#op i kind of wish the sequel trilogy had been about them instead

[redbean-nom]

ahsoka: here's my resume *briefcase full of purified inquisitor sabers*

Considering Ezra was missing in another galaxy and not even hat man will tell us what Ahsoka has been up to, Cal is probably the only one with any particular records and history that Luke could have heard of what with all of his wanted posters. Luke must think Cal is really cool and experienced, right?

oh absolutely, but can you imagine if cal had to apply for the jedi academy

(donation doodles! // tip jar)

[evajellion]

Madou Monogatari: Convoluted Final Exam explanation

Well, that’s the translation that makes the most sense here besides “nonsense”, which is gonna be fitting for this game! I apologize for procrastinating with this one, but here it is.

After 6 years, Compile finally released the sequel to the Madou Monogatari trilogy, as this game continues after Madou Monogatari III. This game is about Arle, much like in Madou I, taking her final exam by traveling through a dungeon. 

Arle explains before beginning how she was once attacked by Schezo, fought Satan, met Rulue and Minotauros, leading to where she is now, taking her final exam, which is arranged by a familiar masked principal.

This time though, she will not be the only one graduating. Lala comes back to compete with Arle with a few other students, and Rulue (who is now a student in the magic school because of the events in Madou III) is also attending.

However, Rulue is really the only student that actively tries to compete against Arle. Lala doesn’t do anything grand, which I feel is disappointing, as we still have not seen her in a fight before.

So the game pretty much… begins. Arle solves the puzzles in the dungeon smoothly, but Rulue, lacking in magic, tries to break through things with brute force and technique (it doesn’t work).

In a deeper part of the dungeon, around the 7th floor to be exact, Arle encounters Satan. At first he says “Oh no Arle, it’s me, the masked principal”… but he forgot his mask.

Arle rightfully pummels him due to her intense distrust of Satan, swiftly defeating him. Rulue finds that Arle has beaten up Satan, and angrily demands that Arle stop, which leads to the two of them fighting right after Satan did. Between Rulue’s brute strength and Carbuncle’s laser fire, a new path suddenly opens up, indicating that there is more to the final exam, and Satan was trying to seal this pathway up.

Arle jumps into the Ancient Labyrinth, abandoning the principal’s dungeon. There are plates scattered throughout the area that Arle cannot read.

Oh yes, it’s also at this point, Archan makes her debut.

Yeah, her debut wasn’t Puyo~n, it was this game. Fun little trivia for you guys.

Arle finds a bracelet while exploring the labyrinth, which allows her to read the what is written on the plates. However, this bracelet actually belongs to Schezo, who had somehow found his way inside of the Ancient Labyrinth. After saying the classic line, Arle calls him a pervert, which immediately leads to them fighting.

Arle defeats Schezo, but decides to heal him after the battle, so she can get an explanation as to what this labyrinth is. Schezo says that this ancient ruin contains treasure that are said to willingly leave the world in their slumber, as if they have dimensional powers.

Arle attempts to return the bracelet to Schezo as a thank you, but he rejects it. Since he had lost to her, Schezo believes that Arle should now be the bracelet’s owner.

Rulue is encountered again, demanding a fight with Arle. This time though, Rulue manages to get into a battle with Arle that’s so brutal, she makes Arle relearn the spell of Jugem (I guess because it’s too OP to have at the start of the game).

Arle finds out that the treasures, which have four guardians that must be pursued. Rulue catches up with Arle again, but rather than fighting, they hear a commotion. Schezo has broken a seal and ended up encountering a terrible treasure guardian.

The Phantom God, the main antagonist of our story.

This design is absolutely badass, but honestly, I think this character’s background ends up being a let down when you get into it...

Arle and Rulue jump in to help Schezo, but Phantom God is invincible. The Phantom God prepares to kill all of them, but Schezo, getting up one last time, cuts open a void for the girls to escape into, while Phantom God obliterates him with thunder magic. Arle cries out over Schezo’s self-sacrifice, absolutely distraught over it.

Crushed with anxiety and sorrow, Arle wakes up in the Phantom Zone, where she meets a woman who she refers to as her doppelganger, due to their heavy resemblance but the only difference being the doppelganger’s colored armor and eyes.

The doppelganger makes a bet with Arle. If Arle can find the doppelganger multiple times, she will give Arle the equipment needed to defeat Phantom God.

Arle does exactly that, defeating the doppelganger multiple times before coming across a mirror. The mirror breaks open, and the original “doppelganger” comes out to challenge Arle one last time, using her full strength.

This doppelganger is different from the other ones, as instead of using carbon copies of Arle’s spells. These spells are notably called “Flame Tornado”, “Dark Blizzard” and “Heavenly Thunder”.

