#liveblogging blasphemous 2

[foxstens]

i feel like. you can kind of choose the pace you go at in blasphemous 2

[rosewoodconch]

RWCH Readathon Days 13-14?

Undercover Princess: Ch. 40-45

Mega liveblog

Ill be honest. I'm really ill: but i am on a bus for 2 hours. So: heres a really porrly written summary of like... the lead up to the ball

Ch. 40

"Promise you'll also be happy"

Well...

Shes happy sometimes?

I really like that again we see that question of jamies origin which doesnt seem so important until youve read everything else

Ill be honest, i usually skip the valentines day bits

Lola is an icon, shes right. Jamie not liking cupcakes is blasphemous

And ellie getting lottle the flowers her name was named for is really sweet and i miss this era of them when it was so easy to fix

Also that note is so incredibly stupid and yes its a threat but also imagine jamie in his room making up the rhyme

"They might take ellie away" GIRL YOUR JOB IS TO PROTECT HER NOT TO KEEP HER FOREVER. Go read the diary again cmon

Ch. 41

Exams! The ball! Finally we hear more about the ball. Its crazy that they get results that quickly

Lottie having nightmares about failing her exams is... oh this poor girl

Shoutout to angus the most scottish person here i love him

Binah is so funny. I absolutely hated people who reacted like that in school

I'm so proud of Lottie like genuinely because after all of the chaos, shes still done incredibly

I was that one sobbing ivy girl ngl. I litterally appealed my b in nat 5 physics because i was convined i deserved a A. I didnt

Ollies messages was so sweet. I missed him so much. He deserves so so so much better. I wish he was able to know things but hes so right to be concerned and hurt. Then "have a good life"

Heartbreaking

Ch. 42

DRESS SHOPPING i probably dont have many thoughts other than OMG DRESSES AND SHOES so sorry in advance

Lèon is an icon and i love him

"I never like to be predictable" YES LOTTIE HARNASS THE SASS

Hes so real with the day and night hes all of us

I really wish ellie got to wear a suit here, it wouldve contrasted so perfectly to the book 5 ball

THE SHOES OH MY GOD THE SHOES

Ellie telling jamie to "just leave" is such a horrible awful thing to have said knowing all we know on reread.

Ch. 43

Jamie lore

I like that we get this explanation before the ball. Because rereading we can see how much the "normal" route relates to ani and saskia and it makes us wonder about who else could be

Jamie is different

The fake story of Hirana, and all of the information about her being lied about not just to ellie, but to jamie too, is so so sad.

Ellie wants nothing but Jamie and her to have normal lives. For them to not be connected in this way. "Everyone should get to choose"

I really love that thats echoed in the ending of the series.

Ugh again with the trust. How often do we hear them go we need to trust each other then lottie hides more stuff again. Im tired lottie.

The Cinderella moment 😭😭😭😭

Ch. 44

Let it be known that in the audiobook connie says Queen Matilda

Her "Real Room" makes me so so happy and i cannot wait to eventually read about it again.

In fact does Lottie ever see it!??!?!?! Someone tell me

See this is what i mean about the trust thing.

Im sorry but if a girl i had a crush on pinned me against the wall, said to tell her a secret or shed bite me i think id pass out

"Youll be mad at me" well no shit sherlock

Jamie is an icon and i love him. Never change

Ch. 45

"I cant promise not to be mad, but I'll hear you out" is so eloquent and I'll always have that in my mind

Creepily similar? A resemblance perhaps?

Ellie lying to try and help lottie is sweet but scary. Because how often does she do this?

I really do think that underneath he is pained for lying to his queen. But not just because hes loyal to her, or that it is his job, but also the queen is nurturing and kind and i think he does internalise that

Lottie defending herself to jamie is so painful

I love the difference between jamie "acting pained" and then the following

For anyone who isn't using the audiobook, i want you to understand how terrifying it is when it switches pov here. Because the whole book has been connie, for the prologue was her mum.

But here, theres a male voice. Jamies va.

Jamie recognising all the palace staff is really sweet

The fact that he has such a routine, hes been trained to hide his emotions from everyone including himself.

And the simple sentence of "he broke down" honestly cuts deeper than if it had been fully elaborated. Its so simple. And thats why its so powerful. He cant even cry and feel comfort. He has to retreat away from everyone and everything

Next chapters are the ball and everything so I'll probably do another mega liveblog for those ones!

Its just easier when I'm ill to group them like this!

