Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Captain France
Aug 3, 2013
Oh my god this stream is an hour long, aren't HI3 streams usually more like 20 minutes?

I mean still gonna watch it but wow.
Also, man they do cool sets for live action stuff.


--Edit
Oh snap page 2.
LONG LIVE THE HERRSCHER OF SENTIENCE!



--Second Edit

Oh wow free Herrscher Of Thunder, Fallen Rosemary, or Dea Anchora.

I wonder which is actually a better choice for new players? I know FR is technically farmable, but she's both a pretty good DPS and a pretty good support for both Lightning and Quantum teams. Meanwhile, HoT is one power creep behind meta as a DPS but only with her new weapon, and tbh I don't know poo poo about Dea Anchora.

Note that my usual Lightning team is HoT with her new weapon, Fischl, and either Fallen Rosemary or HoTr depending on both if HoTr is on another team and just whim.

Captain France fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Feb 24, 2024

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


All the set stuff was pretty impressive, but I can't say I am super filled with confidence seeing the open world area, which was already my least favorite part of this game. Like I enjoy it because it's a VN with arena combat, and the game's been drifting away from that. 1.5 was saved at the end by Fu Hua, but the new characters aren't leading off on the best foot for me with how similar they are to Kiana, Mei, and Bronya. Like I think new protagonists for part 2 is a great idea, but they should be new not just redressings of the original trilogy. It would've been even better if it were characters that had been built up in part 1/1.5 but well....it'll really be down on the quality of story in the first update to hook me. Also it feels way closer to ZZZ than HI3 part 1 to me. Which I guess they do want it to feel like a new game so mission accomplished there.

Meowywitch
Jan 14, 2010

Fight for all that is beautiful in the world

I'm probably about to uninstall, honestly. I have been playing for a very long time, but I feel it's probably time for me to hang up my hat when I just don't actively enjoy it as much as I used to

doesn't mean its bad though, just no longer for me

Eej
Jun 17, 2007

HEAVYARMS
Dea Anchora is the worst pick because she sucks without full gear and even then isn't great until you get her SS for passive SP regen when off field.

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


Meowywitch posted:

I'm probably about to uninstall, honestly. I have been playing for a very long time, but I feel it's probably time for me to hang up my hat when I just don't actively enjoy it as much as I used to

doesn't mean its bad though, just no longer for me

Yeah I mean if I don't love the story/characters after this update, I can walk away. HI3 was beautiful and I love it, but if the story and characters I care about are done, I can be done too.

Captain France
Aug 3, 2013
I see HI3 Part 2 as more of a sequel than a "Part 2," it's only kind of the same game because they don't want the PR hit of shutting down HI3. Which, fair enough Part 1 definitely deserves to still be up and it's going to be a loving tragedy when if there isn't an offline release or something when they get rid of it, but my Part 2 hype is pretty much "new Hoyoverse game" and not "more HI3."

They're doing a pretty good job on the "new Hoyoverse game" front, plus I do still kinda enjoy the other, non-story mode gacha game stuff, but yeah with the other THREE Hoyo games with open world I would rather they'd stuck to the VN style. Maybe for events at least?

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

I’ll give Part 2 up to 3 patches. If it hasn’t grabbed me by then, I’ll uninstall as well. I do want to give Part 2 a chance but it really isn’t making a great first impression on me and I will miss Kiana, Mei, Bronya, Seele and Hua and so far, Senadina, Coralie and Helia aren’t cutting it for me. It’s just kind of a shame that by the time Mihoyo fixed the awful gacha of HI3, they completely changed the story and setting for one which doesn’t seem interesting to me.

SatoshiMiwa
May 6, 2007


I'm gonna give it a fair shot but I do wonder if they'll run into the same issue DBZ/Nanoha had when it tried to make Gohan/Vivo/whoever was the lead in force the new main character and failed

AParadox
Jan 7, 2012

Captain France posted:

Oh wow free Herrscher Of Thunder, Fallen Rosemary, or Dea Anchora.

I wonder which is actually a better choice for new players? I know FR is technically farmable, but she's both a pretty good DPS and a pretty good support for both Lightning and Quantum teams. Meanwhile, HoT is one power creep behind meta as a DPS but only with her new weapon, and tbh I don't know poo poo about Dea Anchora.

