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RIP Akmenos, slain by a pack of assholes just before he could finally partake in the cosmic nachos of the gods with his boss.
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Feb 6, 2023 03:18
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This has got to be one of the most nonsensical plots I have ever borne witness to.
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Feb 6, 2023 04:33
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A massive eruption of POWER!!!!
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Feb 6, 2023 05:11
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quote:Be sure to keep your HP above 0. To do otherwise is strictly forbidden, for obvious reasons! God, these characters wish they could achieve the lofty heights of "some random villager" quote:Thus we can just... not deploy anyone into the danger zone. It's that easy! It.just.works.png
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Feb 6, 2023 05:54
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I can't believe the devs managed to do worse than ham-fisted exposition with all this illuminati elf secrecy. It just bugs me so much that the writing is failing even at self-indulgence. Strawman antagonists aren't great, but at least they'd have something to bounce off with rather than the utterly absent group of Varic/Empyrean and the oddly cordial Akmenos. CremePudding fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Feb 6, 2023 |
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Feb 6, 2023 12:41
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Ah, the classic "the villain planned everything!" that relies entirely on handwaving to avoid answering how they villain could plan tons of coincidences and other events, especially while doing things that literally suggest opposite plans.
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Feb 6, 2023 20:07
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Love the usage of the character with the poo poo-eating cocky grin permanently affixed to their face in a serious, dramatic moment. I'll stop doing this in the future because it's really repetitive but... man they're really good at ruining any possible tension with completely unfitting portraits.
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Feb 6, 2023 20:31
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That shot is just a disaster of character portraits in general. The excessively grinning dwarf, the emo kid's about to cry again, and the expositing lady's face is being blocked by a stupid book being held out by a ponce.
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Feb 6, 2023 21:16
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You're trying this now? Very short support dump today.  Support DumpThe Bianca one is relatively inoffensive, but the Maeve/Kael'thas one is just terrible. Why are we only learning anything about the titular Dark Deity's motivation two missions before the end of the game?
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Feb 7, 2023 05:59
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I like how they flip from desperately insisting that the big bad villain who we've yet to see actually loving doing anything is the worst evil to ever evil, immediately to uwu he's just a little guy who needs a blankie and a cuddle. He is actually neither of those things, he's a cardboard cutout, but good job trying for the entire spectrum in 20 minutes.
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Feb 7, 2023 06:34
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I've been skipping the supports. I can only stand so much of this game's writing before my brain starts to burn out.
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Feb 7, 2023 09:47
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The supports are hard to read, but if TGEK wanted me to skip them he shouldn't have added commentary.
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Feb 7, 2023 16:47
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LOL at a game this badly composed saying "Why would a declaration of love need to be smart?". Speaking of that convo, while it's obvious that lesbian romance is what's being communicated, it still feels plausibly deniable for whatever reason. Hopefully it's just me. Delphisage fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Feb 7, 2023 |
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Feb 7, 2023 17:04
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FoolyCharged posted:It.just.works.png The "solution" of just... not deploying units in an area is so dumb. So utterly, completely, and miserably dumb. How in the flying gently caress were the devs that incompetent? It's arguably not even that difficult - just have the loss condition be that the enemy walks into a specific zone and make the enemies walk to that zone. That's poo poo that GBA Fire Emblem games had literal decades ago. It's not that complicated, especially since they bragged about how the fights weren't just deathmatches, so objectives are a thing they had to have already coded. loving hell, it's before noon and I already want a drink.
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Feb 7, 2023 20:29
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It's like if Blizzard made a Fire Emblem clone, in so many ways.
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Feb 7, 2023 20:34
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Dirk the Average posted:The "solution" of just... not deploying units in an area is so dumb. So utterly, completely, and miserably dumb. How in the flying gently caress were the devs that incompetent? It's arguably not even that difficult - just have the loss condition be that the enemy walks into a specific zone and make the enemies walk to that zone. That's poo poo that GBA Fire Emblem games had literal decades ago. It's not that complicated, especially since they bragged about how the fights weren't just deathmatches, so objectives are a thing they had to have already coded. I will raise you one: the devs already did this for the bridge mission. So yes, they were capable of coding it, they're just... stupid.
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Feb 7, 2023 21:02
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Cythereal posted:It's like if Blizzard made a Fire Emblem clone, in so many ways. At the very least, Blizzard had map mechanics in their RTS games that worked. Even Starcraft had triggers that could do surprisingly complicated things, and the campaign missions were often built around them. Warcraft 2 had a lot of problems, but it's also even older than Starcraft, and decades older than this garbage. TheGreatEvilKing posted:I will raise you one: the devs already did this for the bridge mission. So yes, they were capable of coding it, they're just... stupid. Did they? I wouldn't be surprised if the enemies just go for your units even if they could nominally win via objective. Dirk the Average fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Feb 7, 2023 |
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Feb 7, 2023 21:03
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Dirk the Average posted:The "solution" of just... not deploying units in an area is so dumb. So utterly, completely, and miserably dumb. How in the flying gently caress were the devs that incompetent? It's arguably not even that difficult - just have the loss condition be that the enemy walks into a specific zone and make the enemies walk to that zone. That's poo poo that GBA Fire Emblem games had literal decades ago. It's not that complicated, especially since they bragged about how the fights weren't just deathmatches, so objectives are a thing they had to have already coded. Not just that, but even the original FE on NES had figured out the secret technique of "your main character (and sometimes some others) is mandatory and starts in a fixed position." Thracia figured out how to demand a minimum number of deployed units for certain maps that could otherwise be cheesed in some way by intentionally underdeploying. They're ignoring multiple layers of pre-existing solutions wrt making the player engage with both halves of the map.
