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i mostly skipped watching the battles but there were definitely times when i was roaming on the overworld and all my squads were projected to lose out to the enemy and sometimes i'd apparently eke out a win, so i don't think it always accounts for absolutely everything (though it usually tends to)

UshiromiyaEva posted...

During the battle, the prince squad ran out of AP, and it was torture. DEFINITELY going to have to lay more attention there.

seconding this by the way, AP is super critical so definitely try to get as many items that refresh it as possible. also avoid losing battles too. you're just so vulnerable during the recovery time for both cases that it's close to suicide (on overworld fights it's fine to lose, it's just important to note that you'll get teleported back to the last key location you checked)

it's kind of the biggest thing i was worried most people wouldn't be on board with having carried over from ogre battle tbh

good question, there's actually a pretty good chance it is just that way in the actual game too since it's both the starting area and presumably final area of the game

yeah it is pretty much both. they lock you off from exploring more than about a quarter of the map, and also about half of the stuff you do have access to is ramped up to (what i assume is) the max level. i was playing on the harder difficulty throughout so maybe that stuff's actually beatable if you're playing on easy but it sure wasn't for me lol

other than that, it has an 8 hour time limit, not 5 (and yeah it does pause). you get to finish off any mission after you run over the limit and after you clear any post-mission cutscenes is when they put up the "buy the game" banner

trdl23 posted...

Are there actual unicorns

since it's vanillaware i feel like there easily could be even if i didn't see any in the demo

the name is mostly just for some amulet or whatever the protag has tho because duh

frankly i didn't do anything promotion related in the demo (i mostly spent time exploring the map while underleveled, and also just checking everything in the unit viewer and reading lore entries) but i'd have to guess it is something along those lines yeah. at the very least, i didn't see anything that would point to it actually having an ogre battle promo system instead, and there very clearly are upgraded classes in there with all the things you'd expect of a recruitable roster in a game like this (varying growth rates etc). i'm also not sure if full class swapping is here since the primary focus definitely seems to be on battle skill customisation and also recruiting mercs to cover for class-focused missions if need be instead (also character affinity stuff)

further demo remarks since i kept playing at the time up until i pretty much hit the time limit (i got very close and then my switch ran out of battery lol oops

overworld stuff is obv new but the rest is like 85% ogre battle with the remaining 15% all being net improvements over it and i already adore it. i feel like there may not actually be a huge amount of this game that general audiences will go crazy over though, because its strengths lie so firmly in adapting specific concepts from games they wanted from whatever cult classic jrpgs/srpgs/rtses they wanted tbh (and i think they nailed it). especially ogre battle of course, that's just not a thing most people are even familiar with and i just don't know how most gamers will react to this game pretty much just taking its 30 year old mechanics and using them as-is (especially with some of its innovations being pretty... not mainstream friendly i feel). don't expect to see it vying for any goty jrpg awards even if i think it deserves it

King
Chief

that second match hurts man

ok spoilers but not important ones really

one, god damn this is even more ogre battle than i thought was even possible

two, this is a really specific thing but man i love that you can just swap languages at any point and it'll just carry on with perfect lip syncs and everything. this is of course just a vanillaware thing period but still i always appreciate it

so i guess back on this one now, definitely has to be said that any nso stuff is looking way less likely after they did the big rare (and mother 3 jp) news

still praying for no more let's go. honestly right now about the only thing i think i'd be getting day 1 is either another legends or a pmd2 remake (and it'd be awful timing for the latter to be announced given it's the same day as shiren 6's global launch)

downloading it now i guess, i hope it literally just starts with some long winded monologue about it being the xth chapter of some fake series and showing vague war maps and maybe even tarot cards to really drive the comparison home

now that i think about it, this time of every game having deckbuilding elements really would've been perfect for ogre battle

one thing i will say negatively about the hokkaido portopia-like game is that i think it is a damn shame it's the famicom version that has this legacy they're trying to emulate now

