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Elemental Hero

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Everything posted by Elemental Hero

  1. Personally I haven't merged anyone because it messes with the barracks. I'll either have the merges stuck at the top of the list and messing with the clean order, or advanced sort by rarity and level and no longer be able to cleanly see where the level 40s end, like it is for me now when it becomes a row of silver units. Basically I care more about being stylish than functional which says a lot about me.
  2. My first paid summon was +A/-S Santa Chrom. So that's a BST higher than Amelia because of... reasons. And he has 64 attack and 42 defense. If defending that's 66/44. With refinery that's 56 HP plus 33 -> 35 resistance. Still need to keep pulling for these Brazen skills, which can be inherited by literally any unit--even healers. People will be running around with Razzle Dazzle Gravity+ Elises with neutral stats of 49 attack and 39 speed. Power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep power creep edit: With 100 orbs I got him and two Lissas flipping attack and resistance. So they're pointless--such balanced stats require a perfect nature. I also got a -Res Lute which is stupid, and also stupid because I'd recently upgraded a sub-par Mae, figuring I'd never pull a blue mage. I promptly got a Delthea I haven't used and now this.
  3. Everything about this banner was made for whales. Armor units have the highest BST, and so they give the highest arena scores. Whales use all-armor teams. So now we have a seasonal banner with four new armor units who come with multiple absurdly, blatantly overpowered skills for whales to put on their arena teams--and they better not hesitate, because these units won't be summonable again for a very long time. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
  4. Gee, if this isn't some of the most BRAZEN powercreep yet. We've now crept at once two Defiant skills, two Blow skills, two stance skills, and four stat pluses, all in one skill. Oh, and with Vengeful Fighter, armored units can now activate Aether on counterattack, even with Distant Counter. As if we weren't already reaching a point where many units can ONLY be defeated by Firesweep/Dazzling weapons. And Tharja, wearing nothing but her underwear and a cape in the winter, is classified as an armored unit? Give me a fucking break.
  5. I tried to emphasize that Skyward Sword's linearity isn't what got to me--it was the linearity plus unplayable mechanics. I didn't mind having to take specific actions, but when those actions are so often motion controls that so often don't work for me, I'm not even playing the game anymore. I'm just fighting the controller. And even when the controls do work, these tasks are still stretched to absurd lengths when dowsing quests leave me aimlessly circling an area for an hour, or when something as simple as selling one item turns into a sprawling and blind dialogue tree with massive, unskippable paragraphs. Every game is going to involve parts where the player is at least briefly doing something they don't really want to do. But those can still be enjoyable if they pass quickly, or have responsive and satisfying controls, or give an enjoyable audiovisual presentation--Skyward Sword does the exact opposite of all three of those things, while BOTW nails them. That's where I make the comparison. I do get the story-related gripes. But even there Skyward Sword doesn't win out, because in hindsight the whole story is just Zelda playing tag while Link runs errands for stubborn people. It's been deeply frustrating to replay when so few of the roadblocks are tasks are justified by anything more than video game logic. (Like the tiny trees in Pokemon you have to cut down, or small ledges you can't climb up.)
  6. I was comparing SS and BOTW on the basis of positivity, which I'm defining here as, basically, the player having a good time and not being forced into things they don't like or don't feel like doing. As for the graphics, I don't think processing power was the issue. Nintendo's great at producing visuals that age well--look at Wind Waker, for example. Even the more realistic style of Twilight Princess has aged well, since it retains flavorful art direction and coloring. Skyward Sword is so blurry it hurts my eyes to look around. It only works in constant motion. I think it would have worked better if Nintendo ditched the blurriness and tried to show off the watercolor style through textures. At least some sharp lines would've helped. There are times in Skyward Sword where it's started to look like shovelware to me, with the oversized HUD elements and flat terrains.
  7. It gets worse when you realize that every unit who isn't in the 3* pool can be pulled at 5*. And not one unit has ever been added to the 3* pool.
  8. Confirmed! Goodbye forever(ish), Tingle Tights! Thanks for alleviating most of my doubts. Now I've got all the treasure hunts for my main file and I'll check out this new DLC on my old easy file.
  9. Yo, I've got some questions. Don't know what's in the new DLC so minimal spoilers, please. I just saw that I can't access the story additions without beating all 4 Divine Beasts, which I haven't done because the lights in the sky ruin the landscape and I hate how Nabooris's quest makes Yiga enemies spawn at random. It ruins the way I like to play the game.
  10. But if you don't talk to Fi, her flashing icon and sound effect will never go away. It ends up being even more maddening than her low batteries monologue. The problem with Skyward Sword's biggest tampering is that it's padding. Stuff like its convoluted overworlds and constant fetch quest roadblocks. People invested in the story and scenarios were right to be infuriated by those objectives. They would have made excellent sidequests, but instead they were forced and botched the flow of the game.
