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She's a victim of being character #15 in a game called 13 Sentinels.
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Sep 9, 2022 23:38
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WarpedLichen posted:So as we're wrapping all this up Tamao is oddly not relevant to anything at all? You would think she would be one of the special kids to have a robot made in her shape. In her defense, she "dies" fairly early on in the loop (or at least the part of the loop that's relevant to us), and the vast majority of our interactions with her is actually a robot made in the likeness of her previous-loop version, and even then most of our interactions with "her" are actually that robot likeness being hijacked by an adult male psychopath pretending to be a completely different (and utterly ridiculous) teenage girl and very clearly enjoying every minute of it. "I can see it now... the culprit! ...Their intentions were not pure!  "
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Sep 9, 2022 23:51
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   Chapter 114: Renya Gouto 7 (FINAL)  Looks like we’re back to that scene in the mainframe right after Professor Morimura transferred all the (simulated AI) people to Sector 3.  This shouldn't take too long. Whoa… I'll send you the data once it's ready. …That would be great. But I must say… This IS a surprise. Okino-kun really managed to push this through? Integrating this half-coded thing into the control system…? Thank you… Music: Mutual Telepathy (Composer: Kazuki Higashihara, Arranger: Rikako Watanabe) …… No, well… Okino wanted to tell you that. Thank you. Okino-kun said that? He said the analysis wasn't complete yet…So he appreciates your help with all this. I see… …To look at you, anyone might think you were just a child. But you must be a truly exceptional individual. The message was Okino's, but I'd like you to know I'm grateful as well. Now if you'll excuse me, I must return to the battle. That boy. So he appreciates me, does he?Music: Bleak Pressure (Kikuchi Yukinori)         And liabilities must be dealt with. Does that sum it up?  I specifically acquired this gun for your purposes. You had concerns about self-defense. ……  Now you’re going to use it to shoot me. ……  Use Phaser on Chihiro Whoa, Gouto’s going hardcore!  For safety reasons, neither one of us can be shot with this gun. I configured it very specifically.Oh. Laaaaaaame. Examine Phaser  This gun records the time of its last discharge. And that time looks to be a near match for Ms. Morimura’s estimated time of death. Which suggests… You used this gun to murder her. ……  You yourself were using the drone to keep tabs on Ms. Morimura. Weren’t you? Based off of your expenses for that day… I'd presume you took a taxi to the crime scene. How much do you have in that pocketbook? Were you just playing dumb this whole time…? What gave away that I was the professor, and not her?Use Keitaro Miura on Chihiro  It was back when Miura found you here. You described Miura as an excellent design engineer. But the Miura of 2188 was the design engineer. Not him. Did you dig that out of Renya Gouto's log too? No. That I learned through Miura, the AI of Sentinel No. 17. He also told me about the existence of the logs. If you're not killing me, I assume you're at least locking me up? But giving in to my emotional reaction wouldn't solve anything. Vengeance isn't going to bring her back. So, with that in mind…  That is what I want now. To see what lies at the end of all this. To see what she never could. You made it clear Juro Izumi was not your "cup of tea"… Yet you and Izumi shared an intimate relationship in the year 2188.Oh goddammit, yet another absurd relationship between a Juro and a Morimura.  Even the placement seemed intentional. You and Izumi, together in Sector 1. You died before you could set up the memory transplant. At that point… I can only assume… Izumi sympathized with you, and helped carry out your vision. But you… Why are you so intent on transplanting your memory? Because…  Without someone to guide them, teams dissolve into fear, spite, resentment… It'd be the colony all over again. …… I see… As I suspected. Your devotion to this goal is inspiring, in some ways. …? Are you a gambling woman?Music: Heated Debate (Mitsuhiro Kaneda)  We’ll leave the terminals alone for you. We won’t let Aegis seal everything off. Your loop would still be viable. …And in exchange? As it currently stands… It'd be impossible to revert to your original plan without some compromise. But consider this: Even this final phase won't truly be the end. If we can prove to you that we will overcome that… If we prove to you that we can face the unknown… Then are we not worthy to take up your cause? Inheriting your goal, and seeing it through? You… make an interesting point. We can solve this problem ourselves. If we fail, then I could hardly object to a reset anyway. That's your bet? You don't stand a chance. Music: Last Line of Defense (Kikuchi Yukinori) (Listen to this)   Is anyone too compromised to keep fighting?  The girls may be pushing their limits… Miura’s a bit of a chauvinist, I see…  There are three terminals remaining. We can protect two of them with Aegis. But we’re on our own with the last terminal. How much longer do we need to hold out? We need to reestablish a connection with Miyuki Inaba. That’s still 10 hours off. 10 hours we don’t have…   Brace yourself, Keitaro. We are soldiers, and this is the moment we trained for. Hours, days, it doesn’t matter. We’ll hold the line. Let’s go. Chihiro-san…  …You’re listening, aren’t you? If you’re out there, please, respond…     You… You know a way to link up with the command ship. One that doesn't rely on its position. Don't you? …You're thinking of when I revised the D-Code. Right now… we need that shortcut. And this is where you reveal some new leverage over me? I can't wait to hear what log you found this time. No…  …… You have to be joking. You do realize the position I'm already in? I do. Even still. All I can do is beg. …I just want us to have a chance. …… …This is the most idiotic…    …… You’re an infuriating man, Renya Gouto.  Music: To the Final Battle (Yoshimi Kudo) Everyone, listen to me. We can communicate with the command ship out of range. I'm realigning the three surveillance satellites to their relay positions. We should be connected soon. However… The satellites have to move outside their preset tracks. They'll enter the gravity well and plummet to Earth. Your connection will only last until they hit the surface. You'll barely have any time to do this. Am I clear? Thank you…  Though I guess… I might be the most irrational one here. If you actually manage to pull this off… Then I expect you all to take responsibility.    This is your only chance…          I see our new Mystery File updates just cover an event we never actually saw due to time and budget restraints, ha. Weird that it’s completely unrelated to this event, though.  And that’s it for Gouto. You know, he’s still an rear end in a top hat, but I kinda warmed up to him in the end. Just a bit.  And now all we’ve got left is the last two Destruction stages gated off by that final story progression. Then, it’s off to the final battle. But before we do that, it’s time for one last update to the board.  I add a romantic link between Chihiro Morimura and Juro Izumi.  I also add a note in the 2188 segment spelling out that they were together.  And that, my friends, is it for the board. We’ve had fun with it, but it will proceed with us no further.
