#if i had to guess the game was def like...made with a female MC in mind first and then they saw that ppl wanted to be a male MC too?

[nommedtail]

oooh WHB's latest update says they fixed (some of the? all?) male/female dialogue bugs

servers still aren't fully fixed yet tho lol people rly want the spicy husbandos!!!!

[hypaalicious]

I will maybe cosplay some day but it'd be really cheap cosplay lol but as long as I have fun, right? 🤷 No joke though some of my favorite cosplayers are poc so I don't think skin color matters for cosplay at all, if you aks me.

FFXV is def tied with X for my favorite story. I guess I have a thing for sacrifice lol since thats a huge theme in both of them. More so than the other games, I think.

I completely agree. It's incredibly sad that Yuna has been the only truly compelling female protagonist at all from what I've seen. I mean Garnet wasn't horrible but.. She fell flat throughout most of the game, to me. I'd love to see them write a strong female protag like Light, but with less broody emotionless bs. I do agree about the XIII characters too. The only one in the whole triligoy that felt truly fleshed out was Caius but he didn't come in until the sequals so he's less noticeable especially to those who hated the first so they didn't play the other two.

I agree again. Broody wouldn't be so bad if they gave them more than just that. I mean.. I love Cloud now. And I adore Noctis. Though I'm not sure I'd REALLY call him broody. I know he was down in the dumps but he had so much reason to be so depressed. 100%.

Honestly the most important thing about cosplay is to have fun, you’re right! I think the modern habit of professional cosplayers made a lot of people forget the true spirit of cosplay, which is just a bunch of nerds getting together to dress up as their fave character. But desirability politics, fatphobia, and a lot of racism puts a damper on it sometimes. 😔 I do hope you’ll get the chance to cosplay soon!

I am still waiting for my FFXV-2 where Prompto finds a message from Noct and they go on another adventure to find him again just like Yuna was able to do with Tidus!! 😤

Squenix can make interesting female side characters. But they have problems making interesting female love interests and female MCs for whatever reason. Like, there’s gotta be a plot point better than, “this chick was so annoying that the main dude couldn’t help but fall in love with her” or “she is a strong female character just trust us bro”. 😂

And Noct wasn’t really broody to me, he had a goofy personality with his “king of fishing” shit and his comments. 😂 But I can imagine being royalty and then going out in the wild was jarring for him. Especially after Insomnia fell and then Altissia happened. Lord… Altissia 🥲

If I ever go back and replay FFXV I might do it all up until altissia and then put it down cause I can’t go through that pain again

[anadventurerisfail]

The Failed Adventurer plays FE:Echoes, overall thoughts

this ended up being a lot, so gonna put it under a Read More.

Stuff I liked;

except for dungeons, all characters you had recruited were on the map

how magic use was balanced

archers could counter in melee

the aspect of controlling two different groups

how the overworld map was used.  Especially with the roaming enemies.

weapons don’t break

the music.  Compared to Awakening’s grand and soaring opening music and title music, Echoes has a more grounded feel to it.  There’s a somber feel to it all the time, whereas Awakening only has one map where it has a somber tone.  That music following our two characters in the opening sequence, right when you boot up the game before actually creating a save file, making a promise to always get along with each other and the imagery of all the conflict, it’s saying that this isn’t going to be a happy romp through the countryside.

the characters reaction to getting a bad level up.  That was really good at taking the edge off of it.  Made the reaction go from a “sigh” to a “heh”.

the story through Act 3 was decent.

i like how the Necrodragons felt.  The first time you encounter them, they are big and scary, you need to use you one Defense tank to tank them while Celica is the only one with a spell that can deal heavy damage to them, and you need to keep those that can’t take a hit far away from their high move range.  The next time you fight them, you have additional characters with that spell and a few others can just punch hard through their high Def.

