Fairy Wind until she hits level 36 for Iron Head... that's over 600 Victories away. Even with how streamlined our system is, that's a long time!

As with the mainline games, moves have Power, effects, relevant attacking and defending stats, and PP. Most are equivalent to whatever counterparts the mainline games have for them, but a few get a bit more creative - for instance, many Dance moves like Fiery Dance can use Charisma instead of Insight, since. You dance. That's a charisma thing.

There's also Dojo Enhancements, ways to further customize moves. Enhancements are unlocked with your party's Rank, and can greatly change how a move is used. Earthquake, for instance, becomes a much more appealing option when you can ensure it doesn't damage your teammates!

The character sheet also has pages for players to manage their Bag, write up their backstory, gauge their personality, view how moves work in our system, and show off pictures of their characters. Here's Yew's!

[jeeplethicar]

Some thoughts on the whole magic being easy mode thing because I like drama idk but before I begin I’m going to establish some things.

1. I’m not talking about minmaxing or ng+ neither of those are going to be balanced because they’re not intended to be

2. Magic is fun, I’ve used it before, and no I’m not a guts greatsword strength simp either I like halberds and pyromancy

That said, magic is really really easy and it’s not even kind of a competition and there’s a lot of reasons for why that is and it comes down to a few things safety, damage per hit, and adaptability

Even early game spells can easily put out far more damage per hit than any melee weapon can all while being really far from the target and any potential danger but more importantly it’s really easy to land this damage too. One of the biggest things people will show off is a mega buffed strength weapon (which btw they used spells to make the weapon do more damage) slamming something for a ridiculous amount of damage but right there in that argument is where they’re wrong

Melee weapons can do a lot of damage in one swing and can do a ton of damage. But the thing is that it’s significantly harder to land a charged heavy attack than it is to cast comet or Crystal soul spear across the room especially since you can cast multiple of those far faster than you can swing a charged heavy (or get the window large enough to do one)

Magic also lets you enjoy being able to just run away from the boss and keep casting, literally the only time as a spellcaster you’re in any danger is when the boss rushes at you and you have to dodge that one thing. Even better a lot of bosses straight up don’t rush at you if you run away meaning you can just run off and then keep casting and it’ll be a minute before they even get over to you.

Lastly magic has tons and tons of options which is awesome btw. Especially in Elden ring which is probably one of my favorite builds I’ve done just because I had so many choices available from spells to staves and rings boosting my damage and casting speed and charged spells it’s crazy. No matter what boss you’re coming up against as a spellcaster you will always have some tool that will work to make this boss go down so easy. Is your enemy really resistant to magic? Just use a spell that does physical damage, does your enemy have a ton of hp? Just use a spell that does damage based on how much health they have. Are resins and arrows just a bit too inconvenient? Don’t worry you can inflict any status effect in the game 10x faster than any non-magical method AND it’s a better version of it as well (not all poison is the same in case you didn’t know) You have tons of buffs at your disposal that can improve literally any build to do so much more damage

Sorcery,miracles,incantations,pyromancy doesn’t matter every single one of these are so ridiculously powerful that it’s actually laughable that anyone could try to say that it’s difficult or even harder than melee in any capacity. If you are genuinely incapable of winning without it then you are bad there is no other way to look at it. And that’s fine who cares play how you want, I’ve used magic too it’s a blast. But it’s definitely a significantly easier experience.

There’s a reason that in all my time of playing and I’m helping people fight bosses just because i feel like it. I hate it every time I’m summoned by a sorcerer (my friends can attest to this because I let them know every time) because they are consistently the worst players I have never seen a group of people try as hard as they possibly could to die when all they need to do is sit in the corner and cast their spells while the sunlight warrior does all the work for them. When I’m summoned by a melee character? Awesome man they probably know how to not die to really simple things and at the very least if they don’t they actually have the vigor to take a smack or two (seriously why do you guys not level vigor??) Just saying if I can beat the boss for you when I’m using a whip then maybe just maybe it’s a skill issue when you can’t beat them when you can do half their health in a few seconds

Before I’m done I want to say to all the guts greatsword strength only people quit acting like your way to play is the best as if it’s not one of the most boring builds possible and isn’t even that good.

Play how you want, use magic if you want to or need to I don’t care it’s a video game and if you die when you’re summoning it’s your embers you’re wasting not mine I don’t care we can try as many times as you need. But for the love of god stop acting like magic is even kind of comparable or complaining about how it’s actually really hard too.

