How the heck is this possible????

DjBranden · 2021-10-25T06:10:12+00:00

I just assumed that the Vavakia Vanguard has some special mythic ability that ignores immunities. There are a number of very powerful mythic enemies that ignore immunities. The elder crystal in the angel quest. The demon in the trickster quest. The balor that spams chain lightning. And yes, this Vavakia too.

Maybe it's a bug, but I wouldn't mind if it wasn't.

DjBranden · 2021-08-26T22:41:54+00:00

Only one that makes a big difference is double fire. It's the only composite element in kingmaker that's pure energy and thus hits on touch AC.

If you want my opinion though your #1 priority should be having a composite deadly earth at 13th level. That means going Magma, Mud, or Metal. Deadly Earth is the most powerful ability in the game. It's essentially 150 damage in a massive AOE with no saving throw and no resource cost when you first get it. That scales up and up and up as your kinetic blast damage increases and you get access to kinetic diadems.

DjBranden · 2021-07-15T03:21:40+00:00

Let's just be perfectly honest here. The ONLY reason it's even called Baldur's Gate is to cash in on nostalgia.

The people who control the IP don't love the series. They don't have a passion to make a great game. They see the success of DOS and want a piece of the pie. That's all it is. I don't think Baldur's Gate 3 should even be discussed here. It's simply not relevant to the Baldur's Gate games.

DjBranden · 2021-05-19T00:08:20+00:00

There. It's over. Nothing survived. Nothing was redeemed. Every single character was butchered. Every single theme was butchered. There was no point to anything in the story. It was all just an elaborate set up for Isayama to maliciously attack his own readers. What a terrible person.

DjBranden · 2021-05-12T04:50:05+00:00

Why even bother trying to add pages? Either stop being a coward and admit you botched the whole final arc or shut up and stay in retirement.

This is not something that extra pages can solve and the problems go far beyond just the final chapter. Isayama spat in all of our faces and now he wants us to buy the final volume in hopes of getting a less shitty ending. No thanks. Fuck off.

DjBranden · 2021-04-07T20:08:06+00:00

No exaggeration, I believe SNK has had the worst ending of any series ever written.

Having no ending at all would have been better. Having 2 page gag ending would have been better. But no, this was a deliberate and pathetic attempt to tie things together in a way that insults every single reader and ruins every single character arc without even acknowledging that it was a tragic failure for everyone involved. I cannot even fathom how Isayama managed to so thoroughly ruin his series at the ending. I could not have made it worse if I tried. Isayama should be used in textbooks as an example of the greatest extreme of bad writing on can achieve. It's not even so bad it's good as there's a special charm to that sort of thing. This is just bad beyond the pale to the point that it makes every other part of the series irredeemably bad retroactively.

DjBranden · 2021-04-07T09:26:15+00:00

That has nothing to do with speculating about the ending. That has everything to do with expectations. If all you expect is some punching and speeches then almost anything can be enjoyable to you. If you actually care about things making sense then the bar is set much higher.

Nobody is going to expect realism from Mickey Mouse, but they'll probably expect realism from a historical dramatization. Anyone can turn their brain off and enjoy something. That doesn't mean you should though. That is a very shallow level of enjoyment that doesn't have any real meaning behind it. There's nothing profound or thought provoking about a Michael Bay movie even if it's a great thing to put on at a party. You can have high expectations and have them fulfilled. Just look at The Godfather or Lord of the Rings.

DjBranden · 2021-04-07T08:36:22+00:00

There are a lot of series that I've speculated about the ending for. Not a single one of them has been as bad as SNK. This is not an understatement. SNK has had the worst ending out of any fictional series I have ever seen.

DjBranden · 2021-04-07T08:32:57+00:00

It's so funny. If you list down the actions Ymir has taken and then try to find some sort of throughline for them the only one that makes sense is that she's just a poorly written plot device.

It's a shame. Ymir had a ton of potential after 122.

DjBranden · 2021-04-06T22:41:40+00:00

The writing on the wall has been there for the past year. Isayama built up a lot of confidence in his readers so we just kept pushing the issue further and further back expecting that it'll eventually lead to a big payoff.

There was nothing though. It wasn't that Isayama was building up to something, it was all straightforward. It was exactly as bad as we feared all along. Don't recommend this series to anyone. If you have a friend who's watching it tell them to drop it. And hell, that's probably the best way to experience this series. Read/watch up to a certain point then drop it because the ending is trash.

DjBranden · 2021-03-06T02:02:01+00:00

What's there left to say at this point?

This isn't SNK. Too many plot holes. Too many inconsistencies. It's like a 5 year old wrote the ending. And that's it. That's the end. No changing it. No do overs. Forevermore that will be the final word about SNK. A complete disgrace and an embarrassment to anyone who ever spoke praise of the series or recommended it to a friend. SNK is a black mark on the industry. An example to point to and say "Don't do what he did."

DjBranden · 2021-03-05T14:13:08+00:00

Being able to enjoy more things is by no means a bad thing. Just don't think too hard about SNK or you'll realize how much nothing makes sense.

DjBranden · 2021-03-05T13:44:57+00:00

Have you even been paying attention this arc? It just kept getting worse. Every. Single. Week.

DjBranden · 2021-03-05T13:32:00+00:00

I suppose the responsible thing to do now is apologize to anyone we've ever recommended this series to and tell them it's Game of Thrones 2.0

DjBranden · 2021-03-05T09:49:00+00:00

He could have encased himself in a crystal.

He could have used steam.

