#im a bit underleveled

[trixibebe]

Assorted Zhao in You Tian screencaps for no reason.

[infinitystation]

i'm 14 hours into m&l brothership and so far the most disappointing thing about it is that there hasn't been a song that makes me go "holy shit i need to listen to that for 2 weeks straight" like every other game has had

other than that this is everything i could have asked for, people are calling it hand-holding and a bit too easy but i'm a 23 year old man i didn't exactly expect it to challenge me. the old games were harder because i was maybe 10 years old, not because they were actually difficult. i'm here for the story and the charm, and it has a lot of charm. would like to see more Imminent Danger to our main cast but that's just a personal preference lol

[arkhavens]

whos brilliant fucking idea was it to make all flashpoints(including, ya know SOLO ONES) reset entirely if you disconnect at all? bc i just wanna talk

[jils-things]

pkmn soulsilver babbles c:

i have reached the tag limit writing my thoughts help. im not even done but ig ill just leave it at that AHAHSHSHSH

[ragnar0c]

I fr be playing etrian odyssey games too fast. Why is my guild on floor 4 on emperor 8th? No wonder we are getting our asses beat! Slow DOWN!

[taffy-glitch]

FINISHED THRONÉ'S STORY!!! now i can finally take her out of my party for a little bit lol

[ajdrawshq]

also uh before i sleep. was anyone gonna tell me i can fight the p3 and p4 protags in the velvet room for funsies or

[sexhaver]

ive been playing Cassette Beasts for a minute and it never stops being funny to me how flagrant they are about making this "Pokemon but with features you didn't know Pokemon has always needed". off the top of my head:

super effective/NVE hits have added benefits/debuffs beyond just doubling/halving the damage (hitting Electric types with Ground reduces their evasion and speed, hitting Steel types with Poison gives them poison-coated spikes that do contact damage, etc)

legally-distinct-Pokemon will learn new moves while in your party without having to battle, and you can then straight up steal these moves from them and put them on a not-Pokemon you actually care about using, which gives an actual incentive to hunt down and raise otherwise fringe not-mons beyond completing the not-Pokedex

we all played the Pokemon Infinite Fusion fangame right? we know how fusions work? okay so this game has them as temporary per-battle things instead of permanent ones, which is only marginally less cool while being infinitely easier to balance around

attempting to catch something shows you the percentage chance of success so you know whether you just got unlucky or if you should save your Pokeballs-i-mean-blank-cassette-tapes

leveling up is tied to your not-trainer instead of your not-pokemon, so you don't end up in the classic trap where your starter is way overleveled and everything else is underleveled and then you hit a fight your starter can't solo and have to spend an hour grinding to get the weaker not-mons up to par (funnily enough most Pokemon Nuzlocke romhacks have already figured this out and give you infinite rare candies with the only restriction being that you can't level past the next gym leader's ace pokemon, because Pokemon fans have realized that grinding is the worst part of the game way before Game Freak has)

moves, not-Pokeballs, not-PokeCenter visits, and healing items are all bought using entirely separate currencies which stops you from trivially breaking the economy in half

the soundtrack, fittingly, is pretty good! the vocals were a bit much for my taste but there's an option in the settings menu to straight up turn them off (letting the BGM play on its own), which i've never seen in any other game and really appreciate

downsides:

on a game design level, i understand why can i only carry a max of 5 not-Potions and 1 not-Revive at a time - it's to put a limit on how far away from fast travel points i can get by just running away from everything and healing off damage. on a gameplay level, however, this feels pretty bad

the pixel art style is trying to look as much like Pokemon as possible without actually being Pokemon so the overworld sprites look more like beta stuff from Pokemon that they cut for looking too weird. i have yet to find a haircut that doesn't look bad

this is super petty of me but something about the bloom and lighting of the 3d environments combined with pixelated 2d sprites that still cast shadows makes me painfully aware im playing a video game. it's like they were going for the same aesthetic as Octopath Traveler but fell just barely short. i can't think of a better way to articulate this feeling but if you know you know

it does that really obnoxious half-assed style of voice acting where plot-relevant characters will sometimes (maybe every third or fourth textbox) speak the first two or three words of dialogue before trailing off. mashing through textboxes (as one does) means constantly getting jumpscared by "hmm"s and "haha!"s "okay then!"s

