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SatansOnion posted:the fabric over Sloane's bodacious knockers looks like dark green mozzarella being pulled apart, and it almost irritates me as much as her v1.0 tiddy mage outfit does   Just gotta turn off the vacuum sealer
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Sep 5, 2022 21:53
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megane posted:
...I'm enraged by how much better that makes her design look, haha.
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Sep 5, 2022 22:22
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So they explicitly promised "no rout missions" in the Kickstarter? They did understand that was supposed to be code for "the level design will actually matter more than FE15's infamous barren fields", right?
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Sep 5, 2022 22:40
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megane posted:
Either commit to the boob pockets or don't do them at all.
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Sep 5, 2022 23:03
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MShadowy posted:Either commit to the boob pockets or don't do them at all. It's obviously to draw attention to how big her boobs are, that they're so big her outfit can't fit them properly. I'm actually shocked it's not just a boob window to maximize the sleaze and minimize the effort. Someone really wanted this character to be as sexy as possible. Might also explain why Rina-chan was commissioned to do her voice, she was legendary in the Newgrounds era for voicing women meant to be hot or cute. Delphisage fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Sep 5, 2022 |
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Sep 5, 2022 23:23
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I don't recall it ever being mentioned, are promotions just automatic? GBA FE games had relatively limited items as a requirement for it, so sometimes you had to actually think about who to promote and when to do it. Although it was frustrating having your lord unable to promote until a certain point in the story (looking at you, Roy).
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Sep 6, 2022 05:03
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Grizzwold posted:I don't recall it ever being mentioned, are promotions just automatic? GBA FE games had relatively limited items as a requirement for it, so sometimes you had to actually think about who to promote and when to do it. Although it was frustrating having your lord unable to promote until a certain point in the story (looking at you, Roy). They're automatic at level 10, so any new units that join us at that level get to promote for free. The next promotion is at level 30.
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Sep 6, 2022 05:30
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I've just remembered that the English, around the time of the Norman invasion, had a muster system in which each territory subdivision down to the village was to provide a set number of fully equipped fighting men and ships, so there is in fact historical precedent. Also I guess we have a mad king, sure, I'll take it.
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Sep 6, 2022 19:31
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A Rout Mission in Our "No Rout Missions" Game Welcome back! Last time on Dark Deity a bunch of boring expository meetings happened after we fought our way through a lazy haunted house. Today we have... supports... oh, and we have to go kill some dudes to prove to the king our highly cohesive unit deserves to not be disbanded. First though, we have supports. We only have four supports from last update, then our daily Grinding Advance,  Ah, Christ.   : Great... I guess he is a ferret after all, so the bar is pretty low.  : Charming... : Hey, that wasn't Butter's fault.: Get out of here before I call Lincoln to fetch you! I heroically look at the store before realizing I don't need any of this crap. I'm still on the middle difficulty, and I haven't had a single unit fall yet. Maybe I should have done Deity, but eh.   : It's good to see you regardless.This is accompanied by a loud "STERLING!" from the VA. : How bad is it? : Well, the King no longer wants you dead. You can thank me for that later. : Your orders were to return to Sojourn immediately. If the king were any more lenient with order breaking, he'd have a squabbling flock instead of an army.  : All sounds like good news so far to me. What's the catch?: I relayed your request to remain together as a group. He wants to test you first.: We just cleared out the biggest bandit stronghold in the last century, twice, and he wants us to prove ourselves?: I must agree with Sloane. This seems rather ridiculous.: Look, standing around lamenting life's unfairness won't save your battlegroup. Varic's word is law.: What's this test then?: You'll travel east, to the old mustering grounds near Sunborough. Some deserters are holed up in the colosseum there.: They've amassed a considerable force, and have been a constant thorn in the King's side.: We're to take up arms against our own people?: It's certainly not the most glorious work, but I suspect that's why Varic deems it a fitting test for deviant soldiers. Where did you think the bandits came from, Alden? : They've taken to waylaying travelers along the road. They're nothing short of bandits now. They disgrace the Delian armor they wear.: Troubling as it is, it sounds like we've narrowly avoided anything worse thanks to you. You have my thanks yet again, Commander.: Of course, old friend. Anytime.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Why are they hanging around in a colosseum? Why does this medievalesque kingdom have gladiators? gently caress if I know! Incidentally, gladiator is a class in the rogue tree and it's... weird. We'll get to it.  : As far as I understand, there are actually quite a number of rules governing honorable gladiatorial combat.: I doubt we'll see any such rules observed here. I've yet to encounter brigands with a taste for honor.This game's writing has a weird honor fetish that I suspect has to do with the narrative lead's self description as an anime nerd.  