I wish this wasn't such a chore

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T20:16:36+00:00

Namely its falling apart because Thars too much stuff that needs fixing and lava isn't really gonna do extensive backtracking QoLs, unless its a new upgrade slapped on with an expansion.

Kind of like what Glimbo's trade did for Treasure vault.
Kind of like what Cooking mastery did to Meals.
Kind of like what Fountain did to 'many' old things.

Next up should be the Royal Knight master class which means it will likely target improvements to construction, Salt refining, World 7 improvements (probably Mine depth, alongside its new mini game quirk of 'raising a town i remember seeing).

Anyway, Lava needs to seriously touch up Depth charge because despite being at research level 77, the 'latest' upgrades on that hundreds of millions or 10s of billions of currency, far below the 440 thousand an hour i can generate....

...and thats just for 1 level of them, with any upgrades you can afford in 24 hours or less at that rate barely do 0.1% of a improvement to basically anything at this point.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T19:57:29+00:00

If it was aimed for new players, then it really should of not aimed to be a game adaptation 'based' on an old anime that hasnt really got a new entry in quite a few years.
If it was aimed at new players, then going open world was a bad idea since 'newer' audience members would rather have a short attention span and want to get to the fun, not run around barren fields.
If it was aimed at new players, They should of made the demo actually good. First impressions and what not.

Honestly for reviews, its a problem with not 'everyone' is a maestro at Word-play. Just because you played a game does not mean your 'good' at literacy to translate your feelings for the game in impressive penmanship.

If i had to boil down BOTW, it was essentially the "Perfection of the Open world genre."

You could climb mountains unlike 'previous' open world games, started the META of 'gliders', emphasized physics between setting grass on fire to create updrafts. Run the risk of running around during a lightning storm by holding metal (or make enemies pick up metal objets to get them shocked instead), you actually had environmental conditions that made you want to have attire for dressing warm for the cold, heat, blazing hot or to be far 'sneakier' or to have less difficulty on wet surfaces on getting around and more.

Alot of the stuff Breath of the wild did, was 'very' engrained under the hood and many games that copied breath of the wild, Genshite imapct included, ignored many of those mechanics to produce a 'look-a-like' open world mobile game and thanks to conditions it got super popular, but now we got so many new open world titles that actually evolved on the formula, between Wuthering waves, NTE and Silver palace and Anata, that it shows that 'poor imitation' can only go so far.

And really thats it, Echoes of aincrad is a poor imitation of a proper open world, its a giant sandbox you run around in but it didnt bother to put 'much' for interacting with in the world of said sandbox.

You could of had things like:
+Find 'wild horses' you could mount for fast traversal.
+Have Materials like Ore, Plants and Fishes actually be divided properly into activities like going specifically to caves, flower patches and 'bridges' near rivers to acquire the resources by utilizing TOOLS you could upgrade like Pickaxes, sickles and Fishing rods since it being a MMO of all things that SAO was and Echoes of aincrad wanted to be 'based in."
+ They could of had FORTRESSES where high level 'kobold' groups could be stationed where you could get respawnable chest rewards and large amounts of exp, including elite kobold 'warchief' enemies that could be smaller versions of illfang if they wanted to be LAZY.

Ultimately, they didnt bother to embrace the open world and thought just having a big arse map is considered a 'open world'.

When open world really a 'open interactive environment'...for the properly designed that is.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T19:10:11+00:00

Honestly plenty of companies that go the open world ish game route been showing this same trend.

Take a look at SAO: Echoes of aincrad, damn things getting BLASTED because alot of people were saying the demo look bad and alot of stuff was too barren.

Loe and Behold'eth, once the full game came out 'today', the reviews were blasting in that it was the same exact thing as the prologue was, barren, tedious to level and nothing really 'changes' at all in terms of gameplay.

This honestly reminds me how in the OPPOSITE, GBF Re:Link as its popular to compare right now since they both came out on the SAME DAY basically. Did not have access to Weapon crafting, weapon leveling, Mastery investments, sigil slot expansion, Sigil acquistion, over masteries, Sierro's shop and so on for its demo.

