Serenes Forest's Teehee Thread

[Acacia Sgt]

Man, finally, saw it from start to finish. That was great.

And now...

He he he...

[Benice]

One of the best tracks in the franchise to go along with one of the best moments in the franchise.

[Sooks]

How does Berwick handle characterization to make every character so wonderful? I would guess it doesn’t have supports.

Maybe it’s those side mission things.

[Spara]

Just now, Sooks said:

How does Berwick handle characterization to make every character so wonderful? I would guess it doesn’t have supports.

Maybe it’s those side mission things.

It has a bunch of city events that act as optional cutscenes that have the various characters, along with the side missions. There are a massive amount of city events. 

[Interdimensional Observer]

4 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

Wait, the healing skills weren't THAT bad... not with high potential at least. 

We've got, for direct heals:

• Mindstorm- Shield, targets all, also grants Potential Up, L signature unlockable after Chapter 10.
• Repair- Knife, single target, cures debuffs too, readily available from Enforcer, heals a fix percentage- 10% of HP at most, rather weak.
• Smooth Recovery- Knife, targets all, also grants Evasion up, Irina signature belonging to an Affinity Mission required for Chapter 5.
• Astral Heal- Photon Saber, costs 1000 TP, with Astral Horizon active it targets all (which demands another 1000 TP).

Essence Exchange also exists for Photon Saber, although it's more likely to kill you, unless you're using it as part of some sophisticated Astral Horizon Heal build where it builds up your TP, only for you to then spend it on Astral Heal, which manages to heal more total HP than EE swapped out.

Repair could be better, but Smooth Recovery does make the Knife a viable healer, albeit not a superb standalone.

As for Auras with healing effects:

• Recuperate- Knife, Drifter/Cross only, heal over time, grants Evasion Up.
• Defensive Stance- Longsword, heal over time, reduces damage taken and lowers Melee Attack.
• Medic Free- Assault Rifle, revives on KO, increases resistance to debuffs.
• Overclock- Assault Rifle, heal over time, replenishes Skell fuel, exclusive to Alexa and capable of being unlocked for Cross until after Chapter 9.
• Enhanced Stand- Gatling Gun, heal over time, increases auto-attack damage.
• Titan Recharge- Gatling Gun, heals once upon Aura expiration (Cool Off could force this at anytime), and nullifies reflected attacks and shortens secondary cooldown, exclusive to Frye and requires Chapter 11 for Cross.
• Thirsty Edge- Dual Swords, heals with every melee hit that doesn't miss.
• Raijin- Javelin, heals with every art used, also enables reflect and provides electricity reflection, increases critical rate, but has a relatively short duration of 10 seconds.
• Speed Demon- Javelin, heals over time while sprinting like a madman and reduces art cooldown.
• Geolibrium- Photon Saber, heals over time, nullifies terrain damage, increases beam resistance.
• Astral Protection- Psycho Launchers, heals with every art used, increases all attribute resistances (capping at 50% with tertiary cooldown and the art at level 5).

Looking at Skills:

• Healing Aura- Samurai Gunner, 12-20% of max HP restored with when activating an Aura.
• Rising Renewal- Shield Trooper, recover 10-30% more HP when revived.
• Lifeline- Winged Viper, 10-30% of max restored when activating an Aura below 50% of max HP.
• Blood Carnival- Full Metal Jaguar, 5-25% chance of restoring 4-12% of max HP when a melee auto-attack lands.
• Buff Heal- Enforcer, recover 100-500 HP when receiving a buff.
• Healing Touch- Reviving allies restores 30-50% more HP.

Other than Healing Touch, all of these are affect only the person with the skill.

For Augments, we know the XX quality stuff is exorbitant in price, V will have to do. And for that, we have Arts: Recover HP V and Melee: Recover HP , which are feasible ingame and per Augment provides +50 HP per Art/melee auto-attack used. Potential Up Vs are very simple and provide +12 Potential each, plus Potential-boosting Skills for as much of three of the healing Arts and Soul Voice healing as possible. HP Rebound is unreliable, and Overdrive: Recover HP is too little for how infrequent Overdrive activation will be.

 

In summary, with Soul Voices and the fact Xenoblade fully heals you after each fight, you don't need crazy amounts of healing. Many weapons have at least one healing Aura, and Buff Heal or Healing Aura + Lifeline paired with one of those Aura could keep Cross alive for very long time. Albeit these require you sacrifice an damage-boosting Aura. And, "beginner's healing" -burst healing by commands- is quite scarce, with no one having access to more than 2 of those very few Arts, and they aren't humungous heals either without Potential stacking.