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Sep 10, 2022 17:16
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The board was a really nice little thing to follow along with this LP - thanks for keeping it running, it's been a blast to see it tangle and untangle over time.
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Sep 10, 2022 17:36
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If they're all naked because they grew up in the Sentinels, where did Renya's glasses come from?
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Sep 10, 2022 17:45
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Ibblebibble posted:If they're all naked because they grew up in the Sentinels, where did Renya's glasses come from? the Freemasons
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Sep 10, 2022 18:06
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Miura shouldn’t have a scar IRL either. I don’t think there’s any in-universe handwave for it. They just let that little plot hole stand.
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Sep 10, 2022 18:08
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Ibblebibble posted:If they're all naked because they grew up in the Sentinels, where did Renya's glasses come from? And Tomi's hair ribbons, and Ryoko's bandages.
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Sep 10, 2022 18:11
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Podima posted:The board was a really nice little thing to follow along with this LP - thanks for keeping it running, it's been a blast to see it tangle and untangle over time. Did it ever untangle?  But seriously, the board was an awesome touch
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Sep 11, 2022 05:54
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Feotakahari posted:Miura shouldn’t have a scar IRL either. I don’t think there’s any in-universe handwave for it. They just let that little plot hole stand. changelings SloppyDoughnuts posted:And Tomi's hair ribbons, the lizard people from Hollow Earth SloppyDoughnuts posted:and Ryoko's bandages. Elvis Presley
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Sep 11, 2022 11:58
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The answer is of course actually Universal Control. Except for Ryoko's bandages, that was indeed Elvis
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Sep 11, 2022 17:47
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I still very much want to know who the least complicated Main Character is. Gouto, maybe?
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Sep 12, 2022 11:40
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The main character with the fewest connections on the board (with only 4) is, in fact, Gouto, weirdly enough. I guess it's probably because he's the least present character in most routes, because by no means is his story the "least complex."
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Sep 12, 2022 18:50
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Yeah, Gouto doesn't have evil AIs living in his brain, existential crises, amnesia, rogue clones, time travel adventures, or weird hangups about his sexuality. He's just a jerky guy who wants to get to the bottom of everything, and he's armed with the universe's greatest Bullet Journal.
