#overall it's a pretty strong cast and I'm excited to see where the story will go
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Currently playing through Limbus Company, finished Canto 2 and I think I'm addicted. Decided to make a tier list of the characters for my own reference. I expect my opinions to change a lot as different characters get focused on.
Main cast:
All the characters:
Further thoughts:
I find it kind of hilarious that most of Canto 2 (outside of the Rodya focus and characterising the sinners a bit more) seemed to be about establishing how much of a fail-manager Dante is. They're pathetic and I love them.
Faust appeals to me due to her arrogance (and design). Ishmael and Gregor are just generally likable characters so far. They're just doing their best and trying to steer things back on track amidst the chaos.
Don Quixote is actually hilarious, especially when interacting with Dante, but she also screams at me from the main menu sometimes in a way that's more annoying than anything the others have done, so I almost put her in annoying (affectionate). Love her too much for that though <3
Most of the second tier characters I expect could end up in the top tier as their stories develop. Yi Sang almost made top tier, but I don't think I like him quite as much as the others ranked there. Rodya's focus chapter was a bit weak, but I still like her a lot, especially her design and dynamics with Sinclair and Gregor (I like the whole "covering for her guilt and sadness with flippancy" angle too). Outis I like partially because she's based on Odysseus, but her suck-upishness also is quite funny, especially as Dante continues to be incompetent. Sinclair is just a poor little guy.
Ryoshu is where she is purely because she's had little enough focus that I tend to forget her at times, but whenever she does speak she's hilarious. Fully expect to put her higher later. Vergilious is fine, but not a particularly interesting character yet.
Hong Lu, Heathcliff and Charon are all in the same boat of sometimes being funny, but also a bit one note in a way that can be a bit annoying.
I genuinely keep forgetting Meursault exists (sorry Meursault).
#Don Quixote is great#but could she not scream so much#think of my poor eardrums -_-#based on this I think my favorite type of character is extremely competent (Faust Ishmael Outis)#or extremely incompetent (Dante Don Quixote)#Gregor is just a calming influence and I like him#overall it's a pretty strong cast and I'm excited to see where the story will go#Especially whenever they eventually get around to Dante's story#I wonder will they become a more competent manager over time#or will they remain pathetic for comedic purposes#I'm fine with it either way#I also like Faust because she reminds me of Madoka Magica#because they both take inspiration from Faust#limbus company#tier list
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So I finished Veilguard a while back, and of course I have thoughts. I'm sure none of them are original and have been plenty stated, but hey, we all need to mourn a game when we're done with it for better or worse, so here's mine.
Note: I wrote and queued this before I was aware of the layoffs at Bioware today. This is, in no way, meant to rub salt in the wound or point fingers. If anything, I'm gutted for the people who poured their heart into this game only to be found jobless today. I'm in the exact same position myself, and have nothing but empathy for the situation. To spoil what's below - I enjoyed my time with Veilguard. It could have been better, and if you're a dev that worked on it, you probably know that. I'm sorry it's turned out the way it has, but thank you for the experience regardless. It was a fun game.
Spoilers after the break, obviously. Be aware there will be discourse, but I'm not here specifically to bash. If anything, I'm actually still grateful for the experience.
Overall, I did enjoy my time with Veilguard. After all, my final save file was around the 85 hour mark, so clearly I had no issues continuing to sink time into the game. I itched to play when I wasn't, and I got my Solavellan ending I've been waiting 10 years for, and I damn near 100%'d the whole thing (including getting the hidden cinematic after the credits). So what went wrong? What did I not like? Why do I feel so… empty now that it's over?
If I were to summarize my issues and feelings with Veilguard, it's that it felt like it gave just enough to be passable content, but never committed to being a truly exemplary experience. In every way, from system design to companion design to overarching story to itemization, everything is fine… but not great.
Knowing that DAV went through development hell contextualizes a lot of these issues. If the art book is to be believed, the project had two full blown restart buttons pushed and many leadership handoffs. I've been in conversations, though, where folks ask "Why on earth could DA2 pull off a great storytelling experience, but DAV couldn't?"
There's something else at play, and after my own experiences in the game industry and squinting between the lines to try to glean what I think may have gone wrong, I have a hunch. Pure speculation ahead: I don't think leadership ever fully agreed on a committed vision.