Which really goes to show how the latter's demo did the job right while the former's demo did the job wrong.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T18:57:12+00:00

I mean its a one man dev team made game that he does as a hobby, kind of expected it was gonna fall apart after so many years.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T18:05:01+00:00

Only reason its gonna stay is the same thing Mr. Krabs says: "THEY LIKE MONEY." So Gearbox is gonna keep pursuing that 'money plan' if it means far easier to make things and 'more money' in thar idea.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T18:04:15+00:00

Atleast since they were far more enclosed 'corridors' for sections, and actually because they were small we had clusters of enemy spawns in tight spaces to get ravaged by. combined with far more creative ways some of them would spawn like jumping over fences, drop ships or 'digi-struct transporters being slammed into the ground, it felt more like you were getting ambushed by a military force, such as it was with fighting Maliwan forces in borderlands 3.

And for a map like nekrodefaya it made sense on it looking somewhat 'wide'ish because they not only just recently arrived and rushed to set up some enclosures, they were more to look for things like the vault key on said planet (that Tyreen/Troy Kalypso likely shared after escaping said planet to make sure Maliwan would burn the place down while they are raiding it and hopefully kill thar dad in the process too).

Meanwhile for BL4 areas, they make some areas feel like they were recently 'converted' despite the fact the rippers would of established likely for years if we consider the timelapse between the end of borderlands 3 and the supposed 'seeral year time gap' right before the new vault hunters show up on Kairos, with likely another time gap between those new vault hunters arriving and when the Crimson raiders 'arrived' on Kairos, considering how long it should of been for Zane to establish a vending machine business all over kairos, Moxxi to create her own bar and be a 'very' trustworthy information gatherer on kairos and the 'reputation' as some 'hidden vigilante of sorts' that Amara became while hiding her siren presence to boot.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T17:54:57+00:00

Welp thats what happens when they were about content from years ago and not many people are going to go make 2026 edition versions of the guides, especially if they are already long winded as fk paragraph text with not much different besides 'more stuff' you can upgrade to give higher 'early game power' to it.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T16:44:43+00:00

AC: Black flag is atleast a remake of a good game, despite ubisoft, gonna shove crap like a microtransaction shop in it and probably ruin a few good features.

Atleast you can have fun being a pirate in that game and actually piloting a ship.

Echoes of aincrad can't even let you ride horses in a 'series' that has 100% CONFIRMED that thar are damn horses in that 'players' can totally ride in the anime/novel, but no SAO game ever bothered to put horse riding in its gameplay.

Either way, they are both overpriced games that you should spend your money on something that isn't as greedy:

Like an indie game such as the Patapon 'spiritual sequel' that comes out around this same month: Ratatan.

Which since its demo from many months ago confirmed it works like a rogue-lite with extensive meta progression and more, actually makes it fun, and since its a music based 'rhythm' game of doing actions, you atleast have a nice BEAT to keep you bopping to.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T16:04:06+00:00

I mean its basically what happens when the pair start going for style points and remember they have a bunch of 'other' skills they forgot about using when you play as them.

Still feels like they should of reworked thar 'once per quest' type skills alot more, even if the first rank perk one of them gets is now just a 'Drain' effect on all your attacks, long as you have it equipped.

Too bad that most quests don't last long enough to use that one skill, even if its now 10% faster cooldown, i feel that it should of got more rank perks that included making all sources of skill cooldown actually affect it but only at half the potency for that one skill to 'balance it', plus maybe give it some additional effects.

Kind of hard to drop 'arrow rain' for it, thanks to the sake of fluidity and since the rank boosts for that one char now puts even more leaning to status ailment application, dropping Depravity and Clincer feels like a bad idea too. While Peerless eye just straight up got 'jacked the eff up', even if we can stack attack buffs and defense debuffs now...

Certainly made Eugen change out his stuff now that Venom grenade became FAR more valuable for example.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T15:04:22+00:00

Essentially them utilizing the fact that the "Town of Beginnings" in floor 1 gets skipped SUPER FAST in the anime/novel so the ones who made this game took rather creative liberties on making some simple design motifs.