Note that my usual Lightning team is HoT with her new weapon, Fischl, and either Fallen Rosemary or HoTr depending on both if HoTr is on another team and just whim.

Dea wasn't great when she was released and that was 3 years ago.

Hot is by far the best valk of the 3 but LV powercrept her so hard and she is in unfortunate position of having a limited weapon that is not just a stat stick but actually makes her more fun to play but I would never recommend a newbie to actually pull 7t at this point. She is still quite relevant in MA at least.

FR is old, janky, and not particularly interesting to play but she has the most to offer to a team of the 3. She has some mild buffs and works well as a turg tb holder, still the best paralyze status provider and she does enable lighting carries to do qua fights, or carry them herself. The qua fights still suck even with her but they suck no mater what you do.

TL/DR: hot is very powercrept but still the best and most fun to play valk of the 3 while FR has a role nobody else can actually fulfill but is currently low in demand, ignore Dea. I would just pick HoT and leave her in backburner in case they ever get a random 7T drop while pulling something else.

Zwiebel
Feb 19, 2011

Hi!
This is probably a bit harsh, but HI3s part 1 story wasn't really impressive enough to make me go into part 2 with high expectations. There's great moments and some very good payoff here and there, but it's inconsistent and some of it is just bad. A lot of it is just nonsense and poorly delivered.
It's always been all over the place and for the last few arcs there's been so much time wasted on worthless technobabble that I can't really hold them to a high standard going forward.
And there isn't really much left to do with the old cast other than have a big gay wedding for real, but that's unlikely to happen for a variety of non-story related reasons. Out with the old, in with the new.
The character relationships, individual character arcs and how they developed the cast over time were the bits that made HI3 interesting. So I'm glad they decided to move to a new cast and do a little time skip.

Giving it a chance for a few patches as well.

Captain France
Aug 3, 2013
You know what else is kinda weird about Part 2, and was kinda weird about the Kolosten --> Elysian Realm --> Finale --> Part 1.5 sequence?

We never really got a Theresa heavy arc, and I don't remember us even getting to see adult Theresa, let alone play as her, and apparently she changed back after?

First, there was that bit waaaaaaay back when Bronya was in the Sea Of Quanta where Einstein found out Theresa's battlesuit had a limiter on it that she wasn't sure was important and removed it, and as far as I recall that shoe never really dropped.

Then we got Nahida over in Genshin when every previous Archon to be an expy was a Herrscher.

Then we get Kolosten, with Theresa's grandpa having his whole evil scheme that involves giving her control of Schicksal and relying on the power of the same PE Herrscher as Theresa's Divine Key. Not a lot of interiority or drama for Theresa as she runs some errands for part of the arc before letting Kiana and Durandal have the boss fight.

Then Elysian Realm, which Theresa was not involved in and I'm going to skip my somewhat off the post topic complaining about an arc everyone else loved.

Then the finale basically only gives Theresa her scene in the Kaslana Stigma that Stigma Kevin really gets to steal (it was a cool scene, though) that establishes that she can eat dreams / Stigma Space because of Vishnu, and then the bit where she does it. Also side complaint, you'd think as soon as he became aware that there are Honkai Beasts, not even Herrschers, that can literally eat Stigma Space that Kevin would have cancelled operation: trap all of mankind in Stigma Space for safe keeping. But then Honkai Beasts doing that, or really the Honkai having any sort of agency in the final arc at all just never happened. I still enjoyed the arc anyways due to various reunions and finale hype and my deranged love of stupid technobabble and exposition that makes no sense, but man, it's not like a bunch of what appear to be mindless beasts with no personality is less interesting than Kevin.

And then for Part 1.5, which was supposed to be at least in part about giving some extra attention to characters who didn't get enough focus, we got almost no Theresa, and the reveal that she de-aged again.

Does anyone know if she got a lot more focus in GGZ or something? I'm complaining a little because she's interesting when they're not playing up the "looks like a child" angle, but mostly it just feels really weird to me that she never got a real focus arc. No, Kongming and Luna in the Captainverse do not count those are different characters. I guess there's kind of her Chronicle but that's more setup than anything.

--edit
Also here have a cool Billibilli video repost about the best character
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA8dOTPOTG0

Captain France fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Feb 26, 2024

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

Captain France posted:

You know what else is kinda weird about Part 2, and was kinda weird about the Kolosten --> Elysian Realm --> Finale --> Part 1.5 sequence?

