Samias
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Posts posted by Samias
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I managed to clear the Infernal with some no-merge, mostly accessible units (my Veronica was pulled for and therefore not neutral IVs). Cavalry are awesome.
5* Ares: -Atk +Res (lol), Dark Mystletainn, Reposition, Draconic Aura, Brazen Atk/Def 3, Vantage 3, Hone Cavalry, Quickened Pulse seal (S rank Cecilia)
5* Cecilia: +Spd -Def, Gronnraven+, Shove, Iceberg, Triangle Adept 3, Bowbreaker 3, Ward Cavalry, Spd/Def 1 seal (S rank Ares)
5* Veronica: +Spd -HP, Prf weapon, Recover+, Windfire Balm+, Atk/Res 1, Wrathful Staff 3, Ward Cavalry, Live to Serve 1 seal
5* Young Azura: Neutral, Book of Shadows, Sing, Glacies, Spd/Res Bond 3, Wings of Mercy 2, Drive Spd 2, Drive Spd 1 seal
The general idea was to get Cecilia to deal with all the colourless and lance units with her powerful TA Gronnraven set (Klein especially is demolished by this), while reds and greens were dealt with by Veronica and Ares. If I had Goad cavalry to use, it would have been better on Ares than Hone, and honestly I don't think Vantage did much for me either. Veronica dealt exceptional chip damage while buffing everyone, Ares tanked enough damage with his physical bulk while hitting back hard with constant special triggers, and with Wings of Mercy, Azura could eventually follow around to refresh, and at the end she actually dealt with the final red armor with her pretty strong damage of her own. Veronica also did just enough healing to keep herself healthy too as she tanks a couple hits to keep Cecilia safe.
TA Gronnraven Cecilia was a really good investment.
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There was always something about the way she did her traditional inks that was really eye catching. Her line weight and posing was always so spot on for these. Honestly, Thracia is such a huge turning point for the series' look and the first time I think Fire Emblem had some seriously good art. Very sad that Kaga wasn't able to collaborate with her again after their time with Tirnanog, nor did IS seem to ever want her to come back for anything.
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Late reply here. Yeah, things are definitely tougher. I've so far managed to clear Suzaku EX, and Omega 9 and 10 and progging 11 now, but I don't think our 10 clear was that consistent. I also did some of the new Shifting Canals of Uznair which is a LOT of fun! Crazy RNG fun times were had.
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11 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:
I only got the game a few days ago, and I've only been able to play it for a few hours each day, and things aren't really hooking me yet.
After some thought, I chose to start with Ophilia, it was her or Cyrus who interested me the most. And after that, I decided to go clockwise in the rest of the recruitments- spelling out the word OCTOPATH in the process. So far I've made it to where Primrose is, although I haven't started her story yet, I'll do that in my next play session.
I know JRPGs can be slow to blossom, and once I get subjobs, it should get to be better. But right now, while the combat is okay, it isn't great. My bigger issue however is experiencing eight origin stories, I like the characters from what I've seen so far, but nothing storywise is really "moving", since I just keep starting anew, it has taken me seven hours to get as far as I have. It's become something of a boring pattern at this point- go to town, find character, trigger and complete their Chapter 1, move on to the next town.
I should keep playing for things to get better, but at the same time, I've got SMTIVA in my play log, which I feel like I want to spend my limited play time on as well. I'm maybe halfway in on that, I don't know exactly. It's a bit of the inverse of OT, I find the characters largely insufferable, but the gameplay is good and fast for a JRPG.
I was feeling this after all the chapters 1s, as they are all pretty slow paced. It got better from there. Ophilia's a decent character to have locked to your team, as I too wasn't aware you couldn't swap them out til you were done with all 4 of their chapters. Once you pick up subjobs, the scholar one in particular, she'll be able to take on a good offensive presence beyond healing.
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1 hour ago, Edgelord said:Edit: Apparently that is CaS, so I'm mistaken. Either way we're likely to see trailers for Raphael and Cervantes at this event (which is apparently the one in Melbourne)
PAX Aus isn't until late October and Soul Calibur 6 will be out by then, it's more likely that a trailer is going to drop at PAX West (Seattle) sometime this weekend.
