Guilty Gear Strive 2021 Beta Thoughts

• Instant Block & Instant Faultless Defense (IB window from 8f in Xrd/ACPR to 3f in Strive)
  • I think IBs have too high of a requirement for the (still very good) reward they offer.
    • Being 3f, they’re just a frame over slashbacks, which both negated pushback AND reduced any blockstun to 3f (which means, aside from conjoined attacks with projectiles/puppets, or some singular multi hit moves, you always had a gap for reversal as the fastest non-throw attacks in GG is 3f).
    • The zero-pushback reward is def solid, but it’s clearly not gonna yield much vs projectiles in the corner, or against tick throws that depend on being + while being very close anyways, like airdash jump button > land command grab, or Sol’s long dash 2P>wild throw.  You only have normal block and FD to change blockstun (+ the lingering throw protection) to mess with throw timings.
    • The new IB does allow for a different usage. Pushback is cumulative, so with some strings you might need to IB 2 or 3 hits to make the ender punishable. It also means you don’t have to IB the last hit to make the best use of it. An example is if Ky corners you then does cS>Stun edge, IBing the cS means Ky would do stun edge point blank, which is fairly minus, and def punishable with throw or more even on normal block.
    • Getting IB unintentionally by reacting and blocking late can be kind of more trouble than before. You might not want to be really close after blocking stuff
  • The 3f window is even more confounding for IFD, since IFD is just enhanced FD, and still costs tension to use in addition to increasing blockstun the same amount. IFD is just a percentage better than FD, nowhere as substantial as IB’s no-pushback reward (basically if you can auto IB your normal block, it might make you unbeatable, but if you can auto IFD every FD it probably wouldn’t help you out that much)
    • IFD does have this odd affect midscreen where it actually pushes the opponent away, while you remain still. It’s interesting but not sure it’ll matter much as long as you make them whiff.
    • I do wonder if IFDing projectiles midscreen would just have you stay still while the opponent’s position is unaffected, which means with regards to projectiles, IFD and IB have the same effect. I think if they keep it like FD where it pushes you back, IFD would be more useful to get out of for example meaty projectiles midscreen by pushing yourself further than FD would.
  • Because FD and IB have diametrically opposite effects, using them in combination is less useful. Classic example is Ky Xrd Rev 2 6H where the best option is to FD the first hit, then IB the second, so you get pushed out and then get blockstun reduced, slightly hindering Ky’s pressure. I don’t foresee reasons where for a particular string or multi hit attack, you’d want to be pushed back as much as possible for the first hit, then be NOT pushed back at all on the follow ups (or vice versa). To be clear, this is not taking into account dynamic changes to the string as the opponent reacts to your block options and adapt to it by changing the string.
  • There’s more on this that I cover in the air block section

I still don’t know what to put between paragraphs so here’s some CVS1 stages

• Backdash+Dash Macro
  • Backdash itself seems weaker. On average they take longer to complete, have less invul period, and the vulnerable recovery is longer (Distance travelled is possibly less too?). There’s also the fact that you seem to have a big hurtbox in that airbourne recovery, and you get juggled easily from their blockstring tagging you due to the new juggle system and they get a combo without needing for them to hitconfirm, let alone airbourne hit confirm. You can’t just “take an air hit then tech out”.
  • Backdash is very good to escape throws now that there’s a throw whiff & no throw OS. It gets you an easy counter hit punish. But basically it is the optimal way to get out of throws, you can jump out, but jumping won’t make you able to punish throws by descending in time & you may even get anti aired for it.
  • on the flip side, backdashing with the new dash macro is super effective. Going from 1 > 4+dash > 1 was really easy and there is much less risk of getting hit with lows during blockstun, or getting hit with mids with a 454 input during the neutral part of the input (in fact getting hit with mids is probably impossible, aside from hitting the backdash recovery? Can walk back then instantly backdash)
  • It’s a game changer, and I wonder if the strength of the backdash macro is one consideration why they nerfed backdashes compared to Xrd. I personally wouldn’t mind them taking away backdashing with the macro & being manual only if it means backdashes can be buffed.

• 5D
  • The hold vs tap idea is neat. 5Ds were really strong in the last beta due to them bouncing off the wall, so they yielded big meterless/no-set up damage while still being as fast as say Chipp’s 6K.
  • It does still mean stuff like Chipp or Zato or May’s 6K overheads are kinda redundant. I guess they benefit from being gatling cancelable from 5P/2P unlike 5D. In fact I think for Zato, using the tap 5D in conjunction with Eddie might be more beneficial since the tap 5D is faster than his 6K as an overhead, but 5Ds might be easier to react to with the orange flash still there, or maybe 6K recovers faster so Zato can more easily follow it up vs 5D (assuming 6K can’t be special canceled)

• Throws
  • being 2f means I get hit with attempting to throw after high jump ins that leave an exactly one frame gap before their button, or with 1f-gap-strings, but for higher jump ins or slower buttons or as a general disrespect it works really well defensively, or as quick reaction to like Leo’s berserker slash cross up. The instances where I got hit during start up were rare honestly so maybe I should just be more wary of spamming throws.
  • bigger active frame window does mean that for super high jump ins, I’m able to press throw even while they’re in the air, even when the throw becomes active while they’re still in the air, then the meaty frames of the throw stay active till they land and I grab them. Means no more pressing throw too early and getting a slow 5H button that gets CH on ground instead of a throw.

• Air Throws
  • still strong, was able to confidently use it defensively even for a character with no ground dash like Nagoriyuki to microdash before jumping to air throw better.
  • Assuming there is a similar 2f start up, that means you probably can’t air throw people as low to the ground as before, but the throw is still fast enough that for most uses it’ll work fine

• Roman Cancels
  • The usages for them I think have been understood much more clearly in this beta then before
  • Red RC blast: the easy combo conversion/pressure reset tool, not always optimal since RC blast counts as a 0 damage hit that scales like a normal hit (if not having special scaling on it) + it takes a chunk off risc, but seeing how high damage everything is it might not matter much
  • Blue RC: used for movement, “freeze the game and react”, and interesting pressure + mix up thanks to it having the longest slow down time, which lasts even after hitting the opponent. It does require you to be neutral and not in the middle of any move, so the best way to get it in a way where the opponent is locked down is on oki or after jump cancels and some dash cancels
  • Purple RC: whiff safety, and combo/pressure extensions off projectiles (cause no hitstop). I thought there might be usages where you would purposely RC physical attacks late past their hitstop to get purple RC as a way to RC without the Red RC blast, but that’s negated with Fast Red RC for the most part
  • Fast Red RC: New to this beta is canceling the blast+slowdown with normals, not just specials as in the 2020 beta. This probably is the way to get optimal combos that avoid the scaling from the Red RC blast, unless the blast’s huge launch time & slowdown affords you to do really slow attacks, like charged 5Ds (which seem to launch a bit and do decent damage on juggles). It’s also good for fast mix ups, like Ky blocked 214K into fast RC jK or fast RC drift down land 2K
  • Purple and Blue RC can be made “fast” too, tho the usage might be situational. I seen stuff where Fast Blue RC (coupled with drift) after an airdash or a dash jump lets you carry that momentum ala Xrd’s airdash YRC. And Purple Fast RC has those classic Gunflame PRC forward drift Wild Throw or Hammer Fall PRC forward drift Pot Buster examples, so for stuff where u don’t want the opponent reacting to the RC freeze it makes sense. But for the purposes of making whiffs safe or for combos or pressure outside of immediate mix-ups after RC, I don’t know why you’d want to skip the slowdown circle, or even just the extra composure time, just to fast cancel to something, unless the slowdown (which does not count as a HIT in Blue/Purple RC) adds some scaling or tension pulse reduction or some hidden penalty
  • Guard Yellow RC:
    • I first was troubled by block RC because it just pushed characters a little bit and you get some frame advantage, but this reward seems like it’ll help some characters considerably (particularly grapplers that thrive on being slightly + while in their throw range), while for others it’s not very beneficial (like Zato Guard Yellow RCing Sol to push him right to Sol’s optimal counter poke range, so Zato would still be hesitant in pushing buttons even if he is + due to fear of Sol’s 2D/2P/5K/6P/DP or even revolver if that still has frame 1 strike invul)
    • But it turns out, the game has this stagger state where the opponent is in a long stun animation and they can’t do anything but block, so presumably if you land a block RC, particularly a counter hit one that lasts longer, you can “true blockstring” into a button without worrying about reversals or counter pokes, so probably good to know what buttons to press to “jail them” into blocking. Even so, this still benefits some characters than others, and having this universal system be the replacement for tailor made dead angles means they probably can’t tune block RC’s reward to fit some characters more (or hinder it for ones that benefit off of it too much, or as part of that characters overall balance)

