Feb 28th, 2023, 03:14 PM
@Moonface - It has nothing to do with me not being a fan of Honkai Impact 3rd. I just didn't know about the game until many years after its release, and I tend not to play gacha games unless I'm a day 1 player, because there's just way too much content I would have missed. Sadly Honkai Impact falls into that category.
Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)
Been making steady progress through the main quest. One of my next main quests is the Beasts class, so I'm assuming that means I'm very close to finally getting to use my flying mount, which I am looking forward to. I'm still absolutely loving this game so far. Lots to do in the world, combat is extremely fun, and overall this game is just turning out to be absolutely amazing.
Fire Emblem Engage (NS)
Very torn on this game right now. On one hand, I like that there's aspects of it that feel like classic FE again, and not what Awakening/Fates was turning the series into. On the other hand, there's so many design choices that just leave me scratching my head and trying to figure out who thought they were a good idea. My biggest gripe with the game right now is their horrendous nerfing of movement. In a typical FE game, ground units have 5 Move (or 6 for promoted classes) and mounted units have 7 (8 for promoted units). Well, for some reason they decided to give ground units 4 move in Engage, and then they also decided to completely fuck mounted units by giving them a whopping 5 Movement. This especially fucks over the Pegasus Knight class, because being a flying mounted unit, their whole purpose was to be able to get around fast, but now they can't.
I also don't like what they did with some of the classes in terms of how they work. Knights have so much defense now that only mages can kill them. In the past, Axes were highly effective against Knights due to their high damage and having weapon triangle advantage over Spears. Now axes have lost that usefulness, which is a huge blow to them because now they're just highly inaccurate pieces of garbage, with their only use to "break" lance units.
Ah, the break system. As I feared, it really drags the game down. The weapon triangle in this game serves no purpose other than for breaking an enemy unit. In past FE games, having the weapon advantage would mean a higher hit chance for you and a much lower hit chance for your opponent. It doesn't do that any more. I constantly have enemies wielding Axes attacking Alear with 80-90% hit chances. There is no reason why an Axe should be that accurate against a Sword unit. Though of course when it comes to your axe user, he's got the absolute worst hit chance against enemies with swords ever, so perhaps it's just a "enemies don't have this disadvantage" issue with the game.
Speaking of your units as well, I don't think I've ever seen a Fire Emblem game that starts you out with the absolute most garbage units ever. It seems in addition to neutering your movement, they also decided to give every character unbelievably low speed. Going back to Pegasus Knights as an example, traditionally in the series they always have extremely high Speed, but low Strength. Not in Engage though. In Engage, they have pathetically low strength AND pathetically low speed. At least the first one you get is like that. I think she starts with something absolutely abysmal like 7 speed.
That long rant probably gives a good enough idea on just how torn I am on this game so far. Really loving a lot things about it, but there's other aspects that are just driving me crazy about it and I just don't understand a lot choices they made with this one.
Fire Emblem Fates (3DS)
And we go directly into talking about another Fire Emblem game that drives me crazy! I actually restarted in Fates because I wanted to do something different with my Corrin, and also because I bought the DLCs and wanted to be able to make use of some of them earlier in the game so that I could set up child units to have certain skills. My Corrin is on steroids or something, because she's absolutely bonkers and I haven't even used any stat enhancers on her. I plan to make her a Master Ninja because I read she's stupidly broken as one, mainly with Shurikens being 1-2 range weapons so you can attack at range, but still be able to counter attack enemies that come up to you. She's sitting at 26 Strength as a 20/3 Promoted unit right now, which is insane. Even though Shurikens have the lowest damage output of any weapon type in Fates, her high strength is going to make up for that and she's going to dish out some serious pain once I get her into Master Ninja. As for the rest of my team, I'm still planning what their final jobs will be. Not sure how much re-classing I want to do.
Genshin Impact (PC)
Haven't been up to much on here lately, just doing the usual daily farming and such. Don't have anything to look forward to in version 3.5, so I'm just waiting to see if Nilou is going to re-run in 3.6, and if not, if the rumors of a new catgirl character coming in 3.7 end up being true.
Azur Lane (Android)
We're currently having our next UR event in the game, so I've just been grinding away event stages to earn shop points. Got all of the new girls in... 82 pulls, I think it was, which is pretty decent (actually ended up getting two copies of the UR girl). The only one I need now is the girl who is in the event shop, but also drops from the B3 and D3 stages in the event, so I've just been grinding away on D3 trying to get her. So far no luck, but still lots of time to go.
Arknights (Android)
Nothing much going on here either. Today starts the re-run of our second anniversary event from Jan 2022, so I'll just be farming materials from the good farming stages in that. I will have to re-clear some stages for the event missions, but I can just use my auto-clear from the first run of the event to do that, and I only have to manual the Challenge Mode clear of the final stage, so it doesn't take too much time to clear out everything again.
