Lurker > trdl23

Save damn it. I'm not letting this go again.

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#45: Sacred Bow
Nominator: @Snake5555555555 (2/4 remaining)
Character: Alyssa Hamilton
Source Material: Clock Tower 3

Scores:
Aesthetics: 5
Dominance: 5
Damn: 5
Total Score: 15/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ190i0beZM&t=1296s

This is the very definition of "not too bad." It's simple, not too elaborate, and it gets the job done. The aesthetics sell the power behind the shot, and I admit it's all the more impressive for being in a game where I would not expect someone to wield the power of god and anime.

It doesn't really stand out, though, either, and this writeup is so short because I'm not really certain what to talk about. I redid this entry like five times trying to come up with insights that weren't super trite. I got nothing.

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More tomorrow, I want to go through plenty before school starts.

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#46: Supernova
Nominator: @AquaArcane (2/4 remaining)
Character: Frieza
Source Material: Dragonball Z

Scores:
Aesthetics: 3
Dominance: 7
Damn: 5
Total Score: 15/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGtUEHzk9s

aka "Why was Frieza such a wuss on Namek?" by comparison.

When I was watching DBZ as a kid, I never saw this, so I never knew what the big grudge between Frieza and the Saiyans was about. This, uh, qualifies to hold a grudge, I think.

Yet another 90s anime, but at least this time Frieza has the decency to start cackling from the word "go" as his big fiery orb comes forth. It's quick and snappy in how it blows through not just the planet's staunchest defenders but winds up pulling an Exterminatus on the planet itself. That being said... it's just a big orange energy orb. There's no dramatic tension with it, no real insight on how Frieza is going this, and the way it blows up the planet isn't clear at all; I'd rather have seen it cause a massive extinction event a la "giant meteor" than blow the world to bits.

However, the sheer ease with which it crushes and burns the mightiest of flesh, bone, and stone is undeniable and satisfying in a morbid way.

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#47: Dragon of the Darkness Flame
Nominator: @AquaArcane (0/1 remaining)
Character: Hiei
Source Material: Yu Yu Hakusho

Scores:
Aesthetics: 5
Dominance: 6
Damn: 4
Total Score: 15/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cYTTC4YorM

Looking back, I was absolutely wrong on this one. It deserves to be higher; despite the trappings of 90s anime weighing it down, when I compare this to Giga Slave only two ranks ago, it's leaps and bounds greater in quality, and in all aspects. I'm only letting myself cheat on one nomination, though, so it will have to stay down here where it doesn't belong.

While the "wind-up" dialogue still goes on way too long, it's at least the kind of boasting that supports what's about to happen, and the scene implies part of the reason his opponent doesn't just get out of the way is "overexertion on his own failed finisher" as opposed to the default "sheer stupidity." I think the moment that sells this well is that freeze frame at 2:07. It heightens the anticipation that had been building up since it began to draw power from sky and sea.

All right, that's enough gushing. Even with my errors, this move is far from perfect. The destructive capability of the unleashed attack is woefully lacking; the buildup had the sky crack, the sea churn, and rocks crumble, but the aftermath of it shows no terrain damage at all? Sure, it outright cremates his enemy, and if it were a move that emphasizes precision I could live with it. This is not a much that emphasizes precision. That hurts the suspension of disbelief quite a bit.

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Indeed, not again!

I realized I ended up with two #52s, so we're actually at:

#48: Death Blossom (the other one)
Nominator: @Snake5555555555 (3/5 remaining)
Character: Reaper
Source Material: Overwatch

Scores:
Aesthetics: 4
Dominance: 7
Damn: 4
Total Score: 15/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfnxLKJ-Dww

*Insert obligatory shitpost about Reaper's edginess here*

I still can't help but sigh at the myriad cool design opportunities that Overwatch whiffed, and this is just one example. Yes, it has an exact middle-of-the-road score, but it could have been so much more. Have him spin faster; have some kind of "hail of bullets" denoting the area of effect around him; hell, just have him shoot at a much higher rate! This is Overwatch, it's not like anyone is going to whine about realism or ammo count.