Upon being defeated, the doppelganger gives Arle some important advice for her battle against Phantom God, leaving Arle literally asking who the hell this doppelganger is.

Arle is pushed out of the Phantom Zone, and back into the Ancient Labyrinth, where she ascends to the Guardian’s Floor. Here, Arle defeats the Gem Guardians, and takes the treasure they are holding onto.

Red Ruby, a spirit immune to fire magic.

Yellow Diamond, a spirit immune to lightning.

Blue Sapphire, a spirit immune to ice.

And Green Emerald, a spirit immune to jugem.

After defeating all of them and collecting the treasure they were protecting (the Ruler’s Mantle, a sacred cloth), Arle meets up with Rulue one last time, wishing her the best of luck against the Phantom God.

And so… Arle avenges Schezo.

After Phantom God has taken enough damage, they show their hideous form-- proving to be one of the most difficult final bosses in the Madou franchise.

Phantom God’s defeat leads to them becoming tame, Arle now holds the Seraphim Orb in her hands, thus holding Phantom God themselves in her hands. Arle says she’ll never forgive Phantom God for taking Schezo’s life, until Phantom God says they had never killed him, just temporarily eliminated him.

Despite being heir to the Seraphim Orb, Arle forces the treasure to be forgotten about, rejecting the destiny to hold it. Instead, Arle graduates her final exam, moving on to continue her hard work and adventures with Carbuncle and Rulue. 

Phantom God laments over the rejections with the Gem Guardians, as they find it amusing how much Arle was very similar to “that person”, as they are closed within space once again.

… This is only a loose translation of the events because this last part is a mess, dear lord!

So yeah, that’s Final Exam / Final Test / Nonsense Exam / whatever.

I think the story in this in enjoyable… for the first half anyway, the later half getting into stuff that only makes sense if you read the novels, is irritating. Especially when this is the only game in the franchise to follow the novel story, while the rest go off on their own. To make it worse, years after this, it didn’t even matter, because the Madou Monogatari franchise died, with no continuation to this story. All thanks to Compile’s poor business decisions.

Phantom God is an excellent antagonist, and one of the hardest bosses from what I’ve seen. But them suddenly turning soft at the end kind of kills it, because you spend so long being angry at them for what they did to Schezo. Heck, Schezo’s popularity kind of kicked off even more after this game, people were already in love with him from ARS and the Puyo games, but this sealed the deal.

One of the biggest criticisms towards Final Exam is the graphics, and the non-human characters like Skeleton T, Mamono, and Phantom God look fantastic. Humanoid characters though…

I once saw someone compare this to the Zelda CD-i games. Not far off, but I think that’s an insult to the Zelda CD-i titles. They weren’t as stiff looking, and at least had some cartoonish characteristic style.

The weird thing is, the opening and ending animation videos look amazing. So I’m guessing they blew the budget on that, as opposed to making the rest of the game look good.

The soundtrack also leaves a lot to be desired compared to other Madou games. It sounds like it was done with a MIDI keyboard, especially when compared to how nice the PC98 games sounded.

So while this was the sequel to Madou III we had been waiting years for, it… didn’t entirely pay off. It’s not terrible, there are things I love about it, such as the battle system being improved, but the latter part of the story, the visuals, and the soundtrack are a turn-off.

However, on the plus side, the next game would prove to be one of the best in the Madou franchise, if not the best. One reason for its acclaim popularity being that Compile listened to the fan demand and popularity contests, where they decided to make a game for the most liked character.

Guess who that character was?

[theclarkystuff-blog]

E3 opinions ( Nintendo)

Not the last show of E3 but possibly the last big one of the event, Nintendo strut into E3 with their usual pre recorded segment although I have seen people either dead excited for what a future Switch line up or seem to have no faith in Nintendo at all with only a half hour slot, so let’s review and see how it fares.

Opening the show is what appears to new a new advertising campaign maybe for the Switch but indie sensation Rocket League appears to take the opening slot and even showing off Fifa, neither games necessarily interest me but it seems to show a change in Nintendo, where they would usually promote one of their own works first usually it is nice to see them throw a bone to third parties. While Nintendo may not be able to boast having the kinds of support Sony and Microsoft receive at least Nintendo looks like they are trying to garner support now. 

Xenoblade 2 gets a re-introduction with a new trailer in English which showcased some story elements including game-play which shows that it will play similar to the last two entries in the series and also include some incredible looking worlds to explore once again, although it looks like someone turned up the anime inspiration to the max, mind you. The biggest surprise for me being that Nintendo are still aiming to release this Fall, despite earlier rumors stating that it had slipped into early 2018 so that is cool. 