The broad strokes are there, and they are strong:
The Lighthouse is a cool fucking hub. It grows with your group, responds to their needs, and shapes itself around you as you experience the world. The concept of this is dope AF.
The goal is closure on all the questions left unanswered after DAI. It does get to most of these, even if not as fully and as satisfying as some of us lore nerds would have liked.
Combat is fluid and pretty engaging (at least at first). It's simple, fun, and generally fulfills power fantasies well (for context, I specialized as a full Veil Jumper Archery Rogue).
WE GET TO EXPLORE NORTHERN THEDAS. This is so cool and a place we've all wanted to go for ages. TEVINTER. NEVARRA. WEISSHAUPT. All exciting prospects.
Level design and map design are pretty A+, imo. Landscapes and set dressings are beautiful and artfully crafted. Even if there are aspects of the visual design you disagree with, they committed to it and fulfilled it well.
Exploration is fun. I rarely hunt down every chest in a game. I could not stop treasure hunting for the life of me, and some of those hidden treasures felt really special and rewarding to uncover.
The cast of characters and factions you interact with are interesting and very different - from one another and from previous casts. It's nice to see some new tropes that either haven't been used or have been out of rotation for a while.
Solas is a good antagonist. He was before, and he still is, and biased Solasmancing aside - I always looked forward to the breaks in the game where I got to banter with the Egg.
Voice over cast is fantastic. I know some folks were less fond of non-British/American accents, but honestly, I was very fine with it. It reinforced that this part of Thedas, and this time in the overall storyline, is new and different. Thedas is changing, and so are its people.
All these things said - every single positive I have above feels like they were baseline requirements for a AAA Bioware RPG. That they don't go above and beyond these bare minimums is where the game feels like it fails, especially as a payoff for a critically acclaimed entry that's 10 years old and has a passionately dedicated fanbase.
A phrase I've been using a lot with folks is that DAV feels like the Lacroix of Dragon Age games. It's got the branding, it looks like Dragon Age, and it kind of tastes like Dragon Age, but… just barely. It leaves you feeling like it's lacking. It's a hint of it, and going back to drink it again doesn't quite satisfy you.
What we call this in game development is minimum viable product (MVP), which is usually trotted out at the point by production and/or leadership when you realize you've meandered on the project for so long that you just gotta ship something. This works if you're actually going to commit to polishing it up and continuing to make it better after launch for a live service game; fix it later is fine when that's a reasonable expectation.
But Veilguard walked back on that concept. It no longer was going to be live service, but a one-and-done, and the final, late pivot meant it just had less time to cook in its final form and likely a ton of wasted work that got chucked out. There are so many places where the experience feels like an alpha or beta version of what they actually wanted to do. The Lighthouse and Companions as a whole both exemplify this; they feel and look cool, but the experience of both are shallow and underdeveloped. They felt like they were missing something.
The most egregious issues, in my opinion, in no particular order:
Apologies in advance if they're your favorite, but Rook is probably the worst protagonist we've ever been given. Not because their concept is inherently bad, but because I couldn't really make them mine. Rook has no arc, makes few decisions that truly matter, and no moral conundrums barring maybe the Treviso/Minrathous decision. Even then—it feels like there's a right answer to that decision.
To explain: Minrathous gets fucked at the end of the game anyway. If you pick to save Minrathous, you've just doomed two metropolis level cities to excessive death and destruction AND locked yourself out of a potential romance option for no particular reason.
Rook's actions in Thedas also matter the least. The end state of the game is the same no matter what: the Evanuris fall, and the Veil is preserved. How you do it is largely immaterial. In every other game entry, shit can seriously go sideways and it's always directly because of your decisions.
Companion arcs are largely shallow and so reliant on Rook, they fail to feel real. Some of these arcs are more egregious in this manner than others, and some of them have truly excellent stories to tell (oh, hi there Emmrich). But even with the best arcs, this person asks you to make utterly life-altering decisions for them and you've probably known them for like a month or two at best. It just doesn't feel like I, as the PC, have the right to make that call, or that I've earned it. There's not enough time nor enough high stakes prior to those moment.