i mean like, just look at the hg101 page
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/hokkaido-rensa-satsujin-ohotsuku-ni-kiyu/
they've had better looking versions on cellphones before! though to be fair it's safe to assume they didn't have voice acting then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7tuAqPLbUo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOv4r0iK8Fw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY4o8QmvrEg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETir37xMpKA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNpXpMfq7WU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSqILeUS9yU
things i hope don't slip through the cracks and end up unlocalised given the proximity to switch 2 (but they probably will)

anyway seriously i want this dumb accessory lol
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/485cf6df.jpg

oops i slept in a bit, guess i'll get on this now and not read every comment above me till i'm done lol

am assuming i have already been spoiled on one game here though since i did just get an email about something on my steam wishlist having released

grounded is definitely the type of game i just could not care for less tbh and that's a shame
ooh ender lilies sequel. really ought to get back to that game
arranger looks pretty forgettable but i mean i guess it's nice to see i guess
i just fucking love how much unicorn overlord is like standard ogre battle, given how much erasure that gets put through for not being "the game fft was a clone of". praying it does well enough to give that series a proper second chance now
i get people care about mh stories but i'll be honest and say i was really hoping for a lot of other things when the announcer said "originally released on nintendo 3ds". i do think it's a good thing for mh's sake for it to stay relevant though
epic mickey back? nice. i'd been thinking recently it was weird how thoroughly forgotten that was given how extreme a marketing push it had with nintendo originally
smtvv. nice
i'll have to let my flatmates know about this battlefront release though this is cool
not a south park fan but i'm sure it'll be surprisingly ok like the other ones
also not a sao fan lol. 20 player coop is surprising
it's a shame every gundam game has been failing so hard in the west lately, i doubt this one will be any different
16 player competitive monkey ball is pretty insane ngl
world of goo is the kind of game that really shows its age now, it feels kind of odd to see a sequel now
guess the fantasy life guesses were on the money, which is fair enough. i wonder when we'll get news on the new layton game though
the dissonance of hearing soulslike with this aesthetic is surreal
ok yeah the game from my wishlist was here, would've been really mindboggling if it hadn't been tbh. hope it's good, it certainly looks it. also this reminds me that i really hope that game from the jp direct it was announced at that it replaced (mameda no bakeru, that modernised goemon-like game from good feel)
it kind of feels like they took too long to capitalise on the marketability of suika game tbh. i genuinely have been seeing people streaming clones more than it now, including ones with really cool puyo puyo-like multiplayer mechanics. it does appear the devs actually took note of a lot of their clones though and it really is nice they've tried to apply their own spin on a number of their multiplayer implementastions
i recognise the name of this game but i forget where i've seen it... oh well anyway dig dug/mr driller meets ecco is cool
heck yeah pocket card really was here.
oh hey the moomin game
this looks neat
... demon slayer rhythm game?
cool iguess
oh hey contra
oh so this is pentiment huh. probably should've bothered looking into it properly back when it was in bost lol
rare moment. big news for nso!
i wasn't buying into the super transparent endless ocean rumours but i guess i was super wrong. i can only imagine how live chats were reacting to them literally ending on this lmao

anyway just in case i guess i'll have a look at the jp direct too

oh god first game and they have literally got something new. NEW DENPA MEN GAME dang
oh they dedicated a proper segment to the snufkin game that's nice
they put pocket card a lot earlier here which makes sense given that it's more tied to apple there than here (having also been on iOS before)
i nearly said it before but forgot to, that the shin-chan game releasing today over there definitely had to be on there. i'm honestly surprised they just relegated it to a highlight reel
oh a game centre cx nes remix-like game? neat
oh yeah fit boxing feat miku exists
it's actually insane dragon quest x still gets expansions
more horse
oh no there's roguelikes here
honestly pretty sad contra got relegated to highlight reel status on both directs (still better off than others like hebereke so far though)
guitar practice casual game huh. this wii zapper-like guitar accessory is unironically amazing i want one lmao
ooh what's this. reynatis? oof framerate looks rough though. still this looks good, makes me think of stuff like astral chain or decapolice
ohhh!!! it's an hd remake of that one adventure game that was super similar to the portopia serial murder case. i've had a real itch to play this ever since beating the first of those Iseshima mystery case games that were a direct homage to this. i hope they can get a localisation at some point, even if it ends up being a low profile one. the music in this version sounds solid too
highlight reel 2 time
oh eiyuden was in the jp direct huh. honestly really weird it got snubbed from the western one...
oh the demon slayer game was a board game actually it just happens to have a rhythmgame minigame. which is still pretty surreal lol
oh they had that new SaGa game here that makes sense
wtf they had library of ruina here. that's coming to switch? guess i missed that damn
oh yeah the el shaddai remaster. reminder the devs of it just released a new game the other day called starnaut https://store.steampowered.com/app/2508940/STARNAUT/
umbraclaw, a very japanese cat platformer from inti creates huh. have to admit i completely missed news on this till now too. looks nice!
power pro! the konami cameos are nice too
oh... mother 3. i see. this trailer goes hard though