As a player of Etrian Odyssey, I've sometimes done with few and infrequent command heals, that in a turn-based RPG where enemies hit hard. And for Xenoblade, I spent the vast majority of my XC1DE run so far using Shulk-Reyn-Dunban, which is short on heals, I know how to make it work. But, figuring out how to rely on offense or gradual heals-over-time requires thought and understanding, a Sharla/a typical medic does not.

Whilst I wouldn't ask for another Sharla, I would might toss the Knife and Photon Saber another heal each, and definitely up the default potency of the ones they currently have.

-Don't take this as a railing against XCX, it's a mild-toned dissection and critique.

 

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

Bloodstained's archaic save room practice is starting to test my patience.

Archaic? -I've never thought of it that way in all my 2D Metroid and post-SotN Castlevanias experiences.

The save room has long been and likely still is the norm in Metroidvanias. If you could save anywhere, anytime would it make surviving through the strings of rooms too easy?

I've seen some Metroidvanias criticized for spacing out the save points more than necessary, but not the system itself. I think Guacamelee opted for fully-healing checkpoints, which were more frequent IIRC, but autosaves and "save anywhere" sound alien to the genre.

[Acacia Sgt]

Alright, back to Victoria 2. I've just unlocked Ironclads. My navy is in due for an upgrade...

[Spara]

I did a thing with my free time. Here's, finally, a full set of thoughts on Vestaria Saga Gaiden: The Holy Sword of Silvanister.

Spoiler

 

 

[Saint Rubenio]

46 minutes ago, Spara said:

You know, now that I think about it, each Kaga game always has one really good villain and a bunch of other okay/decent villains, along with some non-entities.

  Hide contents

FE4 had Arvis, FE5 had Raydrik, TRS had Zieg, BWS had Volcens, VS1 had... I guess Therenius? He's not as good as Raydrik, though. Valerius just kinda exists. 

HSoS has some good ones, one whom I can't name, and the other, I will just give the hilariously shitty machine translation name for to confuse the hell out of you. He's the lesser of the two, though. The one whom I will not name is way better. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Goene Waltz.

Hope you're happy. 

Yes, I agree with your assessment. I'd place Raydrik and Therenius below the others, mostly due to lack of screentime, but yeah, when Kaga does good villains, he does 'em really good.

Just one tidbit: you forgot someone.

Spoiler

Hardin. Honestly, about the only thing bad about him is that he doesn't get much screentime in book 1. Beyond that, he's definitely the "one really good villain" in FE3.

As for HSoS... I'm not sure if I'm happy, but hot damn that's an amazing name.

Also

Spoiler

"The one whom I will not name" sounds to me like there might be a traitor... Well, no matter. I'll find out one day, when Zephgarus finally continues with his generous work!

 

46 minutes ago, Spara said:

Also, yes, Owen is one whom I should've absolutely included in the list.

Owen's arc is awesome, and it's also quite unique in the context of FE/KagaSaga. At least right now, I don't recall anyone else like him. And, well, as usual, the gameplay-story integration is just excellent.

[Saint Rubenio]

29 minutes ago, Sooks said:

How does Berwick handle characterization to make every character so wonderful? I would guess it doesn’t have supports.

Maybe it’s those side mission things.

Like Spara said, characters get events as the game goes on that organically advance their arcs as the game goes on without needing to be self-contained. Some playable characters share their arcs, while others are involved with NPCs (and, of course, there's characters for which both apply). Some get little side quests during maps, others get their own maps, others just get city events that you need to unlock doing this or that. Others get all of these!

It works better for some characters than others, but overall, I really like the system. It feels more natural than supports, which are, by the nature of their functionality, awfully restrictive. In supports, you cannot include anything about the main plot (because who knows where in the game you are when you get them), anything about other characters (because who knows if they're dead at this point), and development is severely limited by the fact that whatever happens in a support starts and ends within itself and does not carry over to any of the others.

Honestly, nowadays I find that supports are very much "quantity over quality" when it comes to characterization. Sure, it'd be cool if I could make Axel and Sylvis talk in Berwick Saga, but neither of them need it. They each have their own arcs that progress as you play, and they both get enough. There's no need for unnecessary interactions for the sake of lengthening the script.

[Sooks]

I clicked on the Reddit and oooookay I see what Ruben means about the art...

[Spara]

2 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

In supports, you cannot include anything about the main plot (because who knows where in the game you are when you get them), anything about other characters (because who knows if they're dead at this point), and development is severely limited by the fact that whatever happens in a support starts and ends within itself and does not carry over to any of the others.

Hey, look, it's something PoR kinda did right! The former part, anyway, since of the whole thing about supports building by deployment. That was a good idea, made the support system good after GBAFE supports sucked.