I won't beat this one to death, but the limited amount of previous choices not mattering in this entry hurts, and I know how complicated it would have been to explore all of them. That said, there were a few that had a ton of specific investment that deserved better resolution: Kieran in particular would have mattered so fucking much if he existed as canon. I understand that's the crux of the problem, but it makes it so that if he was part of your world state in both DAO and DAI, his absence is all the more noticeable.
The South being destroyed off-screen through text will never not bother me. The Inquisitor is apparently faffing about doing fuck all with the resources they've built over time, especially if they chose not to disband the Inquisition. They didn't chase after Solas, who they knew was going to be a problem, and then they ALSO let the South fall? I'm sorry - it does a hero that the majority of this fandom is most likely heavily invested in the worst service no matter which way you look at it.
Veilguard feels like a game that couldn't get out of its own way. The part that has me grieving the most is that you can see under the surface a great game was there, but just not fully realized.
Without being one of the people who made the game, we can only speculate and can't presume the cause for why we got what we did. Hell, as someone who works in game development, sometimes you never get the answer yourself as to why things went so horribly sideways. The larger the game and studio, the more blind spots you're likely going to have on the overall project. That said, I have nothing but empathy for the Veilguard team. It's very clear that at least the majority of folks working on it poured in a ton of work and cared a lot about it.
It's not my place to blame anyone in particular for it, because I don't have the first-hand knowledge necessary to cast that judgement. I hope the folks who worked on this don't let it get them too down; you still made a fun game. And I'm sure you're just as disappointed it wasn't the love letter to Dragon Age that you probably wanted it to be, as much as any of us fans who feel it didn't meet the bar.
You had an impossible job to do; the expectations here were so high, and you had more obstacles than any dev team should reasonably have during their project, regardless of the expected fires we all run into during development. Despite that, I still had fun, and I still care quite a bit about these characters.
That's worth something. Thank you for the experience.
#veilguard critical#veilguard critique#dragon age the veilguard#dragon age#critical analysis#Dragon Age Lacroix#i have lots of thoughts and feelings#you don't have to read them#feel free to scroll on by without it#bioware#bioware critical
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The Sign - final thoughts
I want to start by reasserting what I've said before about companies like Idol Factory. Having production companies being willing to try new things and push the genre is always going to get points from me, even if I don't absolutely love the end result. Much better that than yet another university series that doesn't even attempt to be coherent.
So I am grateful that this show exists, even if I did struggle to maintain my enthusiasm the entire way through.
We'll start with some very solid positives.
Pros:
Idol Factory is so good at identifying talent. The acting was overall great, with some genuine standout performances (Nat as Art, I mean c'mon, just incredible). Heng devoured his role. Gap was an utter delight. Billy swings between horny and angsty like no one else. Babe did amazing for his first series, and I look forward to seeing him develop as an actor.
The talent behind the camera was really strong in some arenas too. The production quality was high, and we got some genuinely beautiful cinematography.
Even characters in small roles were memorable and well-characterized.
The action scenes were pretty solid, for the most part. The underwater stuff looked really, really good.
The sex scenes. Idol Factory knows we are thirsty bitches, and I appreciate that about them. And they were so pretty!
The cast chemistry. It was fantastic.
The premise - I am a sucker for the reincarnation trope, Until We Meet Again has a firm hold on my heart.
Some genuinely interesting ideas around karma and fate and determinism.
Getting to see more of Thai culture and mythology.
Cons:
This part hurts, because I really was so obsessed with this series in the beginning. I think it was mostly a writing issue, but there's some big flaws in the story construction that became apparent as we got further along. The interweaving of the past & present, the cop storyline with the mythology storyline...it got a bit clunky.
There were a number of planted seeds that never bore fruit. The Abott being set up as a powerful ally to then be completely nerfed in the last episode. Chalothon being set up to be punished for refusing to give up his quest of vengeance, but that never happening. Tharn being told multiple times he needs to learn to fight for his love, and then he just...doesn't. (Unless you consider talking to Chalothon for a year "fighting").
Really clunky setup at times - we've spent almost no time with Khem and Tongthai, and then suddenly a ring, and then suddenly he's shot, and then suddenly he's fine.
Relatedly, I genuinely can't believe that for their final scene, they had Tharn run in and just tell Phaya that Chalothon had entirely changed as a person and was now in support of them. Why wouldn't you have at least one scene of Tharn & Chalothon talking? I get that show don't tell is not universal for every situation, but it was hella important here! That was a genuine wtf moment. It would have been so powerful to see Tharn finally break through to Chalothon, after centuries of hurt.