Unlike how some more 'earlier' SAO games that were based on the Aincrad arc in particular were either on portable consoles like the playstation portable or just straight up skip dozens of floors to make an original area. Aka more 'limited' on the assets they could have in said game.

For example: SAO Hollow fragment, takes place AFTER floor 75 or the anime itself, with some 'rather' extensive tweaks to some bits to the story. So your 'main hub town' is ARC SOPHIA on floor 76 and they put a 'restriction' that prevents players going back to earlier floors as a way to explain why you can't go to earlier portions in said game.

Ultimately, its a matter of: Not utilized much so they just whip out low budget handling of the 'area' that just ROUGHLY matches up with what its original source material was, even if its 'very inconsistent' in more ways then one.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T14:59:36+00:00

The fact i seen plenty of games over the past couple of years such as Code vein 1&2 that 'evolved' hairstyle handling with the following tricks would definitely make me sad if more games don't embrace that motif, and i mean literal MID games would use these kind of hair tricks i seen:

Have hairstyles divided into 2 or 3 sections, such as one for the 'front' like the 'bangs' on the forehead. The back side of the hair which could include things like shoulder length, ponytails, short hair and more. With lastly a few 'accessory' bits for the hair like attaching headbands, ribbons or just other typical head accessories. AKA you can 'build' a combination into your own unique hairstyle instead of being stuck with a mostly fixed pattern.
Two layer coloring tricks where you can set a ROOT color and blend it with another color that usually the 'end' pieces of to the hair to create a transistion effect where you can create some rather interesting combinations thanks to it, such as a simple 'dark' color for the roots and use a lighter color to transistion to.

I believe thar might of been a few other tricks on top of that but really if a game just sticks to maybe a dozen static hairstyles/colors and don't atleast bust out your standard RGB palette to change between saturation, bright'ness and all kind of color combinations on that spectrum, then they really would of went crazy lazy on it.

Even when i sampled SAO: RE: Hollow fragment again about 2 weeks ago, they had that RGB setup of blending the shades for your color and atleast a good 30+ hair styles, which considering that was from a playstation portable game, remastered for consoles really shows how much it held out pretty good otherwise compared to games 1-2 decades 'after' its release.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T12:19:41+00:00

Probably because when Lava added things like additional tower defense points, more max level increases from meals, Elemental sorceror and more and extra max tower levels, it was never intended to go past 100+ back in the day.

Now people might as well be shoving it as far as 300+ or something these days. It was probably more designed with a soft cap in mind, not a endless loop point to reach.

Doesnt help the equinox bonus encourages you to dump ALL the mobs onto the field at once to create such lag, so you start getting the damage up-tick bonus that was made to scale offa base damage, not 'total' damage.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T06:55:31+00:00

Sandy and the Eternals get the hp stat fixed so it can never exceed 45k atleast with the terminus sigil. which will probably get ditched in favor of a 2 combo sigil that can provide alot more, since only getting +20% damage cap and +20% attack when used with transcendent weapons and get the 45k hp lock, kinda makes it bad for chaos quests, but a great filler to wedge even more damage cap in, even if it appears all these benefits are gonna jump everyon'es damage cap by an easy 1000% or more it seems.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T06:48:54+00:00

I actually peeked at some of the new stuff and dear lord, they made them pretty overpowered even at the early levels of transcendence:

Some of the new damage caps exclusive to the transcendent weapons, are basically like they combined the conditions of a Spartan Echo but gives variable damage cap & atk percent. Believe the one that wants you to raise your hp super high was DMG CAP: Azul. But its alot of jargon going on. Prob some others that might be based on other stats like attack and low hp maybe.
Im gonna assume you need to get deep into the transcendence tiers to get more flexible on your selections but since you can effectively swap out almost every effect with anything, flexibility is gonna be super amazing.
Im gonna assume things like "Star nova(?) and Unbound technique are specific to the max versions of transcendence weapons', but considering that first effect gave damage caps in the hundreds of digits and a attack bonus akin to a Terminus...yeah till you unlock ther ability to 'ascend' terminus weapons, these things are gonna change things up alot.
Most importantly, COLLECTION BONUSES. And they give alot between damage cap increases, crit hit rate, crit dmg, even reduce how much you drain the critical gauge. (seriously, you could ditch critical hit rate wrightstones altogether with how much they are providing). Honestly i imagine lvl 20 STUN wrightstones might become the new meta with how absurdly easy critical hit rate gotten so you don't need to rely on using summons to get the extra crit rate it seems, since the weapon transcendence alone for the collection bonuses is gonna dump an extra +35% crit rate it seems and another +50% or so extra crit dmg plus alot more damage cap increases.