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Feb 7, 2023 21:15
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Can We Join Team Empyrean? Welcome back! Last time on Dark Deity, we killed Akmenos in a badly designed map we totally cheesed. Today we're going to finally, finally see Empyrean exchange more than two lines with the player characters. Unfortunately for us, there's a huge problem that the thread has pointed out. MarquiseMindfang posted:Empyrean could honestly be replaced entirely by a cardboard cutout of himself that Akmenos/Varic keeps moving around. Empyrean hasn't done poo poo all game except randomly explode on a battlefield for reasons I still don't fully understand and the game will never explain. Let's hear what he has to say for himself.  The game thankfully dispenses with narration here. You might recognize the black knight next to Empyrean and yes, the thread guessed it like fifteen updates ago.  : Atlas Shale. Empyrean's dialogue is not well written, but he instantly endears himself to me because he has as much contempt for these characters as I do.  We need to remember Maeve knew all about this guy but didn't want to actually tell anyone, and when Lincoln tried to figure out who their enemy was Irving told him to shut up and sit down. I'm legitimately impressed that they had Irving double down on the stupidity here.  : A noble pursuit, one I myself have spent nearly two decades on - and completed. Trust me when I say I understand them to their core. Remember how Maeve initially described Empyrean? Earlier in the game posted:
 It's hilarious, because Empyrean is supposed to be an arrogant rear end in a top hat in way over his head, but he comes off as the adult in the room lecturing particularly stupid children. These characters have done nothing BUT jump to conclusions.  This has got to be intentional. Now, it's debatable whether Empyrean is telling the truth here. Maeve and Vesta speculate in a support that he murdered Varic's father and framed Aramor, but Maeve is also a god drat liar who withheld information from the party because of racism or something. Meanwhile, Empyrean's first interaction with Irving and company is this: The Game's Omniscient Third-Person Narrator posted:They gently caress up Empyrean's spell and kill thousands of people because they're ignorant morons. Then they start a civil war because they conclude Varic "might" know something on the grounds that he's the greatest spymaster ever who somehow allowed the country to arrive at the brink of revolt. These assholes have run a kill on sight policy, and it is immensely satisfying to see at least one character call them on their stupid bullshit. Granted, "require to" is just painful to read.  Pictured: a high school dropout who needs a dragon to cast spells lecturing an actual magical prodigy about magic. : That's why the Order kept the ritual from you in the first place.: An understandable thought, but misled nonetheless. Though it is true that the Rite of Ascension was involved in the Calamity.  We've heard this name before. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
I know you're just as shocked as I am that the Illuminati hosed everything up last time. : That can't be true. They wouldn't have formed new organizations devoted to the same purpose.: You ascribe more wisdom to them then they deserve, Sildairan. They were as weak in mind as in resolve. They had nothing left to cling to but their old ways.: You would gamble with the life of every creature on Terrazael? I thought the Aspects weren't important. I'm so confused.  : You must know we can't do that.: I thought as much. You can't fault me for trying. I've come to respect your resilience.: It's a shame you killed Akmenos. He was nearly three hundred years old, you know. A maestro in all matters of life and death. So remember how Wow Man was speculating that Empyrean had no one to teach him so he decided to become evil or whatever? Yeah, that's not true.  MarquiseMindfang posted:2: Darknight Edgelord there without the speaking role, is a necromancy'd Sterling. Probably why King Apostrophe isn't too broken up about him dying, honestly. (I know they used a different model in that cutscene, shut up).  What a twist!  This is like the one verifiably evil thing Empyrean has done all game.    : Whatever that thing is, it hasn't been Sterling for a long time. This is hilarious as Vesta is currently an evil ghost powered by blood magic. This loving game.  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 We're going to talk about this scene, because it's hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Heroes confronting the villain and pointing out his evil plan is a classic scene where we know the heroes know right from wrong and they calmly point out why the plan to put warfarin in the water supply to rebuild society in their own image is immoral. This scene is hilarious because Irving and Maeve sound like two stupid kids who haven't done the homework getting lectured by an adult. Irving clearly has no idea what he's talking about and starts throwing crap at the wall. Maeve gets burned relatively early on when Empyrean accuses her of jumping to conclusions, but Irving keeps opening his loving mouth and revealing that he has absolutely no idea of what he's talking about. Now, Empyrean doesn't actually show his work to be fair, but his assertions that he's done his homework and understands magic are backed by the other characters calling him a prodigy. The game has required us to take statements of most of the characters on faith, such as Vesta and Maeve. Why shouldn't we believe Empyrean? This is literally his first time appearing on screen, and everything we've seen at the battlefield or heard from characters like Maeve implies that he is 100 percent the real deal. It's also hilarious because he points out that the player characters have caused more unnecessary deaths with their actions than he has, and he's one hundred percent right! Empyrean resurrecting Sterling is honestly more characterization than the other two villains got, and while it's kind of cliche and predictable it also makes sense to me. If Empyrean is being honest about not wanting to hurt anyone (debatable) then Irving and Sterling messing up his big spell in the desert so that it kills thousands of people would likely make him despise the brothers. Resurrecting Sterling and forcing Irving to kill him is cruel, but I can see how something like that would drive Empyrean to utterly despise Sterling and use him for something like this.  