P.S- in all fairness Elden ring is really easy in terms of broken options across the board but that’s an entirely different topic

[ga-wsc-fmp]

Overanalysing Dragon Quest IX's battle system

(For convenience's sake and for good recording quality i used an emulator called MelonDS for this clip)

At the start of the battle, a little swirling animation plays as it loads up the battle system. This is a good way to smoothly transition over as otherwise it would be a rather jarring cut as it unloads the overworld and loads up the battle stuff.

Here we have 2 party members on our team, the player character, as well as an AI controlled character. The player has full control over what their character does, they can attempt to flee, examine the enemy, change party tactics & equipment, and of course fight.

When selecting fight, a new menu pops up with 6 other options. Attack simply does a basic damage dealing move which consumes no MP and doesn't have any additional effects. This attack has a 0.12% chance to land a critical hit.

A critical hit bypasses the defences and stat boosts of any enemies it hits. As well as doing an extra dose of damage. I've been unsuccessful at finding a concrete number for how critical damage is calculated. But it seems to be a range, a safe assumption is that it does around an extra 200% damage though again, this seems to vary quite a bit.

Next are abilities. In the example above i didn't use any abilities as my character was only level 1 and as such hadn't unlocked any. Abilities are essentially different types of attacks you can do, often costing MP to use. For example once you have levelled up your sword skills enough you're able to perform an ability called a Gigaslash:

Next are spells. Once more i was only level 1 in this clip and hadn't unlocked any spells. Spells are similar to abilities however they are locked to their classes. Later on in the game you're able to change your "vocation" which is the same as a class. So you could go from a mage to a warrior. In such a scenario, you would keep all of the abilities you unlocked as a mage, but your spells wouldn't transfer over.

Next up, there's items. This menu simply opens your character's inventory and allows you to use any items you may have. Often this will be used for healing items as to not use up MP, however there are some special items and equipment that have helpful effects when used in battle, for example there's a sword later in the game that when used as an item throws fire at enemies.

The 5th option is defend. This is pretty simple, your character doesn't attack and instead reduced the damage they will take from enemy attacks for a single turn. This is mainly useful if you have a character that's low on HP, and you need to give your healer time to heal you up. In order to make sure the enemy doesn't kill you before you get healed, you'd defend for that turn to stay alive.

Finally, we have the coup de grace. This is a fun little option that isn't selectable most of the time. Rarely during battles your character will become primed to use their coup de grace. Usually after taking a big hit. The effects of this move differ depending on what class the character using it is. For example a minstrel's coup de grace is called Rough 'N' Tumble, and makes it so they're able to dodge and counter enemy attacks incredibly easily for a few turns. Whereas a priest's coup de grace is called Choir of Angels, and it heals the whole party's HP and removes any negative status conditions. There are even more of them but I won't go over them all.

As a little bonus, if you manage to get your whole party to get and use their coup de grace at the same time, you're able to team up and instead use a "co-op de grace". These are insanely strong moves that completely turn the tide of battle. You can all team up to deal a devastatingly strong attack against the enemy, or you could instead decide to make your whole party completely immune to all enemy attacks for a few turns. It's incredibly difficult to pull off a co-op de grace due to the rng behind it, but it's incredibly rewarding if you manage to pull it off.

So, that's it right? That's everything you need to know about battles? Haha.. hahahaha... ha.... no. I haven't even touched on the tension system, or fources (no that's not a typo), or even things like the incredibly annoying disruptive wave ability that many late game bosses have that resets all your stat boosts, tension, fources, and even passive spells/abilities. But I won't go into all that else we'd be here forever.

By now it should be clear why i enjoy the battle system from this game so dearly, it's so much more in depth than it looks like on the surface and it really forces you to strategise and adapt to sudden situations. I don't expect i'll be able to even replicate 1/16th of the depth if I tried, but i think it'd be a fun experience nonetheless and is so far the idea I'm most interested in pursuing.

[crystalelemental]

"megazardx2: I am of the firm belief that, aside from gimmick ‘mons like Unown or whatever, there shouldn’t be a single Pokemon that’s virtually useless in-game. Competitively, you can’t really avoid it, but in-game, you definitely can. I want to see major improvements to ‘mons like that for Gen X. Let me use Ledian without it feeling like a drag, Game Freak (and also Spinda)!"

