#to be clear this doesn't make the game “unplayable”

[lyinginbedmon]

I think I'm done with Dead by Daylight...

So Dracula just dropped, and with him Patch 8.2.0. There's a lot in there, most of it just dealing with the addition of the new Survivor and Killer, but nestled down in the MISC section is this:

Now, this might seem minor to anyone that doesn't play Killer in this game, but this is a Massive problem. In fact, up until an hour or so ago, I genuinely thought this was a bug. I figured it would be such a ridiculous thing for them to actually do on purpose, it was probably somehow related to how my character loses a foot in height right as the match locks in.

But no, it's actually intentional and it's actually horrific.

See, Dead by Daylight is an asymmetric competitive game. There are 4 Survivors to every 1 Killer, per match. Killers therefore need to know as much as they can about the Survivors at all times to properly manage their time and actions to even remotely stand a chance. They are facing up against the sheer action economy that is an enemy team four times as large as you.

So the first bits of information you get are in the pre-game lobby. You can see roughly what items the opposition is bringing in (unless they switch last second, as is common practice for Survivors) and their Prestige level serves as a decent estimate for how skilled a given player is going to be (even though it's per-character, and Survivor characters have absolutely no pros/cons between them).

Knowing if you're going to be facing a mixed bag of mid-range Prestige Survivors, or a group of P0 newbies, or an entire team of sweaty eSports-esque P100s talking over Discord can determine the entirety of the next match for you.

Personally, I prefer the former two groups. It's more relaxed, I can be goofy, I can try out silly builds or get to grips with a new character. Maybe I get a little bit of a challenge but it's all in good mirth.

The latter are nigh impossible to actually have fun with, because they will abuse every single little caveat given to them by the developers. Like the removal of grabs when a Survivor is unhooking, or the speed at which a Survivor can sabotage the hook you're walking towards, or the umpteen different ways they can avoid taking damage, or any number of the perks that tell them exactly where to run and get there at light-speed even against the fastest Killer characters. And they'll take every second to drag things out and besmirch you.

Killers now basically have to treat every single lobby as if it is that last category. We already had an uphill struggle given that the developers are famously pro-Survivor and anti-Killer, but now we have to do that with the basic foundational assumption that every Survivor we face is going to be the most toxic trash-talking tea-bagging pain in the ass the community has to offer.

So I think, unless some serious changes are made, that I'm just done with this game now. After 860 hours, we'll see if they can get any more from me.

[masteraqua]

let's talk about radiant garden!

hello and welcome back to another installment of KH3 Retry, my chaotic thought experiment where i try to fix everything i hate about the game

i've said it before and i'll say it again: radiant garden should have been the playable hub world instead of twilight town. there are so many plot threads wrapped up in this world, so many paths that cross here, and it's a shame that kh3 never bothered to explore them in any meaningful way

instead, all of the world's depth is flattened into set dressing for tedious exposition, with all the things that made it memorable either cut entirely or moved to twilight town, a poor substitute which is itself lacking in any meaningful development

so let's talk about it! i have a veritable mountain of ideas for what radiant garden could have been like in a universe where it continued to matter after bbs

take my hand

even beyond the general lack of final fantasy in kh3, which is its own can of worms, brushing the restoration committee aside and reducing all of their hard work to an unplayable HD recreation of the bbs map is downright bleak. as much as nomura wants to, you can't just sweep legacy characters under the rug and expect me to forget about them. i'm glad they at least got to appear in re:mind, but it doesn't change the fact that their absence feels like a massive, gaping hole in reality, like the universe has written them out of existence. i'm sure sora can relate

the problem is best summed up by ienzo:

yeah. that's called regression, and it sucks.

so on that note, please disregard (almost) everything that happens in radiant garden in kh3, because we are starting from scratch babeyyyy!!!

this got really long so i broke it down into sections covering different topics

-----

introduction

the town, finally livable again, looks not quite like the utopia of its past, but still beautiful, with the gardens of its namesake in full bloom and the streets filled with smiling faces

the debris has been cleared away to make room for zigzagging rows of houses and apartments, all built in a mish-mash of styles, sizes, and colors—a mosaic of the lives lived outside of this world. from a distance, the vast array of colors resembles a flowerbed, vibrant and alive

baskets of multicolored flowers hang from windows and the beginnings of vines grow around corners. now that the aqueduct system has been restored, life has really begun to flourish all around

patchwork stone walls and bridges weave through the town and line the border. outside the city walls, the water levels have risen and settled, but you can still see remnants of crumbling, moss-covered architecture poking through the surface

finally: the castle, once a pristine but imposing fortress, has been repurposed as a community center. the gates and guards have been removed so that the townspeople can visit freely, and indeed the balconies and halls are usually busy. just like the rest of town, plants bloom in abundance along its facade, nurtured by the light

the library has been reopened and other public services have moved into the castle to help with day to day life. however, some areas are closed off to the public for safety reasons

-----

characters

we'll start with cid—a brand new helipad and gummi garage have been built into one of the castle's tallest towers, and, naturally, he's in charge! now that the restoration is complete, he can focus on his true passion: flying contraptions :) he offers special blueprints for completing gummi ship challenges (including races, maybe??). he also runs a revamped gummi shop, with assistance from chip and dale

speaking of chip and dale, they've been busy. on top of inventing the gummiphone, they've also set up an inter-world network to connect the computers in disney castle and radiant garden, among other places, so they can share data, including the data from jiminy's journals

as a result, data riku gets a cameo as the equivalent of the network's clippy

over in the castle's lab, ienzo and leon are sorting through all of ansem the wise's notes for anything that might help sora or the town. they're working together, but the alliance is...uneasy. ienzo, dilan, and aeleus were, of course, with the people who kidnapped and experimented on civilians before inviting the darkness that destroyed everything. leon only agrees to their involvement on the condition that he supervises, and he always keeps his gunblade within reach

while leon manages the lab, yuffie manages aeleus and dilan as captain of the guard—or, as she calls it, Supreme Ninja Guardian. goofy congratulates her on the promotion! the two men don't particularly enjoy reporting to a teenager, but they also don't put up a fight because yuffie is actually quite reliable despite her antics, and she knows the town like the back of her hand. mainly they deal with any stray heartless that the claymore defense sytem doesn't catch. they feel that it's the least they can do

back in town, a new and improved shopping district has opened up, which is where you'll find aerith's gardening shop! you can trade her common cooking ingredients for specialty ones that she grows herself. when she's not running the shop, she's usually tending to the flowers around town or helping with the community garden

merlin's house hasn't changed, but it has moved, as is his tendency. it's now situated in a park on the outskirts of town, away from all the hubbub. since it's no longer being used as a base of operations, all the computer junk has been excised so he can finally have some peace and quiet. he's recently come into possession of a new project, which we'll get into later

after the events of this game, when ansem the wise has returned to radiant garden, he retires to live out the remainder of his days in peace, leaving the lab in ienzo's hands. the town has moved on without him and has no need for the rulers of its past. his former apprentices, especially ienzo, visit him from time to time, and i think he'd get on well with merlin

-----

axel and kairi

okay so axel and kairi! remember how both of them are from radiant garden? well instead of locking the two of them in a hyperbolic time chamber while the plot stalls out, how about letting them hang out here and bond over the things they have in common?

imagine axel's history with me. lea knew kairi's grandma as the kind old lady down the road who would hand out treats to all the neighborhood kids. he and isa once played a childish prank on her and got in heaps of trouble with their parents. they had to apologize to her in front of a crowd, which convinced them to never pull a stunt like that again (instead, they pivoted toward sneakier, much more dangerous stunts)

axel is also roughly the same age as leon (based on kh1 concept art and inference) so they probably went to school together, though they hung out with different crowds. leon remembers lea as an obnoxious class clown, but axel remembers squall as a broody punk. i think they'd get along now. imagine the banter

since they're not doing any dumb keyblade training

axel takes kairi on a tour of the town and shows her where her grandmother's house was. unfortunately, the lot is now empty, having been cleared of the wreckage. as tribute, kairi picks some of the nearby flowers and lays them in the place it used to stand

her conversations with axel help to clear up some of her hazy memories, which is something she's always been a little scared to do, but now something for which she's grateful. axel's just glad that he's doing something good for once

as kairi's happy memories begin to resurface, so too do the bad ones, and eventually they lead her deep within the castle to the ark where xehanort upended her life. she finds another one of xehanort's reports here with cryptic hints about what his intentions really were—something related to what he calls "the other side" of light and darkness

this concept is vaguely familiar to ienzo as something he overheard in the castle as a child, but he doesn't know any more about it. with any luck, something will turn up in ansem's notes

and then there's subject x, the girl axel and saix befriended inside the castle as children. i'll talk more about this further down

-----

gameplay

one of the defining features of the rebuilt radiant garden is that all the new architecture allows for a variety of ways to get around. you can take the stairs and bridges, of course, but you can also glide along the aqueducts, climb over rooftops, and swing across steel beams

i have a specific vision of being able to parkour your way up and down the outside of the castle on a series of jungle gym contraptions

it should also be noted that i have nothing but disdain for kh3's wall running ability, as i feel it takes all the fun out of platforming, so go ahead and pretend that doesn't exist

in addition to the gardening shop, the new shopping district houses the item, weapon, and accessory shops (manned by, who else, donald's nephews) as well as a moogle emporium for synthesis and keyblade upgrades

i'm also moving remi and the bistro here since twilight town is getting the axe. nothing else about them or the cooking minigames is changing, because they're fun and cute and i like them as is <3 i think scrooge decided to open shop here to stimulate the town's burgeoning economy. it's his way of helping

the outdoor movie theater can come too since it's related to the classic kingdom minigames. just stick it in a corner somewhere

-----

the castle

while the castle was being renovated, leon and the others uncovered even more secret passages, because this building is a lovecraftian nightmare. this is one of the areas barred off from the general public, but leon says that sora can go check it out whenever he has time. he might even join the party? 🤔

the passages lead deep into the earth and appear to be so old that ansem the wise may not have even known they existed

i've gotta tread lightly when it comes to lore that might be overturned in the future, but basically i want this to be an optional dungeon, à la cavern of remembrance, that hints at a connection to scala ad caelum and/or daybreak town. but the specifics are undecided

maybe the dark inferno boss can be moved here?? gotta think more about that one

also related to exploring the castle, i think we should get to see the chamber of repose and the prison cells connected to it, possibly by way of the new passages. both of these things play a role in the story

the chamber represents the part of xemnas that remembers being terra, which is something i want to flesh out more in this AU, to give xemnas more of an identity than master xehanort's goon. perhaps he and anti-aqua (see here for details) have a confrontation? imagine aqua discovering her armor in xemnas's secret clubhouse, imagine how conflicted she'd feel about him being her enemy

as for the prison...