Anyway, this map. You might be expecting some kind of cool setpiece battle, or some kind of book ends seeing as Sterling is both the first and second to last boss. You'd be loving wrong!  Look, I don't know why the souls of the dead in the Astral Plane want to kill us, alright? It's just happening.  It's another dull rear end grinding advance map! The only real thing is that the blue zones are teleporters for some loving reason. Let's take a look at the boss, shall we?  So Revenent is a "resurrected" which is actually kind of a unique class. They made a unique battle sprite for him too even. I'm just as shocked as you are. He's another boss who doesn't move but has a 1-2 range, so you can cheese him to death with snipers because this game sucks. What's his attack? Some kind of cursed sword? Invoking the power of decay against his enemies? A cloud of flies? Poison? No, his attack is actually Tier 4 holy magic. Here's the flavor text on the spell: Why Does An Unholy Undead Abomination Have This? posted:Invoke the power of Innileth to bring your foes to their final justice Yea. I don't know. I do not understand it. It flies in the face of him being an unholy abomination, which is going to be very important in a few minutes.  As it turns out, all my skipping garbage maps and trash mobs has left us severely underleveled. Wow man also manages to not crit the entire time this map despite a 75% crit rate.  We can still take these guys, but they hit extremely hard if you gently caress up.  Here's Liberty's new spell. I think it's a green lantern reference?  She's uh  Still poo poo.   The game has obligingly grouped the denizens of Rainbow Road into groups of four because it's boring and uninspired. I have a theory about this I'll bring up in the postmortem.  The attack for the "Oath" spell is a padlock. Huh.  Christ, you're trash. I take back everything good I said about you. I should have kept Sara and made her another Illusionist.     I should probably point out that the Soul Pilgrims don't even have the lazily recolored undead portraits. They're just generics. These guys were so good at cutting corners where it wouldn't be noticed.  Man, wouldn't it be funny if Empyrean was Alden from the future?      I don't think we keep this level, sadly.  These guys can and will execute your characters if you give them the chance, and they hit hard enough they can actually attrition the army if you, say, mindlessly press forward because you want the game to be over.  We could fight through this but I refuse to on principle.  EFFFFFFF  Like gently caress are we keeping this.  This pack is the only real trouble, although I'll confess the boss' batshit AI is going to bail me out more than once by the end.      The teleporter gives us another turn upon warping.  Revenant's bodyguards all run at us and I begin to wonder something. Can we go back?  You can!  The enemies aren't coded to use the teleporter, but they rush the player with the shortest route possible.  After a few wasted turns they all end up on top of the Boss Helipad.  Fools rush in.  I mentioned they gave Revenant his own sprite. I don't know why he's suddenly an axe user or why he looks so generic.  I also don't know why he summons a holy sword as his attack. I assume it's deliberate, because they could have used the blood magic animation to make him, you know, evil.   He's still kind of a pushover. The original plan was to burst down all 1000 hp in a round, but that unfortunately didn't work out. Nice damage tho.   Alden vaporizes a soul pilgrim for a level.      That clears out most of the Soul Pilgrims.  Instead of going for the easily killed Wow Man, Undead Sterling attacks Sloane for some reason. He won't kill her unless he crits.  Bianca is sick of the grind and wants it to be over so she can smash a princess. Personally, I understand.  As you should have all come to expect by now, there is of course no special dialog for Irving attacking his brother.  Cia clears out the last Soul Pilgrim.   Fenton's in trouble. I get a little worried.  Instead of going after the wounded Fenton, Sterling goes after Bianca who he cannot possibly kill.  She fries his rear end.     Riveting.  I will concede this is an absolutely cruel thing to do by Empyrean. I just hate Irving.       Didn't he just lecture you about jumping to conclusions?  I would just once love to see these idiots proven wrong. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
    : Irving is right. The latent energy that has been flowing around us feels stagnant now.  : We're gonna gut him for what he did. The snake deserves to suffer.There is no way the developers can't have figured out that their characters are reprehensible.       I don't understand this. Why are we supposed to believe Irving and company understand this ritual better than Empyrean? There's nothing in the game to suggest that Maeve or Corvan knows about magic, and there's no secret lore that they've discovered that proves Empyrean is wrong.   : Sterling wasn't the only one Empyrean and Akmenos kept from the grace of death.  : I understand. What he did to my brother makes my heart rage against him. A part of me would jump at the chance to see his greatest pains realized.: But we're no different than the countless widows and orphans he's created this year.: We may be the ones here, but we carry every soul he's harmed on our shoulders today. We owe it to them to end this.   This is performative bullshit. I think it's telling that most of the party wants to torture Empyrean beyond death, which ironically proves him right about them being terrible people who've caused a bunch of death.  I'm glad no one thought to question the Illuminati girls about this poo poo. : No, maybe not. But without mercy, who are we? We too have blood on our hands.   But... why? I thought you were trying to stop him from destroying the world.   TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Ok, we have got to have exhausted all the supports, right?  gently caress! Next Time: The last support dump, and then our freedom from this awful, awful game.