i get that they wanted to make the player feel involved in the story, and it has a pretty decent hook so far, but oh my god. the amount of dialogue "choices" that just transparently do not matter. you know how people memed on Fallout 3 and 4's dialogue choices all leading to the same outcome, to the extent that you were basically choosing between "yes" and "yes (rude)"? and you know how Bethesda would at least attempt to justify how both options led to you accepting the quest anyways, even if it was really dumb? Cassette Beasts has streamlined this process even further by making the options in most of their binary decisions so identical that they don't even require different followup dailogue before rejoining into the main conversation thread. a solid 2/3rds of the dialogue options in this game so far feel like checks that you're still awake. i know this is a minor issue because people aren't playing Pokemon-likes for the engaging "choices matter" approach to storytelling, and i did ignore it at first, but it's so pervasive that you really can't ignore it

[3gremlins]

feel like im having a DA2 experience again where I really liked it and was in my little "this is good" cocoon where i played it many times only to emerge from underground and find everyone else hated it (i mean ive found the other da2 cicadas since but at the time it got really slammed). i've been really enjoying DA:TV so far ( lol tho obvs have notes) here's an early thoughts review, may be a bit spoilery, def rambley, trying to stay vague on stuff still (i think i'm about half way maybe? im trying to not look things up and doing it blind on my first run through. it's hard to tell b/c i went hard on all the side quests and am now way over level for the msq)

the combat system is a little jarring at first and i still miss at least being able to switch to and play as party members if your character dies (instead of the god of war style of full wipe), but i've gotten used to it (it's more annoying for boss fights, regular combat it's very zippy and fun). the targeting at least on controller is kind of annoying sometimes- i'll think i'm pointing at one enemy only to have rook turn and fire at nothing or companions to hit an add instead of a boss. I wish we at least had more control over how it queued who it was hitting. some of the arenas are obnoxious design wise - there's bosses that teleport to you and they give you like a tiny little box to dodge around, not the most fun. i do like that you can punch way above of your weight class sometimes which reminds me of DAO a little bit (like how you'd just wander into a fight or hit a gong and be like oh no, those enemies have skulls over their heads, oh well YOLO). sometimes it doesn't work out but when it does it's very satisfying. It's nice to be able to conquer something mechanically even underleveled (smol fromsoft vibes) Having always been a big fan of the strange composition parties (i.e not just war/rogue/mage), i like that this is now even more viable (and not just me being cheeky "we're having a leather party!" of all squishy rogues). but like the main thing about bioware games is the companions/interpersonal shit and i'm enjoying the heck out of that .i only do main quests to get more side quests from companions (or more side quests in general so we can troll around for more banter). i like petting griffons (and cats and dogs) and playing games with manfred*. I wish the gift system was more interesting like DAO or DA2- i was so excited to see it again and then it was a little disappointing to have them barely react when you get them stuff.

my current fave party are rook and the poison boys (emmerich and lucanis) since they're a rogue too and we just stack necrosis, bleeds and other elemental effects on things till they disintegrate. i like the lighthouse, it feels much cozier than skyhold. I love that you can just wander up to companions having convos and awkwardly eavesdrop. I do miss the little interactions/quests you could get with cole esp*** i think the animations are a little lack lustery? Idk there's something with the face model morphs that sometimes feels weird but the voice acting is strong enough that I don't notice too much. i do miss some of the more bioware-y cheeky things like item descriptions or weird notes near random silly environmental tableaus (there's a little but i just want to read all the notes! there's some in the grey warden areas where i was just like WAIT I HAVE QUESTIONS but there was no plaque about them T.T). where are the stacks of cheese (i do appreciate the fereldens love cheese jokes tho and harding getting so excited when someone says something nice about ferelden) i was esp bummed that there were no random things to read in the black emporium and it's all codex entries instead (that's my favorite tiny bit in DA2 where there's junk you can click on and xenon says weird shit to you). i also wish more had been done with accents of npcs- like i wish all the antivans had similar accents or your crow rook had an antivan accent, stuff like that (having a lot of "ferelden" generic british accents everywhere is disappointing. takes you out of the immersion a lot) My biggest gripe is probably the pacing - I wish it had more horror/mystery pacing like dao and da2 had- the reason we're all scarred by the brood mother is b/c the build up to that was so so creepy (also the necromancer bit w/hawke's mum in DA2). They gave us time to be unnerved or afraid and I do feel the evanuris reveals have been a little rushed so you can't really feel that worried about them (some of the side quests get close to this but still not quite there**). I wish they'd let them breathe a bit more instead of rushing from one giant world changing event to the next. Some of the reveals have been not so great- like lore that the fandom has poured over for 15ish years explained in one line?? i wish there'd been more build up of rook as a character too, maybe even a time skip from a prologue to finding solas kind of thing. the first trailer made it seem like that's what was going to happen but then it in media res'd us in a strange way. the first 10 hours of the game are probably the weakest imho, it took it a bit to get rolling and feel more natural. I appreciate that the first major decision doesn't really let you scum save for it (bit of a jump scare for me lol).