That being said, while it isn't anything special to look at, the clip shown makes it abundantly clear how damn lethal this move is, shredding even the "tanks" of the game in a mere few seconds. What shots we do see carry some weight in them. That counts for a lot.

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Isquen posted...

M "Punished" NK: Most likely to have a victim complex, most likely to complain about tanks spinning in circles.

To be fair, fuck tanks who do this shit.

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Okay, internship project is over! More tomorrow.

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ninkendo posted...

Palace of the Dead unlocked

reading up on it I guess people mainly use it for leveling up alt classes

okay

It's also a fun, unique experience.

If you haven't done Tam-Tara (Hard) -- started by the quest "Corpse Groom" in Ul'dah -- you should do that beforehand!

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Dun Scaith is not just difficult, it's also by far the nadir of 24-man raid design. The boss mechanics (particularly on Deathgaze) actively punish you for daring to treat them like literally every other mechanic that looks the same.

Only good fight among them is Ferdiad. Diabolos has cool moments (beam battles are always my jam) but it's a dogshit fight in most other respects.

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Innocence EX is a fantastic first Extreme to do. Super forgiving (especially given current gear) but still a decent glimpse into what EX mechanics look like.

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I need to remember to put this in OP.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l74RR-geLuIqazjQLeNa7xCyrlwLHBloRjuVQB-who4/edit?usp=sharing

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mccheyne posted...

The PTSD from that fight in a previous final fantasy came back in droves lol. Ended up dying right as he died somehow.

If you do Eureka, you get to fight the real thing.

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Sorry folks. I know this is a trdl-ism, but my internship wraps next week, so I've been focused on that and blowing off my steam doing things that don't involve analysis and writing. I'll try to knock a couple out this weekend.

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Don't stick your dick in crazy, Chris

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BK_Sheikah00 posted...

Woo finally got my Demi-Ozma mount! Primal Forays has some amazing callouts. It was great. Depending how well these drops sell, I might do BA more often.

Oh hey, you were on that one today? I meant to go on it but new roommate and I talked each other's ears off.

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imo you should do Dal first, since that unlocks getting Rays that permanently buff you in Bozja/Zadnor/DR. and reset your mettle by 20M. Otherwise every CE/Skirmish you do at max mettle is just wasting it.

Raw emotions are trivial to come by, especially since you get 2 per DR run, and you'll likely do a lot of DR for timeworn artifacts anyway.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

I'm referring to every already cleared player in chat halfway through the raid all of a sudden all capsing 1 IS NOT A PRIME NUMBER with no explanation.

Oh god yes, that's fantastic.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

That's my first instinct whenever a Sprout asks if there's anything they should know about a particular dungeon, trial, or raid.

"Does this one have a meme?"

Lighthouse of course being the best one.

Are you referring to Construct 7 Dance Party after the raid is cleared?

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DoomTheGyarados posted...

Stormblood MSQ spoilers (like, level 62ish not too far in)

Alisaie telling them that my character is going to take care of everything so they can believe we will free Doma is pretty fucking amazing on the FF hype moments for me. "The three of you?" "Nah, just him." Alisaie is so much better than her brother for me so far, she's got spunk.

I adore both twins but there's a reason Alisaie is Best Girl for a loooooot of people.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

Looking at Universals, the weapons look to be going anywhere from 50-200k. Way less than I expected. I remember being fresh into Heavensward and balking at prices, but I was just a 200k Gil baby at the time.

Edit: oh I guess that explains it looking at your edit, if the materials are easier to get than expected. Some of these weapons are dirt cheap so my assumption is that the higher price ones are just to trick the people desperate for glowy shit into biting, lol.

It's because iirc you can get some of the weapons from Zadnor lockboxes.

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Isquen posted...

Back on topic, I'm gonna try and do some current Extremes for the first time. Which ones are the least changed in ShB from their normal fights so I won't need a two hour primer on how to not die

Innocence EX isn't that different from its normal mode. I'd argue it's easier, honestly, since the first phase doesn't exist anymore, and there's no item level sync downward.

