#don't know much about like game design and balancing when it comes to fighting games i just think it'd be cool...

[realboutfatalfury]

just remembered i had an idea for a 2d fighting game for one piece which yeah that could exist but i like thinking about fighting game sometimes and mixing it with another interest and i have my own thoughts on how i'd transfer them into a fighting game and how the moves would look and what kind of inputs they'd have👍also also the visuals and how things would be animated

[arnaerr]

The more I think about the Elden Ring DLC after my second playthrough of it the more I hate that I noticed too many things that frustrate me in the lore. Not to be a hater on main but I feel the urge to note these down to think about it more later.

- the whole radahn situation. the fight design and the fact that it's the boss we've fought already sucks bonkers. But the fact that it lacks a proper buildup in a narrative and feels random as fuck is what really frustrates me. Feels like retconing. Am I watching Bleach again? Why tf the character who was dead and whose story had an ending is bringed back. The war festival felt like an ending to his plotline and it was fitting. "Miquella saw kindness in him" in a WARLORD?

- Miquella's actions make no sense. Why to bring a bunch of people into the Lands of Shadow. Why charm them if he planned to discard his great rune anyway. These people are not helping. They're just confused. And it's not like Miquella needed help in the first place? What's the point of crosses. Why are they in random places. Why is the one in the Shadow Keep and everyone there is ok with it. If the crosses are in random places bc Miquellla was travelling and searching for the truth about Marika, why is there no cross in the Shaman Village then 💀 it would make sense especially given all the parallels between Marika's and Miquella's ascension.

- if Miquella was obsessed with Radahn all this time he feels not very smart to say the least. Like, the whole scheme of counting on someone to find Mohg and kill him - what are the odds someone would do that. Why cocooning himself in the Haligtree. Why not to help his sister after she nuked Caelid. How did Malenia miss Miquella's kidnap or she knew about the scheme all along. Idk

- what exactly is a Scadutree. "Scadutree is the shadow of the Erdtree". Ok thanks

- the perfumers are growing minor erdtrees in two places DLC and one of them is the Shadow Keep and there's no lore behind it thanks for nothing I guess. When I discovered it, it felt important af 😭

- Torrent? Why the official art showed us that he belonged to Miquella. I hoped to learn more

- love how we use the kindling to burn down the sealing tree only to find out that other Miquella's followers got there before us somehow. Messmer is rolling in his grave

- I wish there was more Godwyn lore. Now the whole Castle Sol situation feels stupid and makes no sense, the mausoleums, etc.

- Romina. I know everyone adores her design but she's so lacking of context to me that I can't really like her. Who is she, what is she doing there why is she guarding the entrance to endgame area.

My main problem with the dlc lore is that I always liked how Fromsoft kept this balance of known/unknown - they gave us little info but enough to be INTRIGUED and speculate further. And as with dlc lore...some of this stuff is so random and has no ties to the things we already know about - too much of unknown - that i don't want to even invest my thoughts into trying to figure this stuff out bc I know that I won't come even close to the truth.

But still the best game I've played this year, 12/10, will replay 10 times, love it

[kaledya]

Hey hey! It's a-me!! The essay writer again!

Lol, sorry.

This time, I just summed up some questions about your AU Exorcists

1. Since Lute's and Adam's personalities are different in Sinners Symphony, I suppose that the morale in the army is different from canon, far closer to "We do what has to be done" instead of the usual "Haha, die you little b@#es. I'm at 261 now, how about you?" Am I correct?

2. How do the Exorcists fight? Now we know that in your AU Blessed weapons are insanely overpowered (sinners are crying for a nerf constantly), I wonder if the soldiers still fight open and without cover just to mindlessly kill a bunch of sinners or if the ladies have more discipline in this?

3. And lastly, two questions in one, do the Exorcists leave behind their weaponry like in canon? Since if not, Carmilla Carmine would probably not become an overlord, or at least have far lower than in canon, since the weapons would be super rare and far more difficult to manipulate with, resulting in less employees, resulting in less deals, resulting in less power.

Have a great day/night. Richard.

And by the way, Sir Pentious in Sinners Symphony when?

Yes the exterminators are a well trained and disciplined unit of soldiers, some lieutenants are even trained by Azrael himself, they do not take pleasure or enjoyment from their work or see it as a game, they do what needs to be done, nothing more and nothing less. There is discipline in the army like in today's armies, the soldiers respect their superiors very much and obey their orders under all circumstances.

Lute is the most skilled exterminator at the moment, in fact she was personally trained by Azrael and is the closest exterminator to Azrael. Lute has the greatest respect for Azrael and will not hesitate to punish anyone who insults him.

War styles:

I haven't designed it yet, but I'll try put a sketch here. Exterminators are divided into 3 different classes

Seraphic Smitebringers (Divine Strikers): These warriors are equipped with heavy weapons that reflect the power of the heavens.

Celestial Swiftwings: This group is known for the speed of their wings, descending upon their enemies like lightning.

Ethereal Vanguard: These warriors combine both powerful blows and swift movement to create a versatile force on the battlefield, but they are neither as fast as Swiftwings nor as powerful as Smitebringers.

Weapons they use

For Seraphic Smitebringers:

Divine Retributors: Great, luminous hammers that echo like thunder with each strike.

Judgment Hammers: Mighty war hammers, adorned with gold and silver, representing fair judgment.

For Celestial Swiftwings:

Heavenly Katanas: Long, slender swords that slice through enemies with speed and grace.

Windscythes: Light and sharp sickles that harness the power of the wind.

For Ethereal Vanguard:

Astral Lances: Spears made of stardust, effective at both near and far range.

Balance Blades: Two-sided blades that offer the perfect balance of power and speed.

The exterminators don't leave their weapons in hell as in the canonü (1. they don't leave a weapon in hell that can kill them 2. the weapons of the exterminators are made in a customized way, they have a spiritual value. 3 even if they leave it, nothing much changes, a sinner cannot touch it)

Carmilla is an arms dealer again. (Like Tony did before he became Iron Man), she is a weapon merchant, her power comes from the quality and uniqueness of the weapons she made in this AU, not from angelic weapons. she is still a 2nd place overlord, after all, Pride Ring is a battlefield and a battlefield needs weapons

+ Carmilla has destroyed all of her rivals, no one else in Pride Ring can enter the weapon trade because they are destroyed directly by Carmilla. so Carmilla's power is still the same, nothing has changed in the level.

I wish you a good day too

and I have no idea about sir pentious right now.

[randomshenaniganery]

Mairon to Finrod (info dump time)

I am going to draw Oleander when im not busy but I did want to show why it took me three days to finish up everything

Me diving into the outfit design and slso Finrod's opinion on the boys its in the bottom tho skksks

ALSO ALSO if u make vespersonas i will be friends pls let us lore dump together

real name: ??? I haven't picked one akskkaskskaskas

Age: 29 (they pretend they're older as Vigil)

Height: 5'7 cm

Gender: enby

Sexuality: Asexual biromantic

Weight: 73 kg

Traits: Street smart, scrappy, observant, liar liar pants on fire

Skills: Swimming, sewing, sword fighting (shield user), puzzle solving, running,

Weaknesses: when they don't want to do something they'll be stubborn about it, can't jump very high,

Backstory timeline:

Has had Fractum Anima for at least 2 months now (same as all Vespers)

In the surface their job was being part of a group of private guards, they mainly escorted people or goods

Ran away from home due to domestic abuse at the age of 12 before joining the guard for training

Worked there for 17 yrs before they got diagnosed and went under

Met Cirrus they were like okay weird but whatever if there's a lunar ichor alternative we gotta try that, saw Cirrus punishing that dude went nope try again later, they did try again later and got the Cirrus grew bored of you route with Ark

Set the pleasure den on fire by using the lotions and oils that were left in the room. Fun fact if you dry lotion on fabric it's VERY flammable and since they don't have synthetic fibers in this game, plus considering what kind of ingredients they'd be using for lubrication, lotions and oil; it's really easy to set things on fire.

After running away and grabbing a new face, they broke into their old room and left their medallion before returning as 'Finrod'

met Oleander while avoiding the guards because they were feeling antsy

became Vigil and is balancing new work, how do I kill Cirrus thoughts and I might need to steal lunar ichor when it pops up in the market.

Habits & hobbies:

Whenever Finrod gets too overwhelmed they use pain to calm their mind, to them pain is clarity. So, sometimes when Finrod stews on bad memories they'll end up harming themselves in some way to force themselves to calm down

Really, really quiet when it comes to pain, crying or having a crisis, high pain tolerance basically which is good because of their flare ups

Sometimes Finrod doesn't really laugh even though something is funny so they learned to fake laugh as a way to show they find something funny

Whenever something is really funny to them they have the habit of covering their mouth

When they're unsure, nervous or feeling awkward they'll scratch their nose

Doesn't have a tell when they're lying cause they do it so much

Finrod has the habit of bringing everything they think they need with them at all times (matchsticks/lighter/strike-a-light/flint, knife, scissors, needle and thread, bandages, map, a magnifying glass, paper and ink) this is because of having to live on the go for their job. scouting behavior etc.

When Finrod is happy/relaxed/calm they'll start humming or singing this applies to games, when they have their plan all finished and they're confident they'll start singing to themselves

In a fight Finrod will throw themselves at people like a battering ram if needed, not that they're big but that they're good at knowing how to use their momentum and weight.

Likes massaging/caressing/tracing their friends' hands as a way to soothe themselves

Can finish dressing up and arranging all their things in under 4 minutes (habit from being a private guard on the go)

Name stuff:

Chose Mairon for their first half because I thought it would be appropriate since this is their first go at the mountain. Finrod is their second go because of how Finrod died and the betrayal stuff that happened to him.