the bad guys?

maybe that one song from mario cars because i have actually had nightmares because of it lol

hopefully stray children news

would be nice to see hebereke/ufouria 2 here too just so more people are aware it's coming out soon (i bet at best though it's probably just going to make 5 seconds of a highlight reel)

also super coping here but i'd love to see some momotetsu or jinsei game localisations at this point too

the steak boss fight

just remembered another one from last year i really have to share from the free sections, especially since they're back on this weekend (4am cst on saturday according to the timetables)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCwGa-XwKsA

on top of also being cool as flip this one shows off the venue it was in more than the other performance i linked so i prob should've linked this in the first place lol, i just forgot about it

oh, and there was also this one which doesn't appear to be returning sadly but was honestly just mindblowing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TanFW71w79w&t=45s
frankly the fact that the venue could just be transformed in this way is still insane to me, this is still probably the coolest vr thing i've ever experienced

Rainbow Star

by the way i just remembered i might as well bring up a big event in here that isn't exactly tied to an company per se

well, actually it is but not exactly a vtuber one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_skv78NJ1U&t=1960s
Sanrio Virtual Festival, or Sanrio Vfes for short, is back and just kicked off last night. It's a big event run and featured in VRChat that is predominantly free access with timed and live concerts, dj sets and shows. This year's iteration appears to be magnitudes bigger than the last one, being spread out over close to a whole month, and also available on many more platforms than before.

https://v-fes.sanrio.co.jp/en/timetable
https://v-fes.sanrio.co.jp/en/timetable/streaming

To be clear, much like last year, it's an event geared towards more mature audiences than the brand would imply. Definitely an event for promoting the virtual music scene first and foremost (and i think that owns super hard)

They have some vrc wizards handling the effects for them, it's honestly insane what they can do for the stage performances. for example, here's one of the ones from last year that wasn't even in one of the paid venues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAWK5--mF_g

at this point i'd estimate there are over 100k vtubers out there, and potentially like... probably not a thousand but very potentially over 500 vtuber agencies too (though only like a quarter of them would have members in even 5 digit sub counts)

the scene is obscene lol

Hide and Seek (online multiplayer) mods

oh i spotted another group that has a dedicated schedule page

https://www.circus-v.world/livestreamings/schedule

appears to be a bit broken though...

absolutely

looking at the schedule now, might check out the opening set of runs on stream 2 when that starts as well as maybe the bowser's fury race

keen to see a good amount of the stuff in 2 days time (from dragonfable onwards tbh), hoping the opentaiko showcase will be fun as well as the maimai one the following day

it's pretty rough sonic generations will be clashing with odyssey (especially a talkatoo% run) but i'll try catching the sanicball run at a minimum

and yeah gamejam showcase sounds neat too

Ho-Oh
Lugia
Celebi
... Pichu (i don't feel very confident about it, without smash ultimate i'd say he's not there now, but since he is...)

i think suicune is damn close but not close enough (being competitive meta in gen 2/3 is good and being box legendary of crystal is significant too, but not as much as ho-oh and lugia's bigger box legendary statuses (and anime/movie roles) and celebi's movie boost (plus being equally competitive-relevant)), and esp/umb (obv reasons, being the most popular eeveelutions besides maybe sylveon or vaporeon, they even have strong presence in spinoffs) are in contention for sure too.

