BrightBow

Does it? What does Dark Magic do that the other schools of magic can't do better? I suppose there is Nosferatu, but given how frail she is and that she has terrible skill and only an average growth I doubt this helps her all that much.

Echoes is not in the poll but Shadow Dragon and New Mystery are? Anyway, the good thing about staff users is that they can make themselves useful even on low levels. And thanks to his Blaggi blood, Corple does at least not need to worry about his staff rank. He does nothing that somebody else can't do better but he can still put in some work no matter who his father is. Sophia has to be the worst. Nonexistent speed, getting killed by everything in one hit, can only use the inaccurate Flux. And what do you get in the end for all your work? A far shittier version of Lillina, who isn't even that great in the first place.

I'm glad that they at least considered to make fundamental changes to the game. Anyway: 1. Mario 2. Yoshi 3. Peach 4. Bowser 5. Donkey Kong 6. Kirby 7. King Dedede 8. Link 9. Pikachu 10. Fox 11. Marth 12. Inkling 13. Samus 14. Pit 15. Captain Falcon 16. Little Mac 17. Ness 18. Mewtwo 19. Villager 20. Wario / Megaman I didn't really want to take it for granted that a guest character will make it in, which is why Wario and Megaman share the same spot. Mario, Yoshi, Peach and Bowser. That's a lot of Mario but they are all quite distinct from each other. Not really talking about their fighting style, more like what kind of characters they are, what kind of energy they express, that kind of thing. It's also why I don't want to give franchises from cartoonish settings several representatives. They tend to feel relatively similar compared to using a character from an entirely different franchise. Dedede comes along because he is a happy penguin with a giant hammer. Might sound like a silly reason but the point is that he has a very unique feel to him. Captain Falcon, Ness, Little Mac and Pit stick around. I really don't see why it should in any way matter if their franchises were "dead". And Captain Falcon in particular is basically Smash's mascot.

It's from Star Trek: The next Generation - "The outrageous Okona". In the b-plot, Data tries to learn about humor. Unfortunately for Data, the writers of the episode were just as clueless on the topic as he is, so the episode delivers "gems" like the one above.

"You're a droid and i'm annoyed." If you don't know where that line is from, call yourself lucky. It's the kind of joke that's so terrible it actually destroys the amount of joy in the world.

I don't see them changing that off all things. It wouldn't be any more awkward then a relationship with your siblings, your friend's kid from the future, grade schoolers, or your servants. A relationship with your student is nothing by comparison.

Btw, do we know which honorific Edelgard uses to address the Teacher? Is it Sama? What worries me about Teacher being the Avatar is that by being her teacher he is put into a position where he is in a way above Edelgard. It's not hard to see how this kind of setup could be exploited for the usual Avatar dicksucking.

That's very much the reason I got sick of these games. If I spent like an hour killing the same enemy over and over again until the RNG finally decides to drop what I need, I don't feel accomplished. I feel like a friggin idiot for having wasted so much time. And these Castlevania games only take like 3 hours to complete in the first place. They are not some kind of massive 50 hours Final Fantasy game or something like that. To waste so much of the player's time in such a short game is absurd. The sad thing is that Order of Ecclesia actually handles these things better then it's predecessors. In Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow every spell is a random drop. And Portrait of Ruin has the worst sidequest system I've ever seen in a video game. You have to do them all in a row, even if you have already meet the requirements for the next 10 in line. And you are given no direction for these "quests". Most of them will ask you for a specific item and you are not given any clue where they are. They could be a random drop from any of the countless enemies or they could actually be hidden somewhere. And the rewards to include basic abilities like being able to whip diagonally, not just random pieces of gear that get obsolete after 10 minutes anyway. Meanwhile in Ecclesia most of the Gylmphs are not gotten from random drops but are hidden somewhere, so the "quests" aren't really important in the first place. You also have several quest givers, so if you get stuck anywhere that doesn't mean you can't progress with someone else's questline. I also recall that the game does give you a certain amount of direction on where you have to go and what you have to kill. Of course none of this changes the fact that making the player to kill the same monster over and over and over until the RNG lets you win is just artificially padding out the game's length.

In my case, I didn't even find a single one of these doors. Fortunately the VS battle requirements were relatively lenient in Brawl compared to Melee with it's 700 plays for Mewtwo.

I just hope they don't make us grind for randomly generated equipment pieces again. Those make the character customization completely unappealing because of all the crap you have to search through unless you regularly spend hours to sell all that shit one by one (while being very careful to not accidentally delete the few equipment pieces you want to actually use. Just allow people to freely distribute a limited amount of points. Same with special effects. Allow them to be freely applied in exchange for stat penalties.

Also, in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn it is possible to have Isaac and Gareth get beaten in the first boss battle while they are NPCs. But the game doesn't account for this at all. So the only things that happens visually is that their idle animation freezes. Not really a bug I suppose, it's just how the game acts when it can't find the animation data that is called upon in order to avoid crashing. But it's weird that the developers didn't do anything here. I mean, they specifically made it so that Isaac and Gareth's attacks cannot actually finish of the boss and consequently gave the player the ability to drag out the battle indefinitely, yet they did nothing to avoid this scenario. The two of them are not invincible, don't have infinite health or protection against fatal blows (like they gave this very boss), no special resistance against attacks that bypass the defense stat or any ability to heal themselves except for Isaac having the Djinn Quartz, which has only a 50% chance of reviving an ally. And Isaac can't use it several times because his AI will never use any summons. It's so strange to me that developers would do nothing to account for such a completely obvious outcome, even if the player has to put a bit of work into it. Like, Radiant Dawn takes into account if you get the Black Knight killed in 1E and I'm pretty sure that's completely impossible to do in a legit way.

In the Jazz Jackrabbit II demo I had glitch that would always make Jazz walk to the left. I suppose that alone wouldn't be so weird. What's weird is how I was able to get around that. I simply had to start up the demo of Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (though maybe any other game had the same effect) and afterwards the Jazz 2 demo would run without problem. I absolutely can't comprehend why these things were connected in any way. And this bug happened 100% of the time, so this isn't placebo or anything. Heck, before I found a solution I went through the entire demo with that bug active, except for the boss at stage 3 who I just couldn't beat with that handicap. Speaking of the Jazz Jackrabbit II demo, I found a bug that allowed you to go through the single player with 2 players by simply loading a saved game while in multiplayer. The multiplayer mode of the demo only allowed the treasure hunt mode, so that was a nice little extension of what was already a very good demo.

So I just took a look at this gameplay video... ...and I guess that Counters haven't been changed at all and still deal damage based on the attack that triggers it? Ike's counter deals 32 damage at 0:50 against Zelda's Forward Air, 25 at 2:38 against... Down Air I believe and only 12 at 3:31 against her multihit forward smash. *Urgh*, this is so obnoxious.

I suppose in PoR it's not just that mounts are awesome but also that foot units suck more then usual. Myrmidons, Archers and Knights are basically all at their worst from the GBA games and then some. Myrmidon's have no power, the Archers Rolf and Shinon have terrible bases for their jointime and Armored Knights have no mobility, accuracy, agility or resistance. Mages also have seen better days. Mercenaries don't exist, Boyd is the only fighter unless you count Largo who joins very late. Nephenee is probably okay. Similar low Strength as Myrmidons but Lances should be able to compensate for that to some degree and they also allow for 1-2 range. But Danved is just a bit too low in every area. In Radiant Dawn this aspect is significantly more balanced. Well, unless your name is Haar. Then the world is your oyster.

Thanks for pointing out that error. Fixed it now.

I recently finally got around to play the game on Normal Mode for a change and was rather surprised by just how much slower my units leveled. This made me curious about how different the enemy forces are between the modes. So I played through Chapter 1 side by side in both modes to collect a bit of data about the enemy's army composition and strength: Considering that it seems like there is no EXP reduction on Hard Mode and enemies of the same level will be equally strong, this makes me wonder how much harder Hard mode actually is. Facing more and higher leveled enemies means more EXP, which means faster access to promotions and spells.

Definitely Ridley. He seems like a blast to play with, literally mopping the floor with his opponents. Plus, he is just a really cool character in general. I'm also looking forward to playing Ivysaur again. I just love that little bugger. Probably mostly because of it's German dub. I love how deep and energetic it is, especially coming from that little guy. Or girl, as the case may be. Plus, there is just something to be said about a little quadrupedal animal kicking ass and taking names.

I suppose the villains are very typical for a Fire Emblem game. The supposed heroes are a lot less so. They are utterly selfcentric at the best of days. Chrom overthrew Plegia and afterwards did absolutely nothing to stabilize the country, causing the land to descend into chaos and allowed the Grimleal to grab power and sacrifice it's population. Chrom later repeated the same thing with the entire continent of Valentia. Although unlike in the case with Plegia, the game never says what happened after it's ruler got defeated. Buuuuut the game was constantly repeating that the dynasts were only looking out for themselves, painting the picture of a country that is only held together by the power of Wallhart. So it's absurd to think that Wallhart's death wouldn't have caused a power vacuum that would throw the entire continent into a massive civil war. And it's even more absurd to think that Chrom would have done any precautions against this because we know for a fact that he did no such thing in Plegia. Then of course Chrom alongside everyone else was utterly deadset against Robin sacrificing herself, without even as much as aknowledging his responsibility towards his people. And this is after Chrom was talking big to Wallhart about he would unite the entire world. Remember that one?: Walhart: ME, JOIN YOU?! Does a pegasus join with the flea on its back? A dragon, with a cow it eats?! You forget your place, BOY. I am the Conqueror! I will unite the world! Chrom: No! ...I will. And not by forcing all the people to choose the sword or the knee. Peace will only come by stoking people's hearts...not their fear. But fuck that ambition and the responsibility that comes with it. Chrom is perfectly happy to let the entire world burn as long as it doesn't affect him and his friends personally. Just like your average tyrant he only cares about himself and his pals. I most certainly could also write how poorly Robin and Lucina compare to previous protagonists but I suppose this post went on long enough as is.

Basically Conquest; except with a perspective flip at some point with the player avatar serving as the main antagonist for the rest of the game. Maybe that just sounds like pure spite but there is a bit more to it then that. What the recent games shown me is the power of framing. It seems like characters may do awful things but as long the story doesn't acknowledge them as such, a lot of players will just ignore those acts or come up with rationalizations and excuses. I find this to be a genuine depressing observation, especially in the case of Conquest where things couldn't be any more blatantly black and white, yet I've seen a ton of absurd defenses for Corrin's actions or demonisations of Hoshido in order to justify the picture that the game frames of Corrin's actions and those around him. It gives me the impression that countless people would be capable of all kinds of evil as long as someone tells them it's the right thing to do. So I like the idea of having a story where you play on the side of the villains, are surrounded by people who are awful but just so happen to treat your Avatar well, and where you carve the way for plenty of atrocities, without the game ever acknowledging these things for what they are, at least until the perspective flip. The goal would be to make the player question themselves why they were unable to see what was right in front of them the entire time.

To me that seems like a strange way to use sarcasm, seeing how that implies that one was some sort of rebel for disagreeing with any of these statements. Which is kinda silly given Awakening's obvious popularity. The rest of the statements also don't sound like anything that has any sort of consensus, as far as I can tell.

The Hookshot is gone? That's fantastic. Well, I suppose it would be better if the Hookshot didn't have the lag at the start and the end. But hey, at least Link can properly throw things now.

Oh man, I so hope that this is true. Btw, do we already know how counters work? Would be great if they would finally be back to dealing a fixed amount of damage.

Maybe it would be about time to finally have a language select.

So I just came home from the dentist and now Ridley is in Smash? Man, I need to have my teeth checked more often.

I find it kinda strange that so far there is no sign of Marie Rose. Given how hard they have been pushing her in recent years, I would have expected that she would be all over the place if a new installment was announced. Not that it would be in any way a bad thing if the blatant pedo pandering character would be left out, mind you. But given her obvious popularity, I don't find that to be a very realistic possibility. But in order to write something that does not express my cynicism, I do I like that Kasumi seems to have gotten a different default outfit. Her old one was the kind of outfit that made it look impossible that she could make any fast movements without it falling off. Maybe some people find this implication "sexy" but to me that just looks "off". Kinda like seeing a broken arm or something like that. And given my choice of analogy, I suppose it goes without saying that I don't find that kind of aesthetic in any way pleasant to look at. Otherwise so far I don't really see anything that this game offers that DOA5 didn't already do. Well, if it at least gets a better PC port then Last Round I will probably keep an eye on it. Especially once the nude mods come out.