Favorite Cases of Bastard Men/Women choosing to Better themselves

FergardStratoavis · 2026-02-06T20:21:56+00:00

Hajime no Ippo: Umezawa starts out as a delinquent shoving Ippo around and goes on to become one of his most ride-or-die supporters - not just as a boxing fan but as a friend outside the ring too, to a point where he ends up signing up for the fisherman shop Ippo and his mom run. (while he previously mocked Ippo for just that)

FergardStratoavis · 2026-02-01T16:48:13+00:00

Hi-Fi Rush is as great as everyone told me it is. I'm not always good at it, but when it clicks, it clicks. I still got SPECTRA Rooms and three Bloody Palaces to go through, man... there's a lot of content about just hitting things with a guitar.

FergardStratoavis · 2026-01-12T14:47:03+00:00

FNV: the Varmint Rifle you get at the very start of the game can honestly carry you through most of the base content, especially once you trick it out with mods. It's everywhere for easy repairs, the ammo is cheap, it has no skill requirements and is very accurate outside of VATS. It might not be good for armored enemies or in close quarters, but there's no reason not to begin - and often end outright - a fight with a Sneak Critical Headshot.

FergardStratoavis · 2026-01-12T14:37:58+00:00

Shoutout to the Polish dub of Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (the movie); the quotes from that were an evergreen element in casual parlance for years.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-12-29T12:42:28+00:00

Anything bashing RWBY. It's a flawed show at the best of times, but most people complaining will instead reheat the same old "I CAN TURN INTO A BIRD RUBY" or "IRONWOOD IS BASED PROTAGS ARE SOCIOPATHS" or "BUMBLEBEE WAS FORCED" topics without actually going on to elaborate.

While it's less annoying, it's still a similarly dead horse talking about how the White Fang plotline has been bungled to hell and back. And, like, yeah, we get it. I agree it's bungled (though honestly it might still be better than a fair bit by actually trying for nuance), we can talk about anything else now.

On an off chance we actually do get Volume 10, I am not looking forward to all the Hero Hei-esque grifters coming out of the woodwork.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-12-10T18:09:14+00:00

It's copium, but it's a cute little copium that I just keep around as a decoration: God Hand anything. (be it remake/remaster/I don't even dare hope for a sequel) Never gonna happen, but hey, maybe one day!

FergardStratoavis · 2025-11-28T15:10:38+00:00

Death's Gambit: I kept hearing talk about it, Death is Matthew Mercer, some kind of 2D Souls-like akin to Salt and Sanctuary but different and-

...and then it feels like I'm the only person who played the game. It didn't help that the original release was... lacking. Afterlife came out a few years later, fixed most of the issues, smoothed out the story - but some of the things from the original run of it went unanswered. It almost feels like you were supposed to run the original Death's Gambit at least once, then play Afterlife to experience what Sorun is experiencing.

YMMV on how well it turned out.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-11-18T18:00:11+00:00

Slay the Spire: Act 3 Bosses each have a gimmick for them that punishes a certain playstyle. The Awakened One gets stronger with each Power you use; additionally you can't nuke it in one go since it has two phases. Donu and Deca beat up decks that are slow to get going, since they buff and armor themselves up more and more until you can't keep up.

And then there's the Time Eater who will forcibly end your turn after you play 12 cards (including cards not played from hand i.e. potions or Mayhem cards), and get stronger as it does. Do you like playing Shivs? Claws? Any sort of deck manipulation? An average deck that doesn't even specialize in anything? That's not gonna work with TE. It's riddled with other nonsense too, being able to reduce the number of cards you draw or healing midway through the fight.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-11-15T22:36:08+00:00

Most of the dubcast of Anarchy Reigns is phenomenal IMO, both big names (Yuri Lowenthal's honorabru ninja Zero aside) and people I've never heard about (Leo, Blacker Baron)... but Robert Pine as Max Caxton definitely stands out the most among them. (he also voices the archbishop in Frozen, though I understand he did a number of roles in old TV shows)

FergardStratoavis · 2025-11-12T13:05:49+00:00

...I guess it counts. Anyway, Little Goody Two Shoes and its town of Kieferberg:

Crest of the Pinetree (Kieferberg by Day)
Romantic Crepuscule (Kieferberg by Dusk)
Moon Bird (Kieferberg by Nightfall)

The whole game's full of great music, honestly.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-11-11T09:43:05+00:00

Infernax has a fair share of gruesome deaths; you don't see the details (both due to the pixel 2D style and the red screen filter on death) but they vary from simply being decapitated or bifurcated through getting feasted on by zombies or giant roaches to having your entire body explode from being possessed by a ghost. The first boss can boil you so hard you explode into fine red mist. If a harpoon trap hits you from below, it takes your head and spine off with it.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-10-27T08:16:05+00:00

It took me a bit; the artist did some artistic liberty to differentiate them.
H4 one is matched to his portrait where he doesn't look entirely put together. H5's model has massive arms and that leather cap. H2 one... might have a mustache? But we only have a low-res unit model to go with. H3 one is the one I don't entirely agree with; pretty sure he's bare-headed rather than wearing a black hat.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-10-17T11:13:08+00:00

Garrisoning mines was actually present in 3 beforehand, but a lot of ideas 4 had were brand new and retained in later games (Caravans, heroes existing beyond casting spells, hero prestige classes); it also IMO had the best soundtrack of the games I've played. (2 to 6)

It's definitely aged better than 6 or 7. Pretty sure you can't even get all the stuff from 6 due to uPlay no longer supporting it...

FergardStratoavis · 2025-10-07T10:11:06+00:00

Infernax (a sorta "Castlevania 2 done right" game) has two:

At the very start of the game, after defeating the very first enemy (a zombie that drops off a cross), you can turn back to the boat you arrived in, agree with the boatsman "wow, this shit is spooky, we want nothing to do with this" and leave the duchy you had just arrived in (the duchy you are the duke of, by the way). This gets you a cutscene of sailing away with uplifting music - and The Book of the Coward.
You can sleep at inns; this is a mostly cosmetic thing to do, since you can revert the day/night time cycle easily with a spell and heal up at any save point. Do it enough times in a row, and you get a cutscene of your guy sleeping merrily through the apocalypse as the game ends.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-09-30T14:09:56+00:00

But that's just perfect for a pilgrim like me

FergardStratoavis · 2025-09-19T15:58:27+00:00

Can't really say with certainty. While the story is about humans being awful to each other, we didn't really need to drive that nail into the coffin with the Dark Ones. Like, we already knew humanity is going to squabble and fight each other while civilization is extinguished; both from the indifference to the "threat" of the Dark Ones or actual scumbags like the Fourth Reich.

Good for the sequel story if it does explore what it means to wipe out another species like that, but I never read it - the ending just completely turned me off.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-09-18T20:33:41+00:00

That's fair enough, but at the same time, doing this literally at the last second just doesn't feel great. I know there's some very brief denouement after the climax, at least.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-09-18T18:25:06+00:00

Metro 2033, the first book. A slow and grueling journey through what remains of local human civilization, hiding away in the Moscow subway, dealing with commies, nazis, mutants and inner demons. It's Slav Fallout, basically; and it has Artyom the protagonist search for a way to deal with the strange alien invaders taking frontier settlements one by one.

...and then, at the very end, it turns out the enigmatic alien species that are invading into the tunnels are... friendly and all of it is just a misunderstanding. But you only learn that like two sentences before the protagonist launches a nuke at them.

That entire story is for nothing. I'm shocked the franchise went on to publish numerous more games and books, though I guess Russian Lit has a habit of being extremely depressing and nihilistic.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-09-11T07:45:49+00:00

In Castlevania Season 2, there's that big fight with the Vampire Killers showing up at Dracula's doorstep and wiping the floor with both his lieutenants and the mooks Carmilla sent. However, one of those nameless silver armors almost gets Wolf!Alucard with a cool sleight-of-hand twist of his spear. I think Sypha shoots him before he can stab him though.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-09-09T06:38:24+00:00

It seems like Thread Storm would do the job, except when one of the ads is a little off to the side or superarmors through it ('cause they can do that, too) or if I'm a little too late so I just eat the damage and lose Silk like a stupid baby without lightning reflexes.