-----

subject x

the prison cells once housed a girl known only by the designation of "subject x," a girl whom team nort seems very interested in these days

when subject x vanished, apprentice xehanort's experiments were brought to an abrupt halt. now, ansem SoD, ever the scientist, is spearheading the search to find the test subject that got away so he can finally complete the research he started all those years ago

saix, meanwhile, has been waiting for this opportunity since the day he joined the organization, and so volunteers to assist. if he plays his cards right, he may be able to kill two birds with one stone: find his friend, and commit subterfuge

but while ansem SoD is convinced that his old master had something to do with the girl's disappearance, saix is more perceptive. he had never trusted xigbar to begin with, but now the man is acting even more suspicious whenever the topic arises

at some point i want saix to go pester axel and try to deliver a covert message about the organization's plans, including subject x. he's a double agent, after all

axel doesn't have much reason to trust saix, but he takes the hint and goes to check the prison cell where they talked to her. what he finds is evidence that she must have been taken by someone within the castle, i.e. a keycard or something

basically i want saix and axel to have a more active role in this plot thread, seeing as it's the reason they joined the organization in the first place

unfortunately the subject x stuff can't really be resolved in this game since we still don't know her identity for sure. but since she's definitely from the union x era, i'm thinking maybe i can leave a clue in that optional dungeon, along with all the other stuff related to the age of fairytales

-----

hundred acre woods

also when those secret passages in the castle were uncovered, they found something else of interest: another volume of the winnie the pooh books, which merlin has been studying. it's in pretty bad condition, and while he's been trying to restore it, he's hit a wall, and so asks sora to check it out from the inside

inside, sora discovers that the books contain a shared universe, but the pathway to the first book is blocked due to the damage to the book's structure

it's implied that there's a whole series of these books, which merlin has been trying to collect for millenia

i'm cutting the entire plot of kh3's hundred acre woods because it goes nowhere and i hate it. what i would like to do is find a way to shoehorn in the plot of the tigger movie, but i haven't thought it through

in any case, you can count on more minigames 💃

-----

miscellaneous thoughts that didn't fit anywhere else

i wonder how riku feels about being back in the castle where he experienced his darkest moments. i go back and forth about this

in case you're wondering, my headcanon is that cloud isn't from radiant garden. i haven't decided if he's showing up in this AU, but if he does, it'll be in a different world. maybe he keeps in touch with aerith though?

with all that said, i would be down for a rinoa cameo! kh2 got my hopes up ;__;

i have an inkling of a potential tron/rinzler cameo by virtue of the bug blox appearing in san fransokyo. haven't worked through all that though. maybe the inter-world network intercepts a rogue signal that corrupts some data in the hollow bastion OS or something, idk

speaking of which, i know i also want to loop yen sid in to the network, simply because i never want to see the inside of his tower ever again. this could have been an email etc. etc. and if i have anything to say about it, it will be

i guess i could connect twilight town as well, but the problem is that nothing happens there, which is why i wanted to remove it in the first place

[bitchfitch]

Tbh this is more me bitching about once again wasting money on a game I probably won't be able to finish due to cripple-itus but we're going to pretend it's a serious discussion on game design.

So to preface: my vision is fucked. Irrevocably. Like get discounts on insurance levels of fucked. But games, even very difficult ones still Often very doable and fun.

One of my favorite genres is "white dot goes on a combat platforming adventure" Ie metroidvania/soulslikes that either Are hollow knight or heavily inspired by hollow knight

And I just want to compare a Good white dot, against an extremely irritating white dot.

This is yi. He is an edgy cat boy. he is a good white dot.

No matter the amount of bullshit on screen or the background color, you can always quickly find the white dot that is Yi or his lil robe.

This Bo. They are a bad white dot. they look like they'd be a Good white dot, what with the really clear silhouette of their ears and strong red markings

This is Bo in the game.

Bo breaks the number 1 rule of being a white dot: they end up the same color as the background because neat light effects which do look Great, were more important than the ability to find you're guy while doing minute long don't touch the ground style parkour sessions.

Like Hollowknight and Nine Sols, Path of the teal lotus uses a lot of forground and back ground layers to create a very nice sense of depth. However the foreground layers frequently completely cover the lower half of Bo's body. often making them a light colored dot on a noisy light colored back ground.

The fact background and play ground elements are often the same color does not help. Nor does the fact the camera is . Bad. it just is. It zooms in and out in the middle of a screen making it extremely difficult to keep track of an already hard to follow character in a setting where. losing track of your guy means getting sent back to the beginning of a tedious boss fight or a prolonged parkour session (which to be clear, would be good if you could track your player character. not the bosses though. They are. bad. they need to attack faster, have more than 2 attacks, or at least have a fraction of the HP they do. so you're not just standing around waiting for them to decide to start up another attack to open a vulnerability window.)

And I'm just going to say it, Someone on the team knew the game had this issue. Because they gave you a fix that doesn't work. You can adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation. None of these fix the issue of Bo disappearing. The game is so blown out that no combination of settings produce a result where bo is consistently visible, and also you can tell whats background and what's something you can stand on.

Anyways Demos are an accessibility feature, and when they're not available don't be lazy like I was and just pirate it. If the devs aren't going to give you a way to check if their shit is busted or not, you'll just have to find one yourself.

Anyways anyways tldr absolutely Gorgeous game, Should've been a silent animated movie instead because it's nearly unplayable and the translators either did a Really bad job, or the writers just didn't get why the jokes they're copying were funny

[meltran]

i finally played pathologic 2 and i dont know anyone who played pathologic 2. so im writing the thoughts here. these are my thoughts on pathologic 2, from someone who thinks pathologic 1 is perfect

i hate to go reviewer brain on this but im conflicted so let's go reviewer brain and start with The Positives

the spectacle is truly wonderful. seeing the town recreated in clear autumnal glory, having kids walking around and actually talking to and playing with eachother, the architecture of each building being ramped up in its strangeness. the poetic item descriptions and the implications thereof in the culture. as a base to build a game off of this is all a fantastic progression of patho1's game world

the new gameplay elements also feed into this, the factory being a proper base you can do upgrades in, the children's caches hidden around and the world they convey, the weirdness of the dead item shop, having an actual job you have to do and get paid for is especially fantastic!!!

for the first few days this liveliness is very pronounced and theres lots of good character moments, a profundity of activities, there continues to be some of this throughout the game. there wasn't a point where i was thinking this is bad or anything

but also... as a game called 'pathologic 2', somethings missing, isnt it...? it's not just that there's only one character out of three - even with that in mind it feels like the game doesnt really scratch some of its surfaces. when i think of any route of pathologic it feels hopelessly dense, overloaded with information, almost every single character getting at least one long monologue about something that is connected to what multiple other characters are doing at this time. patho2's interactions feel (i must stress 'feel', im sure a few great ones could be pointed out to me) on average lighter by a lot, which works well for when there is a profundity of things happening at any given time but that's not a constant for the whole game. at which point the "extremely choreographed walk from monologue to monologue" retains some power over what exists now

(the move AWAY from that, towards something 'alive', is a valiant goal. but it's merely a goal.)

and none of this would bother me that much if i played the game in a vacuum. the focus of patho2 is different than patho1 and that is to be expected and valued. it's a new game, and the things that distinguish it are what make it worthwhile to exist. it's a great game, and a part of a whole (the series as a whole), all things are connected by the lines

but it's just a bit frustrating in the context of the way people talk about these games: "patho1 was the limited unplayable game, its not what they REALLY wanted to make. patho2 is the actual successful execution of those ideas, that's the one you SHOULD play". certainly some ideas got to be brought to life in 2 that were sterile in 1 (see above), but i'm trying to imagine a world where patho2 is the first or only game in the series someones played, and it just doesn't work!!! the disarmingness of the game mechanics is striking for all players, but there is simply not enough there for the characters to feel fleshed out for a newcomer - the kains dont really do anything, the political power struggle rarely comes into play, the bachelor and changeling are very funny when you meet them but rarely interact with anything you're doing, aspity is... just not interesting, and even when i keep in mind that many characters only do a couple things per route in 1, the characters in 2 simply don't talk about eachother enough. the illusion of life breaks and the existence of life can't compensate throughout most of the game. we know a lot of characters opinions of eachother in 1, but 2 will just quickly brush over a thing we knew from 1 or not mention it at all, and not develop it too much further

again that's not universal, the new connections between your personal childhood friend group are great!! but they don't keep their relevance either, you dont get to keep meeting with them throughout the game as a group and discuss whats going on. i thought i must have missed a lot by how many characters in my game died (a very cool new addition), but when i look it up there was only a handful of things. maybe those would have been enough to change my experience, but it's much less than i expected. and so the overall sense i get of the game is empty... i was thinking "im gonna HAVE to replay this one" but it doesnt seem like it would be as rewarding as it gives the illusion of being

which again iiiis fiiine because theres a lot i enjoyed in whats in there. but u have to think about how the pathologic subreddit is almost always talking about patho2 without even having to specify it when someone makes a thread asking a specific question. its just assumed that people only play patho2. so how does this fandom even work??? why do people care about eva yan or the stamatin brothers or anna angel or aspity or the kains or saburovs or the bachelor or clara or general block if they have only played the game that barely goes into their deals? is it solely feeding off fan fic and fanart by those who have dug deeper??? probably i guess but that's very strange to me!!! or youtubers and i restate my usual take that people who make videos about pathologic should by and large be bullied for pushing this narrative of "oh patho 1 is SOOO hard and miserable you could NEVER play it unless youre a skilled hyper gamer which almost none of us are cause we're so weak. only i can play it and interpret it because im smart" like they work at a church or something. also patho2 is a lot more crushing of a game. to be honest.

