Mobile Games, Gacha, Android/IOS games

[Valter]

New Arknights Endfield trailer released. Not a fan of how they made the Hellagur clone look like yet another young beautiful 20 something.




Hellagur in Arknights.




His expy Pogranichnik in Endfield:




It's neat that his ultimate allows him to summon the spirits of Rhodes Island soldiers.

Endfield banners: you get a six star within 80 pulls, and the featured banner character within 120. After a limited banner ends, the featured character does not immediately become unavailable, but instead can be one of the other two characters that can be pulled on the limited banner besides the featured character. So every limited character will appear on 3 banners in a row before being bumped off and becoming unavailable.

Beta test 2 begins on November 28th

Endfield looks sick wtf. I like the idea of autonomous companions

[Kalarion]

Playing Gailardia Trilogy right now. The first is a fun little DW2-alike, with just as much grind requirement and danger. I've spent thousands on rezzes at this point, although no TPKs yet

I suspect the second will ape DW3-4, which is right up my alley. I'll try to remember to report back.

A free singleplayer game? Does it have ads or something?

The game description says it should, but I haven't had any so far in about 6 hours of playing.

Maybe they got disabled? Not sure.

Figured it out. Playing the first game in the trilogy requires zero ad viewing. Playing the second and third requires viewing one ad set per 24 hours. It even gives you a timer!

Very annoying but, on balance in the context of ad-served games, not even close to the worst I've seen.

The first Gailardia's arc followed exactly DW2, as predicted. By about 2/3 through I was tired of the grind gates and just powering through. I took my win against the BBEG with a sigh of relief.

The second looks to be similar to DW3, with a four-man party that allows class choice and limited-utility switching. Hopefully the third will continue improving on the formula.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Pulled Hyacine LC and Castorice. Very nice for damaging Blade and thus giving him an additional tick of the 5 ticks required for his followup attack to trigger (in addition to also damaging Castorice and Evernight and helping them too). Now the question is whether or not to try for Hyacline E1 (increases team max HP by 30%, which is great for Castorice/Evernight/Blade as their damage scales with their HP), or to conserve for Phainon LC or E1.

Currency Wars has been neat with you mixing and matching a party of 8 characters and there being a few additional attack animations, though it'd be nice if the additional 4 characters in the backrow also appeared in group shots of the party on the field. A fifth party member sometimes appears in ability animations/cutscenes that buff the whole party. It also seems like the backrow characters appear in the turn order inconsistently which makes it hard to know when they are going to act (outside of Blade's followup gauge at the bottom getting triggered by Hyacine LC and Kafka), and you can't control them.








Story wise, it is yet ANOTHER gacha/JRPG endgame mode that is computer/virtual simulation, and the third one in HSR after Simulated Universe and Divergent Universe. The lore here on paper is a little more interesting this time, being about a hypothetical scenario where you fighting for the IPC against other organizations/nations/corporations/whatever to take over the galaxy. Though as grandiose the quest dialogue makes it sound, it still just amounts to 8 guys in battle versus 5 mobs, with the other 4 party members being invisible most of the time. So it feels like business as usual. Would have been neat if they had done the thing from The Last Remnant where you can see other army units fighting in the background. Phones are more powerful than Gamecubes and PS3s and some are even more powerful than PS4s so it'd be achieveable.






It is funny that preexisting characters and story bosses are just straight up reused as stand ins for these new factions were fighting against. In this hypothetical scenario, Yanqing abandoned his safe and comfy position at Jing Yuan's side to become a merc or security chief for some arms company? I need more lore about this.

[Valter]

Pulled Hyacine LC and Castorice. Very nice for damaging Blade and thus giving him an additional tick of the 5 ticks required for his followup attack to trigger (in addition to also damaging Castorice and Evernight and helping them too). Now the question is whether or not to try for Hyacline E1 (increases team max HP by 30%, which is great for Castorice/Evernight/Blade as their damage scales with their HP), or to conserve for Phainon LC or E1.

Currency Wars has been neat with you mixing and matching a party of 8 characters and there being a few additional attack animations, though it'd be nice if the additional 4 characters in the backrow also appeared in group shots of the party on the field. A fifth party member sometimes appears in ability animations/cutscenes that buff the whole party. It also seems like the backrow characters appear in the turn order inconsistently which makes it hard to know when they are going to act (outside of Blade's followup gauge at the bottom getting triggered by Hyacine LC and Kafka), and you can't control them.








Story wise, it is yet ANOTHER gacha/JRPG endgame mode that is computer/virtual simulation, and the third one in HSR after Simulated Universe and Divergent Universe. The lore here on paper is a little more interesting this time, being about a hypothetical scenario where you fighting for the IPC against other organizations/nations/corporations/whatever to take over the galaxy. Though as grandiose the quest dialogue makes it sound, it still just amounts to 8 guys in battle versus 5 mobs, with the other 4 party members being invisible most of the time. So it feels like business as usual. Would have been neat if they had done the thing from The Last Remnant where you can see other army units fighting in the background. Phones are more powerful than Gamecubes and PS3s and some are even more powerful than PS4s so it'd be achieveable.






It is funny that preexisting characters and story bosses are just straight up reused as stand ins for these new factions were fighting against. In this hypothetical scenario, Yanqing abandoned his safe and comfy position at Jing Yuan's side to become a merc or security chief for some arms company? I need more lore about this.

How many god **** game modes does Mihoyo need in its gachas? Crazy man, crazy I tell you!

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Pulled Hyacine LC and Castorice. Very nice for damaging Blade and thus giving him an additional tick of the 5 ticks required for his followup attack to trigger (in addition to also damaging Castorice and Evernight and helping them too). Now the question is whether or not to try for Hyacline E1 (increases team max HP by 30%, which is great for Castorice/Evernight/Blade as their damage scales with their HP), or to conserve for Phainon LC or E1.

Currency Wars has been neat with you mixing and matching a party of 8 characters and there being a few additional attack animations, though it'd be nice if the additional 4 characters in the backrow also appeared in group shots of the party on the field. A fifth party member sometimes appears in ability animations/cutscenes that buff the whole party. It also seems like the backrow characters appear in the turn order inconsistently which makes it hard to know when they are going to act (outside of Blade's followup gauge at the bottom getting triggered by Hyacine LC and Kafka), and you can't control them.








Story wise, it is yet ANOTHER gacha/JRPG endgame mode that is computer/virtual simulation, and the third one in HSR after Simulated Universe and Divergent Universe. The lore here on paper is a little more interesting this time, being about a hypothetical scenario where you fighting for the IPC against other organizations/nations/corporations/whatever to take over the galaxy. Though as grandiose the quest dialogue makes it sound, it still just amounts to 8 guys in battle versus 5 mobs, with the other 4 party members being invisible most of the time. So it feels like business as usual. Would have been neat if they had done the thing from The Last Remnant where you can see other army units fighting in the background. Phones are more powerful than Gamecubes and PS3s and some are even more powerful than PS4s so it'd be achieveable.






It is funny that preexisting characters and story bosses are just straight up reused as stand ins for these new factions were fighting against. In this hypothetical scenario, Yanqing abandoned his safe and comfy position at Jing Yuan's side to become a merc or security chief for some arms company? I need more lore about this.

How many god **** game modes does Mihoyo need in its gachas? Crazy man, crazy I tell you!

I remember saying earlier that I think HSR did need more gamemodes, aka ways to interact with the characters you bought.

• The visual novel/movie cutscene story is very long, but there are relatively not many fights to use your characters in for the story.
• There isn't a big world with a lot dungeons to go find or quests to go do which would keep you occupied for dozens or over a hundred hours like in a singleplayer RPG.
• There were a couple side storylines/events with combat like the Heliobi event or the Wardance, but once you've done that your once again out of things to do with your characters.
• You spend about half an hour to an hour max on Memory of Chaos, Pure Fiction, and Apocalyptic Shadow per week since you can just skip to the highest tier you have cleared and only fight that one.
• I had fun progressing through the Simulated Universe: Swarm Disaster and Divergent Universe gamemodes up to around difficulty tier 5 or 6, but the core gameplay loop of "teleport into a room, run forward, fight trash enemies or do talk to a floating card to do a non visual dialogue box choice to get curios or blessings" gets old eventually.
• HSR adds a lot of event minigames like Origami Bird Clash or Seal Slammers or the management sims, but you don't use the characters you paid for in those.

HSR - like most gachas - also has a problem where the business model is about introducing new appealing characters every 2 to 3 weeks, but if your party size is capped at 4 then eventually there just isn't a reason to pull characters anymore if you can't fit them all into your team. So letting your build 8 man teams is very neat. I wonder if this 8 man party might get brought over outside of this experimental gamemode into the rest of the game, but then again the Trails-esque turn order bonuses in the Heliobi event wasn't brought over either.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Teaser for Mihoyo's next game on Unreal engine.

[LemonDemonGirl]

Teaser for Mihoyo's next game on Unreal engine.

Will it be poorly optimized?