[foxingpeculiar]

Video game blogging:

Finished Horizon: Forbidden West (after 96 hours and change). I didn't liveblog this one, but I definitely enjoyed it and will play it again. I know Burning Shores comes out in like 3 days, but I think I'll do the same thing here I did with Zero Dawn and save the DLC for the second playthrough. Plus, I'm playing this through the PSPlus thing, but I do wanna get it on disc, so I'll pick up a definitive edition at some point or something.

Story-wise, I think I said earlier that this feels like a trilogy and now, after seeing the ending of this one, that feels even more true. Also, they had the perfect opportunity to write Sylens out, but didn't, so I'm still curious what they're gonna do now. Like, you can't just fridge him after that... he's GOT to be part of part 3 now, so are they gonna recast him or find some creative solution?

Anyway, I am currently downloading the PS5 upgrade for Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, as voted on by Tumblr, which I very well might liveblog because it does gangbusters on here apparently. But I don't know that I'll start that tonight and I have a seminar paper to write in the next couple of weeks, so it might be a slow start. We'll see how it goes.

After that... well, it's gonna depend on how that goes. I have a preorder of Final Fantasy XVI and will be doing that when it comes out. And I do wanna get Tears of the Kingdom at some point as well. But I'm hoping to maybe get through a couple interesting games this summer and I've got a long queue of games I have access to and want to play, including (but not necessarily limited to): Tactics Ogre: Reborn Jedi: Fallen Order The Last of Us, Part II Dragon Quest XI Tails of Iron Ghosts of Tsushima Kingdom Hearts III Spider Man: Miles Morales Deathloop What Remains of Edith Finch Blasphemous Gravity Rush

And like... I haven't even looked at the classics catalog, really. And this is not including stuff I've started and want to go back and finish/redo (RDR2, Death Stranding, Like a Dragon, Nioh 2), or things I've been wanting to replay for a while (Sekiro, mostly, but also some of the early Final Fantasies, Fear Effect, a bunch of old stuff, actually).

Not enough goddamn hours in the day.

[crimeronan]

this whole flashback to neil’s mom’s death is. im. okay poor kid but also. am struggling 2 develop a srs emotional connection it’s just Too Angst Tragedy.  it’s like a sandwich with seven layers all built from 2008 neopets writing forums advice for how to make the saddest scene possible

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 2-3

Chapter 2 is a flashback to the origin of Sir Integra Hellsing.   As established in Chapter 1, the Hellsing Organization is a secret anti-Halloween-monster task force.   From what I’ve been able to tell, they have a small army of guys and they all live and train in a big mansion, and the Hellsing family runs the whole show.   It’s sort of like the X-Men except they actually do cool shit and you only have to keep track of four or five characters.   

It’s implied throughout this manga that the Hellsing Family is descended from Abraham Van Helsing, the vampire hunter seen in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula.    Shoot, I just remembered I wanted to read the novel so I’d know what this manga was referencing, but it’s too late, I’ll just have to do that later.   I’ve been meaning to read the Great Gatsby for several years, too, and I just never get around to it.   

On the other hand, Integra claimed that her family had been at this since “ancient times”, suggesting that they predate the events of the Dracula novel.  If Abraham Van Helsing was part of their line, then he may have only been carrying on a tradition instead of founding a new one.   I think the conceit of Hellsing is that it regards the Dracula novel as part of its canon.   That is, in this fictional world, the events in the novel really happened, more or less.    I don’t know if that means the novel exists in this world or not.

Whatever the case, it was Arthur Hellsing running the organization up until 1989, when he suddenly took ill.   On his deathbed, he named his daughter as his successor, and asked his brother Richard to help her run things, since Integra was like, twelve, at the time.

Instead, Richard waited three days and staged a coup, forcing Li’l Integra to hide in the ventilation ducts.   He has to act quickly, and kill her before the whole staff finds out what he’s up to, but if he can kill her, he’ll assume control and be set for life.    I’m not really sure what Richard wants out of this.    Maybe he just really wants to run the family business, or maybe he wants to shut the whole thing down and just be a wealthy nobleman without all the monsters.   Anyway, the search for Integra leads to the “underground sector”, which hasn’t been used in over twenty years, so I guess 1969 is about when it was shut down?    It houses a dark arts lab, a library, speciment room, torture chamber, dissecting room, and a dungeon.   That last one tips Richard off, because before he died, Arthur told her that she could find something that would protect her.  