Stuff I didn’t like;

While I like how magic use was balanced, I don’t like how magic damage was balanced.  When a character levels up, each stat has a percent chance of going up.  The final chance is the character’s base chance and the class modifier (if any) added together.  Most character growths are somewhere in the 25 to 45 range, with the classes adjusting it by up to 10 in some direction if at all.  Resistance, the stat used to defend against magic damage, is in the 0 to 5 range for all but one character with an 8 (and no class adjustment ever).  Actually, only one character has a base 5 growth to Res (actually a 7 after class adjustments).  Only four clases raised Res growth; healer class and it’s promote by 2, and female mage class and it’s promote by 1.  When I finished the game, that 7% growth character had 15 Res, whereas a character I got a quarter of the way through Act 4 came with 18 Res.  What was considered my magic tank early in Act 1 (11 Res) didn’t grow ANY Res at all.  The common magic damage enemy had damage passing the mid 20s by the 4th Act.  This made Speed (not getting doubled) and HP the primary defense against magic damage.  It also forced the tactic to deal with enemy mages to be “burn them before they can touch you”.  The attack mages you get don’t get nearly enough Res to trade efficiently with the enemy mages, if they can’t blast their opponent away in one turn they can’t get used.  The only real use I got out of those magic tanks past Act 3 was to be a ward for the teleporting witches, who got up to 20 damage max, and they don’t teleport nearly often enough to be threatening.

OH MY GOD are Dread Fighters broken.  Dread Fighters come from the class line that gets high Attack, Skill, and Speed.  They hit hard (often with a crit), accurately, will often hit their opponent twice, and be hard to hit themselves.  Their weaknesses are magic damage and the bulky physical defense with high attack units.  Then they become the Dread Fighter, gain a flat +5 to Res, HALVE all magic damage received, and gets an increased move range.  Here is your goto squishy killer.  Here is your new magic tank.  Oh, and they can un-promote back to the Villager class, which allows them to potentially gain infinite levels (Villager > Mercenary > Myrmidon > Dread Fighter > Villager) and are the only class to do so without a DLC item.

I guess my main issue with how magic damage is handled is that your magic tanks don’t stay magic tanks, your magic users aren’t your offensive magic tanks, and your units that kill squishy mages just fine before become your defensive magic tanks as well.

Speaking of the Villager class, what they can promote into are different depending on the character’s gender.  Male units get the aforementioned Mercenary class line, as well as the Soldier (high defense and attack, low movement), Cavalier (horse back, high movement and speed), Archer (longest base attack range in the game), and male Mage (moderate magic damage, can heal on promote).  The Mage class is the only one there that doesn’t promote twice.  Female units get female Mage (higher magic damage, can use a sword and heal on promote), Cleric (healing class), Pegasus Knight (flying unit, low Def but high Skl and Spd and supposedly good Res.  supposedly), and Cavalier.  Only one of those can promote twice.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if Mathilda being in the game was the only reason they could be Cavaliers.

The story was ugh.  Alm never gets punished for anything.  After Alm and Celica have their spat, the closest he gets is when Nuibaba uses an image of Celica to get him into her trap.  But he gets Tatiana, and Zeke, out of that, and the death of someone apparently very high up in the Duma Faithful.  Celica walks straight into the lying antagonist’s hands and needs to be rescued by Alm in the end.  Does Alm ever really grow?

I swear I’ve seen/heard this before.  The Female MC and love interest to Male MC does what she thinks and believes is right without telling ANYONE ELSE about it, is drawn by the Antagonist into his lair to be revealed that the Antagonist is lying too late for her to back out and is turned on the Male MC who is forced to kill her except she doesn’t die cuz deus ex machina.

there were a couple times where the maps started out as...empty.  here is a map of the last map to really feel that way.  Half the enemies are teleporting witches, the other half are Myrmidons and the Dread Fighter boss to the far left.  2 witches and Myrmidons to the right.  Every map beforehand, you moved forward to engage the enemy.  Why would they give all that space behind you?  The only reason I can think of to delaying the arrival of the enemy is to give time for the witches to teleport behind you and to kill them off before fighting the Myrmidons and Dread fighter, but they don’t teleport nearly often enough, sometimes not at all, for that to really work out like that.  If we give 3 lines below the southern most notable thing, the ramparts we assemble around, we could easily drop 6 lines off the bottom of the map.