[rusty_shackleford]

Pulled Hyacine LC and Castorice. Very nice for damaging Blade and thus giving him an additional tick of the 5 ticks required for his followup attack to trigger (in addition to also damaging Castorice and Evernight and helping them too). Now the question is whether or not to try for Hyacline E1 (increases team max HP by 30%, which is great for Castorice/Evernight/Blade as their damage scales with their HP), or to conserve for Phainon LC or E1.

Currency Wars has been neat with you mixing and matching a party of 8 characters and there being a few additional attack animations, though it'd be nice if the additional 4 characters in the backrow also appeared in group shots of the party on the field. A fifth party member sometimes appears in ability animations/cutscenes that buff the whole party. It also seems like the backrow characters appear in the turn order inconsistently which makes it hard to know when they are going to act (outside of Blade's followup gauge at the bottom getting triggered by Hyacine LC and Kafka), and you can't control them.








Story wise, it is yet ANOTHER gacha/JRPG endgame mode that is computer/virtual simulation, and the third one in HSR after Simulated Universe and Divergent Universe. The lore here on paper is a little more interesting this time, being about a hypothetical scenario where you fighting for the IPC against other organizations/nations/corporations/whatever to take over the galaxy. Though as grandiose the quest dialogue makes it sound, it still just amounts to 8 guys in battle versus 5 mobs, with the other 4 party members being invisible most of the time. So it feels like business as usual. Would have been neat if they had done the thing from The Last Remnant where you can see other army units fighting in the background. Phones are more powerful than Gamecubes and PS3s and some are even more powerful than PS4s so it'd be achieveable.






It is funny that preexisting characters and story bosses are just straight up reused as stand ins for these new factions were fighting against. In this hypothetical scenario, Yanqing abandoned his safe and comfy position at Jing Yuan's side to become a merc or security chief for some arms company? I need more lore about this.

How many god **** game modes does Mihoyo need in its gachas? Crazy man, crazy I tell you!

I remember saying earlier that I think HSR did need more gamemodes, aka ways to interact with the characters you bought.

• The visual novel/movie cutscene story is very long, but there are relatively not many fights to use your characters in for the story.
• There isn't a big world with a lot dungeons to go find or quests to go do which would keep you occupied for dozens or over a hundred hours like in a singleplayer RPG.
• There were a couple side storylines/events with combat like the Heliobi event or the Wardance, but once you've done that your once again out of things to do with your characters.
• You spend about half an hour to an hour max on Memory of Chaos, Pure Fiction, and Apocalyptic Shadow per week since you can just skip to the highest tier you have cleared and only fight that one.
• I had fun progressing through the Simulated Universe: Swarm Disaster and Divergent Universe gamemodes up to around difficulty tier 5 or 6, but the core gameplay loop of "teleport into a room, run forward, fight trash enemies or do talk to a floating card to do a non visual dialogue box choice to get curios or blessings" gets old eventually.
• HSR adds a lot of event minigames like Origami Bird Clash or Seal Slammers or the management sims, but you don't use the characters you paid for in those.

HSR - like most gachas - also has a problem where the business model is about introducing new appealing characters every 2 to 3 weeks,

Only game like this I played was warframe and I hated it. I just wanted to play as a handful of frames but they kept releasing new ones that were basically existing frame but slightly different. Imo it's a terrible monetization model long-term because you're actively destroying player attachment to your intellectual property.
After a frame was released it no longer got any new content and was effectively forgotten.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

How many god **** game modes does Mihoyo need in its gachas? Crazy man, crazy I tell you!

I remember saying earlier that I think HSR did need more gamemodes, aka ways to interact with the characters you bought.

• The visual novel/movie cutscene story is very long, but there are relatively not many fights to use your characters in for the story.
• There isn't a big world with a lot dungeons to go find or quests to go do which would keep you occupied for dozens or over a hundred hours like in a singleplayer RPG.
• There were a couple side storylines/events with combat like the Heliobi event or the Wardance, but once you've done that your once again out of things to do with your characters.
• You spend about half an hour to an hour max on Memory of Chaos, Pure Fiction, and Apocalyptic Shadow per week since you can just skip to the highest tier you have cleared and only fight that one.
• I had fun progressing through the Simulated Universe: Swarm Disaster and Divergent Universe gamemodes up to around difficulty tier 5 or 6, but the core gameplay loop of "teleport into a room, run forward, fight trash enemies or do talk to a floating card to do a non visual dialogue box choice to get curios or blessings" gets old eventually.
• HSR adds a lot of event minigames like Origami Bird Clash or Seal Slammers or the management sims, but you don't use the characters you paid for in those.

HSR - like most gachas - also has a problem where the business model is about introducing new appealing characters every 2 to 3 weeks,

Only game like this I played was warframe and I hated it. I just wanted to play as a handful of frames but they kept releasing new ones that were basically existing frame but slightly different. Imo it's a terrible monetization model long-term because you're actively destroying player attachment to your intellectual property.
After a frame was released it no longer got any new content and was effectively forgotten.

I had the same issue with Warframe. I joined Warframe when I saw an ad for Zephyr in 2014, bought her deluxe pack and pretty much mained that frame for the whole game. I liked being able to fly fast and her projectile shields. I levelled other frames out of novelty or to level up my account EXP but would mostly just play Zephyr. But once you have formaed your favorite Warframe a few times, that's it. There isn't anything more to progress your Warframe towards. So I would wind up just logging in to check out new content, touring that, then logging off for a year+. A few years ago, Warframe began allowing you to replace a power on your Warframe with an ability from another Warframe that you had cannibalized, but that requires you to play and level up the other Warframe you intend to destroy rather than playing your favorite Warframe to upgrade that.
 
It does not have to be this way. Granblue Fantasy for example updates characters after they have been added. Sturm, a character released in 2017 over eight years ago, is about to get a fifth uncap next week. Uncaps not only unlock new abilities, but also give them new character quests. And then other characters (namely the Eternals) get updated very often. Eahta (the eighth eternal) released in 2015 with a maximum level of 50. He got a 5 star uncap added to him in 2017 which allowed him to reach level 80 and gave an additional effect to his ultimate ability. Then he got a 6 star uncap in 2021 with five stages of transcendence, which allowed him to reach level 100, and then transcend to 110 (enhanced his ultimate, also gave him a brand new ability/skill), 120 (gains new passive), 130 (you can buy a new passive here with EMP), 140, and then the current maximum for him of 150 (further enhanced his ult). And now in 2025, CyGames has introduced Radiance for eternals with 5 tiers to progress through, with Eahta's fifth Radiance tier giving him another ability. Eternals in GBF are infamous for how long it takes a player to progress them let alone all 10 of them, which is an extremely impressive feat that rewards the player with an extremely rare skin/costume for doing so.




And then for the player character classes, CyGames keeps going back and adding new abilities to work towards an old classes (called Ultimate Mastery Skills).
 
Fate/Grand Order and Arknights also operate similarly in terms of continually adding new stages for old characters as the years go on.

It is Mihoyo that is the odd one out in how they release a character, and then even five years later never go back and add new things for them. Mihoyo characters have a sorta, kinda "uncap" system called Constellations (Genshin)/Eidolons (HSR)/Mindscapes (ZZZ) with 6 tiers, but they are not unlocked via gameplay or progressing over the long term, but rather by pulling for dupes of that character. So to get E6 of an HSR character, you have to first pull that character (ie Phainon), and then pull him an additional six times. And ofcourse, you can just dump $1,500 to $4,000 on the release day of a new character to max them, and then that's that. They never get to progress further and you didn't do so via gameplay, so it's not very satisfying. The Eidolon bonuses are mostly invisible back end math rather than something really visible like new buttons to push or new abilities, let alone a new appearance. Genshin just introduced their latest Nod Krai expac an additional 10 levels (from 90 to 100) that is, again, reached not via natural gameplay, but by pulling dupes of max Constellation characters. So if you have a C6 Dilluc and pull him again, he can go from level 90 to 95, and if you pull him another two times after that, he can go from 95 to 100. So it can cost up to $4,000 to get a level 100 character.

Currency Wars adds a few abilities to preexisting old characters in the game mode (ie Firefly and Yanqing get reskins of their boss fight ultimates), but there is no indication yet that this will extend outside of the game mode.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Goodness gracious! The next expansion world, Edo Star, themed after space Japan, is being changed!



https://archive.fo/TN24k


Nooooooo! I knew the CCP had been shutting down Korean media in China, but I didn't expect them to go after Mihoyo games again (it had been a few years since they banned "androgynous" characters like Venti). Apparently the new woman Japanese prime minister said that they'd defend Taiwan, and then the Chinese diplomat threatened to cut off her head, and now China's anti-Japanese propaganda machine is going into overdrive? I was really looking forward to zany space fantasy/sci fi Japan. It could have been something crazy cool like Kamigawa from MTG. Darn you CCP! And what about the devs? We just have one patch left until we go to Edo Star in 4.0. That's just 9 weeks away! It takes Mihoyo a year to make a new expansion setting. There is no way the art team could redo all of the character clothing and abilities and setting architecture and the music and then QA it in time! Absurd! Is it going to get delayed? Will a filler 3.9 or 3.10 patch be inserted? More Amphoreus or Penacony stuff?