Outfit Design:

Mairon's Clothes

Wanted it to come off as simple and formal more reminiscent of their time as a private guard. The most color you'll get from them is their belt and matching cuffs. Very neat appearance more npc looking since they want to blend in. They use the standard black mask in the game as well.

Finrod's Clothes

I gave it more color because Finrod had to ditch their old clothes due to the fire, it's a mix of things they grabbed or bought after the fire. They kept their belt and cuff because it's sentimental and also just useful to them. Although they wear more colors It's mostly dark shades so that they don't stand out in shadows. A lot of their body is bandaged and when they met Oleander half their face was bandaged under the mask too.

Opinions on the boys:

REaLLy wants Cirrus dead doesn't care if they get hurt in the process

Slowly growing an obsession over Oleander but they're very good at hiding it, their banter helps calm them down

Likes to mess with Kier otherwise neutral but i think storywise they haven't met

Francesco reminds them of a friend from the surface they bump into each other time to time

[sokkastyles]

ATLA Live Action Ep 1 Thoughts:

When the writers meant they wanted it to be like game of thrones, clearly they meant "we want the battles to happen in complete darkness so nobody can see what is going on," and not, you know, the sex stuff.

Idk why this never occurred to me until now but ostrich horse is chocobo.

They are clearly going for a darker, more grittier feel here, but it clashes with the attempt to keep things true to the animated origin. Like, the earth kingdom OC looks straight out of some more realistic Adult fantasy show, whereas Sozin's character design makes him look like evil Santa.

So firebenders are able to do that to bodies, which I appreciate from a fanfic perspective and also confirms what people have been theorizing about the agni kai, that Ozai put his hand on his son's face. Not sure it was necessary to see it, though. The original does a good job of horrifying us with implied violence and the adults already get it, while showing it makes it less accessible to a younger audience. This is hardly a problem unique to this show, though.

Air nomads actually riding sky bison!

I like having more background with the air nomads and Aang's actor is great but front-loading the flashbacks doesn't work great for the pacing.

One thing I do really like is the emphasis on how the war damaged the harmony of the nations in more than just a spiritual way. No one has friends from other nations now. Zuko comes seeking "someone who does not belong" with the (false) promise that no one will get hurt if everyone keeps to themselves, keeps the status quo. The air nomads are a complete anomaly in a world of division. We are introduced to Aang, Sokka, Katara, and Zuko, and all are isolated in their own way by the war at the beginning of the story.

Overall there is something just weird about the pacing. Characters keep pausing at vital moments of action to deliver exposition or meaningful monologues. It just feels off.

Zuko so desperate for "glory" that he accepts Sokka's proposal to fight one on one (nice foil to the final agni kai by the way). Then his surprise when Aang shows himself reveals that Zuko himself did not know whether he would really find the Avatar in this village he's suddenly shown up to terrorize. God, it just emphasizes how low Zuko is at this point. This is probably his first real high stakes fight and he might have killed Sokka over absolutely nothing out of a false sense that he had something to prove. It's just...sad.

The scene at the Southern Air Temple looked great and had me in tears. I actually saw some criticism of this to the effect of them "ruining Aang's arc" because he comes out of the Avatar state himself, but first of all, let's be real and admit that if mastering the Avatar State was Aang's arc, he never completed it. Second, just because he could bring himself out does not mean he can control it, and he's still letting his emotions control him which is a learning curve for handling that power, it's just that he was able to control his anger in that moment by remembering the people he loved. Which is not that different from how the scene plays out in the original, only he isn't using Katara as a crutch. Which is a good thing, actually. It's much more fitting and poignant that he thinks about Gyatso here.

I don't think there was any mention of Katara wanting to go north. She has a few lines about wanting to help more and Aang teaches her about balance so she can bend now, apparently, but where is her drive? It feels like they're attributing her accomplishments to Aang and that bothers me. Maybe it'll be mentioned in the next episode, since they haven't talked about Aang learning waterbending yet, either. But I do miss the Katara who was ready to banish herself from the village the moment she met Aang not just because it was the right thing to do, but because of her own desire for independence and autonomy.

Liked the scene between Aang and Iroh. It gives us a glimpse of an Iroh who is stuck as to what to do and so he just gives Aang the Zuko treatment by offering him tea. I'd be excited if this means we get to see more development for Iroh.

[ghostofacrow]

Crow plays Gubat Banwa Pt 2: The first Violence

I'll have to write this one in two parts because I briefly want to go over my setup, but I don't have time for the battle itself today, especially because I'm sure it'll take longer since I still don't know what I'm doing.

So here it is! The moon is bright tonight, watching over the Kadungganan trying to escape the forest's demon infestation. Unfortunately, they have been cornered by a riverbend - the bridge leading back to the coast has been destroyed, so now the only way out is for these three strangers to beat back the demon hoard advancing on them.

I don't normally like using Tabletop Simulator for roleplaying games - the physics can be a bit wonky and it's really bad for sheet management, but it was the easiest way I could think of to make 3D terrain. The rulebook suggests using colors for terrain height, which is very good (and actually how I do it normally for other games) but having a map in actual 3D, even if it's digital, does look pretty nice.

It helps that I'm playing alone, so sharing sheets isn't nearly as important, and that we're still at legend 0, so there isn't that much information I even need to have at hand. I also realized at this point that all the discipline information you need for a legend 0 character is contained on one page, which is very handy. So I just had to import that single page per character and their prowesses.

I probably should have at least given the drawings a flat color tint so they're easier to tell apart but I didn't think of that until later. The balancing advice in the book suggests to use the number of Kadungganan + 2 as a base, which would be 5 in this case. I settled on six - I didn't know what enemies to use so I just picked the first one in each style and added the demon warrior from the demon's unique units. This also means they're pretty easy to color coordinate since the styles already have associated colors, except for the extra demon warrior

Behold, the meeple I stole from a different game gruesome visage of the terrifying demon warrior. Finally I looked through all of the status effects I was actually going to need and made little tokens for them, and added a bowl of go pieces to use for counting things. That's the setup done so far, I think. I probably missed something, but I'll see that when the time comes. There was one other reason I decided to use tabletop simulator for this, and it's that the design feels (and I mean this as a compliment) boardgamey. The abilities generally have straightforward effects, and status effects are a binary affair - either you are poisoned, or you're not, so they're easy to track with tokens, and most of the abilities have straight forward effects like "push the enemy 1 tile" or "if the enemy is aflame, deal 1d4 extra damage". These secondary effects have no saving throw-like mechanic either, unless the enemy evades the attack outright or is immune to the effect, it's going to happen, which should make most of the effects here very easy to track visually. Last last pregame observation - I notice while writing this that demons are immune to aflame and resistant to fire attacks and uuuhm

This makes the Baril Witch situation even worse then I was worried about initially because it makes half of their abilities and their thunderbolt gain condition either not work or very bad. It's not that big of a deal since I'm playing every character, but if this was a normal game with one character per person, I'd be a bit disappointed as Nasirakna's player. It happens, not everyone is good in every fight, but that does mean I'll have to vary up the enemy factions going forward.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm back a day later, time to actually start now! Everything below this is a play by play of the first resound of combat - the next post after this one will be the after action report, if you want to skip to my general observations (this part is might be annoying to read and hard to understand, I honestly can't tell). I already rolled the divination dice when I did the setup earlier and got 1, 5, 8, 7 - the odds outnumber the evens, so the enemies go first. I'll keep the victory and defeat conditions simple for this one, the Kadungganan win if they defeat all enemies and loose if all three of them get defeated.

For some reason, the figures clip into the tiles, but only on some of the tiles. I don't know why this happens other then tabletop simulators janky physics but I also don't care. Everything is set up now, the enemy sentinel moves first.

The enemy types have these tables to determine what they do on their turn if you play without a GM/Umalagad, here's the one from the Demon Guard, the enemy sentinel (the blue enemy on the map here):

This is the first time I've seen pseudo-AI like this in a tactics ttrpg and I'm honestly a bit skeptical of how well it's going to work, but the idea is so good that I really hope I'm wrong here and it functions well. One of the benefits of this being a tabletop game is that, if you roll something silly here, you can always just ignore it and do something that makes more sense or is more fun, and the rulebook is open about this too.

I got a 6 so Rush + Shield Charge + Inflict Violence and it turns out I am proven wrong immediately because this is a solid turn (I'll put the exact riff breakdowns in the alt text)

Yes the wide open token is a door, this is because I couldn't think of something less stupid looking yesterday.

Nasirakna gets to deal 1d4 (4) Damage to the Guard from her Overwatch Aura ("While you have Thunderbolts, you have an Overwatch Aura 3. Any enemy that moves into or leaves a tile in this aura you may deal d4 DMG against, once per enemy per Riff.")

Dranreb goes next and moves around the enemy like this, allowing him to flank and ram into them from the side using his "Shield Charge" Inflict Violence, pushing the enemy one tile away and moving after them.

I get to roll 2 violence dice and pick the highest one because of the flanking here, and I got a 1 and 2, which is a dogshit result, but very useful here for demonstration purposes. The damage of my attack here is 2 (from the die) + 3 (Dranreb's Ferocity) and this gets reduced by 5 (the Demon Guard's Parry). 2+3-5 is normally 0, but damage can't fall below 1, this means the secondary effect (pushing the enemy) still happens anyway. The secondary effects are only avoided if the enemy dodges the attack completely, which usually only happens if you roll a 1. For reasons that you can probably figure out by looking at the map here, the push is more important to me in this situation then the actual damage. I really appreciate the lack of a saving throw-like mechanic here, non-damaging effects like applying poison or moving the enemies around is what you need for combos or to set up cool plays by your friends, so just letting them happen avoids a lot of frustration. You also gain a thunderbolt if your attack gets evaded or deals minimum damage, so being one point off from snakeeyes was maybe ... good? actually?? in this specific situation.

