WARNING: hsr 3.7 spoilers and a big ass wall of text
logged on this acc for the first time in more than a year just so i could rant about hsr 3.7 story, because i have no one to talk about it. i don't expect anyone to interact with this post, but if i will not voice my opinion, i will explode.
i hate 3.7 story. i hate it so much that it's not even funny. and the worst part is... i desperately want to like it. i really, REALLY want to like it. there are so many little things that i loved, but all of them are overshadowed by absolutely ABYSSMAL FUCKASS second half of the story. hell, it is SO BAD, that the rest of amphoreus just falls apart. everything is meaningless. we ended at the start. there was no sacrifice, no consequences. no meaning. the entirety of amphoreus in a retrospective is so meaningless, in fact, that it is on a brink of becoming self-annihilator.
but let's start from the beginning.
- welt, himeko, sunday and black swan are all enter amphoreus and then proceed to do literally nothing. they are there for TWO SCENES TOTAL. TWO. THEY ARE IN THE VORTEX, AND THEN THEY ARE WATCHING TB AWAKEN FROM THEIR SLEEP. THAT'S IT. THAT'S FUCKING IT!!!!!!!!
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i'm actually speechless, holy shit. AE crew became actual embodiment of "potential man" and "what does he even do" memes.
- irontomb. THE fucking irontomb. the fight itself was cool, sure, but holy fuck, if you just think for a moment, it fucking falls apart.
"yeah bruh i'm canonically second strongest lord ravager (and would be the first, if to indergo coronation), actual giant with longinus ass spear, capable of destroying entire fleets, let me just t-pose in a background, while my small vessel engages with my enemies in a close ranged combat" HUH???
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like sure, we needed to defeat irontomb, but that's it???? no heavy losses, no irontomb showing its lord ravager power, just us fighting it, swimming in memoria for a bit, and then defeating fucker with one hit and a power of friendship??? and don't get me wrong, i love "power of friendship' trope, but this is probably the worst example of it i have ever seen. there was no actual struggle! this is the strongest enemy we faced so far and it went down this easily??? lygus, bestie, your irontomb is a fucking fraud, wtf were you doing all of this time??????
fucking war briefing videos on bilibili from mhy made better job of painting irontomb as this universal threat that the actual game!!!! these videos made it seem that everyone would be helping us take down irontomb, but in reality it's just xianzhou luofu and yaoqing (and these fucks in it for the golden blood), ipc (which are SELLING IRONTOMB VIRUS VACCINES, NOT DONATING THEM. FUCKING SELLING THEM!!! THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!! THIS VIRUS, IF UNLEASHED, WOULD FUCK OVER EVERYONE, IT IS IN YOUR BEST INTERESTS TO PREVENT IT NO MATTER THE COST!! i fucking hate ipc so much...) and galaxy rangers (which didn't even made an actual entrance). AND THAT'S IT!!! "yeah bro, irontomb self-coronating is the "end of the world" scenario, let me just ignore it real quick" © everyone else in a world. funFUCKINGtasting.
(also i like how irontomb swallowing all nearby people by turning them into memoria was never explained. why can it do that? idk lmao why not?)
if this is THE lord ravager, then at this point i'd say let's try our chances at zephyro. astral express+acheron+power of friendship+plot armor no diff lmao
- and now... cyrene... oh cyrene... dear lord, that entire plotline was imho the worst plotline hsr had at this point (yes, worse than even firefly's third "death").
shortly before patch went live, i saw a meme that essentially called cyrene skinwalker and just laughed at it, but W O W. she is actually a fucking skinwalker. her ONLY role is to be hsr elysia, and that's it.
"ERM ACSHUALLY it’s bootstrap paradox, demiurge went back in time and became smolrene, while leaving her power behind that eventually became mem (and then demiurge yada yada)" but it is nonsense!!! how did she even became impulse PhiLia093 inside the fucking scepter when as demiurge she WASN’T one??? HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU EVEN CREATE A TIME PARADOX INSIDE A FUCKING SUPER COMPUTER?????
AND!!! from lygus’ perspective, were he to see this, he should have immediately understood what was happening, but apparently not?? like… with how meticulous he is, the fact that this absolutely absurd time paradox exists is just.. yeah ok. sure it totally makes sense. 👍👍
and also, how can this time loop even be sustainable? to complete it (for demiurge to go back into the past) she needed to meet the trailblazer, but us being there was not predetermined (and I’m not talking about the elio’s script, I’m talking about how the trailblazer seems to be this being outside of fate’ calculations – like with nous seeing us as this unpredictable variable). the story with time loop makes sense only when the entirety of it, down to the worldbuilding, is one singular timeline with predetermined past, present and future, which IS NOT the case with hsr, considering that its entire shtick is about breaking free from fate, which means that in hsr' case future is not yet written (which should be a lie, now that I’m thinking about it, since it is stated that fuli and terminus exist in the future). this entire fucking time paradox is UNNESESSARY.
like I LOVE time paradoxes, but what the fuck is this????
and also, at the specific point of time in the story, which is 3.7, demiurge and smolrene are not the same entities. like again, bootstrap paradox, all of that, but still… they are not the same! the way hsr treats them as the same person is fucking diabolical. if it had proper, more logical set-up, and not explained in the last 10 minutes of the story, i think i would be more or less fine with it, but the approach we’ve got is just not it. how can you give cyrene so much screentime and do so little with it is just beyond me. but yay, at least we’ve got an hour or two of yapping about love and seeds and flowers and shit.
also, and this is my personal pet-peeve, but demiurge shattering statue of phainon was diabolical in the worst way possible. shaoji is truly a one-trick pony. like... aside from "reheating nachos" thing, it's just... why? why it was not a shared effort? (we all know why, unfortunately)
there are definitely a lot of hardcore elysia fans that are ecstatic about that scene, but I’m not one of them. it felt like such a cheap parody that it is just laughable.
- WHAT IS IT WITH THE FUCKING REMEMBRANCE GLAZE ALL OF A SUDDEN? LIKE I’M SORRY????? 3.6 WAS A FUCKING PATCH AGO????? yeah bro garden of recollection is a bunch of slimy scumbags (to the point that black swan essentially cut ties with them), fuli is literally this close 🤏 to becoming forth finality, fuli wanted irontomb ascension to use nous’ death for THEIR own goal, BUT NOW WE NEED TO SELL REMEMBRANCE UNIT CYRENE SO TIME FOR GAZILLION LINES ABOUT EMBRACING REMEMBRANCE!!!!
and, with the (somewhat predictable) twist that fuli is not even born yet, evernight story also loses its meaning.
and then, of course, nous is actually not that bad either… THEY just want to prove how cool and resilient and based life is! (let’s just ignore THEM cutting off potential futures, it is not that big of a deal guys!!! and also let’s just ignore circle of knowledge as well hahahahaha)
considering how heavily hsr glazes lan and THEIR indiscriminatory rampage against abundance (why yes THEY destroyed a planet of lizard people because they were pathstriders of abundance but it’s okay because ABUNDANCE IS EVIL!!!! why yes they constantly commit friendly fire but it's fine because lan followers are fine with this outcome), at this point i expect hsr to start glazing nanook. "guys THEY are just misunderstood pookie!! THEY are actually helping to advance universe and its civilizations!!"
- i was so fucking ON BOARD for war of aeons plotline. I WAS SEATED AND WAITING. and… yeah…
if irontomb being flop is somehow the start of war among aeons, then at this point i expect it to be something like this:
propagation manages to come to life once again, but qlipoth bonks tazzy with THEIR hammer and just fucking kills THEM!
but the qlipoth THEMSELF is like "and this is why i must preserve all star systems, which means isolating them from each other! #notoastralanchors #notostarrailintergalactictravel (that is canon btw, qlipoth’s end goal is to have all worlds protected by sealing them off from one another)"
but then astral express crew are all like "no qlipoth you are so cool and rad and big and strong don’t do this haha"
and qlipoth is just "this trailblazer reminds me of akivili and akivili were lowkey cool so ok i won’t so anything i’m chill now :) "
BUT OH NO!!! NIHILITY IS HERE!!! everyone is very sad and nihilistic now :(((( BUT THEN trailblazer REMEMBERS their friends and how cool it was to travel with them and IX is like "OH MY GOD YOU ARE SO RIGHT!!! life does have a meaning… i… was wrong…" and then THEY just disintegrate.
but THEN nanook enters the ring and becomes comically evil, mustache twirling villain "i will destroy the entire universe!!! MUHAHA!! I’m EVIL!! "
but then trailblazer says "no you don’t mister nanook i have friends! " and bonks them with their bat and nanook fucking dies and everyone is saved.
war lasts for ten minutes, then the rest 4 hours of that patch spend talking about the new unit. +100 gazillion yuan in profit.
- lygus’ finale was also fumbled imho. yeah bro he is the main antagonist, let’s give him like four appearances in total with as little of lines as possible, get him to admit that l in lycurgus stands for loser, and then kill him off. bruh. like he obviously ATE those scenes up but still… for a conclusion it was just not that good. shame, considering that this fuck became one of my most beloved characters ever. I will miss him :’(
- also, and this is very small thing compared to the rest, but i am SO disappointed that the boss fight doesn’t have a song to accompany it. the ost is fire, don’t get me wrong, but… god fucking damnit!! this was culmination of a story!!! and then we’ve got a very mediocre song about cyrene and what if scenarios that adds zero value to the story (and sounds really bad in english. like seriously, why vocals of eng version sound so weird and out of tune??).
- i can’t help myself, but i REALLY want to talk about this weird juxtaposition that acheron/other expies vs cyrene have going on for them.
but first! i actually don’t mind hoyo bringing hi3rd characters into their other entries. if anything, i love it. if i were an established writer, i would do the exact same thing, to be honest. at the end of the day, it all comes down to implementation, which is where the juxtaposition between acheron (and others) and cyrene comes into play.
acheron is her own person. her also being raiden mei is just an addition that doesn’t change much. if you were to remove that part of her and leave just acheron, nothing substantial would change. same goes for raiden ei/makoto/even scara: they all carry parts of raiden mei in them, but without them they are still themselves. same goes for loucha, for bronya/silver wolf and others. hell, phainon, who is also hi3rd flame-chaser expy, is still his own character, not just kevin copy. but demiurge!cyrene (again, i don’t think it is correct to treat philia093 and demiurge as the exact same character) is nobody without elysia parallel. she has nothing that is unique solely to her (in terms of fighting style, like acheron does, for an example). remove everything that makes her similar to elysia and you would be left with nothing.
and again, they could make cyrene her own character, they CHOSE not to. instead of giving her a chance to shine on her own, like they gave one to phainon or acheron or everyone else, they just made her hsr elysia. such a waste.
- however, i think what hurts the most is the false premise of the "exotale: scene 8" trailer.
kafka went on and on about trailblazer having to learn how to process loss, showing us clearly grieving trailblazer trying to process amphoreus’ tragic end, but nothing of the sort happened! not even close!!! we didn’t even acknowledged the tragedy that was 33 million cycles, now that all chrysos heirs are somehow gained their memory of it. flame reaver/khaslana are gone as if never existed, as if phainon didn’t went through billions of years of horrific trauma! none of the suffering mattered in the end, it was all simply swept under the rug!!!!
the entire "possibility b" thing is also very disappointing. cyrene had no internal conflict, we didn’t see her desperately wanting to just hide from the world in her own bubble, saved from her dark thoughts by trailblazer through some effort. with the way cyrene is, elio must be a fraud to see "possibility b" as a scenario worth considering and be afraid of.
and also… it was obvious that amphoreus would be preserved in the "as I’ve written", but i expected it’s revival to be its own separate arc, where scepter was completely obliterated, and the only way to make it real was for the trailblazer to actively make it happen. and!! for the chrysos heirs to be essentially dead until brought to life through memoria bullshit. but nope. scepter is fine with herta and screwllum extracting the majority of its data, and chrysos heirs are also fine and pretty much alive inside the book. so again, what’s the point?
like i've said already, in my opinion this entire arc was pointless and meaningless. it would have meaning, if it had actually created lasting consequences for the world of hsr, but again, none of that had happened, we are back at the start. disappointing.
and the thing is, i've picked up hsr because of welt and because i was interested in a story. i always said to myself that the moment hsr will stop satisfy me in terms of a plot, i will quit, and that time, unfortunately, has come. i'm certain that dahlia/penacony plotline will be dogshit, and, seeing leaks about edo-star, it would be extremely mediocre as well. i don't want to get invested in hsr story again, if that story continues to pretend like it is very high stakes while being the exact opposite of that. i will check up on plot from time to time, but unless hsr will bring something exceptional to the table, that's it for me. what a shame :(
(unless they will bring screwllum/mr.reca/another zandar to the table, them I am seated once more, ofc)
anyways I’m now this close 🤏 to writing that one lygus x trailblazer fic that I thought about back during 3.5… just so I can take away my mind from this clusterfuck of an ending.
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