And then Himeko - one of the main characters on the Astral Express - was leaked to be getting an alt form there. Is it not going to be Japanese themed off of her heritage anymore? What about next year's leaked anniversary character of Yae Sakura? Will that get changed too? Or are they just going to keep the current assets and sand off the Japanese stuff and change the names?

Really hoping this leak is wrong.

► MTG Kamigawa arts

[Valter]

Youtube: "Nooooo you can't say ******!"

Gacha gamers:

[Finarfin]

Makes me wanna stop playing ***** gacha/mmo tbh.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Nooooooo! I knew the CCP had been shutting down Korean media in China, but I didn't expect them to go after Mihoyo games again (it had been a few years since they banned "androgynous" characters like Venti).

Im in full support of banning androgynous characters like Venti, God bless China!

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Honkai Star Rail

I have completely finished the 3.0 through 3.7 Amphoreus expansion story.

Wow. That was atrocious. If I had to make a top 10 worse JRPG stories list, this would probably be in it. Well maybe not because there is a lot of ****** JRPG stories, but this isn't just bad. It goes on for so long.

I have written down my thoughts on each patch as I was going through them. It's not all bad. There are some neat moments (namely 3.3 and 3.4).

► Thoughts as I was playing through each patch

3.3

► 3.3 The Fall at Dawn's Rise

The ruined city dungeon was neat, though as usual the dungeon layout was completely nonsensical. Felt too conspicuously "gamey". The first two worlds, Belobog and Xianzhou, did a better job of convincing you that you were travelling through real(ish) places, namely city blocks and shipping dock platforms. I think the exterior designers do an okayish job but the interior designs don't.




I don't recall if I mentioned this in my prior writeups, but the 3.X Amphoreus expansion introduces a time change mechanic to the dungeons. You can walk up to a device and turn it on, and it toggle the level to a different timeframe, usually somewhere in the past be it a few months, several years, or hundreds of years. The geometry of the levels is slightly different in each timeframe, so you are alternating between different timeframes/versions of the level to get around obstacles, solve puzzles, and proceed. There is a projector you can flip on that will cast a shadow of the other timeframe into the current one. In this patch and in a prior patch, there was a neat visual thing where if you aimed that projector at a place where water is (in the future) or once was (in the past), it would cull the volume of water. It made for a neat effect.




The writers made Aglaea's suicide unconvincing. We don't see Aglaea actually do anything in story, but from her way of speaking and how other characters have described her, she is a 1,000+ year old hardened military leader who has assassinated her enemies and has pursued the other people labeled as Chyrsos Heirs in order to save the world. She would be disheartened by the opposition leader's blackmail threat but wouldn't give in. The fate of the thousands of surviving humans on Amphoreus > the life of one hostage. I do think Aglaea's weariness somewhat comes across but I don't get the impression that she would just call it quits so near to the end with 11 out of the 12 Coreflames captured, more Chrysos Heirs than ever before united, so much support from the city, etc. And Phainon has not been shown to be a good leader. He gave a nice speech at the forum once, but we haven't actually seen him in charge of management or assigning soldiers to die and so on. So I don't buy that she "stepped aside" or anything like that trusting Phainon to succeed.






Aquila's fortress was neat, a step up from the other Amphoreus dungeons but still not on the same level as FF13 from 16 years ago and a fraction of the budget.












How is the tiny My Little Pony horse supposed to be descended from this huge robo horse?





The 3.3 Aquilla boss fight is spectacular, easily the highlight of the game's story so far and one of the most exciting turn based RPG fights I have seen. I gameovered the first few times with Hyacine and Phainon before having to switch to Hyacine with Blade and barely eeking out a win. The first time this game has been challenging since the first Argenti fight on the train. I typically don't like pop music, but in this case the echoyness combined with the excitement of the setpiece as they are battling a metal doombird as they fall down an elevator shaft, the bird going supernova in phase the first two phases, the apoclayptic hell rain in phase 3, your HP bar is slowly being locked/stolen away and the tension is rising and you are just barely hanging on, etc. It made for a really fun encounter. It is frustrating that I wasn't recording it and there is no chapter select feature to go back to earlier segments to view the cutscenes, so I can only record the weekly farm version of the fight without the cutscenes and with DHPT to trivialize the difficulty. I loathe saying "it's good, trust me" without the receipts, but I will here.

3.4

► 3.4 For the Sun is Set to Die

It is very strange how you are running down the mountain back to Okhema (the last surviving city in the world) and the characters are talking about the actual end of the world happening and the city is being overrun and everyone is being slaughtered and turning into zombie computer viruses, but you see hardly any people. Only a couple dead guard bodies on the ground. No masses of bodies, or army units holding the line, or people running or fighting for their lives. There is a scene where you encounter Chartonus in the hallway, and the scene being described is supposed to be intense as he is going to hold the line so you can escape from Black Tide pursuers, but the game just isn't presenting them.




The Phainon story of him being trapped in hell for millions of time loops was decently executed. They used the combination of the CGs, Satoshi Hino's shifting voice as he falls into despair over the millennia, the slow walk section as you approach your friends to kill them and you see glimpses of his battles with them in the previous loops, etc. But the execution is just that, just okay. It doesn't hit as hard as it could like in other JRPGs or VNs. It also helps that the patch is relatively short so you have less meandering filler. It's probably the "best" story chapter in HSR so far but that's not a high bar.

The exposition on the metaphysics and the scepter is very confusing and is not presented well in this patch.




I had to keep alt+tabbing out and looking up online to discern what exactly is supposed to be happening. The game itself does a slightly better job when you finish the patch and get the codex to read through, but before that point the story experience is just difficult to parse. I think Amphoreus having three different magicks/powersystems in one is unnecessarily convoluted and that's on the writers:

• So the "planet" of Amphoreus is actually a giant supercomputer called a Scepter that was created by a robot (King Rupert) from long ago who wanted to wipe out all organic life in the universe. But King Rupert and his empire were destroyed long ago, so this Scepter has just been floating around abandoned.
• This Scepter is also a bodypart of the robo-god of the Path of Erudition, Nous. (So... which came first? King Rupert building his WMD, or Nous coming into existence and his bodypart breaking off?).
• This Scepter was then "gazed" (enchanted/hijacked) by Nanook, the god of Destruction.
• So the Scepter is now reprogramming itself and has become an "egg" for a Lord Ravager named Irontomb. (IIRC, "Lord Ravager" is the term used for Emanators of the Path of Destruction. Emanators are supposedly the second most powerful beings in the HSR setting after the path gods and are directly blessed by the path gods, but so far we have only met one Emanator Acheron and she doesn't seem to be as powerful as other characters like Jing Yuan or Feixiao or Castorice who have huge powerful summoned creatures or as powerful as Phainon who has 400 million Coreflames and can drop moons).
• Irontomb is running millions of holodeck simulations of worlds and occasionally deploys computer viruses to local star systems, and once it runs enough simulations the egg will hatch and Irontomb will attempt to destroy the rest of the universe.
• But due to Erudition path magick, Irontomb isn't just writing a normal computer virus, but can alter the concepts. So once Irontomb perfects its virus and deploys it, it will be able to universally scramble every being, including organic people. So people might not have blood vessels or transposons or something.
• But also, there is Remembrance path magick involved, so the people in Amphoreus aren't just digital bytes in a supercomputer but are also composed of fairy magick.
• Said Remembrance fairy magick is composed of Nouspores that are shadows of the future.
• In one of the simulation cycles, Phainon and Cyrene discovered the truth about their world. Cyrene deleted herself from existance (but she is still here talking to us as a pinkachu?) to steal authority from Lygus and prevent him from totaling deleting the Amphoreus sim from RAM, only instead rewinding this Amphoreus sim back several thousand years, with Phainon surviving the reset while everyone else gets rewound to an earlier state. So rather than the theory that Anaxa posited that they would die and become the new Titans like Kephale and Oronyx, instead it's just a rewind, so the Titans aren't changing each times.

... This is just so much more convoluted than it needed to be compared to similar artificially created horror world stories in anime and JRPGs and VNs.

I am also a little confused by the geography of Amphoreus. In patch 3.3, we walked up to the titan Kephale, Hyacine did her ritual to summon the rainbow bridge, and presumably that took us way up above Kephale and the sphere on his back to a ceiling very high above, which is where we ran into the physical server blades/hardware of Amphoreus. So basically Amphoreus is this huge holodeck containing a continent inside it. But if there was a physical ceiling, then how did our train car fly into Amphoreus from space without crashing into the Scepter's hull? But then in this 3.4 patch, Herta and Screwllum look at Kephale and insinuate that the Dawn Device - the sphere on his back - is the actual Scepter. Is that where the supercomputer is and where Lygus is operating from, and it's projecting everything out from it like the holodeck? Is there no physical wall or ceiling around Amphoreus?

3.5

► 3.5 Before Their Deaths

I have finished the 3.5 story.