Dranreb has 1 more Beat left, and originally I was going to use his Shield Bash Inflict Violence, which also pushes the target 1 tile (and would push the enemy into the river here) and would give Dranreb d6 Block. Unfortunately, its violence die is a d6 and because this would be my second attack in this riff, I'd have to make it at 2 demerit - roll 3d6 keep the lowest one. If I land a 1 on ANY of the 3d6 here, it means the attack fails, and that's a bigger risk then I'm willing to take. Thankfully, Shove (push an adjacent fighter 1 tile) is also a basic technique that everyone has access to and doesn't require to roll anything, so I can just push the enemy into the river anyway.

Goodbye. The Guard has jump 1, so he can only move one terrain height up at a time, which means they can't get back up here and has to walk all the way around. They also take 2d6 (4+4) damage from the fall. Really fun and cool move! In retrospect, it would have been smarter to move the enemy to the tile below Haraw to make pushing them off like this slightly harder, but I genuinely didn't think about that until I started planning Dranreb's turn. The decision to combine to hit and damage rolls into one removes a lot of the more annoying randomness in tabletop games (well, in D&D and its children specifically), but I don't know how I feel about attacks with lower damage potential also having a higher chance to miss completely, especially when the attack is already at demerit. It's only a difference of about 12% at 2 demerit between d6s and d8s, which isn't that much, but worth keeping in mind if you're attacking more then once. The demon Raider (a Lancer) is going to go next and I got Rush + Inflict Violence + Rush on the Gambit table. This is pretty straight forward so I'm not going to break it down in detail, they're just going to move in and attack Haraw, who is the closest to them, and then retreat back up the hill. Nothing too complicated except

Rolling the maximum value on a melee attack means it combos and gets rolled again and added together. They also gain an extra 1d6 bonus damage to their next attack after rushing their full speed, which puts us at a whopping 8+4+1+FER(7) = 20(!) damage. Haraw's PAR is 3 so that's 17. This early and she's already at 9/30 POS.

Haraw is also going to go next and she's still taunted by the Guard that fell into the river, which means all her attacks against enemies other then the Guard suffer demerit. Thankfully, she has other options!

Not an attack, so it doesn't count towards the number of attacks per Riff, and nothing to roll here. Dropping the raider enemy into the river is going to be less effective - their jump is 2, so they could get back up easily and wouldn't take fall damage. But the map does have a dangerous terrain spike growth, so I'm going to knock him in there instead. The description for dangerous terrain says that it deals 2 damage every time you enter it. I'm not sure if multiple connected tiles of the same type of dangerous terrain count as entering it once, or if it means every tile you enter, but I'm interpreting it as the latter because it works in my favor here it makes more sense to me that continuing to move through a spiky undergrowth would keep dealing damage repeatedly.

The Corpseflower Curse is the most interesting part - its violence die is a d4, which means the chance to miss is pretty high, especially since Haraw is still taunted by the Guard and has demerit from it. But sliding the enemy down into the bramble first means Haraw is at a higher elevation now, her ranged attacks gain merit against this demon. So at least I'm rolling the d4 normally, get a 3, and put down the field. Flower Balyans gain a thunderbolt from putting down one of the flower fields, which I immediately spend on

...and end her riff. Ending a riff cleanses Wide Open too, and I'm just noticing now that I didn't remove it from Dranreb after his riff. The annoying thing about writing this down as it's happening is that I'm immortalising all the small mistakes I normally wouldn't catch or quietly fix later. The enemy Witch goes next, rushes (through the dangerous terrain) and dazes Dranreb and Nasirakna. Daze gives all of your attacks demerit and all attacks against you merit, but this could have been worse.

Nasirakna is up next and uhm. She doesn't have a lot of options here due to the enemies all being resistant to Fire and immune to the Aflame status effect

They're weak to Soul at least but that still means the ideal strategy is to get into a high position and snipe repeatedly. He's going to spend 1 beat to climb up into the tree next to him, and then use Bala Osuwang on the Raider - the height advantage nullifies the demerit from dazed. Aaand I rolled a 1. The next attack would be at 2 demerit, but at least I can spend 1 thunderbolt on Joss Reloads (see above) so my chance to hit looks slightly less bad....aaaaand I got another 1. This does at least mean I get the thunderbolt back and can use Joss Reloads again to gain 1 Merit for their next riff. I was really hoping I might be able to finish the Raider off but it wasn't meant to be.

The enemy archer gets into a tree of their own and shoots at Dranreb twice (and unlike some fighters here, hits both times). The Warrior Demon rushes twice, taking 8 damage from the dangerous terrain, and attacks Haraw, which is enough to defeat her, and also inflicts bleeding. This doesn't mean she's out of the battle, she's just debuffed until she recovered, Kadungganan don't risk death until they get 5 wounds, and you get one every time you take damage while at 0 POS. Getting knocked out and having to sit on the sidelines for half the fight sucks ass, so I appreciate not making characters drop unconscious. They only get 2 beats so their action economy is still being taxed, but they still get to do stuff, which is the important part.

I might have bitten more off more then I can chew with the enemies here, but what I've played so far already looks really promising. The random enemy behavior works surprisingly well, and the player abilities are very fun, but if I want to finish this battle in a reasonable amount of time, I'll have to stop writing down every move. The next post is going to be a highlight reel and my overall thoughts on how this battle went. It's not looking good!

[oneriderratbug101]

Alright so, in part because I see my tempest post gaining some traction, I want to talk for a second about Wizard101's aoe meta.

Nono come back, I see you walking away already, this isn't just going to be a rah aoe bad aoe meta bad post. There are way too many pieces of content about this issue that don't actually make any points and just say the issue is there. We know the issue is there, we all feel it, that's why a shitpost where I spent 5 minutes manually typing out the word tempest (that's right, not a single word was copy pasted) is doing so well right now.

Part 1 - Why hasn't anything been done?

I'm going to say it right off the bat, I don't think a lot of us really tend to think about how much of a nightmare aoe must be to balance. In the current state of the game, aoe is basically necessary for quality of life. This raises what seems like one of the biggest dilemmas in balancing history though- there is no middle ground for these spells. The only point in which these spells would be nerfed enough for the community to not spam is if these spells were made practically unusable. Because of the unique amount of time battles take in a turn based mmo vs literally any other mmo, using single target spells can feel like it takes forever, and is wildly inefficient. Other games with more traditional gameplay loops can make up for aoe's effeciency by having it in a middle ground, but because we have long turn based instances rather than open world quick fights as our main battles, if the aoe is in a "middle ground" we will still spam it as if it's op. There isn't a pure balancing fix to the aoe problem. In order to fix the aoe spells from a game design perspective, a system is going have to be added, changed, or the entire gameplay loop get reworked. Needless to say, that's probably not happening, and I can't really blame KI on that one.

Part 2 - What's the problem?

Alright, so we've established that, for the forseeable future, an aoe dominated metagame is here to stay. However, aoe makes up an incredibly small portion of the vast array of spells we can obtain. Not even just wiping off single target spells from the table, for efficiency's sake, the main aoe spells used are ones we obtain relatively early on in the game. This branches into two very heavily interwoven problems I've seen a lot of people reblogging the original tempest spam bring up.

2a:

This aoe domination greatly thwarts gameplay diversity. That's the main appeal of the post that started this all, really. It becomes a chore to play the game after a while when all it boils down to is the same exact gameplay loop you have been using for years, with no change despite the addition of more and more spells into your repetoire. It becomes tiring, and it makes the obtainment of new spells lose a lot of excitement, getting not only in the way of fun gameplay but also in the way of core progession mechanics. Other games can avoid this issue becoming too large, as the traditional MMO combat style puts you in more control of your character and adds another layer of enjoyment to be had through that. In Wizard101 I have to take drawn out turns to do combat, where in traditional MMOs you have a chance at getting a bit of a rush from the more involved, faster paced button spams. Now, from here, you can bring up the fact that card games have been around for ages and have been able to avoid gameplay loop issues like this for a good chunk of that time, and I will meet you with a

????? Card games have had balancing issues for ages and many people struggle to get into and stay in the hobby, they've got their own thing going on

But yes, I will agree that despite having their own problems, card games can generally avoid the issue of gameplay loop growing too large through being PVP. That's right, all of you Wizard101 PVP mains out there, congratulations, you've managed to avoid this problem! I'm sure Wizard101 PVP has its own problems though. Regardless, let's get into what PVP brings to the gameplay loop table. As opposed to PVE where you face a semi-predictable AI, in PVP you will be put against another real person, formulating new strategies, using a deck you might not know about, and using spells in a more random/unpredictable pattern. PVP has the benefit of novelty, forcing you to strategize differently across your battles, and to think hard about your opponent's next move every time.

I'm not claiming PVE doesn't have anything like this! Just that in the core gameplay of an MMO, which typically consists of a lot of general mob battles, this battle novelty typically isn't all too present.

2b:

We're missing out on a lot of cool spells! Animations, art, sound design, game design, etc, all of that work poured into these spells and we're just tossing them on the ground like that scene from Toy Story! This sentiment was lost in reblogs as I put it in the tags of the tempest post, but I LOVE storm! The ocean themes, general water themes, and of course actual storm themes hit their mark incredibly well for me! And I feel the same about every other school, as well! Tempest was merely an easy vessel for this message, as it's the most stereotypically spammed aoe. As I said before though, when all you're using is the same spell, a certain excitement surrounding the game leaves. I feel we have gone from seeing new spells and going "That's so cool, I can't wait to use it!" to seeing them and going "That's so cool, I wish I had a chance to use it!".