It's tough, because "useless in general gameplay" is a wildly variable condition. Like...is Spinda useless?

It has some decent options to use in its arsenal, its stats are just low, and that can be overcome. Ledian isn't great, but it does have Baton Pass and Agility, and Dual Screens, all naturally. Most options, even without raw power and stats, have some solid tools. The bigger frustrations, and the things that drive me absolutely insane, are when Pokemon should have access to something they don't. Like, why does Houndoom, a Dark type focused on special attack, not have Dark Pulse naturally? Why does Drowzee, the Dream Eating Pokemon, not learn Dream Eater naturally in any generation? Why is the best Ice move that Mamoswine every learns naturally Ice Fang? Why did it take to Gen 6 for options like Sandslash to get natural access to Earthquake? Hell, why is the only Ground move it learned naturally prior Sand Tomb?

That's where the stupid lies. Because these Pokemon can be good, they can have access to useful tools that are extremely good...but only conditionally, based on having access to the TM at a reasonable point in the game, rather than the end. Like okay, I want to run Sandslash in HGSS. In order for that to be meaningful, I'd have to learn Dig first, because oops, Earthquake is in Victory Road. Or god forbid, you opted for Umbreon as a slow, tanky sack of shit that can barely attack at all. Your options are (1) Toxic (post-game with Janine's gym), (2) healing support (Wish is breed only, Moonlight is level 71, Heal Bell is tutor with BP), or (3) copy Karen's Curse deal for boosting (Breed only). All of these options are frustrating and shitty, and rely on putting up with something being unnecessarily bad until it can suddenly become good. Or, in extreme cases like Platinum, which I love dearly but oh my god, you have the entire game working its best to lock entire playstyles out of player access. Oh you need boosting moves or any kind of status? Yeah, that's BP gated to post-game, sorry. Even with infinite reuse TMs these problems still exist in legion. ORAS transitioned access to Thunderbolt, a staple, to effectively just before the League; Wattson isn't around for this quest until after you beat Wallace. You want to run Calm Mind Audino? Then I hope you have a plan until post-game or someone who's got the TM already, because that's something you only get after finding one of the Sages, and it's one you have to battle, too!

It's just...endlessly frustrating that in a game about customizing your team, they lock so many decisions out of consideration. I get that some of these tools are considered super strong (although Toxic is useless in main game, given the Full Restore spam you get), but if boosting is such a problem, design your fights better. Emerald had this shit figured out easy, every fight in that game has a lead with hard counterplay to setup sweepers, and it rules. Meanwhile in Gen 4, Cynthia is incredibly weak to setup. But that game effectively removed all setup TMs from the game, so when are you ever going to be able to use that? Well, Gardevoir and Alakazam learn Calm Mind so-oh right they're weak to Spiritomb and have nothing to significantly threaten it.

Oddly, one of the things that modern gens have done a little better is ease the access to TMs, but nothing is given without something of equal value being taken away, so we're back to single-use Technical Records, and you need to farm watts or random encounter materials to make it work. The materials are at least smarter than the watts; anyone who's ever used an action replay or GameShark back in the day can tell you how quickly the main game crumples when you get early access to Ice Beam/Thunderbolt/Flamethrower shit. Having more staggered release makes sense in some cases, but it also disproportionately hits certain Pokemon because they're not learning basic moves for their type. And that's a massive goddamn problem. TMs should be for supplemental coverage, not the basics of your STABs. Yet consistently, they're essential just to round out what should be there. Even modern gens have this learnset problem. Hey Coalossal, what's your best physical Rock-type move? Oh, Rock Blast? Which you learn at level 54? So if I want a real move I have to hunt down watts for Rock Slide or Stone Edge, otherwise your Rock-type STAB just sucks ass forever? Radical. There's no reason for it! Things should learn a ton of moves within their types, starting small and building up to powerful endgame stuff. I should never have to use a TM to learn the basics. Even if they only learned STAB moves, that's better than what we have now. I'd rather Swampert actually just learn a physical Water move like Liquidation, than get Rock Slide in its movepool for coverage, because at least Liquidation for its basic function and Rock Slide for something to build with TMs feels intentionally designed.

[thevindicativevordan]

Comics this week, especially Wonder Woman's relaunch under Tom King ?