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Sep 12, 2022 20:21
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Music: Voyage To Tomorrow (Hitoshi Sakimoto) Chapter 115: Destruction 14 (FINAL) Since I last did Destruction, I found a useful guide on GameFAQs by a user called epiphenom that has explained many things I still didn’t understand. That guide has even helpfully been updated with the changes from the patch. That dude honestly kind of scares me, if I’m being real. He updated that guide with videos of him beating every stage on Intense in one continuous “run” without taking terminal or Sentinel damage, returning to previous stages to grind, or resetting his pilots’ conditions. And then he reuploaded new versions after the patch. One thing that guide taught me is that city damage is fake, it can’t hurt you. Well, more precisely, it’s caused by kaiju specifically targeting city blocks with attacks, which is really just a factor of how long we’re leaving kaiju alive. If we’re killing them quickly, less city damage, duh. Simple. We can’t do much to control this, so it’s not really worth thinking about. Better to prevent terminal and Sentinel damage if we want S Ranks. Another thing I learned is that in addition to being nerfed by about 33%, Sentry Guns have also taken a major penalty in number you can have active. Pre-patch, we could have eight Sentries active per Sentinel, a cap I remember hitting exactly once in the entire game. Now we can have six. Total. For the entire map. Ryoko still has her “place two Sentry Guns” Hyper Condenser, so she’ll hit that cap in three uses now. Not much of a point in even bringing Sentry Guns with another Gen 2 Sentinel if Ryoko is active. Though, not much of a point in bringing multiple Gen 2 Sentinels in the first place with the nerfs. Similarly, the cap on Interceptors was previously 50 per map (though if we had fewer than that we could spawn another group), and now it’s hard capped at 40 (so if we would go over that limit we can’t summon more at all). But the really annoying thing I found out from this guide is something I had been wondering about. We have quite a few Mystery Points right now (upwards of thirty-five, actually) with nothing to spend them on. Based on my memories from my original playthrough, we were supposed to have unlocked the final locked Mystery File by now, which would convert all those Mystery Points into Meta-Chips, I believe about 10k per. But with the patch, they moved the required Mystery File. It’s now unlocked by the ending. So now, not only do I have all these Mystery Points with no way to actually use them, I need to do some serious grinding before the final battle to max out all the required armaments and boost some Sentinel parameters. Ugh. But that’s enough grousing, let’s just get into this.   Only 4 strike team members!? In this economy!?  Let’s upgrade Limiter Removal from +0 to +8 and slot it in to replace Jump Attack.  We’re going to upgrade Tomi’s Long-Range Missiles from +1 to +4 to unlock her second new armament, Super Long-Range Missiles. These are even longer-range missiles than Long-Range Missiles, and they’re best used to soften up a group that just dropped in from far away. We upgrade those Super Long-Range Missiles from +0 to +4, upgrading their Lock-on Range and Distance. We slot it in to replace her High-Performance Charger.  For Natsuno, we upgrade her Wide-Range Railgun to +4 (increasing its POW and decreasing its WT) and slot it in to replace her 6 Multi-Launching Rapid Cannons. We also upgrade those 6 Multi-Launching Rapid Cannons from +3 to +4 to unlock her Precision Machine Cannons (“Attacks kaiju within a thin area in front of the Sentinel with machine cannons. Ignores armor.”), which we upgrade to +4 (increasing number fired and POW) and slot in to replace Long-Range Missiles.  For Ryoko, we upgrade her Cyberattack Missiles from +3 to +4. You’ll notice that I’m upgrading a lot of the new armaments only to +4, and that’s because their upgrade costs are pretty exorbitant. The final upgrade from +7 to +8 costs sixteen thousand Meta-Chips for a new armament.  For Megumi, we upgrade her High-Energy Pulse Laser from +0 to +4 (increasing POW and number fired) and slot it in to replace Flare Torpedo. We also buy her Hyper Condenser and slot it in place of Shield Repair.  Finally, for Miura we upgrade Anti-Air Bombardment from +3 to +4 to unlock Wide-Range Bombardment, a skill that seems to do the same thing as its prerequisite, but does not seem to discriminate between aerial and ground kaiju. I dunno, I don’t think I ever got the chance to play around with it. We upgrade Wide-Range Bombardment from +0 to +4, increasing its area of effect and POW, and slot it in place of Miura’s weaker railgun, Main Battery Heavy Railgun.  Let’s roll. Music: (THREONINE) (Rikako Watanabe)      I need to pilot perfectly to get in close. Even if it means I might not come back. But… I’m the one who got everyone into this mess.  But you’re a real badass. More than these guys, anyway. You’re okay in my book… C’mon, follow my lead. Ugh—Stick to the plan! Stay in formation!  Video: Destruction Wave 3-9 This was a pretty annoying wave, mostly just due to the party size requirement.      We can communicate with the command ship out of range. I'm realigning the three surveillance satellites to their relay positions. We should be connected soon. However, the satellites have to move outside their preset tracks. They'll enter the gravity well and plummet to Earth. Your connection will only last until they hit the surface. You'll barely have any time to do this. Am I clear? If you actually manage to pull this off… Then I expect you all to take responsibility. Good luck, big brother…  Initiating communication.  I never imagined this kind of workaround…  The processing is almost done. I’m getting back to working on the mainframe. Even if you cover the next one, there’ll still be one terminal left. Activate Aegis for that one, and protect the terminal.   A loving C Rank, ugh. Gonna need to redo that one later… Thankfully, I’ll at least be able to do it with six Sentinels.    