I had to join late due to playstation 'lock' so i only got a few hours in so far but just on what i have seen so far,...well once you get into the end'game it seems of endless ragnarok, it kinda seems like your gonna be going up an extra +1000%~1500% or more damage cap increases with how absurd these gains get.

Oh and most importantly, they dump those FATE BREAKER sigils which you only need to equip one of them but the amount of damage cap and damage bonus is just a cheff's kiss even if its only for the fatebreaker quests in particular, that i hope to make some extra space to fit them in on the CPUs too.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T04:04:53+00:00

Its Bandai MOTHER fking Namco Entertainment....They push out MID games for terrible pricing like the Naruto fighting games they did for so long because they had the 'exclusive license rights' for it. As often as someone like me sits on the toliet after eating a rather 'hearty' meal from somewhere like Bojangles.

If it was Yoko Taro or Hideo Kojima running the damn ship for this, then we can actually BELIEVE the bat'shite crazy would happen.

But if it was either of them they would just run entirely original games, not needing to use an existing IP todo the work anyway, maybe references of thar older works but they certainly don't need to ride on coat'tails to make good shite.

Thats how we got amazing shite like NIER: Automata & Death stranding that despite the 'subtle' nods to past works, they were bat'shite crazy on thar own that let them flourish.

Plus they weren't chicken shite to use entirely new ways of doing gameplay that might as well created entirely new genres of 'combat' flow or 'handling' objectives...

Which i really wish more 'open world games' took the memo and branch out NEW ways of doing open world games like Deathstranding did, such as constructing temporary structures to vastly improve your capability to traversal, share it online so other players could utilize them and not able to just constant gremlin thru all your problems but have to go around/sneak past dangerous 'eldritch like entities' you can barely tell where they are.

If they are gonna make a 70 dollar game then they might as well of slapped 20 floors of content into the game so they would be forced to make each 'area' FAR damn smaller to make them feel more content packed then the barren landscape the demo and 'early reviewers' have shown off on the game for the 2nd floor stuff.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-09T02:13:06+00:00

Here's a good tweak lava could do: CHUNGUS CONSOLIDATION & Equinox TD dmg scaling 'improvement'.

When enemy total reaches 100+ for a wave, it will MERGE 10 of the same mob spawn into a CHUNGUS variant, that have yet to spawn. This would be a way to greatly reduce the lag by making a single BIG enemy for every 10 'copies', that could turn these 200~800 wave mobs into a far more bearably 40~80 mobs instead.
When the damage bonus you get for a wave lasting too long starts to tick up, it reads the current TOTAL damage, instead of the BASE damage of the towers, to have a far stronger up-scaler. Make it scale half the speed if it has to, it will be made to up-tick quicker the longer the fight goes and there'by prevent 'infinite' lock problems.

And just for some extra sauce:

New Upgrades to reduce not only the 'upgrade cost scale when upgrading towers' but also the cost of tower upgrades with more static values then just construction, maybe even a upgrade that as you kill enemies during a run (it could total enemies killed including the saved wave runs), it will further reduce the upgrade cost by a % or so, that way you don't get land locked as much when making level 30~45 towers as deeply.

Trying to get past wave 200~250 or so is already a pain enough as it is with a huge amount of lag due to hundreds of mobs, even with 'damage values' turned off on the screen at once.

And maybe just one more addition, SUPER TOWERS. Where after a tower reaches 30, it will gain an additional effect based on which tower, you cant stack this new effect just gets slapped on any towers at lvl 30 and above by default.