the game difficulty was...really easy for being on hard mode.  The only times it was actually difficult was in Act 2 when I was facing a Cantor for the first time and when I fought Jedah for the first time in Act 4.  Every other time it just felt like a puzzle that had an easy answer.  For that Cantor, NONE of my units could effectively trade with it.  My one unit with high Res only had an attack that wasn’t very accurate and didn’t have the damage output to counteract the healing it was getting, my offensive mages couldn’t effectively trade against it, and my physical attackers couldn’t efficiently trade as well if they hit at all.  What I ended up doing was to summon a bunch of disposable units to have the Cantor eat away at his health counterattacking them and then just blast him with my mages afterwards before he healed back up.  For Jedah I didn’t realize two things.  1) the map would be over in 6 turns anyway with no indication that it was a defense mission, 2) that the key was 4 separate units attacking, not 4 attacks total.  I didn’t even bother trying to attack him because he was doing that much magic damage, even to the Dread Fighters.

I like the game overall.  I look forward to potentially blinging out my weapons and stomping all over the postgame.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Oh! I wanna hear your hyper critical opinions towards p3 (and p4 if youre up to it). I am genuinely curious as to what it is!

pDSOAPFADFJIOA;FJIA;JF;DA Ahhhhhhh if only I wrote down everything I said (I did this over a year ago). under the cut cause long:

It was easier cause I was ripping it as we played and I had some nitpicks in the dialogue (more so with like “WAIT THAT MAKES NO SENSE!” or “WHY ARE YOU JUMPING TO THAT CONCLUSION?!” kinda thing rather than a translation error). But I can’t really specify what it was cause it was so long ago. The only one that comes to mind is when they’re jerks to Naoto, it must be how she’s talking in Japan cause like.......they’re really, REALLY rude to her. Like, they do realize she has a right to be suspicious of them right? Like, don’t get me wrong, I loooooooove the animosity in some way (great foe-yay/rival shipping yay fodder for me to ship her with the MC ahuhuhu 8U) but dang I wish they made more tension (and made it even). That’s actually the one thing I thought the P4 anime did right (and trust me I don’t think that anime did a lot of things right, esp concerning Naoto...ironically XD), they really built the tension between her and the group very well. Anyway I want to go into more detail some other time, maybe when I replay the two games, but for now I’ll give you a general overview). 

Ok so all and all I think P3 and P4 are fine the way they are. They did a good job with them. P3 for being Hashino’s first hoorah into the series (also didn’t have enough time or money to include everything and had to cut stuff, LIKE THE FEMC! ;W;), and P4 for.....having such....a small.....budget....and....not a lot of time....and.....the company was struggling.....Like dang man I’m surprised we got P4. So like, compared to P5, I’m a lot easier on these two cause in one case Hashino was trying to find his style, and the other he was struggling with working with almost nothing (P5, however, didn’t have any of these issues).

Ok so like.....My biggest issue with P3 is mostly it’s characters and character relationships. P4.....I wish we could’ve hung out with Naoto earlier (even before she joined the team, that would’ve been interesting if the MC and her met up and attempted to draw more info out of each other about the case), and I wouldn’t have minded if they added more to the murder plot. 