I also don't really need this much varric anymore, i kinda wish we had a different narrator if we have to have one. He feels really awkward to just have there and not doing anything(and not just kill off or have something happen to him? he got stabbed by the dagger and harding only touched it is what i'm saying). at least let him get better pjs and slippers or something Idk it does feel like bits of previous iterations they were working on are still there and they don't completely serve the plot well. And ofc there's the decisions not meaningfully carrying over thing- which is a huge bummer. But in reality they've never been good at that- the characters from previous games we see in new games don't really carry through their plots/arcs that much (it's more like cameos or they're a new person now) and the world states are usually effectively the same just with aesthetic faction swaps. I was sort of hoping we'd get some solavellan SOMETHING but it doesn't look like we will get much at all past the stuff in minrathous. i feel like if they were going to only include the one choice it really should have had more impact on the story. (i am also still a clown and want to talk to solas constantly still even tho he has no reason to talk to my rook at all, i do not care, i love a sad woof. i wish we could just casually visit him in the fade. i wish we could switch to lavellan and visit him in the fade, idk something. need more gareth david-lloyd pls) the interpersonal character decisions have been the only ones that mattered much and then only within the constrains of their own games- the bigger world changing stuff is usually the illusion of choice. It would have been nice if they let us have one protagonist carry through but i can also see why they liked changing it up and felt stuck in that format. tl;dr: i'm really like it for what it is but it's def got flaws. Parts of it feel super polished while other bits do not- i think knowing how game dev works that they had to make decisions on what was going to get prioritized and some of it works while others not so much. I wish the pacing was better for sure but i love the characters/companions which is generally what bioware is best at. sad it won't get meaningful dlc, i don't really care about mass effect 5 tbqh. So far I like it better than inquisition for the most part- it feels like a bigger/more polished DA2 in a lot of ways if that makes any sense (with similar budget/pacing issues, but the environments are more fun). as i mentioned in my other post, i really appreciated the trans/non binary inclusion into the story/cc tho. like that can't be discounted, even if the rest of the game has issues. (all the holes in the narrative make me want to do fan art and fan fiction tho so idk, maybe that's an okay thing. maybe dragon age is best at inspiring us to sandbox around in it)

*side note, i am surprised at how much i like emmerich like holy shit what a lovely soft nerd of a man! going to have to play through a few times and romance him and also bellara for sure (romancing lucanis this time round) i find myself shipping my companions with each other more than i normally do too. I just want them to be happy! I wish they'd let us have polyamory, like i could see little polycules in this squad so easily. i need to give bellara hugs and lucanis head pats. taash deserves head pats too, but my rook will need a ladder.

**i am going to cry if they do with the griffons what i think they're doing with the griffons. like straight up, feeling like it was a cursed wish to have them now T.T *** do we think the caretaker is cole? the character design makes me wonder (like the hat/silhouette is very cole like but maybe not. maybe i just want it to be cole lol) there's def characters i want to see show up that aren't going to and then bioware is like "what about this fan favorite??" and i'm like "eh".

[quenthel]

anyway i beat all of bg3 yesterday on honor mode but i died a few times so yk no chivo. The only two fights that gave me trouble were the gith inquisitor and dueling orin. i did both of those things in a sub optimal way tho (dueling orin is harder than just fighting her but i love durge shit and the inquisitor you can go back in act2 to get him but i did it underleveled. overall it was a very fun experience bc having only one save meant i had to live with my choices and fuckups so i saw some new stuff. very nice for roleplay reasons too. the combat on the other hard was not nearly hard enough imo like i managed almost everything without reading up on what the new boss abilities are easily. like a run like this imo should be juust a little bit more challenging. but also this game is not hard at all ig compared to other crpgs.