  11. War story time? I FINALLY beat the 10-11 Chain Challenge! After having Ike and Veronica stare at me for months, It's over--and I cleared all 10 stages with a single team! All units I've discussed before--Elise with Wrathful Dazzling Gravity+, Performing Azura, LnD Celica with Reposition, and Cordelia with LnD, Hit and Run, Guidance 3, Draw Back and Gale Force (the most mobility you can achieve with any unit, and boy did I need it!). If anyone's got a Cordelia in the barracks, upgrade her and your Guidance seal ASAP, and feed her Hit and Run. edit: SERIOUSLY. I just took this same team through my final Chain Challenge, and the most difficult one--we cleared The Mountain of Mages, The Mountain of Splitting Your Team in Half, AND Delthea's Fortress. Although this one team "only" cleared eight of the ten stages before succumbing to Leon and Sonya's Dungeon of Death. Though to be fair, nothing in the entire series canon is capable of clearing that stage. The next two teams just had to clean up that and two other stages, so the rest was easy. I'd been ramming my head against the SoV Chain Challenge more times than I can count, but these unending movement shenanigans shredded it. Imagine Celica moving three spaces to throw another unit two spaces onto a cliff, then that unit moving two spaces, one-rounding an enemy, moving one space, Galeforcing to another ORKO, and moving one MORE space with another battle. That's 11 spaces covered with just two units, and you haven't even touched your Dancer or your mounted mage who will take four more spaces out of the opposing team's movement.
  12. Oh, fuck those. A disgusting blemish on an otherwise fantastic game. "Irritating" ain't the half of it. Eventually I got so angry I just said fuck it and figured out how to cheat by using Cryonis. Maybe it's my controllers aging terribly. I couldn't even swing a few times without the remote (the one that came with the game) crapped out and started reading backwards. Then the nunchuk decided it can't center anymore, which got in the way of picking up the bomb flowers which require you to stand perfectly still directly in front of them. It was a really bad idea for Nintendo to require such precise controls with no correction if the hardware operates anywhere under peak performance. My biggest consistent issue, even when my controllers never hiccuped, was the recentering. When I played Twilight Princess I knew I could press my item button and, in the time it took for Link to draw his bow, I'd be pointing at the target. Skyward Sword is constantly recentering my aim, so if I try to aim in advance I just screw myself over. BOTW does the same with Magnesis once you connect with an object, but it's not nearly as bad because the controllers are easier to move and I can adjust with control sticks. BOTW's issue with motion controls is that they move in a 1:1 ratio (whereas OoT 3D was 2:1 so you could turn around in-game without turning around IRL), and the game will not register horizontal movements at slow speeds. So if you look to your left, then try turning back to face front, it's very unlikely that you'll actually end up in the same place as when you started. This is especially noticeable and jittery when you're scoping out far-away targets.
  13. Oh, those 3D models are so unappealing. Not as bad as the other ten thousand sidescrollers with bland 3D graphics released last year, but still... Sprites would have looked so much better than this slice of white bread sandwiched between two more slices of white bread.
  14. You must be confusing that for something else--nothing in the game stops Raven tomes, except for Cancel Affinity, but only if the Raven user also has Triangle Adept, in which case the weapon triangle advantage becomes reversed. Mulagir does negate Hone buffs, though. Source: I've been using Gronnraven Inigo to counter Bow Lyn since October (and now Spring Camilla).
  15. Yeah, the style won't suit everyone. For me, I was more immersed in BOTW than any game I've ever played, and even hundreds of hours later I still have my own quest to complete. But not everyone is going to immerse themselves in the game world, and immersion is probably the single most crucial element to an open world game's success. If someone doesn't care too much about Hyrule, the characters, or the adventure, I can see why the experience would feel empty. But then again, if someone lacks both the interest and the imagination, they probably wouldn't enjoy any type of story or adventure-based game. For your last comment, my main comparison of the two games is positive experience. Skyward Sword too frequently gives the player only one thing to do, but constantly gets in the way of them doing that one thing. It's a unique experience where I had a blast playing through it the first time, but after that, any level reflection or the slightest replaying was excruciating. Linear games can still be great and stay great if they control well.
  16. Were those two hours out of the beginning? The beginning of Skyward Sword is so bizarre. It's basically an hours-long visual novel--even longer if you consider the time it takes to reach the first dungeon. You have to trek all around that forest so many times, especially if you slip and fall down to the lower levels and have to climb you way back around. As for Odyssey, I haven't played very much of it. But I'd assume it's a less positive/free experience because obtaining the power moons requires more specific puzzle solving, without as many different solutions to try, so it can become more frustrating. And for the breakable weapons issue, it's a very Japanese way of designing the game. If you embrace it (by not obsessively hoarding weapons) the game is way more fun, but most people will want to resist it as much as possible. Though I agree that a method of repairing damaged weapons would greatly improve the experience. It's such a fresh experience, but I have a feeling that once its design catches on, BOTW will feel so bare and outdated.