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My big goal for the raid tier, complete. I've been working with mostly the same roster of people over the course of a month to get the clear. This is the first time I've finished a whole raid wing while the gear was still relevant. Ever since the 4.2 trailer dropped, I wanted to do this so badly and I'm glad I scrounged up the time and the bravery to join up with a random crew.
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That is what I mean. If they announced Tira after the rest of the roster, after launch with other characters, there wouldn't be as many complaints. It would have come across as "this game has support into the future" rather than "content is being withheld from me right now". It's not as if the game is as unfinished as SFV, as table shaking as SC5, or as niche as the many anime fighters out there. If only Namco had more faith in their own product like they did with DBFZ.
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Oh, I know fighting games are one of the harder genres to turn a profit in. Sustaining interest by churning out DLC content is something important to them, especially since doing updated rereleases has never been the norm for Namco, whereas Capcom and ArcSys are way more likely to put "Old game +1" out on the market to recapture costs. However no one ever put a gun to their head and said they have to have super high-end physics (Street Fighter and Injustice sure don't, and Smash Bros, DBFZ and Guilty Gear are stylized out the wazoo) and go as high poly as they have. Obviously the market responded poorly to Marvel vs Capcom Infinite being so poor quality and low on characters, but we already know SC6 will not be that bad. SC5 was their own misstep by deciding to redo nearly the entire cast WHILE rushing the game out the door, instead of doing iterative work with old characters.
Tira being DLC is totally fine. She's a more recent character and doesn't quite slot in to the time period this game is set in. Just I doubt her, or Eliza for Tekken, makes such a huge difference in driving day 1 sales vs the game itself being good. Tekken 7 already had built its rep in Japanese arcades and the US market was thirsty for the series to return, just like fans are thirsty for SC now. They could have teased her closer to the game launch with the full roster reveal, and say "She's part of the season pass with x characters, coming on y day!" and you'd still have people clamouring for the season pass (never mind that season passes are also scummy but it's basically the DLC preorder service minus transparency).
I actually think the KI model is very interesting where you pay only for the characters you want to play. It's a very well made game and it's a shame it isn't more popular. If it hadn't been XBox exclusive for such a long time, it possibly could have done better, but we'll never know. Still, we know from BlazBlue that it's very hard to spin "a large portion of the cast will be DLC" before launch in a positive way. People just think you're cheating them out of content. SC6 isn't anywhere near that bad, being entirely new content, but sitting on announcements could have been in Namco's favour.
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9 hours ago, Edgelord said:
Game development costs have increased significiantly for modern games while retail price has stayed consistent, yet it would be considered more of a taboo to charge more than $60 for a game compared to all the other shady shit that game companies do to get your money down the line. No game publisher wants to be the only ones charging $80 for a AAA game by themselves because it may actually get them more bad press than having day one locked DLC before the rest of the base roster is shown.
Edit: on top of that, people like Jim Sterling or Downward Thrust making reactionary videos doesn't exactly help.
Game sales are also higher than ever and games don't have to cost more to produce. If a game has to include Day 1 DLC to make a profit, they've allocated their funds poorly. Most of the games that have made the most money in the past year have either limited/no DLC (God of War, Mario Odyssey, Monster Hunter World), or are low barrier to entry/free-to-play with microtransactions (PUBG, Fortnite, League of Legends, mobile gaming)
I'm in the animation industry. You allocate your budget from the start. DLC is just a strategy to make more profit, it isn't what is going to be the difference maker between profitable and non-profitable. DLC is not bad, and in fact can add a lot of mileage to a game, but day 1 DLC is pure preorder marketing, something this game arguably didn't need considering how much goodwill they were already getting from bringing back fan favourite characters, plus the guest character. Look at how well Dragon Ball FighterZ did without any day 1 DLC. They had preorder-based early unlocks for the SSGSS characters, and the game is far and away the best selling fighting game of the current console gen because quality speaks for itself.