What the gently caress is this design? We've got a platemail boob thing leaving her stomach exposed to random murderers but also goggles. I'm trying to figure out how she would even get into that costume. Does the boob plate go on last? : We're spotted. Look alive. : You've nothing to fear. Come to join our cause?  Now, we might have a serious moral decision! Do we continue supporting King Badman and his quest to do warcrimes, or -  Nah. : They wouldn't if they'd join us in laying down our arms.: Seems you'll not have that chance just yet.: As you'd have it. To arms, people! The King's men have returned! Drive them back!TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 It never ceases to amaze me that every time they load the map for dialogue we need another loving loading screen before we can play. It's real amateur hour.  The Kickstarter posted: Alexa is heroically hiding in the corner behind a wizard pile.  The infantry square forms up for its traditional grinding advance, and here's the thing. Half the enemies are programmed to go aggressive and actually fling themselves against the army instead of just sitting there waiting to be baited out and killed.  It looks a lot more threatening than it is, as these people can't hit for poo poo! I don't know if the team's just been blessed with good level ups or what (admittedly Cia is... a little nuts) but the enemy saves me the trouble of going over there for about half the level.  Even Irving is contributing!  Sadly the developers were lazy and didn't make a sick animation for Butter attacking people. We are still keeping Sophia.  "Such a shame... you're SOOO cute!"  Irving is insanely lucky this update as he dodges a zillion mages. His fortitude (this game's resistance) is hot garbage so he's vulnerable to getting instakilled on a crit.  Cia, on the other hand, is kinda OP on this difficulty (I assume people are more accurate on Deity) and can just kind of be ordered to tank whatever. She does good damage, too!  Praise Arengee! The archer dies soon after.   Sloane embraces her destiny as a Magician, because speed is god.  Cia levels off a critical.  Irving continues his adventure, and surprisingly earns a spot off the bench this update.  Alden continues the adventures of the Nutshot 3000.  Irving gets jumped on by like 3 mages here.  His survival literally comes down to the wire.  I realize something odd - I'm actually having fun! Yea, it's basic gameplay, but I'm being forced to react and think to what the game is throwing at me. Granted, a lot of it is because I'm playing subpar. The correct thing to do would have been to retreat to the left and form a wall there, ensuring that an extremely tanky character is on the bottom for ranged attacks. However, the non-Irving and non-Garrick team members are strong enough that it really doesn't matter.  Alden is a dodge tank mage. It's kind of nuts.  Bianca's also pretty dodgy.  Brooke... exists. She can dodge a bit but will probably hit the bench soonish.  Maren really needs to promote soon, but we're honestly not doing a lot of healing because the squad is absurdly good at dodging.  Last Maren level of the update.  Lincoln is helping.  Sophia gets a level. Don't worry, this is all still Grinding Advance infantry square gameplay.  There are still a ton of guys coming at us.  Irving gets his health shredded for a level.  Big number!  Irving barely survives a round because, uh, I was trying to show off the wound system. Yea.  Punks step to Sophia (and Butter).  Same round. I was this close to restarting the level, but can proudly say no resets here!  AAAAAAH!  Brooke can take it, but she can't dish it out.  The player phase massacre begins.   These are all on one player phase, which really helps me clean up idiots faster.  Brooke and Irving pop healing items as we keep the Noob Square Formation going.  Despite their best efforts, the self-described "dynamic duo" do not kill this man.  We withstand the assault on the enemy phase fairly handily.  Brooke gets a level.  I guess people aren't staring at Cia enough because they can't hit her.  Seriously, I don't know if enemy hit rates are just bad, we're super blessed, or the AI is being stupid and attacking into massive disadvantage because it thinks it could get a kill if all the hits go through.  Enough of the bad men are gone so we can go back to our slow, grinding advance.  Sloane takes out some Garrick-related frustrations.  Irving continues to try to prove to me that warriors don't suck.  Oh, goodness. This is embarassing. I guess we have to talk about the warrior class tree now.  The warrior class tree suffers acutely from the fact that it sucks. This is the Knight. It does, uh, stuff - namely, gets 6% power from all adjacent player units and gets a +35% health bonus. HP and Defense growths are not noticeably better and this thing doesn't let you fill a role on the team that Cia can't.  Barbarians would be a lot better in another game. Their savage ability letting them ignore 50% of enemy defense is pretty nuts, except that the dragon knight (the only good tier 3 class) has magic attacks in addition to physical so you can ruin defense that way. Their second ability raises the range of the warrior's push skill that I've literally never used, ever. You take the class because it has good speed growth and speed is everything in Dark Deity.  The defender has an AoE defense buff and a provoke skill that I don't know how it works and don't care. Yes, you get a 90% defense growth on Irving, but our best "fragile" DPS units are dodgy and do a bunch of damage. You guys ever play against Eldar in Warhammer 40k, how they're nominally "fragile" but have a bazillion buffs representing evasion that makes them either harder to kill or lets them move after shooting so you can't fight back while also dealing tons of damage? Those are the good Dark Deity units. The Defender is the equivalent of the "durable" army the Eldar are blowing up.  The Dragoon is the only other tier 2 fighter class worth a drat, but it got nerfed. It gains critical chance for each square moved and increases your crit by 20% of dodge. Like all the non dragon knight warrior classes, it still only hits out to 1 square and you're stuck babying a warrior till level 30.  