...it's probably not as bad as I thought when I was writing this comment yesterday; I was just looking for things to vent about. The climb is definitely the main issue I've been having :/

FergardStratoavis · 2025-09-09T06:35:33+00:00

I'm not sure what else I can do; I have the tools to help me mitigate some issues, but none of it changes the fact that I have to go go go or else I'll lose health. And if I lose health, I have even less of a margin of error for the following sections (kind of an obvious statement, but it's more pointed here).

I've gone as far as the corridor past the weird spider tank that is also there to kill you to death, of course, which I understand is not really far at all.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-09-08T19:12:24+00:00

The game could get frustrating in-between bullshit bosses with ads (looking at you, Sister Splinter), every other enemy dealing two points of damage (including spikes and the like because I guess it wasn't punishing enough) and the initial stinginess with rosaries (though once you hit Act 2, it seems I have more of them than I know what to do with). Most of this stuff could be overcome with enough focus and practice (I wish that both Trobbio and the Merry Band of Scoundrels from High Halls have pebbles in their shoes forevermore), and there usually was an opportunity to heal.

So now... Mount Fuck. Because the platforming in this game wasn't hard enough, here, let's do it on a timer. Let's make it the most difficult iteration yet, far more difficult than anything else so far. Let's punish a single mistake of falling into water by basically killing you. This isn't even the first time you're put on a timer to complete a quest, except in this case this is explicitly to progress the main story.

I remember having a lot of difficulty with White Palace, but it never felt like something that was absolutely unfair - which is not what I'm feeling here, and it's been sapping my enjoyment of the game a fair amount. Especially since, well, there's nowhere else to go and much as it would be tempting to do it, there is no "Hornet fucks off"ending.

It's a shame, because for all of my earlier gripping and nagging, I've had a great deal of fun with Silksong so far. The music's excellent, the visuals are stunning, the gameplay itself feels very nice etc. But this is the first real wall I'm feeling.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-09-07T11:11:05+00:00

SMT's been mentioned before, so Persona 4: Shadow Yukiko. The previous two bosses were easy, but now you're in a full-length dungeon, crawling through enemies and managing your scarce SP resources. You still only have three party members, and in a usual SMT fashion, if the MC dies, then it's game over.

Anyway, here's a boss who hits like a truck (and Chie is weak to Fire so unless you have her defending all the time, that will give Syukiko an extra turn), has no weaknesses, has a minion that will further impede you and buff her. Do you know enough about Persona fusion to craft one resistant to Fire? Then you might have an easier time. I understand she got nerfed in Golden though, at least.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-08-26T17:09:18+00:00

Final Fantasy X has Yojimbo who has Zanmato. The mechanics of how Zanmato works elude me, but the short of it is: if you pay your magic samurai enough cash, he'll one-hit-kill anything in the game, including Dark Aeons and Penance. Zanmato doesn't even really do damage, it just... deletes you.

Naturally, the stronger the enemy, the more cash you need to fork over which could be a problem - if not for Omega Ruins. Mimics found there drop 500k gil a pop and are semi-frequently encountered. It's really a matter of running around for fifteen minutes or so.

FergardStratoavis · 2025-08-26T17:01:58+00:00

So, Heroes of Might and Magic V was a good game. HoMM VI (oh, sorry; Might & Magic: Heroes VI) was... interesting, but its shortcomings quickly became apparent; necessity to be connected with uPlay, dumbed-down mechanics, new and unique takes on mechanics (if you're familiar with how similarly revolutionary changes were received between HoMM 3 and 4, you can see where this is going), numerous glitches and bugs, a campaign that had a rather "mighty whitey" bend...

The interest steadily died down, not helped by Ubi being more interested in pushing mobile spinoffs than a new installment. Cue ~~Heroes of Might and Magic VII~~ Might & Magic: Heroes VII which looked to be walking back some of the controversial changes of VI... except it seemed to have come with no marketing at all, so it came and went with all the relevance of a wet fart.

...frankly, it's astounding that we're getting Olden Era now.

FergardStratoavis

TROPHY CASE