The flashbacks. I get that they had to use a ton of the budget for CGI, but I rather wish they had either done the flashbacks in the green screen space they used for Phaya being unconscious, or just used a black stage. It just felt like the cast in costumes running around in the woods, which, admittedly, it was. But it took me out of the immersion, and made them less impactful.
I will still watch anything Billy does, and I'm excited to see where Idol Factory goes from here. And someone needs to do a Gap/Yoshi series stat.
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@daelenn i'm actually gonna give this its own post i think
but, hmmmm
i mean marisha and liam are definitely up there
several of them have powerful energies that aren't feral energies
but okay, i think i'll go with this:
1 - marisha. takes no shit from anyone. extremely strong force of personality. jumps all over the set when playing, incapable of sitting still or not screaming over stuff. see: hitting liam in the face, falling off the bench at the feeblemind moment, perching on her chair constantly, all the times near the end of campaign one where it would get too much and she'd just get up and walk around. "if someone told me five years ago i was gonna be a part of a global dnd phenomenon, i probably would have punched them in the face. and then asked them for gas money."
she's an incredible, creative, good at leading, excited feral, but feral nonetheless.
2 - liam. i mean, you can like feel the feral coming off of this guy. especially prominent when dressing up for liveshows, creating fictional storylines designed to torture his friends, and being angry at current us politics on twitter. like, don't get me wrong, he's a wonderful, loving, gentle human being, they all are. but like... the feral lurks constantly under the surface. whoever decided to sit liam and marisha next to each other for this campaign was a mad genius
3 - sam. now this is sort of where we stop ranking them by feral and start ranking them by chaos. marisha and liam aside, i wouldn't necessarily use the word feral for any of these guys? but sam definitely has the most feral energies of the remaining cast, like... we can talk forever about how good he is at causing chaos on the show, but before you even get to him playing dnd, consider his shirts and his ads. consider that he once put whipped cream on toothpaste and ate it. sam what the fuck.
4 - laura. an extraordinarily talented actress, and, like sam, uses these gifts to cause complete and utter chaos. on the whole, she’s a bit too put together to qualify as feral, but in terms of unpredictability, she beats out everyone. even matt struggles to play jester because he can never figure out what she’s going to do next. this is also extremely useful for laura when she wants to pull some crazy game bending shit, that no one will ever be able to get over. is she feral? perhaps not. is she capable of making everyone else feral? absolutely.
5 - ashley. ashley is one of the quietest players at the table, you won’t even see her until like halfway through the episode when she pulls out a hilarious one liner or a shocking character choice and grabs everyone’s attention. points deducted for overall aura of chill, but definitely added for sheer audacity, and also for how much i love her. the fact that she statistically has the most feral characters is also a point in her favour
6 - travis. a lot of any feralness travis has probably owes itself to being an adhd actor and sports fan from texas. like... that’s a lot of things for a person to be at once, that aren’t necessarily all conflicting, but certainly add up to quite a picture. and that picture is travis willingham. i love him? i think he’s got a good balance of feral and not, shown pretty well in the fact that he has the most feral vox machina character and the least feral mighty nein character. i wouldn’t describe him as a feral person overall, but he’s a big fan of causing chaos (and honestly really fucking good at it), so i think that adds to it a little too. (and also, he loves werewolves)
7 - matt. matt is not feral. matt has two modes, extremely competent actor and disaster human, and he can only be one at any given time. we mostly see the former, as he’s the DM and has to control this chaos, but i love the content we get where he’s not in DM mode and we realise how much of a disaster he is. has his moments of chaos, but on the whole a good and necessary balance to the rest of this squad. he’s also just like soft and full of love
8 - taliesin. i mean, taliesin has incredibly powerful energies, undeniably, but i feel like rather than being feral they were designed to keep feral contained. taliesin was there for the invention of the word feral, looked whatever beast earned that name in the eyes, and won without a fight. feral is terrifying because you can see the thing you know you can’t control, taliesin works near exclusively in the realm of the unseen
(though he does get points for every story he has to share about being a weird queer teen in hollywood and the various drug related and/or criminal escapades he somehow got up to. i mean, immortal jokes aside, taliesin has lived a life.)