Part 3 - Why is this a problem? (E.g. why not just use whatever spell you want?)

You, balance wizard reading this: when's the last time you've heard something to the tune of "just blade me"? How did that make you feel? Did that extend to other parts of your gameplay? To expand on this, anyone who isn't fire or storm, has Wolf Stormblade ever told you that you can't hit? That you deal no damage? Told to just support or pass? Even fire wizards are sometimes subject to this!

The chances are, a lot of people don't realize how much of an effect the community has on their gameplay. I've even encountered this as early as Unicorn Way, but people care about the meta. You're going to play with people, and a lot of this playerbase can tend to treat their own word as law, and so you will have the meta drilled into you. Hell, sometimes their "meta" is less efficient or just straight up worse than your plan. Putting that aside though, opinions turn into "facts", they then circulate, and then you have been pressured to play a specific way. Before I continue, I'd like us to remind ourselves that this is NOT League of Legends, and that at its core this is an all-ages game in a humorous fantasy setting, and that some of us might be taking PVE gameplay a little too seriously. That being said, I get it though! Circling back to an earlier point, this gameplay loop can be absolutely numbing! Of course after 80 battles against Malistaire just trying to get that one drop you want everyone around you to play with maximum efficiency! It's impossible to always keep in mind that some people might be trying to experience these parts of the game you might have already experienced as much as you can! And in a way, it makes sense, why would we roughly double our already extended battle times through not playing aoe? Metas get popular because they work. They work extremely well. Under Wizard101's current combat system, which is a large part of why I love Wizard101, single target spells are rarely a better option, and instead cost me multiple more minutes in my day.

The next suggestion would usually be to solo, however:

A: Not all content can be soloed, you WILL have to encounter another player at some point, and it will usually be in a setting where these types of players congregate most.

B: Even if more challenging content CAN be soloed, you have to play extremely to the meta, defeating the point of soloing here.

C: This is an MMO. A core part of it is inherently community and other players. Why am I only allowed to have fun while lonely?

Unless you come upon a rare chance and find the perfect group of people, you can't consistently play Wizard101 the way you want. And the problem is much larger than the aoe spells.

So, we have acknowledged we all understand the problem and have feelings one way or another about it. We have described why nothing has been done about it, and what the problem really is. We've gone into the community pressures, incentive to self, and damage to gameplay options regarding aoe and a greater meta. I've also done my best to show that this problem runs deeper and is harder to avoid than you may think. So, what's my big suggested change for Wizard101 and KI to fix this problem?

Nothing. That's right, all this for me to suggest nothing. Unless a lot of random reworks somehow magically make things better, this isn't changing. I don't even necessarily want the reworks, either. This problem is just here. I guess the only actually meaningful call to action would be please, regardless of whether it's Wizard101, some other game, or even just life in general, be mindful of the experiences of others. You may be beating that boss for the 80th time today, but this might be a teammate's first encounter with it. You may be jaded and want to do things as fast as possible, but try your best to remind yourself not to take the sparkle out of the eyes of someone enjoying themselves. Remember- you always matter, and whether or not that's going to be positive or negative is in your hands.

Maybe our game gets better, maybe we get better, or maybe some secret third option happens. It doesn't even matter too much to me, despite this lengthy post. I just wanted to get my thoughts on this issue out there.

[enarei]

the levelling experience in retail WOW is so mind numbingly dull. like I understand that they have a complex problem in their hands and leaving it unchanged wouldn't work. I understand the game has literally two decades worth of content, and just forcing new players to go through all of it as close as it was on release would not only be extremely technically challenging to balance, but also an insurmountable task to anyone with a job. but their solution to it shows such an utter disregard for the very core of what makes MMORPGs fun, and all the work they put into previous expansions.

it's actually sad to me to go Outland and see that everything scales to my level. that the bonechewer orcs on the cliffs to Hellfire Ramparts are the same level as the ones that patrol the road proper. that the handcrafted experience of surmounting each tier of orc progressively through questing, until you are powerful enough to climb the Hellfire Ramparts and take on a dungeon with a group of friends, and so on for each new area of TBC, all that has been sacrificed in the name of "current content". all of it has been homogenized such that it doesn't matter which area you do first, which class of enemies you choose to pick fights with, what quests you prioritize with each new level, it's all rendered equally (un)challenging so that players can speed through all of it to get to current expansion without a care in the world. there's zero incentive to care about the world besides the promise that once you're close to the end of your levelling journey, it'll get really good.

people might say that's always been the case since expansions became a thing, once new gear comes out, the old world is irrelevant. and I don't have a reason to disagree, except that I'm still presented with meaningful choices when levelling in classic WOW. the level 65 quest rewards might not be remotely relevant to {current max level content} Ice Crown Citadel in that game, but just being in the overworld itself is fun because the journey feels authentic instead of merely being there as "legacy" content to fulfill the requirement of some levelling experience in an RPG.

it's quite ironic that in an attempt to 'free' the player of the burden of being forced to level through every expansion linearly, so they can Have Their Own Adventure, they completely ruined the sense of autonomy that encourages you to actually do that. you wanna do a really hard quest 6 levels higher than you so you can skip the boring gathering ones appropriate to your level? or maybe you'd rather go to this other place that is full of beasts that you can skin and ore you can mine, so you can train your professions at the same time. have a friend close by? try to do this insanely stupid escort quest and get suckered into world pvp for half an hour when the Alliance shows up to ruin your day. like you get this very organic interaction between game and social systems by virtue of level ranges providing irregular bumps to perceived difficulty and thus how seriously you need to engage with your class's mechanics, how efficiency you need to use your cooldowns to survive an encounter — you get to pick the difficulty, and it turns out it's incredibly fun to challenge yourself.

In retail that barely ever happens, because every single enemy you'll fight in the overworld will be scaled to the same level as you, its health and damage output will never allow them to be exceptionally trivial or meaningfully challenging, which means you barely have to change your tactics.

I know the carrot is real. I know the class design has considerably more depth and the gameplay has the potential to be much more fun just by virtue of dungeons actually having interesting mechanics when they never did in classic. But it baffles me how much of a slog they expect you to push through to get to it as a new player. I find it very hard to believe I'd have gotten into WOW if this was my first experience with it and I didn't have friends telling me how awesome Dragonflight is.

[tallsc]

AvA Yellow and Leadership: Character Analysis

Well, the last character analysis went over very well, and I'm always down to ramble about sticks, so here's some stuff I've been noticing about Yellow and their struggles with leadership and pride. I don't have quite as much planned for this one, but we'll see how it goes.

So in the Color Gang, everyone seems to have preferred roles on the team. Orange and Green like to be leaders - albeit in different ways - and both tend to take leadership roles whenever appropriate. Blue and Red don't seem to enjoy the leadership role as much, and thus take support roles in the team. Yellow, however, seems to me like they like being a leader in a way, yet when it comes to it, generally ends up in a support role.

There's a lot of evidence of this, mostly in season 1 and 2, though a little in season 3 too. In the early days especially, Yellow loved taking charge and showing off, not unlike Green in some aspects. Yellow made the roller coaster so that all their friends could take part in something of their design - without even riding it themselves, apparently, since I would have expected they'd notice the problem at the end if they tried. The Lucky Blocks episode started with Yellow figuring out a bit more about the lucky blocks and then showing off to their friends. They drag Red into a lot of their plans too, both when first discovering command blocks and when messing with texture packs. They do similarly with Blue in the first Ravager episode, leading Blue to Mango's castle.

So it's pretty clear Yellow likes making the plans, or setting the scene. They love being the one who knows everything, the one who makes the decisions, the one who leads. So why, whenever there's a bigger fight or something that has to do with the whole team, are they so rarely the leader? Why are they the ranged fighter in the back who spends most of a battle giving their friends supplies? While it's helpful, it doesn't seem like much of a leadership style, right? Well, I think there's a few reasons.

First, they love being the one who knows everything. Turns out, in a new situation, they're rarely the one who knows everything. In the Raid, even Blue was more of a leader than Yellow with the villagers, because the only thing Yellow knew about the situation was the command block, so they focused all their attention on that. It went well, and they seemed quite happy about it, but their time was spent giving their allies buffs and gathering reinforcements rather than really taking charge themselves.

Second, there just isn't space in the team for a third leader. Orange and Green balance each other out, Green taking charge in tighter situations and Orange tending to step up when there's a bit more time to think, or occasionally just leading their own sub-groups. The only times Yellow really gets the chance to take that role is when they set up the whole situation themselves, which is what they do quite often as prior stated. In most other situations, they don't have the time to figure everything out so someone else steps up before they get the chance to.

Third, especially in the case of an actual battle, Yellow just isn't much of a fighter. They know how the game works incredibly well, but give them a sword and they don't end up doing much with it. So in a fight, they're better suited being a backup for their friends, getting everyone the supplies they need while lobbing bombs from a distance. Their fighting style just lends itself to a supporting role.

Fourth, this is less of an analysis and more theoretical, but I wonder if there might be some lack of trust between Yellow and the others? In all the examples I used for Yellow acting as leader, it did not end well. Whether it was dropping most of the group off a cliff, or making the computer devolve into chaos, or getting everyone possessed, or falling for a villain's trap, every time Yellow leads, bad things happen. So it wouldn't be surprising if the rest of the CG didn't quite trust Yellow in a leadership role again. Which has got to be frustrating for Yellow, cause it seems all they want to do is make their friends happy and proud of them.

