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  1. #131

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    I found him as hard as ep 4 human enemies - I don't mean Phaleg, but the mother cluster people and Ardem. In other words, not hard at all.

    Quote Originally Posted by Reilet View Post
    Dunno why some of you are refering him as Valna/Veruna or whatever other name being made when Varuna makes perfect sense seeing as all of the antagonists so far have hindu deity names.
    Typo. No need to be nitpicky.

  2. #132

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    Not digging Xiaos new design tbh.

  3. #133
    The Lone Gamer of the Apockalypse Zorak000's Avatar
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    it was fun but yeah this is the version of the fight we're supposed to be able to beat easily; he'll likely be a bigger pain later in some Extreme Quest or Endless Quest

    Xiao's outfit is just a little too busy I'd say; like individual parts are cool but having it all there in one place is, too much

  4. #134

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    Quote Originally Posted by TehCubey View Post
    I found him as hard as ep 4 human enemies - I don't mean Phaleg, but the mother cluster people and Ardem. In other words, not hard at all.

    Typo. No need to be nitpicky.
    mother hechmens were lame except for Aratron, and maybe Kohri

    i hate Ophiel(Dio) because , in the 2 runs i did back in EP4 he make my game crash at least once (i dont know if that problem was fix)

    if i have to compare Varuna it will be with those characters and Ardem in matter of dificulty

  5. #135

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    Spoiler!

    coincidence?

    p.s. character ages from animetion https://pso2.jp/anime_eporacle/character/18/
    Last edited by oratank; Sep 20, 2019 at 10:24 AM.

  6. #136

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    Quote Originally Posted by TehCubey View Post
    Gee, I sure did love the part where you easily beat Varuna's bitch face in and then the cutscene begins and it shows you struggling instead, and THEN the game has the gall to taunt you and ask if that's all the savior of Omega is capable of.

    Keep wanking your shit tier antagonists, Sega.
    As someone else said...
    Quote Originally Posted by Zorak000 View Post
    it was fun but yeah this is the version of the fight we're supposed to be able to beat easily; he'll likely be a bigger pain later in some Extreme Quest or Endless Quest
    It's cool if you find him easy to beat gameplay-wise, but don't forget that lore-wise it's supposed to be another thing. No need to get that pissed because of that.

    Quote Originally Posted by oratank View Post
    p.s. character ages from animetion https://pso2.jp/anime_eporacle/character/18/
    Character ages have been a known fact for a while though.
    https://pso2.jp/players/about/character/

    Glad they didn't change a thing, though it's surprising they left Ash's age as unknown.

  7. #137

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    Xiao's new design looks kinda bad IMO. His baby face ruins it and it's too unfocused.

  8. #138

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    Quote Originally Posted by Krystalwitch View Post
    It's cool if you find him easy to beat gameplay-wise, but don't forget that lore-wise it's supposed to be another thing. No need to get that pissed because of that.
    If Sega wants us to lose, then how about making it a fight you're supposed to lose. Or at the very least have Varuna power up in a cutscene or reveal his trap card or whatnot. But no, they went with a lazy switcheroo: the only way to progress through the fight and into the cutscene is to beat him, and then the cutscene itself shows that no, actually you didn't beat him at all and instead he's beating you.

    This is garbage storytelling. It's even worse than when it happened in ep 1 - at least back then the player character is supposed to be a newbie. In ep 6, you're a badass who single-handedly defeated not only Primeval Darkness (multiple times even) but also a literal god. When the protagonist is so powerful, antagonists who are a credible threat must be introduced and played out with a level of finesse, or else it feels like a cheap copout where the bad guys are dangerous only because of a plot shield*.

    Ep 6 totally fails in this regard. YSOK decided that since in ep 5 you were more or less effortlessly curbstomping all opposition, now the opposite should happen - like if nothing existed in the middle, only these two extremes. Both of which are bad but at least the former is a relaxing power fantasy. The latter is just infuriating.

    * BTW, being immune to photon based weaponry because blah blah handwaved reason? That's also a plot shield. Few storytelling hacks are lazier than "make the villains dangerous by giving them a hard counter to the protagonists' powers".
    Last edited by TehCubey; Sep 20, 2019 at 02:30 PM.