Irving becomes a barbarian because I misread Savage and thought it was for both defense and fortitude a la the Reverie. Oh well. A funny thing about promotion in Dark Deity is that the character gets another turn after promoting, so Irving gets to immediately wail on this archer with his axe. So much better damage!  Maybe he'll even stay on the team. It'd be cool to see a dragon knight.  Brooke is nominally contributing.  Sophia has had enough of this poo poo.  There is absolutely no one on the right side of the map. I think it was supposed to be a trap for if you tried to punch your way through and hit Alexa early, but since there's no penalty in Dark Deity for taking your time and grinding away we get this.  Bottoms up!  Elias promotes.  I make him a surge out of curiosity and because I know there are two more good adepts upcoming we can replace him with if he doesn't turn out.  Not bad. We've got all the magic damage types covered too. No, I don't know why there's no shadow or frost damage, it's just holy, fire, lightning, and arcane.  I continue to slaughter the enemy in little groups with no casualties. It's dull and my army is in no danger.  Incidentally, weapon upgrades carry over between types. So if we'd upgraded Elias' balanced spear, his balanced lightning spell would have the upgrade despite being a lightning bolt or whatever.  This is getting pitiful.  Speed, Sloane, speed. We made you a magician so you could get speed.  You're getting shown up by a fourteen-year-old kid.  This is just embarrassing. Go home. You're drunk.   Whee!  The Thief critical animation is pretty neat, as they throw the coin into the air, do a bunch of stabs, flip back and catch it.  Irving manages to impress Cia by being fed a kill.  Looks like we may as well cover our last set of promotions.  The archer gets +8% crit per adjacent ally, which is honestly pretty great in your standard Dark Deity Tedium Square, as well as a 1.25% hit bonus from dexterity.  The drifter is a weird class where you increase crit mod by 50% and get 30% more crit if there's only 1 adjacent unit. This is probably fine for suffering through for 20 levels to get some wombo crit build going off (sniper?) but I'd really rather not do that.  The strider has a lame Lord of the Rings reference and turns you into a dual wielding dodge tank. Sterling is the upgraded form of this, but there's a later character who will do this job a lot better. Pass.  Witch Hunters get extra damage against mages (duh) and have the ability to use their haste ability (+1 movement) to also grant 40% extra defense. You could probably stack that on Defender!Irving for the ubertank, or you could build a lifesteal/dodge tank instead and have someone who can actually fight. "Good against a subset of enemies" is... not actually good in this game full of powerful general purpose units who can slaughter whatever is thrown their way, and there are specific weapon types you can kill rune cloak wearers with. The ranger class tree is... there. They don't have a 1-2 range upgrade like Rogue and Warrior do in tier 3, instead the Sniper can shoot 3 squares. Upon the initial release of the game, the enemy could always counterattack when you fired from three squares away Supposedly, per their patch notes, this is fixed. The tree ultimately suffers from Dark Deity's four weapons system. You can be a swordsman, an axeman, or a bowman, but not both at once! The only classes that can use multiple weapons are the Adept's upgraded Reverie and the Dragon Knight, and even then you get half magic/half weapon arbitrarily assigned. I hope you have the tokens to upgrade two weapons! Sorry. Game badly designed. I end up making Sophia an Archer on the grounds that Archer->Sniper is easy and gives her a niche other units in the army won't be able to fill (except the better archer I think we get next mission, but whatever!)  This is just sad.  Cia seems as happy as I am that the level is almost over.  Yeah, I won't insult your intelligence, Alexa becomes a player character in... 11 chapters. Meanwhile, I present you duel of the boobies. I'm so sorry.  The Wrath of Ferret is real and merciless.  Elias calls down lightning from a clear sky to end the mission.  Yea, Cia, the sheer amount of damage you mitigated by dodging all those morons makes you MVP in my book.  Oh no! Sterling and the king! : From where I'm standing, I'd say you've got that mixed round.I guess we somehow nonlethally stabbed, burned, electrocuted, and bludgeoned our way through those guys.  : Indeed... I must say, I'm impressed with your work. Such an eclectic group. Perhaps you truly are as 'special' as your dear Sterling would have me believe.  Ok King Caudillo over there is hard at work inspiring loyalty. : Oathbreaker! Your war will bring only death and destruction. If you won't see reason, you'll see that for yourself. Ha ha. : This isn't over. : At any rate, you've all passed your trial, and won for yourselves a clean slate. Now stain it with the blood of Aramor. : What exactly did they do again?: Hah! Tell me, little one, do you derive your strength from your insolence? : So it seems. Incidentally, the road to Redhill should provide ample opportunity for lessons.: Redhill? Is the settlement in danger?: A large Aramoran force was spotted marching there but two nights ago. You'd best make haste and prepare the defenses. I've dispatched reinforcements to aid you, though they won't be as quick to arrive.: As you command. We'll set off at once. On one hand, Varic is a dick who does warcrimes. On the other hand, he hates Irving nearly as much as I do. : Yes, your highness.I'm pretty sure kings are addressed as "your Majesty", and "your highness" is a lesser rank. Oh well! TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 We did it! We got through a chapter without any new playable characters being dumped on us!   Oh, dear god... that's a LOT of supports.  Alright. You can have one. The best support in the game. : Would you care to leave willingly or shall I resort to force?Next time: Supports.. and warcrimes!