These Mystery Points are just sitting there mocking me at this point. Music: Voyage To Tomorrow (Hitoshi Sakimoto)  Next up, the final boss wave. Not the final boss, this game doesn’t actually have one of those, just the last wave that has a boss in it. Also not to be confused with the final wave.  We replace Leg Spike with Quad Leg Spikes in Yuki’s arsenal. We don’t upgrade it though, because spoiler alert, we’re not using Yuki in the next wave.  For Hijiyama, we just put Leap Attack back in his repertoire, replacing Composite Ceramic Armor. Composite Ceramic Armor isn’t actually that great, especially on Intense, because it only works on chip damage.  For Gouto, we upgrade his Leg Spike to +4, despite never having any intention of using it with him, to unlock the new armament EMP Spikes. As you can see, it has 100 POW, pierces armor (though it might as well not as a one-hit attack with 100 POW), and drops aerial kaiju. I’m not gonna mince words, this armament is loving abysmal and I regret spending the Meta-Chips to unlock it.  We also upgrade his Gravity Missiles to +4 to unlock his other new armament, Teleportation Field, which lets him teleport allies in a target area to his side. Great, we have something totally worthless and something incredibly situational. I lied earlier when I said Juro was the new worst pilot in the game, that’s my bad for repeating information I heard secondhand. No, it’s easily Gouto. God, and you’re supposed to be the leader, my dude. Whatever, let’s just replace Multi-Lock Missiles in his active gear with Gravity Missiles and get out of here.  For Ei, we replace Rush Attack with Hurricane Rush, which we upgrade to +4 (increasing its POW and setup movement). We also upgrade EMP Surrounding from +5 to +8.  Yeah, I know I just said Gouto was poopy, but we’re actually going to bring him because we have to level him up. We’re not really going to get much use out of our fourth-generation pilots on this map anyway. Also, all three Gen 1 pilots and no Gen 2s. Why? You’ll… you’ll see. Music: [DEOXYRIBOSE] (Yoshimi Kudo)        Is it related to those four-legged ones? But it’s massive!   …We’ve gotten too strong. They’re trying to restore the balance…  Wasn’t this system supposed to give us an advantage? It's set to a level that makes sure they can compete with us, at least… It could go either way. What actually happens is all up to you. Guess they're throwing all they can at us… All we have to do is take them down, right…? I'm on it. Hijiyama-kun… Just remember: the mission is to protect the terminal.   Video: Destruction Wave 3-10 (Watch this) Okay, so, this map is kind of infamous and pretty complicated. It’s something of a roadblock for players who might struggle with all the new gameplay and visual information that’s being thrown at them. To help make sense of this, I included a small preamble in the video for this one where I go over what this thing is capable of. Hopefully that helps. Don’t get too used to hearing my awful voice, though, because I hate it and so should you.    Man, there was a lotta poo poo popping off near the terminal at the end there.      …… I'm sorry… but it's not over yet.Goddammit, there’s always a catch, isn’t there?    Natsuno’s Level 30 Pilot Skill is I Won’t Give Up, BJ. If everyone’s total HP is below 70%, her stats significantly increase. Unfortunately, 30% Sentinel damage means you’re almost certainly not getting an S Rank anymore, so we generally try to avoid this scenario.  Ei’s final Pilot Skill is You Okay, Iori? It increases his WT recovery speed whenever Iori’s HP decreases. Seems alright.       Dun dun dun…  And the final battle is unlocked. We’ll do some last-minute preparation and then it’s time for the end.    No documents on Ei, huh? You’d think Ida would have the most documents on him. Also, gross that you’re stalking the teenaged clone of your lover, weirdo! But that’s the final “real” Destruction wave. Next update will cover the last-minute prep I have to do for the final battle, including leveling everyone up to 30 and getting the last two missing S Ranks. As for who I’ll bring, I’m still working out how exactly we’ll choose our party. Stay tuned for that, I guess.
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Sep 17, 2022 22:56
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I think your voice is just fine (it's a well known psychological phenomenon that people tend to hate the sound of recordings of their own voice because of how it differs from how their voices sound in their own head). Having only played the Switch version of this game, I'm curious as to how easy this fight would be if I could spam Sentry Guns all over the place.
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Sep 17, 2022 23:26
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cMachuPikacchu posted:I think your voice is just fine (it's a well known psychological phenomenon that people tend to hate the sound of recordings of their own voice because of how it differs from how their voices sound in their own head). As someone who played it pre-patch, less helpful than you might think. Don't get me wrong, still very helpful, but railgun spam took care of a lot of my problems before they did.
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Sep 18, 2022 01:09
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MachuPikacchu posted:Having only played the Switch version of this game, I'm curious as to how easy this fight would be if I could spam Sentry Guns all over the place. It's just as hard. I don't remember the specifics because it's like a year since I did it but I remember taking as many attempts and ending up with basically the same strategy he did here.
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Sep 18, 2022 01:29
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Sentry guns were very good before the patch because they had too much HP to be taken down by random kaju AoE, so they survived until the team could summon a critical mass of them. Notably, in the upcoming last battle there is enough random AoE poo poo to destroy pre nerf sentries in short order.