But all she finds inside is a corpse, and then Richard and his goons show up shortly after.   He plans to kill her slowly to punish her for wasting his time, but when he shoots he in the arm, some of the blood splashes on the corpse, and then it comes to life.

Just like Frosty the Snowman, only horrifying.   Richard tries to kill it, which seems pretty stupid, considering how they thought it was dead a minute ago.   That goes about as well as you’d expect, and after slaughtering the goons and taking Richard’s arm, the corpse kneels before Integra and addresses her as “Master.”

Richard apparently knew nothing of this, but the corpse seems to recognize him, at least as far as a Hellsing who’s not fit to head the family.  As Integra shoots Richard dead, the corpse introduces himself as Alucard, the name her family has always called him.  

One thing I find interesting here is that I could have sworn the Hellsing Ultimate anime established that Richard had poisoned Arthur, presumably thinking he would have a clear shot at the inheritance.   But it’s never mentioned here.   Maybe this was something they added in, because honestly, it just makes too much sense.  The implication of this flashback is that there are certain secrets in the Hellsing Family that only got passed down from parent to child.    Arthur and Richard’s father must have known about Alucard, and Arthur was likely the one who sealed him up in the basement in the first place, but neither of them said a word about him to Richard.   Maybe if they had, Richard might have thought twice before trying to take over.   Like the Cheddar Priest, he thought he had it all figured out, but he didn’t know what he didn’t know.

Back in the present day, Alucard is on the shooting range with Seras, teaching her how to shoot.   Seras already knows how to fire a gun, but Al wants her to hit targets at greater distances, using The Force a vampiric “third eye.”   He demonstrates by shooting a target one kilometer away, and hitting it perfectly.   For some reason, Integra is reading the paper nearby, and reminiscing about the her first meeting with Alucard ten years ago.   For some reason, she takes umbrage with the idea that she’s not still a “little girl” like she was back then.   Seras even ribs her a bit, which ticks Integra off.   Of course, Seras wouldn’t think Integra’s a “little girl”.   Integra’s a few years older than she is.  

The main point of all of this is that it establishes why Alucard works for Integra, and what they did with Seras after Alucard turned her into a vampire.   One way or another, Seras is just drafted to fight the Vampire Wars, or whatever they call it.   I find this kind of unsatisfying, because the anime didn’t expand on it either.   Seras just wakes up in the mansion, and Integra tosses her a uniform and says “Get dressed, kid, your shift starts in twenty minutes.”

I think Seras wants to work for the Hellsing Organization, partly because she has nowhere else to go, and partly because she admires Alucard and wants to join his cause.    But it’s never established that Seras has a choice in the matter.  It’s implied that Alucard is magically bound to the Hellsing family.    Integra called him “the research” that her “father and the others were doing.”  Like, you can’t just have a vampire work for you, you have to do stuff to him to make him obey.   I don’t think they’re mind-controlling Al per se.  He seems fully aware of what his role is, and he’s totally comfortable in it.   But he’s not just doing this voluntarily, either.    Integra has some sort of power over him, and my assumption is that Seras inherited that same quality when Alucard turned her.   So now she’s bound to Integra’s orders in the same way.  

But there’s a lot of unanswered questions in this.    I would think Alucard would be expressly forbidden from making his own ghouls or vampire broods.   Yet he drank Seras’ blood without any problems.  Maybe he’s allowed to do it if he has permission?    That might be it.    But then he brings her back to Integra, and I assume she has to make the decision to either keep Seras or destroy her.   I mean, Seras is handy to have on the team, sure, but if this was a good idea, why didn’t they have Alucard do this before?   I guess the situation just never came up.  

I think a lot about what might have happened if the Cheddar Priest had turned her into a vampire.    Would she have become loyal to him?  He said she would have free will, but she’s pretty deferential to Alucard, so what’s that about?   And if she had become a vampire and turned against the Priest, would Al have allowed her to live?   He was on a mission to destroy vampires, so I would think he would have shot first and asked questions later.    Well, let’s move on.

Chapter 3 jumps ahead to August 12, so Seras has been with the team for a little over a month now.   A bunch of murders have taken place in Birmingham (England, not Alabama), and this time no one waits around to call in Hellsing, though they are still surprised to find out she’s a woman.     

This time, the culprit is on the move, and Integra deduces that they’re choosing specific households full of “devout Christians” and spacious walls to write “blasphemous anti-Christian messages.”   Since they’re moving along Route 17, Integra has a rough idea of where they’ll strike next.  