P3....ngl the first act until Aigis show’s up is.....so....slow.....and boring....and no one is really likeable imo. I hated Yukari, I hated Junpei. Mitsuru seemed interesting but she wouldn’t hang out. Akihiko....didn’t really care for him, but I couldn’t  hang out with him. I couldn’t hang out with Yukari or Junpei if I wanted to (Yukari won’t hang out till around Aigis joins anyway, I remember from my last playthrough we tried, it was an NG+ and she snubbed us). Kenji is a moron (don’t hate him, feel bad for him, but god so boring), Kaz is a moron, didn’t do Yuko the first time (should’ve I did like her, hate I only got the first rank the first time I ever played through P3), I didn’t like Chihiro (she started off fine but was kinda creepy later on), can’t hang with Fuuka unless you have maxed courage cause eff me (not like I can ever remember her gd link anyways that’s how forgettable it is, I don’t even like Yukari but at least I remember her’s). Basically......the SL sucked balls. Major balls (I liked Maiko, the Star dude, the old couple, the Hermit, and the Devil......I guess the Tower too he was ok, and....that’s it....for outside teammate links aka Aigis and Mitsuru). Silly was not a happy camper when she popped P3 in after having fun with P4 (and esp after being told P3 was a GAZZILLION TIMES BETTER!!!!1!), tbh I took like a 4 month break from P3 and replayed P4 before I picked P3 back up (after Aigis showed up I def enjoyed it a heck of a lot more after that). Now, P3′s plot is really good and very solid, it’s P3′s strong point. My issue is that.....everything P3 does is for the sake of the plot. It does it well, don’t get me wrong, but everything about the characters is only happening cause “plot demands it.” They never felt super fleshed out, and it’s probably why they feel a little odd (maybe even flat-ish) in the spinoff games (even more so than the P4 team), cause the spinoff games aren’t relying on their (P3′s) plot. I also don’t buy a lot of their friendships (esp the males teammates with the Male MC), Yukari and Mitsuru’s is....ok (I don’t like how the game makes it feel like “oh you have a dead dad? me too! let’s be friends” as a thing, I know she’s just trying to relate and sympathize but.....I’ve seen that as a complaint come up by a lot of people, for someone so popular Yukari isn’t much of a people person in this regard, from how the game frames it that is). Also the fact you can’t friend girls. There’s not a lot of bonding moments in the game, there’s more than P5, but I still don’t feel as close to the team as I should even by the end. And gawd, Ryoji? Wut I’m friends with him now? How? When? I like the guy but I don’t think he likes me. You’d think he’d want to hang out with me cause.....PHAROS! ;W;

There’s more but I don’t want to leave you hanging, but anyway it’s just....I have a lot of issues with how the characters are handled. They’re good characters, I wish there just....more to them. But the thing is.....THIS IS AN EASY FIX! You’ve probably heard me say about the P5 manga/anime “a change in medium can do wonders” or something like that. That’s cause I have P3 to look at. The manga and movies do wonders for P3 my problems with P3. There’s more bonding, character relationships are improved yadda yadda. Yes there are issues within the manga and movies themselves...... but they do a lot of good things too. One of the things the movies did was actually......influenced by it’s P3P remake (aka establish a relationship with Ryoji, yay!). Oh man, P3P/the FeMC fixed sooooooooooooo many problems (it also added some even more awesome duality to a game that already had a lot of duality going on with it), I can talk to Yukari and Junpei from the get go (and they treat me different, and more pleasantly than when I played as the dude), I can actually hang out with the guys (and I DON’T automatically have to date them, in fact I have to work to date them, every single one), the stats for character requirements are laid out more fairly like in P4 so by the time someone is available I can probably talk to them (without having to kill myself trying to manage my social stats).But man, the first act just flows so much better when you’re able to bond with your teammates (also Rio and Saori are great SLs!). Even tho they don’t change the female SLs pretty much at all (making it veeeery gay XD), it does feel like it is at least a friendship by the end (even tho I’m literally dating everyone and you can’t tell me otherwise! 8U). I also love her personality comes across more clearing (and varied) than the males, there’s a more clear progression of her psyche than her male counterpart (it’s still there, just not as obvious, and I love how they’re inverted to each other~! :D). It’s just, with P3, the really minor changes go a LOOOOOOOOOOONG way. The only thing I would change with P3 is the minor stuff. Just add more scenes (that don’t take up time) to the game, on both sides. Gameplay wise add more SLs, alternative SLs even. Heck, if they remade the game, I think being able to go to new places would be cool (and it’d be where you’d meet your new SLs) cause man you’re in a city, you deserve to do more stuff! It’s just the little things man, the little things can make a big impact! It says something that probably my fav Persona fanfic and fav Strain42 Persona parody comicis the P3(P) ones, even tho P4 is my fav game. You change a few things around, even the medium, and it makes a difference. 