  9. #139

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    Quote Originally Posted by TehCubey View Post
    If Sega wants us to lose, then how about making it a fight you're supposed to lose. Or at the very least have Varuna power up in a cutscene or reveal his trap card or whatnot. But no, they went with a lazy switcheroo: the only way to progress through the fight and into the cutscene is to beat him, and then the cutscene itself shows that no, actually you didn't beat him at all and instead he's beating you.
    No, they don't want us to lose, just to keep him at bait because that's what we were doing. Plus it's still an MMORPG, where even if the story is nice and is used as a device to keep updates going on. There are tons of RPGs that make you lose fights and challenge you, MMORPGs work differently because if they want players to even care about the story, it should be beatable by most of the playerbase.

    Quote Originally Posted by TehCubey View Post
    This is garbage storytelling. It's even worse than when it happened in ep 1 - at least back then the player character is supposed to be a newbie. In ep 6, you're a badass who single-handedly defeated not only Primeval Darkness (multiple times even) but also a literal god. When the protagonist is so powerful, antagonists who are a credible threat must be introduced and played out with a level of finesse, or else it feels like a cheap copout where the bad guys are dangerous only because of a plot shield*.
    We never defeated Unfathomable Darkness single-handedly, lol. Even at the start of Episode 5, we went with Matoi and we weren't even aiming to defeat it - just get [Persona] back. And again, we weren't alone against Deus plus we had another entity (Mother) supporting us for that 'cause we were UNABLE to beat it. This is not garbage storytelling, imo you aren't paying attention to half of the story going on so of course it would seem that way.

    Quote Originally Posted by TehCubey View Post
    Ep 6 totally fails in this regard. YSOK decided that since in ep 5 you were more or less effortlessly curbstomping all opposition, now the opposite should happen - like if nothing existed in the middle, only these two extremes. Both of which are bad but at least the former is a relaxing power fantasy. The latter is just infuriating.

    * BTW, being immune to photon based weaponry because blah blah handwaved reason? That's also a plot shield. Few storytelling hacks are lazier than "make the villains dangerous by giving them a hard counter to the protagonists' powers".
    In Episode 5 we were the HERO of the myth, the usual isekai trope, and even so we required a ton of assistance to get through (like it has been for all the story so far... heck, we even needed [Persona] to help us defeat Elmir, not even mentioning the rest of the falz, KK1st, Alisa...). Now we are facing and entity that has all the photons from the photoners... Obviously it wasn't going to be easy. That such entity may exist has been hinted since... EP3? (many people deduced what Shiva was (UD bait) even before Ep6 came out, no excuses there), and her being this strong is only logical. We are warriors that depend too much on the power of photons, which is actually a really nice plot point (if handled properly), because no organization should depend on a single resource - if it becomes useless, they are screwed.
    Last edited by Krystalwitch; Sep 20, 2019 at 03:57 PM. Reason: typos

  10. #140

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    I could've sworn the story quests have a solo PD fight before ep 5. No matter - freeing Persona, even with Matoi's help, is a much greater achievement than just beating PD normally.

    I'm not buying the "we are warriors who depend too much on photons" explanation - even if that's what Sega intended as a message then you, as a player character, never get offered an alternative to using photons, so now it feels like you're being punished for a choice you never got to make. Unless Dark Blast counts, but for some reason ep 6 seems to forget you even have that ability to begin with.

    There's also a difference between "it wasn't going to be easy" and "your actions are meaningless and don't matter". It's a serious problem of agency and disempowerment. I know it's hard to have player agency in a game like PSO2, with a linear story - but you can at least have character agency. Which is to say, are the actions of the player character impactful and do they make a difference?

    Even as early as ep 1, there was player character agency. One of the very first things you do is take a detour to find Matoi, and I don't have to say how impactful in the long run that was. But in episode 6? All your actions were meaningless so far. If instead of participating the Guardian decided to stay home and take a nap, events would have unfolded in exactly the same way. Your presence doesn't matter, you're a passive observer. Sega tries to mask that fact by having the PC fight during cutscenes, but those fights are meaningless. You're fighting not to win but to hold the enemy off, yet the NPCs don't have any issues doing that by themselves. When Varuna retreats, it's not because of anything you did either. You fail to make a difference by getting to Sara in time - she has already failed to defend Kashina, but that also was meaningless because Xiao gets brought back anyway.

    A good storytelling practice is to remove all elements that serve no purpose. When that element is the protagonist, you know your plot has problems.

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