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Sep 18, 2022 05:57
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Chapter 116: Final Preparations Music: Voyage To Tomorrow (Hitoshi Sakimoto)  We have a bunch of stuff to do before we jump into the final battle, so let’s do some light grinding to get our last few S-Ranks and get everyone to Level 30.   First up, Wave 3-2. This one’s gonna be a real pain because it has Gladiators in it, and they’ve been buffed with the patch. Previously, armor-piercing attacks like Demolisher Blade would go through their Composite Ceramic Armor, but now it blocks even that damage. We’ll need Limiter Removal to do any damage to them even with Nenji’s hyper condensed Demolisher Blade.  Got it.   Shu’s final skill is Inaba’s Support, which increases his WT recovery speed if a lot of kaiju are near him. 4th-generation Sentinels only really have Multi-Lock Missiles for crowd control near them, and that armament has a dramatic falloff later in the game, so this is not something we actually want to go off.  Now for 3-9.  Before we go into this one, I’m going to level up Yuki’s Quad Leg Spikes from +0 all the way to +8, increasing their POW and setup movement.  I’m also going to buy most of the Meta-Skills and Meta-System upgrades I hadn’t purchased yet. That includes Team Accelerate, Gravity, Deploy Type-98, Score Boost (only Level 1 though), and the final Score Multipliers. Probably won’t even use any of them, though.  We’re also going to max out Nenji’s EMP Attractor, which we should have done a long time ago.   Miura’s final Pilot Skill is Classmate, which raises his attack if he attacks after Hijiyama. Not great.    Next up, we’re going to run Wave 1-1 a few times to get some more experience while also resetting Brain Overload.  Hijiyama’s final skill is That’s More Like It!, which increases all his stats based on the number of kaiju on the field. Pretty okay, but it also means we’re getting swarmed if we actually get the full bonus.  Megumi learns her final Pilot Skill as well, Look Out, Juro! It increases her WT recovery speed if Juro takes damage. It should be clear by now that these Pilot Skills are mostly incredibly situational.  Unfortunately, we still have two pilots, Tomi and Gouto, who aren’t at Level 30. I’ll run Wave 1-1 once more to try to get them there.  Gouto now has his final skill, Optimally Efficient. This increases his WT recovery speed if you have fewer actions equipped. Based on the testing of epiphenom, the GameFAQs user I mentioned in the last update (check that guide out here), it’s about a 7% reduction per open slot, so if you reduced his arsenal down to one armament, you’d gain about 50% more actions from having about a 35% WT reduction. Again, Gouto’s the worst pilot in the game, so cutting skills from his arsenal isn’t actually that hard, even if we’d have to cut a lot to see more than meager returns. Interesting to think about, if nothing else.   Unfortunately, Tomi’s still not at Level 30 (and we have pilots on Brain Overload), so we’re going to do one final run of Wave 1-10.  This skill name awakened some trauma from the 2016 election for me, I think. This skill restores everyone’s EP a little when Tomi defends. Defending is a bad option unless it’s literally your only recourse most of the time, but it’s nice to make it a little more worthwhile.  And now we have sixty Mystery Points we can’t spend. Ugh.   Here's the Mystery Files we just unlocked.  Now, it’s time to go over our pilots. After reviewing all their skills, I’ve actually removed most of the new unique stuff for a lot of them because… most of it’s not great! Some characters like Juro and Natsuno get lucky, but most others are shafted. I’ll go over a lot of that in this segment, but suffice it to say that I’ve already unequipped most of those new skills in favor of old reliables that are cheaper to upgrade. So, Nenji. He’s pretty good! The best pure damage dealer in the game, really, with his Hyper Condenser boosting the power and range of his Demolisher Blade. Seems like a good pick. Plus, his voice actor died tragically a few months back, and it’d be nice to bring him along for that reason alone. Also, who am I kidding here, you fuckers voted for Nenji five times in a row, you’ll pick him. That said, I have removed his unique skills, because the missile barrage isn’t good enough to justify taking the EP away from his bread-and-butter Demolisher Blade usage, and the High-Performance Charger is maybe a waste when we should try to avoid defending, period.  Hijiyama, our favorite bi idiot. Honestly, though, I don’t love him as a pilot. He has the Gen 1 staples, and he has EMP Surrounding, which is better than the EMP Attractor Nenji is stuck with, but I really like Ei’s Anti-Air Defensive Flares. Nenji has those too, of course, but he has much less room in his kit for them. Also, I’m still mad about how Anti-Air Demolisher Blade works. If we’re bringing more than one 1st-generation pilot, I dunno about Hijiyama.  Ei and Hijiyama really just can’t compete with Nenji on damage due to their lack of a Hyper Condenser. Again, though, I really like the Anti-Air Defensive Flares Ei has. They’re a great tool for preventing missiles from hitting the terminal. I unequipped his Hurricane Rush and Anti-Ground Barrage because Rush Attack is free and we don’t have the space to afford a ranged attack on a Gen 1 Sentinel here.  Juro has his new Arm-Mounted Piercing Cannons, which are really good against newly dropped groups of small kaiju. That’s going to be his main tool in most situations here. He’s got some other stuff, but he’s probably the pilot I most need to play with the kit of if we decide to pick him, considering I haven’t even equipped his Plasma Arc Fusion Cutter. Reminder for everyone that if we pick Juro for the final battle, everyone in the party gets a fairly massive WT recovery speed increase that’ll really help. His other new skill is Elite Plasma Arc Fusion Cutter, which is just overkill. It’s not worth the extra EP and WT cost.  Iori’s Plasmic Wrecker is awesome, that’s really all I have to say about her.  Ryoko is going to be maybe the most burdened by the changes to Sentry Guns, given her Hyper Condenser lets her summon two at once. However, she’s still got some tools. Shield Emitter might even get us out of a jam or two. I gave up on Cyberattack Missiles, though. It’s just no good. Even if hacking the enemies buys you some time, the initial hit does almost no damage, so you’re getting no EP return from defeated kaiju. Plus, a lot of enemies will still head toward and attack the terminal even while hacked.  