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 Why am I doing this game? I feel this game and it's protagonist have been unfairly maligned due to poor advertising. I personally only got this game because it came with my PS5, partially because of it's reputation, but I was pleasantly surprised by it. I am not going to be defending Frey's behaviour, more explaining why I feel it's understandable given her upbringing and the situation she is in. The core defenses of Alfrey Holland as a character and a person are thus and will be demonstrated by how her words and actions contrast with one another throughout the game: 1) Frey is a fundamentally kind person when allowed to be. She just has got used to putting up walls when stressed, making her seem callous to those who already don't like her. 2) Frey has only ever been judged, at least at the point in her life we see her in, by the negative consequences of her actions. 3) Frey's relationship with New York is a bad one, but she gets a bad first impression of Athia. Trigger Warning This game does have a few moments where characters flirt with suicidal ideation, one in the first video. Spoiler policy Do not discuss future events. The things I have mentioned in this post are aspects that are obvious from the first and second video and I explain why in both. Videos: Part 1: A Courtroom, how appropriate. Part 2: Isekais and Dolls Part 3: How to make friends and coordinate people Part 4: Strong of Character Part 5: A Tanta's Wrath Part 6: The Aftermath of Sila's Rage: The Zealots Part 7: The Aftermath of Sila's Rage: The Allies Part 8: The Aftermath of Sila's Rage: Meeting one of my favourite characters Part 9: You are now leaving Cipal... Eventually Part 10: The Blessed Plains, Part 1 Part 11: The Blessed Plains, Part 2, (also Her Name is Bellette) Part 12: The Guardian's Way, Part 1 Part 13: The Guardian's Way, Part 2 Part 14: Entering Middle Praenost BioEnchanted fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Dec 31, 2023 |
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Nov 4, 2023 07:12
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Reserved, Character Bios coming soon.
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Nov 4, 2023 07:45
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Hell yeah. I reviewed this, so played it before the release date. Was convinced it was going to turn that negative image around once people actually played the full game. That never happened but it really deserves a second chance.
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Nov 4, 2023 09:49
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I'll follow this and see where it goes.
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Nov 4, 2023 10:15
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I'll be eager to follow this thread, because I always had a bit of curiosity about this game. It looks quite pretty and seems fun in the trailer, so I was surprised that it turned out unwanted, but never enough to try it out myself. I think part of the poor reception (at least for me) was the high price Squareenix set this game at. I don't see a good reason why it would be 80€, when most AAA games are around 60.
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Nov 4, 2023 10:22
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I've watched some of this game and felt it really didn't deserve the rep it got. Good to see someone else out there has seen the light of the one time quips actually work well. The pacing of this is refreshing, you've totes put a lot of thought into your thesis here and appreciate the game. I'm on board, keep it up!
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Nov 4, 2023 10:47
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How appropriate that this thread is around at the same time someone is doing Ace Attorney. Looking forward to this.
Samovar fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Nov 4, 2023 |
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Nov 4, 2023 12:27
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I’ve played through this game and thought it 100% deserved the reception it got, so I’ll be watching this
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Nov 4, 2023 17:32
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One thing I will say is that your voice does seem a little louder than the sound of the game. Any chance you could boost the sound of the game so it closer volume-wise to your own?
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Nov 4, 2023 19:12
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Samovar posted:One thing I will say is that your voice does seem a little louder than the sound of the game. Any chance you could boost the sound of the game so it closer volume-wise to your own? Thanks, I'll try to boost the game audio more on the next video.
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Nov 4, 2023 19:16
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Part 3: How to make friends and coordinate people In which we start exploring Cipal and get introduced to some basic mechanics and new allies. I also tried to increase the game audio more to even things out this time. hopefully it worked. BioEnchanted fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Nov 12, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2023 09:34
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I think the audio mixing is better now. So - if I want to be frank; it's unfair to lay the blame for the 'Whedonisms' on Holland herself. Cuff is giving the worse of them, imho.
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Nov 12, 2023 21:47
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Part 4: Strong of Character In this video we see how Frey handles a very delicate situation. She deals with it well IMO. This video is a bit rough as the commentary clips a bit during the optional boss fight and trying to fix it only made it worse, so for that I'll move the mic a bit further from my mouth. This is just also the 4th time I'm having to record this for technical reasons so done is better than perfect. To cut down on the visual glitches I'll try doing shorter videos in future, recording each session in 2 parts so that hopefully it'll reduce the issues that crop up in editing. Hopefully this video will be the last one that has these problems, I am trying to figure it out.