• Air Block + Ground & Air Gatling Restrictions
  • dash jump block is strong, sorta like DBFZ, but air throw makes it less safe than there, where your best option in DBFZ is to staircase them to a ground string. You probably can still staircase here with jPPP~
  • Chicken blocking on defense is strong cause you can block everything in the air, in addition to:
    1. 5P/2P starters don’t generally lead to lows aside from specials or specific low command normals like Nago’s 6K, so only chance to catch chicken blocking is to hit the jump start up, a 3f window on some characters
    2. 5K/2K gatlings can start from a low but either gatlings directly to another low with 2D, or command normals the same as above. Very hard to have a low > mid > low string just with normals, this all makes it hard to catch jump outs with a late low in a gapless blockstring without committing to 2D early
  • with air block being able to block everything, and with how the new IB works, air IB and air FD/IFD still don’t have an apparent purpose.
    • You don’t need FD to block DPs or ground normals in the air. Some Air DPs, particularly Ky’s, do push you away very far on normal air block making them safe. And apparently air IB would make u drop quicker in place so u can potentially punish them. Don’t know what air FD/IFD does vs DPs yet.
    • air IB doesn’t reduce blockstun to allow air  IB > air throw, plus the “negating pushback” aspect for air IB is not that useful when a lot of air interactions come from one side air dashing or dash jumping in on the other with a lot of momentum, so they’ll be real close whether you normal block or air IB. Air IB does seem to make you land sooner, but since landing while still in blockstun adds an additional 19f of landing recovery, you might not even be able to air IB > land > ground throw unless your blockstun ends while you’re still in the air & at that point you may as well air throw them.
    • This is may sound like air defense against air pressure is weak, but the air gatling restrictions sorta even the field:
      1. Only infinite gatling button is jPPPP~ so while you can’t interrupt that string with air IB > air throw like before, they also can’t get a lot of hitstun/blockstun off of the last jP to get a big combo/blockstring on ground.
      2. jK only gatlings to jD & most jDs should have some landing recovery, some jDs even float & stop momentum so they aren’t gonna be super + upon landing.
      3. jSH might be interrupt-able on normal air block with an air throw if the jH is slow enough.
    • Air IB was useful to deal with zoning tools like Axl’s buttons or fireballs, so air IBing them didn’t push you away. No blockstun reduction (+ the 19f landing recovery) meant it wasn’t as easy to capitalize on it to move forward with air IB > air dash or double jump forward as in previous GGs, or air IB > land dash, but I guess things are generally more committal on the ground end too in terms of attacks.

• ground and air dash cancels
  • air dash cancel really strong for mix ups, but I think even the fastest ones are interrupt-able with 5Ps, certainly with 6Ps. They can also be good for approaching (like Ram doing max range sword jS a midscreen away then airdashing in with a jump button and being close enough to start pressure)
  • ground dash cancel has some neat potential for pressure with dash cancel throw (was strong for Gio & May, less so for Sol) and combos, for juggles that allow button > dash > button or special, or for canceling to non-cancelable stuff like Sol’s Vortex (infinite or otherwise) or Fafnir, or Ram’s 214H big damage sword swing special, that way it kind of limits those specials to only be “canceled into” from dash cancelable buttons

Big thanks to @kedako_faital & @GREATFERNMAN for finding a lot of the technical data and translating it, which a lot of this post is based on.

Guilty Gear Strive Post Beta Thoughts And Analysis

I like fighting games. I love them so much that I’ll probably have tons of fun with literally any fighting game. So it kinda doesn’t matter much if Guilty Gear Strive is “good” or not, I’ll probably be spending a ton of time on it. For all I know, Strive can just be a game of Rock Paper Scissors and I’ll spend hundreds of hours on it. Whether I’ll spend thousands on it, or travel thousands of miles to attend tournaments for it or to play it in arcades, remains to be seen. So with this post (as I did with the previous Strive post after the first gameplay demonstration stream), I’m gonna try to focus more on the game’s mechanics, what their implications are, and if I like those aspects or not.

The first online beta for the game concluded a few days ago, and I put a ton of time in vs CPU mode on day 1 and played on all the netplay test periods, and I really enjoyed it. I got much more of a handle on the game than from watching all the released footage and from playing the Arc Revo demo a couple of times. I got a lot of things wrong in my previous Strive blog post, and I wanna address that and other new revelations in this post.

Didn’t know what to put between paragraphs, so apropos of nothing, here’s some SVC Chaos backgrounds

Throws

This was probably the biggest mistake. I overestimated how significant throws being slower than 1f would affect their use defensively aside from losing to meaties on wake up. Throws are still strong punish tools, strong interrupt tools in between strings, or after you block a very close jump attack or airdash and they don’t follow it up with a fast enough ground button. Throws are still even strong on wake up in instances when the opponent messes up their meaties. I also learned the fact that you can now throw while running did make them sorta faster to land. Previous Guilty Gears required you to stop running before you can throw, and even the fastest “brake” input took few frames to complete.

Air Throws are really strong as anti airs (and well….anti DPs?). They remain the strongest universal anti air (especially now that ground anti airs are air blockable). The whiff on them seems not terribly punishable, but at least it does standardize things in terms of risk. No more characters with privileged jHs that make whiffing an air throw super safe, or even have that jH reach the other player anyways. Also the fact that you can air throw after air dashing is neat.

I will say the 4/6D input is inconvenient. It makes it easy to mess up a dashing 5D or a dash jump jD with a throw. I could be wrong but I believe literally every fighting game that has a normal throw with a whiff animation either use a button combination input, or have the whiff animation only come out in proximity when they get out of your throw’s range during start-up (like CVS2 or HNK), or cases where the single button is mainly dedicated FOR throws and some special attacks that require a motion input (like Koihime Enbu).

Damage & Walls

Damage in Strive is pretty high. I suspect that one reason it’s like this might be linked to the wall break mechanic. Reducing damage might mean more instances of wall breaks in a round. We might be seeing walls broken 2 or 3 times on average by one player if damage is reduced, and people are already kinda getting tired by the wall break animation. Increasing the number of hits a wall takes before it breaks won’t matter since most corner combos like Sol’s cS fS 5H Revolver loop infinitely until you get wall break.

Roman Cancels

Roman cancels so far seem like the mechanic that most everyone (including me) really like. I think the only people that didn’t like Strive’s RCs have the same (legitimate) qualms about it as RCs in Xrd, mainly about it killing momentum due to the freeze. Although Strive does have fast RC, it’s limited to canceling into specials. You can’t fast RC back to neutral. RC Drift is cool too as it gives everyone the ability to use RC to move without needing a special that has big movement or momentum. Neutral “blue” RC so far is a bit of a (?) since I find I don’t need to use it when I can do like Gunflame or stun edge > RC and get the slowdown and have a projectile out. We still need more info about its advantages over other RC forms, perhaps in terms of a faster start-up or longer slow downtime or something.

Block RC and Air Block RC

As a replacement for Dead Angle, block RC seems less useful for the most part. Sure it has a pretty big hitbox that is hard to avoid, but a successful block RC only keeps them stunned for a short time and doesn’t knock them far away to give you space. This can be good for maybe Sol or Pot to take the small frame advantage they have to dash and command throw (or just Kara-Pot Buster), but others would probably prefer something that pushes them further, to be in a safer position to return to neutral or have the space and the time to escape the corner. Air block RC is also a bit of a (?) right now since you can’t get opened up from an air block anyways, though I imagine it could be useful to get out of fuzzy overhead situations if landing from air block in blockstun forces stand state like Xrd (and pre-Season 3 of DBFZ).

Air Dash

This change came about with the Evo Japan 2020 demo. I had my suspicions first. I thought it was really terrible and would make anti airing it easier. It ended up not being the case. Anti airing it seems much harder than your old airdash because of the way the air dash descends, so jump normals hit deeper. The fact that your descent timing is changeable based on when you do the jump attack (or FD) does make it more unpredictable. It also means you can IAD real close and still fall down quickly to hit them, when previously, IADs done close would sail over the opponent, especially if they were crouching. There seems to be a lot of interesting potential with canceling air dash with FD, as that would allow you to descend without committing to a jump attack.

However, it is weaker in other aspects. Mix-up potential is weakened significantly now that late airdashes are easier to react to. Mobility is weakened too. I had a hard time trying to punish far Gunflames with an IAD, due to the Air Dashes stationary start-up, and the fact that you would need to wait during the air dash itself to clear the gunflame before you can press any button, or else you’d fall sooner into it. This applies to escaping from the corner too.

Air Dash cancels are cool in a sense. They’re great for some combo conversions, but they’re also great for delayed overhead mix-ups. Granted, there’s a small number of jump normals that are air dash cancelable (which are the same double jump cancelable ones), and many of them are fairly shallow and could whiff on crouching, which makes them easier to anti air with 6P, possibly even if they are done to land meaty on wake up.

5D

I got this wrong too. 5Ds are now pretty strong, being faster than in Xrd, even without considering the CH follow-up-able version. I didn’t consider 5D Roman Cancels, which turned out to be really effective. Corner 5Ds into the wall is strong too for meterless conversion and is one way to differentiate itself from stuff like Chipp & May’s 6K, which can only convert to a combo with RCs.

CH form of 5D didn’t end up playing much of a factor in my sets, not as frame trap or punish to CH recovery moves, or done after cranking risc. What I did find is with a successful CH you can choose not to pursue with up and let them fly up and fall, while still giving you a chance to combo on the ground for considerable damage. I imagine there would be many scenarios where it would be better not to pursue, whether for more optimal damage (with supers maybe) or to get a better corner knockdown, rather than going with a stage transition and return to midscreen.

Gatling and 6P

Probably the biggest agreed-upon complaint of Strive for a whole host of problems. I don’t really get the reasoning behind limiting gatling for punch and kick buttons, but it seems to reduce their combo potential in a more direct way then adding proration and damage scaling to combos that start with those buttons.

Tick Throws

2P/5P only cancel to itself and each other, and to “command normals”. 2K/5K can cancel to command normal and 2D/5D (and in the case of Chipp, 5K to itself). Fact that punches cannot gatling to lows like 2K or 2D weakens their use for tick throws. If the opponent tries to tick throw with 2P, I can just hold up after blocking the 2P and can easily escape since they can’t check me holding 7 with a low. The only hope is to have a clean frame trap string that hits during jump start-up, and that means leaving a gap that I can DP out of or even backdash away. Even tick throws with 2K is not as strong since you can’t switch up your string enough to change how many lows you’re doing in a string (if say your character has a low 2S or 2H before the 2D at the end of the gatling route) or even when the second low after 2K comes out, whether directly after 2K or after 1 or 2 mid hits.

