Starsong
2023
I'm going to be exposing myself as a scrub casual (among other things) by commenting on this but alas. The thing about these long-running games (or just MMOs and other derivatives) is that you have to balance around both people who have 12-hour shifts at the office and people who pretty much play the game for a living. Obviously any sort of "lifestyle" game is going to have this problem because they're the sort of thing where you're encouraging the fans to sink as much time into it as possible, so there's going to be huge skill gaps in between the hardcore players and everybody else, but when you staple on RPG elements and gear / ability builds it starts to get real wild.
I'm not new to these games, I've technically been playing since the beta of the first Destiny, but that obviously doesn't mean I'm amazing at it. Despite the fact that I've racked up quite a few hours in both games, I have friends who somehow beat my time investment within 3-4 months of getting into the series. I'm the kind of person who doesn't really have the time or energy to sink enough into the game to have optimal builds for three characters, whereas some of my friends seem to be paid 71.3 USD/Hour to whoop Atheon's transparent ass.
Lightfall is fine if you ask me. I think the content is fine. The campaign leaves a lot to be desired story-wise, but the ending is psychedelic and pretty unexpected, and the Season of Defiance narrative is endearing and pretty interesting. The thing is that this drop came with a bunch of changes to buildcrafting and, most importantly, an adjustment to difficulty in a bunch of sections of the game. What difficulty means in this context is that red bars (pretty much trash adds) can facetank any number of shots from your primaries and that you are limited to be several levels under in challenging activities if you can't get your season level high enough in time. This can be fine in certain activities, but a few, such as Lost Sectors, are frankly unbearable as of now.
Most importantly, the aspect most turning me off right now is the fact that Bungie just doesn't want us to feel strong. The buildcrafting rework is, functionally speaking, a "sunset" of pretty much all our builds. There are inferior alternatives to everything and elemental wells are just straight up gone, so good luck. Again, I'm the kind of person that will take a hot second to assemble a build, so it's grown to the point that I stop and think if it's worth grinding up something new because Bungie might just gut it completely.
The strangest part is a lot of the people I'm surrounded with seem to be perfectly fine with this, and I just don't understand. I don't understand what's fun about feeling like your power as a player is constantly fluctuating based on what Bungie thinks is being used too much. They claim they want us to feel like space wizards, but they actively go out and take away our best (and often most fun) tools.
The truth is a bunch of these changes are happening because of a very general complaint that the game is simply too easy. Yet it feels like everybody who I've heard say that is playing 24/7. Datto, my man, your videos are good and informative, but I'm not sure if I should trust you when you say that the game is too easy when your employment consists of playing it.
Like I mentioned before, it can't be easy to balance the game around two opposite crowds. It's often said that these sorts of games shouldn't be balanced around the casuals because they're often trend-chasers who won't stick around anyway. Yet I don't think that everybody who loves the series is necessarily skilled at it. I purchase all the expansions, I follow the lore, I play pretty much every chance I get, but I will never step foot inside a Grandmaster Nightfall.
It's not even that I mind a difficulty increase, I just wish Bungie would test their own game more, and not have me constantly missing stuff I used to be able to do with my weapons and abilities. How did you guys not notice that one of the ultimate abilities was dealing literally double the damage it was meant to? Seriously?
I'm writing this a few hours after contest mode for the new raid has ended, and of course, every fireteam has like four warlocks with Starfire Protocol. I feel like I'm staring at a man who's about to get his head shot off within a couple minutes. How grim.
I'm not new to these games, I've technically been playing since the beta of the first Destiny, but that obviously doesn't mean I'm amazing at it. Despite the fact that I've racked up quite a few hours in both games, I have friends who somehow beat my time investment within 3-4 months of getting into the series. I'm the kind of person who doesn't really have the time or energy to sink enough into the game to have optimal builds for three characters, whereas some of my friends seem to be paid 71.3 USD/Hour to whoop Atheon's transparent ass.
Lightfall is fine if you ask me. I think the content is fine. The campaign leaves a lot to be desired story-wise, but the ending is psychedelic and pretty unexpected, and the Season of Defiance narrative is endearing and pretty interesting. The thing is that this drop came with a bunch of changes to buildcrafting and, most importantly, an adjustment to difficulty in a bunch of sections of the game. What difficulty means in this context is that red bars (pretty much trash adds) can facetank any number of shots from your primaries and that you are limited to be several levels under in challenging activities if you can't get your season level high enough in time. This can be fine in certain activities, but a few, such as Lost Sectors, are frankly unbearable as of now.