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Sep 7, 2022 05:13
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: Why would the king kill us for protecting his subjects?
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The writers uh... are trying to frame that last support as sloane being unreasonable, aren't they? Like I'd hope it wouldn't be so stupid, but... no faith remains here.
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Sep 7, 2022 06:42
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It feels like they're trying to make Sloane to be really kind of bitchy, but it's not really working in these specific supports that well? Sophia: Sophia did something dumb that got them captured and stuck in cages for 2 weeks. Sloane gets to be pissy at her about that, especially since she doesn't seem to have really learnt her lesson that well. Garrick: They're really non-specific as to what Garrick was walking in on Sloane. And she did bitch him out as the opening. However, Garrick's follow-up isn't exactly charming.... Irving: This one is just stupid. TGEK covered it pretty well. With their attempts at characterizing her like that, and trying to make her vapid and kind of spoiled, it REALLY doesn't speak well of the writers here, in combination with her original character design.
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Sep 7, 2022 08:19
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I'm fine with all Sophia's supports being about Butter, given the content of all other supports. So far the ferret is the best character in this mess. Though I too am sad that he doesn't get an attack animation, because the war dance is a thing of beauty and terror and deranged flailing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YD_PR2IHH4 also TheGreatEvilKing posted:I'm pretty sure kings are addressed as "your Majesty", and "your highness" is a lesser rank. Oh well! In Britain, at least, kings were addressed as Highness until Henry VIII decided that wasn't cool enough and changed it to Majesty in the 1500s. So you could argue for either.
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Sep 7, 2022 09:31
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Black Robe posted:In Britain, at least, kings were addressed as Highness until Henry VIII decided that wasn't cool enough and changed it to Majesty in the 1500s. So you could argue for either. It depends on whether the king or queen prefers to be majestic or high, evidently
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Sep 7, 2022 15:27
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Between the writing and visual designs for female characters, methinks these writers have a really bad case of Madonna/Whore Complex.
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Sep 7, 2022 15:30
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Cythereal posted:Between the writing and visual designs for female characters, methinks these writers have a really bad case of Madonna/Whore Complex. It feels like the virgin/whore dichotomy is one of those big writing blocks that every bad or mediocre writer runs into. Doesn't help that it feels like something audiences explicitly want, given Orochi from FE14's unpopularity in Japan.
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Sep 7, 2022 16:07
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Keldulas posted:It feels like they're trying to make Sloane to be really kind of bitchy, but it's not really working in these specific supports that well? Yeah, they don't seem to know what they're doing with Sloane. (Which I guess is to be expected, since you can tell she changed a lot in development from design alone, let alone anything else.) My guess is she was initially conceptualized as the ditzy, flirty type, ergo the extremely revealing original outfit. Then they started fleshing out her backstory and decided to make her a wealthy aristocrat, which somewhere along the line started bringing "she's spoiled and privileged" traits into the mix. At some point they stepped back and panicked that they were making this sexy feminine character too negative and they were going to get slammed for misogyny, so they started stripping out the initial sex-focused traits and replaced them with making her outspoken and headstrong to win feminism points. But since she's still a noble, that translated into making her bossy and classist. Now they've got this weird mix of things that doesn't quite make sense, like "Such a shame, you're SOOO cute!" being her crit quote when her actual dialogue seems to indicate she hates everybody she's fighting and wants them to just go away. It might also explain why they were so quick to change her outfit when the outcry over it started. (Honestly, considering her crit quote, I was fully expecting at least one of her support convos to be her embarrassingly vamping on somebody. I was actually pleasantly surprised when that wasn't the case.) Amusingly, I feel this makes her possibly the most interesting PC so far. She's certainly the most motivated, if only by virtue of wanting to incinerate everything standing between her and returning to a life of luxury. It feels like she hates being in this game and wants nothing more than to get out of it as soon as possible, which... fair enough, Sloane, I would want the same thing if I was in your shoes, haha.
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Sep 7, 2022 18:00
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Luninareph posted:Yeah, they don't seem to know what they're doing with Sloane. (Which I guess is to be expected, since you can tell she changed a lot in development from design alone, let alone anything else.) Sounds like someone started with wanting to reproduce Charlotte from FE14, but then got bombarded with conflicting criticism about what was good or bad about Charlotte, because trying to reproduce such a broken character is doomed to failure unless you just pull a Dragon's Crown and admit you like the design of a big-boobed flirty girl who fights in a bikini.
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Sep 7, 2022 18:24
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I think I bought this game like a year ago but it stayed firmly in my backlog? This is disappointing, but certainly better to know this way rather than having to play it myself. At least Lincoln's pretty. Delphisage posted:Outdated terminology. Nowadays it's called light novel writing, or Cinemasins nitpicking. Though I also have a pet term of "narou-kei". All right, I'll give you Camilla, but Charlotte's a loving hoot despite her design.