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Nov 26, 2023 18:28
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This may sound like a rather minor complaint/observation re. the game, but it is... Noticable to me, anyway, that Frey, who is normally very physical with other abilities, barely does anything when 'shooting normally'. It's kinda... Disconnected? Aesthetically? It feels like she should be putting more of her shoulders behind each shot, is what I'm trying to get at.
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Nov 29, 2023 09:02
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Samovar posted:This may sound like a rather minor complaint/observation re. the game, but it is... Noticable to me, anyway, that Frey, who is normally very physical with other abilities, barely does anything when 'shooting normally'. It's kinda... Disconnected? Aesthetically? It feels like she should be putting more of her shoulders behind each shot, is what I'm trying to get at. The shooting animation feels very unsatisfying I agree.
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Nov 29, 2023 09:21
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Part 5: A Tanta's Wrath In this part we meet the first of the Tantas, Tanta Sila.
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Dec 2, 2023 18:51
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Part 6: The Aftermath of Sila's Rage: The Zealots In which we begin to explore the sidequests for this section of the game, starting with the small yet numerous question mark ones that give some insight into the minds of the populace.
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Dec 3, 2023 18:05
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Samovar posted:I think the audio mixing is better now. I 100% think Cuff is the writing's biggest problem. He's supposed to be like the cool mentor character but most of the time he's just a killjoy and a dick.
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Dec 4, 2023 08:17
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Seraphic Neoman posted:I 100% think Cuff is the writing's biggest problem. He's supposed to be like the cool mentor character but most of the time he's just a killjoy and a dick. He absolutely is, I got a weird desire to replay the game and frey is actually halfway decent and bounces off all the other characters nicely enough but cuff just adds jack all except bad jokes and being a killjoy. I honestly kinda regret skipping a lot of the earlier cutscenes my first go though as they lack cuff speaking and it makes it so much more apparent.
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Dec 4, 2023 17:06
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Part 7: The Aftermath of Sila's Rage: The Allies In which we meet someone who I'd describe as a Fanboy, plus other rather more minor, and feline, allies.
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Dec 5, 2023 21:44
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I know that popular opinion is that this game is bad, but to this day I don't really know why this game is bad (except usual gamer stuff "its bad bcause its woke")
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Dec 6, 2023 08:50
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There's your answer: It isn't bad. Just had poor word of mouth. At least I like it. Auden and a character in the next video totally own, and fully know how to handle Frey for the most part.
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Dec 6, 2023 11:09
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Szarrukin posted:I know that popular opinion is that this game is bad, but to this day I don't really know why this game is bad (except usual gamer stuff "its bad bcause its woke") Honestly that's pretty much it. Angry gamer Youtubers needed content that month and decided this game would be their pet hate for reasons I can't possibly guess.....
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Dec 6, 2023 11:27
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The only real reason I have to put this game off is that I am fatigued of open-world icon-em-ups.
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Dec 6, 2023 12:31
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Main reason I gave this one a pass, can stem from open world fatigue, and the reports of large amounts of performance issues on pc. The few reviews I saw reported it as decent, though maybe not worth the 70 USD price tag.
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Dec 6, 2023 14:30
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I think its big issue is the opening hours are some of the worst i have seen in a otherwise ok game. Between the plodding pace, the whole fiasco with the bag where nearly everyone who played tried to grab it first since its right next to the bed, and the part with the gangsters where a gun is treated more like a knife it does not leave a good start. Then after that once you get to athia you end up with cuff and frey only for a extended period of time where both are yelling and complaining at eachother and then finally when you first reach the town you are imprisoned, and you deal with frey supposedly being the one to name the break, which makes very little sense considering that these people have been living with it for years on end. Once you can actually get out there the games real strength in its open environments shines through but by that point people were mad or just tired of frey, and more importantly cuff, for hours.
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Dec 6, 2023 14:30
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On naming the break, Athia already had a term for it in the Corruption, I guess Break just caught on because it was punchier.