We never really got a Theresa heavy arc, and I don't remember us even getting to see adult Theresa, let alone play as her, and apparently she changed back after?

First, there was that bit waaaaaaay back when Bronya was in the Sea Of Quanta where Einstein found out Theresa's battlesuit had a limiter on it that she wasn't sure was important and removed it, and as far as I recall that shoe never really dropped.

Then we got Nahida over in Genshin when every previous Archon to be an expy was a Herrscher.

Then we get Kolosten, with Theresa's grandpa having his whole evil scheme that involves giving her control of Schicksal and relying on the power of the same PE Herrscher as Theresa's Divine Key. Not a lot of interiority or drama for Theresa as she runs some errands for part of the arc before letting Kiana and Durandal have the boss fight.

Then Elysian Realm, which Theresa was not involved in and I'm going to skip my somewhat off the post topic complaining about an arc everyone else loved.

Then the finale basically only gives Theresa her scene in the Kaslana Stigma that Stigma Kevin really gets to steal (it was a cool scene, though) that establishes that she can eat dreams / Stigma Space because of Vishnu, and then the bit where she does it. Also side complaint, you'd think as soon as he became aware that there are Honkai Beasts, not even Herrschers, that can literally eat Stigma Space that Kevin would have cancelled operation: trap all of mankind in Stigma Space for safe keeping. But then Honkai Beasts doing that, or really the Honkai having any sort of agency in the final arc at all just never happened. I still enjoyed the arc anyways due to various reunions and finale hype and my deranged love of stupid technobabble and exposition that makes no sense, but man, it's not like a bunch of what appear to be mindless beasts with no personality is less interesting than Kevin.

And then for Part 1.5, which was supposed to be at least in part about giving some extra attention to characters who didn't get enough focus, we got almost no Theresa, and the reveal that she de-aged again.

Does anyone know if she got a lot more focus in GGZ or something? I'm complaining a little because she's interesting when they're not playing up the "looks like a child" angle, but mostly it just feels really weird to me that she never got a real focus arc. No, Kongming and Luna in the Captainverse do not count those are different characters. I guess there's kind of her Chronicle but that's more setup than anything.

--edit
Also here have a cool Billibilli video repost about the best character
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA8dOTPOTG0

Eh, not really. She's always been underutilized as a character despite being one of the more conceptually interesting ones. She actually dies at the end of the Retrospective arc in GGZ when trying to stop Kiana who awakened as the Herrscher of Finality and then in the Reborn arc, she's not even the principal of St. Freya in that iteration of the loop, Cecilia Schariac is.

She's still around in the newest story arc (Houkai Gakuen) though as the head of the tactical department for Honkai Academy, although she's still just a teacher. Kyuusyou is the principal of the academy and those two, Yssring as the head doctor of the academy and Sirin as the academy counselor are about the only characters from the Reborn arc still around that we know of after the 50 year time skip. Kiana and Mei ascended to near Godhood together and are trying to find the source of all Honkai, Seele, Himeko and Sin Mal are dead and Bronya last we heard is running an orphanage in honor of them.

Genshin's Nahida is probably the most focus her or an expy of her has ever had.

Selenephos fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Feb 26, 2024

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


There's always Luna. It's a shame because I love Tamura Yukari after watching Nanoha and Theresa has been a character I'm a fan of, but unlike a lot of the other background cast, she never got an arc. It sucks.

Though speaking of archons being herrscher expies, did Sin Mal become a herrscher in GGZ or something? Otherwise Furina breaks that.

Eimi fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Feb 26, 2024

Captain France
Aug 3, 2013
God I do love hearing about GGZ. It gives me almost the same :words: :allears: :psyduck: feeling as Honkai posts in the Genshin thread used to.

Also weird how Sin Mal is apparently a relatively major character in GGZ but has like one scene in HI3, especially if you buy Furina as a Sin Mal expy.

Personally I kinda think that's even more of a stretch than Zhongli being a Welt or a Fu Hua, and probably just not all Archons are expies, but if she is a Sin Mal that's cool.

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


Captain France posted:

God I do love hearing about GGZ. It gives me almost the same :words: :allears: :psyduck: feeling as Honkai posts in the Genshin thread used to.