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Sep 7, 2022 19:00
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t3isukone posted:All right, I'll give you Camilla, but Charlotte's a loving hoot despite her design. Charlotte's issue is that she's still an FE14 character, so not only does she have to recite some truly awful scenes and dialogue once in a while, but since she's also existing in a game with Camilla, Elise, Kagero, Nyx and Tharja in it - plus even more specifically fetishized female designs like MU, Azura, Setsuna, Severa and Cordelia - her gimmick of "acting faux-cutesy, weak and promiscuous just to attract a mate even as she's RAMPAGING AROUND THE BATTLEFIELD" comes off like an insincere gimmick that's drawing attention to its insincerity out of a lack of creativity a la most narou-kei. If the fanservice characters in 14 were limited to just her and Orochi, and also if the game wasn't so nakedly otaku-pandering, she'd be way more tolerable. As-is, I still can't add her to my list of "FE14 charactes that don't make me angry or apathetic", which is a small list of Orochi, Azama, Reina, and just barely Hana. Delphisage fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Sep 7, 2022 |
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Sep 7, 2022 19:19
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I love barbarian Irving's combat sprite, that tiny anime head on that shirtless swole body. I kinda want someone to photoshop a corresponding dialogue image. 
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Sep 7, 2022 20:12
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I know exactly what they wanted to do with Sloane. She fits the Fire Emblem archetype of "person who joins your army early on that seems unassuming, but is later revealed to be entirely important to the plot, which is why they keep sticking around despite no immediately obvious reason to do so." This is like Sara from FE5 or l'Arachel in FE8. However, Sara was executed well due her joining Leif's army being a result of her own petty grievances with her grandfather, who was a major antagonist in FE4, and l'Arachel works because she is a ditzy comic relief character whose lack of consistency was played for laughs. They are attempting to play Sloane straight despite her having no real attachment to Irving's present circumstances, all because one super-cool map later on needed to have a justification to be played on despite being rather disconnected from everything else. Yet Sloane isn't even the worst of it. There is another character, whom we have already met, who will also have this exact gambit played on them in terms of "I'm plot important now," and it will be even more inexplicable when they do it. Eventually one has to stop looking at these people as characters and more as materials which the plot will shape to suit its needs. ... and oh does the plot have needs. On the nice side, I appreciated the dragoon class. It was a really neat twist on a cavalry unit in an Emblem-like where you constantly wanted to be attacking near the maxima of the unit's movement range. It introduced a lot of easily-optimizable room for strategy. A shame they nerfed it.
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Sep 7, 2022 20:37
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Delphisage posted:Charlotte's issue is that she's still an FE14 character, so not only does she have to recite some truly awful scenes and dialogue once in a while, but since she's also existing in a game with Camilla, Elise, Kagero, Nyx and Tharja in it - plus even more specifically fetishized female designs like MU, Azura, Setsuna, Severa and Cordelia - her gimmick of "acting faux-cutesy, weak and promiscuous just to attract a mate even as she's RAMPAGING AROUND THE BATTLEFIELD" comes off like an insincere gimmick that's drawing attention to its insincerity out of a lack of creativity a la most narou-kei. ...Setsuna? Like, sure, she's plays into anime tropes like most FE characters these days and is designed to be attractive, again like most FE characters these days, but I certainly wouldn't call her pandering on a level that Severa or Azura are and definitely not fetishized if only because I genuinely don't see what fetish she'd appeal to. She's...ditzy I guess, but like, in a way that's more for comic relief than, say, Felicia.
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Sep 7, 2022 21:06
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t3isukone posted:...Setsuna? It's this vibe I get from her supports. If it was just the maid outfit and dojikko, I wouldn't have listed her like I didn't list Felicia, who's more an anime trope being dressed in fetish garb. Something about Setsuna's spaced-out personality, inconsistent long-term memory, and tendency to get herself into problems she can't free herself from makes her come across as fetishized vulnerability, like if you transplanted the brain of a moeblob into the body of a 17-year-old seinen woman.
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Sep 7, 2022 21:32
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Eternal Blathering Of The Unwrinkled Mind I know I promised warcrimes in this update, but right now I'm going to get the rest of our exciting supports out of the way.  : Then be assured of my prayers for you. : Your technique was off in our last fight.: Reporting for duty, Commander Irving!: You people see me as an assassin, but you of all people should see that for the mistake it is.: ...: That would be totally awesome.Brooke seems determined to give Irving a run for his money. Next time: Warcrimes!
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Sep 9, 2022 00:49
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Alright. You can have one. The best support in the game. Clearly, the over-sexing and scant dress was meant to handicap Sloane, as she was too amazing otherwise. When's the last time a character has told another "excuse me, rear end in a top hat, I'M BUSY, gently caress OFF"?
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Sep 9, 2022 01:37
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These supports read like someone who's never worked in public before. A lot of it is 'why the hell would you say that to someone's face?' Like you mentioned in one support, someone in HR would be having a field day if someone spouted even half these lines.