Kirby comes crashing back with his Switch debut looking like follow up on his 2D adventures in the style of the ever classic Kirby’s Dreamland. While I don’t expect this to be a blockbuster seller, Kirby plat-formers are usually a solid experience and with Switch’s multiplayer possibilities which could allow you to play co-op on a single Switch or maybe even over multiple Switch’s via wireless

Yoshi also makes a Switch debut in a new game which appears to be continuing with the Wooly World theme with worlds that appear to be made of cardboard and moving away from the 2D plat-former mold by allowing Yoshi to move in the back and foreground. One of the biggest surprises about this game is that it will be built on the Unreal engine as confirmed by Epic Games spokesperson, Dana Cowley.

Fire Emblem Warriors while looking nice i felt a little disappointed in as the trailer appeared to mostly show cut-scenes over game-play as I would have liked to have seen how the game preformed in action , with the Switch specs in mind and being able to handle hundreds of enemies and big maps and also wondering how the N3DS port will handle, I expect similar results as seen in Hyrule Warriors on Wii U and N3DS respectively but with the game aiming to release this year I get the feeling we may see a dedicated Direct for this later in the year. 

Breath Of The Wild’s DLC was revealed showing some visual for the previously talked about and upcoming content, the first of which is dubbed The Master Trials will add a hard mode and new quest which will enable players to power up the Master Sword to deal out double damage, this DLC will also include some new costumes based on previous entries into the The Legend Of Zelda series such as Tingle’s costume and the infamous Majora’s Mask. This first expansion reminds me a little bit of Dark Souls in some respects but I guess we will get to find out in a matter of weeks The second DLC being dubbed The Champions’ Ballad focuses on the Champions in BOTW which makes me wonder if they have unfinished business after the game concluded or if this is set 1000 years before Calamity Ganon’s appearance or something? 

The big close out of the show was given to Super Mario Odyssey, opening with perhaps the oddest trailer involving a dinosaur but in this short trailer we get to see many of the game-play elements which displayed massive worlds to explore, going into walls playing as an 8 bit Mario in a similar style to The Legend of Zelda : A Link Between Worlds and what appears to be Mario’s gimmick in this game, being able to take control of enemies and NPC like citizens found in New Donk City or a tyrannosaurus-rex by throwing Mario’s hat at them. This game sent me over the top and into hype mode, this game looks fantastic, looks to be amazing fun, looks like it runs at a solid 60fps and oozes a confidence that it isn’t afraid to embrace with its big band styled title song delivered with some beautiful vocals. Super Mario Odyssey looks like it will be the successor that Super Mario Galaxy 2 deserved, having everything you could hope for packed into a Mario game alongside a October release, coming sooner than I expected, this may well be my game of E3.

The other big talking points and announcements I feel I have to address for most part seem to come about after the presentation into the Tree-house broadcasts so let’s address them, Nintendo listened to the uproar over Metroid in recent years and not only talked about giving us one new Metroid game, but 2 of them. Nintendo confirmed that Metroid Prime 4 is in development but having nothing to show for it, not even any concept art or a teaser trailer. While this is a little disappointing I am sure the announcement of the game will bring many tears of joy to fans of Retro Studios trilogy it appears that Retro Studios themselves will not be returning to the series, that ponders the question of who is making it? and what the hell has Retro been working on then for the past 3 years? The other reveal being Metroid : Samus Returns for 3DS, a modern remake of the Game Boy sequel to Metroid being made by Mercury Studios, famous for Castlevania : Lord of Shadow. This reveal looked cool in concept although I felt like it was missing polish despite its launching within months, hopefully the next time we see this game it will be looking better.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle which had its official unveiling at Ubisoft’s event on Monday already looks like one of the strangest concepts with these 2 big franchises coming together for a game which plays like X-Com. The game looks like it could be some massive fun although I may hold out until I see some reviews to help decide if and when i will buy into this.

Mario and Luigi - Super Star Saga DX was another remade gem for the 3DS which looks to be running on the modern M&L engine as seen in Dream Team and Paper Jam, this remake will include a new mode based around a trio of Bowsers Minions which I guess will add a humorous alternative view of the story that many maybe familiar with. Being a big fan of the original Game Boy Advance version I look forward to trying this remake out soon.

I guess I should address Skyrim coming to Switch as well despite it only having a small segment in the presentation but it is cool to see Nintendo willing to allow Bethesda to include BOTW costumes, shields and armors. Despite Skyrim feeling like it is getting ported to anything and everything, including a VR version, the idea of being able to play a grand expansive adventure like Skyrim in a portable form without hopefully getting an entry as bad in performance as the infamous PS3 port, the motion controls looks like they could add some fun interesting ways to play this game but I imagine many will probably default to the regular controls.