Natsuno, previously maybe the worst pilot in the game, now kicks rear end. Both of her new skills have setup movement to allow her to capitalize on the attack boost from Warmup Run, and they’re very good skills in addition. Her main flaw is not having Super Large Missile, but both of her Gen 3 buddies have that, so it’s not a massive problem. Also, Natsuno fuckin’ rules.  Miura is fairly strong and has the good Gen 3 skills. Not much to say here, really. His unique skills are bad, but his kit is pretty good otherwise.  Tomi lacks Miura’s stronger railgun, but hers makes up for it by firing twice in a row with her Hyper Condenser. She also has Super Long-Range Missiles to soften up enemy drops, and Super Large Missile to just obliterate a group on demand. Pretty good pilot, gotta say.  Megumi’s High-Energy Pulse Laser does some work. I need to upgrade her Shield Matrix and Shield Repair, but that skill will carry her pretty far.  Yuki is a beast. Quad Leg Spikes is just loving stupid to the point that she might as well not even have any other armaments most of the time. Thankfully, she does! And one of them is Active Cooling Device, which seems awesome!  Gouto is terrible now. I mean, he wasn’t great before, his only real skill was Interceptor spam, but now they’re a bit worse and that’s still his main job.  “Gotta put on a show for Yuki-chan…” *shudder* Like Gouto, Shu doesn’t get a lot of benefit from the patch. He has the new Optimized Generator now though, which I just unlocked and boosts the EP cost of direct attacks (so, no Interceptors) in exchange for multiplying their power and range by 1.25. Seems… okay, I guess. His Point-Lock Missiles are a slightly less risky Multi-Lock Missiles in that you don’t have to move into the middle of a pack to use them, but they’re still pretty bad.  And those are our pilots. I’ve decided to bring back voting one last time for this final battle so that you can choose who we bring. I was thinking about having people submit ballots, but that seems like a nightmare for me to figure out how to sort and unpack, so we’re just gonna do ranked choice. Here’s how it’ll work: Click on this link to a Google form. Since we have six slots and four generations of pilots, and I want at least one of each generation represented here for the sake of making this not suck for me to have to play, I’m going to have you rank each pilot by their Sentinel generation. Then, the last question will relate to which two generations will be represented with two pilots instead of one, for a total of six pilots. We could theoretically do three pilots of one generation and one pilot each from the other three, but that seems like a bad idea. Hopefully this isn’t too confusing; just rank them in order by ones you most want to see in the final battle. Thanks for participating, guys! Arist fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Sep 19, 2022 |
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Sep 18, 2022 23:05
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Arist posted:
Realized I forgot to show the Mystery Files we got, so here's those.
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Sep 19, 2022 00:20
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Not sure if it would help to know everyone's defense skills? I never really got a sense for how much of an impact they actually had on any given battle
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Sep 19, 2022 06:15
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Defensive skills are completely not worth thinking about. They activate automatically for members of the reserve team and you'll rarely ever notice them.
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Sep 19, 2022 06:19
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I appreciate they tried to give the skills some personality and there was an effort to try and make you think about team composition, unit setup, etc. Shame it doesn't seem like they... Made them good. I've also just realized that most of the characters I like share a generation. And that, while I kinda wanted to see if Arist could do something with Gouto, no way I'm voting him above either Yuki or Megumi.
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Sep 19, 2022 15:04
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The change in mystery files and subsequently loving you out of being able to spend points until you get the final file after the game instead of near the end is really dumb. Like, I get it, game balance, but come on now.
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Sep 20, 2022 09:36
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Just gonna remind people about the vote going on, which I'm going to give twenty-four more hours before I call. One or two of the categories are pretty close, enough that a single vote could sway things, so if you haven't, please do fill it out and send it in.
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Sep 24, 2022 23:42
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Just tried to record the final battle over a marathon 3-hour, 20-minute (!!!) session. It did not go well. I failed many, many times, and unfortunately, I think part of that's the final party selection leaving us a little starved for certain options that we desperately need. So, I'm left to ask you guys what we do about it: either we can turn the difficulty down to Normal, or I can make one (1) pilot substitution. Hopefully we won't need a poll, I just want an informal read of the room on this.
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Sep 26, 2022 22:52
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Substitution, and try to separate the thing into multiple recordings.
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Sep 26, 2022 22:57
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Yeah just swap out the pilot as needed.
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Sep 26, 2022 23:14
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Arist posted:Just tried to record the final battle over a marathon 3-hour, 20-minute (!!!) session. Show us who won the vote and then make the substitution.
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Sep 27, 2022 00:32
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Hunt11 posted:Show us who won the vote and then make the substitution. This.
