Gentleman Jaggi

So I'd been looking forward to this part for literal months and I gotta say you made every second worth it. From giving Giratina the cold shoulder to the status effects fight I was in absolute fucking stitches. Great work man Now to wait for Commander to get to that point Seriously tho this entire sequence is probably the most frustrating point in the whole game. From the good old cutscene inaction to Giratina throwing people into lava like it didn't just get its ass kicked. Why even pretend that our actions matter - the whole thing might as well be a cutscene.

Blake and Fern have a lot or Pokémon that are weak to Fire; a good Heat Wave or Eruption user under Sunny Day or on a Grassy Field should do a good number on them. (It used to be that you could sweep them pretty easily that way, but it seems like Blake's team was changed to prevent that.) For Solaris it's probably most important to goad out his Excadrill while there's no Sandstorm going on. Since both Solaris's tyranitar and Florinia's Hippowdon (assuming she still has that one) will set up Sandstorm on entry you're probably best off to bring something of your own that can set up weather. Or something that can disable weather effects altogether. If you feel like abusing AI for a bit you could try goading Scizor to spam Superpower so it criples itself with the side effect or getting Solaris to use Earthquake a lot - most of his Pokémon know it, most of John's are weak to it and most of Florinia's resist it. Make sure to save something that can take out Garchomp and you should be good. And no, you can't skip any of the battles. Most you get is getting partnered with Julia for the Solaris battle if you beat him back on Pyrous mountain. that arguably just makes it harder though.

Personally I felt the Direct was pretty weak because they spent way too much time explaining in length stuff that just wasn't that interesting. With the character reveals out right at the beginning the only major thing to look forward to for the remainder of the Direct was a potential Story Mode - and with that asinine reasoning for why Smash 4 didn't have one every additional minute the stream got closer to its announced length of 40 minutes just made me more disgruntled. Did we really need that much details on how Spirits work, how they can be leveled, something about sub-Spirits and whichever else they detailed. (I kind of tuned out halfway through until it finally switched to another topic.) Add onto it that Sakurai is honestly an atrociously boring host and most of the Direct just felt like a waste of time. I don't care for either of the revealed characters, so I was just sitting through a 35 minute borefest (with the only break in that being Piranha Plant's Wii Fit trainer-moment) until the last five or so minutes finally had something interesting crammed into them.

You got a point there with Madelis. Never really bothered to rank the whole bunch... I agree that more mystery around Angie would have improved her, but that would probably also require some changes to her character. Right now she's way too straight forward with her madness, so any feeling of mystery would have disappeared the moment you walked through her front door. I guess I might have actually liked her a bit better if I didn't know about that thing with Anju, since then there'd be no hint on the reason for Angie's madness or her powers. As it stands we can assume that whatshisface pulled some ritualistic nonsense on her, aka "because magic". I'd prefer an antagonist with no background to one with a lame background.

From what I've heard the controls are a lot better in handheld mode than docked mode, but that might depend on how well you do with touchscreen controls. It's still a 50$ extended port of a 20?$ iOS remake of a DS game though. I've only played the demo of it but Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk seems like a pretty interesting Dungeon Crawler RPG. You build your party out of puppets infused with souls and although there aren't too many classes you can customise a fair deal regarding how their stats grow. Closest comparison I can think of is the Etrian Odyssey series, although this one seems darker in atmosphere and lighter in difficulty. At least from what the demo shows.

Could you elaborate a bit on why you consider her to be done so well? Personally this is my absolute least favorit part of the game so your praise of it kind of threw me off here. So far she's the game's decidedly least interesting character to me; just another nutcase with some unexplained superpowers that seem to be reserved for the bad guys. Her interactions with Melia and Venam here don't offer much to go with either since they're all under the cover of Angie's mind controll-ey nonsense. I mean I would've been okay with most of those claims, but the bit about Venam not caring anything about Melia just drags the credibility of that whole deal through the mud. You can say a lot about the characters in this game and "doesn't care about Melia" is probably what would come up for very few of them, if any. Honestly what I hate the most about Angie has to be her dialogue. Most of it is just the repeated drivel of a madwoman without a shred of credibility. She doesn't even feel like a threat either. It's pretty obvious throughout this arc that it's building up to a direct confrontation with her and at this point we're only what, about a third into the game? Worse yet at this point we've already been face to face with Madame X, an antagonistic madwoman with unexplained superpowers who we know is more powerful than we are and who's left us a lovely reminder of that fact in the form of our dead mother. Compared to that Angie just... falls flat. Note that doesn't mean I think Madame X is a good antagonist - I just think Angie is worse. Reborn's El is honestly a much better take on a fanatically religious antagonist - We get just enough explanation to make his fanaticism believable rather than him just being mad "because magic", he's usually pretty practical about his plans, always working to a specific goal, and he shows up about halfway through the game, when we've already got a good idea of what's going on around him, and he's established as a major threat with an actual connection to the plot. Angie just sits somewhere in the mess of "getting sidetracked from being sidetracked" that is terajuma. Short summary: to me Angie is an uninteresting antagonist with no lasting effects on the plot or characters stuck in the middle of a messy arc. Do with your run what seems like the most fun to you. Playing a game should never be an obligation and if Rejuv is only grinding on your nerves right now then spare yourself the hassle and do something more fun.