Diamond EX is also pretty true to its normal version with one or two MAJOR exceptions, but it's also a damn fun gimmick fight.

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Not_an_Owl posted...

does the job icon being changed negatively impact your life in any way?

I'd say it improves his life, since it gives him a new thing that doesn't matter to whine about.

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Cassie's other MKX fatality would have done way better. I'm thinking of doing a "trdl's favorites that didn't get nom'd" before the top 5.

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#50: Giga Slave
Nominator: @KanzarisKelshin (3/4 remaining)
Character: Lina Inverse
Source Material: Slayers

Scores:
Aesthetics: 7
Dominance: 4
Damn: 4
Total Score: 15/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqEvG06iU78

Ah, 90s anime. In this 2020s hellscape, where the world feels miserable and media keeps trying to subvert everything, it feels so quaint and pure to see stereotypes played straight.

The way the move tears up the terrain and so effortlessly displaces the Dark Lord's own beam attack is delicious, and the animation of Lina controlling it -- and the devastation to her stamina afterward - give the move an appropriate feeling of weight. The fake-out regarding its efficacy, followed by complete petrification and crumbling, says all you need about its power. Even thirty-ish years later, it holds up.

However, I have enough nitpicks that they become... is there a larger unit for "nitpick"? Something in metric, maybe?

First, there's the two entire minutes of buildup to it. Again, this is 90s anime. We all know how Dragonball Z was. This is nothing new. However, it's a stereotype that detracts from how cool this could be; as I said earlier in this topic, if your move relies on your opponent being dumb without you setting a deliberate track and/or trick beforehand, the domination thereof is less impressive. Furthermore, Lina is calling on a power that is not her own, nor is she making it feel more like a team-up attack the way Bayonetta and her demon buddy do. I'll probably make myself a hypocrite for this later, but I struggle to be impressed with borrowed power without one adding one's own strength to it. Finally, though it's not relevant to the scoring -- why the hell is this move called "Giga Slave"? It's a petrification beam.

Can we appreciate how magnanimous the dark lord here is? Dude is petrifying and crumbling, his opponent has passed out from fatigue, and he doesn't lash out or bemoan his fate. He just applauds his slayers on a job well done. Nice.

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#51: Bubble Head
Nominator: @Raka_Putra (2/4 remaining)
Character: Cassie Cage
Source Material: Mortal Kombat X

Scores:
Aesthetics: 5
Dominance: 4
Damn: 5
Total Score: 14/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3hepvnuivE

Ah, modern Mortal Kombat games. I don't know how Ed Boon . managed to get all the resources to make these look so damn good even if the gameplay animation in MKX can be janky as hell but it really shows.

That's why something that would otherwise be super boring can be somewhat impressive. Let's be real: Cassie does nothing impressive here. She shoots someone in the legs and then the head. That's it. There's no backflipping and kicking a sword into someone, no giant laser convergence, just pew pew pew.

The level of polish is insane, though. The shots feel painful. The real stuff that makes this unique, of course, happens after the deathblow, and it's disrespect in a quintessential millennial fashion. That said, it does feel... blas? I think it takes too long and takes away from the snappiness of the actual gunshots, and it doesn't have the dramatic tension (by design) to pull it off the way they want.

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All right, back into things.

#52: Mega Legends
Nominator: @tazzyboyishere (0/1 remaining)
Character: Mega Man
Source Material: Super Smash Brothers 4

Scores:
Aesthetics: 4
Dominance: 4
Damn: 5
Total Score: 13/30

https://youtu.be/1wnnv5zySAk

How impressive this attack is hinges entirely on how much nostalgia you have for the Mega Man franchise. I have precious little; they've never been my kinds of games.

Still, the bones of it are solid, if remarkably similar to the beam attack from Pokemon a couple of entries ago. Suck someone into alternate dimension, have a bunch of beams converge into a big laser attack, and sadly, show no follow-through on how that translates back to the "real world" (by reference anyway). This time it just happens to be a team-up.

This is a touch better than the Pokemon one, so the ranking here expresses that well. There's a bit more "oomph" to it. It just tries to stand on its franchise's merits more than its own, and I find that tedious.

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Persona 3 and 5 Royal are the kings here. FFX too.

If you count 14 as a JRPG despite being an MMO, then the finale of Shadowbringers is the best part of probably the best expansion of almost any game.

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Wait, he was an aardvark?

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Huh, that's bizarre. The tagging works now, but it wouldn't fill in the name when I was writing it, so I assumed the worst.

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Thank you Shonen.

#52: Earthshattering Kaboom
Nominator: @LOLIAmAnAlt (0/1 remaining)
Character: Smoke
Source Material: Mortal Kombat 3

Scores:
Aesthetics: 3
Dominance: 6
Damn: 4
Total Score: 13/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxTBLKH4tZ4

Another one whose aesthetics suffer for its hardware, but I like this entry more than its grade makes it look. It's so goofy and hilarious, perfectly in keeping with Mortal Kombat's quick move into as much a parody game as a "brutal" one. There's something oddly aggressive about "I beat the hell out of you so hard I have time to summon a billion bombs from hammerspace and blow up the world." Does Smoke need to do this? Absolutely not. Does he sacrifice himself for no good reason? Yep. Adorable.

You know, I'm surprised none of the modern games (9 and onward) tried to remake this one, considering it's an old-school fan favorite.

The reason it remains low despite my enjoyment is that it's just so ridiculously implausible and nonsensical that I can't take it seriously, even as a parody. Still, this was great. Sadly (or perhaps not?) the nominator's name can no longer be tagged, which means they closed their account or it was closed for them.

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Agreeing with my fellow turtle here. Dungeon tanking doesn't get difficult unless you choose to make it difficult by mega-pulling (with your healer's consent).

That said, starting in Stormblood, tanking trials can get spicy even in normal mode.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

Do Repertoire stacks proc even if you're not targeting an enemy being ticked with your DOTs?

Yep. If you dot up multiple enemies they start going off crazy fast.

Unfortunately, unlike SMN, you have to manually dot every single mob you're fighting.

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#53: Menacing Moonraze Maelstrom
Nominator: @Shonen_Bat (2/4 remaining)
Character: Necrozma / Lunala
Source Material: Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon

Scores:
Aesthetics: 4
Dominance: 6
Damn: 3
Total Score: 13/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKb34yK_VH8

This is going to be a brief writeup because everything here should work. It's perfectly serviceable: charge up in true anime fashion, shunt them into some kind of parallel dimension (which is neat and sells the cosmic aspect of the pokemon), and blast them with a good converging beam attack, Bob's your uncle. Nothing fantastic, but respectable.

Given all of this, why do I find myself so bored by it? Maybe it's the cartoony design side of pokemon and Lunala's stupid-ass face. Maybe it's the obnoxious dance that bestows the "Z-power." Maybe it's the lack of follow-through that doesn't show the two pokemon coming back into the normal dimension again. Maybe it's all three of these and more. I wish I had a better way to express why I find it so "blah," but I don't.

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Yes, fantastic.

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SCH gives me so much decision paralysis it's miserable.

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Alanna82 posted...

The fact that lava axe is bad shows how power creep is.

Lava axe was bad when it was first printed. We just didn't know it because we were all bad, too.

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#54: Tri-Beam / Kikoho
Nominator: @ZenOfThunder (0/1 remaining)
Character: Tien Shinhan
Source Material: Dragonball Z

Scores:
Aesthetics: 4
Dominance: 4
Damn: 4
Total Score: 12/30

Sadly, the original link to this move got copyright claimed, and I can't find another one in an expedient manner. Still, it's DBZ. You probably know Tien. You probably know what the Tri-Beam is.

I do remember this getting ranked higher than I'd anticipated since the video sold the move far better than I'd seen before. It's from the Cell saga where Tien is using the Tri-Beam to blow a hole in the ground and keep blasting non-perfect Cell back into it whenever Cell tries to fly out. It works for a while, buying his friends time they need. (I hope I'm remembering this right from three years ago, anyway.)

The trouble is just that, though: When has the Tri-Beam ever worked to finish off someone, let alone someone that matters the modern fighting game notwithstanding? It's always been something the enemy either shrugs off to Worf the poor guy, or it simply harasses well enough for the aliens of the show to do the real heavy lifting. Furthermore, I think this is effectively a "cast from HP" move? That's a bonus if it's something that can finish people off, but a bane if it's simply for a support role, so to speak.

Poor Tien. He's a proper badass, but the series in which he finds himself is full of cheaters.

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#55: Eye for an Eye
Nominator: @Snake5555555555 (4/5 remaining)
Character: Deathstroke
Source Material: Injustice: Gods Among Us

Scores:
Aesthetics: 4
Dominance: 4
Damn: 4
Total Score: 12/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eexBJ0eHTtM

This move gets up here for one part and one part alone: the backflip into kicking the sword into the other guy's chest. That is awesome.

The guns actually detract from the move! If you're going to do something acrobatic and badass like "backflip kick a sword into another guy," don't surround it with mediocre gunshots we've seen a million other times. The guns are distractions from the reason we're here. Now, I know this is Deathstroke, and we can't very well fail to include guns in his arsenal, but they should be as inspired and performative as his sword work. Some ideas off the top of my head:

• Use the pistols to shoot his enemy in the foot, staggering them in a more intuitive manner for him to aim his sword backflip.
• Shoot the sword with the SMGs to drive it through the enemy.
• Hit the enemy in the kneecaps after the sword is in them, then calmly walk over to yank the sword out.

Speaking of which, where the hell does that sword go when the move is over? The answer appears to be "it gets out of the enemy's chest and back in Deathstroke's possession somehow and please don't pay attention to this," but it's a real immersion killer to see such a flagrant flaw in choreography.

With a few concept changes and idiot-proofing, this could have been a top contender. Alas, it is doomed to mediocrity.

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#56: Wind of Destruction
Nominator: @Mewtwo59 (0/1 remaining)
Character: Cyril
Source Material: Star Ocean: The Second Sory

Scores:
Aesthetics: 3
Dominance: 5
Damn: 4
Total Score: 12/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmMuXnD1PEo&t=105s

Another contender that has the unfortunate fate of being on antiquated hardware. I'm don't know much about Star Ocean, honestly. It looks like some kind of proto-Tales Of game from my brief glimpse here? If I'm right, having this kind of extensive sequence might break the pace, but I'm not going to ding points from it due to my own ignorance of the mechanics.

You know what this reminds me of? Some of the summon sequences in Golden Sun. I mean this in a good way since Golden Sun was one of my favorite games growing up, and this move reminds me of the rank 4 Earth summon just in terms of presentation.

This is a move that has all the trappings of a good move, but beyond the reality of contemporary graphics of the time, it falls into another trap: It's a wind move. Other classic elemental moves are far easier to sell as big painful hits without needing to do anything fancy: Earth smashes stuff with rocks, fire burns or causes explosions, ice either impales or entraps, even water can flood the arena. In sprite games, the "impact," so to speak, doesn't require much work with the units that get hit. They don't need to move much aside from a general "I got hit hard" reaction.

Wind has more trouble in that the method in which it deals damage is less clear. The methods in which wind damage makes intuitive sense are as follows:

• Picking up or otherwise displacing the enemy and slamming them into something
• Scouring the enemy with the friction caused by high winds
• Pelting the enemy with debris picked up by the windstorm

Cyril here does his best, and the random explosion effects add a bit to it, but these just aren't easy to convey with the level of technology in question.

That said, I think I rated this a bit too low. This probably still could have gotten a 4 in aesthetics for the vortex being present in addition to the tornado. It's a nice touch on what is otherwise a trite attack.

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masterplum posted...

Just kidding real 45



I forgot how goofy the art on this card is. Yeah I think I have to give the nod to volcanic hammer as a tiebreaker.

Hey, Volcanic hammer is perfectly fine, especially for its time! I know Incinerate is better (and of course Bolt, but we're not counting Bolt) but when it was current, I'd never be embarrassed to rock some.

Lava axe, is, in fact, terrible, but damn is it fun.

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TomNook posted...

I guess I should have specified that I meant the Saw franchise, when I nominated Reverse Beartrap. Your write up is accurate if based only on the first film, as it is only a "test" in that one. But it is used more times in the series, and later is 100% used as a finishing move with no "test". I wasn't able to link videos probably because of the gore.

Ahh, got it. I admit I've never seen most of the movies since it's not a genre that appeals to me, so this is the only one I knew about besides Amanda using them in Dead by Daylight.

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#57: Zesshou Shisen Enbu
Nominator: @Shonen_Bat (3/4 remaining)
Character: Mian
Source Material: King of Fighters XIV

Scores:
Aesthetics: 4
Dominance: 4
Damn: 3
Total Score: 11/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0qauPNG1Vw&t=11s

I like the idea they were going with here, and maybe if I understood whatever she was saying or the cultural aspect of her design (I think Chinese, but I don't want to assume) I'd appreciate this more, but this fell flat for me. The spin-kicks didn't sell their impact well enough; she looks like a top spinning without any stop frames -- I don't know the technical term -- to show the kick really hitting the opponent well enough to illicit such a stark reaction. The plain white background makes everything feel flat. I wish they'd just kept the stage itself in the background.

This brings me to the mask. Regarding the first sentence above, I know I'm missing something valuable there. As it stands to my ignorant American mind, it's a non-sequitur. If the mask means something, I think the fan reveal of it would make this cooler, but as of now, it's a resounding "meh."

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Actual #58:Roar of the Mad King
Nominator: @Pirateking2000 (4/5 remaining)
Character: Susano-O
Source Material: BlazBlue Central Fiction

Scores:
Aesthetics: 4
Dominance: 5
Damn: 2
Total Score: 11/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDlVOGOGhCQ

BlazBlue's choices are so bizarre, and lately, it's made me realize that RWBY is a fantastic pair for it in their crossover tag-team game: Both series have awesome concepts and a few isolated hits marred by idiotic or uninspired design decisions. Astral Finishes are a great example of this. Some Astrals are badass as hell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seX6ULm5vYM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVJkqveccnE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgX9f-gqDFk

But then you get Susano, who just, uh, swings some spooky black-and-green energy around, doesn't even bother to hit his enemy with it -- doesn't even bother to have the enemy on the screen -- and makes the screen go spooky green-and-black until apparently he's made the arena into a mini-hellscape of some sort? It's a mildly impressive show of dominance, and the aesthetics get an artificially inflated grade for the hellscape looking kinda neat afterward, but it feels so impersonal and bland that it does nothing for me. I admit I'm not a huge fan of "block out the screen" finishers in fighting games unless they're executed exceptionally well, and this ain't it, chief.

I don't know too much about BlazBlue lore beyond the first game because I value my neurons, but isn't this supposed to be the Big Bad of the whole series? The end-all, be-all, dude who's going to end the world? Why would Arcsys give him such a mediocre finisher? Thank god this travesty of a series is over, and they're back to making Guilty Gear again.

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Johnbobb posted...

that sums up the difference pretty well imo

I didn't even realize that was age-restricted outside of YouTube! It really does show the difference.

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That concludes our lowest tier of finishers, named for one of the stupidest ways to die in video games.

Poorly Timed QTEs
#65: Zell's Grand Calamity Symphony (Final Fantasy VIII)
#64: Abigail Williams's Qlipoth Rhizome (Fate/Grand Order)
#63: Alex Rogan's and Grig's Death Blossom (The Last Starfighter)
#62: Jigsaw's Reverse Bear Trap (Saw)
#61: Sub-Zero's Spine Rip (Mortal Kombat 1)
#60: Scott Pilgrim Shooting the Shit (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World)
#59: MVP's Playmaker (WWE)

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#58(*): Turtle Paratroopers
Nominator: @redrocket (2/5 remaining)
Character: Ernest P. Worrell and the Second Chancers
Source Material: Ernest Goes to Camp