Most importantly, the aspect most turning me off right now is the fact that Bungie just doesn't want us to feel strong. The buildcrafting rework is, functionally speaking, a "sunset" of pretty much all our builds. There are inferior alternatives to everything and elemental wells are just straight up gone, so good luck. Again, I'm the kind of person that will take a hot second to assemble a build, so it's grown to the point that I stop and think if it's worth grinding up something new because Bungie might just gut it completely.
The strangest part is a lot of the people I'm surrounded with seem to be perfectly fine with this, and I just don't understand. I don't understand what's fun about feeling like your power as a player is constantly fluctuating based on what Bungie thinks is being used too much. They claim they want us to feel like space wizards, but they actively go out and take away our best (and often most fun) tools.
The truth is a bunch of these changes are happening because of a very general complaint that the game is simply too easy. Yet it feels like everybody who I've heard say that is playing 24/7. Datto, my man, your videos are good and informative, but I'm not sure if I should trust you when you say that the game is too easy when your employment consists of playing it.
Like I mentioned before, it can't be easy to balance the game around two opposite crowds. It's often said that these sorts of games shouldn't be balanced around the casuals because they're often trend-chasers who won't stick around anyway. Yet I don't think that everybody who loves the series is necessarily skilled at it. I purchase all the expansions, I follow the lore, I play pretty much every chance I get, but I will never step foot inside a Grandmaster Nightfall.
It's not even that I mind a difficulty increase, I just wish Bungie would test their own game more, and not have me constantly missing stuff I used to be able to do with my weapons and abilities. How did you guys not notice that one of the ultimate abilities was dealing literally double the damage it was meant to? Seriously?
I'm writing this a few hours after contest mode for the new raid has ended, and of course, every fireteam has like four warlocks with Starfire Protocol. I feel like I'm staring at a man who's about to get his head shot off within a couple minutes. How grim.
2023
Barren and poorly designed live service made by spineless, wishy-washy cowards who fired an artist over tweets advocating for basic human rights and completely jeopardized their tie-in comic by immediately cutting contact with an artist who dared to ask for a reasonable schedule. The writing to these games has always been a bit non-committal, but the fact this company that supposedly muses about the dangers of prioritizing results over processes and the obsession with capital comes out so strongly on the side they're supposedly opposing is simply pathetic. They are quite literally contributing to the Evil State they supposedly hate. They didn't even translate the announcements to japanese or english like they always do because they know this won't go down well.
The sheer gall to co-opt and regurgitate the work of dozens of counter-culture authors who stood their ground against their respective systems and vapidly deploy it here, when it's clear you don't believe in it, just baffles me.
Don't bother.
The sheer gall to co-opt and regurgitate the work of dozens of counter-culture authors who stood their ground against their respective systems and vapidly deploy it here, when it's clear you don't believe in it, just baffles me.
Don't bother.
2023
This review contains spoilers
Quite possibly my only gripe with this entire game is that, during the final boss, it seriously looked like the protagonist was gonna rider kick the guy, and then he didn't.
(Also Felix is kinda ugly enough to put me off, but that's neither here nor there really.)
(Also Felix is kinda ugly enough to put me off, but that's neither here nor there really.)
2023
Everytime I finished a chapter of this I had to get up and walk around the house staring at the walls with my hands behind my back like a middle-aged father watching television.
As soon as I started the main quest my hatred for the previous arc grew exponentially. Goddamn I never wanna see those stupid fucking yaoi boys ever again.
This review contains spoilers
Day six. I have styled my phone's homescreen using image-displaying widgets to display pictures of Firefly. I got through a particularly tough day of work without the use of any stimulants by thinking about Firefly. I have discussed Firefly's status on internet messaging apps for at least 5.3k words. I have approximately 192 pulls saved up in the event that I can eventually use them to obtain Firefly. Youtube recommends me an average of three Firefly-related videos per refresh.
The shadows on the walls grow larger and I cannot seem to glimpse the sun anymore.
There is nothing left for me here. The only way is down.
The shadows on the walls grow larger and I cannot seem to glimpse the sun anymore.
There is nothing left for me here. The only way is down.
dude.
this made me realize that i have an extremely serious tunnel vision problem.
This review contains spoilers
OK but seriously, some thoughts on the entire Penacony arc:
I did not realize how much I liked this game up until 2.0. Before then, this was just kind of a game I played for 5 mins a day before heading back into the infinite torture oil rig.