That's why I'm quite happy with how the last few episodes are going, and am really hoping Yellow's command staff doesn't get used for anything bad. While Yellow spent most of the Raid doing their own thing with the command block, when they returned to the nether, taking point in the fight against Mango, I feel like that has to be the perfect spot for Yellow to be in. With the command block, they're in an element they're comfortable with, they're in the lead like they want to be, with still the supporting, defensive aspect that they're good at.

As dire as the situation is right now, at least Yellow might finally be settling into a better role for themselves.

That ended up quite a bit longer than I expected, huh! There were even some more points I had in mind that I never felt a good time to bring up, so guess I had a lot more to say than I thought. Well, if you read this far, hope you found it interesting! I'm sure I'm going to be making more of these in the future, so see you then! (Please look at my art too though I work very hard on it ^-^)

[tony-lee-gordy]

I recently beat the demo for Card-en-Ciel; the new game devolved by IntiCreates, the same team behind the Megmaan Zero series, Gunvolt, and Bloodstained. As someone who really loves card games and deckbuilders, these are the types of games I really enjoy.

The premise is pretty simple. You play as Neon, a "Master Chair Detective" (basically a white hat hacker) who takes on a case about finding out the scetet of some anomalies in various games. There's nothing too out there, but i really like Neon so far. Behind the do goober hacker side, he's just a big game dork who loves video games as a whole. It helps he's voice bt Aleks Le, and I've grown to like a lot of his roles like Shun and Minato. Heck, all the voice acting is really good, and there's a lot of it (which can thankfully be turned off since it persists into card fights, and i can see someone finding it annoying. I personally found it funny and charming)

The game flow is pretty straightforward. Go do a dungeon run order to progress with the story, come back, gain levels to improve your stats between runs. As for the game itself, it does a few things I really like. First off, despite what some videos say, this DOES NOT play like Battle Network. It's solely turn based with emphasis on positioning and card management. Ine of the cooler aspects is a balance mechanic where if you do enough break damage, you can stun an enemy and stop them from attacking. It adds some much needed strategy between going for pure beat down or stopping one enemy and moving out of the way of another. The game encourages you to fight because not doing ao raises a threat meeter that can add random debuffs when entering a room.

One of the more interesting aspects are Muse encounters. You can find them in a dungeon, and beating one allows you to recruit them, offering their skills and passive abilities when you meet a certain condition, and they can stack and it can get very, "I don't know what's going on"-y at times but in a good way.

Something else I like is how you interact with the map. After clearing out a room of enemies tou can place cards down for bonus effects, heal, or enhance cards with passive cheat codes. I really liked this mechanic a lot. Made me think what I need the most. "I could boost one of my cards permanently, but my deck is getting kinda bloated I could stand to see a few cards on the map, then again I am low on health" these are the type of choices I like. Very risk vs reward heavy and no choice feels universally better. It's great stuff.

Visually this game looks really nice. Very vibrant with very nice character designs....some of it a little fanservicy but the "all in good fun" kind that makes me laugh (like hell, the demo ends with you being able to use Ancie as a lap pillow..that just made me laugh one of those "want the hell XD" kind of laughs) and like I said the voice cast is really good. I can tell everyone had such a fun time voicing these characters.

I guess my only real complaint is guess is that outside of those moments of losing track of what's going on, keeping up with card effects and all the voiced dialogue in combat being a little much, I can see people getting a little tired fighting all these fights. These maps are fairly large, and nearly every square has at least 2 enemies on them, and because you're encouraged to fight a decent amount, i can see this get VERY repetitive and annoying for someone. Heck, after a while, I just focused on fighting the Muse and treasure room enemies and a few along the way. You aren't REQUIRED to fight EVERYTHING on the map anyway so I think focusing on those rooms and a few more for good measure would be fine. The other personal issue is...this game is a love letter to IntiCreates and their I.P. I haven't played a lot of their games so I didn't recognize a few names but that's just a me thing. (I should get on that. The games I have played by them have been very good)

I very much enjoyed this! It feels easy to understand mechanically, and the stuff it does differently from others in the genre helps it have its own identity. I love the voice acting. It's usually appealing. Yeah, the story (so far) isn't really doing much for me plot wise (outside of character interactions) , and I can see it at risk of being receptive but those didn't stop me from having a good time. I'm definitely gonna pick this up when it comes out. If you're into this type of game, or really love the company who made it I'd strongly reccomend this :)

[whyitfucks]

Why it Fucks: City of Mist's Themebooks

lateral character progression rules!

For those who don't know:

City of Mist is a 2017 Powered by the Apocalypse game from Son of Oak Games. Described as "set in a modern city where legends are real people. Heroes, tricksters, and monsters are reborn inside ordinary people, regular Joes and Janes, who gain supernatural powers connected to their legendary alter-egos."

The game focuses on telling stories that merge the fantastical with the grounded. Okay, if not grounded "lower altitude". It's the structure that you'd find any on detective/police/superhero procedural on TV. A detective game, even if those detectives are also embodiments of legends like Red Riding Hood or the Goddess Artemis.

One of the delightful things about it, and the reason behind this post. Is its use of what it calls themebooks. Every character at any given time is host to 4 themebooks. These can be powers tied to the myth you represent (Mythos) or some part of your mundane life (Logos). A Thor based character could have a "Relic" mythos for his hammer, and a "Defining Relationship" Logos with his old dad he cares for. They provide benefits to rolls when needed, have unique weaknesses and so on. Most importantly they have a mystery (for the mythos) and identity (for the logos) that tell us why we care or give little hooks. These themes get discarded and picked up throughout the game as you use them. Letting characters change without worrying about balancing difficulty.

As an example, let's look at one of the characters from the quick start, Salamander, tied to the myth of, well, the Salamander

One of his 4 playbooks is based on his job as a city water worker. We can see it has the identity "I need my job to survive" this tells us why it's important to him. I won't go in to much of the rest about power tags and such, instead looking back up to Attention and Crack.

Attention is like an XP track for that aspect of your character. There are a couple ways of gaining it like invoking your weakness tag for a penalty for example. You evolve it, expanding out the power/importance of the theme.

Whenever you take an action that goes against or would cause conflict with one of your themes it takes on a crack. Maybe Salamander has to leave his shift to go fight some bad guys, angering his boss. When the crack track is full, Salamander will lose that theme and trade it for another. Broadly, the themebook creation rules are written very generously. You can come in with a loose concept and they'll help you solidify it into something usable

Why It Fucks:

SO. What we have here are characters with 4 individual aspects that serve as side plots, mysteries or recurring beats that each have two directions they can go to (focus or conflict) that are, for the most part, entirely player directed as to which way they're going. Some MCs might twist arms for hard choices but at the right table that's just good drama baby.

This is a game that frequently references television procedurals or detective stories as big touch stones. What they've done here is empower not only the MC but the players to thread together their episodic adventures in a way that can also reflect consequence without making that player less "powerful" in game terms. Facilitating really dramatic change.

City of Mist is a game I'm quite fond of, it has it's issues but design like this is why I want to start writing these posts. Whatever I think about the game, this single little bit is SO! juicy to me.

[theannoyingurge]

For the Durge Creator meme, 4 and 9!

Sorry for how long this became!

4. How did Durge come to be? Why them? Was it a vibe you tried to capture or a specific visual you wanted to represent? Did you borrow them from previous works or were they handcrafted for this story you have in mind?

I went in blind as an Oath of the Ancients Paladin (lol). Never played a BG game before. I knew the gist of The Urge mechanic and that I wanted to resist it, but it wasn't supposed to be a main playthrough.

But then Alfira happened, and I met the Oathbreaker Knight - who had apparently met me several times before - I fell in love with the concept of a good person who was cursed to be evil against their will, and all the trauma that comes with.

The vibe was how dark a heart can become when forced to withdraw from the light. The self destructive ways we insulate ourselves from feeling anything too deeply. The fear of being seen for what we are, balanced against the dread of being alone. How we rationalize our own sins to live with ourselves, and how twisted our sense of reason can become when subjected to horrific realities.

When I feel the weight of my part in climate change/capitalism/systemic racism/etc, it's easy to just be a snowflake in an avalanche. The power I have to vote, boycott, protest, etc feels almost meaningless in the face of the pure scale at which evil exists.

I wanted Durge to feel that small, yet remain single-mindedly possessed by the power to end it all.

She rages against something she knows is there but can't fight without turning inward. It was a bit of a study in environmental factors, comparing her character before and after the tadpole. Pre-amnesia, she probably blamed life itself for The Urge, believing that peace was possibly only when there was nothing left to trigger violence. Post-amnesia, she is forced to unpack all of that around the campfire and can begin to heal.

9. How much did Bhaal influence their design or personality in the end? Did you research lore to purposefully get the resemblance or do you just go with the flow and what feels right for the story you want to tell?

I stopped playing the game for months to figure out how Bhaal's "divine parthenogenesis" supposedly worked while he was dead, how his temple functioned prior to Returning Day, what caused Viekang to suddenly murder his brother, etc. It was a mess, but I wrote a thing, and it made sense at the time.

Bhaal crafted Durge from his corpse floating in the Astral Plane and the essence of his botched rebirth, which was supposedly locked away in Mt Celestia after the events of the previous games. I blamed the Spellplague for releasing it into the Astral. There it was seized by his vestige, infecting the mind of a murderer with the heart of a savior (like Withers' line in Act 3).

