#textiro

[fukouiro]

no idea who follows me that uses them but i added rss/atom/json feeds to my website @ https://sadcolor.net

(also sorry if someone somehow discovered this in the last 12 hours when i first added them because i just did the no-no thing and changed the ID formatting)

[fukouiro]

i feel like i really should stop making text posts just to complain about things but oh my god i listened to STREETS OF RAGE 2 Soundtrack (Expanded & Enhanced) the other night, and it might actually be one of the most upsetting things i've ever heard

unfortunately, i don't really know a lot about music so i can't be super detailed with my complaining.

to me, there's a huge style disjoint between the original SOR2 songs and the new segments this person has created.

for one, almost every new segment comes at the end of the original track, which makes the remix structure very formulaic. it also means that whatever new musical ideas are being added don't really have time to develop or feel like they're an organic piece of the song.

again, i don't really have a good way to explain it, but also the new segments just feel... wrong. i think especially, a lot of songs get a new solo (or multiple) and that's like not really a prominent feature of any SOR songs i can think of off the top of my head. the vibe of the song also noticeably shifts during the new segments in a way that i don't know how to describe.

i'm not going to say the new parts are bad in a vacuum (they aren't), but when you tack them on the end of a SOR song, they don't fit at all ("Never Return Alive" is one of the most blatant offenders). but i can't really pretend like they're two separate songs because they're still very much parts of a song and not a full song on their own.

writing this post makes me feel like i'm just complaining about things being different, but i don't know!! i really like how Streets of Rage Remake did remixes of the SOR songs. i think the new parts they add to songs in those remixes work pretty well. i can't ever experience this in a vacuum so i will never know

[fukouiro]

recently finished engaging in hollow knight hater behavior by getting all of the achievements in the game

[fukouiro]

i really wish balatro's random elements were more generous because i think once you've unlocked most things, it really quickly becomes rerolling the run on the first ante just to guarantee something good (even on the lowest difficulty with any of the easiest decks)

and then you still might not make it past any of the next antes depending on how nice the game is to you

[fukouiro]

random fighting game musings...

for no particular reason, i just remembered about the novriltataki video on fighting game comeback mechanics. the conclusion it comes to, that comeback mechanics are best when they have little actual effect on the game, is kind of weird. and even weirder is the assumption that comeback mechanics are designed primarily for new players, and the comparison to persona 4 arena's awakening mechanic

so they say that P4A's awakening is bad because it activates at 35% health while you're outside of a combo. it also gives you a huge defense boost, among other buffs. because of this, the ideal strategy is to never get the opponent down to that threshold so that you can eventually take them out with one big combo (or at least, leave them with as little health as possible). this, they say, is frustrating for new players who can't do large combos and limiting of the viable strategies at top-level play.

on the other hand, the guts system in guilty gear is supposed to be good because it basically amounts to visual trickery with the lifebar as the characters gradually take less damage as their health lowers. the actual effect on the match is little and mostly amounts to using altered combo routes because of the damage scaling system (the minimum damage of any hit is 1, and the game's bhealth value is 420).

in the first place, i feel like calling guts system a comeback mechanic is stretching the definition. but also i think that guts works not as well as a comeback mechanic because of the fact that chip damage isn't affected and because of high-hitcount combos? like, certain characters can really easily game the system because they have a natural ability to do high-hit combos (like chipp or ramlethal). also this mirrors the point against p4a "requiring" large combos to defeat awakening, because it's pretty much the same thing as guilty gear "requiring" special combos to defeat guts scaling.

and another thing i think is weird is how they fault awakening for only activating outside of combos, but that actually makes it a strategy to play around awakening. characters in persona can also use their invincible moves to decrease their own HP to deliberately put themselves into awakening range, meaning playing around awakening isn't entirely up to the attacker either.

also, the complaint that you are "punished" for allowing the opponent to go into awakening because you didn't kill them in one big combo is weird, because that kind of punishment happens a lot in GG's guts scaling system, but just to a lesser extent. you essentially get rewarded more for landing large hits near the guts scaling thresholds, but it's rarely possible to actually optimize around this fact because of the combo system of the game and just the nature of fighting game matches in general. sure, that makes it "not limiting" but it's not because it's really a freeing mechanic, y'know... on the other hand, p4a having one clear boundary makes decision-making around awakening a long-term plan that both players can influence. there's freedom in how you value you or the opponent's awakening, in how much you try to manage the opponent's health so they don't get awakening, and in how you manage your own health to potentially get awakening even if your opponent is trying to avoid that

i'm not saying that awakening is like, the best comeback mechanic ever or anything. but it feels weird that the message of the video is "comeback mechanics in a 1v1 fighter are unnecessary" but they also have to do this weird framing of guts scaling as a comeback mechanic when it just isn't...

[fukouiro]

i've actually never used hurricane/tornado toss before but i felt like vi's needle skills were game-trivializingly good haha. they're excellent for general enemy encounters and bosses alike.

i guess this post got sorta long so it's time to put a read more

they pierce all defense so if you give vi the attack berries, both last attack and power exchange medals, ADBP enhancer, and electric needles, she does like 21 damage with needle pincer plus an almost guaranteed stun for the first few times. hurricane toss does 30 damage with this setup though, so that is a good deal more damage... i think needle pincer only comes ahead on an enemy with 3 or more defense, which is basically none of them as far as i remember. it's pretty much only going to happen on an enemy/boss with 2 defense that's shocked (which only happens if you run status needles, haha). it's probably good if you hurricane toss then shock an enemy later in the turn or something like that.

even if the damage isn't as good on needle pincer, i find the ability to stunlock enemies/bosses pretty ridiculous and you can get several free turns on a boss where you can do 36 damage as long as you only do one needle pincer plus normal attacks. obviously you can spend more TP if you wanna though. since i was trying to keep my TP up without using any items most of the time, i never ended up using hurricane toss for extra damage though haha

needle toss is also one of the best tools in the game for planning damage distribution. you can toss them at 3 different enemies for 8 damage each, or sometimes at one enemy, then a second, then back to the first for 16 damage to one and 8 to the other since you dodge damage scaling by targeting different enemies. or sometimes you just have to throw two at the first enemy and your last at the second, but even then that's still pretty good because otherwise you would have "wasted" damage on that first enemy that you now get to carry over to the second one.

and of course, with shock needles comes the pretty high chance of disabling enemies for that turn which makes your life easier. also it just feels good when you do cool shots that barely miss one enemy to hit one behind them

↑ this encounter in particular is perfect for illustrating the use for needle toss, cuz you can take out this entire encounter with just one needle toss on this setup by hitting the 2nd, 1st, then 2nd enemy.

not relevant, but iirc i cleared this game the first time on hard mode + hard hits without spending any of the stat boost berries until the team maki fight because i was indecisive. it was so time-consuming because of the damage output difference between me and the enemies :'). also i was like "why would you ever fight enemies once you're max level, they take so much resources" but now i know better cuz vi is #broken and i should have been using my stupid stat up berries

[fukouiro]

help why are spambots liking my one halloween comic

[fukouiro]

help what do i draw