(re: general block: the army is like barely in this game? block gets hidden away somewhere by longin and people talk about that a lot but longin is literally not in the game so what??? they couldve reworked the entire military presence to make them wayyy more involved it couldve been cool)

some of this is even echoed by the devisers - btw i can barely find any convo on the devisers or the PTB's role in this game or isidor ghazar or mark's quantum mechanics moment which are all the actually interesting and cool new deep lore parts of this game. theres actually MORE talk about p1's deeplore. so idk what's up with that - but anyway one of the devisers says to you "We're wasting years copying what already existed, and we have no time to add anything original on top." like thats literally in the game, in present tense. the limitations of patho2 as a work are part of what patho2 is so idk i think to get real value from it we have to engage it as a work on its own and not "pathologic remake" which is what everyone wants it to be even though its so inadequete at being that

so speaking of which, getting into analysis, those ending choices, huh? i only saw diurnal myself because why would i come all this way and not cure the plague. but the choice you have is interesting here because its a sort of nullification of the choices you had in patho1. which were destroy the polyhedron, destroy the town, or instate the invisible storm but dont do that one. the polyhedron was the ultimate symbol of modernity, an eternal end of history, while the town was culture as a progression of real peoples lives. but now, destroying the polyhedron is destroying the cultural history. one is entwined with the other and can't be untangled. so if you come into this from patho1 (AS YOU SHOULD) the choice is extra unsatisfying because the dichotomy is eating its own tail. i don't think either one feels particularly meaningful honestly - other people have pointed out that the game ultimately asking you to choose between the parts of your racial ancestry shuts down whatever interesting things might have been happening in the game regarding your racial ancestry

i think thats true (i AM unsatisfied with that entire story compared to its enormous potential... though i did miss some shekhen content, love that place's existence) but im feeling a bit more positive because i know that pathologic 3 will come out this very year. which is not the bachelor's story in the sense it was originally designed but what i mean is i know theres a future for the series so i can think about what they were trying to do here without despairing over "wouldve been good if they could do that"

in patho1 clara's route can only be played after playing another character's, and concludes a lot of themes from the other routes. its not that it necessarily concludes them, u can get the secret scenes for example in the others, but if you play them in order clara's is already aware of and interacting with deeplore, so there's a clear progression. and in patho2 mark refers to "the next play"... i think part of what you'd probably be doing if youre doing a "more modern" take on pathologic is to actually track progression more directly and have a specific ending scene for playing all three characters, right? that's not how it would go now, but i wonder if the endings of haruspex is made with that in mind. i wonder if the plan was that mark is aware of you the player's progression and each play would end unsatisfyingly no matter what, with mark vowing to do it better next time, culminating in the ability not to unlock a proper ending, but to at least argue about your situation. it's suggested at one point that artemy may have been a real person at one point and the play is merely a restaging of his actions in the past - which of course it is, pathologic 2 is a self-aware adaptation of 1 literally and in-universe. so the endings don't point towards any real future for the town, but if they solved the issues at hand there'd be no reason for a next play... the true goal can only occur in sequence, sequences within sequences

while im here, the powers that be saying they want me to destroy the polyhedron because they want to grow up is a good contender for most unsettling thing in any of these games!? wtf would it mean for the demiurges of this world to grow up??? is that good or bad for us?? this too would be part of the metanarrative that i assume will continue in the now-sequels

while i did find the parts of the game that are less interesting retreads to be, less interesting, so much of the new stuff and the new themes its trying to get at are fascinating for me to think about ... the idea of a "real human" gets brought up a lot and i'd need to look at some of those convos again. the invisibles-esque idea that all of what we go through, both us as a player and the town as a world, is a form of growth needed to achieve our real potential, which is not superhuman but, in fact, actually, truly human. it's a development of themes that WERE in 1 (games as a way to process and understand death, the effort to use the game as a turing test and/or focus to determine the presence of human consciousness) but it's a new side to this. isidor and simon (and georgiy in the marble nest, who is basically simon) devised a plan, an ideology, that is cruel and painful but also a necessary step in the road to true consciousness... at the end of the marble nest you can tell the executor that you're ready to accept the bachelor's death because you are not the bachelor, and it shows you a door at the top of one of peter's staircases... so what i'm saying is, i am god and so are you and we are awakening from our collective dream of separation (which - its just hitting me now - is so obvious if we're dolls of the powers that be. because a hand is holding it and doing a funny little voice, but really, it's all just that hand, isn't it. straw dolls with nametags...) (is the ultimate endgame of this story transcendental growth for everyone involved? for the ptb to grow up into adults, which involves slowly piece by piece putting away each one of their toys, which involves the toys themselves remembering what they are beyond their individualistic sense of ego???? oh my god????)

[willowtron]

KCD1 steam review that went over the character limit

I was originally going to wait until I'd played KCD2 until I made a final decision, but after having replayed much of this on Hardcore and with absolute confirmation that there'll be no transfer of save profiles, I don't really see a point in waiting.

KCD1 was, largely, a proof of concept; and it shows. Even years after release there are some quests that are IMMENSELY buggy, to the point where portions of the game become unplayable if you make some (very easy to make) "mistakes" in the way you approach certain quests - if you don't want to cross-reference with the wiki to make sure you don't routinely lose hours of progress, then read no further.

Aside from the truly game-breaking bugs, KCD1 is also rife with just… jank. it is a game that is utterly lacking in cze- sorry, polish. Animations, both body and facial, can look goofy and amateurish; movement oftentimes feels clunky, especially on horseback and while crouching; many of the ways you interact with the world (brewing potions, picking up items, talking with other characters) have needlessly long single-animations, that Might make you feel more immersed, but usually just feel repetitive and out-of-place. Need to both boil water, and turn a sandglass? Unfortunately Henry is utterly incapable of using his peripheral vision and must look directly at everything he's doing at all times, so that's not possible.

Your body in-game rarely feels like an extension of your own limbs and capabilities; anything taller than an inch must be jumped over, and unless the obstacle is tall enough for the same "mantle" animation to play, you'll do a full-height squat jump every single time you need to traverse a small rock or plank. If you're crouching and walking, expect to get stuck on every single little thing, even the ones that are invisible. Some trees and shrubs can be walked through, others not, it's not always clear which is which - bad news if you're on horseback! Now you've fallen off and hit your head, idiot. These little examples of feeling like a human piloting a character, rather than feeling immersed as a human within the world, are the main things that really break KCD's spell; the game is Gorgeous, and when you just… stand there, and admire it, you really do start to feel pulled in. But then some random wayfarer, eyes glazed over, walks really slowly into your horse and yells at you about it, and the illusion is broken again.

It's not all bad (though we're not done with that yet); the game is beautiful visually, as mentioned, and also well-optimised - for a game that was pushing the limits of technical possibility on release, it still does a good job seven years later. The sound design and soundtrack are wonderful, and there are select songs I will go out of my way to listen to just in my day-to-day, which is always a good sign to me. The UI can feel a little awkward at times, the scroll bar just a little too small to make use of, but ultimately looks good and is easy to navigate; the only negative of it being that the animation to go from "menus" to "game", and vice versa, is really quite long - and the game doesn't pause During this animation, which can lead to some shenanigans while riding your horse and checking the map.

The thing that truly wowed me with this game, and that had me so invested in seeing the original vision fully-realised in the sequel, was the sheer number of mechanics this game has: there is a stealth system; there is a lockpicking minigame; there is proper archery with drag and drop-off on arrows; there is a developed combat system; towns and traders will be altered depending on crime rate, items sold, opinion of the player, etc; there is a developed alchemy system (my personal favourite); training your dog can give you more options (though I think Mutt is really poorly implemented); there are hunting spots that go hand-in-hand with the archery; the list goes on. The game is doing A LOT, even when you're not really interacting with NPCs. But these mechanics are often surface-level; which is to be expected of a proof-of-concept, but it's worth noting regardless. Yeah, the game does technically Have these systems, but many of them are… lacking. The more complicated it is, the less you'll be able to appreciate it; simple things like lockpicking and alchemy feel really good most of the time, but as soon as NPC interactions are added (villagers, guards, Mutt, game animals) the mechanics start to fall flat.

To give a couple of examples; hunting, and the "evolving towns". Red Dead Redemption 2 really gave us the prime example for how to bake Hunting into a videogame; when you go out for meat or skins or fun in RDR2, you choose an area with the desired animal, and have all sorts of options. Even when you're not using your tracking sense, you can still hear the specific calls of different animals, you can still set up bait, you can physically see the tracks in the world. Compared to RDR2, KCD's hunting mechanic feels like a 6 year old's best effort; animals spawn in a specific location (usually only while the camera isn't facing them), and then they just… wander away, usually in a group, in a straight line. "Hunting spots" in the game aren't where animals Gather, they're where animals Spawn, and if you miss them spawning? Well, wander away, and walk back again to prompt them to spawn again. It feels… like a game. Immersion breaking. These aren't animals in the world that you're choosing to hunt, they exist purely TO BE hunted, and the game treats them as such.

And then the evolving towns. This was actually advertised pretty heavily in the game's marketing, that if you steal from towns and villages then the number of guards will increase, you'll be searched more often, villagers will be more suspicious; and all of this is exacerbated still by a poor reputation. This is really cool in concept; imagine a wealthy shop-owner awakening to find his most valuable merchandise has been taken in the night! Of course there'd be an effort to find the thief. Or a guard stumbles upon a corpse in a back-alley, the torchlight revealing a pool of blood and a sack of meat where once a person existed - of course they would double the guard! But in practice the system is over-simplified; guards will never search NPCs or be suspicious of anyone that isn't the player, and nobody but the player will ever commit crimes except for a random "pickpocket" event that, again, is just there for the player. You'll never see increased security or suspicion if Cumans or Banditry is prevalent in an area, and there are several farmsteads or villages that are raided throughout the game, but you'd never know by the way people react. So what ends up happening is this: if you commit no crimes, no guard will ever stop you for a random search, nor comment on you being suspicious. If you do commit crimes, even if nobody sees you, you will be searched frequently. This isn't intended to punish players for choosing a more rogueish Henry, I think, but it does have the same end result.

Finally, the elephants in the room; writing/story, and combat.

The game's story is… not uncompelling, but it does lose wind about halfway through. In general it does a good job of recognising that the player will be well-equipped and skilled before the game's conclusion, so it shifts from "rags to riches" to more "investigation and exploration", and that shift is subtle enough that I don't imagine a player being put off by it. You still get to fight bandits and Cumans, you still get to be Henry, so it works. However, I did find I just… didn't really care so much about the actual contents of what I was doing. There's a certain point where. following a large-scale battle, you defeat a major antagonist and sort of complete the "rags to riches" arc. You are at this point a skilled swordsman, known and respected by the nobles of the region, and presumed to have the financial means to basically do as you please; but you won't move on to the next antagonist you actually care about within the scope of this game. These next two sort-of-major antagonists are also the only gay characters in the story, and they're essentially portrayed as just shit-eating backstabbers and weasels, so... make of that what you will.