I thought that the idea for this chapter was neat. You get to go back in time and meet two Chyrsos Heirs who loved in antiquity (sorta like the Elpis arc from FF14 Endwalker). It expands the setting. I do wish that we had gotten to glimpse Chyrsos Heirs and that they had gotten unique designs. Apparently Cerydra had an army of 500 of them, but you would never know from going through the story.

The game is going for a visual novel story, but it's too poorly done. The devs don't have the skill to execute it well enough. VN scene writing but presented with static 3D models standing around with boring camera angles and almost zero animation. It is just disinteresting to look at compared to a VN with expressive sprites and poses and sprites being moved around and funny gags and such. The dialogue is often too flowery and metaphorical. The writers are trying to be profound but they are not pointing to the truth like Tolkien did, so instead it just feels fake deepness like Babylon 5 and so many other secular knockoffs. The story also glosses over how heinous Cerydra is, not only wiping out cities and killing soldiers without surrender but also murdering her own lieutenants for contrived reasons.




I don't understand why Hysliens got two CGs, one being fanservicey and the other her looking somewhat romantic towards the MC, when that is not how she is being presented in the story and most certainly not in her voice acting. It feels almost as if the CG team didn't even read or playtest what was happening in the story.





Cyrene has been bringing down my enjoyment of Amphoreus. She is presuming that I am her best friend or perhaps even love when my character has had very little meaningful interaction with her. Also strange given how earlier in this expac, there was a scene where the Stellar Hunters were onboard the Astral Express and you could choose to either ship the Trailblazer with Kafka or Firefly, and as thin as those connections are they are much more credible than the Cyrene connection. I hate her near constant winking, and her voice is starting to get really grating. I don't know what the author (Shaoji?) is thinking her, but it's not good.




Cerydra's tacky V-tuber character design is incredulous given that she is supposed to be a brutal warlord from antiquity. If they wanted a cute girl, they still could've done something like make her look like an evil queen with a pelt over her shoulder or something.




The banquet scenes with Cerydra - the conqueror of this entire planet - where there is just a couple dozen NPCs in a huge overall empty plaza is embarrassing. The PS2 was able to display more character models for crowd shots like this, and 5 year old phones are more powerful than the PS3. The scene is somehow even worse than the Ishgard crowd scene from FF14 Heavensward's patches.





It is frustrating how calm Screwllum and Herta are during their scenes with Lygus. Particularly Screwllum since he appears to be the most moral character of the geniuses. Lygus has wiped out 30,000,000 worlds over and over and is planning to wipe out the universe, but these geniuses don't express any emotion or anger or fear or panic whatsoever. Even when they find out that one of the revered founders of their order regrets creating the Erudition and wants to undo it, they express zero emotion at that.





Hysliens is apparently the last person alive in the world, but you wouldn't know it because the world you are walking around doesn't look apocalyptic. It's bright day and the buildings in Styxia look intact when you are outside. When you are walking around Okhema, it is supposed to have taken place hundreds of years after Lygus' army tore through and destroyed it, but the actual environment looks like how it was on the last day of the 3.4 cycle when the apocalypse was just kicking off.

The Sea Sirens described in the the story's dialogue text as being mermaids with tails and scales, but ingame there are no such models whatsoever and they just reuse bog standard human female models with no adjustments. Same issue with Castorice in 3.2 where in the 2D animated cutscene in Styxia she looks much younger, but then in the inengine cutscenes she is reusing her current day adult model. The devs really couldn't be bothered to use their $100 million USD monthly revenue to create a few different models. The segment was also confusing because I think story wise you are supposed to be walking around the sea siren's city, but in the story they are talking about how they must defend "here" underwater before the Black Tide reaches up and encroaches in the surface dwellers, but the actual city you are walking around is a surface city (Styxia reuse?). It is very confusing. No attempt to make it look underwater. (The geography of Amphoreus in general is difficult to grasp because all of these cities are described, but there is so much asset reuse, and Kremnos in lore I think is supposed to be some sort of Warhammer 40k walking fortress but you don't actually see anything like that and it just looks like another asset reused Amphoreus city. The story also doesn't have map CGs either like you would see in FF14 or Utawarerumono or even GBF sometimes).





I was confused when I was fighting Lygus and then got a cutscene, and then that was the end of the patch. I didn't get the catharsis of finishing the boss fight, and I haven't heard of you get to properly fight and beat him later. He didn't have a third form. I find it hard to believe that my Phainon is too powerful when the Aquilia fight in 3.3 took 10 or 20 minutes. The way Cyrene is presented expositing about how she defeated Lygus feels like the writer is trying to hard to make their characters look cool or smart.

3.6

► 3.6 Back to Earth in Evernight

Nice asset reuse of the 3.1 Grove map, redressing it to look ruined and golden.

I can't believe that this many hours into HSR, this is the first time we get even a shred of explanation for Dan Heng and Blade's backstory that was vaguely alluded to in the Luofu arc.

Dan Heng's memory of Dan Feng walking around and talking to people and trying to have heart to heart conversations is vapid when this is just a memory of Dan Feng, not the actual soul of Dan Feng like the soul of Ardbert walking around and talking in ShB.

The fantasy computer level is a neat idea, too bad we don't see more of it fleshed out.

Too. Long. Winded. I am starting to just read scene summaries and skip them entirely if I read that nothing happens in them (8 times out of 10). This is a general issue with HSR but is an especially an issue with this chapter, where there is nothing happening on a moment to moment basis. It's people standing around talking for hours and hours on end rather than people actually doing anything significant or there being exciting action. As bad as a lot of JRPG plots are, at least stuff actually happens in them, even in the worst Trails games.

It is bizzare how March gets her regular not-evil eyes back in the CG, but then in the very next inengine cutscene she is still using the evil Evernight eyes.

Very repetitive speech from all of the Chrysos heirs at the end.

Shut up Cyrene.

Someone needs to slap the writer or give them a good shake. Write a sane script. Or fire them and replace them with someone else who can write plots that happen in a timely manner and are suitable for the medium.

3.7

► 3.7 As Tomorrow Became Yesterday

Several of the locales towards the end looked neat.


















Why did Welt, Himeko, and Sunday even beam down to Amphoreus if they weren't going to do anything? I was expecting them to participate in the final battle with the rest of the Astral Express crew, but they didn't.




Also, it is frustrating that the cutscenes depict the Trailblazer, Dan Heng Permansor Terrae, and March 7th (Evernight) together, but then in gameplay you can't viably use them together because Evernight gains charges by taking damage while DHPT grants absorb shields.

It is odd that the arbiter generals get a scene planning for the attack, and then are never seen again.




Irontomb's ultimate where he conjures the lance of longinus and wipes out the alliance fleet was neat.




Seeing the 12 Chrysos Heirs on the Astral Express makes the place feel more alive. The train cars are very large in size but we normally only have six people on board, so you are striding across large empty rooms.

Music was weak after the 3.4 patch.

General issues with Amphoreus:

1. Mediocre audio-visual presentation. It's 95% people standing around talking barely animated with barely any facial expressions, no cinematography, etc. It is very, very boring to look at for a VIDEO game. Visual novels have more visual interest than this. 2D gachas like Granblue Fantasy have better scenes than this. 100+ hour long Trails games have better visuals in their average cutscene than this. Etc. Better scene visuals could have made the obscenely lengthy and boring writing palatable. I don't know how a game like this that rakes in a billion dollars per year can have worst cutscene presentation than 2014 2D Japanese gacha games or midbudget JRPGs. I don't know why Mihoyo games have so many good trailers but the standard ingame cutscene quality is so lacking.

2. Filler galore. This did not need to be a 100+ hour long story. If the writers were competent, then this story could have been told in 20 hours max like in a PS1 Final Fantasy. There is so, so much filler on both the macro and micro level. On the macro level, several of the patches are pretty much filler. The Kremnos immigration plot as the Kremnos people have no greater relevance and you wind up barely seeing the populace of the world after the first couple patches. Almost nothing happens in between patch 3.4 and the last patch in 3.7. And then you have filler within the scenes, where you have lots and lots of pointless scenes that do not advance the plot and is just people spouting flowery metaphors.




3. Extremely excessive flowery writing. I have never seen it this bad. Not even some of the most egregious VNs I have read like Type Moon VNs are this bad. Every. Single. Scene. The characters are talking like poets. It is almost always vapid. If the story was being written based on the foundation of truth like Tolkien's stories, then maybe some of it would be neat (though I'd still cut almost all of it), but instead it ultimately amounts to hours and hours of talk about nothing and secular JRPG nothingburgers like "love" and "this is our answer", etc. It is also egregious how towards the end, the Chyrsos Heirs have I think 5 or 6 triumphant goodbye speech scenes where they one by one make a flowery declaration before vanishing into particles. It wasn't good the first time but then they waste your time doing it 5 more times.

4. Extremely confusing metaphysics/plot devices. The workings of Amphoreus and what is going on in the plot becomes extremely convoluted in 3.4. I tried writing my understanding of it down. But then by 3.6 or 3.7 with the introduction of the Demiurge being four different Cyrenes or something, I gave up. This is also a major contributor to why the story is so disinteresting to watch, as there is a lot of scenes of people standing around talking about the metaphysics. FF14 is a ridiculously metaphysics heavy story too but doesn't have anywhere near this much boring standing around and expositing.

