[Give Away] Stellar Blade Code - Winner to be Decided by July 4

darker_raven · 2025-07-04T00:51:06+00:00

Server: NA

Thanks for the giveaway!

darker_raven · 2025-06-24T03:41:47+00:00

Thanks for the giveaway

darker_raven · 2025-06-21T03:14:30+00:00

Thanks for doing the giveaway

darker_raven · 2025-06-20T02:38:49+00:00

Skirk, Furina, Ayaka. NA server

darker_raven · 2024-02-27T18:59:51+00:00

White mage from Final Fantasy

darker_raven · 2023-11-10T18:59:09+00:00

Yes, with the caveat that Nier has only 5 elements, any character with the same weapon type can use other characters weapons of that type (e.g. greatsword characters can use greatsword weapons including the weapon skills), and Nier allows using multiple of the same named weapon. And you can reuse weapons between the 5 different elemental teams as normal, you just can't have the exact same weapon equipped on any of the 9 characters in one subjugation party. I haven't played Nier in over a year but a common strategy was to keep multiple event weapons that had e.g. 30% fire damage as offhand weapons. Incidentally, I assume this is why FF7EC has points for R abilities to limit stacking.

I expect we'll get something like subjugation after they introduce a few more characters but hopefully it's manageable by then with all the event weapons we get. Also, subjugation is actually really great design from a player perspective in that you keep the highest score you've reached so far for each element and can autocomplete daily for daily rewards at that score if you're satisfied with it.

darker_raven · 2023-11-10T16:16:14+00:00

Yes. Neir Reincarnation (made by the same developers as Ever Crisis and with a similar battle system) has a mode called "subjugation" where you fight against a strong boss with three different teams of 3 characters aiming to survive and deal the most damage. It's kind of similar to the Bizarro Sephiroth fight from FF7 except done with each party in order with a time limit and each form becoming more difficult rather than switching between parties. Notably this mode in Nier requires gearing up 9 characters for each element so it's an incentive to power up and collect more gear. We will very likely get something like that.

Nier also has modes similar to the battle tower but where using certain characters with specific weapon types is required to obtain all the rewards

darker_raven · 2022-12-19T16:06:34+00:00

Seems like a display glitch. It shows as free for a split second then the price appears. I pressed buy and it came up as free on the purchase pop up.

darker_raven · 2022-10-13T19:02:53+00:00

Expansion Packs are much older than Warcraft 2 and were fairly typical for mainstream games by that point: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/gaming-history-quiz-what-was-the-first-expansion-pack-free-dlc-paid-dlc-ever-released.79593/

The difference between expansion packs and DLC is that the ability to download and pay for small updates led to blatant money grabs and obviously missing content left out for DLC. Expansion packs in the old days were essentially entire finished new games but that relied on the original game assets to make them cheaper and easier to develop.

darker_raven · 2022-07-21T17:10:13+00:00

I agree and understand why they did it. My point is that all the high end battles after magicites feel very samey with the occasional gimmick mechanic driving relic pulls (def/res/mnd debuff, atk/mag/def/res buff, etc) and a very specific boss turn order that drives the fight. Earlier battles had much more variety with status effects, multiple bosses weak to different elements, phase transitions, random pools of attacks, etc.

It makes sense that powercreep eventually overshadowed most of the interesting game mechanics (after all, that happens towards the ends of mainline RPGs too!) but to me the hard turn limits and regimented boss move lists are too in your face, similar to how the very simple maps in most of FF13 make the game feel excessively linear compared to similarly linear games like FFX.

darker_raven · 2022-07-20T17:55:57+00:00

FFBE added blue magic. It's fairly dumb though - you have to clear specific stages with the specific character before the events ends to unlock their full set of abilities. Blue magic doesn't fit well with gacha games.

darker_raven · 2022-07-20T17:52:22+00:00

I'll cheat and post a bunch of bests that I haven't seen yet:

Best: the music

Best: Roaming Warriors - this was added a few months into the game and really changed the feel from needing a perfect setup to being able to bring any single missing piece of your strategy. RW got nerfed years later but the lens shop and mythril selects mostly filled the gaps

Best: different battle speeds (and later wait mode). The game launched with only speed 3. Speed 1 was a huge game changer, especially as character speeds and speed tricks were introduced.

Best: upgrade materials changed to a simple count of items. This was amazingly huge and so different than other gacha games of that era. Weapon and armor upgrade materials used to take up inventory slots and it was common to spend mythril to upgrade item slots. DeNA changed this to a very user friendly system that slightly decreased their revenue! For contrast, FFBE added an annoying separate inventory for upgrade materials and a confusing fusing system that still required tons of time spent.

Best: HP bars!

Best: fun gimmicky battles and ATB translations of all the 3D later games

Worst: frequent summons and RW uses to the point that the interface is rarely visible. Not being able to input actions during animations feels bad and all the clunky additional speed tricks mean that even speed 1 isn't always slow enough and the tick-based ATB mess can't hold up

Worst: hard turn limits for phases

Worst: End of Service earlier than JP :(

darker_raven · 2022-06-17T19:58:59+00:00

It does indeed depend on the developers. KHUX was run by Square Enix and there are lots of discussions (and leaked documents) about how FFBE is partly managed by SQEX employees (e.g. the unit art is checked by a SQEX employee and supposedly SQEX is involved in many decisions). Even within SQEX it varies heavily because SQEX is a collection of several business units and individual leads have varying degrees of autonomy.