Wonder Woman #1 -

Wondersisters we're fucking back! Fantastic first issue from King and Sampere. It's a very tight compressed read, King wants to make the reader feel as blindsided by how quick everything goes to hell as Diana no doubt does. Sovereign looks like the King Washington from AC3, and I love his design. Connecting him to WW through the lasso mythology is a great concept. Despite the lasso being her iconic weapon, we really don't know a lot about it. King wants to write Superman so bad he gave Wonder Woman her own bald evil genius/mastermind to fight. Seeing Sarge Steel kill an Amazon in front of her own wife and child is a hell of a way to set the stakes. Some people were upset about that, but WW has needed to increase the feeling of danger in her books for a while now, and this accomplished that. Themsyacria itself isn't in danger, but Wonder Woman's mission in Man's World is, and that's a set up that works for me.

Love how Diana casts a huge shadow despite it being a while before she actually appears on page. We see King have her do all the actions you'd expect and then King shoots them all down as ineffective. God I love that scene where she sends her sword back to Nubia because she doesn't want to be tempted, sells the hell out of her being furious. And her dressing down of Sarge Steel? Peak Wonder Woman right there.

Steve is in a potentially very interesting place. Usually he's just Diana's wholesome and supportive boyfriend, this is a chance to put the screws to him and find out what makes him tick. He swore an oath and is technically committing treason by helping Diana, which he points out, but he still helps her all the same. Now I get we don't want to focus too much on a man in a WW book, but as her most important male supporting character, I argue that Steve needs fleshing out to bring him up to the level Lois and Selina are at.

My only qualm is I wish we get a page dedicated to the reaction of the other Wondy Rogues at this new player making moves. What does Circe or Cheetah or Cale make of this? Grail is going to show up, what's her angle? Definitely could see Psycho jumping for joy. While I doubt Sovereign can actually be Wondy's arch, I do like him as this new major player who upends Wondy's status quo, and I want to see where the other Wondy Rogues fit into his plans.

Superman #6 - Quick read but at least next issue is the oversized one. Livewire remains an ass despite working at the Daily Planet and that makes me deliriously happy. Having her as the anti-Superman voice at the Planet is a great gag, hell you could even have her livestream her fights with Supes to boost the DP's sales as a way to profit from being a villain even when she loses. AI Lex insisting on calling Superman "son" remains hilarious, Clark is clearly fed up with Lex's bullshit. The Chained seems to be a powerful telekinetic, was hoping for a more creative powerset, but at least he has hair. Saw that reference to Master Jailer helping Lex build the prison that held Chained, please let that be a tease for Jailer to make his return soon.

World's Finest #19 - Meh. Far as first meetings between Superman and Batman go, this one is down near the bottom. Jax is every bit as boring as I thought he would be, and Waid just pays lip service at the end towards the idea of Batman not trusting Superman. More fuel for the speculation that Waid is taking over Action with "Aethyr" showing up. What a boring look and design, not at all the Lovecraftian god in the vein of Gerber that PKJ had been building up. If Waid is really taking Action I have zero hope he delivers a satisfying conclusion to whatever plot threads PKJ himself doesn't wrap up. Waid is simply too stuck in the Silver Age. Let's hope Kingdom Come gives this book the shot in the arm it needs.

Nightwing #106 - Without Redondo the book's paper thin nature is front and center. Still, far as continuity goes, this does use the Ric era in a good way. Taylor of all people being the one to do something interesting with that time period surprises me.

Green Lantern: War Journal #1 - My grandma has dementia and I teared up at that scene where John makes a construct of his sister for his mother who has it. Caring for relatives with dementia is just trying to keep them happy even when it breaks your heart. If PKJ is really losing Action, at least here he can continue the United Planets plot threads with Thaaros. John put that fraud GL in his place and it was badass. If the Radiant Queen can body hop, maybe the people who speculated she's an alternate version of Katma are right and the body she's been in isn't her original.

Vigil #5 - It's good! Castle is more than a little shit.

Loki #4 - Damn good mini that I can only assume is being totally ignored by Ewing given the ending has Loki seemingly embracing his status as the God of Lies again. Or is that actually setting up Ewing Loki, who is openly apologetic about how he's going to fuck over Thor if it makes for a good tale in Immortal Thor? Watters needs to get more work.

Captain America #1 - Solid character beats and interactions, but it lacks a big "hook" as it were to keep me reading. I am amused to see JMS' big return to Marvel monthlies involves someone trying to make a deal with the devil.