Actually, while I'm here and not on Steam, can we talk about women, queerness, and people of colour within the context of the game? I'm not someone who believes every game needs to explore themes of marginalisation, but you're telling me every single person you encounter is the exact same pasty white? That gay people only exist as ratty villains? I'm pretty sure the game goes out of its way to fail the Bechdel test, where even the "casual chatter" that townsfolk will have is almost always centered around either the player's actions or their husbands/brothers. Women in particular are portrayed almost exclusively within context to the men in their lives, which while accurate to the sexism that existed in the period, does leave the game feeling sort of... Male power fantasy? There's not really a single instance of a woman who is confident, independent, and level-headed, who does not also rely upon being saved by a man at some point in the story. The game addresses this slightly with the "A Woman's Lot" DLC, but man even Theresa and Johanka essentially just... they have their moments of independence, but largely facilitated by you, as Henry, giving them that ability. Anyway.

The latter half of the game's story is, far more than anything so far, obviously a set-up for the sequel; you can tell at this point that either this game is like... five times larger than you thought it would be, or that you're not seeing the conclusion to the story any time soon. The former is not the case.

Which brings us to the really big issue; the combat system.

KCD has, throughout its existence, walked a fine-line in regard to the actual controls; the game was designed to be both controller and mouse+keyboard accessible, and was released for both PC and console accordingly. This makes some things feels better or worse on different systems; stealth and horsemanship feel better on controller, where you can more easily control finer movement and speed, but feel bad on mkb because you can't do that; archery and the lockpicking minigame feel better on PC, on the other hand, because the mouse offers even greater fine motor control against the drag and sway the mechanics have.

Melee combat on a controller is always going to be a difficult thing to get right in a game that is styled as immersive and complex; there are a few examples of games that have tried in the multiplayer genre, like For Honour and Mordhau, and the classic souls-like examples for single-player games - but these games usually have to make sacrifices along the way (Elden Ring isn't exactly "complex" during a sword fight), or have combat as their main focal point with by far the largest amount of dev time invested into that mechanic.

KCD attempts to simplify this; combat with a sword can be split into 4 basic actions, with a little extra depth given to each one. You can slash, you can thrust, you can block, and you can dodge.

When slashing, you move your mouse or joystick in one of five directions to control the direction you slash from (up, right, left, down-right, and down-left - like the axes of a five-pointed star). The thrust is basically just a sixth option on the star. As you improve your skills, you can learn combos (which are only unlocked via level-up perks), that will allow you to chain together strikes into a Powerful Move (a little animation plays and you basically get one extra free hit in). These combos can range from three specific consecutive strikes (up, right, down-left) to five; the more strikes, the stronger it is.

Blocking, meanwhile, can be broken up into three "tiers", and can be done with or without a shield; you can block all incoming attacks by just holding Q, but you will not interrupt any enemy attacks and you'll still take some damage. The higher your shield or weapon's defense stat the less damage you'll take, but it's basically never zero, and not interrupting your opponents attacks will allow them to perform combos on you with ease. If you want a better block, you need to perform a "perfect block"; this is essentially just blocking early on in the attack. There'll be a cool little slow-motion effect, and you'll have the ability to perform a riposte, which can only be blocked by another perfect block from your opponent. And finally there's the Master Strike, which trivialises all combat.

The Master Strike is essentially the Perfect Parry from other games; you press Q at just the right time, and an animation plays where you both block the enemy attack, and hit them with your own at the same time. It's very easy to perform, and there's no way to block or avoid it once the animation starts. This can also be performed on you, at any time, if you choose to attack with a slash, thrust, or riposte. This has two major consequences;

Performing long chains of attacks for a powerful combo becomes essentially impossible against an opponent who can perform either a Perfect Block or a Master Strike, and those combos are a waste against enemies who can't (they'll be weak little peasants who you can just bully anyway). Landing one good hit isn't enough to knock your opponent "off balance", nor drain their stamina enough to prevent them from blocking, so you have to just be really lucky basically; if a Master Strike is performed by your opponent at any time during your combo, it is likely you'll take more damage than they will have.

Attacking at all becomes kind of... pointless? You can just stand there and press Q at the right time, not touching the rest of your setup at all, and you're literally unbeatable. Compare that against the risk of having it done to you, and the combat becomes a game of pressing one singular button over and over.

There are other gripes, too; the stamina mechanic, which is used both to prevent the player from wildly swinging and also to mitigate damage from incoming attacks, oftentimes feels clunky when facing opponents. Master Strikes and Perfect Blocks are really cheap, stamina-wise, so defending is always better than attacking in regard to your stamina economy against an opponent with any skill at all; even if you've hit them with three or four solid attacks in a row, that they weren't able to block regularly, they can still turn it around and injure you by performing a Master Strike.

We also need to talk about the FOV, camera controls, and combat against multiple opponents; your Field of View, as the game is designed for both PC and Console, is very limited. You basically don't have peripheral vision. Enemies will abuse this by just sort of... awkwardly jogging through your player model when fighting multiple of them, and then attack from your sides or from behind; behind, fair enough, but in real life the attacks from the side would actually be visible to you and you would be able to react to them. Not here.

You may have also noted a while ago, that if you need to move your mouse/joystick to control which direction you slash from, then how are you meant to move the camera? Well, you don't. During combat the game will lock your cursor onto an opponent, and that lock can only be broken by sprinting - the game does technically have an "unlock camera" button during combat, but it's not a toggle, so it just immediately locks back on again. Against multiple opponents you have to use the scroll wheel to individually cycle through each opponent until you're locked onto the right one; try blocking attacks from specific enemies when you have to go through that. To really drive home how frustrating this can be as well, the game doesn't really do verticality in attacks. You're always just swinging directly ahead of you, with no regard for elevation - even relative to your opponent.

The player camera also moves in uncontrolled ways when you get hit; the harder you get hit, the more your camera gets thrown about. Realistic perhaps, but with the limited field of view and lock-on camera, you spend most of the time in combat utterly powerless to control how you look around. In my opinion, this is the thing that makes the game the least accessible; you genuinely have to be pretty resistant to motion sickness for this to not feel awful every time. Combine this with a "fade-to-monochrome" effect when your stamina is low, as well as low-res blood effects when your head is bleeding, and the visual experience in combat is just abysmal (and exacerbated by the, yet again, limited field of view if your helmet has a visor).

On the other side of this, however, opponents will awkwardly teleport around in order to block your attacks; if you land a hit and see your opponent flail to one side, leaving their other side entirely exposed, this doesn't actually mean that side is undefended. They'll just... teleport back into place in order to block your next attack as well. Against opponents who are actually out of stamina but still blocking this weird little side-to-side teleportation can occur over, and over, and over again. This for me is actually the main dealbreaker for the combat not feeling immersive or realistic; the game strays away from the animations and visuals actually mattering in these moments, instead opting for a more casual experience - but it only applies to your opponents. And don't forget! The especially skilled ones will perform a Master Strike and now you're taking damage, actually. Idiot.

The final nail in the coffin, putting aside how attacks work out of combat and the awkward clinch mechanics, is how the game reacts when you try to run. One of the game's tips during the loading screens is to "run away, live to fight another day"; but! Would you have guessed it! Enemies have a sort of... gravitational pull. Even if you manage to break the camera lock, and have enough stamina to start sprinting away, enemies can perform weird little animations that just suck you back in; like being grabbed and pulled around, but while their hands are full. No amount of strength can prevent this from happening, and certain animations will also hurt you in the process - if you want to slash at me while I run that's fair enough, but it feels bad when my character, clad in full-plate, then just... turns around and looks at the enemy, camera lock kicking in again. Against multiple opponents they might drag you about for several seconds at a time, being pulled by one counting as you moving out of range for another, so the animation triggers again; and all of this contributes significantly to the feeling that you have no control over your camera or your movement, as the camera is thrown all over the place during these animations.

To top this off, you can't surrender to most opponents; Cumans and Bandits alike only want you dead, you can't just... offer your valuables for safe passage. The only people you can surrender to are guards, and they only attack if you commit crimes and are wanted, so 90% of the time your choices in combat are:

Fight, usually in a 1v3 or 1v4

Run (can't, they'll suck you back in)

So really, until you have good gear and levels, your only option to avoid boring or frustrating combat is to just... avoid it. If you have a horse you can try mounted combat (which is basically just doing a weak little sword swish), but your first horse spooks so easily that you'll get thrown off if you're anyway near an enemy (which is usually instant death). And did I mention the game does surprise ambushes at random points along the road? Good luck avoiding combat, bucko :)

Oh, and you need an expensive consumable item to save.

[nitrosodiumfmpsequel]

Stress Testing Part 1: Fixing Lag

On the last day before the Easter holidays, I have decided to do some more playtesting, and get people to search for as many glitches and problems as they could in the game.

I could only get three playtesters (everyone else seemed to be busy with their own projects), but the advice was still very constructive. I will go through the different problems one by one.

Lag problems: These are definitely an issue. As previously stated, the computers give texture streaming error messages and when resource-intensive actions take place like opening doors, I get a message that the video memory has been exhausted.

Softlock room: I never even considered this could happen until the playtesting. This could be solved with a way out of the room, a switch to open or close it from the other side, or a 'restart level' button for situations like this.

Robot dialogue glitch: This is not a glitch, I've intentionally done this. There is a clear way to stop the conversation, and if the player doesn't want to do that and keep the subtitles on their screen then I've given them the option. There's not really a situation, at least in the first level, where the player couldn't just finish the conversation manually and get the widget off their screen.

"Wedgy got me stuck": This refers to jutting sections of the starting hole killing the player's momentum. This can be solved by putting collision boxes on the shaft sides to smooth out the descent. This is difficult to explain, so I will go into more detail in its own post.

"Rocks made me loose my cool": This refers to the rubble piles severely affecting the framerate.

The lag is the prime issue here, since it does make the game near-unplayable. I spoke with a friend on his issue and he said that the problem likely lies with the textures. I may have accidentally imported 8k textures, which would therefore be causing the "Texture Streaming Pool Over Budget" error messages, and the quality is a moot point anyway because these monitors only go up to 4k. However, the rubble model is obviously causing a problem that goes beyond texturing.

I opened the level in Wireframe Mode and was pretty stunned - the rubble has so many polygons that it looks like a neural network! This is obviously causing the issue, so I deleted them and played through the level to test. The lag issues were completely fixed. Obviously, I still want a rubble model of some kind, so I went back to Fab.