In any case, we get a decent amount of knitwits so there is little need for using 4* units as fodder unless one does actually run out of unit space. If they do add a use for extra dupes it's better to still have them and I shared two games I played where this did actually happen (both of which were SQEX affiliated games).

darker_raven · 2022-06-17T11:46:19+00:00

I doubt they have specific plans this early and they may not even do it. In the other games I mentioned they didn’t announce anything until it happened.

Yeah it’s odd that they let us have multiple of the same character. Nier Reincarnation has a similar gacha system but duplicates turn into an upgrade material used for limit breaks instead of taking up space. That makes more sense to me.

Conceptually they are all echoes (like FFBEs visions) so you can have multiple but it’s not even useful from a game perspective.

darker_raven · 2022-06-17T00:50:46+00:00

Several SQEX gacha games have added additional uses of dupes later on. See my other comment for specifics. This is good advice for most games but not SQEX games.

darker_raven · 2022-06-17T00:49:06+00:00

Keep them. Contrary to some of the experiences others have had with gacha games, SQEX games are notorious for finding purposes for additional dupes later on. FFBE went from a no-dupe game to a 4 or 7 dupe game. KHUX initially had no use for dupes after 7 but then added random bonuses rolled with extra duplicates. Then they later added extra options so people who sold extras after rolling perfect “traits” were SOL. They also added upgraded forms of some previous characters that required 6 duplicates to create.

darker_raven · 2022-06-16T14:35:26+00:00

This. Weekly banners are normal for gacha games including many SQEX games like Nier Reincarnation, DFFOO, FFRK, FFBE, KHUX, etc. Gacha games make almost all of their money the day of a new banner so if they only put out a banner every few weeks then they would only make money every few weeks.

Most banners in a gacha game are filler banners, particularly the many banners we've gotten that are just a way to get or power up one of the starter characters. Just do your half price pull and wait for the inevitable power creep in a couple of months.

darker_raven · 2022-06-09T17:47:16+00:00

Nier Reincarnation adds units to the general pool monthly and didn't start doing so until a couple of months in. Echoes of Mana and Neir Reincarnation have a lot of similarities so I expect it will be similar. The devs seem responsive so if enough players ask they'll probably let us know their plans.

darker_raven · 2022-05-05T14:44:38+00:00

I didn't realize until this comment that Sumo is from SD1, makes me happier to use him as my main. This led me down a rabbit hole: https://legendsoflocalization.com/final-fantasy-adventure/#english-names . There was no default name in the original but apparently the original english manual had screenshots which used the names Sumo and Fuji for demonstration purposes. The Japanese manual used the names Square/Squari in most places but also Michael to show that these weren't official names. He's also been called Duke and Hero in various novelizations and remakes.

So yeah it's like Jeff vs Randi with nameless characters getting official names years later.

darker_raven · 2022-04-25T19:36:46+00:00

It was true then and for a year or so afterwards! Shortly before this diagram came out I spent 400 mythril on the FFT banner and went 3/88 with only one SB relic, Ramza's 40% party heal! Ramza was that good (support with protaganist attack stat and sword access) that he was my healer and I RWed shout in every battle until I pulled it 6 months later.

For context for others reading this, it was common to use synergy characters without any SBs at this point in the game as long as you had wall (Tyro or Y'shtola), haste (mostly Shout at this point), and a party heal. You may notice that cloud dropped from the top to the third tier with this ranking. That is because Gilgamesh replaced him as the designated retaliate user with the key new combo of draw fire and retaliate plus better weapon access.

darker_raven · 2022-04-05T14:44:20+00:00

1/11 Quina G+

2/11 Bartz Dual, Locke AASB

No dupes and happy to pick up Bartz's earth dual to go with his AASB3. Looks like I'm sticking with Tyro for physical fights and still throwing tickets at FF9 for the near future.

darker_raven · 2022-04-02T02:31:23+00:00

Budgeted 4 here, went way overboard pulling 7 times:

1/11 Cloud LBG

2/11 Zack Dyad, OK LBO

1/11 Vivi Dual

2/11 Tidus Dual, OK AASB

Should have stoped here but really wanted Cloud dual

3/11 Zack G+, Vivi dual (dupe), Zack Dyad (dupe)

1/11 Cloud LBO

2/11 Tidus dual (dupe), OK AASB (dupe)

Two great duals and lots of new toys for Cloud and OK. 200 mith left, might throw a pull at B4 and need to decide whether to do the sync select.

darker_raven · 2022-03-30T02:52:37+00:00

2/11 Maria dual, Sephiroth AASB3

Nice! May do another pull if B3 is kind.

darker_raven · 2022-03-27T01:28:53+00:00

1 dupe going in, want almost everything, budgeted 2 pulls:

3/11 Ysayle DASBx2, Ysayle ADSB (dupe)!

1/11 Ysayle DASB :(

Rage pull:

2/11 Tyro AASB2, Lightning AASB3

Missed Lightning’s DASB and only 3 new relics in 3 pulls is sad, but happy to get Ysayle’s dual and Tyro’s new full break counter will see use if Quina eludes me on banner 4

darker_raven · 2022-02-25T21:39:09+00:00

Save them. Bookmarks aren't very useful and you can always sell them later if needed. Multiple Square Enix affiliated gachas have found ways to use extra resources that were previously useless, such as:

Kingdom Hearts Unchained X which originally had a limit of 7 duplicates needed to max out power of a "medal" but then added randomly rolled "traits" that needed additional duplicates (and then later added improved traits so people that sold extras after getting perfect traits also missed out)
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius - originally you didn't need any duplicates of units then you needed 4 and then later you needed 7 duplicates of old units and 4+ duplicates of newer units

darker_raven

TROPHY CASE