[griseldagimpel]

Pokemon Violet & Scarlet 7-Star Mewtwo Raid Guide

I now have Mewtwo in Pokemon Violet & Scarlet, so here is a guide for what I learned when doing the raids. The rest goes under the cut to save space.

You need four players using Mew. Mew gets a boost when it first comes onto the field, and I haven't found anything else that has staying power. The 7-Star Mewtwo raids really seem to be set up on the assumption that you'll be using Mew. So use Mew.

EV Mew for defense and special defense first of all, with a bit in HP and Attack. Speed's pretty much a drop stat. It's not that you can't outspeed Mewtwo with enough EVs; it's that this is a raid, not a match where you can one-shot the opposing pokemon. There really just isn't enough value in being faster to justify taking EVs away from anything else.

Have a nature that boost Attack or Defense. Note that while Mewtwo is a special attacker, it has a move that does damage on the physical side, and that's the one that it'll use the most. That move is Psystrike, and Mewtwo is getting a boost to it from being the Psychic tera type.

Mewtwo knows Calm Mind, Psystrike, Ice Beam, and Aura Sphere. Also, because Mewtwo is a Cheating Bastard, it also knows Rest and has a chesto berry. We'll get to that.

I think it's because the shields are up - oh, right, Mewtwo puts the shields up at the start of the battle, right after giving itself a starting Calm Mind boost - you can't use status moves against Mewtwo directly.

Okay, so what moves should the Mews have?

Well, between them, the Mews should have:

light screen

bug buzz or x-scissor (if tera type is bug) or shadow claw (if tera type is ghost)

leech life (regardless of tera type)

life dew

electric terrain or misty terrain

mudslap

A boosting move like bulk up or swords dance

Light screen, life dew, and electric/misty terrain only need to be had by one mew, although it doesn't need to be the same mew. You can get away with just having one mew know mudslap. Attacking mews should have a boosting move and attacking moves of the ghost or bug type. And PP max them! Mewtwo is so flipping bulky that it'll take a LOT of attacks to take it down.

When the raid starts, the team should set up light screen, and the player responsible for mudslap should hit Mewtwo about three times. Mewtwo will clear the accuracy drops eventually, at which point it should be hit another three times. Yes, aura sphere will always hit - unless you're tera type ghost! - but that is seriously Mewtwo's least powerful move. And bug type pokemon resist fighting type attacks. (Aura sphere is why dark teras aren't advised.)

Once you can Terastallize - and you're relatively healthy - do so, boost up, and focus on breaking Mewtwo's shields. Now, right before the shields go down, the player responsible for electric/misty terrain needs to set it up, pay very close attention to turns, and keep it up for the rest of the game! As long as electric/misty terrain is up, Mewtwo can't heal up with rest.

Then it's just a matter of taking out the rest of Mewtwo's health.

I used a scope lense for my item, but I could see stuff like bright powder having value. Just don't use berries! Mewtwo's ability is Unnerve, so you won't be able to use the berry.

Updated: I thought reflect was needed to halve the damage of psystrike, but light screen still does that, even though psystrike deals physical damage. Also, misty terrain is interchangeable with electric terrain for the purpose of these raids, and while bug buzz is slightly more powerful than x-scissor, the latter will work if you can't manage the former.

[ogdoadfates]

Hello! I love your apocalypse au I think you have really amazing ideas, it has been living rent free In mind 24/7 stg. I had a small thought if you don't mind :,) I was thinking about apocalypse Vax doing something similar to canon (and something ravens tend to do) that when he's out on runs or scavenging in old stores etc sometimes he'll find and grab little trinkets that reminds him of the group? like grabbing a small carved bear statue for vex, maybe a necklace with a flower on it for keyleth or a little mouse toy for minxie, cool looking guitar picks for Scanlan etc. it's a small gesture but in a world where everything is just so shitty all the time I imagine it would mean a lot to them:,)

Heya!! Aw thank you so much, you have no idea how much that means to me! ^-^ And your perfectly fine, I'm more than up to having people suggest/add on to my aus and such!! (if anything people wanting to add on delights me cause it means they're enjoying it which means a lot to me) And by the gods yeah he so would do that XD I'd imagine it does boost moral so no one really gets on his case for grabbing 'non-essentials' and probs in Percys case they actually might even help in some cases. (Also I say no one would get on his case but there is probs some teasing when he gets something for Keyleth specifically) One thing I'd imagine he'd grab for the whole group to enjoy would be music CDs to play in the car, only on long non stop drives of course so as to not get attention dragged onto them. (maybe he could find an old personal cd player with headphones?? gods does anyone even remember those XD ) got to admit now I'm just thinking of one of the times they actually set up base/camp somewhere, him and keyleth sharing headphones and Vax getting her to dance with him to make her smile and relax.