Also weird how Sin Mal is apparently a relatively major character in GGZ but has like one scene in HI3, especially if you buy Furina as a Sin Mal expy.

Personally I kinda think that's even more of a stretch than Zhongli being a Welt or a Fu Hua, and probably just not all Archons are expies, but if she is a Sin Mal that's cool.

I never saw Zhongli as Welt or Hua, but he and Owl have a lot of story similarities if nothing else.

SatoshiMiwa
May 6, 2007


Maybe if people bought more bitter melon soda we'd get a good Theresa arc that isn't in captain-verse!

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

Captain France posted:

God I do love hearing about GGZ. It gives me almost the same :words: :allears: :psyduck: feeling as Honkai posts in the Genshin thread used to.

Also weird how Sin Mal is apparently a relatively major character in GGZ but has like one scene in HI3, especially if you buy Furina as a Sin Mal expy.

Personally I kinda think that's even more of a stretch than Zhongli being a Welt or a Fu Hua, and probably just not all Archons are expies, but if she is a Sin Mal that's cool.

Sin Mal is still pretty much the same in GGZ’s Retrospective arc as she is in HI3, a minor villain who is fiercely loyal to Cocolia and… generally a deeply unpleasant person who sexually assaulted Seele as per the manga. Cocolia is the main villain of the Retrospective arc so Sin Mal is kinda her right hand woman?

When the stigmata terminal activates and creates a new loop leading to the Reborn arc, she gets a slightly different backstory and is generally a much better and more heroic, if still kind of violent and unstable person. It’s this Sin Mal specifically that likely inspired Furina.

But I mean. Even Cocolia’s backstory is different in the Reborn arc, where she’s the mother of GGZ’s version of Natasha/Raven and when Sirin awakened as the Herrscher of the Void, Natasha died, making Reborn Cocolia a grieving mother and far more sympathetic. It also makes GGZ Otto more monstrous since he digs up Natasha’s dead body, clones her (as Ninti) and then uses the clone as blackmail to force Cocolia to betray Anti-Entropy and defect to Schicksal. Reborn arc Cocolia is like, the one Cocolia in the Hoyoverse who isn’t a completely terrible person. Can’t really say the same for Retrospective Cocolia, HI3 Cocolia, La Signora or HSR Cocolia.

Captain France
Aug 3, 2013
Just now got around to this video I put off until I did the Mars crew stuff and then forgot about. It's a nice anime filler episode, has it's moments at least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XHvX2K9idA
Among other things,

Fu Hua continuing to make nonbinary people (me) jealous of her look




Durandal studying at the Yor Forger school of facial expressions


Book Of Fuxi's image of The Cooler Seele being even cooler



And Book Of Fuxi's image of Theresa reminding me that we never got a TheresOtto, that would be pretty cool.


Selenephos posted:

GGZ <words>

Wait I thought Reborn was just a time loop. Does Natasha not exist in Retrospective or did she straight up get new family relations?
Oh wait she could just be adopted.

Is there a better way to read up on, or even just straight up read GGZ than Hoyostans? Maybe they've gotten more comprehensive since last time I looked?

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


Fu Hua is so handsome, it's a loving tragedy they made her wedding skin a dress instead of a suit. Because if it was a suit, I'd have it and the figure.

SatoshiMiwa
May 6, 2007


Yeah I like the look of her new suit but an updated suit model costume would be great for it!

Senti could get one too!

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


SatoshiMiwa posted:

Yeah I like the look of her new suit but an updated suit model costume would be great for it!

Senti could get one too!

Right now my cope is that when we get Hua in HSR they'll make Senti a foxian

https://twitter.com/RSyaooooo/status/1753290725603909927

e: also add in dark Seele with light Seele's personality for Wolfie.
https://twitter.com/namelessakikaze/status/1677214882918178823
https://twitter.com/namelessakikaze/status/1671536884588195843

Eimi fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Feb 27, 2024

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

I'll never forget that manga where Hua played too much Hitman and thought knocking guards out and stealing their clothes as a disguise would be a good idea. I wish we got to see more of Hua.

Captain France posted:

Wait I thought Reborn was just a time loop. Does Natasha not exist in Retrospective or did she straight up get new family relations?
Oh wait she could just be adopted.