As it happens, I had been using the "raw" variant of the model, which was 400 megabytes, six times larger than the high variant. I had obviously imported some ultra-high resolution model by accident, and so I decided to reimport, using the low quality version.

This looks just as good in my opinion, since I wasn't aiming for hyperrealism anyway. I am still getting warnings about the texture streaming pool though, and I suspect this is caused by the vines. I checked the Unreal forums and found this post which suggests to me that foliage is notoriously hard to optimize in UE5. Given that I am getting errors about texture streaming, it is possible that the vine texture is too high-definition.

I imported the low-res version of the Broom Creeper texture, and it seemed to cut the texture streaming over-budget by about 50 MiB (possibly megabytes, but I don't know) - of course, it is still overbudget. I'm really not sure what's causing it, but it could be the wall textures themselves, so that's worth taking a look at too.

As it happens, the Sandstone Blocks texture (used for the floor) is an 8k texture, and the rest are 4k, which is still fairly high. I can probably reimport the two I use (Sandstone Blocks and Clay Plaster) as 2k textures, and that'd save me a lot of headache.

Here's the game with 8K and 4k textures.

This is the game with 2K textures. The difference is impossibly minimal, but somehow the texture streaming overbudget went up. I don't know how to fix this, but it isn't creating any more lag, so we can consider this a success for now. To conclude, I will be more careful when downloading models and textures in outrageously high resolutions.

[gwynbleiddyn]

sighs i feel so. bad. about playing destiny

no matter how much i try i havent been able to find a group or a niche that consistently runs a) same time as me and b) is actually co-operative with my disability and doesn't just delegate me to random backfill or ad clear

like i spend hours learning dungeons and raids only to not do them. i'm so willing to teach if people have a little patience. i've been kicked from so many lfgs once they realise i'm not on comms. people say it isn't an issue but it absolutely is and nobody seems interested in navigating it and it makes me so freaking sad that one of my all time favourite games is so fucking unplayable to me

[crystalelemental]

Okay, I'm giving up on Class of Heroes. I do not have the attachment to deal with this.

The specific finisher that broke me is the final boss, Demorea. Even before this, there were two earlier boss fights that effectively came down to "keep reloading and fighting them until you get one with lower HP totals." Each one of them hits for like 700+ damage, which is infinitely more than I can possibly have, takes so little damage even from spells that unless we kill in one round we cannot beat them, and even with my Party Skill to boost team defense, we still all die. The only solution is to mindlessly grind in dungeons until we are statistically strong enough to handle this shit, and I regret to inform you, I am not doing that. I'm sure we saved the day. I'm sure everything's fine. I'm not sticking around to find out.

I want to like this game. I really do. I think I generally like the idea of a dungeon crawler, but this is the least reinforcing game I have ever played. At a bare minimum, your gameplay loop is "go explore, come back to town when you're carrying too much." Easy.

Problem 1: you have to identify the items you got. Hope you have one of two classes that can do that, and also that they're a good enough level to handle the identification if you get bigger items.

Problem 2: If you identify, you then have to divine the alchemy recipe to make it. Most don't show up at all, and you can buy the recipe book, but they're exorbitantly expensive, and you can't know if what you bought is actually for the item you rolled.

Problem 3: Once you make that item, there is an exceptionally high chance that all of it is useless. Items are restricted by class, race, and gender, and more than likely you won't be able to use it anyway. Get a cool scythe usable by the Valkyrie? Oh sorry, you chose Celestia as your race, unavailable. Get a cool bow you want on a Ranger? Sorry, you didn't choose a Fairy, unusable. Hell, I found a super strong weapon that was clearly a boss drop for how expensive it was, only to find out you can only use it if you're male. I do not know how to deal with something like that.

It's awful. "But hey, at least you can level grind, right?"

Problem 1: Accuracy is so bad that you're more likely to miss than hit. I want to say "Thracia accuracy," but Thracia is generous compared to this shit. So level grinding is not only tedious, it's dangerous, because you can just keep missing while opponents beat your ass. Late game, enemies can just casually one-shot your back row for no discernible reason.

Problem 2: Even should you acquire level up, stats can go down. I have had no shortage of level ups where a character will just lose a point or two, gain shit for HP, and be worse after the level than before it.

Problem 3: Before anyone can guess at class allocation being off, know that taking on a new class resets your level to 1. This has a beneficial effect on HP should you just grind back up, as HP doesn't completely reset and early levels are easier to unlock. But it does absolutely annihilate your accuracy, which was already shit.

The game should feel unplayable, by all accounts. The only reason it doesn't is that the game has a surprisingly simple overall feel. I got through pretty much everything just fine, with only the occasional boss giving me any real trouble. But in another bizarre decision, this game randomizes boss HP, so you can just try again and there's a chance they're just overall worse off. Even when I started getting into these nigh-impossible endgame fights, the solution was pretty easy. Turn 1 apply buffs and debuffs, Turn 2 cast the party skill for boosted magic damage and fire. Provided they didn't roll really high numbers, most bosses dropped just fine. The major hiccup and the reason I'm not playing this any further is because the final boss is a two-phase, and there's no way to reliably clear a two-phase fight without grinding, which sucks.

"I mean...shouldn't that just be fairly simple at this point?" You'd think that, but no. As mentioned, late-game enemies can one-shot your back row, and there's a chance Revival fails, leading to becoming ash, which as I understand it is permanent death. Even casual fights that have one move that can surprise you are a huge threat.

But nothing beats the chests. Getting good equipment is fully a matter of opening chests, and all of them are trapped. Well. Not all, but close enough. Without one of the thief-aligned classes, you're basically dead upon opening a chest. With them...you're still probably dead because the game fucking lies to you. You can search it to identify the trap, but then it'll just be a different one half the time, or it'll be the exact one identified and that you attempted to disarm, but it'll go off anyway, and it's not a failed check because failing to disarm will just say "disarm failed," this is a different kind of fucked up event. Which is horrid, because there are some devastating chest effects. Medusa's Eye and Stun Gas are basically party-wipes. In the best case, it misses your healer and you continue no problem. In most cases, it might miss a character or two, but not anyone who can fix the status, leading to leaving. If it hits everyone, you lose instantly. Then there's Reaper's Scythe, which kills someone, leading to the hope they don't turn to ash. And there's one that lowers Stamina, a mechanic that is incomprehensible because it is never explained, but sucks ass.

Apparently, Stamina is age, and the lower the number, the older you get. What happens when you get older? Increased chance of stats going down on level up. Meaning this is, effectively, as good as killing your character forever. It is insane that this is considered something reasonable.

By all accounts the game is beatable. If I really wanted, I could spend the requisite...however long it takes to farm out a bunch of levels for this fight. It can be done. But I have zero interest in it. Runs are already empty enough without this feeling of not being able to make progress until I level like 50 times. I'm out. I'll try Class of Heroes 2, but if mechanics feel the same and I don't have it on good authority it gets better, this one may very well be a trade-in.

[ladyirisreviews]

Breath of Fire 2 - REVIEW

After playing Breath of Fire 1, I was very excited to see what the sequel brought to the table, and honestly, I am glad that I played this, despite not being exactly what I wanted out of it.

I'll skip the prelude to talk about the stuff that happens in the "current time".

The protagonist and his friend, Bow, are both orphans who became rangers when they grew up, but someone framed Bow for a crime he didn't commit, so he is forced to flee the village, and it's up to the protagonist to clear his name, You'll meet several characters along the way and discover something sinister brewing in the land.

In this game, characters are more fleshed out and move along the plot, unlike in the first game where it's only the bad guys showing up and you have to beat them up.

Characters still join you without much reason, but at least most of them get some spotlight, they still don't interact with each other but it is a step forward.

There's also a place where you can directly talk with them, and they will comment about what is going on, which I think is a neat detail even if the dialogue is shallow.

I wish they could have had dialogue for all of your party members every time the plot was progressing, but for the most part, they are as silent as the protagonist, the exceptions being when they are first introduced and when their time in the spotlight comes.

The plot is also a huge step forward, the introduction does a good job at building a specific type of atmosphere and some mystery, as well as having some pretty well-made cutscenes throughout the game.

It's still pretty simple, both the story and the characters, but it is a noticeable upgrade.

I also liked how in very few instances, the game used the battle screen to make a cutscene play, I thought it was pretty cool, and I wish the game used that trick more, it would have made some scenes even more impactful.

As much as I appreciate the work that was done in everything related to the writing, The translation work is kind of terrible.

There are multiple instances where the text will be badly formatted, sentences will have weird wording, pronouns will be wrong, and even options will do the opposite of what they say.

I like everything that the plot tried to do, but the horrible translation does bring it down a bit, thankfully it doesn't make the game unplayable, or make you unable to appreciate some of the stuff that it does.

But man, I wish they released a re-translation for it.

Now going into the combat.

Right off the bat, I think getting rid of the icons was a good choice for the UI, which felt kinda clunky in the first game.

On top of having an attack option and a special option, every character has a special skill unique to them.

The main character, for example, recovers HP depending on how low his HP currently is, the effect being stronger the lower it is.

I felt that overall they didn't influence the battles a lot, the one for the main character is nice but I felt all the others were disposable, but it is still cool that each character has unique stuff.

Also, you can defend and switch formations by pressing L or R.

Formations are kinda neat, it's a step above just making a character be in the front or back row, deciding the risk of a character being attacked in that way was interesting for me, and I found myself changing the formation multiple times during my time playing the game.

As for magic, there are points when it feels underwhelming, especially around the middle of the game, but at the start and the end, magic can pack a punch.

Which is a big upgrade compared to how it was in the first one, where the only worthwhile spells were the healing ones, weaknesses still feel like they are kind of an afterthought, but at least they exist.

I do have to say though that making bosses immune to all the status-inducing spells and debuffs is very lame, I don't mind bosses being immune to things like sleep or poison, but being immune to debuffs as well makes the debuffs feel completely worthless, you won't be needing them on random fights either, since they end very quickly.

Despite this, the combat feels like a huge step forward compared to the original game, bosses will have you managing resources and you will need to watch out for random fights towards the end of the game.

A lot of random encounters are still solved by pressing the auto-battle button though, but if you use it during the last dungeons of the game odds are one of your party members will be KO'd.

There's also another mechanic that impacts combat, and that is the shaman system.

You will encounter shamans along the way that can fuse with your characters to increase their powers, there's a total of 6 shamans in the game and you can unite a max of 2 shamans to any character.