#crit role cast#critical role#matt mercer#taliesin jaffe#travis willingham#laura bailey#sam riegel#ashley johnson#liam o'brien#marisha ray#cr thoughts#text#meta#?#feral rankings
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TWEWY: The Animation - Episode 1 Review
Like a bolt from the blue, it’s time for the TWEWY Anime Review!
After a lot of anticipation, it's finally here, and I sure do have a lot to say. So no stalling—let's get to it!
The show starts off right about where you’d expect it to—Neku waking up in the Scramble Crossing—and to me, a strong feeling that “the animators did their research”.
From the early scenes where Neku dodges incoming traffic in a movement style reminiscent of his dodge animation in TWEWY, to the poses and facial expressions of the characters introduced so far, the way the show is presented and paced feels not only natural, but authentically “TWEWY”.
Remember this pose? She also does the hand-wavy thing too, but animated, and it's great.
Of course, the foundation of this authenticity is the amazing art style that we knew we were being treated to from previous trailers—not just colorful and vibrant, but endearing through its simpleness, immersive, and an overall pleasure to look at. Then, throw in the excellent voice acting from some notable voice artists, well-executed dialog that feels accurate to the characters, and thankfully, actually treating partners like they're both important—I was admittedly sort of worried they would make Shiki seem a bit too weak/helpless, but she's moving around, fighting, and carrying her weight like I'd expect her to—and you get something that I think is, at the very least, trying to do justice to the source material as best as it reasonably can.
However, while the art style is pretty great when there's not much movement going on, it does take small hits from the usual pitfalls of 3D/CG animation. The variance of thickness in the lines and slight heaviness in the movement as the models are rotated in combat scenes feel like they give themselves away, and it can sometimes be a little bit difficult to process what's happening in fight scenes. I felt this was especially evident against the bear-like noise where Neku and Shiki do the anime's version of "syncing up" for the first time.
However, as long as you're not analyzing it too much, it shouldn't be a deal-breaker or anything. It's not like the CG jumps out at you or anything, right?
Story-wise, it's an adaptation of a game, so it's given it's going to cut some corners and simplify some things—but again, I don't think anything that's a deal-breaker has been cut-out yet. Smartphones are updated, missions might be simplified a bit, and Rhyme can apparently shoot energy-somethings around, but I think it's paced so that people who haven't played the game won't lose interest, which I think is fair given that RPGs can be a bit "slow" to get interesting.
Further more, even though we're only a single episode in, we've already established the core cast of both player characters and antagonistic ones, and just enough information has been given to give us a sense of what the characters relationships are—or in some cases, could be.
Rhyme and Beat seem to get along fairly well, while Neku and Shiki... well, don't, actually, but also Shiki is so forgiving and flexible it kind of works out, and Neku DOES show signs that he's not a jerk at heart.
And like in the game, Neku adds a bit of tension to everything, but the goodwill of everyone else keeps things going for the moment. In the mean time, the viewer is getting used to the whole premise of this "death game", what the enemies are like, and more, and I think just setting things up like this is all we could ask for in an intro episode.
Beyond the story and visuals though, it would be a disservice not to mention the music, which features both familiar and original tracks that I think are mostly used well—one could maybe argue the game songs don't perfectly fit an animation context, but if they continue a balance of hitting us with the soundtrack-based fan-service and playing music that fits the actual context, there should be nothing to worry about.
While I don't have too much to say on the general sound design, it definitely felt fine and fitting enough that... well, I don't have anything to say. Sometimes saying nothing is a good thing, yeah? Just not necessarily in Neku's case...
Given that it's the first episode, me and everyone else watching are forming first impressions, but it'll be exciting to get comfortable in this visually mesmerizing show (the scenes that don't clearly look like CG are seriously, seriously beautiful IMO—I'm actually kind of moved, haha) and see how the pacing adjusts as we go through the... well, you all know how many days it is, right? ;) For now though: thanks for reading, I look forward to your thoughts, and I'm excited for the next episode! --- First Impressions: 7.5/10 if I'm trying to be objective about it (it's a game adaptation, it can only be so good imo), but 9/10 because I'm a diehard TWEWY fan XD
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