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Sep 27, 2022 02:46
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Hunt11 posted:Show us who won the vote and then make the substitution. This is the best option, yeah.
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Sep 27, 2022 11:10
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And that's the final recording for the game done. I'll put together a summary of the vote totals in the next update with the final battle, but all that might be a few days out still because I have to subtitle that video plus review the big three hour recording I made earlier for dumb reasons. It's been a trip. everyone. Thanks for reading.
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Sep 27, 2022 21:05
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Chapter 117: The Final Battle So, I got your results in for the big poll. Pretty decent response, 35 votes in all. Before we begin, let’s go over that.  Unsurprisingly, Nenji received the lion’s share of the first place votes for Gen 1 with 31 (!). That’s more than any other option received in any category. That’s good, he deserves it. He also received zero third place votes. Hijiyama and Ei were tied for last with two first place votes each, but considering Hijiyama had a good deal more second place votes, if we end up with two Gen 1 pilots, I’d have to go Hijiyama. Sorry, Ei.  For Gen 2, people were a little more split between Juro and Iori though Iori still had the most with 15 (though, oddly, both had more second place votes than first place). Most voters decisively rejected Ryoko.  For Gen 3, Natsuno was the decisive winner, and poor Miura the redheaded stepchild. Sorry, buddy. Tomi’s in second place, and I’m not-so-secretly hoping I’ll get to bring her along with Natsuno.  And in terms of Gen 4, it’s a runaway victory for Yuki, with Megumi the obvious favorite for second place. Poor Gouto received no first place votes at all. Now, our current locks are Nenji, Natsuno, and Megumi, as they’re the only candidates with true majorities. If we calculate the ranked choice preferences, Iori becomes a lock, with the second place candidates for each category being obvious from there: Hijiyama, Juro, Tomi, and Megumi. I’d really like Megumi and either Juro (for the boosted WT recovery speed) or Tomi, probably leaning more towards Tomi, but we have to see which Sentinel generations people preferred first.  This is honestly a lot closer than it looks. It seems like Gen 4 is a lock, but it doesn’t have a true majority, and the ranked choice votes could shake out in surprising ways. Once we calculate those, it turns out that Gen 1 is actually the #1 option, with Gen 4 being second, then Gen 3, then Gen 2. So, we go with Gen 1 and Gen 4 for our “double Sentinel” generations.  This will be our party. Unfortunately, this means I have to bring Hijiyama over Tomi or Juro. This will turn into a problem. As you might suspect, this does not end up going well for me. In fact, I recorded a 200-minute session of repeated attempts to beat this motherfucker! I could have watched Tenet in that time! Or, you know, a good movie! Here’s a catalog of my various attempts to defeat this final battle: Attempt #1: Natsuno died. 13 minutes, 33 seconds in, 75% complete. Attempt #2: Terminal breached. 14 minutes, 48 seconds in, 75% complete. Attempt #3: Game crashed, though the attempt was doomed anyway. 12 minutes, 39 seconds in, 50% complete. Attempt #4: Terminal breached. 13 minutes, 5 seconds in, 50% complete. You know, these times don’t even include the opening preamble that I watched all the way through every single time, which itself is about two minutes and fifty seconds long. Just for the record. By the end of this recording session, 36 minutes and 50 seconds of the video were just that opening cutscene. That’s about 18.28% of the whole session. Attempt #5: Reset due to low health. 8 minutes, 26 seconds in, 25% complete. Attempt #6: Terminal breached. 13 minutes, 26 seconds in, 50% complete. Attempt #7: Reset. 8 minutes, 59 seconds in, exactly 50% complete. Attempt #8: Terminal got shredded in a matter of seconds. 10 minutes, 1 second in, 50% complete. Attempt #9: Terminal got shredded even faster than Attempt #8. 10 minutes, 12 seconds in, 50% complete. Attempt #10: Terminal got breached, though there was a glimmer of hope that we might be able to survive long enough to win. Didn’t happen. 14 minutes, 17 seconds in, 75% complete. Attempt #11: Terminal breached. 13 minutes, 28 seconds in, 75% complete. Attempt #12: Terminal breached. 15 minutes, 37 seconds in, 75% complete. Attempt #13: Game crashed, but we were hosed anyway. 11 minutes, 53 seconds in, 50% complete. Here’s a helpful chart of all my survival times (not counting crashes or resets):  After attempt #13, I gave up and asked you guys in the thread here for permission to either lower the difficulty or make a pilot substitution. Honestly, I was kind of hoping you’d pick option A there because I was loving sick of running that battle, but you graciously allowed for the substitution. Sorry, Hijiyama, but we're benching you. I consider your replacement to be within the spirit of the original vote, though, because they received way more votes than you did. The problem with bringing Hijiyama wasn’t really about Hijiyama himself, but a simple dearth of good ranged options. So…  As you can see, I threw Tomi in as a replacement for Hijiyama and decided to see what came of it. Gen 3s are extremely valuable on this stage for their abilities to easily kill groups that have just landed or contain high-value targets like APSOS units, so hopefully having an extra one gets us somewhere. God knows we could also really just use another EMP. First attempt with Tomi went… poorly. I died after the 50% mark at about 12 minutes, 21 seconds in. So I tried again. What you’ll be seeing is that next attempt, #15. Music: {EDGE OF THE FUTURE} (Hitoshi Sakimoto) (Absolutely listen to this)     Well, it manages the world, right? Keeps things running smooth, keeps us thinking we're from our own eras? So why would it let some crazy disaster like this go unchecked? What, you're... you're saying it's not working? If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be getting headlines of this happening around the world.  