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I think the climate of people's attitudes towards day 1 DLC in fighting games has gotten significantly worse since Street Fighter x Tekken had DLC literally on-disc. And then in the past couple years you had the extremely half baked starting roster for Street Fighter V and extremely large numbers of DLC characters in a thin starting roster for BlazBlue Tag Battle, including the initial reveal that the RWBY characters were all going to be locked behind DLC (initially paid, eventually turned free). Also we haven't even seen the whole starting roster for SC6 yet so it's just bad taste to already be advertising DLC when you haven't even seen the whole base product yet.
Remember for people who want to lab match-ups for tourney purposes, this basically makes these purchases mandatory, bumping up an already-full-price game even higher. Especially so if that character is your main from a previous game, locked behind a paywall. BBTag is one of the few games not at normal AAA price, but it's also the game with the most reused assets of all current gen fighting games.
I think SC6 still looks really good compared to 5, especially with the return of the original characters instead of their idea of trying to replace everyone all at once. I don't think the DLC thing is going to impact the game's sales. Just I don't blame people for whining at bad practices. Just because every company does it doesn't mean it's good.
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Spoiler
This game's great characters are definitely bogged down by fanservice. I really came to care for them all by the end and it kept me going but I feel like the game undermined itself by having Pyra dramatically swing her chest around while standing idly, or Nia's revelation while donning yet another unimaginative swimsuit, or the fact that Poppi's evolution all kind of funneled into very samey, high cut swimsuit armor that everyone else had. Plus the whole thing with certain blades like Dahlia having OK art but really badly done 3D renders, or Theory having a childlike body but they still did things like put holes in her outfit for boob and butt ventilation while her official art contorts to show off both at the same time. I like sexy, but this game doesn't know how to leverage it. Like Camilla from Fates, the execution here of trying to make sexy characters is trying way too hard to show all the bits. And then it came at the cost of the game having a really hard time finding its identity until you made it considerably far in the game.
Unlike Pyra, I'm not that bothered by Mythra unless the camera is kind of upshotting up her skirt. I think her design would have been better if she didn't have boob holes but the outfit is more cohesive to me, rather than booty shorts with whale tail and reverse support up top while still having gravity defying honkers. Pneuma is the best of them though, shame she's more extra...
Still, I really like Nia, Morag, Poppi, and Zeke so much. I kinda got over how much I disliked Rex and Pyra/Mythra's designs to be invested in their story, even though I really dislike the whole shotacon vibe Rex has going on. Tora could fall off a cliff and not come back and I wouldn't miss him. The designs for Torna: The Golden Country seem promising for not undermining the tone of the story.
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Not having an Ivy alt makes me feel super bummed. I've always liked her alts way better than her standard outfit considering they were usually actually clothes.
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The gacha crystals are definitely the worst part, but pity pulls do mean you'll get a few. Plus one of the non-RNG freebies you get in the early mid-game is one of the best of the bunch too. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
The game really sinks its hooks in once you get past a little clumsy map design early on. Don't be ashamed if you feel lost. I think everyone did.
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I'm looking forward to the upcoming skeleton army, to be honest.
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Sinnoh's surf speed is absolutely indefensible. Same with the slowly depleting HP bars and rising exp bars. Gen 4 had a terrible game engine even though the world design is interesting in concept. Other than gen 1 being a cluster of terrible game mechanics and glitches, gen 4 is probably the least playable gen at this point, as much as I love the games.
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Too much water is definitely a meme, but I still think the reviewer in question had some good points, for one major reason: It's too faithful to the original RS with extremely bland Pokemon all over the place. This was a problem with games all the way up to gen 5, but the water represents the terrible repetition present throughout the entire game.
1. A water rich region's wild encounters is overwhelmingly represented by Wingull and Tentacool. Even though wailmer and luvdisc are common with a rod, and could have easily been used to spice up the encounters. As it stands, there's no way you don't just repel over the oceans. Because Wingull can't even be contained by water alone, Wingull's line appears in 31 areas, though some of them are ponds in cities that you generally wouldn't check.
2. On land, you're basically seeing zigzagoon and linoone line in the majority of grass patches. The Zigzagoon line is present on 8 land routes.
3. Gen 1 staples like the Abra line, Geodude line, Machop line, and Zubat line also appear a lot. This is a problem in every game but in a game with a particularly limited pre-National dex Pokedex like ORAS, it pushes a lot of the new guys out of the way.