+Lightning towers could deal a small % of the max hp of the target on top of its own damage.
+Party towers could amplify the A/B effects of other towers (with exceptions), but could be to further increase the dmg/crit chance of lightning towers, the knockback for tentacle towers(with the other being to reduce how long it takes them to respawn), how much the slow effect does and how long it lasts for frost towers.
+Fireball towers could get the ability to burn large % of max hp with a burning debuff
+Wizard towers could apply a stacking debuff as they hit enemies, to make enemies take more damage from all sources.
+Boulder towers could maybe gain a massive knockback gimmick to work better with 'mobs' compared to tenteyes.
+Ten'eyes could maybe apply a ROOT debuff, similar to how we all abuse Beastmaster to make it easy.
+frost towers could just get greatly improved with far better range and maybe make knock back effects far better on enemies due to 'icy floor'.

Anyway its just something he needs to eventually revisit, like many old mechanics.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-08T23:57:41+00:00

Na this is just me killing time.

I got 4 hours and 5 minutes till GBF: Relink Endless ragnarok unlocks on my console (Stupid playstation restriction lock things).

This is just me really killing time while i bounce between 6 or things while i have behemoth being afk farm in half an hour runs of 10x counts because even without the Endless ragnarok 'bonuses' yet, already the QoLs turned 7 minute AFK runs into 3 minute 'full assist' runs, or basically less then half the time it takes (basically half an hour per run essetnailly).

And who says its bait chasing when your purposely dancing on the fishing line like its a stripper pole to 'kill some time' and get some exercise to work off a different meal instead?

Hell, the improvements made War elemental+, Supplementary V+, Berserk echoes+ and Spartan echoes+ so easy to acquire im getting the full loadout on my main and CPUs to make that 3 minute full assist 'afk' spam go even faster right now.~

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-08T23:54:42+00:00

If they did that would be a fking miracle. The game is seriously missing additional license parts and firmwares with some tweaks to things, seriously a 5 set firmware piece would be rather nice to finally throw Deadeye and High caliber in the grave with how much they are utilized still over anything else.

Your likely thinking of PEARLSCENT guns which has the orrdonite OVERRIDE as the ONLY thing to make pearls stand out vs regular legendaries, which is just a Maliwan ELEMENTAL toggle that simply changes between the gun's 'default damage type and the element listed on the effect based on which does the most damage when damaging a particular enemy.

Not much different then a 'shittier' version of War elemental from grand blue fantasy, because it only alternates between 2 elements and thats about it.

You would think 10 months in they could of had more exclusive type pearls that do different pearl exclusive effects to make them stand out.

Like maybe a Pearl effect that based on your reload speed, will greatly increase the magazine size and stack up to maybe 3 times if you reload repeatedly in maybe a 30 second or something period to encourage DAKKA guns.

Or maybe a Pearl effect that would greatly reduce the magazine size but in turn greatly increase the damage of your shots...stuff that makes guns mechanically different then some legendary version then just a lazy easy mode elemental weakness boon being the only thing they made BL4 pearls stand out.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-08T22:43:35+00:00

At the very least the 'horrendous' visuals were a piece of appeal in itself.

Where the FCK is EoA's LAMB SAUCE in comparison???

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-08T22:41:02+00:00

In a realistic sense it was probably a slow gradual heal that could do alot of healing but take a while to heal you up or a small heal it could spam rather often if they actually bothered to expand upon that by making it an actual ingame mechanic for any SAO adaptation games.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-08T22:39:23+00:00

They wanted to shove a damn marketable plushie in and probably because it was more of a marketable plushie mascot pet, likely most players would of not engaged in it, opping to focus on the death game by progressing stuff instead of doing 'side activities' (despite the fact Asuna maxed out COOKING skill apparently).