It convinces the system that’s a normal process. That’s when the Deimos appear. Universal Control has no idea it's under attack. The mainframe gets taken over before it can even register anything. It forces a manual system reset. If it was aware of any of this, it'd never let this situation even happen. It still hasn’t picked up on the problem? This whole giant-robot-apocalypse thing is kinda hard to miss. The Aegis severs the link. It can’t detect any of this. It’s numb to the intrusion. And that’s why we have to wake it up, and show it the threat. We have to make the system understand… This is not normal. It’s a state of emergency.  I can broadcast the terminal link signal from the command ship I'm on. By routing the signal through here, I can reconnect the links severed by the Aegis. That should make Universal Control finally realize what's going on... So this was your big fallback plan? Yes. It's the only option we have left. And that'll fix all of this...? We won't have to fight anymore? If the final terminal is taken over before then… When the world gets reset… you’ll all vanish along with it. This is the moment of truth. The final battle. Please… Protect us all.   Video: The Final Battle (Please watch this) This final battle is rough on Intense, holy poo poo. So many times I would just get hosed because I was out of Meta-Skills and there are a million APSOS units in play so I’d have a ton of shielded enemies bearing down on the terminal with nothing I can really do about it except throw out an EMP Stunner to buy a tiny bit of time and breathing room. That, and just pray. But at the same time, it’s really cool. The entire game has been building up to this moment, this final test, for the characters and for the player. And you have a lot of interesting gameplay decisions to make. Do I risk overextending Yuki or Nenji to kill that big kaiju, knowing they’ll be at risk if they get targeted? What armaments do I use, trying to conserve EP for this utter marathon? Did I use too many Meta-Skills? Am I already hosed? And it’s all backed by {EDGE OF THE FUTURE}, one of the coolest tracks in the game, dynamically shifting as Miyuki Inaba tells us we’re 25%… 50%… 75% of the way to finally escaping this nightmare. When Brat Overflow, the main theme, starts to play after the 75% barrier is cleared, it’s exhilarating. All this is to say, while this may have taken me almost four hours of attempts all together, it’s an amazing finale. We’ve certainly earned the payoff, I’ll tell you that much. Now, go watch that video and pat yourself on the back. We’re there. We’re finally there. (the next update is mildly  , for the record)       
Arist fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Dec 8, 2022 |
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Sep 30, 2022 02:00
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I meant to have this up much earlier today but the drat upload of the battle itself took forever to process in HD.
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Sep 30, 2022 02:04
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Thanks for trying so hard with the voted-in squad; that's a ridiculous amount of dedication to the poll! I'd have given up after the 3rd wipe, I think Anyway, that said, I don't love the battle system in this game, but even as it tries to crash whatever system it's running on, this final battle does a stellar job of immersing you in the intended desperation also Edge of the Future is such a good final battle song
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Sep 30, 2022 03:07
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Fixed the music link for {EDGE OF THE FUTURE}
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Sep 30, 2022 03:31
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Another aspect of this final battle, which really does not pose a problem in any other map, is WT Economy. Everything moves so fast, way faster than on other maps. And there's SO MUCH poo poo. You really have to consider how long a pilot is going to be recharging after an attack when you choose your skills. If you choose poorly and all your pilots are recharging at the same time all you can do is sit there and watch as the terminal drops 20% in 2 seconds because it got hit by 4000 missiles and no one was available to shoot them down, because you WILL use all 4 Meta-Skill charges before the mission is over. I actually just replayed through the game for the first time since the patch, and I don't remember if I did this a year ago when I first played this, but I found that Missile Rain is good. Like Really Good. Like Stupid Good. The missiles shoot down enemy rockets, and because the attack persists instead of doing damage when you use it that means it will block enemy rockets for a long time. It also kills so many small enemies that it recoups it's cost every time. It's basically Defensive Flares with more range and really good damage. A tactic I did for this mission (albeit not on Intense, I gave up after like 5 wipes) was to have two Gen 3 pilots and have them alternate firing Missile Rain over the terminal.
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Sep 30, 2022 03:52
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It is a massive battle of endurance where you have no idea of how close you are to winning until it has already happened.
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Sep 30, 2022 07:06
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It's also the battle where you finally know exactly what your objective is and why you're fighting for it. Up to now most of the kids are fighting without really knowing why other than "don't let the Deimos reach the Terminal". Now you know that it's do or die time, and your back is so far up against the wall that you can smell the paint.
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Sep 30, 2022 09:52
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