also raikou and entei are somewhere around top 10 at least (boosted by ova and movie relevance compared to sui) along with ttar (thanks to long standing competitive relevance and also presence in stuff like unite) and wobbuffet (90% thanks to the recognisability from the anime after all this time). marill and togepi might also be around there too but i def don't think they have enough factors to push them any higher than that really

one thing i genuinely just forgot about until was that REALITY Studio runs both Ichipro/First Stage Production and this new Vebop Project group, so they legitimately just scheduled the 3D debut of by far their most popular talent from the past year at the same time as these Maiden Works debuts. kind of insane lol, good thing it didn't seem to backfire too much on either end

it's also worth mentioning that they also have another agency that started up just a couple of weeks ago called Specialite, which is JP and EN focused, so they're now responsible for two of the biggest groups so far this year. Pretty big coming from reality of all things, they haven't really had any major groups till now (aside from vesperbell and kmnz if you count them...)

anyway i still haven't gotten onto the vebop debuts yet since live studio's hiiro is only now wrapping up (i definitely like her already. looking forward to seeing her collab with her genmate, who i'm somewhat of a long-time fan of now)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZyQtauuv5g
Didn't notice this till now but Ichipro's Amae Ten is also having her 3D debut now

OrangeCrush980 posted...

The old NijiEN was just a poor rebrand of Niji-India as a last ditch attempt to salvage that small branch. The current NijiEN is a fairly big deal and is second only to HoloEN and maybe Vshojo in terms of English Vtuber agencies/branches.

ok true the main one i thought was significant there was definitely VTA getting mass culled a few months ago since that's been almost their entire pipeline for new jp members over the past year or two

still as an outsider to the en scene i feel like i've seen less viewers of modern nijiEN around than for ones like phase connect or prism project too (also idol-en but that definitely felt like a "accidentally being in specific circles" kind of thing)

oh i have more "new agency debuting in less than 2 hours from now" news

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4NPSu3Anns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itf6YIs5eFw

Vebop Project is debuting two groups, one today and another tomorrow (Maiden Works and Morimori Nyanko Meshi). Surprisingly, I'd already seen this agency a few months ago when they put up a video for auditions, didn't expect to already be subbed to the group channel tbh

also...

One of my long time personal favourite vsingers, Tsukinowa Noa, has her 3D debut in less than an hour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL6v2unTZBI
Her mini-live sets, especially all the ones where she plays guitar too, are often so nice I've even shared them with irl friends at times

thirdly it looks like mikeneko is back to being active as mikeneko again too as she is about to do a cooking stream

Destination (stage)

Epic Movie
Sharknado
Snakes on a Train
Morbius

one "idle" game I think is worth recommending is Legend of Neverland, which is a phone mmo where you can auto basically everything including all the dailies

i love it for the more casual stuff you can do with others, i had a ton of fun finding ways to glitch out of bounds in a lot of places and also play custom midis with people in those goofy places on the server. also just the competitive and guild stuff, and home customisation

haven't really checked on how its servers are being handled now but if it's like how it used to be, they're making new ones constantly so it should be very easy to jump in and not be way behind the level curve.

other than that uhhhh i am playing one proper one loosely but i wouldn't say it's an easy rec

Hbthebattle posted...

I think there's a simple reason why most people don't use Drifblim: its movepool is rancid ass so you do low damage, on top of it struggling statwise in most areas. It's the same with GSC Sudowoodo and Shuckle (low level and low stats), GSC Togepi (Togetic is not enough of a reward to bother), and RSE/ORAS Kecleon and Castform (low stats, bad moves).

Gift and Overworld Encounters do often get used, but only if they're worth in the first place.

eh, i mean i used it and i thought it was fine. stockpile/spit up/swallow was a unique playstyle that allowed for pretty big damage and quick access to ominous and shadow ball soon after so it could manage without all that setup was also nice. the biggest shortcoming with it for singleplayer was, and this is very valid, the fact that gen 4 healthbars took an eternity to tick down lol and it had low defenses

on a separate note i came back in here to report that Link Studio, a relatively new agency, is debuting its first member in two days time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBCfloC6tB4

voltch posted...

