All the S@nics - the end

[Catabo]

LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE.png (147.83 KiB) Viewed 1365 times

Thank goodness, a minor spelling flub! Only now do we have free rein to drag the game through the mud.

[helucard]

These games never know what to do with Omega, huh. We're two for two with games introducing him as broken down somewhere, and I know there's at least one more down the line. Can't they just have him be out there having a grand old time blasting some robots?

That IS his element. He's the over-eager robo-butcher with no regard for anything else. That is his self-assigned, programmatically focussed purpose, and he will perform this task to its completion without rest or consideration for outside factors - including his own wellbeing.

Quick summary of Omega in the IDW comics:

He is singleminded in his conquest. He does not care if things look bad, he will fight forever if there's targets to shoot.


To the point of literally being torn apart and not realising it.

[KobaBeach]

he's such a good boy

[BobisOnlyBob]

Omega is a delight and a welcome addition to the roster in just about any context

[QuiEstFaba]

I saw the tags--was the original title, by any chance, "Rare Recording Of Past Imperator Ralph M. Lewis Recording His Thoughts During His Tour Of Egypt. he Talks About The Giza Plateau, Sakhara, Imhotep, Tell El Amarma, Akhnaton And Luxor Temple"?

[raocow]

naturally

[KobaBeach]

raocow, the one person to go full on 4 fighters in ff1 as their first run

also i cannot stand rouge's constant bitchiness, she contributes Nothing to the team. literally worse than nash lunar. i have no idea why she's so miserable in this game. shadow is also post-generations, captain pissant shadow for some reason and amy is just constantly going through uncontrollable mood swings she feels like an ableist or sexist caricature.

i seriously hope bioware games aren't All written like this because Jesus

[helucard]

Ok, so I can't say I've been a fan of the music's volume mixing or instrumentation so far, but Yikes... YIKES... That track in particular.

[EllenHouraisan]

I dunno, I find Rouge's occasional quips hilarious. It's like 06 Rouge, who clearly knows this is a stinker and doesn't really want to be here.

[helucard]

Loving the arbitrary joke of reading the entire first page of the summary and totally disregarding page 2.

For us to allegedly be only

half way through

according to A Patreon Friend, I do wonder how much story could possibly be written for this... Like, the prospect of a wormhole opening over the world, threatening to destroy it, and needing to get in there to stop the guy who's been responsible for all the problems so far, it really feels like an ending act. Like, unless Ix has some kinda backup plan or something if the black hole over the planet they want to conquer doesn't work (sure, just spaghettify the land you wanna go back to, smart move genius), what would their plan's next phase even be? It doesn't feel like there's space to have more story, so is it just... a whole lot of filler gameplay?

I worry.

[KobaBeach]

I dunno, I find Rouge's occasional quips hilarious. It's like 06 Rouge, who clearly knows this is a stinker and doesn't really want to be here.

She was never this rude though, she was kind of, pardon my cringe, "tsundere" in SA2 but she was never outwardly mean to like Tails and Amy and whatnot, she was just all business. Amy was also never this strangely written, she's obsessive about Sonic to a disgusting and terrifying degree yes, but she can put her feelings aside if the situation calls for it, she's not constantly aggro towards every woman she sees, except for maybe Blaze? And it got cleared up (I have not played Rush in like a decade).

Shadow is like. People complain about "le meta era" in the comments of every Sonic critique video on YouTube but I feel like the biggest casualty of the tongue-in-cheek scripts is how constantly and pointlessly mean Shadow is, and this game is somehow a fucked up foreshadowing of that. He's constantly a fucking bitch boy, who has nothing to do but to be an asshole to everyone. Like in

Sonic Boom

he only exists to be edgy, and in Chronicles, aside from worrying about Omega (the one soft spot in his character in this game), he's literally that.

He's a rival to Sonic, yes, but he doesn't go out of his way to be a dick to people outside of like Adventure 2 where he was an omnicidal maniac due to a misplaced vendetta. He's just stoic and aloof, like Proto Man. He can be cold, but he's never outwardly a dick. The games where Shadow is just a dick for no reason are the worst written ones (and the Sonic Boom cartoon of which Shadow is the only poorly written thing, I will go to my grave defending that show).