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Feb 8, 2023 06:25
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: 
: He would want us to continue doing a grinding advance.
: I wonder if he's close to completing his evil ritual?
: Remember me? I'm in the dialog!
: Wow you people are hosed up.
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Feb 8, 2023 06:40
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To the end, they keep communicating the opposite of what they intended. How do you gently caress up writing this badly? This is actually worse writing than FE: Fates, it's kind of amazing.
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Feb 8, 2023 09:03
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They couldn't even be bothered to give the Sterling thing any kind of pathos or horror. The revenant uses holy magic, that could be a sign that it's the actual Sterling still. Give him a bit of dialogue to show he's trapped in there and knows what's happening and make him beg his brother to kill him. Or give him different dialogue to show that he's been warped to be evil and make him gloat and provoke his brother into killing him (it's not like provoking Irving to murder is hard, jeez). Instead they just have him standing there. There's nothing to indicate this is even actual necromancy, it could just be an illusion cast on a lump of meat to gently caress with Irving out of spite. And Irving's reaction is the briefest and most milquetoast imaginable, which combined with the lack of special battle dialogue leaves what ought to be one of the emotional high points of the game falling completely flat just like every other story beat has. It's a boring fight and the personal aspect is barely acknowledged.
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Feb 8, 2023 09:50
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This level felt like they intended to have more revenants/morphs like FE7 given the four piles of enemies but just... didn't. I wonder who else was intended. Varic? Akmenos? Sloane's dad? Bellmaker fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Feb 8, 2023 |
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Feb 8, 2023 16:23
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I'm noticing how it's all girls who want Alex from Golden Sun to suffer, but it's guys who have to say "nuh-uh, torture is bad".
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Feb 8, 2023 17:12
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Another game where I find myself rooting for the bad guys to win because the 'heroes' are just such an unlikeable bag of dicks.
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Feb 8, 2023 17:13
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This is middle school fanfiction levels of writing holy poo poo
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Feb 8, 2023 19:35
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In the penultimate chapter of the game, Empyrean's on-screen evil acts counter finally reaches the dizzying heights of...1. Kind of. And there's not even any pathos! Zterling doesn't even talk! It might be a clay doll SHAPED like Sterling for all anyone knows! Why is anyone at all bothered by this? It's "mildly disturbing" at best! If this was a competent game, they would make it absolutely clear that Sterling has no control over himself and is basically a passenger in his own body. See: Kylier in Yggdra Union. Spoilers for an ancient GBA game, I guess. Have his critical quote and cut-in be him with a pained look, desperately begging his target to get out of the way. Have all of his unique battle animations start with a tremble as he tries to hold himself back. Things like that! But no, he just stands there like a big lump. Argh, god, this game. Please tell me there's a bad ending for losing to Empyrean that we can consider canon instead. He seems to be by far the most competent character around here (this is not high praise) and I want to throw my hat in with him.
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Feb 8, 2023 20:28
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MarquiseMindfang posted:In the penultimate chapter of the game, Empyrean's on-screen evil acts counter finally reaches the dizzying heights of...1. Kind of. The final battle of the DLC has you play as Empyrean to kill Sterling and company. These developers do not deserve more of my money.
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Feb 8, 2023 22:01
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How Rude posted:This is middle school fanfiction levels of writing holy poo poo I disagree, my middle school fanfics were wretched, and likely among the worst of my generation, but they weren't that bad. For a start they had as many as one plot lines, and furthermore, I made sure the bad guys actually burned down at least one village or other generally agreed upon as evil act.
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Feb 8, 2023 22:13
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The ultimate ending has all the antagonists getting wasted at a wrap party at a nacho bar and there is nothing this game can do to convince me otherwise.
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Feb 8, 2023 23:14
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SIGSEGV posted:I disagree, my middle school fanfics were wretched, and likely among the worst of my generation, but they weren't that bad. Yeah my terrible sixth grade fantasy had the antagonists—even the ones who join the heroes!—actually menace the heroes to varying degrees, and there was a coherent if aggressively bland/clichéd plot. This is a flavor of bad that usually only emerges because you're trying to get away from middle school writing and failing to get/heed advice that actually functions.
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Feb 9, 2023 02:49
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Oh my god, everyone is right, this writing really is worse than fanfiction.
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Feb 9, 2023 03:15
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this is truly the my immortal of srpgs...