Is there a better way to read up on, or even just straight up read GGZ than Hoyostans? Maybe they've gotten more comprehensive since last time I looked?

I think Natasha didn't exist in HI3 even until after the Retrospective arc ended? But yeah, in GGZ she only exists in the Reborn arc and is Cocolia's biological child who died during Second Eruption, had her corpse dug up by Otto, cloned and adopted as Ninti Apocalypse and then raised to be Otto's personal child assassin he uses to get rid of political rivals and to blackmail Cocolia with so she'd defect to Schicksal, in HI3 she's a mercenary who works for World Serpent and runs an orphanage in her spare time and in HSR she's a doctor in Jarilo-VI who provides medical treatment to the underclass of Belobog and also runs an orphanage in her spare time. It's not a huge surprise that Natasha doesn't exist in Retrospective, Sirin barely exists in it too, literally only appearing right at the very end and being explained as the Second Herrscher whose cores were split between Schicksal and Anti-Entropy and Cocolia's big plan is about reviving Sirin. Instead what happens is that Kiana merges with Sirin and becomes the Herrscher of Finality, killing (almost) everyone. GGZ Sirin is also mostly a Reborn era character because of that (and is... quite a bit different from HI3 Sirin too, there's a reason she's still alive and part of the core cast even in the newest story arc while she's long dead and basically lives as Kiana's soul in HI3).

Actually come to think of it, I think technically HI3 Sirin came first. She's largely just background lore in the Retrospective chapter, then HI3 came out and made Kiana her clone/reincarnation, then Reborn fleshed out Sirin and gave her a different backstory and her backstory from HI3 was actually given to GGZ Wendy instead.

As for catching up on GGZ lore, not really. There is Operation Gekkou, which tries to turn GGZ into a VN that's a work in progress but it's only partway through the Retrospective era and even then, only everything up to Chapter 8 plus some events have been translated, with everything else being a machine translation at the moment. Although, Chapter 10 is around the point where GGZ lore and HI3 lore begin to deviate and split into their own separate things as that's when Kiana, Mei and Bronya finally become students at St. Freya and Himeko and Theresa are introduced, so you can treat up to that point as a prequel to the beginning of HI3, it's still canon to HI3. There's also the cutscene interpreter website but again, most stuff is machine translated. That covers a lot more events and up to Chapter 12 of 15 in Reborn, but it's all half finished and machine translated and there are a fair number of inaccuracies because of it.

So... you're mostly just going to either have to wait for the fan made VN to catch up, know Japanese or Chinese and play yourself or deal with machine translations.

Selenephos fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Feb 27, 2024

Captain France
Aug 3, 2013

Selenephos posted:


So... you're mostly just going to either have to wait for the fan made VN to catch up, know Japanese or Chinese and play yourself or deal with machine translations.

Alas, my Japanese reading was really bad even when I was studying and practicing it, and now it's like ten years out of practice too.

Kanji is so loving hard, man.

Oh well, it's not like I've read most of the HI3 manga either.

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

Captain France posted:

Alas, my Japanese reading was really bad even when I was studying and practicing it, and now it's like ten years out of practice too.

Kanji is so loving hard, man.

Oh well, it's not like I've read most of the HI3 manga either.

You should. A lot of the super early manga is fluff but Second Eruption is fantastic and Alien Space is worth reading just to understand why Welt is in Star Rail. London Vacation is also fun just for having the best member of World Serpent being the villain of the manga.

Captain France
Aug 3, 2013

Selenephos posted:

You should. A lot of the super early manga is fluff but Second Eruption is fantastic and Alien Space is worth reading just to understand why Welt is in Star Rail. London Vacation is also fun just for having the best member of World Serpent being the villain of the manga.

I've read Second Eruption, Alien Space, part of Escape From Nagazora (honestly? Don't recommend), and Ai-Chan Origins.

I think learning that the design of Ai Hyperion /\ showed up years before she did was even weirder than learning that Ai-Chan is in any way canon. See also: Learning Carol's buff mom predates APHO, and seeing Shigure Kira in Second Eruption, made before most of the game, days after she first showed up in the game all the way in 1.5.

Also if we're going to go the Genshin/Star Rail route of having too many playable characters, Lewis and Shub Niggurath were loving robbed.