I don’t know what the point of the “blasphemous messages” or seemingly ritual killings is supposed to be, since the killers are just this young vampire couple who only seem to be interested in this for immortality and power.   Their goal seems to be to kill thirteen families, and “they’ll” see to it that they get stronger.   I don’t know if this means some other party has put them up to this, or maybe they mean “they” as in all the families they’re killing.   It’s like this is an initiation ritual or something, except we’ve already seen Seras become a vampire, and she didn’t have to do anything like this to seal the deal. 

Then again, maybe the point of this chapter is to demonstrate that vampires take a while to get all their powers.  When Alucard confronts them, he scolds them, not for their string of murders, but for their lack of conviction, and their inability to transform or fight without guns.     So maybe this couple was trying to jumpstart the process by feeding on several dozen people in a short span of time.    But Al seems to think that isn’t how it works.    I don’t fully understand his moral code, but he doesn’t seem to object to vampires on principle.   Being a vampire is fine with him, so long as you have a purpose to it.   If you’re only in it for immortality and power, with no other reason, then he doesn’t respect you.   Seras wanted to live, but not necessarily forever, and I think she wanted power, but only enough to fight against evil.   That’s what sets her apart in Alucard’s eyes. 

So he kills the boy, but the girl escapes out the window, but Alucard already had that move scouted.

I’m not sure who’s saying “No!” here.   Maybe the girl vampire running down the road.   Anyway, Alucard put Seras on the roof of the house before he went inside, just in case anyone tried to make a break for it.   So all she has to do is shoot down the runner before she’s out of range.  Except she’s 600 meters away, it’s night time, and Seras doesn’t have a scope for her gun.   But Al reminds her to use her “third eye” and it works.  

After it’s over, Seras realizes that she didn’t even feel the recoil of the gun, and she can see in the dark with no trouble at all.   She wonders what’s happening to her, but that seems like a dumb question to ask one month after turning into a vampire.    I’m guessing the first few weeks of it didn’t feel all that different to her, and she probably knew she’d get stronger and better at shooting guns, but now that it’s actually happening it feels a lot stranger than she expected it to be.   In the anime, Seras also points out that she can hear Alucard talking to her in her mind, which is also weird, but I guess she’s got plenty of other weird stuff to process now.

Back at the base, Integra considers the recent increase in vampire attacks.   They’re all jobbers, like this couple Al and Seras killed, and none of them have any particular agenda, except to kill people.    She begins to wonder if someone’s making all these vampires just to cause trouble.  Hmmm...

So, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here, but this foreshadows Milennium quite nicely, but are we saying Milennium made vampires out of that boy and girl?   Were they behind the Cheddar Priest as well?  Also, “two” doesn’t seem like a huge increase in vampire incidents, so I guess there have been some other vampires running around between Chapters 1 and 3.   Oh well. 

[dunamanticarchivist]

C2E86 Liveblog first half

AIIIEEEE WE’RE GOING TO WAR SOUND THE BELLS

Yasha is somewhere around here, Ashley??

Where’s Pumat in all of this, just tagging along helpfully?

Doors? Not a problem after Jester’s paints THE ENEMY HAS BEEN DEFEATED

Ah Pumat noticed. I now have a fear. Still, Winnie the Pumat 

SILENCE PUMAT says twitch chat

Oh god Nott is playing charades with Fjord

Do you remember the telephone game they tried to play to pass the message earlier on?

Oh bloody heck, that’s a GORGEOUS cathedral

Good place to die in

FALSE IDOLATRY HERETICS AND BLASPHEMERS

Sorry I’ve got a thing against bad religion

Twitch chat at the Cardinal: Ok boomer (literally she has a booming voice)

Gotta get through the chaff first

AHH MY BACK M9 continuing the tradition against old folks

That was one hell of an entry Widogast, one hell of an entry

FIRESTORM?? That’s nasty

DC higher than 17?? OUCH

Matt’s dead stare into the camera as he talks about enchantment spells, don’t piss off the nerdy DM that literally made that world

Oh god the demons are coming already

Caddy is pissed; that was a max damage Sacred Flame

Nott just ends the Cardinal with a well placed shot, set up by her partner in crime Jester

ASHLEY she’s gonna kill everyone but still ASHLEY

Oh its Obann the fucker KILL HIM

And he got his charm on Beau?! Of all people?!?!

