Soteriologian
25d ago
How is the story/characters? One of the most off-putting things about SMT5 is it didn't feel like it had any characters at all. I don't even mean they felt cliché: they felt inert, like mannequins. I'd happily take a stereotypical JRPG hero over the Nahobino/whatever-his-real-name-is any day.
Soteriologian
25d ago
How is Metaphor? I'm a Persona fan (3/4/5), but when I tried SMT5 I didn't like it at all. The battle system was mechanically better and had more depth, but everything else was worse. Much worse. In particular, the constant echo-y audio drove me mad. I stopped playing after the first chapter and haven't returned.
Soteriologian
25d ago
I haven't even updated yet and I still get the joy of Telegram adapting to the new Liquid Glass paradigm. It looks so bad.
Soteriologian
25d ago
As you say, these actually mostly make the game harder, but they allow you to do content faster if you're good enough.
Well, Bloodboil Aromatic in particular does not allow you to do content faster: it's a huge pain in the ass to farm the recipe and materials! There is no world in which doing a boss 20 seconds faster is going to make up for 15 minutes of farming.
Bloodboil Aromatic, as far as I can divine, has exactly one use: doing nuke build tricks. If they'd make my adaptation and just get rid of the damage-taken penalty, it would have lots of uses! You'd have to do this arcane farming routine, but it would indeed give you a big boost that might help you beat a boss you were having trouble with.
Now, damage-gamble talismans (as opposed to consumables) like Fire Scorpion Charm do have a much more common use: they're good for level 1 challenge runs. If you're going to die in one hit anyway, then it makes no difference if you take more damage, so equipping something like the Fire Scorpion Charm is all buff and no downside. And unlike Bloodboil, skilled players do use it since, it's not a consumable so you don't have to farm it each time you want to use it--you just pick it up once and equip it.
Anyway, I do agree that having a variety of items with weird cost/benefit analyses can make the game more interesting. But even here, what you'd want is "complicated" items for skilled players to not require farming (as good players will just skip it if it does), and all-good-no-downside items for unskilled players to be the sort of thing you'd be able to craft from naturally exploring the world and having an inventory full of materials. Bloodboil is the exact opposite of this principle.
Finally, you have to compare these things not in a vacuum, but to other stuff that exists in the game: compare Bloodboil Aromatic to Flame, Grant Me Strength. The latter is a spell, meaning you pick it up once (right from the start of the game, if you know where it is) and use it as many times as you want, it grants +20% to both physical and fire damage, it occupies the same "internal" buff slot as Bloodboil Aromatic (meaning you can't use these two at the same time), and there's no damage taken penalty!
Soteriologian
27d ago
Richard Hanania, author of The Origins of Woke, suggests that these sorts of group chats are actually really common among the right wingers he interacted with. In fact his response to this seems to indicate agreement this chat is tame compared to many conversations he has seen.
It is. In a darknet chat, I once saw someone say
Soteriologian
29d ago
I did not enjoy Infinite Jest. The author is a gifted wordcel: he has nothing worthwhile to say, but he is very good at saying it. It's just Reddit philosophy, dressed well.
Soteriologian
29d ago
In this context, choosing to join underground resistance group was choosing to die for the cause, soon and often in rather unpleasant way, and it was clear to everyone.
Why would it be clear to everyone? It's clearly false: the war ended within a year, with their team winning. In fact, this resistance leader himself survived the war.
I'm not saying there aren't people with a martyrdom fetish, but that's their problem, not an objective analysis of the situation or even a coherent strategy. In the words of one of the generals on the winning team: "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
Thanks! Sounds worth a shot, will pick it up sometime.
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