6P as combo fodder

Because 6P is a universal “command normal”, it’s the main (often only) gatling route you can combo off 2P/5P and 2K/5K (besides 2D). Even if characters have other command normal, they’re usually slow overheads like May/Chipp’s 6K, or long wind-up damaging buttons that need a long juggle state to combo, like May/Chipp’s 6H. Thing is 6Ps don’t always make great combo fodder since their main usage is as anti-airs. Some don’t have the range to combo from far away, others (at least in Xrd) don’t hit crouching. Linking these 2 different uses means balancing the property of 6Ps would be hard. If they have the range or were made to hit crouching, that would certainly increase their power as anti airs, and vice versa.

6P Cancelability

And since 6Ps are now the main combo fodder for P and Ks, they now all don’t gatling cancel to anything because that would defeat the point of the restricted gatling routes (as you could then do 2K>6P>5S>5H etc and get good damage). This, in turn, makes confirming off 6P anti airs fairly hard, as you have to cancel to a special. Depending on the character, they might not have a good special to cancel to that both combos from normal and counter hit at all ranges, and is still safe on block or at least uninterruptible in case the opponent blocks the 6P. It also seems to potentially reduce combo damage potential but I’m not ready to claim I know optimal damage output for Strive

KOF similarity

KOF sorta has a similar issue that it solved. A lot of characters in KOF have a 6A or 6B overhead command normal. Normally they’re slow and are non-cancelable, but if you cancel into them, they change properties, becoming much faster, enough to combo from a close C or D (or even lights), and they become cancelable themselves into special/super, only losing their overhead property, becoming a mid. Maybe Strive can incorporate something similar if the game insists on the limited gatling system, to at least separate the anti air usage from their combo fodder usage a little, although this isn’t really how GG games usually handled things, but Strive is already veering far from traditional GG.

Instant Block

Probably the element I’m personally most disappointed about. Gatling issue is more crucial but this…stings more to me. I had the impression that pressure in Strive would be weaker but it is not. Ky has strong pressure resets with his 6K and shock state 214K being + on block, Sol’s Fafnir is fairly + on block and his new cS>fS>5H string keeps him real close to get a safe-ish, hard to escape close gunflame to land. Forward Drift RC helps characters close in again during pressure, and while sure it costs %50, meter builds much more quickly in Strive than before. Not to mention being cornered is more dangerous than ever, since any hit can lead to a big combo and strong oki if they stop before wall break, and escaping it with the new air dash is harder. The only factor that leads to weaker offensive pressure is the limited gatling, even knockdown time seems to have been increased, and there are more opportunities to get a safe jump or fireball oki on the opponent. I feel like it’s imperative that they give IBs some usage to get out of pressure, whether the old way of reducing blockstun & pushback, or with some new mechanic. The same goes for Air IB as you can’t Air IB Sol’s airdash jPPPP anymore to air throw between hits.

As they are now, IB both lacks the “goal” that it previously let you achieve while also lacking some of the risks (beyond execution errors and mistiming). In older GGs, they could get you out of a mix-up or can make you punish something that’s safe on normal block, but they also can put you in trouble, whether it’s creating gaps that can make you get hit with mids, reducing pushback and blockstun enough to make the opponent be able to throw you sooner, or jack up risc higher if your IB creates gaps in a true string. There’s none of that in Strive, and the perfunctory tension gain increase (in a game where meter builds up so quickly anyways) means IBs are just slightly “better than nothing” status: It’s nice if you get them, and it’s no big deal if you don’t.

Last few points

I won’t need to point out the major issues with the UI/UX and Lobby system, all of which have been mentioned plenty of times by everyone. Also didn’t wanna chime in on character specifics since Venom ain’t confirmed for Strive yet, and none of the confirmed cast is a main or sub for me really.

• Dash jumps seem to not make you go further anymore, instead, they just made stationary forward jump go further than usual.
• There are fewer jump cancelable normals given that combo routes are now much more ground-based. That goes for double jump+air dash cancelable jump normals too.
• There’s a new “launch then restand” type of hitstun, which has an awful lot of hitstun. You can choose to combo immediately to launch the opponent or have something hit late to keep them grounded.
• Status effects UI elements have been removed. The previously shown ones now just appear on their affected element (negative penalty and positive wall break bonus on the tension gauge, Shock state just on the character). It’s for the better I suppose if the game’s not gonna have a crazy number of buffs/debuffs type status effects, and besides Ky’s shock state and Faust’s Afro, none of the currently shown cast has anything like that.

As is, Strive is fun and very Guilty Gear-like in a few aspects, particularly when you’re winning, when you’re getting that crazy pressure in, using knockdown to set up a strong oki, doing crazy damage combos in the corner, instant airdashing in, and using Roman Cancels to enhance your combos/pressure/oki, but it doesn’t feel like GG when you’re on the other end, being forced to just block (hah) pressure, having to commit to a risky grounded anti air to stop Sol’s airdash jPPPP, having no way to mitigate + on block moves, having a hard time escaping the corner, and dying from a couple of mistakes without even getting a few chances to at least attempt to block some mix-ups. I thought Strive was an attempt at a balanced reduction from both ends. Reduced offensive options with weaker oki, more costly RC, limited gatling and so forth, balanced with lack of IB, slower throws, wall breaks resetting things to neutral, and even no meter-based options like Blitz or Slashback. It seems clear that’s not the case, and these gears need some tuning as they’re a little bit off-balance.

Castlevania Season 3 thoughts

Spoiler-free review: Enjoyed it overall but not as much as S2. Felt long & often times cruel and cynical without always justifying it.

SPOILERS AHEAD

First thing I did when Season 3 popped up was look at ep count: 10 ep this season vs 8 in S2 vs the 4 in S1.

Despite this Season being the longest, my main issue is it didn’t feel like things have progressed, plot wise at least. I understand the need for more episodes since now there are more characters to focus on then ever, and the characters are all more separated than ever: Alucard isn’t with Trevor or Sypha, Isaac isn’t with Hector, and we also get introduced to a number of new characters (many of them die in this season, but some like Saint-Germain will probably come back, along with the Vampire sisters).

Yet there’s a lack of forward movement: Isaac takes 10 episodes to travel from where Dracula sent him, in the middle of the Sahara desert in Africa, to reach Europe and almost get to Carmilla’s castle, Trevor and Sypha start the season wondering around in a wagon and finding a village, to just leaving that village in the same wagon after it’s been utterly destroyed, albeit much more disheartened. Alucard starts the season alone in his dad’s castle and ends in the same way.

That’s not to say there’s no character development. Alucard starts this season missing Trevor and Sypha, making miniture doll recreations of them, and imagining having discussions with them. This obviously shows that his seclusion inside the castle made him miss his friends. He seeks human interaction and kinship, which is fairly different from when we first met him in Season 1. He meets these 2 travelers from Japan who seek his help with learning how to fight and kill vampires. In training them he becomes fond of the two kids, and in the end he is confronted (in a pretty erotic scene!) and is about to be killed by them (seemingly because he just didn’t show them parts of the castle? Or don’t trust that Alucard is saying the truth about the castle losing it’s ability to move), when he kills both of them instead. It’s a shocking end, and it leaves things unclear about whether Alucard actually wanted to kill them out of anger or out of self-defense, or if he even intended to kill them or not. What was more revealing was what he did with the bodies after, by gruesomely impaling them and sticking them outside the castle as a morbid warning sign that visitors are absolutely not welcome. This is the most cruel thing Alucard has ever done, and he is morphing more into his crueler father, seemingly detesting humans. This whole season attempts to showcase how horrible humans are, or how violent their tendencies be, but perhaps not always in a successful manner: The priory in the town, and the town judge who was posthumously revealed to be a sadistic child murderer. All the town guards Isaac meets in his journey (along with some of his backstory that was shown in previous seasons), the story of that talking night creature who spoke of his life on earth before he died and went to hell, and was then resurrected as a night creature beholden to Isaac. Parts of it were done well, others not so much.

That’s not to say this season’s length was warranted, I swear there was like half an episode devoted to Trevor, Sypha, and Saint-Germain just walk around town talking about mysterious wall markings, and a lot of Saint-Germain looking at books (I don’t wanna give too much flak to Saint-Germain, I thought that infinite corridor episode was pretty cool actually). The Vampire sisters all just….make plans all season long, aside from Lenore who kinda takes all season to seduce and bound Hector. I was hoping they’d use this season to show why Hector chose to work with Dracula as his forge master, like they did with Isaac last season & this one, but I guess he was just duped into it. It was fun seeing Isaac fight against Legion, one of my fav Castlevania bosses, but it’s not like that side-quest diversion amounted to much.

In a sense, for a 10 episode season, it all felt like a stop-gap for something more substantial next season. I had some theories for what was gonna happen this season when I finished season 2 (I thought they might use this season to close the book on some characters and move along the timeline to Simon’s era) but now I’m even less sure what’s gonna happen in season 4, which is I guess not all bad, but that’s dependent on next season, not this one.

I was gonna make a clever analogy about Season 3 being like a “lesser” Metroidvania, one that’s more bloated and stretched out, where it takes so long just to unlock basic early game upgrades like a double jump, but that would be unfair to season 3 since I overall liked it, so I hope season 4 doesn’t fall in that trap.