4. Finding Sootopolis isn't so bad, but the signposting to find the Team Aqua base is rather poor. It's been made better, but in RS this was one of the easiest places to get lost, leaving you sweeping the ocean trenches for a sign of where to go. Cue more wasted repels or excessive amounts of samey encounters.
5. The Elite 4 reuses Pokemon of the same line multiple times. In RS, Glacia still had Sealeos! Now she just has... double glalies and double froslass and a walrein. Yay. Phoebe has two banettes, a dusclops, and a dusknoir. These teams are just yikes.
There's just a lot of design decisions here that the devs consciously chose to not change. Which is a shame because there's a lot of good QOL changes like the Dexnav and additions of mega evolutions and split evos from gen 4, but they didn't even decide to take some of the Emerald changes to spice up the Pokedex even a little bit. The game definitely gets better in its post-game with the addition of Mirage spots and Delta episode, but it isn't the huge upgrade to RSE than FRLG is to gen 1, or HGSS is to gen 2 games either. Something about the changes made is very underwhelming, knowing what resources are available to them now.
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I'm actually a big fan of the limited interaction. It's so easy for a story to go too far; Just look at Golden Sun: Dark Dawn where all 8 characters seemingly had to chime in about everything, plus any side NPCs around. The other characters had little to contribute to the overall story and it just became a bunch of "kids react" moments. Obviously a game can be better written than that, but I think it's a huge problem of the jRPG genre (and anime and manga as well) where you just write dialogue to explain every little thing and have a reaction shot just to tell the audience how they should feel. I liked the travel banter and I especially liked the post game ones that started to occur outside the stories, but I'm glad the game stayed focused on one character for each path. Alfyn and Olberic were especially stand-outs to me, with Alfyn having a purpose but no direction, and Olberic almost being his opposite.
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All Path Spoilers, tying stories together - BIG SPOILERS
SpoilerIf you haven't finished Lyblac and Kit's side stories (Daughter of a Dark God, and In Search of Father), I wouldn't read below as I'm going to summarize some of what you read in the final area you can open up.
I also found it extremely weird that at the end of Tressa's path, you suddenly are confronted by people from Obsidian. It was obvious from the name drop that Tressa and Alfyn's stories were connected from the last minute namedrop of Graham Crossford but then it was awfully confusing how it tied into Primrose. And then the final secret dungeon finishes tying the knot.
Ancient Hornburg sits on top of the Gates of Finis, the locale where the 13th god of Osterra, Galdera, is sealed away by Odin Crossford. Odin entrusts the Dragonstones to Hornburg's first king, Beowulf, and House Ravus. Graham Crossford, mentioned several times in the story, is Odin's descendant.
Lyblac uses Werner's mercenaries to bring ruin to Hornberg so she has access to the Gates of Finis. Lyblac also uses her resources to convince Mattias to corrupt the Sacred Flame and find sacrifices to Galdera, and has him work together with Simeon and Obsidian so they can form a network of assassins and fill influencial roles with unscrupulous people. She uses Lucia and Yvon to help her source the knowledge to complete the rituals that will call forth Galdera into the world. Presumably Lyblac was able to steal all the Dragonstones with Obsidian's help. While Cordelia and Heathcote recovers the stones, the gate was already opened.
Tressa's journal is representative of the beginning of Graham's journey, before his wife dies and before he meets Lyblac. Obsidian is working on Lyblac's behalf, and they're using the journals to find Graham's next-of-kin. The sentimental journal of Graham's is useless to them as it's too old and makes no mention of Graham's son, Kit.
Alfyn meets Graham after Graham's wife has passed, Graham saves Alfyn's life and passes down the antidote to the medicine that saves his life. It inspires Alfyn to help others but is something of a bittersweet ending to Graham's journey. However, Graham is lured by Lyblac to the Gates of Finis when she promises Graham that his wife can be brought back from the dead.
Graham realizes that Lyblac is using him, and tries to defy her, but is too powerless in the end to stop her. His body transforms into the monster known by Redeye and he escapes, but his life is no longer his own.