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Dec 6, 2023 14:38
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I will... Hmm. I feel a bit mean for critiquing this game for THIS specific point, considering it's not the only game guilty of it, but the city feels... Strangely lifeless? I get that it is a ruined city, so the disrepair makes sense. But it is so... Lacking in bright colours. Everything seems muted. So much so that the braziers seem almost alien in the fire being so colourful. When I remember the design of the cities and towns in the Witcher 3, by comparison - they had both rich and poor sections of cities, but they felt much more lived in. Blah, I feel I'm doing a poor job conveying my point here.
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Dec 7, 2023 06:42
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No ,Cipal does feel fairly sterile, that's a fair point. It helps that Auden's pretty cool herself though. I personally feel that Cipal being sterile might have worked better if the outside world was just a huge clusterfuck of clashing colours due to the break, have it be the one place that still makes visual sense. They do some interesting things that we will see in the future, but I feel they don't push it far enough at least early on for Cipal to really stand out as is. BioEnchanted fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Dec 7, 2023 |
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Dec 7, 2023 07:17
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BioEnchanted posted:No ,Cipal does feel fairly sterile, that's a fair point. It helps that Auden's pretty cool herself though. I look forward to this development.
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Dec 7, 2023 09:34
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Bookthief posted:Main reason I gave this one a pass, can stem from open world fatigue, and the reports of large amounts of performance issues on pc. The few reviews I saw reported it as decent, though maybe not worth the 70 USD price tag. Likewise. What I gathered from the trailers and the demo was that this game felt interesting, but not $70 interesting. I'm keeping an eye on this LP and let Steam inform me if there's a big discount at some point.
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Dec 7, 2023 13:22
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I was ruminating on the character of Frey idly (as one does), and I started comparing her to Chai of Hi Fi Rush. He, like her, is often quippy and can be annoying in that quippy-ness, too. But he wasn't as disliked (as I understand), but I think it is because, even though Chai is the player character, the other characters treat him as being vaguely annoying, and he is readily made fun of by them, even while doing his own thing, but it is done in such a way that it also shows they get on with each other, in a way. I guess what I'm trying to say is that being quippy isn't necessarily bad in a work of fiction, but it is very much dependent on how the rest of the world interacts with it. If you have too many characters indulging in it, or if it is... Treated seriously, it can get tiresome very quickly.
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Dec 8, 2023 18:56
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Part 8: The Aftermath of Sila's Rage: Meeting one of my favourite characters I love this character as she takes completely the opposite tack to Auden and Robian - she's just a mirror, every barb that Frey fires she fires right back, she's constantly sparring with her verbally and it's fun to see Frey on the receiving end of a friendly sort of withering disdain. She knows exactly how to motivate Frey - she'll try to succeed now purely to spite her predictions. After this video we will leave Cipal and finally start properly exploring Praenost on our way to Sila.
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Dec 9, 2023 17:35
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Johedy is excellent, probably the best character in the game in my opinion and you immediately hit the nail on the head as to why.
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Dec 9, 2023 17:59
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Part 9: You are now leaving Cipal... Eventually We are SO CLOSE to finally leaving Cipal, just a couple more things that need our attention. As of the next video the journey will begin in earnest (after a single remaining loose end is wrapped up)
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Dec 10, 2023 18:26
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Just caught up to vid 8, and I also like Johedy.
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Dec 11, 2023 21:29
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Part 10: The Blessed Plains, Part 1 In which we finally start exploring the first big area on the way to Sila's domain, and get introduced to some of the bigger areas. I'm always a sucker for good worldbuilding so always like when a collectible type includes stories that in universe characters told each other.
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Dec 11, 2023 23:14
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I wish we had gotten a game which included that worldbuilding instead of delegating it to pickup descriptions.
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Dec 13, 2023 19:18
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Szarrukin posted:I know that popular opinion is that this game is bad, but to this day I don't really know why this game is bad (except usual gamer stuff "its bad bcause its woke") The word of mouth saying this game's bad is completely unrelated to the actual ways in which the game's bad
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Dec 13, 2023 19:19
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Yeah, I can't say I'm thinking it is secretly good - I'm still pretty critical of it. But it is interesting to see how it actually plays.
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Dec 14, 2023 14:24
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