Anyways I just saw a video about Evangelion spin-offs and that reminds me that I'm kicking myself for starting this game during the Genshin crossover, shortly after the Evangelion crossover. I assume they'll probably never rerun it and that sucks.

Also sucks that we seem to be getting the entire Summer Survival Rhapsody series rerun, but Luna's first event has not been rerun once since I started playing this game.

Also Elf Academy was fun and there should be an Elf Academy 2 with Klein.

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

Part 2 is officially out now.

Despite the gacha on paper being better, my good luck streak with the game has sadly come to an end. As for the Part 2 story itself, it’s not really engaging me so far. I’ll give it another two patches but I may drop this I’m afraid.

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


I haven't pulled yet, but going for FoV drained everything I had, I've got like 18k after the patch. Not the wisest decision but it was Hua so wisdom leaves my body. The new suits also didn't particularly impress me in the story. Senadina was the most interesting but they really made her feel like a thousand cuts, and there's no big satisfying moment in her playstyle. I liked the weaving of basics and weapon skills but it being on the cooldown it was kind of lame. Helia and Coralie very much feel like beginning suits and there's not much to say about them beyond that.

Story wise...eeh?
So setting things on Mars meant part 2 needed to set a lot up and it does with all the grace of Tesla and Einstein starting to yap. There's so many proper terms and backstory just forcibly hammered into us. It didn't feel great. I also strongly disliked the very beginning where Entropy is just told she's the strongest and most specialist girl to ever exist. Senadina rises a bit above being a Kiana clone, but Helia and Coralie can not dodge the Mei and Bronya accusations. The most interesting character is Songque and seeing more of her is what holds my interest for the remainder of this update. I also found including Vita and Lambda kind of weird. It's not as clean of a break from part 1 as I thought, and I really do wonder what this is like as a new player. It's not as jarring going from GGZ to part 1, but it expects you to know a decent amount of things from 1 and 1.5 that I wonder how new player friendly it is.

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

Yeah I don't really know who Part 2 is even aimed for. It fails as an introduction for new players because it throws around enough terminology and technobabble that only veteran players would know, but also doesn't do enough with the new cast to keep veterans engaged either. I'm hoping it's just growing pains due to introducing a new setting and characters but... I dunno.

Dr Kool-AIDS
Mar 26, 2004

I wonder how many people who've never played HI3 are even trying it now. If people didn't check it out due to curiosity about Star Rail, does hearing about it getting an upgrade convince them to try it? I feel like this is more for lapsed fans who don't want to have to go back and finish all the story they missed, but maybe I'm wrong.

Bad Video Games
Sep 17, 2017


If I had a computer, I would check it out. I'm not playing an action game on a touchscreen.

Dr Kool-AIDS
Mar 26, 2004

I can't even believe people play genshin on mobile, let alone hi3.

Eej
Jun 17, 2007

HEAVYARMS
HI3 is eminently playable on phone, I've retained Nirvana on touchscreen. Genshin is terrible though.

SatoshiMiwa
May 6, 2007


They moved the big ultimate button to fit in jump and while I'm okay with it on the new characters but man it annoys me on Senti. Doesn't help Xbox pad moved it to rb which is just there. Should switch to PS5

Captain France
Aug 3, 2013
Honestly, I feel like some people are forgetting how much Hoyo likes to start stories with stuff that's unexplained and bits of exposition that make no sense yet, Part 2 feels like it would be barely worse on that front than Star Rail without Part 1, let alone comparing it to Part 1.

Really there's a lot of Part 2 that feels more like a combination of Star Rail and APHO than Honkai Impact 3rd as we know it, which kind of sucks, but was pretty expected. Still hitting "New Hoyo Game" quality for me, enjoying it so far, but man, I'm already playing two Hoyoverse Open World games and missing out on tons of side quests and stuff, I'm at least interested in ZZZ, do we need four of these? The VN story and self contained gacha fights felt better just from not being the same thing again.

As far as being "the same thing again" goes, though, the open world is neat so far. The dips into weirder locales both in the Sea Of Data and the cutscene preview look great, I've always liked Honkai's locations besides . . . well actually besides their open worlds that aren't APHO, but this new one feels APHO quality for the main world at least. New characters are fun in both gameplay and characterization, even if Senadina feels like a Kiana/March hybrid and Coralie is a bit too Bronya on the surface. Only on the surface, though, she's actually much funnier and "wackier" than Bronya, but in a complete deadpan, it's fun. And Senadina's personality might feel a bit derivative, but it's a fun derivative at least. Also really dig Senadina's expansive movepool and yo-yo riding, and Coralie's hammer is very satisfying.

