Board 8 > Fate Grand Order Topic 1 - The Many Deaths of Yu Mei-Rin

(+) Yeah! (+)

I guess I'll out myself as a player of this damn game.

I've really fallen in love with this game over the past year and a half. Yes, I'm aware of how awful the gacha system is, but as a guy who loves both turn-based RPGs and deckbuilding games, it's a blast to see a decent fusion of them, even if I have a bit of 3-turn brain rot now when it comes to free quests.

The events have been decent-to-pretty-good so far this year. Valentine's was kinda "eh" because I don't care much for Caren, and the CBC was carried by Voyager being the best. I enjoyed Summer 5 a bunch last year, and Summer Yu is fantastic both as a unit and character, so I'm glad we have this rerun going.

Super excited for LB6, I wish it would come sooner. Lasagna is clearly having personnel issues given how all the events are running for 3 weeks from now on.

If there are enough people, I'm glad to get a google sheet with our friend codes going.

there's pretty regular discussion on the board 8 discord. the "mobile-games" channel is actually just fgo discussion only, as a matter of fact

Oh, huh. I'm not big on the B8 discord - I'm really awful with huge servers. Still it feels good to know I'm not alone on this one.

Also if we were to continue on from the F/GO topic series we had several years ago, this would be like Topic 14.5.

trdl23 posted...

Oh, huh. I'm not big on the B8 discord - I'm really awful with huge servers. Still it feels good to know I'm not alone on this one.

I basically only use the mobile games channel myself lol
Sometimes the Falcom one too.

I play as well (and also am in the discord) but wouldn't mind posting here too.

Likewise what other people posted. I have every channel muted other than mobile games haha.

Been playing since launch, and yeah, this is a good event. I'm at the point where I just skip all story in reruns though, even the ones I liked (such as Saber Wars 2, which has the best story of any event IMO).

I just reinstalled this last weekend. We'll see how many months I last this time.

Saber Wars 2 was so great; I'm shocked they haven't done a third yet. I usually don't skip story on reruns I remember liking, but dear god will I hammer every skip button I can if they bring back the Erice / Voyager event. Even though Voyager is precious.

How did everyone like 5.5? I absolutely adored it, but I've heard that overall opinion is mixed.

It's by far the worst of the Lostbelts. Kintoki was fun, but that was the only highlight. Everything with Douman was awful, and Tsuna was boring too. The biggest fundamental problem it has was that it didn't really introduce any new characters, and the old characters were all used in the same sort of plots we've seen them in before, so it was just kinda dull most of the time.

I dunno, man. LB2 exists.

I find Douman wildly entertaining. It's so nice to have an absolute jackass to hate, but he has this perverse charisma in every scene that I can't help but wonder in excitement about what bullshit he's going to pull next.

Tsuna was boring, but he gave other characters a chance to shine (especially Babbage, who FINALLY got a cool moment), so I was okay with that.

Who surprised me the most was Shuten - to me she had always been a silly joke character, but she was super compelling here, especially with her unusual care toward Kintoki. Obviously, they've always had a connection, but it was fascinating to see her focus on something beyond her usual whims every so often.

Kintoki is my second-favorite chapter companion character, right below Bedivere (I don't consider CasGil to be one since he's not traveling with us most of the time). He's the "dumb shonen protagonist" done in a wonderful, charming way.

trdl23 posted...

I find Douman wildly entertaining. It's so nice to have an absolute jackass to hate, but he has this perverse charisma in every scene that I can't help but wonder in excitement about what bullshit he's going to pull next.

But... he didn't pull anything surprising. There were no twists. He was the villain, and he had no shocking plans. Everything played out as expected.

I thought he was terrible in Shimousa too, though.

After all the complexity throughout the other Lostbelts, I'm fine with someone who's just a villain and revels in it. Sometimes you just need a monster, and Douman is a fantastic monster. The "what" was obvious from the start, but the "how" was the clincher for me.

I also didn't care for him in Shimousa. He doesn't share the spotlight well with others, so he's really only good as a small supporting part of a bigger story (LB4 and 5.2) or being in center stage. Being part of a main-antagonist Team Evil didn't do him favors.

EDIT: That's actually what I appreciated most about Heian-Kyo. You are with the good guys, the bad guy is the bad guy, unravel his plan and then go kick his ass. Sprinkle in some fantastic character moments (The exchange between Kintoki and Yoshitsune was heart-wrenching) and bam, a simple and delicious meal. Not from a 5-star Michelin-rated restaurant, but satisfying nonetheless.

Heian-Kyo lost me pretty quickly once the evil generals started showing up. I thought the fake Grail War setup went some entertaining places, but it ended up being total filler, and then the climax just threw a bunch of randoms into the mix like Ibuki-Douji and Kagekiyo to be the real threats. That's just bad writing.

Looking forward to LB6 though which even if I know a lot of it is still gonna be great.

Yeah I think "worst Lostbelt" is pretty accurate for Heian-Kyo.

The only one I'd even consider ranking lower is 3 and I think that had more redeeming qualities than 5.5

But yeah I also just don't like Douman at all and don't know what his fans see in him.

Ibuki was pretty wack, yeah. She should have been on the table from the start. I was otherwise fine with the evil generals since it was Douman's admittedly-shitty backup plan, and it gave us an excuse to see Kagekiyo in a Genji-rich environment.

LB2 has aged like milk for me. Just... nothing ever happens for the first 80% of the story, and while it has a great spike in quality at the very end, it was just a glimmer of greatness that I wished had been present throughout everything else.

I do think LB2 was terrible, my ranking goes something like 4 > 5.2 > 5.1 > 1 > 3 > 5.5 > 2, I think.

Skadi is cute as hell tho

Anyway I'm looking forward to whatever summer 6 is, though I imagine people who haven't completed part 1 yet will be confused as to why we have mini-Vinci

I quite enjoyed LB2. The setting was awesome (here's another way Heian-kyo sucked - the setting is way more boring than any other Lostbelt), Ophelia was fun, and Surt was great. Surt breaking out of the sun was maybe the best imagery in the game?

Gerda was better than any character in Heian-kyo.

Gerda was the most obnoxious morality-bait of a character, I don't care how tragic that final scene with her was supposed to be. Ophelia was also the worst Crypter by a lightyear

Surtr coming out of the sun WAS fantastic, though. Only thing that rivaled it was Tiamat emerging from the sea.

I'd agree with 5.5 as the weakest Lostbelt. Douman had kinda worn out his welcome by that point and probably should have just been straight killed by Pepe in 5.2. LB2 at least had the Attack on Titan-ish setting of "humanity in a cage" going for it.

5.2 > 5.1 > 4 > 1 > 3 > 2 > 5.5... I think?

Hyped for LB6 though.

4 > 5.1 > 5.2 > 1 >>> 2 > 3 > 5.5 personally

5.1 > 4 > 3 > 5.5 > 5.2 > 1 >>> 2

The highs of 1 are so high, but Nyalter sucked the air out of the room constantly. Still waiting for my Patxi pseudo-servant.

4 is special to me since Arjuna is my favorite character in legend ever, and it was fascinating to see what would happen if Krishna hadn't given him a divine pep talk during the war.

I just realized I misspelled Yu's name in the topic title.

Hopefully her robocentaur boyfriend won't impale for me

New lotto dropped on JP! It's about time they got their normal lotto schedule back.

Also I've seen rumors that Arcade won't be getting new servants anymore? I don't know a good place to verify this, but if so, the days of Onore Arcade are finished. As is Arcade itself, I expect.

Not a rumor for Arcade. It was announced on the Japanese site for it.

Oh. That's as official as it gets.

To clarify, is it "no more exclusive servants" or "the roster on Arcade is completely locked now"?

trdl23 posted...

To clarify, is it "no more exclusive servants" or "the roster on Arcade is completely locked now"?

The latter.
They will continue to get game updates and new events for the time being, but no Servants will be added to the game past what is in currently.

It probably speaks more to do with Arcades finally dying in Japan like they did in the rest of the world than FGO Arcade itself doing poorly, because it supposedly was top 3 most played Arcade cabinets.

All right. Still kind of sad given how the languid pace of mobile content is spooking people. Maybe they can redirect resources back to mobile now?

trdl23 posted...

All right. Still kind of sad given how the languid pace of mobile content is spooking people. Maybe they can redirect resources back to mobile now?

It was a different company entirely doing Arcade, part of Sega IIRC
So it likely won't have any affect on Mobile. Though I do hope Mobile gets its shit together soon. JP is complaining about the schedule just as much if not more from what I've seen, they have to know.

LB6.1 is 99.9% June 6.

They're doing one of their broadcast things on the 5th and LB6.1 should be immediately following it.

I'm ready for heian kyo then

This time around I got a perfect score on my date, as a refined lady deserves.

Got a perfect score blind the first time the event ran and did so again this time.

would have failed my favorite servant otherwise

Wait, what's this about a date?

The very last quest of the event (well along with the Challenge Quest, it unlocks after you complete the epilogue/post-story stuff) is a no battle quest where you hang out with Fujino (it's totes a date). You have a bunch of choices over the course of the quest and towards the end Fujino comments on how you did and it affects the ending of the quest.

I think it resolves to "perfect score", "not perfect, but good", and "BAD END"

Oh, right, that. I've been super slacking on the rerun, so I forgot.

JP dropped its lotto and it's a -fest so I've had to scramble together some 6S teams for 90+ (Fuck these 90++ nodes).