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Sep 9, 2022 02:04
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You know, it's the second time in a row we get theSIGSEGV posted:hardline second wave waifuist creation being (comparatively) cool and good and relatable and having as many as several personality traits. This is somewhat unexpected, and also not entirely unexpected, I imagine, with all the, shall we say, focus she got from the dev team, someone placed themselves in her shoes for a minute or two. SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Sep 9, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 04:24
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:
I will admit, I find Brooke more tolerable than Irving. It might be because of how they characterize her as a liar, which makes me imagine how she might be lying about everything she says. It would be hilarious to find out she's actually not a professional killer but only, like, stabbed someone nonfatally in an alley one time and then spun that into a whole fake career of "hundreds of successful murders" and "hundreds of evil schemers have employed me" only to accidentally get in over her head when she got hired by the two princesses from earlier and has been panicking ever since, only to be "rescued" by jumping ship into this bunch that's (mostly) too stupid to catch her out.
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Sep 9, 2022 04:49
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Luninareph posted:I will admit, I find Brooke more tolerable than Irving. It might be because of how they characterize her as a liar, which makes me imagine how she might be lying about everything she says. That's why her conversation with Sloane has her spewing nonsense! She's panicking because here is someone who's actually trying to hire her to stab someone. Also why in combat she's so bad at the actual stabbing people part. I know that interpretation is definitely not what was intended, but it's more fun that way.
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Sep 9, 2022 05:46
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When Butter isn't on screen everyone should be asking "Where is Butter?". But unironically, I don't even care that Sophia is mostly just a vehicle to talk about her pet.  Honestly I feel Sophia and Alden have the advantage of the writers not trying to make them 'deep' at all, and that makes their dialogue far less painful to read.
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Sep 9, 2022 08:09
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Mathwyn posted:unironically, I don't even care that Sophia is mostly just a vehicle to talk about her pet. Not as annoying as Cherche being used as a vehicle for talking about her mount, certainly.
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Sep 9, 2022 11:34
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The actual answer to Sloane's original design, I suspect, is that the character designer really liked Naga the White Serpent.
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Sep 9, 2022 15:31
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I dunno, Naga would probably have a very long list of flaws with that outfit, and that's coming from the person stupid enough to stab herself with her own spiked shoulder pad. Don't get me wrong, Naga wasn't stupid, and has been critical over people's wardrobe choices, but she was also firmly in the "fashion over function" camp.
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Sep 9, 2022 15:43
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Randalor posted:I dunno, Naga would probably have a very long list of flaws with that outfit, and that's coming from the person stupid enough to stab herself with her own spiked shoulder pad. The function is making boners.
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Sep 9, 2022 15:46
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The Character Assassination Of Sloane Val'Myren By The Coward Dark Deity Welcome back! Last time on Dark Deity we did a bunch of supports. Some of them even featured ferrets. Today we have to go save the settlement of Redhill from bandits or some nonsense.  I keep looking at the gold pile, thinking "we don't need to start blowing money yet", and just upgrading our team's weapons. The plus side is we don't have a lot of weapons we want to upgrade.  Now it's time for some glorious, glorious narration.  : They do so, capturing the fiery leader, Alexa. After their success, Varic allows them to keep their group together.: He orders them now to Redhill, a large settlement to the south that produces many of Sojourn's crops.: An Aramoran force has been seen travelling towards the settlement.: The party heads now to see their first battle in the war against Aramor.About friggin time.  : You bet it is. There's probably more fertile farmland here than in all of Aramor.Then it's pretty obviously a priority target, isn't it? Where's the local garrison? Right, Varic started a war he wasn't prepared for because he's a moron.  : What about those stone arches? I think I see a whole bunch of people down there!...McDonalds?  : Ever the observer, Alden. That would be one of the King's famed aqueducts.: Indeed. A rather strange target for the Aramorans though... they're far from functional at this stage.This is the first and last time King Varic is implied to do anything good or worthwhile.   Uh... yes? Look, the Delians need the farms to maintain any kind of army, and ACOUP has written a lot about how pre railroad armies need to go where the food is. Considering that Aramor was provoked into this war by the violation of the peace treaty and a covert ops team burning a city, it's not shocking to me a massive army is marching into Redhill. : I think she's suggesting we get down there before that happens.: Right. Don't worry, this isn't final deployment or anything. Notice the blue fighter in the middle. : Without our reinforcements, stealth would provide the best approach. If we move quietly, we might be able to flank them, and- LIncoln, NO! Flanking is rear end in this game! We keep the Grind Square together at all costs!  Yes, that's another one-note comic relief character. His voice line here I believe is "BENJI!!!!" Benji talks about Benji in the third person. Benji is going to get acquainted with the bench intimately. : What was that?The sheer amount of characters and the writer's desire to make them all plot relevant is one of the many things biting Dark Deity's crude facsimile of a narrative. : The battle cry of an overconfident fool.: Well he's no friend of Aramor, that's for sure.: He'll be no friend of anyone's if we don't help him.Benji later died because every single loving character needed to get a word in.  