The catch is that characters are only compatible with some of the shamans, some being able to unite with most, and others with only a couple.

Also, if you happen to discover a special combination the character's color will change and the effect of the bonus will be stronger, or even better, their form can completely change and get a bonus in all stats.

I have some problems with the system though, it's lame that you can't fuse the shamans with everyone.

Allowing that extra customization would have been very cool, of course rewarding the secret transformations but still giving a little bonus for a non-special fusion.

Another problem that I have is that the fusions come apart very easily, when a character reaches critical health, or passes out, the fusion comes apart, but it also happens after a lot of cutscenes, which is pretty lame and annoying.

It would be better if you could have access to the fusions everywhere, or even at safe spots, but they are restricted to only 1 city.

So if you lose it in a long dungeon it's either go all the way back or finish the dungeon as is, which makes them feel a little bit worthless.

The overworld abilities make a comeback, but like last time, they feel a little bit like an afterthought, I saw it being used mostly to force a certain character into the party.

It would have been better if some character interactions led to them being forced onto the party, since if they are not with you and you encounter the obstacle you need them for, you need to go all the way back for them, which is the same place the shamans reside after you find them.

This can be kind of annoying.

And the worst is that they were perfectly capable of just forcing them on your party.

There is this section where you need a specific character to be with you to talk to another character, you get transported into a dream world with some save points available where you can change your party, but the character you need can't be removed.

And there is nothing inside the dream world that requires them, they don't even get dialogue inside, it's a bit frustrating.

This is one of the only things I think were better in the first game, you could freely change your party from anywhere, and that type of backtracking didn't exist thanks to this.

And like I mentioned, if they forced characters into your party with some plot in the middle it wouldn't be a problem, it would even flesh out the characters more.

Breath of Fire 2 has a way lower encounter rate than 1, so at least the backtracking isn't as bad.

Moving forward though, there's another new mechanic.

As you advance through the game you get to build a town of your own, and there are a lot of factors that change quite a lot of stuff.

Depending on the carpenter the look of the town will change, and you get to recruit people from around the world to open shops, only 6 though, and once you invite them to your town they will remain forever, so choose carefully.

Some sell pretty good stuff and others are useless, by talking to them when you first find them you will be able to know what purpose they would serve in your city.

And you could just save, recruit them, and then check out what they do, I think it's a very neat feature.

With the main features out of the way, I want to talk about the rest of the details.

Like in the first game, the overworld feels pretty small and looks pretty similar all over the world, at least there's more variety in the locations you get to visit in the dungeons, but also, like in the first game, they are very short and have barely any puzzles, the reduced encounter rate makes them more enjoyable to me though.

I had a nitpick in the first game, in towns, whenever you entered a house, the town theme would fade out and a different song would start playing.

This bothered me very much, and I am happy to say that doesn't happen in this game, but I have a different nitpick related to the music now.

And is that almost every dungeon plays the same song, this also applies to the towns, and they are not even that good in my opinion.

I am very glad the last few dungeons had unique songs, I would have been pretty mad if they didn't, but outside of those 2 songs, I think the game has a pretty good soundtrack.

Not every song is that great, but there's a couple that are very remarkable in my opinion.

I'd say I would definitely recommend this game over Breath of Fire 1, you don't miss on much lore if you skip it, as stuff that you would need to know is explained in the main plot of the game.

Writing this review made me realize how much I appreciate this game, especially when comparing it to the first one, it's such a big improvement.

I wasn't very optimistic about the series after I played the first one, but after looking at all the improvements they made in 2, I am a bit hopeful about Breath of Fire 3, and what improvements they could make.

Like more character development, a tighter combat system, or better dungeons.

Unlike the first game, which I think only people who enjoy very simple RPGs with almost no plot would enjoy, this game feels a bit more accessible, and I think you lose nothing in giving it a try.

The horrible translation could make it difficult to get into it, but once you do it's pretty fun to see through, at least in some parts.

It still has some issues, especially for how optimized RPGs are these days, but I felt it was a genuine attempt at making a better game, even if it still falls short in a lot of things.

There's a lot of plot-lines and concepts that I wish were developed more, characters that had more screen time, and of course, a better translation.

I kind of wish Capcom would remake this game someday with the proper care put into it, I think it would be incredibly good.

They don't need to waste millions in giving it mind-blowing graphics, as long as they get good translators, polish some of the rough edges, add some QoL stuff, and maybe add the Game Boy advance portraits.

It could be a very good quality release, but I know that will never happen, I still can dream though.

[good-fwiend-in-wome]

i see where you're coming from, i like to advocate for accessibility wherever possible, but aside from the "i will find you and tie you to a chair" part i am 100% not joking.

outer wilds specifically and the very small genre of games like it are games that you can not just only play for the first time once (like how i wish i could forget firewatch or portal 2 to reexperience them with fresh eyes) but that you can only play once, period.

i am fully serious when i say that not playing outer wilds is better than watching a playthrough of outer wilds because watching someone else play it fully precludes you from ever playing it in the future, because once you know how the game ends you can skip the entire thing on your first loop.

if someone doesn't have the hardware to play the game, they shouldn't play the game until they can run it. if someone's bad at videogames or disabled, they should play it and experience figuring it out with someone who can deal with the controls and who is also going into the game blind. passively watching someone else figure things out for you completely removes the point of the game and you can never experience the game yourself.

this of course doesn't apply to all games, most games you can get an almost identical or at least good experience watching a playthrough and never touching it yourself, but in discovery games like outer wilds it's underwhelming and stops you from playing it even if you wanted to.

this kind of brushes against the discourse space of "should hard games have difficulty settings" but whereas something like celeste can give people accessibility options while making it clear that it's not the original artistic intent of the developers and you can still play the game as designed later, outer wilds is fundamentally forever basically unplayable once you've played/watched it once.

[2dkapsddr]

December 31st, 2024 - Arcaea, vivid/stasis, ProSeka

-- NOTE: vivid/stasis Final Chapter Part 1 spoilers located deeper into the post // Read with caution, and click off before the Arcaea scores end if you fear spoilers! --

Today is the day... the final day... the day we would finally wrap up this absolute hell of a year and enter the new year 2025 on a completely new slate . It's honestly still really shocking just how fast the year went by, and (as of the 2025 where i'm writing this post) it still doesn't feel anything like a new year . well, i guess that's a given, right? not like a new year really changes anything... except maybe giving a new beginning/clean slate to start on some resolutions and set some goals!! so in that case, i'd say it's still pretty important!!! i've got several ideas for goals i'd like to shoot for this year, mainly ones in my real life that could really use all of my focus, so i might be a little more lenient with my goals in regards to rhythm games this year... but i'll still set some tough and significant stuff for me to achieve this year when the rhythm gaming goals come around, so stay tuned for that later today!!!

the scores today...! ...started off pretty weak, in all honesty . i was just trying to complete some challenges for a silly little arcaea community server and so the scores themselves aren't very good, but i guess there's a few easy song upscores due to one of the challenges??? one being Dement ~after legend~ (FTR-7+, MAX-10 -> MAX-6), the other being Brand new world (FTR-7+, MAX-7 -> MAX-4), both definitely MAX-able in the near future... maybe i could go for more MAX scores as part of the new year??? there's also a bunch of plays on Prayer while helping a friend with another challenge, including a MAX score on the PRS-5 and a MAX-1 (tragic) score on the PST-2!!!

<== VIVID/STASIS FINAL CHAPTER PART 1 SPOILERS BEGIN HERE // BEWARE IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED IT IN FULL!!!!! ==>

given what was just about to come, however, these Arcaea scores above were less of the spectacle of the day and more of a warm-up for things to come... i wrapped up the arcaea gaming as i finished depleting my stamina and was about to head out into the open of the house to ring in the new year with my super loud family... that was, until talking in the Hajimeli Hideout server for a bit and making jokes with the other members gave me a VERY daring and VERY silly idea for wrapping up the year... what if -- despite only having 17821 rating at the time of getting this idea -- i managed to grind my way up to 18000 rating before 2025 approached in my timezone?

fufufu... delightfully devilish, 2dkaps! but how were you supposed to achieve that with only 5 hours until the new year and a bug that made the final chapter song unplayable (and also your skill level lol)? that's a good question, and as for the answer... i didn't know . i honestly didn't know why i was doing this or if it was even possible, but each new play i got only served to synthesize the planted idea deeper within my brain . like, just recall the rating i had before this whole run started: 17821, only achieved by playing through and clearing Class 12!!! and even before that run, i was only at 17717 rating at the start of C5P1, and 17762 by the time i unlocked everything in the chapter!!! it was still quite a long shot away from being achieved, sure, but i believed in myself... i believed in the grind... i believe i could legit pull this off .

and so, with a peek into the final chapter folder and the songs i had to defeat along my path, i got to work!!! starting with a sightread on one of the new node songs, ULTIMATUM [FIN 16], where i got a sweet sightread near-FC and near-V rank -- a lot of rating to start with right off the bat!!! and then it continued with my first S+ (and 999k) on B3611V [ENC 16+], getting me to the 17850 mark already!!! 4 hours left on the clock, so i had to act faster if i wanted to make it in time . looking to the Phigros Soundscan songs for inspiration, i targeted and got quite a bit of rating from an SS and SS+ (1.002M -> 1.005M) on Distorted Fate [ENC 16], followed by a somehow way better sightread score on Rrhar'il [FIN 16+] that pushed my rating from 17868 to 17896??? hah???? ...well, i'll get to my slight concerns about that one later . doubting my ability to repeat my performance on the chart due to it being Rated a 16+, i set my sights on yet another newly unlocked 16+, SENT://INEL [ENC 16+], to boost my semi-poor score on it, and i managed to upscore it to a clean SS and broke the 17900 rating barrier with 17903!!!!

whew! now here's a quick split in images because writing that much in back-to-back paragraphs is probably very dizzying . however, this also serves as a safe space for me to complain about Rrhar'il [FIN 16+]'s rating and why i think it's placed so awfully high... now i appreciate how much it boosted my rating and i really do love the chart, but to rate this a 16+, the second-highest visible difficulty in the game... feels way too ridiculous . to be fair, i should've seen this coming given just how confusing and conflicting the scale has gotten since probably v3.0, but it's the culmination of nonsensical ratings and inconsistent difficulty that make this the straw that broke my camel's back... it's not a 16+, it's not anywhere close to a 16+, it's way closer to any 15+ i've ever played in terms of difficulty, and to compare it to the other, much harder 16+s (even Last Wish, which has the same chart constant as this chart!) despite lacking heavily in any of their difficult qualities... it's so hard to take this game's rating scale seriously when half the charts in the game straight up lie about their difficulty level . i can't even confidently place this at 15+ because i don't even know what it means for a chart to be 15+ anymore, but i definitly think this chart falls way short of even being a 16...