Guilty Gear 2020 Analysis And Yes, Opinions

Changes I like

Roman Cancels (or RCs)

RCs seem even more versatile and yet less abusable than Xrd:-

• there’s no 25% meter version ala YRC
• slowdown is only attainable if they are in range to get hit with the “RC blast” (which looks like burst). So doing something like stun edge/Stinger YRC, or even fS RRC doesn’t automatically make you win neutral, or for the RRC case, make you easily convert any hit to a combo, or any blocked attack to a blockstring. In fact, some far hits in 2020 like Sol 6H have such range + push the opponent so far that even with RC it won’t make it possible to convert to a combo easily.
• Neutral RC does slow down the opponent tho (anywhere on screen?) but at least that requires you to be not doing anything consciously. It’s unlike doing fireball YRC to get the slowdown AND have a fireball out
• There’s some weirdness about inputting dash to make you move forward after RCing? It looked cool & probably has potential
• There’s a purple RC, no sure how to get that
• Guard cancel RC is replacing Dead Angle Attacks. It seems, for the most part, a generic replacement, although I wonder if it’s still blockable. It certainly won’t have character-specific stuff, like how some DAA are low profile-able, or can be avoided by air dashing just over, or different frame data stuff like startup and block advantage, or even range. However, it didn’t knockdown, so it seems like a way to directly reset the situation by putting the opponent in a short blowback state with slowdown, and might be more rewarding than the standard DAA, considering how DAAs often push the opponent really far, and how techs work in 2020
  • works in air blocks too. Might be a solid way to escape being staircased since air IB>air throw won’t work now

It’s kind of funny that the last thing I expected the GG after Xrd to do is to have even MORE types of RC. Even ignoring guard RC (the dead angle replacement), there’s like 3 or 4 types of RC, and also the weird dash input after RC, and seemingly more types or at least more uses to be revealed in later builds.

Counter Hits

Really cool looking and don’t seem too “momentum stopping” ala SFV crush counter. They help with some move confirms and have “degrees” to how big of a CH hitstop they are, as there’s a weak, medium, and big CH.

Changes I’m ambivalent to

Throws

Throw changes are probably the biggest, they seem to inform a lot of the other changes too. The changes are:-

1. not 1f (Kedako thinks it’s 2f)
2. have a whiff animation
3. done with 4/6D
4. because of it not being 1f, it now loses to meaty attacks on wake up (and I assume would come out much slower in slowdown, unlike in Xrd where even in slowdown it was still 1f)

This probably has the biggest effect defensively, as throws won’t be as strong of a tool anymore, being harder to land successfully, and more punishable on whiff due to the whiff animation (with no OSes or just a strong fast 5H or 6H to cover your attempt). If they are indeed 2f, they should still be the fastest type of attack that probably every character will have, and post-wake up/block stun throw protection will still be there.

This also means it might not be enough to know if a string has a gap or not. Like frame data in GG is important, but because of strong 1f universal reversals, knowing where gaps were was enough, and you’d easily discern from playing whenever you get hit and there’s no “!” sign to denote that you were opened up from blocking. There still remain backdash, which I don’t know yet if they are frame 1 invulnerable or not.

Dust Attack (or 5D)

1. only lead to follow up on CH
2. faster startup as compensation
3. Can’t normally follow up midscreen, does meager damage on its own and knocks them away
4. Seems like you can follow up on normal hit in the corner with wall bounce/stick combos

5D CH leading to bigger reward might maybe mean they can be used in frame trap situations (possibly to punish whiffed throws if those are CH state) in addition to their overhead property. Frame traps might be more of a thing now in general with reduced universal 1f options too (& the big hitstop on big CH buttons).  They probably do real good damage in the corner as overhead openers. 5Ds might be good for punishing CH recovery moves too.

I also wonder if 5Ds can work as counter pokes. 5Ds don’t often have the most suitable hitbox/hurtbox to work as counter pokes, nor were they fast enough, but they might now be, given their new restrictions and faster start-up. I also wonder if the follow-up on CH can work if the 5D hits airbourne characters.

Air block

1. now blocks everything, even ground buttons, without FDing (you might need to block lows in the air with down-back, and overheads with back/up-back, similar to DBFZ)
2. to compensate: it seems to build quite a lot of RISC, a single air blocked Sol 2H(?) was almost enough to crank RISC above the CH threshold

No air tech

1. All hits that either launch or hit characters airbourne can’t be teched out in the air. Only after they land will they “tech”
2. Some moves lead to a “float” animation on hit, while other attacks seem to push the opponent way down and have them hit the ground and tech

These two changes I think go hand in hand. No air tech means grounded string would combo more easily, and there would be less need to jump cancel to “pick up” air hits. Often in GG you’d need to commit to a jump cancel to convert something like Sol’s 5K/2H or Venom’s 6P to a combo & knockdown on normal hit, which if the attack was air FD’d, would put you in an awkward & possibly punishable position after the jump cancel.

But now in 2020, with no air techs, it seems a ground string would both combo and still be safe in case they air block. There’s less need to risk jump canceling thinking your anti-air attack hit, only for it to be blocked. No air techs also apply to attacks that catch backdash or jump-outs, especially in the corner since wallstick/bounce property means it’s really easy to convert those airbourne hits to a damaging combo.

But with all this, what’s the point of air FDing then? It seems clear that RISC, in general, will play a bigger factor, and if the the amount of RISC that Sol 2H did in the gif above is any indication, it seems like it’ll build quite a lot. I also noticed in another instance that Air FDing did not drain as much tension as in Xrd at least, understandable given that it’s no longer a privilege to be able to block grounded normals/DPs while airbourne, so you wouldn’t need to pay as much of a price in tension.

Instant Block (or IB)

1. doesn’t reduce blockstun, but still retains meter building (& maybe RISC reduction)
2. nothing mentioned about it still reducing pushback

    It’s weird how they reduced the number of types of rewards you get from a successful IB. In a high offense pressure game like GG, IBs are a tool necessary to reduce blockstun to:-

1. eke out a gap within a true normal blockstring to escape with 1f reversals
2. force the attacker to strain more if they want to maintain offense by turning a + on block move to 0 or – on block. They’d either need to do faster moves, or use reversals on offense (think Sol doing bringer which gets IB’d, then doing DP after) or spend meter with RC (or force breaks in +R) or risk getting mashed out of
3. make a safe move punishable
4. make a punishable move even more punishable by giving you more time (and reduced push back) for a bigger damaging slower starter combo

This all gives great power at the hands of the defender if they know the timing of the opponent’s attack and blockstring. The attacker then needs to change their blockstring to switch it up and not be predictable or anticipate and bait their IB by beating out their reversals, or do frame traps that would normally not work on normal block (as it might just land as a true blockstring), options which can be dangerous if they were FDing instead of IBing (as it would push them away, whiffing this normal). Now in 2020 there’s only really 2 block types to adjust your blockstrings for: normal block, and FD.

Another important aspect is this makes air strings harder to escape with air IB>air throw (doubly so if air throws are now not 1f anymore). This might be a reason why air block RC is a thing. I also think that maybe air IBing ground attacks (particularly anti airs) might be another important way to reduce RISC build up and could be worth learning (althoough I imagine it would be really funny if they made IBs actually do reduce blockstun, and you then air IB grounded anti-airs and punish them).

It’s just odd that a tool like IB, made to reward good read/reactions, timing, and match up knowledge of character strings, is still there but it won’t be a much of a table-turning tool anymore. Having IB only lead to passive rewards related to tension, RISC, and chip damage is kind of disappointing. Even in the newest Samurai Shodown, the instant block there granted you access to a guard-cancel attack to get you off offensive pressure. It honestly would be less weird if they just took out IB altogether than to keep the lesser important parts of it in.

Gatling routes

1. Seems generally reduced. Ps don’t gatling to anything but Ps. Same with Ks. So 2K lows can’t gatling to slashes and heavy slashes. And 2P/5Ps (generally the fastest attacks) don’t gatling to 2Ks for lows (but maybe still to sweep?)
2. Slash and heavy slash routes seem the same
3. Proximity Slash is still there

    Odd but possibly necessary change. Instead of maybe relying on proration like in previous GGs, now the game limits gatling options to reduce damage output, especially considering how damaging something like cS>5H does in 2020.

This might also be a balance to the weakening of throws. 5P/2Ps are generally the fastest type of attacks, and work best as offensive frame traps, or abare (mashing out of pressure with buttons or throw).  2Ks are often the fastest lows, which makes them the safest empty low option in Oki situations. They’re harder to react to, and harder to escape out of with reversals, particularly if the 2K lands during blockstun. If universal reversals are weaker, then it kind of makes sense that a button like 2K (that catches these reversal attempts in blockstun) would be less rewarding.

Corner

1. Super freeform combos. Sol did like cS>gunflame x3 and it comboed
2. After a certain amount of hits, the wall breaks and there’s a stage transition. Both players then reset around midstage

    Corner game was always strong in GG:-

1. With no more ground to be pushed away towards, projectiles keep you locked down in place for stronger oki & pressure
2. hits (especially air ones) tend to not push the attacker away as much (hence why you get dustloops in the corner, less so midscreen, because of how far jDs knocked away)
3. special properties like wall stick and bounce increase combo potential.

    This means oki is stronger because of #1, and rewards are stronger because of #2 and #3 (and #1 if your character uses projectiles in combos). The new change probably doesn’t effect #1, but makes #2 and #3 more apparent, as it seems like any hit will wall bounces/stick. But now with the wall break and stage transition, it is not possible to loop them over and over. The weakening of throws also makes it also harder to “throw the attacker into the corner” too, so that’s one other aspect that makes escaping the corner harder.

On The Ground hits (or OTG)

1. still there but damage is unscaled

It seems to indicate that after sweeps, you can either choose the hard knockdown for oki, or follow up with damage. The OTG time seems generous enough that you can follow up with stuff that would normally be hard in general gatling routes. Sweeps become in a sense a type of launcher moves (like Tekken), but subsequent hits would quickly force a tech, like how it is in older GGs.

Status effects

1. Ky’s electricity puts a debuff that makes subsequent attacks do more risc and chip?
2. Negative penalty is now displayed as a status effect
3. After corner wall break stage transition, the attacker gets a “positive bonus” buff where they build tension automatically (in addition to other buffs like damage maybe?)

The fact that there were clear icons in the (kinda terrible looking but obviously early) UI do show that status effect might play a bigger role. Status effect were a thing in Xrd: Raven had slowdown effect on his needle, Faust had poison, Slayer in Rev 2 got a forced CH after his bite grab, and Johnny’s Bacchus Sigh makes Mist Finer guard crush (and was unblockable pre-Revelator 1.06 or about, as in prev GGs). From the shown 6 characters, only Ky had a unique special status effect moves with his electricity attack. 

Status effect can be cool, there’s a lot they can do with it (I think Granblue Fantasy Versus, being based on an RPG franchise, has status effect stuff so they might have thought to borrow some of that for GG, but not sure). The status effect part of the UI might also just be the place that shows all the character-specific meter info (like Johnny coins & Mist Finer lvls, Sin’s calorie meter, Raven’s horny meter, Zato’s Eddie meter etc.) all in one convenient place.

Final Thoughts

There’s sound logic to all of these changes. And it seems they balanced each of them from the attacking and defending perspective:-

• Meaties beat wake up throws but it’s harder to meaty people on wake up due to most combos leading to a quick ground tech
• wall combos are very free form and do big damage, but they end with wall break and stage transition back to midscreen (attacker gets a buff as compensation) so you can’t loop them back
• you can air block any ground attack, but since there’s no air tech, it seems like a normal ground string would work fine on air hits, and there’s no worry of tech-button-ing through. Air blocking also builds a lot of RISC
• 1f universal reversals are weaker but reduced gatling route options and weaker rewards on 5Ds (and other overheads) midscreen means there’s less to worry about when blocking, not to mention you can get out of tick throw attempts by jumping out and punishing the whiff animation, and you can still air block if they try to catch your jump out (as long as it comes after jump start-up), this might also be why IB doesn’t reduce blockstun, or else IB>jump out might be too strong
• Most attacks don’t lead to a hard knockdown but the ones that do (sweeps mainly) still give you good time for oki, or you can forgo the oki and follow up for decent OTG damage.
• Counter Hits are now BIG and COOL….that’s it, no but here

Emphasis on RISC is interesting. With air blocking cranking more RISC, and reduced escape reversal options, it seems building RISC would be easier in general? It’s how you become more threatening with mix ups with 5D midscreen at least.

Also seems like in general there’ll be less setplay focus. None of the shown characters ever really got a chance to do some real setplay, partially because of how combos push the opponent so far and make them tech so fast, but also because the characters at this build don’t have the tools for setplay, particularly Ky and May, the strongest of the bunch in projectile-based setplay in Xrd. Maybe at a later build more moves will be added, or more RC types that allow it.

I think GG2020 (in this Arc Revo demo build at least), is simply taking some previous general truths about Xrd and bringing them to their conclusion:

• Wild Throw leads to combo which gets you damage, so why not just have Wild Throw do damage directly
• midscreen mix ups are generally weaker in terms of reward, so why not just make 5Ds and overheads only lead to combo in the corner
• Punch and kick starters have initial proration, so why not just limit the gatling routes to limit combo potential
• Most of the time you escaped from blockstrings with IB and FD, normal block was rarely a way to escape specifically (in instances where IB & FD won’t), so they just made normal block and FD be the only block type that matters in terms of blockstun/pushback, doubly so considering the weaker gatling options from frame trap 5P/2P/2K/5Ks.

My worry is they mold all the characters to be a more homogenous heavy neutral, low setplay type, to fit this new system, and kinda stamp out other types of characters (and players) that can be good because of their combo execution or intense labbing of setplay, or their immaculate defense with crazy IBs. That, in turn, ends up making more redundant character types, and a roster with redundancies is often a worse offender than one that is imbalanced because at least with a weird low tier character, they might play in such a different way that they can still do well due to their unique toolset. But if GG2020 is all Johnnys and weaker Johnnys, then there’s less reason to pick weaker Johnnys.

I know the game is far from finished, and I hope they flesh out the system and characters more, to allow for more variety and reward more types of players (also Venom please). GG can be an oppressive game to learn, but it’s kind of a necessity given the near limitless options the series offers, and the varied playstyles it has. It probably hasn’t been (and will still not be) an easy road for Daisuke Ishiwatari and his team, but I’m hopeful and still excited. I’m not really a fighting game developer, but lately, I’ve been helping a friend of mine make his own fighting game, and this new experience has shown to me that, it’s not only hard to play fighting games, it’s also damn hard to make them.

NieR, Violence, And The Humanity Spectrum: Part 1: Gestalt

Introduction

[Goes without saying that this post will have major spoilers for the original NieR, though not Automata, that’ll be in Part 2 sometime later]

NieR and Yoko Taro’s other games are about violence, and what drives people to go to such lengths to kill and be desensitized about it, or even feel righteous about it. Obviously, games as a medium are predicated on enacting violence, whether shooting space invaders, or stomping turtles, or gunning down an enemy squad in an FPS, often without delving into it as a moral issue. And when they do, the attempts, particularly in the big budget AAA space, seem rudimentary, offering simple binary “good acts” and “bad acts”: Will you kill the cute little sisters to gain power-ups, but end up with a bad ending? or will you not go the selfish route and save them (which in the end you would recuperate all the missed power-ups anyways) and get a good ending? Commit violence, and while you may get immediate benefits, you will eventually be in a worse outcome. Do good, and while you may be at a loss at first, you’ll eventually be in a prosperous state. Many of the games that try to tackle the moral issue this way end up actually undermining their point, because they inadvertently give a tangible benefit for doing the the right thing, giving you a reward later on, like power-ups, a happy ending, or even simple stuff like a trophy or achievement. And that’s not the best argument for the morality of pacifism if you just end up roping it with a reward. Doing good things can sometimes get you a good outcome, but other times it doesn’t, and it might even put you in a worse place.

So what the NieR games look into is “why” people resort to violence, what drives people to use such a measure to get what they want, without really casting an explicit judgement on it. Unlike other games that look into the issue of violence, there is no “pacifist no-kill” route, you are required to use violence to progress in the game, with no other way to pass through. And while the games have multiple endings, they’re not an assessment of how good of a person you were. There are no bad endings, or good endings, or middle of the road endings. Violence has to happen, and the games try to show you the motives behind it, on both the player and enemy side of things, so that you can understand, or maybe even sympathize, with the the committers, painting a dire hopeless situation with no out, where the most positive outcome of the clash is “well at least one side will get to survive, or get something worthwhile out of it”.

Both NieR games also examine the morality of violence enacted on a sort of “humanity spectrum”. What do I mean by that? Let’s just say If we were to grade any entity, living or not, on how close it is to humans (or more importantly, how they are perceived to be close to humans): we start from the lowest point with inanimate objects, then to tiny organisms like bacteria, then to plants, to animals, and finally to humans with “souls” (I’m sure there’s a better term for this but for now lets use the clunky “humanity spectrum”). Normally, the average person won’t have much of a moral quandary breaking inanimate objects. But they might when going up the spectrum to plants, to small insects, to livestock animals, to wild animals, domesticated companion animals like dogs or cats or horses, and finally at the top, to humans. People even use higher levels of the spectrum as a justification not to enact violence on lower levels: “Don’t go breaking that car with a crowbar, it’s not Larry’s”, “Don’t chop down this tree or it’ll effect the ecosystem, which will deteriorate the environment and hurt animals and humans”, “Don’t eat beef cause cows are conscious and have thoughts and care about their young ones, just like humans do”. Or they might use someone’s pacifism and sympathy for lower levels as argument that that person wouldn’t hurt entities in the higher level: “so-and-so wouldn’t hurt a fly, so how could they punch someone?”. Things get a little bit more interesting when it’s about violence enacted between 2 entities in different positions on that spectrum. People can tolerate the killing of an animal if it means saving a person’s life, if say a wild animal attacks someone. Sometimes, even humans can go down the spectrum based on what they did or how they are perceived. People justify capital punishment done on criminals because they have done such inhumane acts, like murder, and they cannot ever be redeemed and become genuine human beings again, or that going through with the execution is the only path for their salvation to be a good soul again. Not to mention a lot of horrible genocides and enslavements throughout human history were justified by claiming that people of a certain race or religion or nationality or any form of social group they ascribe to are “subhuman”. The people who believe and act on this say they are not cruel because they aren’t killing actual people, they’re killing “animals” who’s existence is a threat to real humans (or precisely, their very strict definition of real humans, who have a particular look or follow a specific mindset or social belief).

And so the NieR games examine this topic in an interesting thought-experiment way by having you play as literal incomplete-humans or human-like characters fighting other quasi-human characters. The funniest thing about the NieR games (aside from the fact that it is a series that canonically originates from a crazy joke 5th ending of the original Drakengard) is that it’s a series about humanity’s propensity for violence with no real true complete human characters, whether in the protagonist or antagonist side. In the original NieR, this fact was hidden from you, but in Automata it is clear from the outset. The NieR games also love to showcase this via multiple playthroughs, where the first playthrough casts the enemy as seemingly mindless vicious monsters hell bent on ridding you and your kind. But the second adds in a little more context, or puts the player in a different perspective, which will help cement the player’s doubts about the player-character’s motives and justification for using violence that was have built up in the first playthrough.

Part1: Gestalt

In the original NieR, you play as a father (or brother in NieR Replicant, but I’m going with the story of NieR Gestalt) named Nier (just to keep things straight, “NieR” = Game, and “Nier” = character) who wants to save his daughter, Yonah, and his village from the threat of Shades, which manifest as these creepy shadowy monsters that attack the villagers, or as a disease that possess and ultimately kills people, known as the black scrawl. So papa Nier tries his best to go around the world questing and gathering a party and leveling up and acquiring new weapons and magic abilities and other RPG stuff to become strong enough to save his daughter, which halfway through gets kidnapped by the leader of the Shades, called, appropriately, “The Shadow Lord”. After the final confrontation, mysteries are revealed, and you learn that these shades are actually what’s called “Gestalts”, which are the souls of humans that were intentionally separated from their original physical bodies for a long backstory reason, and were planned to be inserted back into artificial bodies at a later time (called “Replicants”), which happen to be YOU!!! THE PLAYER CHARACTER!, and your family and friends and all the other village people.  So on one hand, the gestalts, which were once real humans and sat at the top of the humanity spectrum, got corrupted, became mindless and violent, losing some of their sentience and sense of identity, and slid down that spectrum. On the other side, Replicants, which are mere meat grown in some sort of process, developed a sense of consciousness and identity, and rose up that spectrum. (The NieR wiki mentions that the gestalts “relapsed”, became corrupted and started attacking replicants because their corresponding replicants became more and more self-aware. But I prefer an ambiguous reading of it that doesn’t state which side caused the other).

This is expanded upon in the second playthrough, when you, the player (not the character you play as or his party), can now understand what the shades are saying with subtitles that translate their garbled unintelligible speech (2001’s ICO on PS2 did a similar thing). The second playthrough also adds extra cutscenes that center around some of the prominent shades you fight. The biggest examples are the wolves attacking the town of Facade, which show that the pack and their shade leader are just enacting a retaliatory revenge attack on the kingdom by attacking the wedding and killing the just-married Queen of the kingdom, all because the guards were previously killing the wolves on masse so that they wouldn’t attack the village during the wedding in the first place. In an attempt to protect the wedding from an attack, the guards only provoked the wolves to attack. Violence begets violence.

The other example is the little shade controlling the robot. The cutscenes show that the shade is a child that was saddened by the death of their gestalt mother. And that in the shade’s grief, a robot comes and befriends the little shade, becoming determined to protect the kid at all costs. So the battle against the robot doesn’t frame the shade as an entity controlling the robot, it shows that the robot, by its own will, simply wants to protect its friend from getting killed by Nier. (note that the young shade has the most shrill voice, one that is almost literally painful to hear because Yoko Taro is a huge jerk).

These examples expand the player’s understanding of the shades, showing that they are intelligent compassionate creatures that care not just for their own, but for others like animals and intelligent robots, with sympathetic reasons worthy for those animals and robots to befriend or side with in a conflict, which Nier just cannot fathom to understand, let alone see. But the most important example that explains most about what Nier thinks of the shades is in the village of Aerie, as this shows an example of replicants like Nier recognizing the humanity of shades, and really shows what Nier thinks of them:-

[If you played NieR or watched the part above till 1:39:00, you can skip the next 2 paragraphs, which just describes the above video section at length]

When entering the cave that leads to Aerie in the second playthrough, a short audio-only cutscene plays where we hear that the villagers are talking amongst each other (in an odd possessed tone), being worried about “that man” who will kill everyone. Being that it’s the second playthrough, you, the player, know that this must refer to Nier. You also learn that the villagers wish to be left, with their shades, alone. That they’re not being invaded or oppressed by them. That the villagers and shades want to co-exist in peace and that they do not need saving. This is supported when Kaine confronts and kills one of the villagers, believing that it’s a shade, while the villager and her young brother plead Kaine and her crew to stop attacking. But a shade does indeed manifest out of the still warm dead body of the villager, and starts attacking Kaine and her crew, slashing Kaine and knocking her out, and through the ensuing fight you hear the shade speaking, saying that it and the villagers wish to be left alone, and that what you are doing is monstrous, that you are the true villains for going around killing innocent people, whether shades or replicants.

Then, during the boss fight with the giant orb boss (Wendy), Emil exclaims that what’s in the orb is not shades, it is in fact people, and he becomes hesitant, but Weiss denounced that, saying that it’s shades. The boss fight ends with Emil going nuclear and blowing up the boss and the whole village with it. After that, the party regroups at the entrance of what was just moments ago, a village full of people. Stricken by his guilt, Emil starts crying, but Nier consoles him, saying that if not for him, the group would have been all dead. “don’t look back”, he says, as the cutscene ends.

[Continue below]

This section is probably just as dire and tragic as the ending, since it shows a possible future of peaceful coexistence between the shades and replicants. We don’t know whether this is an ideal coexistence or not. It’s possible that a lot of the shades were inhabiting bodies that don’t belong to them (which is possible, as is the case with Tyrann, who is a shade that’s partially possessing Kaine). It’s possible that even if they did inhabit their own bodies, they would basically write over the self consciousness that the replicants developed, maybe completely or partially, but there’s at least some elimination of character happening. A lot of this isn’t exactly known or explored, but the tragedy is Nier and his crew didn’t even look at this, or give them a chance to work this messy coexistence out. He didn’t understand the situation, or rather, he didn’t seek to understand the situation. Maybe it’s because Nier himself can’t understand what the shades are saying, but if robots and wolves and other replicants can communicate fine with them, why not Nier? Even then, Kaine, being already partially possessed with a shade, have been shown to understand what shades say when she fights the boss Gretel and even earlier against the boss shade Hook. Emil certainly does understood the situation as well. And it’s hard to imagine an all-knowing all-powerful flying wise book like Weiss can’t understand shades. But Kaine holds a grudge against shades, Weiss seem to have forgotten some of his abilities and just history of who the shades are, and Emil just keeps getting pushed around by the other three to do their bidding unwillingly. It shows how people who know what they’re doing is wrong can be complacent helping someone ignorant of the situation, like Nier, continue to enact violence.

Still, there’s a tiny chance Nier was right and all those villagers lost their self consciousness and free will, that they were all possessed and that they could not be saved, that their cries and fears and complaints are mere show, enacted by the shades puppeteering the replicants to instill guilt and hesitation on Nier’s party. This is hinted at in the dialogue cutscene when you enter the area, where the villagers aren’t speaking in a normal tone, but rather an odd “possessed” tone. It’s possible that killing the shades and their bodies, and destroying the village, did prevent the threat of shades from expanding to other villages, but this is merely a comforting scenario that you can believe that makes Nier’s action at least understandable, or righteous.

This all culminates in the final confrontation between Nier and his Gestalt mirror self at the end of the playthrough. Gestalt Yonah, after possessing her corporeal replicant body, sees that replicant Yonah is a real self conscious entity that seeks to rejoin her father, like herself. Gestalt Yonah recognizes Replicant Yonah’s humanity, and seeing no other way out, Gestalt Yonah sacrifices herself in order to save Replicant Yonah. Contrast her act to what Nier does immediately after that scene. The Shadow Lord becomes stricken with grief over the loss of his daughter and goes crazy trying to kill Nier. And Nier says something important that sheds some light on how he justifies his violence: “You want me to understand your sadness?”, “You think I’m gonna sympathize with you?”, “I have something to defend! I have a reason to live!”. This isn’t just ignorance from Nier anymore, he knows who the Shadow Lord is and what his goals were. It’s no longer ambiguous, there is no benefit of the doubt to be given, and there hasn’t been for some time before the final hour or so of the playthrough, but Nier doesn’t care. It’s very antithetical to what Gestalt Yonah did: Yonah saw her counterpart as a real human worthy of saving, even at the price of her own, while Nier and the Shadow Lord saw each other as a monster that has to be killed.

NieR doesn’t cast sides as good vs evil, it just presents this sad hopeless dire situation as is. The shades and Shadow Lord particularly are far from innocent, even when they still have their sanity, and have not relapsed and gone into uncontrollable madness. It’s possible that a relapse is in itself a conscious act done by shades as they realize their own bodies grew their own consciousness, leaving no place for them to come back to, and they start killing or possessing replicants as a form of retaliation, or as some way to scare replicants from becoming conscious, or anything more than docile. A lot of gestalts never recognized the replicants’ humanity, so why should the replicants do?

In the end, after the player has gone through multiple repetitive playthroughs of the game, having to have collected all the weapons, NieR hopes that the player has learned from their experience by asking them to do something analogous to what Gestalt Yonah did. It asks if you, the player, have recognized the humanity of an in-game character who you have learned a lot about, how she was shunned by her hometown for her body, how she was raised by her loving grandma who was killed by a shade, thus igniting her life-long grudge against shades, and how she was possessed by a malevolent shade, corrupting her until she was completely taken. It asks you to do the ultimate sacrifice a game could possibly ask its player without probably venturing into illegal territory, all to save a video game character, to extend your gesture of goodwill across the TV and into the game’s world. It asks: “Are you a sympathetic enough dude to delete your save data to save Kaine?”

Next part, we will be talking about the real reason I have gone and wrote this whole thing, which started out just as a preamble that was pretty long already, and just grew and grew, and I thought “this is just way too big to just put as a supplementary intro so may as well cut it into parts and post it separately”, and that is obviously NieR Automata, where it tackles violence but the major difference being with entities on both sides that don’t:

1. Really die (seemingly?)
2. Feel pain (maybe?)
3. Fight as a means for survival due to #1 but also because they don’t care for survival as a goal (or do they?)
4. Have language barriers and can communicate freely with each other if they want to

I’m hoping to get that done before the end of the year but I might get lazy or busy or whatever. In any case, hope you enjoyed reading this.

All screenshots were acquired from Maggie Mui Longplays channel on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-LYw1TIOjA3hNhriA7535g

Shantae and the Half-Assed End Game

Hello, long time since I wrote here. Anyways, I managed to finish Shantae 1/2 Genie Hero last night. And for a game that started out great, one I’ve been excited to play (can’t say I’m the hugest Shantae or even Wayforward fan but I always enjoyed their games, and their great sprite work along with usual collaborator Jake Kaufman’s music), the last third of Shantae did just spend all the goodwill it accumulated in the first 2 thirds. It’s a problem that’s endemic of bad “Metroidvania” design, things that I sometimes think developers wrongly believe are what’s “fun” about Metroidvanias as a genre. Just to get the good stuff out of the way, I did really like the look and sound of the game (I’m writing this while listening to the OST). And the writing and story was good silly fun.