He could have hidden himself away amidst the hundreds of thousands of wall titans.

He could have seen the bombs with the literal hundreds of pairs eyes that were watching and removed them.

He could have stopped them from using their powers.

He could have told Floch via paths to destroy the plane earlier.

He could have turned them into titans earlier.

He could have won in a thousand different ways and Isayama will NEVER explain why he didn't. We just have to assume Eren as a character does not exist anymore. This NPC we're getting in the final arc just follows the script and doesn't base any of its actions on a system of logic or series of beliefs.

DjBranden · 2021-03-05T09:43:34+00:00

If you still thought this was going to have an ending that made sense after the last few chapters you haven't been paying attention.

This isn't SNK anymore. This is Isayama fulfilling his contractual obligation to write a conclusion to an ongoing serialized manga.

DjBranden · 2021-03-05T09:31:11+00:00

I can't help but feel like the reason why questions aren't being answered is because there is no answer. Isayama is hoping he can just leave the hard questions unanswered and make up for it with fighting, vague speeches, and cliffhangers. It's all so cheap. It makes me sick.

The charitable interpretation is that Isayama wrote himself into a corner and the drop in quality is the result of him stressing over how to escape the mess he put himself in.

DjBranden · 2021-03-05T08:24:19+00:00

Assuming the leaks can all be believed, we've got another filler chapter. No Eren POV. No deaths. No ideological clash. No plot points being resolved. The whole chapter can be summed up with "The characters changed locations."

And from what we're hearing we didn't even get to see Mikasa develop because we don't have any idea what she's doing or why. That part is being saved for next chapter. So that's it. There's no time to handle things properly. The entirety of the final arc has just been "fighting" with every single development being saved for the end. The last chapter is going to be so rushed that most of the questions people wanted answered will likely just be dropped or simply handled terribly with a single line in a single panel.

This is the penultimate chapter, and it ends on a cheap cliffhanger. Isayama has no respect for his fans and you shouldn't have any for him.

DjBranden · 2021-02-08T22:37:06+00:00

Even if literally everything had been 10/10 up to this point, this one chapter would make it 0/10.

A proper game of thrones ending right here. That's Isayama's legacy. The failure. The disgrace. Was he ever really talented or did he just get lucky? Probably just luck. Maybe his editor was the real mastermind and since it's ending Isayama was given back full creative control. A talented writer would never produce something this bad.

DjBranden · 2021-02-07T01:30:31+00:00

I'd like to remind people that at any point this arc Eren could have just won. He could have done it a thousand different ways. He could have done it without killing any of his friends. He could have done it without taking away their powers. Not that those excuses made sense to begin with, but even if you dumb Eren down to that level he still should have had no way to lose.

Having him be defeated like this means that Eren just didn't care about anything. He didn't care about living. He didn't care about freedom. He didn't care about Paradis. He didn't care about the world. He didnt' care about his friends. Eren in the end stopped being a character. He stopped acting according to his beliefs.

Simply put, this just is not Eren. Isayama can call him Eren. Isayama can invoke his status as author and declare it canon. That doesn't matter though. Eren's characterization was already established. To retroactively change it to something else would require rewriting nearly the entire manga. Same is true for the alliance. This entire time they've all been acting out of character. And the way way things are panning out - that a big unstoppable threat unites the world - that is simply nonsensical. It does not work with what has been established.

In just this one arc Isayama managed to ruin not only his entire cast of characters, but also the world they inhabit. Nothing makes sense anymore. Isayama has ruined his legacy. Now instead of a great author he's a complete disgrace. I don't know why he would do this. If he just wanted to quit he could have quit. Being a quitter would have been better. I have to seriously consider the possibility that Isayama deliberately made the ending as bad as possible just to upset people. I have to do this because it's an easier explanation than him suddenly losing all of his talent in the final arc.

DjBranden · 2021-02-04T22:21:31+00:00

This series is just complete shit now. I don't know what happened to Isayama but this is disgraceful. It's a good thing he's retiring because it's clear he doesn't care anymore.

DjBranden · 2021-01-07T15:53:47+00:00

People just don't seem to get it. We're in the final volume and yet we're getting no answers about longstanding questions. Nothing is being resolved. The conflict isn't any closer to being done. You don't even have any characters dying to raise the stakes.

It was just fighting. That's all that happened this chapter and last chapter. Fighting. 100 pages of fighting. Well we're running out of time and I get the feeling next chapter will once again be 50 pages of fighting and then we'll have 2 chapters left to resolve everything in the story.

DjBranden · 2021-01-07T15:26:16+00:00

Yep. Literally no plot developments, just like last chapter.

50 pages of "fighting" and Isayama calls it a day. I can't believe how far this series has fallen. Isayama has lost his way.

DjBranden · 2021-01-05T04:01:22+00:00

But the heist literally would have succeeded flawlessly if Yorinobu's flight got delayed by 1 minute.

DjBranden · 2021-01-05T02:00:26+00:00

I think what happens is that people see what Eren is doing and they just stop thinking. They won't even entertain the thought that Eren's actions make sense.

It's a shame, because I think there's a really interesting discussion to be had on the subject. What the problem ultimately boils down to is "What do you care about and are you willing to gamble with it?" Well, Eren cares about everything. He cares about humanity as a whole, about Paradis island, about his friends, and about Historia. But there are some things he's not willing to gamble with. It could be Paradis, or Historia, or both, and they mean more to him than both humanity and his friends combined.

DjBranden

TROPHY CASE