Scores:
Aesthetics: 3
Dominance: 2
Damn: 5
Total Score: 10/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw_8j3MwfZo

I will admit, given my username, nominating a finisher that features turtles is cheating. Turtles are fantastic. This is just pure, stupid kids-movie art in motion. I can tell you turtles can pack one hell of a chomp, and I imagine that if there were an ounce of realism in this movie, the poor fools who got turtle mouths over their noses or ears would have lost them. How did the kids get in a position where they could launch their turtles from a canoe-based trebuchet? How did the bad guy's ominous crates and encampment catch fire? I don't care. I wanted to see some small turtles parachute in and fuck some bad guy mooks up, and I got exactly that. Look at the complete disarray and the retreat that got sounded. Yes, it's goofy and dumb, but so is a lot of stuff; if you can sell something well enough, I'll usually buy it.

You know what? The more I watch this again with fresh eyes, the more I realize I criminally underrated this entry. Screw it. I'm breaking my own rules on this and will re-rate it higher up the list because if I don't think of the turtles, then who will?

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E come vivo? Vivo!

#59: Playmaker
Nominator: @Lopen (2/3 remaining)
Character: Montel Vontavious Porter
Source Material: WWE

Scores:
Aesthetics: 3
Dominance: 5
Damn: 2
Total Score: 10/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9gHS94WBcY

Finishing moves in pro wrestling are always trickier than they would be in most media. Unlike digital media, they need to be done in real life; unlike in film, there's no editing to rely on. This is done in front of a live audience (pre-covd) after all. Again, I don't grade on a curve, but as someone with a modicum of stunt and stage combat training, I can appreciate how tough the job is to make something memorable without any means of touching up or getting multiple takes.

With all of this said -- I must be missing something here, right? The guy just flips the opponent halfway around. The only thing that looks like it might get hurt by this move is the opponent's arm getting slammed into the mat, but only in the way that losing an arm wrestling match would. The opponent's head isn't getting hurt at all; MVP's leg is cushioning the blow. Now, this isn't uncommon in stage combat. For example, if you watch the Undertaker's signature Tombstone Piledriver very closely, you'll notice that the Undertaker's knees hit the surface just before his opponent's head does, so Taker is the one who takes the brunt of the hit. However, Taker is good enough that his big move looks like it's going all on the enemy's head. I can't fathom what MVP's half-leg-lock over his jobber's head is supposed to convey, though, and that's a glaring flaw.

I'm honestly not sure why I gave this slop a 5 on Dominance. If I were rerating, I'd put it down to 3 and cast it into the bottom 5 abyss like it deserves. I don't know MVP much, but I hope he came up with a better signature than this.

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E come vivo? Vivo!

By the way, is everyone okay with the writeups being as brief as they have been so far? That's been a major deterrent for me to make ranking topics when I see people like Snake, Mycro, etc. have these page-long writeups for every single entry.

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E come vivo? Vivo!

#60: Shoot the Shit
Nominator: @Johnbobb (4/5 remaining)
Character: Scott Pilgrim
Source Material: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Scores:
Aesthetics: 1
Dominance: 1
Damn: 7
Total Score: 9/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHHZvNx3zrw

Johnbobb, if you were going for last place with this, you shouldn't have picked something that made me laugh my ass off.

This is such a glorious anticlimax. Despite the brevity of the clip, I was expecting some kind of Persona-style showdown with his Shadow, but instead of choosing violence (like the entire rest of the movie), Scott just... defuses the situation by talking things out off-screen. It's like one of those Friendship gag finishers from various Mortal Kombats, but more poignant.

This is distinctly different from the Saw clip before in that this was, by the most technical definition possible, a finishing move. The conflict was swiftly and totally resolved due to Scott's actions. Of course the nature of the shot means there's no aesthetic to talk about, and dominance isn't established because the entire point of the scene is for there not to be dominance. This kind of thing is what the Damn factor is for -- a quality that just doesn't fit what one might expect. Bravo.

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E come vivo? Vivo!