  17. I don't mind linear games. What gets to me about Skyward Sword is that I feel like I'm always fighting against my controller and against the game's interface. I swing my sword and suddenly it's reading backwards. I pull out an item and get ready to point at something onscreen, and the game has reset my cursor's position to the middle of the screen again. And, of course, I'm stuck scrolling through two minutes of slow text boxes to sell one item, and I have to stop to slowly recalibrate the controls, and Fi stops everything to tell me about my batteries. The problem isn't that Skyward Sword is always telling me exactly what to do. The problem is that it's telling me exactly what to do, and doesn't let me do it.
  18. At 5* Tharja's got 34 speed. Assuming she's got Hone Speed active (because you should be surrounding your Blade tomes with buffs), that's 38, doubling enemies starting at 33 speed. With a +Speed nature, she's got 37 -> 41 speed, now letting her double enemies with 34, 35, and 36 speed. The mid-upper 30s have so many speed tiers with buffs get involved. Though again, this is enemy phase stuff. If you keep Darting Blow on her she'll be doubling everything (though keep in mind her Blade tome only increases for bonuses that turn her stats blue, like Hone and Rally). Most people underestimate the importance of units who can successfully bait. The +Speed nature for Tharja might not make or break her, but it's certainly optimal.
  19. There aren't many options for red mages, so feel free to train her. Though she is available at 4* and a +speed nature is crucial for her enemy phase performance (38 vs 41 after hone), so don't get too attached before you pull another. Her main edge over Sanaki and Lilina is that she can take an arrow or two and comes with a good base kit.
  20. I just went back to play Skyward Sword after 350 hours of BOTW. Now I know why I didn't go back before, and I've got a broader perspective on game design. I was at Scaldera, the second boss. The controls kept crapping out on me. Fi wouldn't shut up about my batteries and that icon never went away. The boss fight was completely repetitive but would've been tolerable if the controls were working. After I took a break the game made me stop to recalibrate my controller three times. Got back to Skyloft and tried to play the game like I played BOTW--slowly walking around and taking in the experience. Yeah, Skyward Sword was not meant to be played as slowly as it runs. The world only looks nice if you stay in motion--it's flat up close and blurry otherwise. Walking around just made me antsy and frustrated. Then I got to Beedle, and when I didn't buy anything he stopped to show me this nice cutscene of him being a douchebag to Link for no reason, which is a great way to make the player enjoy the world, huh. The real kicker here was when I tried to sell bugs to one of Groose's cronies. They make you check your stock of each bug individually, and there's box after box of slowly scrolling text each time--and you can bet your ass that they fill every box all the way even if it means just restating the same phrase four times. Everything about the UI here is so clunky and infuriating--even the way you scroll. Holding down the A button the whole time, watching the text appear, waiting for the moment you can quickly let go and press down again. It's demeaning, and physically it feels awful. After that I'd fuckin had it. But no, I wasn't allowed to stop there. I was forced to keep playing long after the game had overstayed its welcome, until I could find a save point. This game was the grand finale of Nintendo's hottest system, and it used save points, one of the worst features any video game could ever implement. There is no reason for any modern video game to ever use save points. EVER. There is no excuse for this. Then I snapped the disc in half in my mind as I booted up Breath of the Wild to a functional UI, controls that usually work, a world I can watch and listen to, and a game that respects me. I have a new understanding of everything that makes BOTW playable and enjoyable. I'm acutely aware of what makes BOTW's overworld so satisfying to slowly walk through. There are things to look at. There's wind, there's dust, there are blades of grass and pebbles and inclines. And everything you do is up to you. If I'm taking a long path in Skyward Sword, it's because the game is forcing me to. I'm angry because I'm not in control. If I'm walking to nowhere in Breath, it's because I've chosen to do that, and I'm in control, because I know that if I ever get tired of this I can always travel a different way, so there's no dread or worry. SS's finicky controls for stopping in front of a bomb flower and harvesting it made me physically angry, especially when my controller wasn't cooperating. But in Breath, I was perfectly content mining ore slowly, because that was my choice. I was never trapped. I have never had to view any situation in BOTW with a negative attitude. And I think that's it right there--that's the reason why BOTW has been so well-received. Other games have more exciting set pieces and gripping scenarios. But those games will sometimes make you do things you're not in the mood for, which makes you feel trapped and frustrated. BOTW never forces you to do anything you don't want to, which means you never have to feel the negative emotions of uncertainty and loss of control. You are always doing something you like. Even the few parts of the game which are poorly and unfairly designed (looking at you, Trial of Wood) don't get too infuriating because you can always think of a different way to play through it, and if it does get to the point where you feel very negatively, you can just walk away and play the rest of the entire game. Breath of the Wild is the most positive game Nintendo has ever made, and Skyward Sword the most negative.