Bhaal wasn't happy about his miracle child's Divine Soul sorcery, but beggars can't be choosers. He grooms her to supress it and train in other professions instead. However, he takes advantage of her ability to love him the way truly evil spawn never will. She was destined to be the perfect, loyal daughter; a foil to all the ambitious servants who failed him.

She's a sweet faced Tiefling bard. Has her father's Netherese features. She favors illusion, enchantment and divination spells to get inside people's heads. She effectively bluffs Bhaal back into power by sowing fear of his return, and portenting doom to any who don't aid that end (a Spirit Bard's take on Pascal's Wager).

In her younger years, she unleashes Creepy Little Girl nightmare fuel against Cyricists and sex predators to meet Dad's death quotas guilt-free.

She gradually extended the treatment to people she doesn't like, which steadily grew to the population of Toril. She failed to notice the shift from "necessary evil" to "evil necessarily".

However, a small remnant of her Divine Soul hibernates, restless and disembodied. It occasionally lashes out and tosses coins to beggars, or shows mercy to the Chosen of her father's sworn foe.

Suffice to say it's all Jergal's doing. He's involved in everything and too many tabs were opened. "What is the worth of a single mortal life?" sounds like a question he and Dark Urge have both done terrible things to get answers to.

I needed Dark Urge to experience spiritual conflict over something bigger than Bhaal, more akin to nihilism or fatalism, to untwist some deeper rooted issues and explore Jergal's character growth as well, as a once-BBEG who is now a Neutral servant to Kelemvor. Like, 'stop murdering people' is a great first step, but 'cherish life even when it seems fleeting and hopeless and you have no answers' is the goal here.

[northwest-cryptid]

This shouldn't be nearly as much of a controversial opinion as it is; but I miss when games were literally and firstly designed to be fun experiences. That fun can absolutely lean into the demographic of the intended player; but the entertainment and fun used to be very clearly emphasized for the common player.

And see this is where I lose people. They get too caught up on the first part of that and ignore the last 2 words. I've heard people tell me "you're just salty because you're bad" but at the risk of sounding arrogant, no I'm actually salty because I'm better than the average player and if I'm getting frustrated and struggling to ENJOY the game then there might be a problem here.

Sure you can wave this off saying "you're arrogant if you think you're literally better than the average player" but honestly I see this issue a lot of in the communities of actually difficult games, where the difficulty is part of the fun. People treat it like a dick measuring contest and refuse to hear anything bad about it; as well as anyone saying they're actually good at it.

Thing is, I actually do enjoy difficulty in games. When I played ULTRAKILL I made a point to start the game on Violent. Even when I was told to go get all the weapons first; I found that I enjoyed a challenge that was designed with what I had available to me in mind. Sure I didn't P rank everything on my first go of it; but soon after I not only felt motivated, but enthusiastic to go back and P rank those stages with my new fun weapons.

Dark Souls 3 is literally one of my favorite games, it's clear that for all it's faults; there was a good bit of care put into the difficulty to match with where the player was expected to be at the time. Even with it's branching paths I never felt underleveled for a boss encounter. Bosses didn't have over the top wild combos that they could switch up on the fly; or ridiculous AoE spam that comes out exclusively in the last 10% of the fight. They were just balanced, challenging, entertaining fights.

I think the major problem people fall into with "Difficulty Is Fun" type games is that devs fail to understand who they're making the game for and when they're making the game for them.

Again going back to ULTRAKILL here, because it's a GREAT example of how a difficulty is fun game can be done right.

See the game starts very slow with a firm understanding of your basic weapons leaving you to figure out how to parry fairly early on and use it alongside your guns without thinking of it as something that's difficult to pull off. It's not this high risk high reward thing, it's just another tool in your kit.

But the dev/devs clearly understands this game is made for the Difficulty Is Fun crowd; so they don't just give us a difficulty option for the game; they additionally make sure the difficulty ramps slowly.

Throughout the first half of the game you're more than allowed to get used to how things work before being expected to use them well; and when you clearly have more experience and confidence with the game it begins throwing harder stuff your way.

But you know what's cool? The ultra-hard content that's made for the dick measuring contest elitists? That's locked behind getting Perfect rank on all the stages in an act; doing so unlocks the super hard boss mode stages and if you beat all of those you unlock the like ultra-hard masochist gauntlet stage.

Did I mention you can do this on any difficulty? Or that different difficulties actually change up how the game plays? With easier difficulties allowing you to counter your way through the whole fight but at Violent and higher you can't parry throughout the second phase? This means if I enjoy getting into the thick of it and scrapping by on 1 HP and a dream, I totally can; but my friend who wants a stress free fun time with the game can actually experience all the same content on an easier mode and guess what; we're both happy?

Like I'm sorry I'm not saying every game needs to have an easy mode; that's an argument in a totally different ball park. This isn't about "easy mode" because that's not what I want from games. I don't want my Difficulty Is Fun game to have an easy mode; I just want it to be fair and enjoyable.

People shit on Dark Souls 2 for a lot of stuff, but you know the one thing that has always bothered me?

There's this really pretentious achievement you get the first time you die, it's literally titled "This is Dark Souls" and you know why that bothers me?

Every SINGLE time I see someone unlock that the reaction is roughly "oh no, I'm not going to enjoy this game am I..." Which all the "hardcore Souls fans" laugh at and say "yea get ready to die for 40 hours lololol"

I'm sorry but like, that's the dumbest shit I've ever seen; go wank off to difficulty somewhere else. Did you hear what they fucking said? They're not going to ENJOY the game they paid for? What's the point of doing the thing that's supposed to be entertaining if they're not entertained?!

Are these games meant to be "rage games"? No that would seem almost insulting to call them that.

Why do I like Dark Souls 3? Because the game doesn't feel like it's looking down on you, the whole game is designed to cheer you on, to coach you. Every time you get knocked down the game is telling you "get back in there champ you got it this time." If you're not sure what I mean I should likely explain it like this,

I once watched a playthrough in which one person had never played Dark Souls and the other was a veteran player. The vet was a sort of coach to point out things about the game the newbie was likely missing.

The first boss encounter was pretty scrappy but whenever he's die the vet would ask him "did you see what happened there?" Essentially talking him through like "you dodged right but he's right handed so you dodged into the swing, try sicking by our left, his right; and dodge under his weapon instead." Or he'd explain things like attack opportunity and such. The idea of their turn and your turn, the enemy attacks; and then during their recovery you get to do an action as a reward for actually dodging the attack. This lets you heal, attack, or set up something for the fight. It's a classic back and forth that leads to players being able to play in different ways and not just build for Poise, Vigor, and Strength so they can play the most boring character known to man.

It's cool to watch because having someone there to point things out is a great way to show how a veteran vs a newbie is going to view the game. If you've played a lot of Souls before, or you've played the game longer you're likely going to pick up on the ways the game is trying to hint at you to do something.

I recently did a Dark Souls 1 stream in which I literally beat the first boss with the broken straight sword and doing so was a way for me to sorta showcase how. No the game isn't about DIFFICULTY; it's about understanding. I know that's a big meme in the souls community but I'm serious you know, if you learn the attack patterns (which they don't constantly switch up), you figure out what animations are tied to which AoEs and which attacks; and you focus your efforts on dodging those attacks and learning their timing. Now you know where your chance to hit the enemy is, you know how long you have, you can learn and gauge how you need to weave in and out of range.

There's this constant "git gud" saying that I really hate, because on one hand that explains nothing; on the other hand it's absolutely true. However when you tell a new player or even an existing player to "git gud" they're not going to know what that means, they're not going to actually take that to mean:

If you feel squishy, throw some levels into Vigor.

If you're rolling to slow, take off some gear; you won't need the defense when you learn the attack timing well enough to dodge it better; the extended i-frames will help you dodge more.

Take a moment to study the bosses movements so you know where your chance to attack comes in and roughly how long you'll have when it does come up.

Remember how scaling works, dumping 30 points into STR isn't going to do as much as upgrading your weapon to scale better. You can dump those points into Vigor and then throw a few points at whichever damage stat your weapon scales with and still deal considerable damage.

Use your estus early, if you heal for 50 HP with each estus, and you have 10 estus. With a total health of 100, you have effectively 600 health. If an enemy hits you for say, 30 damage; that looks scary, that can 2 shot you right now; but if you actually use your estus liberally you'll realize the boss needs to hit you closer to 20 times. As long as you're healing you have plenty of mistakes you can make.

When I say that games aren't made with fun or entertainment in mind anymore; and they're made to circle jerk the other top players and elitists of a community. I'm not just talking about how hard a game is to beat. I'm talking about nerfs made exclusively for PvP that effect the vast majority of PvE players who will never touch PvP. I'm talking about nerfs made to weapons that could help struggling players with specific bosses because they happened to pay attention to how damage resistance/weaknesses worked.

I'm even talking about how Elden Ring is a so called "Open World" game that refuses to tell the player the recommended level for an area. Meaning it's very much still a linear experience, just with more steps. You're not playing an Open World game, you're playing a Linear game with extra steps and longer walks between quest NPCs.

Okay so you start in Limgrave, cool; most the world isn't accessible to you until you beat some bosses; other parts are totally accessible to you, let's explore some of those first right?

Now if we assume you're a common everyday player, maybe new to Souls games because you've been hearing all the Elden Ring hype and want to try it out. You're probably not good enough to immediately go and fight the first real boss of the game. You're also likely not going south, because the game doesn't point you in that direction.

In fact, one of the early game paths leads straight into a level 60 area. How would you know this? Surely the game has some form of a warning right? Like you know, maybe an NPC along the most common path that will tell you that you're not ready yet. Maybe a message left at a grace warning of powerful enemies ahead; this isn't uncommon for Souls Games having little messages around to clue the player into things.