STOP TALKING AND GET STUCK IN! You're the commander! : You might.Why is Lincoln acting like Irving can only take suggestions? TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 We're given the opportunity to promote Benji and I make him a knight as he doesn't seem to lose anything much that way and also he'll be residing on the bench. Speed is still 35%, but again, 1 warrior in the form of Irving is more than enough.  Once again the game looks cheap for anything that isn't the battlemap or combat animations. This mission actually has a functioning gimmick with a time limit! I know, I'm as shocked as you are.  There are all these inquisitor jerks in the aqueduct who, every turn they stay on their little squares, will each reduce aqueduct health by one. If the aqueduct is smashed you get a game over. These guys also have extremely high resistance and plate armor, which our mage heavy comp hates. Compoundng all of that is that we've gotten into flank position, whereas I'm out of it that day and click the start button. Benji is also in the middle of the map surrounded by two priests and a raider, so you need to get to Benji before he dies AND start killing the hammer guys before they smash the aqueduct. It's... ugh... actually half of a good mission!  I realize too late the game has split my force into Competent Team on the left and Less Competent Team on the right.  Sophia starts the battle for Less Competent Team.  We're not high enough level to just steamroll everyone yet.  Cia don't care.  As I write this I realize we have two eternal aspects I've completely forgotten about. One is on Brooke and gives her +15% chance to hit. I think the other is the amethyst we got from Eddie Murphy's Haunted Mansion that gives a 30% damage variance. I have no idea why you would ever use that.  We can talk about them more once we get more. They're supposed to be a big part of your character builds, but a lot of them have obvious faux drawbacks that exist to make you feel like a smart min maxer man. There's one that drops magic to raise defense and fortitude. You put it on a defender and feel s-m-r-t for making a min maxed tank, even though it's the most obvious thing for anyone who's played an RPG ever.  Team Less Competent forms into a square to hold off the initial Aramoran cavalry assault.  Team Actually Good continues the slaughter.  I pull poor Benji into the corner where they beat the poo poo out of him.  Next turn he runs toward Team Actually Good while munching his mutton to not die. Team Less Competent has formed a square and is taking surprisingly less damage than I thought.  Remember, all these dodges and crits are poor technique!  Irving's axes are actually pretty good into the cavalry guys.  This level, on the other hand, is not.  Not bad!  Anyway, here's the plan. Elias, Sloane, and Lincoln will go save Benji. Cia, Alden, and Bianca will start murdering the hammer guys in the aqueduct. Team Less Competent will continue grinding away at the guys who've trapped them in their deployment zone.  Maren, as the leader of Less Competent, manages to attack this man into a promotion.  She becomes an Acolyte because lol. Yes, I'm aware her strength is currently higher than her magic, but the game may as well be called "Magic Run". It also raises her speed a lot, which is very handy for dying less.  This gives her another turn where she can immediately start chunking down the enemy horse.  This is just insulting.  Irving applies axe to face.  The assault on the aqueduct continues.  Garrick continues grinding away for a level.  The combined efforts of Irving, Maren, and to a lesser extent Sophia begin breaking Team Less Good out of their deployment zone.   Sophia, that's a terrible level.  Brooke even contributes by procing instadeath.  The bench, the bench is calling...  Seriously, compare her to Cia. Cia is fast and stabby.  The fighting to relieve Benji continues.  Team Less Good wanders into the aqueduct and discovers several things. First, the muddy ground seems to reduce movement by two, while being completely undocumented. Second, the maul guys require a ton of focus fire to chip down, but will fanatically wail on the wall instead of moving to attack position.  Even Alden's not doing much into them, and he's got advantage! The more I play, the more convinced I become that mastery was introduced to make weapon advantage last into the late game.  Bianca's kind of struggling as a result.  Benji goes full reddit atheist on this priest.  He even gets speed out of it. I guess if people really want to see more Benji I'm not entirely opposed to it.  That sure is a level.  Maren has gone from "innocent village trainee" to "unholy blood mage" in a few days. It's hilarious.  RIP.  Bianca is really good, you guys.  Irving chops the mission's gimmick in half. You win when all the maul guys are dead.  Butter the ferret leaves a trail of mangled dead.  Ok, Maren, your magic stat isn't bad, but you will literally never use strength again.  Cia continues applying knives like some kind of sadist.  I will settle for speed on Irving.  Benji and the relief squad pile in. Fun fact, the aqueduct health never gets under 50% despite all the slow grinding.  That sure is a level.  The maul guys on the right start suffering mysterious axe accidents. There are a whole bunch of Aramoran soldiers at the bottom who will kindly never aggro unless we bait them out. We don't care about XP in this game, so....  That's all I really want from a Sloane level.  After the initial rush it's just another slow, grinding advance.  Jesus, Cia.  I guess if I had to pick 3 stats for her it'd be these 3.  Alden looks forward to a long adulthood of frying people's genitals.  Force implosion has a stupidly long animation that Cia does not care about.   Ok, fine, you can stay off the bench.   There's not a lot the enemy can do here. We could bait out the bottom raiders, but why?  The game is not hard enough that we need every scrap of XP. This might change on Deity difficulty, but I don't care enough to play it.  That sure is a level Sophia.  Ehhhhhh.  