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Feb 9, 2023 06:20
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It's kinda funny that Dark Deity is in a two-pack with a much better SRPG in Symphony of War. SoW isn't amazing but the developers at least made a couple of RPG Maker games that I quite enjoyed in Skyborn and Echoes of Aetheria.
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Feb 9, 2023 08:19
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The Last DumpThe Very Last Support Dump We did it. We're finally free. I wish I had more to comment, but I can't. These characters by and large are so dull and uninspired. I've wasted enough time on them. We can finally end this playthrough next update and then... Lost Eidolons. gently caress.
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Feb 14, 2023 00:42
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So many words about absolutely nothing.
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Feb 14, 2023 00:55
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"Making allies into enemies doesn't make you a better fighter" I say as I antagonize an ally.
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Feb 14, 2023 01:13
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Inadvertent Symbolism So I discovered something terrible as I booted up the game for hopefully the last time ever.  This apparently triggered the appearance of one last awful support, just as a final "gently caress you for playing."  I'm sorryOf course it's all about praising Irving's "leadership" while he hypocritically abandons the country he plunged into war. Oh well! Onwards!  We run into another problem. Our characters need a bunch of cool one-liners to spout off because it's traditional for these JRPGs to have them. Unfortunately this is a fight about nothing. The heroes don't represent any virtues, the player party is an amoral sack of crap being manipulated by Sloane in her attempt to seize supreme power.  Meanwhile Empyrean represents nothing. We don't even know why he wants to become a god. He has no motivation and his characterization varies from scene to scene. This is a problem, because the final confrontation isn't just supposed to be a clash of arms, it's usually supposed to be some kind of thematic confrontation. Luke in the Empire Strikes Back is partially confronting Vader because on some level he's terrified of becoming him. The Fatebinder in Tyranny is confronting the old order and sealing their damnation as the next Kyros, doomed to perpetuate the cycle. King Arthur is confronting the inevitable undoing of everything he built by his own hand. Macbeth is confronted by his own fate sealed by his own actions.  Thus we have the lazily introduced stakes that Empyrean is going to destroy the world, which suffers from the problem that Terrazael sucks and I don't care about anyone in it. Competent writers will generally at least have something indicating the world is worth saving, such as Tolkien - and his later imitator Stephen Donaldson - emphasizing the beauty of Middle-Earth that would be crushed by Sauron's victory. Alternatively, we could be invested in the characters and care about what happens to them. None of this is present. Terrazael is a lame fantasy pastiche of regurgitated garbage and these characters are mostly dull stereotypes who like warcrimes.  Case in point. Sloane personally executed her own father after convincing the Delian revolution to launch an unprovoked attack on his house. She stood there and did nothing while Irving convinced the party to start a civil war to assuage his own ego to the benefit of the foreign royalty they were traveling with.  Also everyone is teleporting in in groups and I don't understand why.  What are you talking about? You randomly joined the party because you were hanging out with them on Ford's ship. I don't understand why you think Empyrean forced the party together with violence. You weren't even fighting in the war!    Irving naturally teleports in last.  Now, you might be confused when the party started referring to Sterling's reanimated corpse as "Revenant" but hey, what do I know? It's not like lazy and inept writing has been a staple of this game. : You're making a mistake. We don't want to kill you, but we will if you leave us with no other choice. It's funny because this is one hundred percent correct. It is performative bullshit, because this is still the same Irving who in his heart wants to torture Empyrean to death.   This is probably true.   : No. I will see my ascendance through to the end and leave this wretched world.Take us with you!  You... you did nothing all game! You didn't even bother to put together a hit squad or anything to impede these guys' progress! You just dicked around and spouted bullshit about how you couldn't stand and fight alongside Varic or about how Akmenos totally needed to destroy the party.  I can only read this as extreme sarcasm, because all these idiots did was listen to the last anime woman who told them to do something. : And you, Irving. I thought that you might understand the high call of the powerful to achieve something greater. To transcend this fleeting mortal existence.But... you're immortal. You made an offhanded reference to being "born of the eclipse" and having infinite time. The DLC apparently reveals you predate the original Backstory Explosion. Come to think of it you're a powerful wizard who's immortal. What is the functional difference between having enough magical power to level armies and immortality and being a god? : I will look fondly upon your memory. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Now, you guys might be expecting a big spectacle, but this is Dark Deity, so we're going to cheese the ever loving gently caress out of this boss.  I guess the omniscient narrator wants us to know that  this will destroy the world and needs to be stopped. This fight loving sucks.  There are these six crystals scattered around the area that you can explode to turn off various gimmicks.  Like this. I don't know what the hell "Wicked Bolt" is for reasons we're about to see shortly.  This thing sucks, but it's also within attack range of your guys t1, so it should never go off.  This thing can't actually be zoomed in on, but Firestorm is weird and special. I'll get to it in a bit.  This is nice to pop but not mandatory. There's one in the upper right corner that lets him cast "Manastorm," and one directly to the right of Empyrean that doubles his movement.  First things first.  No regeneration!  So, Empyrean is a lovely gimmick boss. Despite being supposedly more powerful than Akmenos he can't actually manage to strike from more than two squares out. He can, however, run across the entire battlefield to blast your guys for 60-70 damage.  He is surrounded by two lazy orange auras. The Manastorm rages a square around him and deals 50 damage at the end of the turn. I don't think it can kill, but there's actually no animation for it or the other lazy orange effects going off.  The outer aura applies in this weird cross shaped firestorm that grinds your guys down. These are both removable after 1 round of combat with the appropriate crystal.  This thing sounds scary but is actually optional, as you'll see when I demonstrate my pro cheese strat.  Another annoying thing is that Empyrean randomly selects spells, so his crit modifer is constantly changing based on the spell in question. This is happening constantly throughout the battle preview screen, so he essentially has a random critical percentage the player has no way of knowing. What a great design! You can also see that one of the phantoms has another lovely orange aura. This is "Wicked Bolt" and it randomly targets I think three characters for some damage. I don't loving know how it works because this is an overcomplicated mess of lovely gimmicks that largely don't matter.  Oh, yeah, he can randomly get 41% crit rate. Hope you can pick well for RNG!  Empyrean has his own super special casting animation as an "Eclipse Archmage", but he just selects from one of the game's existing top tier spells. What do you mean, unique final boss spells? What do you think you're playing, Stygian?  Incidentally you can still cheese Empyrean with snipers because this game sucks.  You two can 69 on your own time.   Heedless of how little my healing actually did, I allow Empyrean and Maeve to express their burning lust for each other and have to reload.  Sure, whatever. Reload the battlesave!  Fenton blows up the manastorm crystal, which will enable our Pro MLG Tier Stratz.  See, Empyrean has a lot of bullshit, but he still doesn't have the ability to actually move through our characters. We have a bazillion guys who can run off and pop crystals, and who Empyrean actually attacks is extremely predictable.  Pop!  I think the idea are these are the aspects Empyrean brought for the ritual or some poo poo? I don't loving know.  You have to zoom in to view this tooltip. Don't worry, this isn't even the worst bug we'll encounter tonight.  Empyrean can't actually kill Sloane even on a critical here, but for some reason his AI is absolutely fixated on her. I don't understand why, but I'm OK with it.   Close!  I am eating literally every single healing item I've accumulated over the game. I also have a pile of stat boosters I legitimately do not care to use.  Vesta picks up a level from healing Alden (admittedly after the last screenshot)  Alright, Bug Time! Vesta can't heal Sloane here, but she can heal herself via items. Can you guess why? It's because the game is registering Sloane as being in the square below where she actually is. I discovered this when I tried to move her and she snapped back to that square. Once I moved her back up, I didn't have any problems. Yup! posted: So here's the thing. Faust's Ethereal has the currently undocumented ability to block damage at 50% of Faust's health, even though it's supposed to give him the ability to move through units. Faust drains 20% of his damage on hit and does more damage the more health he's missing. Empyrean's AI does not factor skills into its targeting and will always go after Faust because it calculates an instant kill.   Because Empyrean is currently surrounded and being baited into attacking Faust, we can have Caius contribute chip damage with no risk whatsoever.  I think I moved Faust out of bait range to try to heal Sloane. I hadn't discovered the cause of the bug yet so it failed.   This is the move I cancel.  And Sloane resets down one square.  I screw up here.  If he'd crit Bianca that would have been another restart. I decide that trying to get more characters in is a complete waste of time and decide to continue grinding with Faust and Caius.  Too close! This is Emp's counterattack on the next turn.  gently caress it, keep grinding.  Maeve pops the protection crystal and we can get chunking in earnest.  Caius grinds to another level.  Faust is literally invincible. He can literally just drain tank the final boss to death for absurd amounts of damage.  He then loving double crits Empyrean. This! Is! Sparta!  Imagine an invincible blood magic ghost dunking on a final boss. Forever.  This is the Koeli-Sumash ultimate spell, in case you doubted whether he was a bad guy.  We've basically got this in the bag.  Caius' damage is so awful.  I thought Maeve killed this. Guess not. Now Empyrean is going to take even more damage from our blood magic ghost.  This is hilarious.     Jesus, Faust.  Jesus can't help you here, apparently.  I love how his class skills perfectly negate his statistical deficiencies.  Caius grinds another level.  Finally Faust grinds Empyrean low enough that I feel confident about bringing in other characters.  Thus Empyrean falls to your local WoW knockoff.  Faust gets MVP and no wonder.  The man basically did 2/3 of Empyrean's health by himself.  It's time to load the thrilling conclusion!  Why does this game love showing the heroes standing threateningly over beaten foes? : No. This is the end you chose.Why the hell are we talking about fate? No one has brought up fate in this entire loving game! It's too late to make Empyrean a villain who tragically overreached, game! : To know such power through no effort of my own... No, Irving. The choice was never mine to make.What are you talking about? : Maybe not. But your misery doesn't give you the right to gamble with a hundred thousand lives.: So you say. Luckily for you, it seems your word will be the last. That's the compassion we've all come to expect from Irving! : You'd best hope you're right. It's funny because this is absolutely not a courtesy the party would extend to Empyrean. Remember, last update Sloane, Alexa, and Liberty were shrieking about how they would torture Empyrean for all eternity. Next time you eat a nacho, raise a chip to Empyrean. : The world may come to need your strength... The lazy purple filter returns!  