As far as all this fits together, I feel like Simeon's involvement is pretty weak though. It could be that he, like Mattias, doesn't age because of a deal struck with Lyblac, but nothing is really said of it, unlike Mattias who is explicitly made immortal until he's no longer recognized by current members of the Sacred Flame. On the other hand, H'aanit's story is surprisingly tragic at its end, knowing that Redeye is the one Tressa had been following the journey of, Alfyn was looking for all along.
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I'm so bad at Rathalos EX... I'm usually relegated as healer and I get hit once and I'm pretty much dead. Boy does he hurt if you aren't on top of things. Not helping is all my friends eating a loooot of damage in phase one. Big oofs. There's a team of four dragoons who managed to down the thing so maybe one of these days we will get good... maybe.
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/50d73607cbd2e026586c2ddd7bd6a163d1e3120e
Also hey one of my designs made the shortlist for this. Cool.
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2 hours ago, Xaltago said:
I'm glad there are some Runelord recommendations; I've been banging my head against him for a couple days. The stupid mass sleep, mass unconscious wipe when red is infuriating because it just feels bad to lose like that. Mass boosting Rehab is really smart and I'll have to try that. Are the other advanced job fights as status intensive?
Scrutinize's biggest advantage is that it's not level dependent, and some NPCs have extremely high requirements before you can Inquire. Generally speaking NPCs with low rates tend to have some kind of bonus but I do kinda hate how binary it is versus the other Path actions.
SpoilerRunelord has the most status effects, but Starseer also has some attacks that cause unconsciousness. I'd say every other advanced job is a bit less tricky but generally push out a lot more damage. Archsage is particularly dangerous. Bear in mind this is from the perspective of not using any advanced jobs to take down any others.
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Two entries for FFXIV's armor design contest. The first one was accepted into the finalist shortlist! Which is kinda funny because I was away on vacation for nearly the whole contest, spent the majority of my time on the rejected one, and then rushed the accepted one in a hazy jetlagged all-nighter just before the deadline. Just goes to show a memorable design =/= time spent rendering or colouring.
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Astaroth looks absolutely brutal. What a beast. Seong Mi-na getting an overhaul to make her different from Kilik also looks like a good choice. Even though she's the OG over him it always sucked that she was stuck with the moniker of "Kilik but worse" for so long.
I guess as far as reveals go I'm mostly hoping for Cervantes, Raphael and Setsuka the most at this point. I also wouldn't mind Cassandra but at the same time Sophitia is already there. I know a lot of people are also hoping for Hwang and Hilde. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw at least one more newcomer though.
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After beating all 8 stories, postgame spoilers
SpoilerThe Gate of Finis is so frustrating... the 8 bosses are pushovers but the final boss is ridiculously hard and there is no saving. It's really awesome but it's going to take me a lot of prep before I go back to make another attempt. One loss is such a huge timesink. This is Cloud of Darkness levels of tough, except you need actual strategy to beat the boss and not just level grinding.
Surprisingly Good Characters
in Fire Emblem Heroes
Posted · Edited by Samias
People are often down on Palla's refine because she retains having a TA weapon, but honestly there's so many threatening, tanky greens running around and the brave effect on initiation without a speed dump makes her an extremely valuable part of my flier team comp. She can run Fury and a multitude of B skills (currently I have Escape Route), your pick of flier buff, and I stuck a Brazen Atk/Def seal in her seal slot, making her a potent threat once Fury wittles her health down while she enjoys +6 to str/speed/def/res in combat when parked near other fliers, on top of a ward, goad, fortify and/or hone. She was a key part of my strategy for clearing Abyssal Michalis and Abyssal Narcian. If I'm not running Flier Emblem, I have other red fliers who are more flexible like Summer Tana, Laegjarn or Elincia, but Palla's Whitewing Blade has put a smile on my face thus far.
Cecilia is also a great budget unit to invest in for Aether Raids. She has solid counterpick potential in running TA Gronnraven against some of the more common blues and colourless ranged units.
Young Azura as others have said is one of the most reliable dancers in the game. Her res and speed when parked with an ally is actually solid. Probably one of the best free units IS has given out.
Any healer who runs Dazzling Pain+ or Gravity+ and double savage blow is a great asset. I honestly believe everyone should build at least one. Azama may have one of the worst attack stats in the game but he can run the standard healer harrassment build.