1841

“Tis weak to fire, Arisen!”… “Quickly, strike its tail!”…

Looks moderately interesting, so I’ll keep an eye on how well the anime is recieved. Still really holding out hope for a proper sequel some day though. Seeing that trailer makes me want to reinstall Dragon’s Dogma and do another playthrough.

1842

As far as I can tell from the trailer, the entire show is 3D, with humans using a cel-shaded shading and frame reductions and monsters using a more traditional 3D shader. It is definitely a choice (and a weird one).

The confusion is understandable. Fake 2D in anime has gotten really good. The only way to catch it is to look for too good 2D animation with subtle and perfect conservation of 3D volumes in small movements. Things like too much detail in places where it’s not needed (hair, etc…) can help too.

1843

Wow, this is so much better, for me, with mouse and keyboard. I might actually keep playing this time!

1844

And I thought there wasn’t much of a story at all in the game. Is the game worth playing for the story? How’s the game if you don’t want to have pawns?

1845

The faces in this stand out as being pretty clearly 3d models to me. I can’t quite articulate what gives it away, though. Something about the lighting, although it might just be a frame rate thing.

Whatever it is the Arc Systems Works guys do though, that is almost indistinguishable.

1846

You are forced to have pawns. At least one? Possibly more.

The weird “this is like Metalocalypse” jerkiness to me evident in both this and in Castlevania is, I think, a consequence of a weird “flatness” to some of the faces when violence is happening, like they move almost like paper dolls.

1847

Mostly what they do is expensive manual frame by frame animations. Shows like this only do that for big action scenes and do a lot of key frame animation too (with reduced but too consistent frame rate).

Watch a clip of Beastars to see what the best faux 2D anime looks like (I noticed it was 3D because I thought it would have been too expensive to do manually).

1848

Yeah, there was a good explainer video posted somewhere a while back about their animation technique, and how they blended various approaches.

I think the dynamic frame rates does a lot in making it feel “natural”.

1849

Well I finished the campaign for this game last night. This took me by complete surprise because up until I saw the credits roll I felt like I was only 1/3rd of the way through the story. I dislike the abrupt ending, and I’m still totally unclear about the dragon’s motivations for plucking my heart out and telling me to come kill him. I’m genuinely annoyed by the story because of all the loose ends.

All that being said, I enjoyed the combat, but I was level 49 when I finished the game and everything else felt half that. I’m sure I out leveled the game. I also liked the world, but, again, it felt less than half the size it talked about. I was expecting to go to the north at some point and issue some payback for some stuff they pulled, but they might as well have never brought them up since they’re not even in the game.

As for the dungeons, I just loved those. I only wish there were three times as many and the monsters there were harder.

I still have DLC to complete, Bitterblack Island or something, I will do that next.

On one hand this game feels like it should have been so much more and it leaves me feeling unfulfilled, on the other I totally appreciate so much of the cool shit it does.

1850

Since this is a Japanese game, what you saw wasn’t the ending. You have to play New game Plus to get the ending.

1851

Yeah, you have a bit left, then the DLC stuff!

1852

Damn you, Japanese devs! This is why I sputtered out on Neir: Automata, they just couldn’t figure out how to wrap the damn game up.

1853

Wait, is this for real?

1854

yup - Its really part of the universe lore, and its cyclic nature.

Also, depending on choices taken or not during the game, you can get various ends. Both the first and second time around.

1855

It’s one of the best New Game plus out there - the world itself is changed. I don’t want to spoil anything but do check out!

1856

I agree completely - I really enjoyed that.

1857

Shit, I’d better move this up my “to play” list.

1858

Luckily I might still have time to finish the game for realsies before the Netflix show releases. I’m currently working through Everfall.

1859

Bitterblack is freaking hard, I didn’t get too far into it. It’s a combat challenge dungeon, and I think might have been released around the time of Dark Souls-mania.

1860

And the DLC is the best stuff in the game, incidentally.

It’s challenging but you’ve got so much build and gear flexibility in DD that you can definitely find a solution to every problem. It’s not some sado-masochistic Souls game.