I don't understand how we went from rude Empyrean who refused to explain himself and dunked all over the heroes to this guy who's praising Irving's skill at violence and calmly making his piece with death. It's completely loving incoherent. : ...: So, my destination is unchanged. So was this all just an elaborate suicide attempt? I'm serious. Was this all just supposed to be Empyrean's cry for help because no one understood the terrible fate of being born a turbowizard? Where did this capacity for empathy come from, and why wasn't it extended to Varic and Akmenos, who literally gave their lives to help Empyrean? For that matter, wouldn't Varic - as a king who inherited from his father - have had some understanding of being born with unearned power? Is this supposed to be a critique of hereditary power structures? It completely falls apart when you watch Irving inherit the Illuminati, but that's really par for the course.  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
I hate to admit it, but this scene kind of works? I think it's the art of the bleeding and dying Empyrean that does it for me, where he's breathing his last and lamenting his failure. Now, it's completely inconsistent with his prior characterization (aside from WoW Man's baseless speculation that has been disproved) and it really only works because we can see the pain on Empyrean's face and our standards are so low. There are definitely things that work against the authors' intention, like Irving proudly gloating over a dying man he killed, but this is probably the best scene in the game. It's not a high bar to clear.  I guess Bianca wins gamewide MVP. Woo! Bang! Pow!   : It has been 36 hours since Empyrean's defeat. Meet the new status quo, same as the old.  : It is scheduled to happen a month from today. Many had fled during recent months to wait out the revolution in safer areas.Oh, so all the nobles have left the country? Tell me more about how any government without them would be illegitimate.  : I suppose there's no surprise in that. Neullais is nice around this time of year, I hear.: I've regained control of house Val'Myren. Monroe and I will be meeting with our advisors on how to proceed. Oh, that's right, Alexa stands for the common people. The ones that she's not starving to death.  : They won't.: Lincoln, we'd like you to assume Sterling's former role as commander of Delia. : I...: I would be honored, Sloane. And I am honored that you would want that after all we've been through.: We also know that we'll need advisors who represent more than our own interests, and we need to begin rebuilding the Kingdom.: I can think of no one better suited to be Delia's quartermaster than you, Alexa.Fun fact: the royal quartermaster was responsible for preparing the king's sleeping quarters, not supplies and whatnot. I have no idea what the hell this means.  This is hilarious. I want you all to remember the party basically sold out Alexa's half-assed visions of a new Delia for the common people by Sloane insisting that any government that didn't respect her hereditary privilege was illegitimate while Maeve made fart noises. They even talked about Lincoln's home country being a republic! Alexa just sold all her supposed principles down the river and it makes the revolution even more of a joke. The common people are good enough to fight and die when Irving shows up to spew bullshit about Faine but not good enough to have any say about this new government the party installed by force. : Yours was a good idea too, Lincoln, sorry.: So you accept?: Of course I accept! Who else would keep your greedy rump in check?: A great many, I expect... We also have a role for you, Wren, if you're planning on sticking around.Remember, Wren is a professional assassin who randomly showed up in the woods and derailed negotiations with the wood elves by killing three of them who apparently wanted to talk.  : Oh?: There are going to be hundreds of Delian nobles swarming the palace a month from now, and we've no idea where their loyalties lie.: I was hoping you would be interested in helping us keep tabs on things.This is hilarious. We overthrew the king for being too tyrannical and gathering too much power. Now we need this professional assassin on retainer to keep the nobles in line. A foreign professional assassin with no relations with anyone in the country save for the leaders of the violent revolution that installed themselves in charge via force. : I see... if I am understanding, I have a month to consider, yes?: Two weeks. We've got groundwork to lay."We had Alexa and Liberty build some torture devices and they kept getting overly excited. It was kind of weird, actually." : I will think on it. "We wouldn't want any of the Aramoran peasants getting ideas, now would we?" : The question remains whether we have your uncle's support.: We're planning on leaving immediately to meet with him. When he hears the full story, he'll understand. You have my word that the war will be ended."Because we literally won. We helped you guys do a complete regime change and sat back and watched as Irving started a civil war. Bye, losers!"  Bullshit, Lincoln and Caius have tons of supports about how Aramor and Delia were constantly sniping at each other and Sara had a whole thing about how her country fantasized about seizing the bridge. : I believe we will be able to rebuild the friendship our kingdoms once shared. All I need is time.: Aurima, I trust you will come with us to Oasis. You deserve no less than a full pardon. : You don't need to live there, but you should at least allow us to do right by you. Your legacy in Oasis deserves to be known.You probably forgot Aurima's exile subplot, much like the writers forgot basic plot structure.  : I will join you, at least for a time. Thank you, Princess. : I hate to break up the party, but we should make preparations. War isn't good for safety on the roads, and we have a lot of ground to cover.: Of course. Where houses Val'Myren and Val'Burin hold sway, you will always have a place.: We will talk soon, I'm sure. Be safe.: Thank you both. Christ, shut UP!  : I'm quite sure. I don't know where I need to be right now, but it isn't in Oasis. I will write you all, of course. : I expect no less. Goodbye, friends. The Aramorans all leave. Funny, they didn't shoehorn poor Caius in here. Be free, my man. : You won't be sticking around, will you?: No... I'm going to Chelebons with Liberty and Vesta.: I think you should speak with Iris. I suspect she'll want to join you.: I'll seek her out before we leave. I don't know WHY everyone is suddenly on last name basis with Irving all of a sudden, seeing as the Sildairan Illuminati crap is supposed to be secret.   Remember how Irving was all in on patriotism and started the civil war to fix the kingdom he supposedly loved? Now he's loving off to join the Illuminati. What a hero.  Someday he'll abandon his wife and kids to get attacked by some evil dude after the magic rocks, and this evil dude might actually have a plan instead of eating nachos. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
  : I will. Fenton's been teaching me all about their customs, making sure I know how to be respectful. Worst case, I've got Maren along to keep me in check,Sure, why not.      : Don't worry, I'll hold him to it. Iris too. Shut. UP! : Rose, Benji. I pray Redhill sees a speedy recovery. Thank you again for all you did to help us. Make sure you're recognized as the heroes you are. : You don't even need to say it...  : I pray your voyage is less eventful then our last. You'll need your strength. There's plenty of work left to do. : Wouldn't dream of it, buddy.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Make it stop! : I think there is a place for me in the Order. For all of us. : The Order will take you, or I'll have Alastair's head.: Let's keep the taking of heads to a minimum for a while, eh? : I couldn't agree more. It appears we're ready to depart, thanks to one unscrupulous smuggler with a heart of gold.  : Looks like Sara wasn't lying, her people kept the Ol' Humpback in tip-top shape! We're ready to sail whenever Her Holiness commands.  Truly a champion of the common man.  : Of course, of course. Faster to Alastair, faster to a good bath drawn in my own home in Threllisar.: You should really try to relax while we travel, Irving. You may regret not doing so when you never get another chance.  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 : We can't make a decision before we get the full story. What a moron.  : And we've had problems enough without the largest consolidation of Aspects since the Calamity plopping into our laps. We don't have nearly the numbers we need to do much of anything.: We could return to hiding.: No... Those days are far behind us now. Gods, let's hope I still remember the words to the Rite of Initiation.: Do me a favor, would you, and fetch me a copy of our charter from the archives. We're going to need all the help we can get.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 This image looks incredibly lovely and pixelated on my monitor.  I don't think there are any more screenshots I need to show of this game. I've never seen a game so sloppily made that it glitches out the credits into unreadable garbage. It shouldn't surprise anyone that there's no QA credited.  You were loving terrible at your job.  I think it's telling that the guy who did the Prophet animations left themselves credited as "Black Mage".  Anyway, that's Dark Deity. I think I've made my thoughts on the game very clear. It's trash. I was willing to cut the developers a lot of slack initially due to age and inexperience at first.  The problem is that everything is done in the laziest and sloppiest way possible. The maps are uninspired. The game systems are overly complicated for a strategy that involved forming a grinding advance square and marching. The writing is bloated and sheer garbage. It's clear none of the people involved - with the exception of the spell animators - had any idea what makes people actually want to play a game, so we got this slop dumped on us.  This isn't even some guy's small basement game, they took this to E3! They clearly wanted this to be a big indie hit that was going to wow people by being a cool new tactics game that hearkened back to the GBA Fire Emblems after the main series devolved into dating sims with violence. This was supposed to go out there and compete with real game companies making real games, and they poured so much effort into this story that they failed to verify whether anything they were doing was any good. Then again, I will leave you with the knowledge that this is the only game I have EVER seen that hosed up the end credits like this. Next Time: Postmortem, and then the end of the LP.
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Feb 14, 2023 07:28
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: Holy poo poo, now I'm confused, and I live in Black Geyser!
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Why even bother with reloading here? The game is over, it isn't like the stat penalties matter anymore.
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Feb 14, 2023 08:11
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After reading along all the way through this, I think the harshest thing I can say about this game is also the simplest. Most bad games I've played, or watched/read LPs of, or whatever had something going for them. Like a neat plot idea the writers fumbled, some interesting gameplay bit that could have been done better, or some characters or music tracks or something that deserved to be in a better game. Or a general sense that the game could have been so much better with just a handful of tweaks and fixes here and there. Or failing that, if they were complete shitshows, some of them were at least entertaining shitshows, even if not in the ways their creators probably intended. This one has nothing. I can think of nothing unique to this game that I'd like to see salvaged for another game. I can't imagine a "fixed" version of this game that doesn't involve sanding off so much that it would basically just be building something completely new off a vague generic skeleton. It's not even lovely in an amusing way. It's just a complete nothing of a game.
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Feb 14, 2023 08:18
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