Ok onto P4. Now P4 is the opposite of P3, with P4 it’s strong point is it’s characters. The characters drive P4. P4 is character based, P3 is plot based. P4 the plot takes a back seat. This is fine, it works in P4′s favor, like how the plot worked in P3′s favor. P4′s plot is ok, it does a great job with supporting the characters. Sadly I understand if you wanted more murder mystery (or just mystery) in a murder mystery game. And in P4′s defense, again, it had a barebones budget and not a lot of time and the company was doing pretty bad and P4 still came out pretty great (was the most popular before P5 came out, lord knows if it may even come out on top again if it gets an updated graphics/gameplay remake). And it’s also really hard to keep a murder mystery going for about 70-100ish hours (and only finally solving it in the last 1/5 of the game). Also P4, like P3 (forgot to mention that above), sticks to it’s theme really well. Even making it solving it/obtaining the good ending routes semi-difficult. Sure you can deduce Adachi, but tbh it’s also difficult. They do a pretty decent job building the guy up as a friend (even more so in P4G due to the SL). Izanami is also well hidden. The game makes you work and it rewards you.

Now if I were to change stuff.....it’d range from minor to major depending on what we’re talking about. Minor would be adding more scenes of Naoto bonding (she needs it cause the late game doesn’t do her justice), and like I mentioned above, I think have a deduction off would be interesting (Naoto’s SL was one of my favs cause of how we solved a gd mystery, god I’m so mad that never made it into the anime, even as an ova, it could’ve been a great team-building filler one too). Another thing I’d add would maybe be.....something similar to quests, but instead you have to solve a mystery (which means talking to people, and investigating areas), it can range from finding a cat in a tree or finding a bully or whatever. Just something minor that can give the mystery lovers something fun to do. I’d also have Izanami/gas station attendant be an SL (she originally was the Empress before giving that to Margret). Oh I’d also like to take Margret out on “dates” (c’mon gimme dem fun shenanigans).  And.....now this can be minor or major (depending on what they do, but it’s probably more major), add another red herring. I don’t care how.....but....it would help draw attention away from Adachi. Maybe they’re added from some of the mini mysteries you solved, maybe they squeeze an extra dungeon into the game some how-some way (doubt it for the later, that’d be a major change), but another red herring would be good. 

For a Major change it’d be restructuring the plot a looooooot, adding more dungeons for more red herrings. I would actually make Dojima a red herring. He originally was suppose to be the killer (but they thought that was too dark, understandable), with Adachi as the red herring instead. Other than that I’m not exactly sure how they’d overhaul that. I mean, if they made a P4 game based off of P3P’s route (aka different route/game, different killer), I’d like to see their prototype stuff play out. Short-haired ice queen Yukiko, delinquent/bully Rise, Pretty boy Naoto (actual boy this time, also make him dateable.....what? I like Naoto 8U), 1st year MC, Female Teddie, Adult(?) Kanji, Dojima as the killer, Adachi as the red herring (Chie and Yosuke are actually pretty much the same). I’d really like to see that. 

But tbh, I don’t really know where to start in giving P4 a major overhaul (except to go with the prototype set up), possibly cause it’d mean introducing/creating new characters. But P5? I do, oh man I know where I would start (P5 is where I’d make my major changes left and right, no minor changes here...except maybe dungeon 1), I’d make soooooo many changes to P5. But that’s for another time (not now, it’d take too long). 8U