But no, it doesn't; it just lets you go in and attack something and see you're dealing no damage and then when you inevitably get 1 shot you go "guess I'm not supposed to be here" right?

Well no.

Remember, This Is Dark Souls, you're gonna die fucker; you better get back in there and keep trying until you get it, because THIS IS DARK SOULS.

That's when they inevitably get fed up and if they're smart, they go somewhere else. So let's say you try to skip over the first remembrance boss of the game; you finally got passed Margit. You do not want to have to fight another big boss right now. You just want to explore the open world, maybe get a few levels; see the sights.

Well I hope you're already level... 40-50?

See this?

This is the wiki's recommended level per area, do you notice anything about it? A sort of linearity? Now you might not at first, you might say "but Cryptid there's multiple areas with the SAME recommended levels!" Sure there are, and accessing those areas may require you to beat a boss in another area, or travel through an area to get to that one. In other words; it's still a linear path, and while more than one of these is accessible to you. If you're not already a vet who might have over-leveled or who may be skilled enough to fight enemies significantly higher level than you; then it's possible to go from say Liurnia of the Lakes to Siofra Aquaduct and get your ass handed to you.

That's all well and good but the issue here is that it creates a sort of metronome of frustration.

When you know where the game wants you to go, and you're on par with it's damage output and such; you feel fairly confident even when the game does some genuinely bullshit AoE spam. However when you ping-pong between higher level (but technically "accessible") areas getting killed repeatedly and always having that core philosophy of "this is Dark Souls stupid, get used to it" in the back of your head where you can't tell if this is the intended path or not because sure it's hard but, and say it with me now; This Is Dark Souls.

You might be thinking "but Cryptid, even the cult classic Fallout New Vegas does this!" Which is wrong, they do in fact use high level enemies to dissuade the player from attempting specific paths and essentially railroad them into the intended route. However, there is one key difference; the fallout community doesn't pride itself on the difficulty of their games. The fallout community doesn't use the saying "git gud" in place of real advice. The fallout community is very open about cheese, breaking the game; and how this is a fun and acceptable thing to do. Not that if you cheese a fight or make something easier for yourself you're somehow "playing the game wrong."

So more often than not, if the player encounters a field of 50 Deathclaws they think "yea I'm not meant to be here yet" and move on. With many NPCs telling the player safer routes, the player actually not only has options if they want to leave, but actually knows where to go to progress as intended. They're still allowed to try to break that progression and do things their own way but you can't say they weren't literally warned by the in game system designed to make sure they understood the difficulty of what they were undertaking.

Dark Souls 1 and 3 feel like flawed, but enjoyable games; If I found myself frustrated with them; it was often because I was frustrated with myself for making the same mistake multiple times when both I and the game had been telling me not to do that again.

Elden Ring felt like a hot mess until I started paying more attention to things like recommended levels. Then it felt like a bit less of a still hot mess because I'm sorry but that's what it is.

Now I'm on the DLC and I hate that every time I get into a boss fight I begin to enjoy myself; I think you know, it's fun it's cool this feels fair but challenging. Then in the last like 10 - 25% of the HP bar they have to pull out some extremely spamming AoE that locks you into multi-hit and can 1 shot your entire health bar; or heal them for their entire health bar; or both!

Which you know, if I was a squishy glass cannon build or something then I wouldn't really complain. But I'm not, I'm literally playing the boring Vigor Poise Endurance heavy armor fucking bleed build ass piece of shit mimic tear summoning HP talisman + defense talisman build. I'm still getting consistently through most of the boss fight and then suffering because there's some cheap shit they pull out last minute to ruin the fun.

It's still impossible to know if you're on par with the area you're in, I don't want to look up a guide; sometimes everything leading up to a boss feels really solid; I dish out as much as I take; I'm feeling good about it. I go into the boss room, nope 1 shot. What, is the point?

Okay so now do I throw myself into the brick wall 40 more times or do I go grind? Or do I explore somewhere else? I don't know man I think I'll do the first because I got pretty close that time. Oh wait no I didn't not this time because I didn't really get to learn any of the moves. My camera is a mess, sometimes they can hit through walls, sometimes their hitbox extends outside their actual model; and sometimes they have a multi-hit AoE that launches so if you even get hit by 1 part of it then you're hit by the whole thing. Hope you somehow knew what this boss was and already preemptively built resistances to it or else you're not going to have fun dying to the last 5% of the HP bar repeatedly because oh yea it can still do other attacks while doing the bit multi-hit AoE bullshit. Fuck off.

I hate the feeling of "this is a fun boss fight I'm actually enjoying this; that's pretty solid I feel like I'm enjoying this game again." Being met with "oh no can't have that; let's throw some absolutely bullshit mechanic at the last 5 seconds to make sure you're here for 3 hours longer than you should be."

Look if I were particularly bad at these games I'd honestly shrug it off, but I'm not. I'm sorry if you think I'm fucking arrogant; I can't sit here and justify my confidence to you; if you think I'm arrogant there's no telling you otherwise. The truth is I used to speedrun DS3, I've done full no-hit runs of DS1 for fun; I actively enjoy getting P ranks on the fucking Prime levels of ULTRAKILL on Violent and fucking Brutal difficulty.

Not only am I actually good at "difficult is fun" games; but I genuinely enjoy them for it. I've not had a single boss fight in the DLC where I've won and still been excited about it. It's always a "fucking finally done with that bullshit" never a "WOO YEA BABY" is that what you want your players to experience?

There's absolutely a sort of bell curve in my opinion when it comes to the enjoyment of Difficulty Is Fun type games; they're the sort of thing you likely will be frustrated with a lot up front; but then as you spend more time with the fight you're going to learn it's mechanics and it's attack timing. So you begin to enjoy the flow of the game, you get into the sort of groove for when you can attack and when you need to dodge; or when you need to do a specific thing; or swap to a specific weapon. It all starts to come together in this kind of fun exciting back and forth between the game and you. However that runs out after maybe 15 - 30 minutes; now you've hit the point where you're confidence is so high that you don't feel like "you CAN do this" you feel like "you should have ALREADY done this 5 attempts ago." Your understanding of the attacks isn't "oh wow I should dodge INTO this one and AWAY from that one!" Now it's just "ugh right it's this one, god I'm fucking stupid I should be able to dodge that by now- oh right, cool yea fuck it go on do the fucking unavoidable chin move right right okay I don't get a turn to attack..." You don't celebrate a victory, you sigh in relief of it being done and over with.

I don't know about you, but I'm really sick of how especially in the souls community, if you dare to say something is bad and you've not beat it on your first try and mentioned how easy it is. You're ignored, told you're just salty; told to git gud, told to go play a different game if you don't like it. Now look where we are, FromSoft acts like the worst of the community, they refuse to let their game be accessible to the common average player. You pay $40 to get mad, frustrated, and give up repeatedly until you finally overcome the problem and don't even feel happy about it. Congratulations, I hope you "enjoy" your suffering because it's just not a good fucking time.

I remember how many people refunded Elden Ring back when it first game out, and I remember every fucking elitist dick measuring contest participant out here laughing about it. Why? Do you not think those people deserve to enjoy the same fucking game we do?

[tch-tchtchkaa]

Rune Factory Frontier RULES!

And I completely understand why younger me never got very far.

Coming from RF5, the pacing of this game is immaculate! I'm at the end of spring and I've only gotten to floor 3 of the Spring dungeon. I might be on the 3rd or 4th dungeon in some of the later games. There's always so much to do and in the beginning it's locked by energy (Max RP not increasing is actually a baller design choice), but once you get crops in the dungeon it quickly goes to time management.

The dungeon design is so peak!! Weapons taking a not insignificant amount of RP per swing means that crop growing is VITAL in the dungeons. Which means you'll have plenty of RP Runes floating around even if you ignore the fights after unlocking the fast travel to the lower floors. Also. Dying means something! Not a hit to your finances, you just lose the rest of that day! And one of the Bachelorettes hates you a little each time lol.

Love that time is paused in buildings. Since the map is bare bones and doesn't show people's locations, it's really nice to wander without feeling a time pressure. Also love that cooking/crafting/forging are all inside the house so no time passes as you gather materials and craft.

Having the crafting features tied to a mini game is such a cool design trick. Sure cooking can increase the price of crops, but it takes real world time and a modicum of effort to pull off. It helps keep the profit balanced not only through RP cost, but through player motivation. Plus, your one and only save point is right there in your house, super convenient for save scumming (which probably works best on emulation cause the Wii do be chuggaluggin')

However

The Runey system is super poorly explained with how important it is for the overall farming experience.

I definitely did not have the patience for this when first playing the game, so it just invited a complete sense of dread that would stop me from progressing. I had to search the internet for the various Runey guides and keep a journal, and it's still a bundle of stress for me. It's easily the most unfun chore in the game, the actual act of sucking up Runeys is sooooo fuckin slow, and the hit boxes are stupid and make no sense. It takes 5 ever, especially on a rainy day (Y'know, those days where watering your field is taken care of so you want to use your time saved on a different activity :/). And you have to keep a constant mental math of how many of each Runey you want to skim off the top to make sure the area is sustainable (although this part I enjoy cause I'm a wierdo who likes arithmetic a whole bunch).

Nevermind the fact that the whole Grass Factory concept was invented by players and I don't even know what the intended play design was supposed to be. It feels super unforgiving for how little is explained.