2.0 itself is fantastic. It's charming, it's funny, it's mysterious, and gets really overwhelming towards the second half which I really dug. The plot gets surprisingly complex and difficult to predict. Even just the scenery is enough to get you interested; there is a very special magic to it all even when the writing falters, and that's something that's difficult to achieve for me. When Something Unto Death first appears, an antagonist unlike anything else in the game with that scary ass music and offputting design, it brings you out of the entire vibe so hard that I can't help but love it. It emphasizes that sudden overwhelming feeling of something unknowable that emerges from a sea of ideas and brings you out of your comfort zone, itself compounded by the plot having like seven different organizations going into it, themselves all motivated by some pretty deep and interesting lore. It is the most promising start to anything I've read in a while.
2.1 is actually just perfect. Despite it laser focusing on the one character so hard, everybody gets important if small character moments, and everything lands with impressive gravitas. I do have to point out that the lack of subtlety in the maze scene is a little funny; Aventurine quite literally talking to The Ghosts Of Christmas Past to get the rest of his backstory and psychology across is a little funny, and it is no short scene either, but I forgave the general tackiness because his character is genuinely complex and fascinating.
You come to feel for him because he is absolutely a victim of systemic injustices but he is also not a baby boy; despite everything, he makes basically every wrong choice he could have in his life, and this shows by the fact that nobody in the cast seems to be on perfectly good terms with him, even Dr Ratio. The way they turn these "attractive" anime boy traits that fujoshi often like, things like his stalkery demeanor, into genuine character flaws and observations is just so great. They completely turned me around on a character that really gave me the ick.
And oh lord, that boss and finale. It's exciting, it's sad, it's complicated, and it's inspiring. I've seen a lot of people completely misread this part of the story. Please don't get outwitted by a game that basically just says that you should live! It's not that complicated, and if you somehow came away out of that patch feeling like Aventurine was dead or going to die, you read the entire last monologue wrong!
2.2 is where the problems begin and I'm not sure they ever end.
It's like 2.1 in the sense that they focused on a single Sad Backstoryman but they really, really fucked up the balance on making the other characters have significant moments. Sunday basically ate his fucking sister, Robin, in the womb because jesus lord he leaves ZERO room for her to do or say much.
At one point, Robin literally gets shot in the fucking throat. We get to hear Sunday musing on it for like a half hour, but we never really... get to hear or see what Robin thinks of it. And yes, I hear you. I know that she doesn't need to turn to the camera and verbally explain her rather simple character, but the problem is, I don't know what to think when the game hits me with polar extreme levels of subtlety. Sometimes you have, again, The Ghosts Of Christmas Past, or Sunday explaining the goddamn dove three fucking times, and other times you have Robin's entire character being in a Youtube trailer and in-between the lines reading. I understand that there is something to her, but the game does not succeed on spreading that cake succesfully.
Oh, and while I'm extremely biased towards Firefly, my favorite character in anything ever, what they did in 2.2 to her was absolutely crazy. Listen, I'm not salty that she didn't suck on the camera like Aventurine and Sunday. I adore 2.1. She's in there for all of five seconds, and yet, in those few scenes that she's in she's treated with such gravitas. Her character comes across wonderfully. 2.2 has a few good scenes of her but they're all already information about her you could have gotten within ONE scene of 2.1. Yes, she has more lines, but she feels less important. She disappears from the story something like halfway through and isn't even given the right to appear in the emotional montage of all the characters at the end. They gave emotional precedence to fucking Sparkle over Firefly. Having played the entire thing in one sitting, I was completely floored and disappointed. And this wasn't helped by just waiting, waiting for her to show up, or for the game to at least acknowledge how core she is to the story, only to get hit by a random tacky HI3 reference from Acheron at a moment where it seriously feels like it should've been her. It felt like getting cold wine poured on my head for the third time that night. The reference isn't given any impact because it is deployed in the most literal way possible, with none of the tender subtext of the original scene and basically no reason to be here. I was genuinely shocked they referenced such a pivotal and iconic scene for what appears to me to be no reason.
The weird thing is, the stuff about Misha, Gallagher, the Nameless, Penacony's history, etc in the patch itself are all absolutely fantastic! But the actual plot of the arc really does not live up to the mystique and magic that it promises because, put plainly, Sunday just isn't that good and he isn't helped by the fact that, again, the fucking dove. It really gives you time to realize how simplistic and downright edgy the entire concept is because through the three times that they bring this up, they don't add anything new or twist it in any way that might make us understand the siblings a little more or find their conflict interesting
The other day I was thinking, just as a random napkin suggestion, if they couldn't have made Robin explain the dove for the second time, and then have them argue with each other for the final time, instead of just center everything on Sunday himself? Because as it is now, Robin feels merely like an opposition and plot device to Sunday to fuel his monologues. I understand that there's more to her character but the game really failed to get that across in how she's treated.