Oh right Helia and Dreamseeker are there too. They're pretty, I guess?

Honestly I feel like the biggest problems with Honkai Impact 3rd Part 2 so far are that it's Honkai Impact 3rd Part 2 (apparently there's even a required minimum Captain level? Like, you need to play part of Part 1 first?), and that they released 1/3 of a chapter like a Honkai Impact 3rd update instead of the whole first arc at once like when they launch a new game. Well, that and that I'm already playing two other Hoyoverse open world games. I suppose as long as they don't start requiring doing open world stuff to do story updates there's no reason one couldn't just keep doing those and ignoring a lot of the rest, though.

Also it annoys me that the pause button goes to the main menu instead of settings. Unless you're in a thing, then you can't open either!
Also I don't know why I took the half-price pulls for Songque when I'm never going to actually choose her over Klein, my favorite NPC.

Also it is loving criminal that this game still doesn't have a photo mode.

OH ALSO PSA THERE'S A "LOBBY" THING WITH AN EVENT AND CHIBI FALL GUYS MINIGAMES.
Idunno I feel like some people might have missed those, maybe, the main menu feels less main menu-y to me now even though it barely changed.

Eej posted:

HI3 is eminently playable on phone, I've retained Nirvana on touchscreen. Genshin is terrible though.

I feel like at least for me the thing that made HI3 work on my phone the little bit I played on there was the smaller scope, instanced combat.
That we've got an open world instead of moving forward.

Oh well I can't fit HI3 and Star Rail on my phone at the same time anyways. Still, another reason why I feel like they should have stuck with the VN format.

--edit
I should note that while I'm wondering if I can just play the story and skip the open world in the future, I spent all day playing the open world and it's pretty good.

Captain France fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Mar 1, 2024

Zwiebel
Feb 19, 2011

Hi!
It does look like it's more of a story for returning players and long time players.
The combat might seem fun for new players, but the way the story is presented seems a bit detrimental and it probably doesn't help that it's still just hidden away somewhere behind all the menus.
Don't think this is really the big "re-launch" people have been expecting (or dreading in some cases). It's just the same as usual.

I quite like Coralie. Her attack animations are great. Unlocked her hammer and character card and took her for a spin in Elysian Realm. She's a joy to watch.

The Astral Ring mechanic is very silly in how wordy it is. They need some multi-lingual editors or technical writers that just whack the developers with a newspaper every now and then. The tutorials helped a bit. The "Resonance" thing made no sense to me until I saw them show it off in the Astral Ring tutorial.

Collaborators being as expensive to level as ELFs makes them really unappealing. Not sure why they didn't change that.


It's alright so far.

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"
Very sad there is no mention of my favorite character to play just yet...



Pardofelis' combat is so much fun. Plus you launch a giant cat at your enemies.

Captain France
Aug 3, 2013

Zwiebel posted:


Collaborators being as expensive to level as ELFs makes them really unappealing. Not sure why they didn't change that.


It's alright so far.

Don't forget you can also just use your ELFs as collaborators with new abilities and everything.

I haven't felt like deep diving mechanics today, but Klein seems to still be fine for lighting teams like the new trio.

AParadox
Jan 7, 2012

Eimi posted:

I haven't pulled yet, but going for FoV drained everything I had, I've got like 18k after the patch. Not the wisest decision but it was Hua so wisdom leaves my body.

I did the same and did not regret it at all, people really underestimated just how good FoV is, she is as much of brute force goddess as LV is and can steal bosses from other modern valks. I've managed to outscore Hares and Bricks in a fight perfect for them with S rank FoV and ele valk stealing phys valk fights is almost never a thing.

Eej
Jun 17, 2007

HEAVYARMS
Astral Ring is just APHO2's sicko mode mechanic

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

For all the talk of the gacha rates being much better, they certainly don't feel better to me. That could just be confirmation bias on my part, admittedly it's very rare I had to go to hard pity previously, but it's happened here on all banners.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply