Serenes Forest's Teehee Thread

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I have decided to make a mistake, and am replaying Three Houses. It has been a long time coming, and it was probably my least favorite Fire Emblem game for a while,

-At least you gave it a fair shake before. I don't think in all honesty that I can say I ever did that for 3H.🙁 Three playthroughs, not one iota of doing monastery, nor witnessing plot, nor seeing characters. If all I did was fight, nothing else, I don't think I truly played 3H.

 

28 minutes ago, Armagon said:

You begin the game as I am close to finishing it.

It's like poetry, it Ouroboros.

Isn't an ouroboros supposed to be one snake eating its own tail? With two people, is it an ouroboros, or a 69?🤔 Well, if you're a yoga master, I suppose you can make yourself an ouroboros.

...After several hours' further delay, I opened the game at 2:00 PM. I didn't get past the title screen until 2:19. Did I then play the game? "Yes", but no, no, no no, nononono!😐

I skipped all cutscenes, muted the TV and turned off all sounds in the options while swapping voices to Japanese, I set the combat to easy and auto, ignored any written dialogue on screen (minus tutorials I had to manually complete), expanded the mini-map to block out the scenery (I actually struggled to keep my eyes on the screen), and just ran in a straight line from objective to objective. I stopped as soon as I got a mandatory fetch quest. I exited the game by 2:44. The irrational behavior feedback loop could not be broken.

Though I quoted Revelation earlier, as I know painfully well, I am neither the Alpha nor the Omega. Beginning and ending games I both struggle with. Does that make me the Mu and the Nu? -The 12th and 13th letters of the 24-letter Greek alphabet?🤔 Well I can struggle with resuming games after a hiatus too, so I wouldn't say even the middle goes smoothly for me. Yet even so, I wasn't expecting to flounder so terribly today.😑 

At least I bashed my head against XC3? Maybe I'll try again undocked later tonight, redoing the whole of what little I forced myself through. Everyone can have their own definition of "progress".😅

 

46 minutes ago, Dayni said:

What an image.

I mentally sketched it out days ago. Just waiiiiting for my chance to pop it on Shrimpy.😝

55 minutes ago, Dayni said:

Onwards to the end of all I suppose.

Would that be the worst thing right now? -Some would ask.

55 minutes ago, Dayni said:

(Why is it always the not War and Death horses that end up confusing people and making it feel like there's 2 doing the same thing? Whether it's Pestilence and Famine or War and Conquest? here apparently. Yes you can point out differences, but I just don't get how this keeps happening)

You're saying people confuse White Rider and Pale Rider? Or are you saying White with Red? Or are you saying both are confusing for different reasons? Black Rider/Famine is the only one that can't easily be confused, I think?🤔

...A cursory look reveals White = Pestilence can only be traced in writing back to 1906. That then is such a newborn interpretation, that I'd be inclined to think it inaccurate and go with Conquest instead though maybe the Almighty didn't want us to figure it out until nineteen centuries after He sent His Son?.

[Codename Shrimp]

Problem with 3H, imo, is that it is one of those games where the more you think of it or look back to the worse it becomes?

Like y'all remember how i was one of it's ardent defenders back then, but nowadays i just think "Was good, but not top", and 3 Copes didn't help matters either and soured me alot on Fodlan writing.

It's, for me, in the reverse category of games like Xenoblade 2 or Fates, where i liked quite enough back then, but look on more fondly than most other games i know and like more the more i look back to them.

Edited yesterday at 08:15 PM by Codename Shrimp

[Interdimensional Observer]

5 minutes ago, Codename Shrimp said:

Problem with 3H, imo, is that it is one of those games where the more you think of it or look back to the worse it becomes?

Silver lining- it sounds even better than Fates and Radiant Dawn for "I think this tragically-flawed story could've been fixed, if..." creative-speculative ideas?🤔 Fan chatter I've glimpsed suggests that? -Like, ambition + some nice established pieces - poor execution = a great dollhouse to fanfictively play with?

Plus those (so far, perhaps forever) unanswerable questions of how the process of 3H was actually developed. The mystery concerning the chronological sequence of the creation of the routes.

[Dayni]

  I'm having the idea of getting into Pokemon Go to go out more often (also Meltan, but that's a likely outside bet for free. :P). Course, the winter coming up is a factor against.

25 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Yeah guys, as a Venezuelan, I can confirm we come in with built-in plasma cannons. Just vaporize a guy on the spot.

So there's a bunch of plasma rifles just available in the US now, but kept in migrant communities? What a frightful world, if it were true.

8 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

You're saying people confuse White Rider and Pale Rider? Or are you saying White with Red? Or are you saying both are confusing for different reasons? Black Rider/Famine is the only one that can't easily be confused, I think?🤔

...A cursory look reveals White = Pestilence can only be traced in writing back to 1906. That then is such a newborn interpretation, that I'd be inclined to think it inaccurate and go with Conquest instead though maybe the Almighty didn't want us to figure it out until nineteen centuries after He sent His Son?.

I'm saying White being recategorised keeps on leaving it overlapped with Red or Black, which doesn't help with discussions.

But then again I'm not a Revelations expert, knowing all the subtext of this bunch of cavs. And there's no way someone didn't take the Mongolian Empire as a sign of the end of the world off this text alone.

[Codename Shrimp]

Time to try Metaphor

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

55 minutes ago, Codename Shrimp said:

Time to try Metaphor

 

Metaphor or Meh-taphor?

...Is what the demo may determine.😀

[Armagon]

Oh baby a double!

[Armagon]

@Interdimensional Observer We gotta save this IP from the Square Enix jail dawg.

2 fucking thousand Benjamin Franklins for a Xenogears watch. Square, buddy, IP ain't big enough to warrant even the cheaper 300 dollar watch.

[Codename Shrimp]

🤔

You got the me that faces the screen, here!

best girl spotted?

>Worms

Best kind of magic

No canon name?

Protag is Elda + he has a fairy companion - hence Feldario is what i came up with.

2024 moment

I like our little fairy companion

I wish

Someone tell her xD

But some are more equal than others, or something.

It is a fantasy 🥲

Protect MC's smile!

Damn we are ugly

we are going with that eh

Yeah, ik, we suck

Cool

i see. Interesting

I thought i am gonna play fantasy democracy and not assassination xD

"Welcome to the Velvet Room"

You know, Persona, but playing it cool. Or something

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Metaphor or Meh-taphor?

...Is what the demo may determine.😀

Didn't finish yet, still quite a bit to go, but impressions so far are okay to good-ish?

Interested in world/politics/story...but gameplay is not gripping me yet. Also calendar makes the Shrimp nervous.

And pretty annoying how stunning an enemy in action mode pretty much forces me to go to turn based mode.

So far it's in the "Wait for sale + free slot" - but rest of the demo might change that ofc.

Edited 21 hours ago by Codename Shrimp

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

Oh baby a double!

-Well they initially announced Flamefrit (post-April Fool's) as a Card-en-Ciel preorder bonus. But only in Japan, and only for physical buyers of CeC. Now, they said that if you buy CeC digitally (regardless of region), you'll get free early DDF digitally -but if you want to buy DDF alone (digitally) (which I'm considering), you'll have to wait until later.

51 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Weltall and Weltall-Id faces? 

I feel like the shade of blue is too bright for Weltall, though maybe a watch face needs to be reflective of light to everything atop it readable.

51 minutes ago, Armagon said:

@Interdimensional Observer We gotta save this IP from the Square Enix jail dawg.

2 fucking thousand Benjamin Franklins for a Xenogears watch. Square, buddy, IP ain't big enough to warrant even the cheaper 300 dollar watch.

At least there's a market for robot figurines (referring to the Weltall I posted the other day). Wristwatches inspired by mecha? Gundam or Evangelion and they probably would sell, easily. But Xenogears? Hammer "doubt" like an ejection button.

51 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Square Enix has been remastering -to mixed results- a bunch of its back catalogue of late. Much of it SaGa b/c the old respected founder is still there, yet there was Trials of Mana (and the Mana compilation, Secret's visual remake, and Legend's remaster), Live-A-Live, Actraiser, Tactics Ogre, and Chrono Cross (but surprisingly not the more famous Trigger). -Though there remains absences from Square's and Enix's prolific 16/64-bit outputs, and any SE plans to financially slim things down and trim out smaller games could kill future remasters.

In the case of these portable timepieces, I'm thinking it could be different regions of the brain acting independently. That if SE has a merchandise branch, it acts without any regard for what the gaming development sector of the company is doing.

All this said, sure, I'd be fine if SE sold XG. Nintendo would unite the 'G with the 'B under its creator, but how often does Nintendo purchase IPs? Bamco, though notorious for not giving us an XS compilation remaster, could hardly be worse than SE, and at least it'd bring XG and XS together. -Other than these two giants, I really don't know if anyone would want it, nor do Xenogears any better.

[Armagon]

3 minutes ago, Codename Shrimp said:

Also calendar makes the Shrimp nervous.

If the calendar forces me to stick to a pacing, that's a no-no I fear.

1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

but if you want to buy DDF alone (digitally) (which I'm considering), you'll have to wait until later.

Still, two months early at the earliest, that's pretty good.

Might consider getting on PC just for that. Maybe.

 

[Codename Shrimp]

Also performance issues on PC. Not that bad with me, "only" FPS drops, but alot of people are having problems i hear

5 minutes ago, Armagon said:

If the calendar forces me to stick to a pacing, that's a no-no I fear

so far it's just for show, but i wonder how it's gonna be used....

Edited 21 hours ago by Codename Shrimp

[Armagon]

1 minute ago, Codename Shrimp said:

so far it's just for show, but i wonder how it's gonna be used....

It also started off as just for show in Persona 5 but then I did the unspeakable crime of doing the main task too quickly.

[Lightchao42]

It's peak... I wasn't expecting them to acknowledge that half the Moon is still destroyed.

On 9/24/2024 at 7:04 PM, Dayni said:

Meanwhile, Sonic decides to do Fall Guys for some reason (money)

Me when Sonic Fall Guys has a Light Chao cosmetic

(Maybe I'll try it if they make Chaos playable.)

5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

At least I bashed my head against XC3? Maybe I'll try again undocked later tonight, redoing the whole of what little I forced myself through. Everyone can have their own definition of "progress".😅

I think you waited so long that you started to hype it up in your head too much. Now that I think about it, it feels like there usually aren't many opinions on it between "greatest game ever made" and "least good Xenoblade".

And if you need a palette cleanser, you can play Trails-

1 hour ago, Codename Shrimp said:

>Worms

Better kill it quickly before it uses E A R T H S H A K E R and wipes your party.

Edited 20 hours ago by Lightchao42

[Acacia Sgt]

6 hours ago, Armagon said:

Yeah guys, as a Venezuelan, I can confirm we come in with built-in plasma cannons. Just vaporize a guy on the spot.

Jesus Christ, if Biden was saying this, there would be calls for him to resign medically.

Why would anyone complain? They're just exercising their Second Amendment rights. What are they gonna do? Implement Gun Control?

6 hours ago, Dayni said:

That exec was in touch with Pocketpair, even knowing this is a mistranslation /s

Ah, this is localisation at it's most insistent.

> Tiger with huge breasts

Hold on, it was the US who first wanted to make the Pokémon horny?

[Acacia Sgt]

Okay, last hope of the year maybe for a new SRW announcement during the TGS? I'm ready to be elated or disappointed.

[Eltosian Kadath]

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

-At least you gave it a fair shake before. I don't think in all honesty that I can say I ever did that for 3H.🙁 Three playthroughs, not one iota of doing monastery, nor witnessing plot, nor seeing characters. If all I did was fight, nothing else, I don't think I truly played 3H.

Lol, yeah that would be Three Houses at its absolute worst played this way.

 

2 hours ago, Codename Shrimp said:

Problem with 3H, imo, is that it is one of those games where the more you think of it or look back to the worse it becomes?

Like y'all remember how i was one of it's ardent defenders back then, but nowadays i just think "Was good, but not top", and 3 Copes didn't help matters either and soured me alot on Fodlan writing.

I wonder how I will feel about it after this little return, as I did not like it before, and have a hard time imagining me seeing it as that much worse. I really hope I don't feel worse about it by the time I am done with this...

 

32 minutes ago, Codename Shrimp said:

No canon name?

That is relatively normal for the Persona games, where the MC doesn't really get a canon name until the anime makes one for them. Also I find the meta distinction between player and character being made here kind of interesting.

 

I guess I can share some Three Houses thoughts as I go, and make a thread, either at the end of a route, or perhaps at the end of snoring clouds with some more conclusive thought. I think I will start with the most mixed bag comment I have, which is about the monastery.

...yeah this ended up longer than I intended, so I think I will put it in a spoiler box for space saving

Spoiler

I kind of like the monastery section of the game a lot, but I find that they are ruined by one major thing, Professor Level. First off, the way Professor Level increases your capabilities in the game's down time leads to a perverse incentive to maximize that Professor Experience in a way that turns the otherwise fun little fishing minigame into a chore where you save up bait for the extra experience event (fist full o fish), and then just ruin it by overplaying it during that time. There are a few other micromanagey thing like that with regard to Professor Level experience (the fishing minigame is just the easiest to articulate), and feeling the pull to optimize in this way makes the game less fun to play. That is before getting to the other massive issue with Professor Level, that getting it above C tier also leads to unfun behavior due to how much it lengthens the between time. I picked C rank for three big reasons, first getting one rank higher gets you to the point where you can now do multiple battles in a week (which is an exhausting way to stretch the between time, and below Maddening at least makes you feel overleveled after doing it); secondly getting two ranks higher gets to the point where you have more lecture points than half the deployment limit for the army (at least so far deployment limit hovers at 10, and I remember it doing so for a long time, but if I am forgetting about a noticeable increases in deployment this issue might not be as bad later in the game), which leads to some nasty incentives where you either micromanage the bonus sources of motivations (thing like timing supports with the MC, manipulating MVPs, save scumming for end of lecture choices, or over engaging with lost items and gifts), or you feel pressured into doing even more explore moments than you should to raise motivation (which are made longer by the increase in activity point, leading to a nasty cascade) or else waste the lecture points, finally I find the 5-6 exploration activity points is just about the right number for them. Both battles and exploration scaling with Professor level then devalues Seminars which don't scale in the same way, made all the worse by the way they give out class/weapon experience decreasing as your ranks increase (making them effective less value over time on their own), which is a shame as I kind of like them as a third option, but already (I have gotten past chapter 6 and I am about to start battle of Lion and Eagle mock battle) it feels like they have been outmoded into a waste of time. A shame such a good thing was ruined by Three House's desperate attempt to make you micromanage everything, so its time to move on to a thing I dislike that was made even worse by that same desperation.

I have never been the biggest fan of class changing, I generally see it as a nice bonus incentive to replay a game, but generally prefer to stick to base classes...which is so counter to Three House's philosophy on how things should work mechanically that this was never going to be among my favorites. Theoretically I could stick to "canon" classes, but doing so would literally require me to research what class you see the units in when you recruit them late from other houses, or when you face them in combat, and having to do that kind of research sounds ridiculous. Also the way you need to micromanage your weapon exp, and class exp for vital skills makes the whole experience miserable. That is all before how easy it feels to fall into the very boring paradigm of Oops All Wyverns, which is the sign of a very poorly designed class system...ugh I want to move on to something at least a little positive, as the way this game's micromanagement systems are designed compels me to engage with them in spite of the enjoyment I would have ignoring them.

I am liking the maps more than I remember doing so before (although playing through them four times for the snoring cloud maps might be playing a major role in my earlier dislike). Their decision with reinforcements are as moronically designed as I remember (if reinforcements are too close it is either a pointless waste of time without ambush spawns, or obnoxious with them), but the maps themselves seem interesting enough. I also remember there being way too many boss kill chapters, but so far that isn't as awful as I remember, admittedly the free time battles all being route might be skewing things a bit, but there has been a little variety, especially with my first paralogue being a defend (or boss kill...) chapter.

Recruitment is way grindier than it should be and kind of stupid, but outside of trying to recruit Bernie (as she is my spirit animal), I have been fine ignoring it, so I will chalk that up to being a mixed bag, and move on from this point fairly quickly. I probably should recruit a few others for paralogue purposes, but I might not feel like doing so. At least I found a way to ignore this pile of micromanagement, in small part thanks to remembering how softlock by dawn is designed to screw you over for engaging with this system.

As for some seemingly useless mechanics that I have tried to use but find mostly pointless, there is the Adjutant and mission help system. The ability to ask for mission help from someone outside the class is so neutered by their inability to gain any kind of experience that it is clearly only to help grind out recruitments (which I have been mostly ignoring anyway), and really emphasizes how over-leveled taking extra battles makes all your other troops, so I find the mechanic rather useless. I don't actually know if appointing someone an adjutant actually does anything, I remember the system literally being bugged before, but even now I haven't notice it do anything.

Storywise, snoring clouds doesn't go anywhere fast, so Three House's main selling point isn't doing a great job of selling it at the moment, but I remember it picking up a bit latter into the game. Its world building is fairly solid, which is nice, especially when compared to the low bar that is Fate's world building. As for the characters, I feel like I hate about a third of them, like another third, and feel fairly neutral on the last third, but with all the grinding this game insists upon I end up having to see supports even from the characters I want to throw bricks at, so a very mixed bag here as well.

 

[Acacia Sgt]

Reminds me I need to start my second run of TH one of these days...

[Armagon]

I fucking cooked.

Please watch that timelapse, crazy how me at the start of this year couldn't even dream of doing that.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Lightchao42 said:

I think you waited so long that you started to hype it up in your head too much.

I wouldn't say "hype" exactly, if one relates hype to eagerness, as I wasn't actually eager whatsoever to begin XC3 (though I truly want to begin it). Were I excited, I might've plunged in with less hesitation (but not none, I'm not sure if that's possible with me) and pushed through.

It's more like "veneration". Like I'm walking into the Holy of Holies, and XC3 is both the Temple's inner chamber and the Ark of the Covenant contained within. I'm not afraid of being disintegrated (I won't open the Ark), but I need to fully commit my mind, body, and senses to the game. If I detect a single stray thought or feeling, then it feels wrong, and soon that sense of wrongness snowballs.

-Which is a downright bizarre way to think of a piece of entertainment.😅 They should be relaxing, not send me into performing austerities. Yet all games on some level, but especially full-length JRPGs, do this to me nowadays. (Berseria being the most recent prior, though I didn't start acting weird there until the opening act got underway.)

If there was a way to upload the first ~five hours of XC3 directly into my skull, with a save file at the same point, that'd be great. To have the meet & greets among the initial crew over with, the plot past the initial liftoff stage, the gameplay through the most basic of tutorials. I wouldn't care that much if I didn't have a full understanding of why I'm going where I'm going at that point, nor why Male B calls Female C "Screech Lady" b/c I missed a first-hour comical interaction.

As is, I think I'll simply have to wear myself out. This instinctual irrational behavior takes effort, and while I can keep it up for an entire game (Fates and 3H), in this case, I ought to surrender, I want to surrender.

If only this was X2 dangit! My yearning to know answers to the mysteries that the first game left behind outweighs any hesitancy I would have. I would dive in playing furiously seeking to discover who the "Great One" is ...until side-quest fatigue sets in, and then an IRL week passes of not-playing, during which Arma gets to the final boss whilst I'm only at Chapter 7.

1 hour ago, Lightchao42 said:

And if you need a palette cleanser, you can play Trails-

I'll wait for Sky Remake, Second Chapter.😛

Though in a way, Trails would be easier to leap into. As that franchise is at ground level for me, it's just video games, I haven't placed it on a pedestal atop Mt. Everest. -Yet, while I'm okay with an Unfinished Battle, I don't want an unfinished story that I'll be forced for years to wait on a conclusion for. Even if the sheer number of existing Trails games and present overarching story completion % might have reached the point where I can begin, and the True Final Ultimate Last Best Game will have released.

 

57 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Okay, last hope of the year maybe for a new SRW announcement during the TGS? I'm ready to be elated or disappointed.

The possibility had never crossed my mind. I must've given up for the year already.😆

 

1 minute ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Lol, yeah that would be Three Houses at its absolute worst played this way.

It was wariness, wariness, wariness.😅 No animations nor music either. What's this about a deity getting torn to shreds in a supernova?

Thankfully, I very much enjoy Fire Emblem gameplay.😆

[Acacia Sgt]

19 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Theoretically I could stick to "canon" classes, but doing so would literally require me to research what class you see the units in when you recruit them late from other houses, or when you face them in combat, and having to do that kind of research sounds ridiculous.

Actually, you don't need to. Most of the time the students themselves tell you what focuses they want, and it's pretty much their "canon" stuff. Like, say, Bernadetta telling you she wants to focus on bows and riding. That kind of stuff.

10 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

The possibility had never crossed my mind. I must've given up for the year already.😆

Yeah, my hopes aren't too high either... but well, who knows. If it happens, it happens. If not... well, we knew that already.

Edited 18 hours ago by Acacia Sgt

[Venger_06]

Of course it would end like this lol

Also, Sky FC Remake is now 100% tieing into Kai 1/2. What the fuck

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 hour ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Actually, you don't need to. Most of the time the students themselves tell you what focuses they want, and it's pretty much their "canon" stuff. Like, say, Bernadetta telling you she wants to focus on bows and riding. That kind of stuff.

Kind of, but I have already seen what looks like a contradictory path with my Ignatz's desire to be both a Sniper and a Mortal Savant with those focuses...

[Acacia Sgt]

18 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Kind of, but I have already seen what looks like a contradictory path with my Ignatz's desire to be both a Sniper and a Mortal Savant with those focuses...

Yeah, sometimes a character can fit more than one class from their talent spread. Ignatz's Strengths are in Swords and Bows, while Reason is his Hidden Talent. Thus he can also gravitate to Mortal Savant as well as Sniper. When not recruited, he only ever shows up as an Archer/Sniper, as it were. It is "canon" in the sense it's the classes they "excel" the best at, but naturally the game mostly just picks one if the character has more than one. A lesser indicator is that, before it was patched to let you pick between the generic outfits or keep the characters in their War Phase outfits regardless of class (save the mounted one), Archer/Sniper were the only classes that allowed Ignatz keep his default War Phase outfit, while Mortal Savant uses the generic class outfit.

Which begs the question... did Ignatz first proposed the Sniper path, then Mortal Savant? One could say that, without Byleth as the teacher, he only has time to excel in one path, and archery is the faster one, then. Since Mortal Savant requires more effort plus the fact Reason is a Hidden Talent. The lack of Strengths in Lances and Riding explains why he's not progressing to Bow Knight instead. It still makes the jump to Mortal Savant weird, but it's in the sense of keeping to one's Strengths (and with how weapon usability works in Three Houses, he can still use the Bow as a Mortal Savant). But well, that's just me trying to Watsonian it.

Edited 16 hours ago by Acacia Sgt

[Acacia Sgt]

I wish Ideon were to appear in SRW again. I want to go to town with wacky Ideon Gun MAP range.