Delphox is saddled with a kind of stiff and awkward pose in pretty much every official artwork and sprite. I'm sure if there was some game that bothered to really play up Delphox's witch/sorcerer theme than a lot of people still hating on the design would change their opinion. Remember Pokken and how it went all out turning Braixen into a Magical Girl? Something like that for Delphox would be cool, just more focused on impressive sorcery than cuteness. I haven't gotten around to using Delphox in Reborn yet, but I have one as my Starter in Rejuvenation and she's consistently a powerhouse doing great damage and screwing the enemies over by stealing their Items. Nothing quite like stealing an opponent's Life Orb and turning its effect around on them. Also Delphox is fluffy and fluffy things are great.

So what's the deal with Clarice?

Today is Trust Nobody Day

That seemed like a really stressfull battle so congratz on pulling through!

Yeah, there were a bunch of people around for Giratina, but it was just kind of "oh noes, Giratina!" *battle* and then nothing. Nobody cares we just beat a Legendary. Can't remember if Amber and Tesla ever specifically mention Kyogre. My memory of that part is somewhat foggy. The elde was there for Groudon, but she wasn't exactly happy about being down there in that ruin and then she got taken hostage. Probably not in the mood to praise our heroism. Tesla is best girl.

All the starters I care for are rip... Totodile: 5 Piplup: 14 Chespin: 8

Bulbasaur: 8 Cyndaquil: 6 Totodile: 9 Piplup: 10 Chespin : 14

Bulbasaur: 14 Cyndaquil: 14 Totodile: 17 Mudkip: 6 Piplup: 14 Chespin: 13 Rowlet: 10 Popplio: 11

Bulbasaur: 15 Cyndaquil: 16 Totodile: 16 Mudkip: 9 Turtwig: 7 Piplup: 18 Chespin: 17 Rowlet: 14 Popplio: 14

Nuu, the two Pokémon I came here to save in the first place went down while I was at work. :c Bulbasaur: 16 Cyndaquil: 14 Totodile: 17 Mudkip: 14 Turtwig: 9 Chimchar: 5 Piplup: 20 Oshawott: 0 Chespin: 19 Rowlet: 15 Popplio: 14 At least I got to finish off the otter. :|

So is there a rule on how often you're allowed to post here? Like once a day or something like that. Bulbasaur: 18 Cyndaquil: 19 Totodile: 16 Mudkip: 16 Turtwig: 11 Chimchar: 7 Piplup: 18 Snivy: 4 Oshawott: 5 Chespin: 18 Fennekin: 4 Rowlet: 16 Popplio: 16

Of the top if my head I remember we have to fight Giratina, Kyogre, Groudon and Yveltal. With Madame X's Yveltal Aelita is around, although she doesn't participate in the fight (at least in gameplay). Kyogre and Groudon I'm pretty sure the player is alone with, but that also means there isn't exactly anyone around who'd bother to tell that story. Giratina... There's a big deal made out of it at firstwhen Geara catches it but from then on it mostly just gets ignored. The battle with it on Valor Mountain just about gets ignored by everyone save Venam (including Giratina itself yeahyeah, just go around tossing people into lava like you didn't just get your ass handed to you by a Fearow) To be fair here the only one who's around here is Aelita and Yveltal isn't exactly something you're supposed to be able to beat with anything but uncounterable cheese strategies. You can't really make "You're supposed to lose here" any more clearer than throwing a max Level Legendary at you. Well, aside from throwing several of them at you. Also, if I just had to fight a deathbird and then afterwards my mother got murdered I'd probably care more about the latter; it'd probably be reasonable for the NPCs to not really bring up Yveltal because the protagonist is still in mourning and there just isn't a good moment to bring that up.

Her name used to be Amaria, but it was changed to Amanda in V9. That moment was pretty funny; at least she realized we're always involved.

It's still feels nice to get recognition now and again. It's a small thing, but one of my favorite throw-away lines in reborn is Charlotte calling the protag a wrecking ball when preparing for Meteor's attack on Belrose Manse. It's just one sentence, but it shows that somebody paid attention to what we're doing. It doesn't even need to be a "You're the great hero" moment, even just somebody noting that things seem to be going better now without knowing why can feel rewarding because it shows that our actions had an effect. @topic: Melia just kind of sucks the whole plot into her when she's around, that's an issue I noticed. The fact that the game often has so many characters around doesn't help since their interactions will inevitable bounce off of Melia. As a player it often just kind of feels like you're tagging along to do the heavy lifting rather than being there out of your own agency and drive to act.

@Commander Whoops, dunno how I missed that. Thanks for the heads up.

Whoo, I've been looking forward to this. Can I just grab a save out of the Ep15 Follower Mod or do I have to disable it in Ep15 first and the reenable it in the Ep17 version?

Blackstream factory probably didn't take longer than a few hours tops (can't excatly spend days raiding a terrorist base on your own) plus however long it takes to get from one end of the city to the next one by foot/bike. Victoria similarly would have needed some time to get in contact with somebody or to train that Muk. And then she'd be either travelling some path inaccessible to us or travelling the same as us around the same timeframe but with no trace of her to be seen along the way. What we see ingame is just a downscaled portrayal of a much larger world causing details irrelevant to the story to be lost. There's only one path, because that path is the one the story leads us on. That doesn't exactly connect to the previous thing with Victoria but point is: assume there are other paths that people can take, but which do not show up because they are not part of the story's progression. Team Meteor for example likely has many secret ways through the city only accessible to them, but they're never shown because the player does not know them and the story never leads us there. So whenever they show up somewhere that you'd normally have trouble getting to the natural assumption is "they've got their own ways to get around." I feel like Fern would probably try to rub that in our face the first chance he gets, since he's basically attention whoring us the whole time, but I'll give you that that's a possibility.

Shelly's still a Gym Leader and more than capable enough to take on a bunch of Meteor goons. In-universe she was just too damn submissive to speak up to Saphira, the out-of-universe reason was likely so players would be on their own for the battle against Sirius/Sigmund. Victoria getting to Apophyll or Fern getting to Route 1 ahead of the player are other points I remember right now. It's been some time, I might find more. Additionally there's stuff like Cain using Muk to cross Azurine Lake; even if the player has their own Muk, we can't do that because it's a story action that's exclusive to an NPC in a certain scene and gameplay will not allow us to imitate that. Yeah, the player doesn't exactly get a good start with Titania, although she seems to be softening up somewhat during Ep17. She's still definitely acting against Team Meteor and is therefore an ally though. Some might call it twist, others might call it ass pull. The best twists are those that have hints that are only recognisable once you know the truth. Otherwise they run the risk of being either too obvious or too out of left field for the player to feel okay with. Aya just came out of a pretty grueling 12vs10 Double Match with likely most of her team being out; plus she literally saved the protagonist's life there so what the hell dude? And even ignoring that your point is still irrelevant, because in-universe what matters more than the choice of type is the abilities of the trainer. (Arguably that still holds true for gameplay - i.e. everyone doing challenge runs of any sort - but characters in-story have a lot more freedom with this sort of thing than we players, who are bound to gameplay.

To be fair, a lot of people don't do a whole lot whenever the protagonist is around. Amaria and Florinia accomplish nothing during the Obsidia Tangrowth incident, Shelly hides during the attack on Belrose Manse, Adrienn is just as useless against El as Cain is - those are just the ones that come to mind right now. Since this is a game it naturally often ends with us doing the work. He also didn't have any dispostiion towards El, nor tried to influence our opinion, he was just absolutely confused. Rightfully so, since the whole situation makes not a lick of sense if you don't already know what's going on and Radomus was being about as suspicious as he could be. He doesn't win. He just buys some time, loses, and is then then taking hostage. El has Bennett bring him in to threaten the protagonist once you arrive at the sanctum's altar. The timespan of events is pretty ambigious; we just have no idea how long any of this could have taken. The Agate situation seems to be pretty recent, as iirc there's never any mention of it until we reach Route 1, so it's not out of the question that he may have been able to get through and back before it got closed off. NPCs using pathways that don't exist for the player isn't really something out of the ordinary. It's kind of a bother when you start thinking about it, but it's one of those things in games that just sort of happen. Anna also thinks those black eyes of his are cool, if they were hinting at something sinister about him I'd wager she'd be unsettled by it. Remember she likes Shade, despite just about everyone else being rather creeped out by him. Besides, we don't even know what those "visions" of her really are. There's some hints that they could show the person's "true nature" or the like, such as the protagonist glowing or Lin being not actually there, but with visions like Cain or Saphira it could also be more literal or hint at things thar are going to happen. That'd mean Cain's gonna get Chandelure'd nuuu... Team Meteor is essentially an extremely localised terror organization, so them being vastly outnumbered is to be expected. Our number of allies mostly stems from the league's scope and the fact that these people are actually taking action like you'd expect them to unlike those in most other regions. An interesting theory anyway, though I don't think there's really anything hinting at it. It would get quite a reaction out of a lot of people though.