5. Very little emotional engagement. The story is ineffective getting you to feel anything. I think there were only four moments in the entire story where I felt anything. The first was the Phainon and Mydei bath contest, that was funny. The second was Hyacine imitating Anaxa's voice, which was funny. The third was the intense battle with Aquilia, that had me on the edge of my seat. And then the last was seeing and hearing Phainon's despair as he watched his parents get corrupted into computer viruses and then him being condemned to live through the 33 million cycles. But the rest of the story and the scenes were just whatever for me. There are lots of scenes where the writer thinks this is supposed to be epic or climatic or emotional, but it just has no impact on me whatsoever.


Given how long this scene drags on for and the flowery words, the writer thinks this is going to be a big deal, but I just couldn't care.

Again, the Phainon stuff in 3.4 was neat.


6. Cyrene. Once the Pinkachu turns into the little girl and starts talking in that extremely fake, high pitched voice, she starts to bring down my enjoyment. The universe starts warping around her. She is constantly winking, constantly made out to have this master plan who outwitted all of these 33+ million year old robot super geniuses, is a god, is the savior of the universe, etc. She is the character that spouts the most amount of vapid crap like love and hope. The story is also very weird in how she is initially introduced as Phainon's love interest, but then half way through the story she apparently abandons him and starts talking to you the player as if you are the most important person to her and holding hands with you and so on. It's just offputting, and ineffective when the game has already teased the Trailblazer with Firefly, which wasn't really convincing either but I'll take that over this.




7. Weak finale. The halfway point climax in 3.3 and 3.4 of the fight against Aquilia and then running through the empty streets of Okhema as the world is ending while being chased by the Flame Reaver, and then seeing Phainon's horrible fate and then the last battle against the Flame Reaver was pretty decent. But then the actual final act in 3.7 is forgettable. The out of game trailers hyped up the galactic alliance of the Xianzhou fleet + Herta space station + IPC + Galaxy Rangers landing armies on worlds and a massive war across five star systems, but then you don't see any of that in game. Irontomb is a nothing villain with no emotional engagement with him. He's just a neat looking big boss model, while the only characterized villain of Lygus is standing offscreen apparently neutered. There is a jump the shark moment with Irontomb wiping out the entire universe, but then due to Cyrene spouting love and hope we rematerialize everything and then beat him. Noncommital ending where the Chyrsos Heirs appear on the Astral Express, but then we find out that they are all going to fade away and die, but then we find out that Amphoreus might come back and become a real planet someday. Pick a lane people. Either kill them off and be done with it or having them immedietely rematerialize along with the rest of the universe.


That was cool.


8. Lots of lazy asset reuse. There are several moments in the story where you are supposed to be fighting different people (as in actual people) or giants, but then you enter battle and just fight black tide models. I lost count of how many times I fought the Nikador model in this expansion. There also several scenes where you are supposed to be running through a location such as the orange apocalyptic streets of Dawncloud or Okhema, but then the battle scene used is the peaceful blue interior baths of Marmoreal Palace.

I don't know what these Honkai Impact 3rd players were smoking. They were constantly talking about this writer "Shaoji" as if he was a big deal. If this guy wrote Amphoreus then I don't want him writing for HSR again. This guy does not seem to have a grasp on reality, wasting many hours of my life on this drivel. From what I have heard, he seems to have an unhealthy fixation on his imaginary waifu of Cyrene or Elysia, apparently having her name engraved in his glasses. Can we get a sane, competent writer for the next expansion? One who has read a lot of good books and knows to write stories that get to the point in a timely manner? It is very good that this game has good battle audiovisuals and neat minigame events coming out regularly, or else I would have dropped this game.

[Lhynn]

Mediocre audio-visual presentation.

Meanwhile wuthering waves just keeps upping the ante in terms of presentation.

After the half a year spaning adventure on rinascita, after gathering every single character from 2.0 onwards and most of the 1.0 cast, fighting reality bending villains, beating deities, after nearly losing and having to be saved, etc, etc, etc. After ultra high stakes, we get to relax with an anime inspired story, where we meet a girl in a city frozen in time.



Just look at the camera, the voice acting, the characters and their movement.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Mediocre audio-visual presentation.

Meanwhile wuthering waves just keeps upping the ante in terms of presentation.

After the half a year spaning adventure on rinascita, after gathering every single character from 2.0 onwards and most of the 1.0 cast, fighting reality bending villains, beating deities, after nearly losing and having to be saved, etc, etc, etc. After ultra high stakes, we get to relax with an anime inspired story, where we meet a girl in a city frozen in time.



Just look at the camera, the voice acting, the characters and their movement.

That one scene makes Rover look cooler than Aether/Trailblazer/Wise.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Granblue Fantasy festival has happened. With the original main storyline having now concluded, they are launching into a brand new part 2 saga (FGO just concluded their second saga), which will feature side characters like Narmaya. Bhaisa just got released for people who liked her in this year's anniversary event. The biggest announcement was a Steam port of GBF, but you cannot link your existing account there so this doesn't do anything for existing players. I am not sure why we would want to recommend people to use a steam app instead of the convenient browser. http://game.granbluefantasy.jp/#top

[Manny V]

Infinity Blade gang Infinity Blade gang

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Fate/Grand Order's main story has now ended, and people are in uproar over the ending. Some people are coping that there is going to be a "true ending" released on New Year's day and more story announced, but really this is just typical godless Japanese author mentality so I fully expect this is it.

As a recap: the plot of FGO is that alternate timelines/artificial worlds are being created called Singularities and Lostbelts, which threaten to replace and erase Proper Human History (our world/the true timeline). So each arc you go into one of these artificially created worlds and destroy them and their inhabitants. Ie Lostbelt 3 takes place in a sci fi Chinese empire and then you destroy that world and everyone in it, LB6 takes place in a Camelot empire that has spread across the earth and you destroy that world and everyone in it, etc. The protagonist is a serial world genocider like the unhinged direction that FF14's main story later takes. Goodness I hope this does not become a trend.

Well, the final chapter is here and the plot twist is that the entire game has actually been taking place in a lostbelt. Even though you could choose to do nothing and just continue to live in this lostbelt as it eventually replaces the real world (the FGO world is much more fantastical than the real world), the protagonist instead opts to destroy the world of FGO too. Everyone except the MC dies and the MC loses his memory of his adventure (and all of the servants you sank pulls into and countless hours grinding up), returning to mundane earth and becoming a Japanese salarymen. Meanwhile, the story gives typically Japanese mumbojumbo about "how even if the destination was pointless, the journey is what mattered". Nevermind all of the worlds the protagonist genocided trying to save his own only for him to now genocide his own fake world too.

If there is no God who defines right and wrong and what you should do, then you have to conjure up justifications as to why it is worth being good or doing the things that you do. Justifications that amount to nothing. (Nasu already did this crap with Fate/Stay Night with the hero being condemned to a hellish eternity futilely trying to save people but the author tries to pass this off as a heroic thing). So that's how we have a VN story that runs for 12 years where you wiped out multiple worlds and everything you did wound up being all for nothing, just to return to a crappy one, and this is supposed to be a happy ending.



With Granblue Fantasy's original main story having just ended and now FGO, we are two for two on crappy gacha main story endings now. Genshin's 7 chapter story is about to conclude next year with the Sneznhaya arc, and I am not too optimistic about that having a good ending either.

[Cipher]

Fate/Grand Order's main story has now ended, and people are in uproar over the ending. Some people are coping that there is going to be a "true ending" released on New Year's day and more story announced, but really this is just typical godless Japanese author mentality so I fully expect this is it.

As a recap: the plot of FGO is that alternate timelines/artificial worlds are being created called Singularities and Lostbelts, which threaten to replace and erase Proper Human History (our world/the true timeline). So each arc you go into one of these artificially created worlds and destroy them and their inhabitants. Ie Lostbelt 3 takes place in a sci fi Chinese empire and then you destroy that world and everyone in it, LB6 takes place in a Camelot empire that has spread across the earth and you destroy that world and everyone in it, etc. The protagonist is a serial world genocider like the unhinged direction that FF14's main story later takes. Goodness I hope this does not become a trend.

Well, the final chapter is here and the plot twist is that the entire game has actually been taking place in a lostbelt. Even though you could choose to do nothing and just continue to live in this lostbelt as it eventually replaces the real world (the FGO world is much more fantastical than the real world), the protagonist instead opts to destroy the world of FGO too. Everyone except the MC dies and the MC loses his memory of his adventure (and all of the servants you sank pulls into and countless hours grinding up), returning to mundane earth and becoming a Japanese salarymen. Meanwhile, the story gives typically Japanese mumbojumbo about "how even if the destination was pointless, the journey is what mattered". Nevermind all of the worlds the protagonist genocided trying to save his own only for him to now genocide his own fake world too.