My biggest regrets are killing Minthara on accident (so i couldnt see her storyline once again...), killing the Owlbear Cub (bc the ogres i summoned aggroed it) and Rolan dying to Lorroakan (he like one shot him first round). Otherwise it was like a perfect run where i did everything very well and i got the endings i was going for for everyone pretty much.

idk if i want to touch the game anymore tho and im a bit exhausted by most of the fan discussions around the game too... eventho i really love the parts of it i do love and i see a lot of cool art. ah well

[the-mighty-mittens]

Im only partway through end roll (3rd night I think? I'm stuck on the tree lady fight, I think I might be a bit underleveled oops) but I had the urge to draw Russel (tbh, I think he's growing on me just a little)

(cw/ tw: needles)

He's just a quirky guy

I haven't been able to play for a little while but now that I think about it I think the medication was changing color? It was orange last time I checked but I swear it was pinkish the first time, I could be crazy though.

I think this whole experiment is pretty messed up, especially using it on a literal child. I also dislike the lady calling Russel a "deranged maniac" every morning. But I wonder if, by calling him a deranged maniac and throwing all the stuff he's done onto me without much other info about his personality, the game is trying to dehumanize him in a way? Maybe to make the player care less about him? To make him care less about himself? Idk

Earlier I said I think he knows what he's done and doesn't care, (based on his diary stating he doesn't feel guilty), but I'm not entirely sure if that's the case now? I still don't know, I don't think it's like in Omori where Sunny just forgets, but I feel like I was maybe a little too quick to judge the kid.

[boyswillbedogz]

dog rambles about pokemon PLEASE ask me about pokemon im so normal pls

LYCANROC is my lowest level main pokemon as he is so recently evolved. i have a midnight lycanroc twice his level, but the minute i got my paws on a rockruff with Own Tempo i couldnt resist having my all time fave pokemon. might name him chester after the cheetos mascot.

SMAMEY is named aftee one of my friends who really likes garchomp! he’s my highest level pokemon and quite strong and tanks damage like a brick fucking wall

SNURK is also pretty new and i need to patch up his stats but but Noivern is ine of my all time favorite pokemon and pretty useful :3

FENTANYL was my starter pokemon and my main for a very long time. i am deeply attatched to this silly little weed cat, whose a strong pokemon and has accompanied me for many many battles.

F1NN was my first eeveelution (i now have all but flareon uwu) and i love his cute little face from the bottom of my soul. its also just rlly useful to have a fairy type imo. yes hes named after F1nnst5r, at the time i got F1nn i was watching more and more of them and yknow,,, trans colors. i got him at like lv50 wayy before i was ready and i remember jumping up and down in excitement lol.

DAISY is probably my strongest pokemon! he’s named after a TMA character. Daisy is my second oldest main pokemon, and i got him while i was wayy underleveled. lucario was my fave pokemon as a puppy so im pretty attatched and also Daisy’s just a good pokemon!

most of my eeveelutions are swapins (equally leveled pokemon i sometimes switch out during important battles to use type matchups to my advantage) but i also have dual types for the same rzn. i also have a couple i just keep for sentiment or cuteness, like my dashbun m0ist (named after a youtuber yeh) who was one of my first pokemon and the first pokemon i ever evolved. obv ive caught more pokemon than i have but i released the ones i dont use or want for organization.

i have all my gym badges, all the titan badges, and all the team star base badges (yay!) and 40hrs playtime (for reference i got the game on may 5th but only started playing any time other than weekends on the 15th) idrc to fill up the pokedex, i like the battling & story aspects. might make my team as furries for the bit

[sadlazzle]

still thinkin abt elden ring .. do u think im a lil underleveled for raya lucaria rn ?? or should i keep wandering for a bit n jst dong some random bosses in ~ the wild ~

[narzissenkreuz-ordo]

ok so

ardyn fight? sexy as hell. a bit anti climatic at the end but i was out of any sort of healing potions so i will TAKE IT (i went in. very underleveled i think)

the chapter title 'cure for insomnia' oh my god fuckin genius. it took me 25 hrs to realize that. insomnia. darkness. good shit

the end cutscenes were rlly nice and i was like. oh wow ok this is it i didnt cry. huh weird.

and then. the screen went black and. the voice over from the very beginning of the game starts playing and i fucking lost it