Also I'd imagine the first few times he does it they all have different reactions, Grog would just be straight forward and maybe give Vax a shoulder punch (light punch not hard, still moves him a bit tho lol), Vex would roll her eyes but would very much cherish it, Percy at first would be very confused but would later be very touched (maybe even make a raven shaped trinket for Vax in return?), Pike would just hug and thank him, Scanlan would joke around with him but inside he is actually super touched by the gesture, and Keyleth is just delighted and most likely blushes. (I'd imagine some of their reactions stay the same and some would just change in small ways/they'd expect it)

[zmeu-ra]

Organizing my thoughts on Sonic Frontiers:

Sonic Frontiers is my favorite Sonic game in a decade (Generations was the last one I wholeheartedly enjoyed). But it’s far from GOTY material.

The story takes itself seriously! Hallelujah! So refreshing. I haven't decided if the plot is that great yet, but it's definitely more competent than what we've had lately. There are both genuinely touching and funny moments.

Sonic feels good to control in the islands. I appreciate the option to tune his handling. Once you find what works for you, getting around is a lot of fun.

The island layouts are messy. They’re giant playgrounds with routes and challenges to explore ("open zone"). This is a cool idea in theory, but messy in practice. I hated the random boost pads and springs that pull you into challenges if you accidentally touch them while running somewhere. It’s like Sonic has ADHD and is constantly shifting between different hyperfocuses. I’ll admit it was fun at first; zooming across the island, getting pulled into exciting new challenges, but once you’ve completed them, they become useless obstacles. If they could somehow give me a reason to go through these routes again, they would be less annoying.

One of my main issues with the "open zone" layout is that it disconnects Sonic from the game space. Most things you interact with - platforms, springs - aren't part of the world, they're just laid on top. It would've been nice to interact with the world itself, characterizing the Starfall Islands a little more, but I also see how difficult of an undertaking that would be to design and program.

Cyberspace is a cool concept with hit-or-miss execution. The 3D parts are nice, the 2D parts are not. In 2D, Sonic's physics skew just enough to be sluggish and annoying. I do appreciate the level designs inspired by past games, it shows how well layouts like Metal Harbor hold up. It should have all been 3D, but that’s pretty demanding so I get why they didn’t commit. And of course, all the stages have total banger tracks.

The combat is a little bit... meh. It's fun and flashy, but doesn't have much depth (this is coming from a DMC fan, so take it with a grain of salt). Also I played on Hard Mode, in which I died a lot but was still never very mentally stimulated, so I wonder how brainless combat is on the lower difficulties.

That pinball machine was torture.

The Titan battles were the stars of the show. I was jumping out of my seat fighting Giganto, and my heart was racing for Knight, but Wyvern truly sent chills down my spine! Just wow. The music, Super Sonic in the moonlight, those combat setpieces... the Titan battles are just *chef's kiss*

Except for Supreme. What a letdown! Did they run out of time working on him? He’s just a spicy Giganto! Why is the apex of the Titans, corrupted by an eldritch force from space, so boring??? And I totally burned through his health without even thinking about it. “I’m Here” barely hit at all.

And that final boss? Ikaruga? I’m down for sudden genre shifts, but shouldn’t the game’s grand finale be a climax of all the mechanics the player has learned up to that point? You go from Metal Gear Rising-esque adrenaline rushes against creatively-designed Titans, to shooting a monologuing rock for 2 minutes. Was there a planned phase two that was more like a Titan? Idk, it wasn’t badly made or anything, but it felt like a weird decision.

Finally, I'm curious how much the plot will change the status quo. It sounds like Amy wants to go "spread love" whatever that entails, Knuckles is considering leaving the Master Emerald more often, and Tails wants to adventure solo to prove his heroism to himself. Does that leave Sonic alone in the next game? Is he open to hang with different crowds, like Team Dark or Silver/Blaze? If so, bravo for creating an opportunity to work with other characters, Mr. Flynn.