Neural Cloud (Android)
I've just been hopelessly trying to figure out how to properly build my characters in this game.
Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)
Been making steady progress through the main quest. One of my next main quests is the Beasts class, so I'm assuming that means I'm very close to finally getting to use my flying mount, which I am looking forward to. I'm still absolutely loving this game so far. Lots to do in the world, combat is extremely fun, and overall this game is just turning out to be absolutely amazing.
Fire Emblem Engage (NS)
Very torn on this game right now. On one hand, I like that there's aspects of it that feel like classic FE again, and not what Awakening/Fates was turning the series into. On the other hand, there's so many design choices that just leave me scratching my head and trying to figure out who thought they were a good idea. My biggest gripe with the game right now is their horrendous nerfing of movement. In a typical FE game, ground units have 5 Move (or 6 for promoted classes) and mounted units have 7 (8 for promoted units). Well, for some reason they decided to give ground units 4 move in Engage, and then they also decided to completely fuck mounted units by giving them a whopping 5 Movement. This especially fucks over the Pegasus Knight class, because being a flying mounted unit, their whole purpose was to be able to get around fast, but now they can't.
I also don't like what they did with some of the classes in terms of how they work. Knights have so much defense now that only mages can kill them. In the past, Axes were highly effective against Knights due to their high damage and having weapon triangle advantage over Spears. Now axes have lost that usefulness, which is a huge blow to them because now they're just highly inaccurate pieces of garbage, with their only use to "break" lance units.
Ah, the break system. As I feared, it really drags the game down. The weapon triangle in this game serves no purpose other than for breaking an enemy unit. In past FE games, having the weapon advantage would mean a higher hit chance for you and a much lower hit chance for your opponent. It doesn't do that any more. I constantly have enemies wielding Axes attacking Alear with 80-90% hit chances. There is no reason why an Axe should be that accurate against a Sword unit. Though of course when it comes to your axe user, he's got the absolute worst hit chance against enemies with swords ever, so perhaps it's just a "enemies don't have this disadvantage" issue with the game.
Speaking of your units as well, I don't think I've ever seen a Fire Emblem game that starts you out with the absolute most garbage units ever. It seems in addition to neutering your movement, they also decided to give every character unbelievably low speed. Going back to Pegasus Knights as an example, traditionally in the series they always have extremely high Speed, but low Strength. Not in Engage though. In Engage, they have pathetically low strength AND pathetically low speed. At least the first one you get is like that. I think she starts with something absolutely abysmal like 7 speed.
That long rant probably gives a good enough idea on just how torn I am on this game so far. Really loving a lot things about it, but there's other aspects that are just driving me crazy about it and I just don't understand a lot choices they made with this one.
Fire Emblem Fates (3DS)
And we go directly into talking about another Fire Emblem game that drives me crazy! I actually restarted in Fates because I wanted to do something different with my Corrin, and also because I bought the DLCs and wanted to be able to make use of some of them earlier in the game so that I could set up child units to have certain skills. My Corrin is on steroids or something, because she's absolutely bonkers and I haven't even used any stat enhancers on her. I plan to make her a Master Ninja because I read she's stupidly broken as one, mainly with Shurikens being 1-2 range weapons so you can attack at range, but still be able to counter attack enemies that come up to you. She's sitting at 26 Strength as a 20/3 Promoted unit right now, which is insane. Even though Shurikens have the lowest damage output of any weapon type in Fates, her high strength is going to make up for that and she's going to dish out some serious pain once I get her into Master Ninja. As for the rest of my team, I'm still planning what their final jobs will be. Not sure how much re-classing I want to do.
Genshin Impact (PC)
Haven't been up to much on here lately, just doing the usual daily farming and such. Don't have anything to look forward to in version 3.5, so I'm just waiting to see if Nilou is going to re-run in 3.6, and if not, if the rumors of a new catgirl character coming in 3.7 end up being true.
Azur Lane (Android)
We're currently having our next UR event in the game, so I've just been grinding away event stages to earn shop points. Got all of the new girls in... 82 pulls, I think it was, which is pretty decent (actually ended up getting two copies of the UR girl). The only one I need now is the girl who is in the event shop, but also drops from the B3 and D3 stages in the event, so I've just been grinding away on D3 trying to get her. So far no luck, but still lots of time to go.
Arknights (Android)
Nothing much going on here either. Today starts the re-run of our second anniversary event from Jan 2022, so I'll just be farming materials from the good farming stages in that. I will have to re-clear some stages for the event missions, but I can just use my auto-clear from the first run of the event to do that, and I only have to manual the Challenge Mode clear of the final stage, so it doesn't take too much time to clear out everything again.
Neural Cloud (Android)
I've just been hopelessly trying to figure out how to properly build my characters in this game.