Generally speaking, as pure antagonists go I ended up liking Aventurine way more in his patch because not only do his troubles feel indicative of the world at large and hinting at the overarching plot, he feels genuinely human. Sunday's stuff is all mostly out of his hands because he's being groomed into the entire thing, which I understand is the point but isn't halfway as interesting because Sunday feels like he's getting babied by the story itself. He simply isn't as interesting or as conflicting.
I admire what they were going for here; Sunday isn't like the average antagonist of these "lotus eater" stories, who are often completely right in their ideology but wrong because the plot demands that they be wrong so that the protagonists can win. In this case, Sunday is utilizing dangerous, downright ableist ideology that was drilled into him by his superiors. Sunday is wrong from an ideological standpoint as well as a plot standpoint. They specifically make this clear by making Firefly, disabled and victim of similar injustices, call him out on his shit, which just makes it more jarring that she's not in the latter half of the patch but ok.
When the characters refute Sunday's ideas, it feels like it means something. It's not just the protagonists going "nuh uh", which I admire, but the character himself just...isn't that endearing. The story was straight up more interesting when we thought Something Unto Death was the villain.
2.3 is really good. There's not much to say about this one. This game is utterly fantastic at small, tender, witty character interactions and this patch is probably the strongest writing the game has seen when it comes to these things. I've seen a lot of people be upset at this one, but I can assure you that the problems you have are just snowballed from 2.2, and those are plot points that should have been resolved last patch but weren't because we REALLY needed to repeat the charmony dove thing. This was always meant to be a victory lap and that's exactly what it was. Also everything with Firefly here is really good.
Overall, I really liked it but am somewhat sad that they fucked it up right when it was most important. I hope that they'll learn to balance the great character interactions with the attempts at JRPG plots.
Also, please don't make more Sad Backstorymen for now. Half of the entire story was about them. Give me something else next time.
Also I got my hands on E2S1 Firefly and E1 Ruan Mei without doing any whaling. Woohoo.
I did not realize how much I liked this game up until 2.0. Before then, this was just kind of a game I played for 5 mins a day before heading back into the infinite torture oil rig.
2.0 itself is fantastic. It's charming, it's funny, it's mysterious, and gets really overwhelming towards the second half which I really dug. The plot gets surprisingly complex and difficult to predict. Even just the scenery is enough to get you interested; there is a very special magic to it all even when the writing falters, and that's something that's difficult to achieve for me. When Something Unto Death first appears, an antagonist unlike anything else in the game with that scary ass music and offputting design, it brings you out of the entire vibe so hard that I can't help but love it. It emphasizes that sudden overwhelming feeling of something unknowable that emerges from a sea of ideas and brings you out of your comfort zone, itself compounded by the plot having like seven different organizations going into it, themselves all motivated by some pretty deep and interesting lore. It is the most promising start to anything I've read in a while.
2.1 is actually just perfect. Despite it laser focusing on the one character so hard, everybody gets important if small character moments, and everything lands with impressive gravitas. I do have to point out that the lack of subtlety in the maze scene is a little funny; Aventurine quite literally talking to The Ghosts Of Christmas Past to get the rest of his backstory and psychology across is a little funny, and it is no short scene either, but I forgave the general tackiness because his character is genuinely complex and fascinating.
You come to feel for him because he is absolutely a victim of systemic injustices but he is also not a baby boy; despite everything, he makes basically every wrong choice he could have in his life, and this shows by the fact that nobody in the cast seems to be on perfectly good terms with him, even Dr Ratio. The way they turn these "attractive" anime boy traits that fujoshi often like, things like his stalkery demeanor, into genuine character flaws and observations is just so great. They completely turned me around on a character that really gave me the ick.
And oh lord, that boss and finale. It's exciting, it's sad, it's complicated, and it's inspiring. I've seen a lot of people completely misread this part of the story. Please don't get outwitted by a game that basically just says that you should live! It's not that complicated, and if you somehow came away out of that patch feeling like Aventurine was dead or going to die, you read the entire last monologue wrong!
2.2 is where the problems begin and I'm not sure they ever end.
It's like 2.1 in the sense that they focused on a single Sad Backstoryman but they really, really fucked up the balance on making the other characters have significant moments. Sunday basically ate his fucking sister, Robin, in the womb because jesus lord he leaves ZERO room for her to do or say much.