So like any Metroidvania, Shantae uses level design where you are hampered from progressing thru a level or a part of a level because of you not having the ability needed to get past an obstacle, whether it’s high ledges or underwater caverns or big blocks of rock. And you get the abilities needed via transformations dances, where Shantae can transform into all sorts of animals with a cute little dance. The problem can be probably summarized as “there are way too many transformations and progress-critical upgrades”. The game has about 8 critical dancing transformations (there are 4 more but they’re mostly optional). So Shantae can transform into 8 creatures. But that’s not it. Each of those transformations has its own ability upgrade. So basically there are 16 progress-critical ability upgrades that Shantae needs to get to complete the adventure.

16 is a number and it doesn’t really on its own determine whether a metroidvania has enough progress-critical upgrades or not, but the way they handled them here does clearly show that they kinda over did it by about 5 to 6 or maybe more upgrades, so much so that some of the abilities have like super specific uses that are only used in literally 1 screen of the whole game. Take for example the crab and mermaid forms.

Shantae in her normal form can only swim on the surface of water. She can’t dive under. So one of the first transformations she gets is the crab form, where she be a crab and crawl around and jump underwater. Sound good. Then underwater you’ll find ledges that are too high for you to jump to. And soon you’ll get the mermaid dance, which lets you turn into a mermaid and swim freely underwater. Two forms that are underwater related? Doesn’t it sound redundant, and if the mermaid form makes you move freely, why ever turn into a crab? Well, the crab is much smaller than the mermaid form, so you can go into small crevices underwater, where you couldn’t, Ok. So you go into one and then you find seaweeds and you can’t progress cause guess what, the crab form needs an ability upgrade so you can use your little claws to snap seaweed. Why is a crab snapping its tiny claws considered such an extraordinary ability that needs to be a distinct upgrade you collect out of a hidden treasure chest? I don’t know. It sounds so rudimentary, like having one of the later abilities in a Castlevania game be “swinging a sword” or “punching” or “whipping”. But anyways, so now you can break any obstructions underwater? No. There are big rocks and you need to get an upgrade for the mermaid form to shoot bubbles, which can break them. Ok, is that all of the water-related abilities? Well no, in the last like 30 min of the game, you can the ability to awkwardly climb waterfalls (tho it is functionally more like you warp up to the top of a waterfall or the bottom. You don’t freely move).

And that’s the problem with having so many upgrades. The game splits-hairs on which specific ability can be used to access a specific place that 2 or 3 other abilities that do things similar don’t. Take the Spider-form. It allows you to shoot a web and cling to ceilings (not walls mind you. Spiders can’t do that you know). Taken on it’s own it seems like a fine ability. But it might be the most redundant ability because you can jump higher and climb walls with the monkey form, or outright fly with the harpy form, or use the bat form to float (not freely fly tho, that’s for the harpy form. Splitting hairs!). If Shantae 1/2 Genie Hero didn’t have all these other more immediate abilities, the spider form might be used more. But there aren’t many instances where it is needed unless it’s a high narrow spike-filled pathway that’s too small for the harpy to fly thru, and is inaccessible to the monkey due to spikes, and that there isn’t a nearby ledge that’s on the same height where the bat form can float thru safely, nor is there a nearby wall where the monkey form can climb and then spring over to the other side with the “monkey bullet” ability. Only then (that is if the ceiling isn’t filled with spikes) is the spider ability “useful”.

It also means a lot of the abilities aren’t useful in the “general action-platformy parts” aside from the obstacles that are put there specifically for you to use those abilities. The only 2 are the monkey form, which makes you move faster, be smaller, and jump higher than the human form, although you lose any attack ability. And the harpy form unlimited flight, always useful in platformers (although you only get it really late in the game because of how obviously useful flying is in a platformer). None of the other abilities are useful for taking out large hordes of enemies, nor get thru a level more quickly, or to do more damage against bosses (you’d think the Elephent charge attack might do a lot of damage vs bosses but from what I tried it doesn’t and it’s unsafe and you’re best staying in human form and spamming scimitar magic while attacking). So for the most part you may as well be just carrying around a set of very specific metaphorical “colored keys” that are only useful when you find the coordinating metaphorical “locked door” for you to use. And more often than not, after the excitement of opening those doors, you’ll more likely find another door behind that needs a different colored key that you most likely don’t have and need to do a bunch of backtracking and forthtracking 3 or 4 times in a stage doing tedious fetch quests of items that you can’t fetch because it requires an ability you get by finishing another fetch quest that you should have been doing first instead of this quest you’re doing.

I think Shantae 1/2 Genie Hero might be the ultimate argument of the banality of Metroidvania design if the only things a new power-up grants you is accessing tiny segments of a stage that only house either more locked doors, or another ability that then itself only grants you another tiny segment in another level with more locked doors and colored keys. And as a fan of metroidvanias, I believe this genre is more fun and worthwhile and meaningful than that.

Eva 3.3333333/Qqqqqq spoilery thoughts

I liked it, don’t think I like it more than 2.2222222 but I still liked it. I heard ppl didn’t like this as much. I guess I can see why. It feels…short, not necessarily length wise but it def lacks a conclusion? especially for most of the cast since they kinda don’t go thru any sort of arc (well besides poor Kowaru), even for Shinji. It feels like how the part 1 of the 7th Harry Potter movie (or one of many “we had to split the last movie of our planned trilogy into 2” movie) feels, like it ends on the end of the second act & you are waiting for the 3rd act to start & the oops it ends. Looks hella beautiful as always.
Other thoughts:

– I liked that it’s post-apocalyptic, & it’s post-apocalyptic like nothing else. Like with End of Eva you only get to see what happens after the third impact & then poof, movie over. Here you get to see a little bit more of the world & its red & crazy, it does look like hell on earth.

– I’m kind of a sucker for drastic time jumps, I know it’s an easy gimmick to freshen things up but the fact this takes 14 years after is pretty cool. Almost everyone looks different now, & it’s a new world with new bases & ships & stuff, helps sink in how just foreign this must feel to Shinji.  Although how convenient it is that people who pilot Eva’s “don’t age up”. Like I can get that Ayanami & Kowaru might not age up because Ayanami is just a weird clone/vessel & Kowaru is an angel, & Shinji has been stuck in his Eva Unit all this time (besides the whole Eva saga is about sad teenage feels so it would be kinda counter to the ethos of Eva to have Shinki grown up), but I would have liked an aged up Asuka & what’s her face with glasses…uh…shit…*googles*….Mari Illustrious Makinami. Actually I don’t think they ever even called her name her (she was just called four eyes by Asuka, lol). I will give them credit cause it seems like Asuka has grown up at least mentally & isn’t just her same old hot head self.

– boy they rrrreally made this for Shinji X Kowaru fans. I’m kinda surprised they didn’t do as much “fanservice” as usual tho, beyond the Kowaru X Shinji stuff.

– I think for an Eva movie, they did do more explanation & exposition than usual, like that old dude who hangs out with Ikari did explain quite a bit to Shinji when he played Shoji with him.

– so uh…this was out in Nov 2012 & we are close to 4 years from its release & from what I hear there’s been no info on when the fourth (& I believe last) rebuild would come out. Like Hideaki Anno managed to make a new Godzilla movie out (which I hear is pretty great so I def do wanna watch it) but I guess animation & live action are so different that they can each be in production without hampering the others progress…I guess that’s what I hope the situation is. I really wanna watch the 4th one soon cause I fear I might forget where things were & what happened in the previous movies by the time that comes up. 

Uncharted 4 spoiler-filled quick post-game review thing

• No where near as good as The Last of Us, it might not even be my fav Uncharted. But I liked it still
• Villains were both meh in their own ways. Rafe was never threatening, while Nadine was never really invested in taking down Drake or getting the treasure. I feel like a combination of the two would have been better.
• Super happy ending was unearned. It’s like the most optimal ending, which kind of goes against the whole theme of greed having bad repercussions. The whole game is about how Nathan should NOT be going back to treasure hunting, and that’s clearly showcased in Henry Avery’s story. But…in the end he does find the treasure and does end up working as a legit explorer whatever and he becomes super rich and famous and has a daughter and Sam and Sully are now cool uncles who do their own adventuring.
• Sam could have been a bit more interesting. Him having a lot of banter doesn’t equal character development. I can’t really describe him any different than Nathan to be honest.
• I wish the tension between Sam and Nathan would have happened earlier in the game. Nathan should have learned that Sam lied to him earlier, because for quite a long time there’s not much that happens once Sam joins up with Nathan right until that point, I mean in terms of character development of Sam particularly and the relationship between Sam and Nathan.
• Flashback scenes were great, probably the best parts in the game maybe. And they were very The Last Of Us
• Final Boss battle was up there with MGS4 in terms of being super dumb. Games with final bosses that use a brand new mechanic or are very QTE-ish are dumb. And again, Rafe was NEVER threatening. I never believed for a second that Rafe could take down Nathan in a stupid sword fight, and when he does I blame the stupid new mechanic Naughty Dog just threw at me at this moment
• Had pacing problems? Lots of long stretches of climbing parts and then shooting parts. It’s kind of repeats itself: get to a place, explore it a bit by jumping and climbing, reach a critical point in whatever location they’re exploring that shows them more clues about the treasure whereabouts and the backstory of Henry Avery, and this point usually has a puzzle to solve, then you exit the place to head to the next cave/island/tower and you find out that bad guys are there blocking your exit so more stealth+shooting commences.
• Lots of boxes with wheels. The exact same boxes with wheels that are apparently everywhere whether in Panama or Italy or Scotland or Madagascar or a tiny pirate island near Madagascar. It becomes even more comical when you realize that Drake has a rope that he can perfectly throw and hook trees mid-jump but he cant use to climb a wall with?
• I really liked the backstory of Libertalia and Henry Avery and the pirates. Usually the legends in these Uncharted games never made me interested as much as this one. They seem to always be just enough exposition to service the adventuring and exploring part of the main narrative, and to simply point to where Drake and crew should go next. But this one was pretty cool, first with Avery’s fascination with Saint Dismis, then him amassing his treasure in Madagascar, then the establishment of Libertalia, the Pirate version of “Outer Heaven” I suppose, a nation of pirates. And then the in-fighting and downfall of the nation and ultimately Avery himself due to his greed.
• It’s probably why I spent more time reading all the notes in this one more than other Uncharteds.
• I’m also glad that a modern AAA game can still deliver backstory thru stuff like environmental clues or by written notes WITHOUT relying on audio recordings, which is becoming rather tiresome in these games. If you think the backstory itself is not interesting or short enough for me the player to stand there to read/observe, then I don’t think I’ll be interested if I can consume it in a more passive form with audio recordings.
• Guybrush Threepwood being one of the founding pirates was a cute nod