That's a surprise. She did dodge tank a lot for Less Competent Team. : Looks like that's the last of them.: Strange... I would have expected a larger foce.: Can you believe we held them off all by ourselves?: Yeah, so much for those reinforcements.Remember, this settlement provides food to the capital and will probably be needed for Delia to mount any sort of counterassault. I will grant that the enemy being here implies Delia is badly losing the war. This will never be followed up on. : And you - you're not one for the silent approach, are you? : When Benji charges into battle, the world's gonna know he's coming.: That's your name I take it? Benji?: Gotta hand it to my ma. Couldn't think of a better name if I tried.You know, for a "dumb" guy this is actually a pretty clever response. : I believe you...: What we've accomplished today is an impressive feat, no doubt. I expect news of it will greatly please the king.: I don't know about you, but I'd like to be there when that happens! Let's move out. That's right, people of indeterminate gender, it's time for ANOTHER clumsy character introduction!   : Do not fear, my friend. We routed them, I assure you. : Then how do you explain the smoke rising from the valley? They've set fire to the fields. Their army marches on the settlement as we speak.: Blast! I should have known... Those skirmishers were no invasion army.: Is that what we're up against now? An invasion army?: I'm afraid so.: We defeated them once. Call it a warm-up.It sure is lucky the player army cannot suffer meaningful attrition in Dark Deity unless units get one-shotted.  All hail the reincarnation of Scipio Africanus! : If we don't set off at once, we'll find only ash and rubble when we arrive.: It's settled, then. What is your name, lad?: Caius.: Very well then, Caius. Lead on.: Those reinforcements would be a welcome sight right about now.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 A new chapter, and you all know what that means. SUPPORTS! But first, narration.  : They repel an Aramoran force striking at the aqueducts - a victory that seems too easy.: A young man, Caius, runs after them as they are preparing to leave. He tells them the Aramorans are attacking the township.: Now they head for Redhill proper to attempt to fend off the Aramoran attack. : It's alright, Benji. We all have our strengths, yours just happen to be mostly physical. Ah, poo poo. : Alright we'll have to agree to disagree then. Maybe over tea?Yeah, I don't like this support. It's like Sloane became a different person who rolls over for negging and Garrick remains a manipulative rear end in a top hat.  : This could be a massacre.: It will be. : Looks like the civilians are barricading themselves inside those buildings.: We have to protect them at all costs. Prepare for a fight. This is about to make things a lot more awkward.   This is about to get really confusing really fast. : Astounding. I seem to have better luck recruiting Aramorans than Delians.His Aramor racism sensors didn't even go off this time! : What caused you to change your allegiance? The dumb hits us hard in the face. This is a well worn Fire Emblem trope where a defector from the Bad Kingdom joins the army because they hate being ordered to do warcrimes. The problem is that most GBA Fire Emblem stories feature a peaceful kingdom ruled by just lords - your protagonists - who take noblesse oblige very seriously and are usually sneak attacked by Bad Kingdom breaking an alliance or peace treaty. This is completely lost on the Dark Deity writers, who pull a  style "inversion" where King Apostrophe Badman starts a war he's unprepared for by, well...The Very First Update posted:Thus while the enemy defections in Fire Emblem make sense as Hector will never order his troops to round up all the citizens and massacre them Crusaders in Jerusalem style, the Delians absolutely will do warcrimes because King Apostrophe Badman has absolutely no respect for human life. It's like defecting to the Germans in World War I because you think the use of poison gas is unconscionable. : If that makes me a traitor, so be it. I'd rather die a traitor than live a murderer.I want to once again reiterate Delia started the war. There is no way Caius gets his wish without knowing this game's incoherent script. : Well, don't plan on dying today. What role suits you best? Caius is fast and dodgy so we make him a strider. We can either make him a blade dancer for more dodge tanking, or send him into sniper next so he can double at range 3. : I can always respect a man who stands by his sword.The dynamic of Not-Commander Irving is still bizarre and I'll have more to say on it soon.   Next time: Let coherence die. Kill it, if you have to. TheGreatEvilKing fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Sep 11, 2022 |
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Sep 10, 2022 21:29
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"Overconfident and underprepared evil empire launches a war where they win a few early sucker punches then hits a stalemate and eventually breaks" isn't without precedent in Fire Emblem, at least - Three Houses with the Adrestian Empire is a good example if you're not playing on their side. I was actually expecting this game to have no black characters at all. Credit for passing that exceedingly low bar, I suppose.
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Sep 10, 2022 21:51
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I can't even tell which parts of that support are supposed to be honest and which are sarcastic. It also feels like the support is just Garrick slinging pickup lines at Sloane and Sloane just standing there and only reacting to the last thing said to her.
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Sep 10, 2022 22:48
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It's almost impressive with the supports how with complete freedom to restrict pairs and learn from so, so many examples they still keep putting out duds so consistently.
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Sep 10, 2022 23:21
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Shiny777 posted:It's almost impressive with the supports how with complete freedom to restrict pairs and learn from so, so many examples they still keep putting out duds so consistently. I don't think that was the lesson anyone learned from FE13, whether developer or audience member. Most of the criticism of the 3DS support system was too occupied with complaints about not having same-sex couples to notice the low quality of the characters and S supports in general. Delphisage fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Sep 10, 2022 |
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Sep 10, 2022 23:38
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So, erm, when I played this game, most of my magic characters fell flat apart from Aiden and Bianca, and my physical characters all excelled. Even my clerics were all turning into physical fighters. Did the patches nerf the physical part of teh game?
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Sep 11, 2022 00:25
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