#doesn't seem like the quality got nerfed though

[g0ldgauntlet]

That Arlecchino edit I made was apparently too powerful for Tumblr since I had to scale the file size down to 70% when I exported it

[marble-running]

okay preliminary thoughts:

Aisha has the best design by far. Personally I'm not to fond of all the bright colours, they clash a bit to me, but I could buy her wearing something like that, it fits the athleisure vibe most of her casual outfits went for. 8.5/10

Bloom is. fine. I like her skirt. I do think they should've put her in yellow, or at least something other than pink, since all of them sans Musa have at least something pink. Kind of reminds me of the cowgirl outfits from s8. 5/10

Flora seems to be ok. The jacket bothers me. I think I see what they were trying to do with the sleeves being like flowers, but to me it just doesn't really work, and I couldn't really picture Flora wearing it. Obligatory comment about Flora always having the same hairstyle. The dress is cute tho. 6.5/10

Musa's done pretty well. They put red back into her colour scheme and I am very grateful for that, she really stands out against the sea of pink, blue and green. Not sure what's going on with her top but maybe that's just the low quality image. Also they seem to have returned to her having shorter hair. Excellent. And the mesh gloves are a really nice touch. The whole thing reminds me of her s5 casual outfit. 7.5/10

Stella. Stella Stella Stella. Absolutely got the worst design, it's giving 2010s disney channel mean girl. Which does not bode well for Stella's characterisation. I swear if they have her be the mean girl I will be forced to throw hands. The pigtails could be a callback to her og Magic Winx hairstyle, but tbh they just make her look more childish. 2/10

Tecna isn't getting done dirty by a later season's character design? What is this??? I feel like the colour scheme could use some work (maybe a bit more purple and less bubblegum pink), but I like that they've gone back to a more cyberpunk (?) vibe. The metallic skirt is an interesting detail. Also it look like she might have a prosthetic arm? Which would be cool. It looks like they copied Mirta's hairstyle though, points off for that (Tecna will always have a shaved side to me.). 7/10

All of them except Stella seem to have the same thick belts? Aisha, Flora and Bloom all have the same skirt style (mid thigh, low waistline), and it doesn't help the overall look.

Is the Black Circle the starter villain??? Either they've been severely nerfed, or they'll be replacing the Trix as they get more powerful as the Winx do. Either way, begs the question of what happened to the Trix.

Ngl that's a change I think has potential, since Bloom is on Earth at the start. The producers have the advantage of being able to look back over the season as a whole and patch up any continuity errors caused by the later seasons, such as the lack of the Fairy Hunters in seasons 1-3 despite all the blatant fairy activity on Earth. Maybe the Black Circle don't have to replace the Trix, but they could be set up earlier on.

What are the chances we get some gay shit this time around?

[tiglo]

Deathloop slab only Day 4

so I'm not going to go over what I did over the last few sessions of this challenge because other than like 1 thing I had to do differently to actually finish the game (I'll talk about this at the end of this post) I basically just played the game normally. Flicker and Havoc took away all of the challenge, because when I was thinking of doing this I thought that Havoc and Flicker would be helpful but not that helpful. you could probably beat the entire gam with nothing but havoc and have very little issues with anything. but back to my point, I'm just going to talk about some various things I either didn't mention before or things I found interesting about the game, discovered during the playthrough, and other generally interesting stuff about the game that are vaguely related to the challenge.

Random thing #1

Loop stress must buff all drops instead of just dropping rare loot more often. so I got the Sepulchra very early on this time and I found that for whatever reason it hardly did any damage to anyone I shot it with, when in my first casual playthrough it was a guaranteed one-shot headshot on basically everything but the collector. then when I did my final loop I tried to snipe Wenjie from not very far away and she tanked 6 headshots, so either the Sepulchra got nerfed between June and now or loot quality does more than just drop rare stuff more often. I hardly used the Sepulchra because it just couldn't kill anything this time around and I'm wondering if I should have gotten another one to compare before I reset my progress to playthrough another challenge run (which is honestly not really a challenge run and I won't be doing posts about this current one but I plan on it for the next)