  21. I did account for Mulagir in my calculations. And like I stated, Iote's Shield is only slightly weaker than TA in archer matchups, but unlike TA, it doesn't come with a chance of completely screwing over your entire team. As for Iote's Shield not boosting her attack, that doesn't matter when Camilla still scores OHKOs with Goad Fliers (not a visible buff to be negated by Mulagir), and will always 2HKO in retaliation if given Quick Riposte, which is a great skill for her anyway. Lastly, as for TA giving her the extra strength to beat tankier blues: if they're mages, you already bait and kill them with QR. If they're melee, you OHKO them with a magical soak under 55 (or 60 with Goad Fliers, not super unrealistic), and if you don't OHKO them, then you're walling them with up to 43 defense at advantage. Your other fliers can reposition themselves away like crazy, as if blue is even a threatening color against flier teams. As for Distant Defense, that's an incredibly rare A skill already available as a seal. Only a crazy whale is going to waste that for minimal gains at best on a niche unit, and you'd still have to combine DD with another defensive skill to win the key matchups. My icing on the cake will be a Blazing special. After any round of combat in which Camilla doesn't OHKO or is attacked by a doubling weapon, she'll be able to take out another opposing unit (and damage others) as long as she can inflict at least a tiny bit of damage. The key here is that without TA Camilla becomes able to reliably kill reds. (I want to use an AoE special so her special won't trigger on an unnecessary attack, as she doesn't need a special to win her matchups, will win them at several different points in terms of cooldown, and Blazing specials will consistently deal more damage than Ignis.) ... And this probably concludes more analysis on Spring Camilla than anyone ever asked for, all so I could find a way to not feel bad about seemingly suboptimal IVs.
  22. No, you really don't. Not if you're using Iote's Shield instead of TA. TA isn't adding anything significant to archer matchups in comparison, and only puts your counter at risk of totally backfiring. Combine with flier buffs and you can still survive and OHKO this Lyn (even if she's boosted), or survive and eventually kill with Quick Riposte. If you don't have those flier buffs... then you aren't playing flier emblem and either aren't using Camilla or don't need her so desperately to counter archers. The most difficult situation for Camilla vs Lyn would be if Lyn is using Mulagir and has retained her base HP and Res--otherwise Camilla can one-shot her with Goad Fliers active. QR still wins this matchup in any situation. I don't mean to imply that Triangle Adept will never be a consistent choice on Raven users (because I do madly love my Inigo), but in Camilla's case you know the team is screwed without her. You need to make her archer matchups as ideal and consistent as possible. Anyway, I feel like I'm writing for Smogon here. "This Spring Camilla has 176 IVs in perpendicular defense, in case she is ever put against a tickle-me-pink Brave Lyn on turn 45 during water season under Trick Room within five minutes after you make eye contact with the cutie across the bar while Mercury is in retrograde." edit: Ran more calculations for Reinhardt. Distant Defense is a nice seal, but it won't save her from horse buffs. You'd need TA... or Deflect Magic! Deflect Magic takes him out and you can also charge up a nice special. So if you run Spring Camilla with Gronnraven+, Iote's Shield and Deflect Magic, she successfully counters both Brave Lyn and Reinhardt.
  23. Oh hey, I finally got one of those mage fliers. Playboy(girl? how does this work) Camilla. -S/+D. So that'll put her at 22 speed and 33 defense which is... real lousy. I'm sure there's probably some way to make this ideal, with Gronnraven. Wouldn't even need Iote's Shield to survive a hit from a high-powered archer. Walls them decently with Triangle Adept but will get shredded against Cancel Affinity, so scratch that. Needs defense buffs to survive Brave Bow Cordelia's first attack, and an attack buff to survive by OHKO counterattack if Cordelia retains her base HP and Res. But then, if TA is too risky and Fury is bad for walls, then there isn't much better to give her than Iote's Shield. For team comp, this is still no good against red and green mages. So for balance I'd want a red mage wall... which means Camilla's best partner is Caeda. But seriously fuck Caeda I'd rather strain the team by picking Clair. I already have Ruby Sword Palla who can check the greens. As usual Gamepress isn't very helpful here. It's usually because their builds are baaaaad (seriously, their new Elise writeup calls her unusable outside of horse emblem), but today it's because they haven't updated her since release. And there's also a laughably bad build for her using Reciprocal Aid and Green Egg for healing. Green Egg gives 4 HP on initiation. It ain't healing. Oh, and that build also has Fury so her HP only ever goes down regardless.
  24. I have three Celicas. She's a powerful unit with a rare skill. Keep the extras forever and never do anything with them.
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