All in all, I enjoyed my time with the story mode, I just don’t see this as being something I’ll look back to fondly or think it has Game Of The Year potential. Maybe I’m tired of this franchise, maybe this one really wasn’t that great anyways but I’m glad Naughty Dog can now move away from Uncharted to do other stuff.

Games of the Year 2014 (Part2: Indie console games)

Transistor

Because Transistor exemplifies the best of what indie games can offer

It’s not a surprise that Transistor became the poster child for indie games this year, as it clearly demonstrates all the best qualities a self-motivated, self-monetized, and self-managed game made by a smaller team has over a larger budget AAA title: Innovative mechanics, stark new art direction, some oldschool sensibilities (this is an isometric game after all) bucking of trends (a game that stars a female protagonist and with a love interest? Not something you see, except for maybe Otome games but those are centralized around that idea).

Plus, there’s a great sense of just plain fun in the game. There’s a hum button, where protagonist Red would hum to the great soundtrack. There’s a flourish button, where Red would just twirl the sword, which has no discernible purpose. You can hang-around in the beach areas, play with a robo-dog, or just sleep on the hammock and enjoy listening to different tracks of the game. It’s all just there because they’re fun things to do.

Because a great competitive game must start with a solid simple basis

2014 has been a strong year for local “couch” competitive games. Nidhogg, Sportsfriends (on Playstation at least), Samurai Gunn (which was technically December of 2013 but I only managed to play it this year), and the new Smash Bros. But Towerfall is definitely the best of them all. Even Smash. which while great, essentially incorporates the same exact mechanics from Brawl (if not Melee) with a little bit of fine-tuning and a general increase in speed. I mean take out all the new stages and new characters and you pretty much have Brawl but in HD. It’s a shame there is no online-mode of sorts. And it’s also a shame that the new expansion is probably not going to add Online multiplayer. But if you have even a single couch-buddy, Towerfall is so much fun.

 Because it’s a silly little game with a lot of heart

Octodad reminds me of SEGA’s Virtual-On, of all things. Now I love Virtual-On, it’s a great mecha-action series with a fun, deeper-than-it-looks competitive edge and great iconic mech designs that take advantage of the chunky polygonal look of early 3D games. But it seems the game’s convoluted controls may have turned off people from playing it. But to me, it’s that weird controls that makes Virtual-On so fun. Because the complex controls gives the game plenty of nuance on what you can and cannot do at a specific time, which is all important information that players need to learn in order to up their competitive game. Plus I imagine piloting giant mechs like those won’t be as easy say driving a car.

And that’s what is fun about Octodad too, figuring out how to control Octodad IS THE WHOLE POINT of Octodad. And even failing that yields many hilarious moments. It brings back that tactile feeling of trying to figure out how to play Super Mario Bros for the first time, or Super Mario 64, and then being rejoiced once you learn how to Z-Jump. If you’ve been playing games for a while now, on different genres, you can probably discern how any of the upcoming games would probably controls like: The Order 1886 will probably control like a 3rd person cover shooter, Zelda Wii U will probably control like the last few Zeldas, even indie games have clear inspirations they take from and conventions they follow. In most of these games, controls are the medium to deliver a game’s main point, whether to showcase amazing graphics or an interesting story or a massive scope or exciting mechanics. But in Octodad, the controls are the message. And that is so rare these days (The last game I could think of that shares a similar idea may be EA’s Skate. ).

And this is all wrapped up in a super charming and funny story about a person trying to disguise their identity to fit-in to society’s expectations, only to find it so hard for themselves that they end up having to reveal their true personality, getting them both accepted by their family and friends and also shunned by others (well, a seafood cook in this case). It’s just a fantastic game, one that you won’t forget anytime soon.

Games of the Year 2014 (Part 1: Intro + Big Budget Console games)

I suppose it’s that time again, where everyone lists their games of the year and all that. So I wanted to do mine, which will be split into several parts put into very loose “categories” cause I don’t want a huge long post on this. Actually, there will probably be some games that weren’t released this year. Also, these aren’t the best games in an objective manner (cause no such thing exist). Anyway let us begin:

Big Console Games of the Year

It seems year by year, I become less in touch with more modern AAA games. Games like Far Cry 4, Sunset Overdrive, and Forza Horizon 2 would probably be something I would totally be into…if it was 2005. It’s not a slag on these games, it’s just that I’ve been drawn to more smaller niche portable/retro games over the last couple of years, this is especially true since I’ve been ramping up my retro game collecting this year to dangerous proportions. Still, I do play AAA games every now and then. I liked the Multiplayer in the new Call Of Duty, I enjoyed Destiny’s beta (but have yet to spend the time with the full release), and I did enjoy a few AAA games so much that they are now going to be listed below as some of my Games Of The Year:

 

Alien Isolation

Because you don’t let the budget of your game design the game for you

A first person Stealth-survival horror game with no auto-saves, limited resources, and an invincible stalking enemy that follows you through the whole game does not sound at all like what you would expect from a AAA movie-franchise based game, but that is what Alien Isolation is.

It is a genuine stealth survival horror game through and through. I had some of the most tense moments ever in a game just slowly huddling into a tiny cupboard, looking at my grainy green motion tracker, noticing that the tiny number is ticking down, then seeing the green dot come into the screen, seeing it get closer and closer, the beeps going faster and faster, then you see it, you see the Alien through the tiny holes of the cupboard lumbering around the room, making that distinct Alien screeching sound. You wait, and wait for what seems like minutes on end. And then the alien leaves and you are immediately encumbered with relief.

And then there’s the amazing faux ’70s technology retro futurism aesthetics, which was realized so well and so fantastically recreates the look of the original Alien, something which could have only been achieved with a AAA budget.

There’s an argument that smaller indie games usually are more adventurous and innovative with gameplay mechanics, artsyles, and storylines, but they lack the scope and detail of AAA games. While AAA games have massive scope and intricate detail, but they usually incorporate very safe, very conventional game design, artstyles, and storylines. Alien Isolation is a little bit of both, and that’s why I think it’s special. Sure it has it’s flaws: it’s way too long. And it oddly ramps up in very “gamey” ways (like how the androids suddenly become immune to electricity because they put on raincoats late in the game, among other things) but even so, Alien Isolation is fantastic.

Strider (2014)

Because sometimes borrowing ideas can be a great idea onto itself. “Good Artists copy, great artists steal” and all that.

The Playstation 1 was not an environment where Castlevania could succeed, specifically the old classic-style castlevanias. So Castlevania had to change from a simple, short but extremely hard platformer into to a more meaty experience with Symphony of the Night. Strider 2 didn’t adhere to that lesson, going for a more traditional design, which was sadly out-of-fashion when it was released in 2000. And it seems like it failed commercially speaking (I’ve yet to finish it, but so far it seems like a fun game. Maybe not as good as the original or Osman/Cannon Dancer).

So following Castlevanias path, the new Strider adopts a “metroidvania” design. And it’s not like there wasn’t a precedent made in the same series. Just like how Castlevania II on NES was a loose progenitor to SOTN, Strider did veer once before into similar territory with the NES version of the original. And this new Strider is well executed. The Power-ups are fun to use & work more than just “keys” to open up the next section of the map (see Castlevania: Mirror’s of Fate if you want a bad example of power-ups, some are LITERALLY just used to open doors). And the map design is large but always populated with engaging new enemies, new environments, interesting collectibles, and hidden areas. And once you’re near fully powered, you get that sheer awesome “metroidvana end game” feeling where you are just too powerful, and enemies that initially were so tough become mere weaklings. And the controls feel really nice, very reminiscent of the original (I love that Strider can mash his sword probably as fast as the player can input them).

The transition to a “metroidvania” design does make it lose a bit of the tight pacing and level design of the original arcade game (same thing was lost when Castlevania transitioned into SOTN frankly). Plus, having it be a metroidvania means you can’t have the globe trotting parts of the original, since it’s all taking place in one location. The music sucks, and the story is dull bad rather than insane non-nonsensical bad, like the original arcade game. And the same goes for a few of the boss-battles Still, it’s a great new adaptation of the series. And I hope a sequel comes up.

Bayonetta 2

Because doing the things you know best, that everyone knows you do best, can be the best thing you could ever do!

I wrote most of what I wanted out of this in an Ello post a few weeks ago, so I think I may just link that here:

https://ello.co/badoorsnk/post/qmJFwGAu3qNYAkIW-HCNkA