Random thing #2

Apparently the Rapier is considered the meta by the community, it's the weapon I've used the least just because it's loud, slow to fire, and I thought it was just too niche to ever justify giving it a loadout slot. But the community disagrees. The actual worst weapon is much harder to figure out, I looked at a bunch of tier lists and a few reddit threads, the only weapon that wasn't ever called the worst in the game was the Strelak Verso which doesn't mean it's the best it's just generic enough that no one actively dislikes it. I saw the Constancy Automatic at the bottom surprisingly often, it's really not a bad weapon it's just very underwhelming for the first unique weapon most people will find; it's really just a Limp-10 with a finicky reload. but the one people called the worst most often was the PT-6 Spiker so the next challenge run will be with just that, even though I like the Spiker more than silenced Tribunal or Limp-10

Random thingy #3

Julianna randomly invading even though I had invasions turned off was a persistent problem throughout the run. I have no clue why but just based on behavior they were all the bots that invade in single player mode. she never dropped anything all that useful so I never really mentioned it except for the first time she invaded after I switched to friends only. I think there are ways you can force the game to have Julianna invade, this theory is mostly from me playing as Julianna and finding that some really good players seemed to be grinding Julianna in Updaam at night. like I would unintentionally invade what appeared to be the same player multiple times and every time he had the safe in Colt's apartment open so maybe reading the note from Julianna always forces one and other locations also have triggers like this, again I haven't tested this at all and the wiki doesn't mention it anywhere

Random Thingy #4

it took me a bit to figure out how I could actually kill Julianna because the dueling pistols are obviously not a slab and all slabs are nullified in the core. eventually I figured out I could open the door, activate Aether, then shoot her from outside the door.

[seddm]

Have you ever been bothered by the fact that Marco doesn't know how to animate the star? in seasons 1 and 2 he knew how to cheer her up not only that but he was also the voice of reason that made the star reflect on the traditions of mewni which led her to want to end the discrimination that monsters suffered so come seasons 3 and 4 make marco a complete idiot and he doesn't know how to animate star it seems they nerfed star and marco's relationship a lot just to make starco cannon at the very end of the series a very cowardly decision

At a surface level, I can't fault you at all for feeling like that. With the introduction of the whole love triangle and Tomstar, Star and Marco screentime together, especially when it came to more light hearted or otherwise not tense adventures, was heavily and mercilessly slayed. This is a big issue with the series and something that alienated a lot of fans, both more casual ones and ones more obsessively into it. Like me!

At a deeper level, though, and it's fair to recognize that the important themes kept being even more relevant later on in the series, EVEN IF THAT'S NOT NEARLY ENOUGH, I don't feel like Marco was "nerfed" in the second half of the show, at least when it comes to Star. For most of S3 we essentially get Star going "I just want to have silly fun with Marco!" to then rely on him for everything important in her life, to the point of having a breakdown when he is seemingly done in the season finale; meanwhile Marco feels uncomfortable being near Star and tries at first to have outlets for his worries and then to focus exclusively on being a squire, all the while being as close as possible to Star during the biggest moment of change in her life - emotionally and physically, with the whole Mewberty Form 2.0 plot.

And sadly these underlying tension between the two of them keeps being a thing until the very end in S4 as well, preventing the episodes from truly being able to go back to the level of happy closeness we got to knew and love during the first two seasons, but that doesn't mean their relationship doesn't keep growing and deepening: you'd need just The Knight Shift to see just how important Marco's presence is to Star, the mere idea of his absence being something she didn't even stop to consider.

,And then, as soon as she is at yet another crossroad in her life, after Eclipsa's coronation, full of new possibilities without knowing what to do, she immediately goes back to Earth, to Marco, because he's her "True North", even if (and, I repeat, that's a tragedy and a huge blemish on the series' quality) we didn't get Cheer Up Star or Camping Trip style episodes anymore.

So, tl;dr:

Did the show fuck up its tone and alienated viewers while jeopardizing Star and Marco's relationship during S3 and S4 in favor of excessive relationship drama and underlying tensions that limited the interactions between characters?

Yes.

Did it also consistently keep showing just how important Star and Marco have been in each other's lives and how much they affected their growth and happiness, at least if one looks at individual episodes and disregards the pacing and looming drama?

Yes.