If there is no God who defines right and wrong and what you should do, then you have to conjure up justifications as to why it is worth being good or doing the things that you do. Justifications that amount to nothing. (Nasu already did this crap with Fate/Stay Night with the hero being condemned to a hellish eternity futilely trying to save people but the author tries to pass this off as a heroic thing). So that's how we have a VN story that runs for 12 years where you wiped out multiple worlds and everything you did wound up being all for nothing, just to return to a crappy one, and this is supposed to be a happy ending.



With Granblue Fantasy's original main story having just ended and now FGO, we are two for two on crappy gacha main story endings now. Genshin's 7 chapter story is about to conclude next year with the Sneznhaya arc, and I am not too optimistic about that having a good ending either.

Well... it turns out the real Holy Grail was the friends that we made along the way!

Also, care to spoil me on how Grand Blue Fantasy ends? I tried to watch the anime but I kept falling asleep before episodes ended and found myself having to do multiple rewatches. At some point I just admitted I wasn't really enjoying it but I do kind of wonder how it all ends up.

[Oyster Sauce]

Fate/Grand Order's main story has now ended, and people are in uproar over the ending. Some people are coping that there is going to be a "true ending" released on New Year's day and more story announced, but really this is just typical godless Japanese author mentality so I fully expect this is it.

As a recap: the plot of FGO is that alternate timelines/artificial worlds are being created called Singularities and Lostbelts, which threaten to replace and erase Proper Human History (our world/the true timeline). So each arc you go into one of these artificially created worlds and destroy them and their inhabitants. Ie Lostbelt 3 takes place in a sci fi Chinese empire and then you destroy that world and everyone in it, LB6 takes place in a Camelot empire that has spread across the earth and you destroy that world and everyone in it, etc. The protagonist is a serial world genocider like the unhinged direction that FF14's main story later takes. Goodness I hope this does not become a trend.

Well, the final chapter is here and the plot twist is that the entire game has actually been taking place in a lostbelt. Even though you could choose to do nothing and just continue to live in this lostbelt as it eventually replaces the real world (the FGO world is much more fantastical than the real world), the protagonist instead opts to destroy the world of FGO too. Everyone except the MC dies and the MC loses his memory of his adventure (and all of the servants you sank pulls into and countless hours grinding up), returning to mundane earth and becoming a Japanese salarymen. Meanwhile, the story gives typically Japanese mumbojumbo about "how even if the destination was pointless, the journey is what mattered". Nevermind all of the worlds the protagonist genocided trying to save his own only for him to now genocide his own fake world too.

If there is no God who defines right and wrong and what you should do, then you have to conjure up justifications as to why it is worth being good or doing the things that you do. Justifications that amount to nothing. (Nasu already did this crap with Fate/Stay Night with the hero being condemned to a hellish eternity futilely trying to save people but the author tries to pass this off as a heroic thing). So that's how we have a VN story that runs for 12 years where you wiped out multiple worlds and everything you did wound up being all for nothing, just to return to a crappy one, and this is supposed to be a happy ending.



With Granblue Fantasy's original main story having just ended and now FGO, we are two for two on crappy gacha main story endings now. Genshin's 7 chapter story is about to conclude next year with the Sneznhaya arc, and I am not too optimistic about that having a good ending either.

It's escapism!
Can't you see?
It's not healthy!

[Stack of Turtles]

Fate/Grand Order's main story has now ended, and people are in uproar over the ending. Some people are coping that there is going to be a "true ending" released on New Year's day and more story announced, but really this is just typical godless Japanese author mentality so I fully expect this is it.

As a recap: the plot of FGO is that alternate timelines/artificial worlds are being created called Singularities and Lostbelts, which threaten to replace and erase Proper Human History (our world/the true timeline). So each arc you go into one of these artificially created worlds and destroy them and their inhabitants. Ie Lostbelt 3 takes place in a sci fi Chinese empire and then you destroy that world and everyone in it, LB6 takes place in a Camelot empire that has spread across the earth and you destroy that world and everyone in it, etc. The protagonist is a serial world genocider like the unhinged direction that FF14's main story later takes. Goodness I hope this does not become a trend.

Well, the final chapter is here and the plot twist is that the entire game has actually been taking place in a lostbelt. Even though you could choose to do nothing and just continue to live in this lostbelt as it eventually replaces the real world (the FGO world is much more fantastical than the real world), the protagonist instead opts to destroy the world of FGO too. Everyone except the MC dies and the MC loses his memory of his adventure (and all of the servants you sank pulls into and countless hours grinding up), returning to mundane earth and becoming a Japanese salarymen. Meanwhile, the story gives typically Japanese mumbojumbo about "how even if the destination was pointless, the journey is what mattered". Nevermind all of the worlds the protagonist genocided trying to save his own only for him to now genocide his own fake world too.

If there is no God who defines right and wrong and what you should do, then you have to conjure up justifications as to why it is worth being good or doing the things that you do. Justifications that amount to nothing. (Nasu already did this crap with Fate/Stay Night with the hero being condemned to a hellish eternity futilely trying to save people but the author tries to pass this off as a heroic thing). So that's how we have a VN story that runs for 12 years where you wiped out multiple worlds and everything you did wound up being all for nothing, just to return to a crappy one, and this is supposed to be a happy ending.



With Granblue Fantasy's original main story having just ended and now FGO, we are two for two on crappy gacha main story endings now. Genshin's 7 chapter story is about to conclude next year with the Sneznhaya arc, and I am not too optimistic about that having a good ending either.

It's escapism!
Can't you see?
It's not healthy!

destroying your entire universe to go live in a different one probably would qualify as unhealthy escapism

[rusty_shackleford]

video games really love unacknowledged mass genocide huh

[Valter]

Fate/Grand Order's main story has now ended, and people are in uproar over the ending. Some people are coping that there is going to be a "true ending" released on New Year's day and more story announced, but really this is just typical godless Japanese author mentality so I fully expect this is it.

As a recap: the plot of FGO is that alternate timelines/artificial worlds are being created called Singularities and Lostbelts, which threaten to replace and erase Proper Human History (our world/the true timeline). So each arc you go into one of these artificially created worlds and destroy them and their inhabitants. Ie Lostbelt 3 takes place in a sci fi Chinese empire and then you destroy that world and everyone in it, LB6 takes place in a Camelot empire that has spread across the earth and you destroy that world and everyone in it, etc. The protagonist is a serial world genocider like the unhinged direction that FF14's main story later takes. Goodness I hope this does not become a trend.

Well, the final chapter is here and the plot twist is that the entire game has actually been taking place in a lostbelt. Even though you could choose to do nothing and just continue to live in this lostbelt as it eventually replaces the real world (the FGO world is much more fantastical than the real world), the protagonist instead opts to destroy the world of FGO too. Everyone except the MC dies and the MC loses his memory of his adventure (and all of the servants you sank pulls into and countless hours grinding up), returning to mundane earth and becoming a Japanese salarymen. Meanwhile, the story gives typically Japanese mumbojumbo about "how even if the destination was pointless, the journey is what mattered". Nevermind all of the worlds the protagonist genocided trying to save his own only for him to now genocide his own fake world too.

If there is no God who defines right and wrong and what you should do, then you have to conjure up justifications as to why it is worth being good or doing the things that you do. Justifications that amount to nothing. (Nasu already did this crap with Fate/Stay Night with the hero being condemned to a hellish eternity futilely trying to save people but the author tries to pass this off as a heroic thing). So that's how we have a VN story that runs for 12 years where you wiped out multiple worlds and everything you did wound up being all for nothing, just to return to a crappy one, and this is supposed to be a happy ending.



With Granblue Fantasy's original main story having just ended and now FGO, we are two for two on crappy gacha main story endings now. Genshin's 7 chapter story is about to conclude next year with the Sneznhaya arc, and I am not too optimistic about that having a good ending either.

Was there adequate foreshadowing to this twist or was it an asspull?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Also, care to spoil me on how Grand Blue Fantasy ends? I tried to watch the anime but I kept falling asleep before episodes ended and found myself having to do multiple rewatches. At some point I just admitted I wasn't really enjoying it but I do kind of wonder how it all ends up.

Granblue Fantasy's main storyline is divided into three major arcs. The Girl in Blue/Phantagrande Skydom arc (of which the anime adapted the early sections of), the Dawing Sky/Nahlegrande Skydom arc, and the Wayfaring Astral/Oarleygrande Skydom arc.

► Arc 1: Girl in Blue/Phantagarde Skydom

Phantagrande arc: the main character Gran lives with his little dragon friend Vyrn on Zikenstill island, he receives a letter from his deadbeat father to come meet him on some mythical island called Estalucia. Gran then bumps Lyria and Katalina who are fleeing the Erste Empire which is expanding across the Phantagrande skydom (the GBF world is dividing into various "oceans" called Skydoms, which are separated from each other by a massive storm called the Grim Basin that is extremely difficult to pass through and survive). They then get the airship the Grancypher and cruise around. Later on, they meet the Black Knight who at first seems like Darth Vader of the empire, and eventually they defeat and capture her and hand her over to the international police, the Crew of Enforcers. But then the Black Knight turns out to be Eugen's daughter Apollonia and asks the crew for their help in saving Erste, so they break her out of jail and flee.

We then find out that the Erste Empire is not actually Erste. The real heritage people of the Erste Kingdom live on the now forgotten desert island of Ravi. They were wealthy and kept to themselves, but the king and queen died. The prime minister was a lesbian who lusted after the queen and went crazy, and then took control and started hyper militarizing, and it became a Roman empire thing promising citizenship to foreigners through military service. Eventually the prime minister built an artificial floating fortress island and the capital of this new empire was moved there and the empire became made up of predominately foreigners, while the true heritage people of Erste and their kingdom were abandoned and suffer under the empire. Now the world curses "Erste" when most of the actual blood Erste people haven't done anything against the world. Apollonia wants your help to save the true Erste, that kingdom on the desert island.




It also turns out that the prime minister is frustrated because she learned the buried history of the Erste Kingdom. The popular narrative taught today is that Erste was always strong and did not succumb to the Astrals' invasion hundreds of years ago, but it turns out that Erste was amongst the first to surrender and was thus not destroyed like all of the other islands. The prime minister is also enraged that the king - the man who the queen married - was secretly an Astral. The prime minister has built a machine that will remake the timeline so that Erste was always strong and never bowed to the Astrals, and to also get rid of that man.




So you, Apollonia, and Adam - another Erste Kingdom general who got unwillingly absorbed into this new empire - rescue princess Orchis (who lost her body to an accident and her soul has been stuffed into a puppet) and then infiltrate the imperial capital, defeat the prime minister and her machine, etc. Then you go back to the desert island, the princess gets put into a real body and becomes queen, and the kingdom of Erste is reestablished on the island. The rest of the empire falls apart.

Overall I thought that the last half of the arc (at around chapter 40 when you talk to Apollonia and bust her out) was when I started getting really invested into the GBF story, and I thought that Phantagrande had a cathartic ending.

In a post credits scene, it is revealed that Apollonia was not actually the real Black Knight. She killed and impersonated the real Black Knight, which she needed to do to get the clout to infiltrate the Erste Empire's military. The real Black Knight was a member of the seven Luminary Knights - the most powerful warriors in the setting besides the Eternals - who serve The True King, who rules an empire spanning multiple skydoms called Istavion. He also seems to take a fixation on you and your dad.




There is a side storyline that shows some of the fallout of the empire's collapse and the reestablishment of the kingdom.

(I was trying to be brief, but as I went on with the summary they got more into the weeds and longer).

► Arc 2: Dawining Sky/Nahlegrande Skydom

As Queen Orchis' and general Apollonia's most trusted agents, you are tasked with tracking down some dangerous materials that the Erste Empire was researching, lest they fall into the hands of bad actors. A luminary knight named the Golden Knight winds up absconding with what you are looking for, so you chase her.




Your pursuit winds up taking you across the Grim Basin into the Nahlegrande Skydom, which is a cool fusion of Western medieval Europe and the orient. You lose track of the Golden Knight, but meet new friends but wind up getting roped into Nahlegrande's troubles. Up until very recently, there was a hegemony over the Skydom by kingdom called Torhid, but there was a civil war and it broke up, causing a lot of warlord states to pop up. The first village you meet is being taken over by homeless Torhid war vets trying to establish their own country, led by Reinhardtzar. You work with a new character named Cain, and when he threatens (he's actually bluffing) to blow up the villagers, Reinhardtzar relents and surrenders.




After that, you go follow Cain (with POW Reinhardtzar in tow) to the kingdom of Idelva, of which Cain is a general of. You fight for the kingdom of Idelva and their sovereign Pholia, general Cain and his late brother's fiance Leona, and Reinhardtzar (released into Cain's custody).


Reinhardtzar, Cain, and Leona at a restaurant in Luxurious, the capital of Idelva.


Sovreign Pholia




Subplot: The heroes realize that they need to become more powerful, so they go to an island of buddhist monks and train to bond with the Primals/summons that Lyria absorbed in the Phantagarde arc. Rackham gets Tiamat. Io gets Rosetta. Eugen however is nearly forever lost to a fantasy dream world where he gets a second chance to stay with his wife and Apollonia, who he had abandoned in real life. Keiji Fujiwara's (RIP) voice acting was really good and I thought that this might have been it for him. But he pulls through and bonds with Leviathan.





Idelva's capital is attacked by another warlord state, Rhem. Right away things appear to be very wrong with Rhem since a young soldier appears to be in charge.




Unfortunately, the Rhem force ways waste to Idelva's capital town of Luxurious and have the upper hand, and then cease and then declare that they will leave if Idelva hands over sovereign Pholia to them. The Rhem army's leader Gilbert then accuses Pholia of being a ***** who infiltrated Torhid's noble society and led men to their ruin and caused the civil war that everyone is suffering from. Pholia voluntarily surrenders.




The Idelva clerks and captains are paralyzed trying to decide what to do or who should be appointed/elected king, but Cain and the crew set out to Rhem's capital island to rescue the sovereign. There you meet up with a resistance and find out that it's another Erste situation where Gilbert's faction of imperialists have taken over (backed by Istavion/The True King), so you help them. Gilbert becomes intoxicated on dark magick and then drunkenly reveals that he was a Torhid soldier along with Abel (Cain's brother and Leona's fiance), and killed him. The True King arrives with the White and Scarlet knights, and Gilbert turns out to be working for him. They leave and take Pholia with them.

You pursue them to the ruined island that was once the capital of Torhid. It is revealed that the Scarlet Knight is Baragona, who was a prince of Torhid who murdered almost his entire royal family and extended family. Gilbert was an agent of Baragona. Pholia is an unloved daughter of the True King was sent by him to destabilize Nahlegrande in anticipation of invasion. The True King contacted prince Baragona and told him to join or die. Baragona knew that the royal bloodline could authorize control of a superweapon called the Wall which can blow up islands, and that the true king couldn't be allowed to get it. So he feigned loyalty, killed off the rest of his bloodline but allowed one boy to escape (Abel died bodyguarding the little prince before Baragona could explain and give him money to run away with the boy. Gilbert was unaware of which side Baragona was really on and was able to report directly to the True King, so Baragona couldn't tell him to stop), hoping that the boy would live to one day return and become king of Torhid.






The party kills Gilbert. Baragona merges with the superweapon before the True King can and selfdestructs. The True King returns to Istavion. The falling rubble from the collapsing island forces the crew's airship, the Grancypher, to descend or be destroyed.




There are a few sidestorylines set after Nahlegrande, one is Pholia going around to hot spas with a middle aged guy and another just released about Cain/Leona/Reinhardtzar becoming adventurers and leaving Idelva, and a story about a mission Abel did for Torrihid when they were looking for little boys to sacrifice to make super soldiers right before the collapse.

► Arc 3: Wayfaring Astral/Oarleygrande Skydom

The Grancypher descends to an island near the bottom of the world called The Edgelands, where time moves at a different rate than the rest of the world. While repairing the airship, Gran meets Shitori, who then promises to catch up with him again one day.




The ship is repaired and you fly back to Phantagarde and find that it is in the middle of a war. Again. Furias (actually a clone made by The True King who killed the original Furias offscreen) is leading a Neo Erste movement (backed by the True King) and is trying to take over, but you stop him.




Furias' soldiers have flamethrowers and horrifically kill a screaming soldier right in front of Katalina and Lyria. Katalina has had a mild case of imposter syndrome/self confidence issues, but here she becomes shaken.




It was instigated by the Violet Knight, who absconds with a dangerous relic, so once again Queen Orchis asks you to pursue him. Meanwhile, there is a subplot about Loki - an antagonist from the Phantagarde arc - decides to imitate you and start his own adventuring crew. He acquires the Gransleuth, a sister ship to the Grancypher and the one your dad used.




You pursue the Violet Knight to Nahlgrande. You also run into Loki. But then everyone gets accosted by the demonic Otherworlders from below the sky world so you have to work together.



The Otherworlders come from the ruined surface of the Earth (tldr GBF takes place in our far future. Demonic corruption was spread across the earth turning most of the population into monsters. Some lucky few got a rocket ride to the moon and live there but everyone was doomed. Then the great dragon Bahamut came and used his power to raise up the last uncorrupted sections of the world into the sky). The Otherworlders try to tempt you in exchange for Vyrn and Lyria, saying how both you and them (Otherworlders) had been wronged by the ominipotent/Bahamut, but really they just want to take over the sky world.




The Grim Basin is revealed to be a containment wall to prevent Otherworlder corruption from spreading between Skydoms. At least one Skydom has already completely fallen, and the True King's Istavion empire is the premiere force in the setting fighting against the Otherworlder invasions.

While fighting Otherworlders, Katalina runs into the lingering spirit of her great great grandmother Ares and her maybe lesbian friend. They give her a pep talk and Katalina bonds with Ares as her summon.






Gran swings by Idelva to find out what happened.




You catch up to the Violet Knight, who then decides to duel you. After losing he relinquishes the relic, returning to the True King knowing he will probably get disciplined or chewed out. But then while he's at a restaurant, he gets assassinated by one of the crewmembers on your rival's ship, who turns out to be an agent from the moon. (The moon people don't come up again in the main story. They are from a side storyline called Society and Foe).




The crew decides to go to Oarleygrande, which is the capital Skydom of the Istavion empire. Upon entry, you are immediately hailed by Istavion forces and told to dock in Istavion, where the True King is waiting for you. Eugen stays at the airship keeping the engine warm if they need to make a getaway. You walk up to the True King's house (the text says he has a house at the top of a hill, not a grandiose castle. But then the background show rather large interior corridors). He asks Gran to marry his daughter Alliah the golden knight and become his successor (because Gran is THAT MAN's son and also bonded with Vyrn and Lyria, and thus outside of fate). Gran eats and stays the night, and then when the True King asks again the next morning, Gran flees. The White Knight and the army give chase to capture Gran and bring him back. (Bafflingly, a recent story event says that it is impossible for crossbreeding to happen like human x Erune. But that is one of the numerous retcons/inconsistencies that GBF has had over the years. The vision of GBF keeps changing from writer to writer).




The islands in the skydom have been tugged by airships into positions around the capital island, with each island being like a city district. So one island is full of schools and colleges and where all the young people go to study. One island is for entertainment and is full of tennis courts and casinos and theaters and etc. One island is for justice so it's where all of the courts and prisons are. Etc. So the rebels help you go on a circuit throughout the islands.





At the justice island, one of your friends from the school island you infiltrated who turned out to be a rebel sympathizer, is on trial for being opinionated against the True King, and you are working with the defense attorney trying to get him off. The True King turns up in person, and it turns out that the judge presiding on trial is also a rebel sympathizer, but the True King doesn't really care. Actually he's here to save everyone because the Otherworlders have arrived, and they can rewind time. The True King is unable to save everyone as it stands, so in the courtroom he just declares Gran is now the True King of Istavion and leaves. The White Knight searches for him to no avail, and then asks Gran to accept the title for now.



(I started losing interest in the main story after this so I stopped taking as many screenshots)


At the house in Istavion, everyone comes to great the new king and kiss his hand. You travel to a farming island with the Golden, White, and Green Knights as your advisors and your entourage of clerks and surveyors, greenlighting public works. When you were appointed True King, you also inherited your predecessor's magic eye power that allows you to discern/remain cognizant of changes to the timeline that everyone else isn't. It then starts turning into kind of a horror story as Rackham gets deleted from existence and replaced by some brand new party member as your helmsmen, who in this new timeline was always there from the beginning. You go to visit another one of your populated islands for a checkup, but by the time you arrive it is a deserted ruin. At this point it becomes clear that the Otherworlders have been winning the war for a long time by manipulating time to remove obstacles, and are expanding their territory without anyone else realizing it wasn't always that way. This is what the TK and the Luminary Knights were really fighting against.

Meanwhile, the True King is waltzing through time, and goes to a previous world in which everybody except the Violet Knight died, having been absorbed into a humongous evil tree, its tendrils have spread to every island in the world. The TK brings AU Violet Knight back to our world/timeline.

You meet the rebel leader who was aiding you from the shadows, who turns out to be Shitori, and then she has a breakdown. She had survived the prior world/timeline in which Gran gave up on fixing the ship and stayed with her on the Edgelands. While you were there, the rest of the world above was being taken over by the Otherworlders. Refugees from above were being portalled to the Edgelands. Then at last the enemy came for the Edgelands and killed Katalina and co, but then when you tried to escape through portals there was nowhere else in the world to run to. Through something something Shitori somehow travelled back in time or to this new successor world/timeline.

You lose contact with one of your islands near the capital, so you set out to investigate. The Otherworlder's doom tree is being grown on it, so the end is near. One of the crewmembers in your rival's airship sacrifices herself trying to harm to the tree. The tree becomes a big boss and you go super sayian - merging with your other selves across timelines - to fight it (this was a jump the shark moment for me and when I started tuning out). But because the big bad tree has time rewind powers it cannot be stopped. Because of some sort of connection between the tree and the prior True King, he decides to erase himself from the timeline to make the tree boss vulnerable (everyone else forgets that there ever was another true king besides Gran).




After this the story faces total plot collapse. You go to Estalucia and meet dad, but the writers admitted in an interview that they couldn't be bothered to write interactions between him and all of these characters that had met him before like Rosetta, Walfrid, Shitori, Seox, etc, let alone our companions who would like to have a word or two with him about his deadbeetism like Katalina and Eugen. Gran dad dies, Rackham and Katalina come back, yadda yadda. The devs were in a rush to end the original main storyline so that they could bring in fan favorite side story or side NPC stuff like Narmaya and Lucilius. Sadly the butchering of the story has soured people on the Oarleygrande characters and we haven't gotten any side story content about them for years. White Knight has JUST been announced to being made playable, six years after he was really introduced at the theater island.

Fate/Grand Order's main story has now ended, and people are in uproar over the ending. Some people are coping that there is going to be a "true ending" released on New Year's day and more story announced, but really this is just typical godless Japanese author mentality so I fully expect this is it.

As a recap: the plot of FGO is that alternate timelines/artificial worlds are being created called Singularities and Lostbelts, which threaten to replace and erase Proper Human History (our world/the true timeline). So each arc you go into one of these artificially created worlds and destroy them and their inhabitants. Ie Lostbelt 3 takes place in a sci fi Chinese empire and then you destroy that world and everyone in it, LB6 takes place in a Camelot empire that has spread across the earth and you destroy that world and everyone in it, etc. The protagonist is a serial world genocider like the unhinged direction that FF14's main story later takes. Goodness I hope this does not become a trend.

Well, the final chapter is here and the plot twist is that the entire game has actually been taking place in a lostbelt. Even though you could choose to do nothing and just continue to live in this lostbelt as it eventually replaces the real world (the FGO world is much more fantastical than the real world), the protagonist instead opts to destroy the world of FGO too. Everyone except the MC dies and the MC loses his memory of his adventure (and all of the servants you sank pulls into and countless hours grinding up), returning to mundane earth and becoming a Japanese salarymen. Meanwhile, the story gives typically Japanese mumbojumbo about "how even if the destination was pointless, the journey is what mattered". Nevermind all of the worlds the protagonist genocided trying to save his own only for him to now genocide his own fake world too.

If there is no God who defines right and wrong and what you should do, then you have to conjure up justifications as to why it is worth being good or doing the things that you do. Justifications that amount to nothing. (Nasu already did this crap with Fate/Stay Night with the hero being condemned to a hellish eternity futilely trying to save people but the author tries to pass this off as a heroic thing). So that's how we have a VN story that runs for 12 years where you wiped out multiple worlds and everything you did wound up being all for nothing, just to return to a crappy one, and this is supposed to be a happy ending.



With Granblue Fantasy's original main story having just ended and now FGO, we are two for two on crappy gacha main story endings now. Genshin's 7 chapter story is about to conclude next year with the Sneznhaya arc, and I am not too optimistic about that having a good ending either.

Was there adequate foreshadowing to this twist or was it an asspull?

The announcement trailer for the Lostbelts has voiced lines that turned out to be referring to the final chapter, so the overall ending might have been planned out. Some of the finer details might have been changed later.

[LemonDemonGirl]

Is Genshin's new story really that bad?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Is Genshin's new story really that bad?

I haven't done the current Nod-Krai story yet so I don't know. Last year's Natlan story stalled out for me quickly and then alienated people with the resurrections and the fan favorite Fatui member Capitano getting the Bolvar the Lich King ending where he sits on a throne and goes to sleep rather than becoming playable. Only good thing I have heard is that the in engine cutscene quality has become better.

The general issue with the Genshin story is the same issue as HSR's, where it's not that entertaining on a moment to moment basis. There is a lot of standing around and talking, not that much tension to keep you clicking to find out what happens next, lack of consequences, etc. Early on you had the threat of the bad guy brotherhood, the Fatui, but now most of them have become your friends, so where is the threat?

[rusty_shackleford]

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The unprofessionalism of the American voice actor English is a sight to behold. So many people have no business sense whatsoever, creating public facing accounts in their name and then mouthing off. Last year the English voice actors stirred up drama trying to coerce Mihoyo - a Chinese company - into signing American voice actor union agreements, which then got several voices replaced. And now once again there is a kerfuffle with an HSR actor who sued the voice recording company claiming that he should be considered an employee, and then when he didn't called back to reprise his character for HSR he then screenshotted and posted the emails with the email address of the guy he was talking to.

[Lhynn]

So that's how we have a VN story that runs for 12 years where you wiped out multiple worlds and everything you did wound up being all for nothing, just to return to a crappy one, and this is supposed to be a happy ending.

That ending is a clear set up to a 2nd game with updated graphics were ******* can spend thousands again, pulling for the same ******* characters.
I bet itl be announced next year.

Thats the only reason they are killing the cash cow. They got a fancier one on the way.