[Sooks]

3 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

(because who knows where in the game you are when you get them)

Pent and Louise do.

3 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

, anything about other characters (because who knows if they're dead at this point),

Doesn’t that apply here? Or was permadeath too much for not-Fire-Emblem?

[Saint Rubenio]

Just now, Sooks said:

Doesn’t that apply here? Or was permadeath too much for not-Fire-Emblem?

There is perma-death, but this isn't as much of an issue because arcs aren't restrained to having exactly 2 characters every time. Some of them are just one playable and an NPC or two. Then there's a couple that are four-way character arcs, and all playables too. As such, the events don't feel as jarringly self-contained as supports in FE do, because they're allowed to include as many (or as few) characters as they need. Plus, unlike supports, these events are often intertwined with gameplay shenanigans that make them feel less "detached" from the game, so to speak.

3 minutes ago, Spara said:

Hey, look, it's something PoR kinda did right! The former part, anyway, since of the whole thing about supports building by deployment. That was a good idea, made the support system good after GBAFE supports sucked.

Yeah, the system has been improved since its inception, but I still prefer the way KagaSaga handles it.

[Punished Dayni]

4 minutes ago, Sooks said:

Doesn’t that apply here? Or was permadeath too much for not-Fire-Emblem?

I mean, no.

Definitely not too much.

[Saint Rubenio]

3 minutes ago, Dayni said:

I mean, no.

Definitely not too much.

I let out the biggest sigh of relief when I seized chapter 15 and it dawned on me that Best Dad had survived my tactics the entire game.

Like, wow, I was terrified the whole way through...

...Shame not everyone can say the same.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Saint Rubenio

[Shrimpica]

The support system will stay problematic and meh aslong as the evens happen vacuum

[Sooks]

Ah, SerenesForest. The best functioning website on the internet:

3 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

There is perma-death, but this isn't as much of an issue because arcs aren't restrained to having exactly 2 characters every time. Some of them are just one playable and an NPC or two. Then there's a couple that are four-way character arcs, and all playables too. As such, the events don't feel as jarringly self-contained as supports in FE do, because they're allowed to include as many (or as few) characters as they need. Plus, unlike supports, these events are often intertwined with gameplay shenanigans that make them feel less "detached" from the game, so to speak.

But then doesn’t who’s dead still matter here if character arcs are connected to each other?

[Saint Rubenio]

3 minutes ago, Sooks said:

But then doesn’t who’s dead still matter here if character arcs are connected to each other?

Well, yes. The arcs cannot happen if the characters are dead. But then, neither can supports, and supports only have the guarantee that the two characters are alive, whereas this system can use the characters it needs. If, for example, the character's dad is a playable, in supports they can only talk about the dad in the distant past, and brief mentions at that, because otherwise it'd be weird if the dad was dead at the time.

Plus, Berwick often has NPCs share arcs with playables, which grants even more freedom when compared to supports. Sherlock, for instance, shares his arc with no playable characters, but rather with a couple of NPCs.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Saint Rubenio

[Armagon]

2 hours ago, Shrimperor said:

wasn't that bad iirc, but yeah, most game have no reason to not have a save everywhere feature

To be more exact, this is the problem I'm having

Archaic save-rooms is the thread that connects all of this.

1 hour ago, Spara said:

TRS had Zieg

Shame I killed him

51 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Archaic? -I've never thought of it that way in all my 2D Metroid and post-SotN Castlevanias experiences.

The save room has long been and likely still is the norm in Metroidvanias. If you could save anywhere, anytime would it make surviving through the strings of rooms too easy?

Refer to to the image explaining my issue to Shrimpy at the moment.

But I will say, both currently released Blaster Master Zero games let you save anywhere. There are still save points but these are simply where you'd respawn if you die or exit the game. It's just not the only place you can save at.

[Shrimpica]

1 minute ago, Armagon said:

isn't there some kinda regen equipment iirc?

But yeah i understand you.

[Saint Rubenio]

6 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Shame I killed him

If I had to save one person from the end of the world, I would save you, just so I could chuck you off the spacecraft!

[Shrimpica]

[Sooks]

Gotta love Teehee.

[Armagon]

13 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

isn't there some kinda regen equipment iirc?

There's a Healing shard which replenishes your HP in exchange for 30 MP and this effect is honestly garbage.

There's another shard called Regenerate, which heals HP passively. A shame it has to be crafted tho because drop rates don't exist.

6 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

If I had to save one person from the end of the world, I would save you, just so I could chuck you off the spacecraft!

Not if I chuck you off first.

[Punished Dayni]

2 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Me: