Cardinal

He/They Resident weeb, gamer, amateur 3D artist, writer, video editor, etc. etc. Co-Author of Pokémon Sealed Colosseum on Ao3. Don't ask me about my thoughts on Kingdom Hearts (or do, I can't control you) pfp source: iikoao

[cardinalarts]

New video, and it's NOT a game review this time! I wanted to talk a bit about Z-A's story and what I personally think is its biggest problem. You may have seen a post I made recently that goes into this topic. This video is just that but more in depth.

To be honest, I never really liked making reviews all that much in the first place, but I love rambling about what makes a game's story good or bad, so I'm using this as a test run to see if this is the kind of content I want to focus on moving forward.

[cardinalarts]

Crawled out of my hole after 7 months to finally post a new video! This time I'm covering In Stars and Time and how it excels at quickly getting you to like its characters

[cardinalarts]

Played every Star Fox game for the first time to prepare for the new remake. Here's my ranking:

Star Fox 64 + 3D: Put them together since they're functionally the same. After playing through it a couple of times, I finally understand the hype. If it wasn't for Adventures being so long compared to the others, I'd probably have the most play time in 64.

Assault: Could've used more Arwing missions and the on-foot gameplay was clunky and went on too long, but I thought it was pretty good when using the C-stick camera setting. The story was all right if a little rushed, and the banter between the characters was on par with 64, if not better. This is the only other game that comes close to 64 in quality, and I can definitely see myself going back to it later.

Star Fox and Star Fox 2: Fun games, but god that frame rate. Still, it was interesting seeing all the things from 2 that would get recycled in later games. The SNES games feel rough, especially after playing 3D and Starship, but I think they're good enough regardless. And Nintendo, please bring Miyu back.

Zero: Full disclosure, I played this one on Cemu with a pro controller. So while I didn't have many issues with the gyro aiming, I can imagine that having to look at the game pad *while* moving it would've been torture. For the first two or three stages, I thought I was going to like it more, but some of the later additions/changes just left me confused. Things like making the final Star Wolf battle a Fox solo mission, or having an entire extra mission to introduce Katt where she's the ONLY person talking with no response from Fox or anyone else. In fact, I'm pretty sure every time Fox was on his own, ROB is the only character who speaks. Ultimately, this feels like Star Fox 64 reimagined by people who didn't understand what made it good in the first place. Not outwardly terrible, but a middling imitation of a better game.

Command and Adventures: I have them in the same tier because they frustrate me equally in different ways. Adventures suffers from literally not being a Star Fox game. It's essentially just your average early 2000's action game with a basic plot and mid gameplay. I can appreciate its importance to the franchise in introducing Krystal, but overall this game was a slog. Meanwhile Command has *almost* decent gameplay (I tried, but I just can't stand the touch screen controls), but it gets repetitive. And then the writing is so irredeemably bad that it drags down almost every positive thing I could say about it. Not sure how much of that is the poor translation and how much is just the writing being that bad at the source. I played two routes and can't say I can see myself playing the rest.

Star Fox Guard: Exists. I have no particular emotions about it. Played like three missions and got bored.

That's all I've got. Looking forward to the remake

[cardinalarts]

Current state of my Tomodachi Life island:

Wes wasn't really vibing with Rui at first, but then instantly fell in love with her once he looked into her eyes. Rui has not yet reciprocated.

Wes and Michael became fast friends over their shared love of Pokémon battles and are currently living together.

Hatsune Miku keeps falling in love with every woman on the island. She is now head over heels for Shantae after nearly ditching her for Teto.

OOT Link is getting along pretty well with Wes and Michael, while TOTK Link isn't socializing as much yet. I'm tempted to add every single incarnation of Link and Zelda, but I need to remember the 70 Mii limit.

[cardinalarts]

Wes, Michael and the Links have formed a small friend group, with TOTK Link also moving into the Team Orre house. I made a Mii for Skyword Sword Zelda. I think I'll add a couple more incarnations of each, but I'm not sure which ones yet.

Shantae has a crush on Miku now. But Wes lost his love for Rui after she spent way too long talking about a sock. They've move back up to Ultra Friends and Wes has shown some interest again, but neither of them outright has romantic feelings for the other. I DID NOT ASK FOR SLOW BURN IN MY TOMODACHI LIFE.

I also added Siffrin and Isabeau to my island and they immediately started dating, so there's that at least. The newest inhabitants are Razell, Dazell, and Odile, but they haven't done much yet.

[cardinalarts]

Current state of my Tomodachi Life island:

Wes wasn't really vibing with Rui at first, but then instantly fell in love with her once he looked into her eyes. Rui has not yet reciprocated.

Wes and Michael became fast friends over their shared love of Pokémon battles and are currently living together.

Hatsune Miku keeps falling in love with every woman on the island. She is now head over heels for Shantae after nearly ditching her for Teto.

OOT Link is getting along pretty well with Wes and Michael, while TOTK Link isn't socializing as much yet. I'm tempted to add every single incarnation of Link and Zelda, but I need to remember the 70 Mii limit.

[cardinalarts]

Dazell and Shuffle take the stage!

Comissioned this art from @skyephox. This may very well be the first art of Dazell to ever exist (I checked). Which makes it really funny that it is forever linked to my fanfic by virtue of a Zorua being there. Go read Operation: Toxel

[cardinalarts]

Tried out the Tomodachi Life demo. You know what I had to do.

[cipher-legal-and-ethics-dept]

Thoughts on Bill Cipher?

Every time I try to look up my blorbos, there is that fucking triangle

[cipher-legal-and-ethics-dept]

Why do you hate me

[cipher-legal-and-ethics-dept]

Yay ship edit

[cardinalarts]

Cipher Syndicate, more like Cipher Sine-dicate

[cardinalarts]

After I do my Urbain/Taunie analysis video, I think I'll do a Kieran one next. Never played the Gen 9 DLC (those frame drops actually made me sick), so I always took most of what the fandom said as gospel. But if they get literally everything wrong about Taunie, how can I trust them to be right about Kieran? I want to confirm for myself.

[cardinalarts]

Operation: Toxel Chapter 6 — False Transfer

Now that the magician twins know the truth, Michael decides to test Shuffle's resolve with a battle.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/76724396/chapters/210867561

[cardinalarts]

This whole time I just assumed the Zeraora quest would start once I caught all the other legendaries.

How silly of me to not consider that I would have to find a child standing on a random rooftop in Vert Sector 3 who trades items, take a wild guess that giving him Canari bread would give me the item that lets me make the donut, and then I could take that to Ansha to start the quest.

That makes much more sense.

[cardinalarts]

I know making any comments about the price of Pokémon games is asking for trouble but I'm just gonna say that GBA games were $8 on the Wii U

[cardinalarts]

Trying to get a shiny Virizion in Z-A and quickly realized it's actual hell because you can't see it when it spawns/despawns. I'm stuck just running in circles while putting complete faith in internet randos that this will eventually work. That's asking a lot from me.

[cardinalarts]

Update: found a shiny Pansage

I was using the Fighting donut

[cardinalarts]

Trying to get a shiny Virizion in Z-A and quickly realized it's actual hell because you can't see it when it spawns/despawns. I'm stuck just running in circles while putting complete faith in internet randos that this will eventually work. That's asking a lot from me.

[cardinalarts]

Operation: Toxel — Chapter 1 & 2 changes

Not exactly an update, but I made some small edits to chapters 1 and 2 of Operation: Toxel. The Secret Santa exchange that the original one-shot was written for had a 1000 word limit, which meant I had to cut some things down. Now that we're well past that, and most of the subsequent chapters are longer anyway, I decided to restore those parts. None of these additions impact the story.

In chapter 2's case, I have a confession to make. I had no idea who Shuffle's trainer was going to be until I started writing chapter 3. Riffle was barely a concept, and I didn't even plan on giving them nicknames! In fact, the whole plot point of Shuffle refusing to answer to his nickname was literally just a way for me to retroactively explain why Dazell called him Zorua in the previous chapter.

In short, chapter 2 feels like it's missing some things in retrospect, so I thought I'd touch it up a bit. I added some foreshadowing for Riffle, and threw in a small line at the start establishing that Jovi is in school (explaining why she's seemingly not at the HQ Lab in Chapter 5. I couldn't find a natural spot to say that in the actual chapter, so this was the next best thing)

[cardinalarts]

Wrote a short Wes x Rui story for Valentine's Day because I'm single as hell and have nothing better to do.

Wes and Rui spend the holiday in Sinnoh's Snowpoint City, but Wes is having trouble dealing with all the snow after spending his whole life in a desert.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[cardinalarts]

[Re: Operation: Toxel]

Please remind Master Eldes that, regardless of his wishes to be part of and interact with Cipher, he should seek legal representation from the very best Orre has to offer - the @cipher-legal-and-ethics-dept, of course!😆

Just a little shitpost, forgive me

This feels like a conflict of interest, but I will pass the message along regardless.