All in all, good game. Room for improvement, but still the best we’ve seen from Sonic in a long time. Not bad for a team of 60~ devs. I'm hopeful for the future! 2022 is the year of Sonic!

[jcmarchi]

TopSpin 2K25 Review - A Strong Return - Game Informer

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TopSpin 2K25 Review - A Strong Return - Game Informer

In the heyday of the tennis-sim video game genre, Top Spin and Virtua Tennis were the best players in the crowded space. However, in the time since the genre’s boom settled, the offerings have fallen off considerably, with both franchises going more than a decade without a new release. TopSpin 2K25 signals the reemergence of the critically acclaimed series, and though it’s been a while since it stepped on the court, it’s evident the franchise hasn’t lost its stroke.

TopSpin 2K25 faithfully recreates the high-speed chess game of real-world tennis. Positioning, spin, timing, and angles are critical to your success. For those unfamiliar with those fundamental tennis tenets, 2K25 does a superb job of onboarding players with TopSpin Academy, which covers everything from where you should stand to how to play different styles. Even as someone who played years of tennis in both real life and video games, I enjoyed going through the more advanced lessons to refamiliarize myself with the various strategies at play.

Once on the court, you learn how crucial those tactics are. The margin of error is extremely thin, as the difference between a winner down the baseline and a shot into the net is often a split-second on the new timing meter. This meter ensures you release the stroke button timed with when the ball is in the ideal striking position relative to your player. Mastering this is pivotal, as it not only improves your shot accuracy but also your power.

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TopSpin 2K25 is at its best when you’re in sustained rallies against an evenly-matched opponent. Getting off a strong serve to immediately puts your opponent on the defensive, then trying to capitalize on their poor positioning as they struggle to claw back into the point effectively captures the thrill of the real-world game. I also love how distinct each play style feels in action; an offensive baseline player like Serena Williams presents different challenges than a serve-and-volleyer like John McEnroe.

You can hone your skills in one-off exhibition matches, but I spent most of my time in TopSpin 2K25 in MyCareer. Here, you create your player, with whom you’ll train and climb the ranks. As you complete challenges and win matches, you raise your status, which opens new features like upgradeable coaches, equippable skills, and purchasable homes to alleviate the stamina drain from travel. Managing your stamina by sometimes resting is essential to sustain high-level play; pushing yourself too hard can even cause your player to suffer injuries that sideline you for months.

I loved most of my time in MyCareer, but some design decisions ruined the immersion. For example, I ignored portions of the career goals necessary to rank up my player for hours, so while I was in the top 10 global rankings, I was unable to participate in a Grand Slam because I was still at a lower status than my ranking would typically confer. And since repetition is the path to mastery, it’s counterintuitive that repeated training minigames award fewer benefits, particularly since the mode as a whole is a repetitive loop of training, special events, and tournaments. Additionally, MyCareer shines a light on the shallow pool of licensed players on offer. Most of my matches were against created characters, even hours deep. 2K has promised free licensed pros in the post-launch phase, but for now, the game is missing multiple top players.

I’m pleasantly surprised by how unintrusive the use of VC is. In the NBA 2K series, VC, which can be earned slowly or bought using real money, is used to directly improve your player. In TopSpin 2K25, it’s used primarily for side upgrades, like leveling up your coach, relocating your home, earning XP boosts, resetting your attribute distribution, or purchasing cosmetics. Though I’m still not a fan of microtransactions affecting a single-player mode – particularly since it’s almost certainly why you need to be online to play MyCareer – it’s much more palatable than its NBA contemporary.

If you’d rather play against real opponents, you can show off your skills (and your created character) in multiple online modes. World Tour pits your created player against others across the globe in various tournaments and leaderboard challenges, while 2K Tour leverages the roster of licensed players with daily challenges to take on. Outside of minor connection hiccups, I had an enjoyable time tackling the challenges presented by other players online. However, World Tour’s structure means that despite the game’s best efforts, mismatches occur; it’s no fun to play against a created character multiple levels higher than you. Thankfully, these mismatches were the outlier rather than the exception in my experience.

TopSpin 2K25 aptly brings the beloved franchise back to center court, showing that not only does the series still have legs, but so does the sim-tennis genre as a whole. Though its modes are somewhat repetitive and it’s missing several high-profile pros at launch, TopSpin 2K25 serves up a compelling package for tennis fans.