ALL THE FUCKIN PHOTOS YOU TAKE......... LIKE. OH MY GOD........... i always already crying at then. the credits stop and im like ok ok ok its over for real now i can stop crying

then the fuckin. campsite scene. what the fuck was that i was bawling

and then i was like. SURELY after these credits roll its over yeah its finally over

AND THEN THE SUNRISE AND THE FUCKIN MONTAGE OF ALL THE PLACES U WENT.... noctis and luna's afterlife wedding.......... and they pick up the picture you chose for noctis to take...........

and. THE FUCKIN FADE TO THE TITLE SCREEN..... like oh my god

its was great and very enjoyable and im glad im finally played the game after years of people telling me to

(shout out the anon who told me ardyn was my time. ur the one who pushed me over the edge thank you)

i skipped a lot of the side content (all of it) bc i just wanted to Know the story and figured you'd be able to pick back up for dlc and stuff. will DEF be playing the ardyn chapter asap

[irradiatedsnakes]

my team rn is about lv 74-78 and i was like wellll im a bit underleveled for red (whose pokemon range from lv 80-88) but i'll give it a go anyways and i absolutely mopped the floor with him<3

[pixelatedbugs]

what do you mean theres no more “the scholar and the merchant” crossed path . i need more gay men

okay im going to ramble about the stories ive completed now spoilers! uh oh! for partitio, osvald, ochette, temenos, and hikari! (the last two, i havent completed their stories but i mention something spoilery)

i did partitio’s first since he was my first character and i needed to get him OUT of that first party slot . he’s free now . I loved the story though i was mildly disappointed in the ending (i wanted that old capitalist man to die) but tbh it wouldn’t have really fit the tone or partitio’s character to leave him for dead. plus partitio started the whole ass industrial revolution and created the concept of a department store so . that chapter was really fun by the way, i love how it actually had a permanent effect on the town and also alrond is fuckin great. the final boss was teetering on annoying for me but I think that was because i was a bit underleveled for it. overall i think it was creative, i mean it was a fucking train thats sick as hhell. but that cannon does SO much damage god.

osvald. holy shit massive mood change . like i already had a big mood whiplash when i got osvald after agnea but damn. anyway harvey is actually fucked up, way more than I already thought he was. if he wanted to steal osvald’s research and kidnap his wife and kid for their special magic blood he should’ve just killed osvald. that would’ve been the smart decision, but he’s so envious, so angry that they’re equal and he’s not better, that he decides to frame osvald for killing his wife and daughter, leaving him stuck in a really shitty maximum security prison for 5 years, then use his wife’s blood to make a chimera (okay shou tucker), lies to osvald saying it’s actually her. and it does have her voice, and i presume a bit of her mind, considering that once it begins to run out of health it starts to crumble and cry, and its tears heal osvald…its still not her though. she’s dead because harvey saw no more use in her. but hey, osvald’s daughter is still alive! and her minds been fucking manipulated so she thinks harvey is her father. jesus christ chapter 4 fucked me up. anyway the final boss battle was great. Osvald finally finding the answer through wanted to protect Elena was fucking awesome. the power of love is based and its also a giant fuck-off laser beam that transcends the elements to all foes, and reduces their shield points regardless of their weak points that costs 75 SP.

ochette’s was so good! the final boss being the companion I didn’t pick (in my case, the lājackal) almost made me cry. it was so sad, it didn’t deserve that, and im really excited to see my mom play her story because she picked the lājackal and I wanna know what Mahina could’ve been…also, the boss fight was hard as fucking hell, and extremely creative. The fact that it gets different attributes based on who you’re using??? thats fucking sick?? why did i have to be using castti so it got infinite heals every turn?? i still beat it first try but god it was hard. i still don’t like the human chief but at least she’s trying. I was really worried we were going to come back to the beastling village being overrun ON TOP of the night of the scarlet moon. oh yeah, who the fuck was the dark hunter? probably will find that out later..

also starting to see where these stories connect. The Shadow and D’arqest have been a running theme, at least in ochette’s, osvald’s, temenos’, and it’ll probably show up in hikari’s as well. plus there’s that purple fog with the creepy music that shows up sometimes (it was the same music during the part with all the corrupted people during osvald chapter 5…)

anyway im going to take a break now. i wanted to do castti’s so i could train up my lower characters but i am tired because i played for like 10 hours straight . hyperfixations suck ass sometimes i cannot stop thinking about the fuckin game and i need to fuckin sleep. holy shit i wrote a lot sorry.