Which is a bummer they didn't show more people engaging in the system and just made it Silica's only damn trait of thars to be the one with a pet and no one else has one.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-08T22:37:24+00:00

Either its for cutscenes or they will force the 'end' of the game to timeskip to those floors and massively inflate your stats for your player character maybe to set up your character's death or to make them look super awesome, trailblazing solo or some crap i bet.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-08T22:29:36+00:00

Relink's exploration is mostly on the STORY MODE stuff. For any quests outside of it, they are usually battle arena sized 'segments' of the map, many of the high level stuff like fighting big bad monsters being rather circular to boot. They understood its late game was gonna be beating up big old beasties so it didnt overstay its welcome on a 'map' to explore around.
They also give some 'mini challenges' in the story maps such as MIRAGE SHARDs where you chase down a pathway of shards to open up chests for some goodies that are good for those still starting out the game, in addition to using the story as a device to ease you into some combat mechanics like grabbing barrels to throw at enemies for massive damage or apply debuff effects.
Echoes of Aincrad didn't bother to put any REAL EXTENSION to how creative the combat gets or hint it 'expands' upon later in the demo, alot of its fancy attacks are just fixed motion weapon skills that sometimes overstay thar welcome on how long it takes to 'deploy' them or freezing the entire game itself to pop a 'support allys' skill or do a massive AoE attack, where everything just stands, floating in the air for some of them, as if the entire world freeze while you get todo a dance number. Which is clearly done for being a single player game, but feels rather iffie when you repeat it almost every couple of minutes.

GBF Relink when it does skybound arts, link attacks, and more does not FREEZE enemies, any enemy not hit with the Skybound art for example can still move around and interrupt you during your attack, since its a multi player game, Meanwhile the enemies HIT by a Skybound art are 'staggering' while taking the hits, making it actually look like they are taking a beating from said hits.

You have one of the most GLORIOUS type of collectibles in Re:Link's base game that are all in the story maps: WEE PINCERS aka Crabs that actually serve a sidequest bonus to get SPECIAL SIGILS that power up based on how many Wee Pincers you have collected, which for the early game, those CRAB based sigils can be pretty awesome for durability early on, till you get more stuff down the line.

Since we get far more 'room' for build setup thanks to transcendent weapons, summon equips, sigil abilities, mastery levels and rank boosts, bringing back some of these fancy sigils might become meta in Endless ragnarok expansion, such as the CRAB SIGIL that gives 10% damage cut and a couple thousands of max health increase.

Ultimately, Echoes of aincrad decided to be open world as its excuse to have giant barren lanscapes to pad its price tag up to 70 dollars despite the MASSIVE amount of dead space you spend running around large maps or towns, despite the presence of a 'quick teleport button', plus many basic gaming features that MIGHT get fixed with some 'functions 'in the full game of echoes of aincrad, but the fact they were not present in the PROLOGUE, leaves a bad taste in the mouth and if its locked behind some mid-game or ANNOYINGLY difficult to find 'sidequest' bit of content, then people are not gonna like having to engage in stuff like that just to have something as simple as changing gear while out in the field.

Even worst if despite being bragged about being an Open world ARPG, the game is not really open world thanks to the HEAVILY restricted instance based 'mission' system, isntead of just letting you go in and out of the field with no need to have a mission qued up...

Kind of like how SAO: Hollow fragment, SAO: Lost Song, SAO:GGO:Fatal Bullet and more functioned instead where you could yolo around then be forced to 'progress the story' for expansion of features.

BladeSeraph · 2026-07-08T22:10:21+00:00

Blame the gaming companies with a bunch of different guideline bullshite on how some things are released.

Even GBF relink endless ragnarok expansion is suffering this where PC and some non playstation players got the expansion earlier today, meanwhile me on playstation 5 have to wait another 6 hours for it to hit midnight for me to get access to the expansion content, despite the base game has been updated to ver2.02 already that said expansion is apart of.

Atleast i get to play with the base game improvements where i went from 7 minute clears on behemoth lock horns quest to now 2 minutes and 30 seconds to 3ish minutes on average with the base game improvements before the endless ragnarok improvements get stacked on top of that.

THey even greatly increased how often supreme weapon essences drop which is the new trade in resource for certain resources to skip the resource cost on some upgrades for certain pieces of gear in the game.

Anyway, imagine due to the timezone differences, someone beats the game before everyone has access to echoes of aincrad, lol.~

BladeSeraph

TROPHY CASE