Also I literally have never fished in the game. When I played back in the day, I had no interest In Cinnamon and didn't look up her schedule. Turns out you can only get the fishing rod if you follow her to her fishing spots. That seems a little hidden for a main tool of the game imo. This playthrough, I just don't have the tiiiime. I want to fish, but if I have a few spare hours I feel obligated to spend it trying to unfuck the Runey system.

Literally everything else about the game is peak. And even with the blunders of the Runey system, following the internet guides are rewarding. Even if the game itself should be much better about explaining the system.

Holy hell I love this game!!

[dumbfinntales]

After about 45 hours I finally beat Lies of P for the first time. Man, how lucky am I to play three complete bangers of games in a row? Lies of P was an amazing game, not perfect, but truly a gem in the rough. Click more blelow to read my full thoughts!

So what is Lies of P? It's like if the "we have bloodborne at home" meme was genuine and you play as twink Pinocchio who fights against mechanical puppets. Sounds ridiculous, right? But the game makes it work. The world might be based on the story of Pinocchio, but it goes into so many different wild directions. The lore, the characters and most importantly the atmosphere are so superb that I kept forgetting that I'm playing as Pinocchio. I really do like the story they went for and there are a ton of nods to the original Pinocchio story.

Lies of P is a souls like and probably the best one I've played. It is the closest that any souls like game has reached Fromsoft level of quality and truly feel like it. And I'd go as far as to say that this game does reach Fromsofts quality. Everything feels so pristine and so fine tuned. The art direction is godly, the enemy designs are wild and varied, the bosses are brutal and the world and its atmosphere are great. And the game feels really good to play, for the most part. But I'll get to my criticisms later.

One thing that they did a bit different from Fromsoft are the story and characters. The characters were real fun and I quite grew to like them, Venigni and Polendina for example. There was a lot more dialogue to each character so you really got to know them and what their story is, while in most Fromsoft games their stories are tragic, but you don't really get to know them. The games story is also very straightforward and most things are revealed to you in time. So it's not your usual Fromsoft "figure things out on your own" type of story telling. It's quite refreshing actually and there were some really nice story twists and revelations along the way.

Like I said previously the game feels really good to play. The combat is top notch and feels a lot like Bloodborne when it comes to combat options and speed. I'll give bonus points to Lies of P that you can fully upgrade multiple weapons per playthrough, while in Bloodborne you can only do two. One criticism or irk or whatever you wanna call it is the parry timing. Many people have talked about his online, and I agree. The parry timing is strict and combine that with extremely delayed attacks and you're in trouble. I wish the parry was a little more lenient because learning the pixel perfect timing for each boss is quite tedious. And the more attacks a boss has the more tedious it is.

This is not a criticism per se, but holy shit this game is hard. Far harder than any Fromsoft souls game. In fact it might be one of the hardest games I've ever played. The balance is a bit all over the place though, like most levels and basic enemies are easy to deal with, but bosses and mini bosses are brutal. I was stuck on a mini boss for like 50 minutes. That's how long a boss should take, not a mid level elite enemy. The game is this difficult because it asks so much of the player. You are somewhat squishy so you die quickly, bosses are relentless and the parry timing are extremely strict. Some enemies in this game have these overly delayed attacks that hang in the air for long and come down in fraction of a second and you can't possibly react to that in time. You gotta see that attack multiple times until you can predict when it comes down accurately. Many bosses in this game took me more than an hour to beat.

But despite being stuck on most bosses for so long I still persevered. As a personal challenge I did everything solo as well and I never really felt frustrated. Dunno why, but Lies of P sparked my classic enjoyment for souls bosses that Elden Ring killed.

I'm not sure where I'd rank Lies of P yet, but I'm really looking forward to any possible DLC or continuation. This developer has truly showed that they know how to make a tough as nails yet fun game, and they know how to craft an interesting and twisted world. Using a classic fairy tale no less!

[mesaprotector]

I began writing this Elden Ring review when I felt the game nearing a close. Today I finished it. First "AAA" game I've ever played to completion, and I have mixed but mostly positive feelings. At any rate, my life to come is going to be a bit different not fighting wolves for hours each week.

Graphics

Anywhere from "fine, but relentlessly grim" (Caelid, much of the Mountaintops) to "I want to move here right now" (Siofra/Nokron, Leyndell, the Roundtable Hold). The game looks very good, though I can't say the same about some of the enemies and NPCs. When the designers cared, they made some very cool-looking stuff - Astel, Naturalborn of the Void is one of my favorites.

Music

The region themes were definitely a highlight. Above all, the terribly sad theme of Leyndell, a lone city clinging to life in a world falling gradually to pieces. The way the horn-using enemies harmonized with that theme was a beautiful touch. I wasn't as impressed with the boss themes though that might just be my personal preference for chiptunes.

Characters

Overall, this isn't a character-driven game, and that's fine. The voice acting definitely lends a hand with best boy Margit/Morgott and other characters like the Blackguard; but most characters who are memorable are memorable because of their designs or combat abilities. I do have to ask, though, why do most of the characters have to die? Even characters whose arcs I completed just up and died at the end. Alexander should've survived!

Combat

I think for the most part this aspect was fun. I definitely can criticize certain enemies getting reused (those awful ulcerated tree spirits, if you're going to reuse a boss that many times at least pick one that's fun). The balance was a bit off, as the game very clearly expects you to be playing a Str/Dex melee-focused build with a lot of dodging, weaving, and blocking, and doesn't bother balancing for anything else. Never mind that you can snipe enemies from a distance one by one or mow them down on Torrent, and then certain boss fights are MUCH harder doing anything except melee. (Hi, Rennala... or any of the Crystalians.) I don't know if it was intentional that some dungeons are torture but have easy bosses at the end.

I played Dex/Fth, using the Treespear for most of my run until I went for the Blasphemous Blade later in the game, with the Cipher Pata as a backup. I was terrible at dodging and only attempted it on bosses with telegraphed attacks like Mohg and the Fire Giant. I spent most of my time on Torrent, because the Treespear is an S-tier mounted weapon, and turned into a stealth-sniper every time I was in a dungeon. People sleep on bows and crossbows - their damage is terrible, but they're fantastic for aggroing one enemy at a time or hitting those dungeon pillars that breathe fire.

Despise the weird balancing, I think my only major quibbles with the combat in Elden Ring would be that, one, items are mostly useless - why use a Rune Arc to try to beat a hard fight when it's not enough of a buff to guarantee a win, and you lose it permanently? - and that the boss fights being occasionally hard throws progression out of whack if you're anything other than very, very stubborn. Which leads me to my main complaint about this game.

Questlines

Oh dear lord. I've always hated "guide dang it"-type content in games, but it's fine if it's like, secret rooms that have a bunch of coins and a cool sword. Not if there are obscure quests that you're all but required to play for much of the game's plot to make sense. (Rogier! I'm talking about Rogier!) I'll get into this more in the "story" section but I scarcely had a clue what was going on for most of the game, because almost all the lore for the game is hidden deep in questlines which can easily be permanently missed. I praise Miriel his Holy Turtleness every day for being one of the only NPCs who tells you about the gods without you having to find the Dubious Runebear Medallion first (or whatever). Without him I'd have had no idea who Marika even was.

The game also punishes you, over and over, for daring to explore areas early. Nepheli and Corhyn both died because of this in my playthrough - I'd already explored the Albinauric Village and the cliff by the Royal Colosseum, respectively, so I didn't re-explore once they moved to those locations. Then they just both died when I burned the Erdtree. Thanks, game. Really appreciate it.

While I'm at it - gesturing should never have been a mechanic in questlines except when you're explicitly told what to do (like the Finger Snap to summon Blaidd). Same with the Prattling Pates - there was zero indication they were anything but a joke item and then suddenly, dead Boc because you missed the single chance the game gives you to use one. (Rebirth with Rennala didn't kill me the three times I did it... so why did it kill Boc?)

I'm not sure I'd have completed even a single quest had I not had the bright idea to look them all up after the Fire Giant. (Maybe Fia's?) Turns out that was already a bit too late.

Story

I will say that the game's story and world is very, very good. It's a shame it's so hurt by the poor quest design, because I genuinely wanted to learn everything I could about the demigods, about the conspiracies and factions and everything else. Unfortunately I've learned more from the game's wiki than from the game itself. Even when I burned the Erdtree I wasn't totally sure why I was doing it, except that Melina told me to.

I was told by a friend not to heavily RP my character because it'd make the game too hard, but I did do a bit of it. I played a tough old lady, pious but brutal, who would never dare talk to the Three Fingers or do the bidding of a heretic, but wouldn't hesitate to slay a god. I intentionally skipped Tanith's questline because of this, and left the Dung Eater to rot.

Endings

I accidentally picked Ranni's ending. I was in the boss room after finally beating that obese flying salamander and instinctively pressed E when I saw a message below me, and instead of asking to confirm the game went straight into the cutscene. (Yet another example of this game being poorly designed for PC!) I think I was eligible for two other endings, and Fia's was my favorite concept of the three, though its 20-second cutscene I watched later on Youtube wasn't much. It does feel like the endings have the same issue as the rest of the game - very good ideas that never get explained well enough to be appreciated.

Overall

7/10; an amazing world with passable characters and very fun gameplay, but held back by the terrible quest design. If the game provided a lot more lore by default (for example, at the end of each major boss fight, or through Gideon and other NPCs who rarely change location), and made it very clear what the quest breakpoints were, it could easily be a 9/10. The game breaks the unspoken rule that hidden content should never be core to the plot. Anyone who plays this game should do it with a guide - not an exhaustive 100% checklist, but enough of a guide that nobody ends up dead without you intending it, and that you don't miss the most plot-relevant quests in the game.