ah well, enough complaining, i'm gonna grow gray hairs at this rate if i keep shitting on a passion project that isn't even out of early access yet... but i really do hope they reconsider their rating scale as a whole so gross misratings like this one don't happen again . while this is technically my first and only 16+ FC, it really does not feel like one and i'm ashamed to brand it as such... unlike Rrhar'il, however, these songs seem to reflect the difficulty of a 16+ WAY better!!! AND there were way more potential upscores to be achieved on the charts in order to boost my ratings!!! revisiting SENT://INEL [ENC 16+], i raised it from a clean 1.000M up to almost 1.003M, giving me a +8 rating boost!!! following this was ANOTHER near-1.003M upscore, this time on B3611V [ENC 16+] (which i hadn't even gotten to SS yet before this play!!), giving me +11 rating this time!!! paid another visit to APOCALYPSE CALL , the ENC 17 and FIN 16+, to snag some rating from both... and i got quite a bit!!! ...though alas, i'm still a bit unsatisfied with the scores on each chart

no time to worry about that though, because i was burning out on both difficulties and needed a quick break... and that's where switched over to set another upscore on SENT://INEL, raising it up to a 1.005M and breaching the 17950 rating threshold, stopping right at 17951!!! just 49 rating to go until the big 18000, i was so close i could taste it...!! ...but alas, that's where the story ends for me . it was already 2 1/2 hours until 2025, my arms were super tired, and i just didn't feel the motivation to continue my grind any further... i definitely don't think i reached my limit overall (i can probably snag the 18000 rating this week, if we're being honest), but i definitely would've gone insane and missed out on a lot of familial interactions if i kept going... which is why i made the decision to call off the run and leave the 18000 rating final stretch for later this week . that unfortunately means i won't get to show off my fancy 18000 rating in the 2024 recap, but it does mean i'll get to set my sights even higher rating-wise for 2025's goals!!!

one last silly score for the year before i hop off, but here's a heal-free clear on Proto Disco [Append Lv.34] before ringing in the new year!!! such a banger chart and song... i'm gonna absolutely love grinding this one out for the new year www

aaaaand that wraps up 2024 in terms of scores!!! quite a lot of writing for a considerably smaller quantity of scores, but it's always quality over quantity down here in 2dkapsddr town nowadays... i jest, but still!!! thank you all so much to anyone who's followed and liked my posts over this year and earlier, read any of my rhythm game ramblings, and stuck with me as i complained about stuff that just didn't make sense to my super perfectionist autistic brain . i can't really say how 2025 will go, given it's only just started by the time i'm writing this post, but i'm gonna set my sights even higher than i did this past year and aim for even bigger achievements that may or may not even be feasible!!! i expect the recap, review, and comments on my 2024 year in rhythm gaming post to take quite a while, so i'll be working on that in the background this week and hope to have it published sometime this week, but regular daily rhythm game posts should continue as per usual!! happy new year to all, may all your wishes and achievements come true this year as i'll try to shoot for with mine, and until next time!!!

[fizzingwizard]

Just my Tsubasa Chronicle sims enjoying themselves in Sulani, my favorite place to put them since TWC. (plus bonus birdies on the porch)

Look how well Kurogane and Mokona get along. They even mimic each other. I swear the game makes Mokona follow Kurogane more than anyone else. She gets little thought bubbles with his face and no one else's. Such favoritism.

dumb stuff below

First some nonsense.

A lot of drinks look exactly the same despite having different names, I know that. But these two not only look the same, their names are almost identical! Also, parental punch?? What is that????

Gotta love townie names. whuuut

My game is so fucked. I did a repair, so we'll see if that helped at all next time I play.

Most annoying things right now are:

My sims in one family were ALL afraid of the dark. I used cheats to get rid of it, nada, came back later. Then the scared moodlet started just sticking around during the day. Its timer would just... reset! so they were terrified of the dark in broad daylight. I ended up turning Wants/Fears off altogether. I don't really use them, but I did like having them on, because it offered some variety to the kinds of moodlets sims would get. But it's just as buggy as Lifestyles and became unplayable.

HOWEVER...! Despite turning off wants/fears, MY SIMS STAYED SCARED. The moodlet is now just ever present. Nothing has worked. No rebooting, no resetting, no switching households, no cheats... Can only cross my fingers that the repair did some magic because seriously what the hell.

This next one has been going on for a VERY long time. My sims constantly complain about their path being blocked even when there's nothing blocking them. Ex, a sim upgraded the tea pot. Another sim went to make tea... and started whining that he was blocked. NOTHING about the tea pot or the room had changed. I literally have no idea what's going on there.

HOWEVER... I think it has something to do with my game mysteriously deciding of its own damn will that Sims are only allowed to do kitchen stuff on CORNER counters. They can't use big empty counters with no clutter. They definitely can't use end pieces. The sims will only prep for cooking in corner counter space, and if there's any object there, functional or otherwise, it doesn't work. It doesn't matter if there are other clear spaces around.

DESPITE THAT, sometimes my Sims DO cook on the big counters... but only if there is a SINK ON IT. They'll cook on the counter if it's being used as a SINK. WHAT.

The "only cook on corner counters" thing is really obnoxious because just how many corner pieces can you fit in one kitchen for heaven's sake?

I know this is a bug and surely not affecting everyone. When I watch builds on Youtube, I see the builders make their Sims try different actions to make sure they still work after the builder has downsized a counter and put a table over it, or downsized the cow farm and built a nicer stable around it, or made a bathroom with all the works that is only 1x3. They check and their sims can use everything fine. But then they mention in the next video that they got comments from players who downloaded the build that those objects didn't function, even though they tested it. Yep so some games have just decided "no" to move objects cheat. At least to keeping functionality when it's used at least. Many tricks that used to work for me don't anymore. I used to downsize the tent and put the non-functioning Get Famous one over it because I like its rustic look. My sims would still use the tent just fine. Now they don't. Nothing has changed about how the tent is placed. The first time it happened, I deleted and replaced the functional tent, and that fixed it for a while. Then it stopped working again, and hasn't since.

Sims has upped the prices for the games in Japan and I know it's because the yen is so weak right now but goooooosh. I can't afford that. geez. At least I'm pretty fed up with how broken Sims 4 is right now... hopefully I'll be able to resist buying the expansion coming out in July, at least until Black Friday or some other sale. Will still be annoying to buy a pack at a "discount" which is the same or maybe still higher than what I would have paid for it brand new before. Nothing to be done about it though. No idea when, if ever, the yen will strengthen, and in the meantime it's crappy for me in a lot of ways much worse than not being able to buy a Sims game.

[caitas-cooing]

Idk if this is weird to ask out of the blue, but you’ve made me all nostalgic.

I played Shining Nikki back when it was Love Nikki, before the move to 3D. But that account was linked to a Facebook which I’ve since deleted, so I’ll be coming in completely fresh. Would you recommend starting playing again? I quit because the events had become completely unplayable without spending irl money. But seeing all your posts has made me miss it. And the newer clothes look amazing. The lighting/shading on the 3D models can look a little wonky to me sometimes. But the different poses! The amazing makeup! It makes me remember all the things I loved about the game 🥲

Okay, this is going to be a long answer probably but bear with me. First of all Shining Nikki is a separate game from Love Nikki so you would have to start over even if you hadn't deleted your Facebook account. The Love Nikki server is still up and running about the same as ever from what I can tell from other people who still play Love Nikki, but don't quote me on that because I deleted it when Shining Nikki came out I didn't have space for both on my phone.

As for spending money it depends on what you want out of the game. If you just want to complete the story and have a couple of cool outfits and accessories to need around with you can get that for free if you're patient and know how to manage your resources well. Diamonds can be saved up for hell events if you have more impulse control than I do and even then I am usually able to get some cool stuff with the pulls I can get even if I can't complete the set. The hell events do come at a pretty fast pace though. There's also benefits events happen fairly often where you can free outfits just for dying your dailies and you get free stuff on special occasions like server anniversaries and Nikki's birthday. Basically if you log in everyday wait you'll get something cool eventually. Some of the motion poses do cost money, but there are few one as well. The jump pose is free and they're going to give out a free dance move one in the inspiration space soon which is nice (or at least they did in the Chinese server so I assume that what the dance practice goal in the diary is for)

So basically it's not the easiest mobile game to play without spending money, but definitely not the worst out there either and I think the story and outfits are cool enough to be worth it. That said gacha games in general can be addictive and if that's something you are more vulnerable too you should steer clear of it or have someone else monitor the amount you're spending if you do decide to join.

It's takes up a lot of storage space and it doesn't always run very well on older or cheaper phones. If you have a tablet or something it might run better on that. I also know some people use an android emulator and play on the computer so that's also an option if it doesn't run well on your phone.

[chrismerle]

on the whole, I'm willing to let a lot slide under the umbrella of 'the blight is now effectively its own living entity, as it's being altered in real time by Ghilan'nain,' and some of it I'm willing to just go 'that's clearly a loose thread for later' since it's clear that another sequel in probably another fifteen years is intended (mostly with regards to 'something even weirder is in the blight now'). generally speaking, though, I do agree that the blight needed to be handled with a little more consistency than it was (and lbr, 'sometimes red lyrium just means it's angry' was a cop out because they wanted the lyrium to look like blood and ignored the fact that keeping it unnaturally blue would have been plenty spooky) and SOME explanation for how the Neve/Bellara got healed at the end would have been nice. but a lot of this seems ... I don't know if nitpicky is the right word. it just seems really convenient to only bring some of this up solely with regards to veilguard

like, 'oh, the blight is suuuuuper contagious and deadly, except for Rook and Co.! booo!' okay but then tell that to Morrigan, Leliana, Zevran, pre-Awakening Oghren, and Sten, who were all not Wardens and who were all getting wounded by supposedly highly infectious darkspawn. plus your literally blighted dog, which you cured incredibly easily with one(1) flower that is then never mentioned ever again. if that's an inconsistency now, it was an inconsistency then, too. when in reality allowances just have to be made for the fact it's a video game. in-universe, it's super easy to get infected with the blight, but as a player, if you keeled over and died every time a darkspawn touched you then the games would have been unplayable from the beginning. or i guess they would just be another series of souls-likes.

or the talking darkspawn or the heavily blighted Wardens. the blight doesn't just make you drop dead, it turns you into a darkspawn. the calling isn't the point at which wardens drop dead. it's the point at which the blight catches up with them and turns them into a darkspawn finally. that's why a lot of them go off into the deep roads when they start hearing it; they want to go get killed so they can't turn into a darkspawn, while taking as many already-existing darkspawn down with them as they can. it's a zombie plague, but it's set in a medieval fantasy so no one wants to call it a zombie plague. some of the zombies are just smart zombies; this is not a new trope. the heavily blighted wardens helping isseya are talking darkspawn, which have been around in every game, if you include the DLC. the Architect and the Mother in Awakening? they're talking darkspawn. Corypheus, the big bad of the entirety of Inquisition? he's a talking darkspawn. Isseya is the same thing; she even kinda looks like the Architect. if intelligent, talking darkspawn are an inconsistency now, they were an inconsistency then, too.