Kinda sad that the Nijisanji civil war erupting is the most significant vtuber event this year.

it's pretty wild that this has completely shelved the mel and rushia stuff in the public eye tbh, the whole thing with the new round of rushia allegations last month especially was wild

anyway since it's only relevant to the english vtuber fandom and like, niji already killed off their EN branch once but nobody even cared then, i do think it is going to probably not have huge lasting effects once it's all over, like... how many people actually watch niji en nowadays in the first place compared to any of the other major western agencies. yeah it's clear they're running a total shitshow operation and it is clearly imploding on a level close to what holo cn experienced so it'll probably be forced to shut down sooner or later this way, but even then. the termination of the old niji en in 2021, or niji kr in 2022, or almost the entirety of their JP branch feeder program (VTA) last year, all didn't come close to making the biggest news for the scene in their respective years and i feel like this would ultimately be the same at the end of the day. even hololive fully exiting china's scene at a time they accounted for an overwhelming majority of all revenue in the scene and giving anycolor's other, china-based agency a monopoly there (amusingly, i think that one has flat out been doing better than niji even before the drama) just isn't something anyone cares about now

but yeah tldr i think it's not good but also niji losing branches is never a big deal because niji themselves just aren't now

and since it's only affecting the english scene at the end of the day i also just don't particularly care since i don't watch any of it lol

anyway yeah that's my view on the matter

extra news that technically is relevant for several groups

Hayanagi Chigusa, who is in LiveCartoon's Charact group (https://www.charact.info), Project Little Lindo (https://littlelindo.org), and Re:fAce Music Production's Starry Wink unit (https://reface-music.com), has announced a one-man live

https://twitter.com/hayanagi_tigusa/status/1756816137319550989

also since this helped jog my memory on a few more groups to talk about, i figured I'd mention another one that I'm still regularly watching a couple of members from that i forgot about, that being the idol group Palette Project (https://paletteproject.jp)

fuck this hurts

RIP

i wasn't sure if i would or not but i'll probably try to get eiyuden some time this year after all now

also actually might as well just dump some misc schedule pages so i don't get tempted to post stream links as much

https://schedule.hololive.tv
https://www.nijisanji.jp/en/streams (yeah i know it's a bad look to include this currently lol)
https://774schedule.com
https://schedule.v-react.com
https://varium.jp/schedule/#today
https://i-stream.jp/schedule/
https://haconect.com/#schedule
https://all-secrets-keepers.com/#schedule

I've been watching a lot of Varium streams lately personally, and still reasonably regularly watch at least a few members in most of the others listed, especially ASK (which only has 5 people so duh, but still. still a great group). Also outside of the ones with schedules, still frequently watching most of EMOVE's streams obv (https://vtuber.official.jp/neqre.html) one member of mche proche (https://mecheproche.com), occasionally watching several from the aforementioned VEE (there's some fantastic members in the more recent generations especially, but every gen has at least one person i still like to watch), some from a couple of members of VBOX (https://vbox-pro.jp), a few from Konami's my dear group (https://nest.mydear.anystyle.jp), one of the members in COSMONOAH (https://cosmonoah.jp), and still one of the members of Bestia Gakuen/BEESProject (https://bestia-escuela.com), as well as most of the members of the indie group PalePalette too (https://twitter.com/MiyaoTiyu/status/1590693897650733056). I'd also mention that I'm also watching misc ex-indies like Ringring (https://www.youtube.com/@ringring_room) who is in V-WaVE nowadays but I honestly have no idea if V-WaVE still even exists now so lol

oh i didn't notice this topic till now

i'm gonna just post misc other agency news since obviously nobody will know otherwise lol

the vtuber group in e-elements' esports program, Happy Hunters Haven, is being terminated at the end of the month https://twitter.com/HHH0414_info/status/1754414557907341408/
Some of the members have decided to continue as indies

