Thanks so much for the speedee response! I've been a huge fan of your story ever since I first found it a little over 2 months ago. I've been watching Kill La Kill nonstop since the COVID crisis began. In a way, its helped keep my sanity in check.
Thank you so much!
I actually was surprised when I saw the email notif the other day regarding your message about the TV Tropes page. It’s actually quite an honor to have been so influential to you! Thanks for reading the entire 100K thing!
I was actually thinking about making at DTR style story for Berserk!Ryuko. The basic gist of it would be that Ragyo takes in Ryuko before Mako could slap her back to normal, and then decides to use Berserk!Ryuko as a pawn to help her in the life fibers deeds. Would you be interesting in collabing with me? Or at least give me suggestions?
Hey, you have my blessing to do with my story whatever you want. Meme it, parody it, make an AU of it, it’s all good.
I’ve stopped writing a long time ago mostly due to lack of interest, but if you want suggestions or need ideas, I’m down with writing a bunch of them to help you along.
I'm interested in creating a TVTropes page for Down The Road to help it get more exposure, but I'll need your help doing it. Could you list me some tropes found in DTR that I may have missed or haven't yet found?
Erm, I don’t remember most of my story since it’s been 3 years since I finished, but I assembled a list of the ones I remember, if it helps. I tried staying away from the ones already listed in KLK’s main tropes page, because you probably already drew from there.
Action Girl
A God is You
Alpha Bitch
Axe Crazy (can be interchanged with Brainwashed and Crazy)
Body Horror
Bond Villain Stupidity (if you want to count Ragyou’s arrogance towards the end)
Brought Down to Badass
Burning with Anger
Chest Burster
Contrived Coincidence
Convection Schmonvection
Crapsack World
Cycle of Revenge
Darker and Edgier
Designated Victim
Deus Ex Machina (arguable)
Disney Death
Doppelgänger Attack/Elite Mooks
Double-Meaning Title
[The] Dragon
Evolving Weapon
Fetal Position Rebirth (I think the third to last chapter when Ryuuko wakes up in the P/OLF)
Fire-Forged Friends
Foreshadowing (?)
Homage/Shout-Out
Horned Human
I’m a Humanitarian (Ryuuko and Ragyou’s heart)
In Media Res
Kid Hero
Matricide
Mutant (see: "horned human")
Nay-Theist
Plot Armor
Teeth Clenched Teamwork/The Power of Friendship
Travelling at the Speed of Plot
Turned Against Their Masters
Unexplained Recovery (again, debatable)
Unstoppable Rage
Wham Shot/Line
Would Hurt a Child
dang, thanks for sharing your experience! from the sound of it I agree I probably wouldn’t get it at full price, but soundslike there is enough good in it to get it at a lower price for a fan
There is! As cranky as I probably sound, the game is pretty fun, and again, you can hear the effort the KLK team put in behind the game with their visual/auditory gags. Neither the game nor the story mode are meant to be a carbon-copy of the show, and honestly, it’s better that they aren’t. It makes the game far more interesting and expectedly random (which is what KLK is, in essence).
I liken it to my play-through of The Fractured But Whole. Frustrating at times, but visually engaging, fun (as it doesn’t take itself too seriously), and also $60.* Kind of hoping for the KLK game to get a surprise DLC pack though. I wouldn’t mind supporting TRIGGER, even if I didn’t like their more recent anime outings.
*$60, not including TFBW’s DLC, which is another 66ish dollars. I got the game and DLC on sale for ~$12 on Steam and I’m pretty happy with it.
And remember, calling the rending scissors “snippity snips” is canon.
marshmallowgoop replied to your post: Honestly, the KLK game might just be the first...
I do agree that the price is a bit much (and I bought two LEs and Steam, so I put out nearly $300 for this game), but at the same time, this is a small passion project. I’m willing to shell out extra money if it means we get more content with as much love and care put into it as this. The short story mode is disappointing, and I do also think the game was rushed. I think things could have been a lot better if they waited. But it’s more KLK, so imo? I’m not that upset.
You’re right. At the end of the day, it’s still KLK content, and I’m mad grateful for the team that worked with TRIGGER to bring this out to the world. I don’t think that TRIGGER will do another huge project involving KLK (instead just doing a few cameos here and there), but it’s heartening to see them reaching out to fans about 6 years after the show premiered.
Also, I’ve been meaning to ask someone with the LE: Does the soundtrack CD just have tracks from the show, or does it also have the game OST as well, because the music is pretty banging. I wonder if they got the same team that did the original show’s OST to do the game OST as well...
I’m not sure how much you know about the development of the game ‘cause you’ve been gone a while, but a lot of your complaints are actually addressed. Ryuko also has a story mode in the game (so the total runtime is more like 3-3.5 hours), and you get to fight battles that you didn’t get to as Satsuki in her side of the story. As for Mako, she and DTR were supposed to be day-1 free DLC, but they got pushed back because they’re not finished yet.
The most of the game development I’ve seen is random bits and pieces that I’ve read when following Arc System’s account on my Twitter, in addition to the very far and few pieces of information that were reblogged by other KLK-centric Twitter accounts.
Either way, point taken. I retract that part of my critique then.
Haven't finished the story yet, but so far, it's leagues better than the OVA, so I'm not mad. *shrug* The Steam version is buggy as heck, though.
Agreed, regarding the OVA part. I think the OVA definitely had potential in developing Hououmaru as a character and furthering her backstory in addition to introducing the life fiber clones as a threat (the idea itself was nice, the execution was a bit gimmicky), and having a more vulnerable Satsuki that for once wasn’t sure of herself. I haven’t managed to crash the game though (given my unfortunate habit of breaking games)**. I stopped at the third fight against Ragyou (Episode 9 part 2) because I was getting close to the 2-hour refund deadline and was very ambivalent about continuing.
Further testing needs to be done to see if I can properly glitch/break the game.
**The crashes I had when attempting to use the main menu the first couple of times I played the game notwithstanding.
a-fool-without-a-clue replied to your text post
damn that bad?
It's more like it's $60 for about 2-2.5 hours' worth of story content (not including cutscene runtimes), with the main draw being that you get to fight with your friends or others online. However, you must play a part of the story mode first before you get the ability to play with others online. The PC port is ok, with main issues being fixed frame rates, max resolution being 1080p, some stutter in gameplay/animations, repetitive game-play even with the amount of combos and different types of moves you can use, and controls being awkward even with rebinding (as mentioned before, you cannot use space bar, shift, or control to jump). I have a GTX 1060, an Intel i7 processor, and 16 GB of ram, so the stuttering technically should not have been an issue.
And to be honest, while I'm not really a story-driven person or invested in heavy story-intensive games like The Last of Us, I felt like it wasn’t really worth $60, especially with such as short story. To me, the game kind of seemed... unfinished? Rushed in some aspects, perhaps would be a better term for it. Like, while the gameplay itself seemed as it was made up for a demo and just... stagnated. There just seems to be a lot of lost potential of what could have been, especially with the bits they threw in during the story (see under spoilers).
There just seems like a lot of characters/character moments were left out and kind of forgotten or thrown in at the very last moment (eg: no 3-star Mako uniform). I feel as if they had went Super Smash Bros Brawl and had story in between fights where we unlock different characters to play and play as them to advance the story, I would have felt differently. The rock-paper-scissors mechanic surprisingly only showed up once in my game-play, as did the sudden death mode.
Don't get me wrong though, I believe that the game is a work of love. It shows in how good the voice acting in the game is, with most of the original voice actors coming back to rehearse their roles. It shows in the animations, where some of them look as if they came straight from the anime itself. It shows in how characters break away from previously established canon for silly quips (Iori being cute and holding up the swords) and throw light jibes at the show (eg: literally calling the scissor swords as “snippity snips” in the subtitles, Satsuki going from 100 to 0 when Ragyou picks up a piece of Senketsu and implies she’ll use it to further her goals when Satsuki replies “What are you planning? On second thought, I don’t care”).
Heavy spoilers below.
Training mode starts with the fight against Ryuuko, where you utterly crush her. The story mode proper starts during Naturals Elections and the Grand Culture and Sports Festival, where you fight Ragyou, Nui, Ryuuko, the Elite Four, covers, Ragyou again, etc. in succession.
What follows and intersperses between the fights is a highly compressed and anachronistic version of events from the show that are re-purposed here. These include: Ryuuko getting stripped of Senketsu (and Senketsu getting chopped into pieces), Nui getting her arms cut off, Bakuzan being broken into two (this time intentionally, by Iori), Ryuuko receiving the rending scissors after said disarming of Nui, Hououmaru being eaten, Ryuuko going apeshit at Nui after Nui reveals that she killed her father (no Berserker mode Ryuuko, though), and Satsuki and the Elite Four bowing to Ryuuko.
Ideas introduced during gameplay/cutscenes include a mind-stitched Satsuki and the Elite Four (with Ryuuko saving them this time in an off-screen moment), Ryuuko fighting dual-handed with her scissor sword and Bakuzan (and no, you can’t control her while she does this), Nui almost-instantly teleporting the Primordial Life Fiber to Honnouji’s basement, Shinra-Kouketsu being finished before the Festival ends, and the squad storming down to the PLF (like, why would Nui even move it there? The satellite to distribute the life fiber signal hasn’t even been built yet) to destroy it.
Sirc and I continue to roast the ever-living hell out of the game. I plan on recording the game and doing several riffs off of the cutscenes.
Approximately 2 hours of gameplay/cutscenes later, I’m at chapter 8 (of 10). And so far, it’s not too bad. I currently give the gameplay a 7/10. Rating may change when I complete story mode and unlock other parts of the game.
Animation is mixed, either looking like it came straight out of the anime or like a first-year animator was using flash (Nui’s scenes notwithstanding due to her 4th-wall breaking nature). The guy that’s doing the subbing for this should get a reward, though. The storyboarder too.
It’s a real shame that we can’t dual-wield as Ryuuko with Bakuzan and her red scissor sword though.
Also found the decision by Satsuki to have Bakuzan be broken by Iori into Gako and Kouryuu so that she could dual wield too to also be questionable.
So I was gonna stream the game after work tomorrow (see: twitch page).
Apparently, there’s a verboten on streaming the game, as you can see by the warning page before you even get to the title screen. I’m actually curious to see if such enforcement is actually viable (I’ve seen 3 twitch streams on the game concurrently as of writing this post), especially to people living overseas or in countries with governments that don’t care. I haven’t heard of a blanket ban on streaming at all (I’ve heard a ban for a game whose name I can’t remember that lasted only for the first couple of days so that there wouldn’t be any spoilers).