I was overall impressed with Nintendo’s presentation despite the short presentation, although they did not waste much time promoting games releasing within the next few months like Arms or Splatoon 2 but they are being given special competition events at E3 to act as promotion there, it is nice to see we wasn’t bogged down with more info about it at the presentation. While I am confident Yoshi and Kirby will be good games they hardly seemed like big announcements I was expecting for the Switch at its first E3 but with Metroid Pime 4 and a new RPG Pokemon being confirmed in development I would only wish Nintendo had more to show really, many have been hoping for ports of Mario Maker, Super Smash Bros 4 or Bayonetta 2 to Switch or even talk of the Virtual Console service coming to Switch but it feels like we are getting small servings for this year. While Nintendo has it’s Directs to spread awareness of upcoming titles which they can use any time of the year I can see why Nintendo maybe holding back some announcements for a later date, similar to how I feel Sony may have been holding back on announcing new stuff for its PSX expo later this year but overall I was happy with what I saw Nintendo seem to employ an unusual method of unveiling games as a few were presented through the Tree-house segments instead of the presentation which strikes me as weird as some of these would have been more than welcome during this brief conference.

This years E3 I felt was only mediocre for most part this year, while we got some interesting updates to games announced in previous years I felt like there was a lack of anything really new or fresh at least for most part throughout the whole show. I feel Microsoft while having an impressive new console had a serious lack of impressive software to make it stand out like BOTW did for Switch or Uncharted 4 did for the PS4, Forza 7 could well be that game for all I know, but I get the feeling it won’t be. Sony and Nintendo had good presentations but neither really felt like they ignited a fuse, while not every E3 can be an amazing one, this one certainly wasn’t a bad one, until next year I guess, have fun.

[chaysingthesun]

I respect everyone’s right to their own opinions on this, and I say this with all respect to op and without any desire to start fights about it, but I’m confused because I thought the second option is exactly what they’re doing? I don’t see how they’re watering down exo’s concept at all. It feels more respectful to exo imho to not have aespa either 1) steal exo’s story outright or 2) ignore it entirely, but instead to have them engaged in a different but related story in the same universe (or multiverse or whatever). The only thing that’s changed about exo’s story afaik is that now we know one of the many dimensions they’ve been in may be related to kwangya and whatever’s going on with aespa, and that’s intriguing to me bc it opens up a lot of fun possibilities.

(I don’t see kwangya as being anything like exoplanet by the way—no tree, no exo-like beings with powers, looks very different, to me it’s got different vibes entirely… that’s fair if you disagree, but nothing about it really strikes me as an exo storyline rip-off?)

I’m 100% an EXO-L and the disrespect that’s been shown to them makes me really angry, but I don’t really think that’s what’s going on here? As much as I’d prefer we get more exo right now, it makes sense to me for the company to focus on the newer groups. Besides, they can’t do much with exo right now anyway due to so many of them being in the military. I wish it didn’t feel sometimes like they’re ignoring exo outright, but at least we’re getting some crumbs and at the same time they’re not changing anything drastic about exo’s storyline so when they do come back as a group, there will still be plenty to explore and more story to tell there, and it will still feel like the exo we know and love. And in the meantime we’re being blessed with all these great solo projects, many of which also seem to be continuing exo’s storyline as well.

Concepts aren’t unique to exo, and exo hasn’t been the only SM group to have a related concept before the official announcement of the SMCU either (it’s all speculation of course, like any of exo’s story, but there are a million hints that Red Velvet is the Red Force). If concepts aren’t your thing that’s okay, but I’m really confused about all the hate. To me it’s kind of like Star Wars or the MCU or any grand epic movie or book series that takes place over multiple time periods or dimensions or worlds.

Since I’m a big fan of Star Wars I’m going to use that analogy: EXO are like Luke, Leia, and Han, the main characters in the original trilogy. Just because there are prequels and sequels being made doesn’t mean that the originals are not important anymore. In fact those prequels and sequels are only being made because the originals are so beloved. The expansion of the story is a tribute, not a theft. You may or may not like the newer ones, and that’s fine if you don’t, but that doesn’t change anything about how great and epic the originals are. The thing that’s different (happily so!) with exo is that with the Star Wars movies, some choices were made in the prequels and sequels that had a big impact on the original characters, and with exo, it’s not like that at all; their story proper has barely been touched.

Another good thing is that since the SMCU is related to exo, as more of the story gets told, more people may be drawn to exo and their part in it. Anything that gets more people loving exo is a good thing imho! I can understand people being fearful of anything new, but I hope more EXO-Ls can be open to what good things may come out of this.

Anyway I’m so sorry for writing a whole ass essay here 😅 I just wanted to provide a different opinion that maybe might help make sense of it and be more positive for exo

lol actually since i am on the topic i truly don’t get smcu?? not to be the exos greatest defender but what sense does it really make to water down their original concept to fit their label mates when it could’ve just been expanded with aespa instead idgi