At one point, Robin literally gets shot in the fucking throat. We get to hear Sunday musing on it for like a half hour, but we never really... get to hear or see what Robin thinks of it. And yes, I hear you. I know that she doesn't need to turn to the camera and verbally explain her rather simple character, but the problem is, I don't know what to think when the game hits me with polar extreme levels of subtlety. Sometimes you have, again, The Ghosts Of Christmas Past, or Sunday explaining the goddamn dove three fucking times, and other times you have Robin's entire character being in a Youtube trailer and in-between the lines reading. I understand that there is something to her, but the game does not succeed on spreading that cake succesfully.
Oh, and while I'm extremely biased towards Firefly, my favorite character in anything ever, what they did in 2.2 to her was absolutely crazy. Listen, I'm not salty that she didn't suck on the camera like Aventurine and Sunday. I adore 2.1. She's in there for all of five seconds, and yet, in those few scenes that she's in she's treated with such gravitas. Her character comes across wonderfully. 2.2 has a few good scenes of her but they're all already information about her you could have gotten within ONE scene of 2.1. Yes, she has more lines, but she feels less important. She disappears from the story something like halfway through and isn't even given the right to appear in the emotional montage of all the characters at the end. They gave emotional precedence to fucking Sparkle over Firefly. Having played the entire thing in one sitting, I was completely floored and disappointed. And this wasn't helped by just waiting, waiting for her to show up, or for the game to at least acknowledge how core she is to the story, only to get hit by a random tacky HI3 reference from Acheron at a moment where it seriously feels like it should've been her. It felt like getting cold wine poured on my head for the third time that night. The reference isn't given any impact because it is deployed in the most literal way possible, with none of the tender subtext of the original scene and basically no reason to be here. I was genuinely shocked they referenced such a pivotal and iconic scene for what appears to me to be no reason.
The weird thing is, the stuff about Misha, Gallagher, the Nameless, Penacony's history, etc in the patch itself are all absolutely fantastic! But the actual plot of the arc really does not live up to the mystique and magic that it promises because, put plainly, Sunday just isn't that good and he isn't helped by the fact that, again, the fucking dove. It really gives you time to realize how simplistic and downright edgy the entire concept is because through the three times that they bring this up, they don't add anything new or twist it in any way that might make us understand the siblings a little more or find their conflict interesting
The other day I was thinking, just as a random napkin suggestion, if they couldn't have made Robin explain the dove for the second time, and then have them argue with each other for the final time, instead of just center everything on Sunday himself? Because as it is now, Robin feels merely like an opposition and plot device to Sunday to fuel his monologues. I understand that there's more to her character but the game really failed to get that across in how she's treated.
Generally speaking, as pure antagonists go I ended up liking Aventurine way more in his patch because not only do his troubles feel indicative of the world at large and hinting at the overarching plot, he feels genuinely human. Sunday's stuff is all mostly out of his hands because he's being groomed into the entire thing, which I understand is the point but isn't halfway as interesting because Sunday feels like he's getting babied by the story itself. He simply isn't as interesting or as conflicting.
I admire what they were going for here; Sunday isn't like the average antagonist of these "lotus eater" stories, who are often completely right in their ideology but wrong because the plot demands that they be wrong so that the protagonists can win. In this case, Sunday is utilizing dangerous, downright ableist ideology that was drilled into him by his superiors. Sunday is wrong from an ideological standpoint as well as a plot standpoint. They specifically make this clear by making Firefly, disabled and victim of similar injustices, call him out on his shit, which just makes it more jarring that she's not in the latter half of the patch but ok.
When the characters refute Sunday's ideas, it feels like it means something. It's not just the protagonists going "nuh uh", which I admire, but the character himself just...isn't that endearing. The story was straight up more interesting when we thought Something Unto Death was the villain.
2.3 is really good. There's not much to say about this one. This game is utterly fantastic at small, tender, witty character interactions and this patch is probably the strongest writing the game has seen when it comes to these things. I've seen a lot of people be upset at this one, but I can assure you that the problems you have are just snowballed from 2.2, and those are plot points that should have been resolved last patch but weren't because we REALLY needed to repeat the charmony dove thing. This was always meant to be a victory lap and that's exactly what it was. Also everything with Firefly here is really good.
Overall, I really liked it but am somewhat sad that they fucked it up right when it was most important. I hope that they'll learn to balance the great character interactions with the attempts at JRPG plots.
Also, please don't make more Sad Backstorymen for now. Half of the entire story was about them. Give me something else next time.
Also I got my hands on E2S1 Firefly and E1 Ruan Mei without doing any whaling. Woohoo.