Loving the arbitrary joke of reading the entire first page of the summary and totally disregarding page 2.

For us to allegedly be only

half way through

according to A Patreon Friend, I do wonder how much story could possibly be written for this... Like, the prospect of a wormhole opening over the world, threatening to destroy it, and needing to get in there to stop the guy who's been responsible for all the problems so far, it really feels like an ending act. Like, unless Ix has some kinda backup plan or something if the black hole over the planet they want to conquer doesn't work (sure, just spaghettify the land you wanna go back to, smart move genius), what would their plan's next phase even be? It doesn't feel like there's space to have more story, so is it just... a whole lot of filler gameplay?

I worry.

I think they just go to Twilight Cage and get hit with a truckload of sudden, non-foreshadowed backstory and midbosses and then Ix

[helucard]

[...] I feel like the biggest casualty of the tongue-in-cheek scripts is how constantly and pointlessly mean Shadow is, and this game is somehow a fucked up foreshadowing of that. [...]

Sega have long been pushing for Shadow to be The Rival™ and nothing more for a good while now. We had Ian Flynn actually step forward and say that basically Shadow's character is restricted, he'd love to add more to him, even if it's just a jokey sidepanel of Shadow straight up munching on coffee beans or something, but he's not afforded that freedom.

Someone stated a while back that their friend brought up shadow's portrayal with him at fanexpo, and Ian said that they had this idea of shadow actually doing something cool and intelligent but it was shot down by execs saying he's basically gotta be shown a different way. Exactly how true this story is should be taken with as much salt as you'd use for any "I have a friend who..." story, but it lines up neatly with what he's saying on Bumblekast that he just doesn't have much freedom with Shadow. Sega want him one way, and it's... awful.

[QuiEstFaba]

on an unrelated note


Now this is my jam--I love screwball improvisations like this. I used to catch stuff just like this all the time before I moved up north. I guess it's no surprise even the engineers ring a bell. As do many of the other names Antoine Berthiaume worked with--Fred Frith, Derek Bailey, Maryclare Brzytwa, The Norman Conquest--a few of them are outright luminaries in their own rights.
But I digress.

[KobaBeach]

Sega have long been pushing for Shadow to be The Rival™ and nothing more for a good while now.

I know and I fucking hate it and stuff like this is why

Sonic Frontiers

is absolutely going to have a dogshit story

[Matt is me]

Man, as I keep watching, I hope Rao never gets another Ferox.

For Cream, it's a great choice. Her support stuff is all or nothing, and Ferox makes sure it's all. Amazing. Having one Ferox is excellent.

But I fear if rao gets another, he'd use it. He said as such when he got the first! And for everyone besides the bunny, it's....kind of bad? If you're decent at the QTEs (and rao is now), you still do well with your POW moves even when you're not perfect. Using Ferox would give him *slightly* more damage with the POWs on average while also depriving him of the useful effect of having another chao.

The set up now is perfect. Game is going very very well. I'm terrified it will get worse.

[KobaBeach]

But I fear if rao gets another, he'd use it. He said as such when he got the first! And for everyone besides the bunny, it's....kind of bad? If you're decent at the QTEs (and rao is now), you still do well with your POW moves even when you're not perfect. Using Ferox would give him *slightly* more damage with the POWs on average while also depriving him of the useful effect of having another chao.

I wonder if that's my case. I'm thinking of trying Sonic Chronic again as I go through Bravely Default after beating Chrono Trigger again, but I might grind a bit as the reviewers might have done to get some of the broken full level POW Moves out of the way. I like softening my RPGs a bit to enjoy the story and combat but I don't really like extracting the entire difficulty, the most I do is grind a bunch of levels when I'm stuck (usually around 5, doing like 15 on Lufia 3 now because it's an insane game).