BURN THEM ALL This is the wizard’s playground now

Pumat Sol is the most cheerfully terrifying mind controller

Oh shit Beau can just dispel charmed 

Goddamn thats hot

Called it, I knew Skin Gorger was bad news

Oh wait Ashley just doubled 1s on Nott

Ooooof the Cadogeist hits really really hard

Laura looks like she’s about to throw up from the stress

Nott just sniping shots WITH A NAT 20 AND SHE SHOOTS AGAIN

64 in one

2 hours and its nowhere near a break yet

MARATHON SESSION

Seeing the 3 digit HP Fjord reduced to 1 digit is marginally worrying

Oh god Yasha is going to carve through them like butter

They forgot Yasha has resistance to Necrotic damage, but still

PUMAT SWOLE WITH TENSER’S TRANSFORMATION

5TH LEVEL DISPEL WORKS

ITS JUST FUCKING WORKS

Ok i should turn off my capslock

Holy shit the first half is still going (2.5 hour mark)

HOLY SHIT THEY ARE STILL GOING (3 hour mark)

MARATHON MARATHON MARATHON SESH

Did they literally just abandon Nott? 

DID THEY JUST ABANDON PUMAT SOL

AAAIIIIEEEEEEE

[foxstens]

not really enjoying blasphemous 2 atm

[foxstens]

yo i beat a boss

[foxstens]

this might be a case of ori2

[foxstens]

im so fucking mad

so i have access to three bosses currently and i can't beat any of them. nor do i like them enough to want to keep trying.

there's this lady who kinda reminds me of isidora but worse. because a lot of her attacks can be parried but not all and its kinda hard to figure out which ones you can parry and which ones you can't because it doesn't follow the rules of isidora's fight. and there's no walls on the side of her arena so if you fall you die instantly. she's the aggressive kind of boss who chases you and has very short openings. i usually struggle against these types of bosses but especially here because i don't like her.

then there's this guy who seems like??? a blacksmith?? but he also doesn't have any dialogue and his attacks are pretty erratic. i think he's probably the easiest of the three i can fight right now, i got close to beating him a few times but he just isn't dying for some reason. some of his attacks are also really hard to parry or avoid, and i also just don't like the fight. at all. he does lead to a very very very important upgrade though ugh.

and lastly, there's the one i'm mad about. this boss is so fucking cool, he's in a great area, he looks cool, his music is great, he really fucking reminds me of my favourite boss in blasphemous 1. except. he has three fucking phases of which i hate two. IT'S SO FUCKING HARD. the first two are easy individually but then in the third it's just both of them at the same time and it's soooooo fucking hard when these attacks don't mesh together at all and you can't fucking avoid theeeeeeeeem.

and like. the game is being kinda stingy with upgrades. movement upgrades are fine, they come at the right time and i love the platforming. but so far i got one fervour upgrade which is not a lot considering the fact that death is much more punishing here. as in, after you die and you recover the guilt fragment, you don't actually recover all of your guilt and you gotta go to an npc to purge all of your guilt periodically. WHICH IS A FUCKING STUPID SYSTEM WHY THE FUCK

i also only got one additional flask, and two health upgrades which i had to look up because they were in annoying ass spots. by the way the game has a lot of instances where it just looks into a room with waves of enemies. when you get items for it i don't mind, but sometimes you don't even get anything it just happens in normal ass rooms and i don't get it it's so fucking annoying.

and most of all, i haven't found any weapon upgrades. i even looked them up and turns out, none of them are available until i beat at least one of these bosses. WHAT IN THE NAME OF FUCK. i'm even unable to use the weapon i like against these bosses because it barely does any damage. i guess the reason people are finding this game so easy is bc everyone uses the flail but i don't like it??? it's hard even when using the sword, BUT WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING THREE WEAPONS WHEN THEY'RE SO UNBALANCED

maybe i should wait for patches or smth idk, but that could take years and by then i'll probably be spoiled about everything. i'm just so frustrated rn like i wanna love it but all of these things are so much more annoying than anything in the first game. and like i said previously, i have yet to come across an area or boss i love, so basically the only thing i truly love about this game at the moment is the platforming :'(

[foxstens]

yea idk what game everyone else is playing this is def harder than 1

[foxstens]

just beat my first boss. i kinda hate how unbalanced the weapons are

[foxstens]

blasphemous 2 yaaaaaaaaaaaaaas

[cvstodians]

“How did it feel to be back in the Mother of Mothers?”

[cvstodians]

Hate to say it but.. hear me out