(and this isn't even getting into the fact that the Architect baldly states 'darkspawn can be returned to full rationality by drinking the blood of a Grey Warden' and it is then never addressed again)

was veilguard messy in places? yes, but that's not unique to veilguard. dragon age as a whole, as much as I love it (and I do love it, so much), has just always been a goddamn mess. there's a random event in Origins where totally-not-kal-el falls from space and is then found by totally-not-john-and-martha-kent and it is never addressed again. the qunari basically turned into a different species between origins and DA2, and the entire thing was just hand-waved away with 'sometimes they're just born with no horns.' in Origins mabari are said to be super intelligent by dog standards, to the extent of being able to understand spoken orders, they imprint on a single owner, and they're relatively rare, but by the time Inquisition happens basically every dog in Thedas is a mabari and they've just become really big pit bulls, and Cullen just finds and adopts a random one. only mages can do magic, but it's apparently not magic when the rogues turn invisible, teleport, back flip 16 feet into the air and still shoot with unerring accuracy, drop a respawn point in the middle of battle, or make spectral clones of themselves, and it's also not magic when the warriors spontaneously become invincible.

I dunno, I don't expect anyone's opinion to change from my tirade. it just feels disingenuous to see so many people go 'can you believe how messy Veilguard is for these things that have been there since Origins but that I'm only conveniently taking issue with now?'

the lore inconsistencies with the blight in this game are actually exhausting. 'the rules have changed the blight has changed' okay but make it make sense within the changes please like

the blight is the titans dreams gone mad with rage okay. red lyrium is lyrium infected with the blight. except that section of red lyrium in harding's quest which is... angry... but somehow not infected with the blight... even though we know what red lyrium is from inquisition

the calling eventually kills you but there's a bunch of super blighted wardens who've been alive for ages underground. isseya has been alive since the 4th blight. these wardens aren't even proper darkspawn they're just Really Corrupted

there's that ominous 'theres something in the blight' quest you do in the wetlands that just turns out to be a giant blight growth. darkspawn appear from blight pools now. also apparently in the wetlands there's just a bunch of flowers happily thriving beneath the blight that are fine once the blight is removed. did we forget the western approach. that the land is barren after it's infected with the blight.

it's super easy to become infected with the blight, except if you're rook and co apparently because that blighted status sure doesn't really have any consequences. spEAKING OF which neve/bellara become super duper infected by the blight to the point they can control it and yet afterwards... they're fine?? they're fine!! there's no cure for the blight except apparently you can just shake it off. the hero of fereldan has been searching for a cure for decades but could've just shrugged it off apparently!

[butwhatifidothis]

15, 18, 19?

15. Favourite Golden Deer support chain, and why?

With how much I've talked about it I think it's clear that Claude and Marianne's support chain is my fave GD support chain, given that it's one of my favorite in the whole game lmao, so for a bit of spice I gotta say I really, really like Leonie and Lorenz's! It's super refreshing to hear a noble's side of things regarding nobility and the commonfolk being discussed so respectfully, while still acknowledging the flaws of it - and these two characters couldn't have been a better choice to discuss that with. Lorenz and Leonie are both fairly stubborn in their ways and both hold their "titles" closely; Lorenz is obviously prideful of his nobility, but Leonie herself is also prideful in her experiences being common-born have given her over that of the nobles that surround her. Having her see the mindset of a noble that takes his obligations as seriously as Lorenz - with Lorenz coming to similarly see the mindset of simply being friends with others without considering status - is definitely up there in terms of the game's concepts and execution of said concepts.

18. Character(s) you wish had been playable, and why?

RHEA RHEA RHEA RHEA bruh you cannot IMAGINE my disappointment when Rhea CAME WITH US TO SHAMBHALA but she was STILL unplayable, even on my first playthrough of VW where I wasn't fully on board with her yet (this was about when my mind was changing tho so yeah lol). She's literally got stats and growths in the game's coding, her Archbishop model has fighting animations (cuz CF), she has crit quotes, but noooooooope! For some reason the creators didn't think being able to actual USE RHEA was a good idea, even though Fire Emblem as a series is absolutely not a stranger to end-game recruits. So sad dude 😭

19. Support chain(s) you wish had had an A support, and why?

I'll say my serious answer is Dimitri and Sylvain, with that being compounded with "I don't particularly like this support in the first place" because all of Dimitri's other supports with his close friends are so important and go over very interesting topics that hold a lot of depth to them, meanwhile Sylvain is the clown of the group with a support that's just. Weirdly goofy. Like you have Ingrid over here discussing with Dimitri the violent death of a beloved friend of theirs and how best to honor his memory and move on from it, you have Felix struggling to come to terms with the fact that his best friend will never be who he once was and is capable of great violence, you have Dedue and Dimitri struggling with their shared trauma of Duscur and how one is the other's reason they are able to keep moving forward past it, and then. Like. You have Sylvain over here. Talking about gettin' bitches. Making haha funnies about Dimitri handing over a dagger to (who they don't know to be) Edelgard when he was a kid. Especially considering you can get this support during the war (WHICH I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT RECCOMEND DOING OMG my sister did this and Dimitri's teenager voice coming out of a clearly adult-ass man is SO FUCKIN' JARRING DUDE), it just doesn't fit. I guess on one hand it's nice for Dimitri to have a silly support with a friend? But on the other hand you get folks who compare this support with literally all of his other friends' ones and you get takes like "Dimitri and Sylvain were never that close" which, like, is wrong, but I don't exactly fault them for coming to that conclusion, if that makes sense. The game didn't do any favors for these two, in terms of their supports.

Non serious answer, Sylvain TOTALLY should've been able to A support Bernadetta. Their support is some of the cutest shit ever, definitely some of Sylvain's sweeter moments with him trying to genuinely relay how much he genuinely likes Bernadetta's writing through a written review that she wouldn't be so scared off from. Let them A support!! It's not fair :(

[gigadracky]

How to download Dragon Quest of the Stars!

There are 2 proper ways to download the mobile app game Dragon Quest of the Stars!

This mobile game is free to play but have optional purchases for gems, like any other Gacha based mobile games.

A Gacha based mobile game is when the game has a function where you draw materials through a lottery feature by using in game currency(gems) to use in game, for this game it is weapons and armor equipment, and what you obtain is based on luck. Similar to a loot box system in most western video games. You obtain gems through playing the game. It's not difficult to earn gems in this game, and you also can purchase gems with real world currency.

From my experience with most mobile games that are Gacha based, the drop rate % for this games is bigger compared to others.

Download the QooApp application:

On Android you will have to visit the QooApp website and download the .APK file, then once you open the .APK file on your android mobile device you will have to let your phone do the work. The link to the website is right below.

https://apps.qoo-app.com/en

Once you have QooApp downloaded, copy this -> 星のドラゴンクエスト , and then paste it onto the search bar after opening QooApp application, you should find it as the first search result.

Click download and then you will have the game downloaded into your android mobile device! Once you open the app it is going to download all of its files, so it will take a while to download. Make sure you have a steady connection and keep the app open so it can download.

To update the DQ app you will have to go to the QooApp application and download the update through there, then when you open the game it will copy the update files after you have clicked and completed the update on QooApp and download. You will have to keep the DQ app open to download the necessary files to completion.

These updates occur when there is a new big event being added, new features being added, or when they are fixing bugs. We get heads up notice on Scheduled Maintanence with whats being updated. When they appear I will post on the facebook group, Dragon Quest of the Stars USA, also in the Dragon Quest of the Stars Discord server with a translated guide with what the updates are and when they will occur.

Also doing it this method, if you plan to purchase gems with real world currency, you will not be able to. You can only do it with the second method.

Japanese Android/iOS store:

By doing this method you can have your phone do the updates for the mobile game automatically, once you open the DQ app it will copy the update files and download them like any other mobile app game.

For Android users:

You will first need a VPN to start with and have it set to Japan, then you have to go into your settings and clear the Cache for your Play Store. Then you can either 1) Create a new email, or 2) Change your current email's region.

Changing your current email's region can affect whether or not some of your apps can be updated, depending if those apps are region locked to your country. So I suggest making a new email or use a secondary email you don't care about so you can switch between email accounts easily in the app store and all of you apps, including the DQ app, will update automatically based on your update settings on the app store.

If you have created a new email, you will have to have that email account's region set to Japan and add a phony japanese address(what most people use is a hotel address.) Then when it comes to the payment option you can just use a paypal account.

Once you have finished changing regions, you can access the Japanese App Store and from this point I didn't need to use a VPN any longer to access the play store, you just need it to trick your email into believing you are indeed in that region to have it set. Yet again i have done this a long time ago and can't really remember how i did it 100% I am just sharing from my memory and websites I have just researched while making this guide lol.

It is possible to purchase gems with real world currency doing this method, but there are more steps to cover. What you will need to make this happen is a PayPal linked to the play store account you used to download the mobile game and something else I can't remember. I will come back to this guide and update this once I have done my research.

For iOS users:

Follow this video: https://youtu.be/JMDG5KC4yqc

If you have downloaded the DQ .APK through other means than these steps you will not be able to download any updates, making the game unplayable. You will need a means of downloading the update files, which these two methods offer.

Once you have downloaded the game, enjoy and go on Questing 😁! You do not need a VPN to play this game as it does not have any sort of region lock to it.

When you begin playing not all features are available right away. You will have to obtain access to features like Multiplayer and the Momon shop, where you upgrade weapons and create materials, by playing through the tutorial and story mode. It doesn't take long to get to that point.