I legit like. Grinded to Lv100 in Final Fantasy VIII just so Ultimecia would have a fairer chance of beating me (rudimentary level scaling), she still lost badly, I had a bunch of Meltdowns, junctioned Ultimas and just. Quistis' Shockwave Pulsar, Squall's Lionheart and Zell's Punch Rush/Booya combo strategy.

My thing tho is that I'm just kind of Bad at rhythm games, it's why I'm apprehensive about playing Melody of Memory. I'd be down for playing DDR or IIDX or Pop'n (my ex/friend-with-benefits told me Pop'n is Hell Difficulty which. Yes) or Gitadora someday, but I don't know if it's actual lag or anything but Sonic Chronicles' QTEs don't feel very good to me. The draggers' gamefeel feels... Kind of off.

[Lord Ruby]

Getting another Ferox might make him use other characters' support moves, which could be interesting. I've heard Amy's attack buff, for instance, is very powerful.

Now that we're in another world, and it seems we won't be seeing more human characters, there's a weird thing I've noticed...? It seems they only bothered to make male NPCs...? Like, there are the children, the adults, the old man, and the gun commanders. There are also a couple of unique human NPCs, but I believe they were also all male. I suppose the GUN soldiers are technically ambiguous, though.

[KobaBeach]

Considering how Rouge and Amy were treated, MAYBE it's for the best?

I don't know much about Bioware's games yet, other than "people play Mass Effect for alien sex", "Wrex and Garrus are husband material", "Baldur's Gate is GOAT unless you're one of those insane WRPG stans with an unhinged vendetta against RTwP", "Knights of the Old Republic is several people's gamewife" and "Matt 'raocow' McMuscles likes Jade Empire".

Also the whole "Tali stock image" incident and the 4chan TORtanic saga- I mean SaGa- I mean saga

jennifer hepler deserved better regardless of the quality of her writing

[Blivsey]

I have to assume all the Unique Chao are, well... unique, and you can't get more than one? Though with how wack this game can be...

[raocow]

in this very thread lion claimed he got four feroxes using regular savescumming so

[Blivsey]

then why does the game call them unique aaaaaaaagggggghhhhhhhh never mind i guess sonic chronicles is actually a bad game

[KobaBeach]

iirc The Zoah were actually named in a poll in Sega of America or Sega of Europe's website. People submitted a few names and there was a poll for them, I forget what I chose from the poll actually! This was when I was like, 11. And I'm currently 25, so lol.

Zoah was the submission of a western Sega fansite called Sega Nerds, I'm not sure if they're still up (Fake Edit: They are and they also do articles on bitcoin and gambling which... I get that Sega did gambling in the early days, amusement machines and all, but Yike!!). Anyway Zoah is a reference to Panzer Dragoon Saga, a settlement visited in the middle two discs (2 and 3, of four) in the game.

BTW raocow, I wholeheartedly support a PD Saga LP, much more friendly to newcomers than Chronicles, I feel. They specifically made sure there was no grinding either, which is a plus even if there were quite a few big names designing that way already such as FF6 (for the most part) and 7 (if you don't want to do superbosses, though personally I managed to do so at 50 something with some exploits).

[kitikami]

: I would be glad to reward you with the finest gift of all: knowledge...Eh on second thought, here have a consumable.

This game is full of weird stuff but the thing that keeps getting me is the weird Escher-esque perspective where they drew 3D environments but then programmed everything to interact wherever it projects on a flat plane.

[KobaBeach]

This game is full of weird stuff but the thing that keeps getting me is the weird Escher-esque perspective where they drew 3D environments but then programmed everything to interact wherever it projects on a flat plane.

What do you mean, like mapping out collision on top of drawn backgrounds? A lot of PSX-era games were like this, Square's FF7-9 and SaGa Frontier 1&2, Capcom's Resident Evil 1-3... The thing is that like SaGa Frontier 1 and FF7, these backgrounds are not very obvious and hard to navigate.

[kitikami]

For example, where raocow goes up two cliffs via springs here, if he had jumped back down toward the camera, he would fall a while to the base of each cliff. But instead he jumps off the back, and it just instantly plops him on the road in the background as if depth doesn't exist anymore.