Sony Music's VEE group, which had its own weekly variety program on Tokyo MX until recently, is having a pretty major live event on the 28th. Pretty cool group, I'm a fan of a decent number of its members. https://vee-official.jp/merge/

The group EMOVE, run by artist Harui, composer ALNEAR and original member NEQRE, is finally getting a 2nd wave of members on the 25th. NEQRE herself is going to be celebrating her 3rd anniversary soon, so this has been a long time coming (technically even longer than 3 years, since the group is just a renamed form of the music label neqre had well before her debut) https://twitter.com/Harui9000/status/1750836122870300746/
All three new members already have channels and have been posting teasers but they haven't been seeing much exposure yet, so go give them a sub if you can!
https://www.youtube.com/@cotenpau
https://www.youtube.com/@SHISSHO_CHOBO
https://www.youtube.com/@Hayamaru_chun

T-

(the band)

Hbthebattle posted...

no, I get what you mean, that's why Lucario (and Togekiss) are on my list. Most Kanto players pick up Snorlax and an Eeveelution, most Johto players use the Red Gyarados, most BW2 players end up using N's Zorua, most SwSh players end up using Toxtricity. I just think Garchomp, as the one pseudo who can be obtained early without grinding the game corner for 1 million years, gets a lot of play.

perhap true, like i said i half expect most people to spot it well after leveling their team past it, but i guess there's always the inevitable daycare grind to compensate though, as that's what you've def implied for the eggmons you mentioned and i don't contest it since i totally did it myself... still, for me at least it still goes back to just it not feeling super right to use compared to "thing tied to event in game" and especially just "funny secret cave mon you're probably not meant to find out about till later on" but that places a lot of faith on people lol

on my end, i think i went back and dealt with wayward b1f stuff after getting strength etc and i did consider using it but also was more tempted to hatch better ones for postgame (and then i don't think i ever even got a ditto, at least on that playthrough lol. pokeradar sucks!)

i wonder how many players nowadays try doing the mew glitch in gen 1 now lol

Hbthebattle posted...

Garchomp is available after the second gym in Platinum, so people are gonna go for it early if they can.

it's also in a hidden location though is what i mean. i was definitely a weirdo about this but it just felt like... you know. i was also the type of person to pick out turtwig as a starter most runs not just because i think torterra rules but also because it felt wrong for the rival to have anything other than infernape, i was extremely conscious about not taking advantage of walkthrough knowledge unfairly for that too since it just felt to me like they put gible where they did as... kind of also a trophy mon in a way. not like, anywhere near feebas tier or anything like that but still

part of it was also admittedly because i didn't really want to use something with better stats than the starter.. i just kind of take having a "canon" feeling run to an extreme...

i also get that this is a weird stance to take straight after also talking about expecting drifblim to show up once or twice here but idk the drifloon thing feels like a "fated encounter" kind of deal compared to it

Yagami

in a way i kind of expected more people to say Drifblim because the weekly Drifloon "event" stood out as something to me as a thing people would just "do" if they were, you know, checking guides here or on serebii or marriland, but not like important enough to be treated as a strictly trophy mon like the legendaries or rotom

having Garchomp on the other hand by E4 is something I definitely didn't do on a first run given where it was lol (maybe just a me thing but even while knowing where it was, it felt like it wasn't really meant to be accessed that early, so i just didn't till it was way below the rest of my team. early game dragon rage also just made it pretty scary to deal with tbh)

anyway yeah starters+staraptor+luxray+lucario for me prob, while bibarel definitely makes a lot of teams for obv reasons i don't know if it stays in enough teams for E4 to make the 6 (it's definitely still a lot though)

the race for achieving more brightness in oleds as of late (due to samsung mostly) hasn't really appealed to me personally, but i will say that i am keeping an eye on panasonic's z95a, which (as is typical for panasonic flagship models now) comes with a built in sound system that remains leagues ahead of the others, rendering sound bars non-essential. with this new model though they apparently jumped ship to a less dated OS so I'm waiting to hear if it's particularly good and responsive