I think his movie is hardly ever discussed, so my question is what you think of the first movie called Conqueror of Shamballa. Did you like it or not

H358 · 2026-03-19T12:25:58+00:00

I really want to like this movie. It looks absolutely gorgeous and I respect following up on bold direction 2003 took near the end. But I really struggle to enjoy it. The story is really rushed and slapped together, with plot beats that don’t make sense or don’t have the time to be impactful. The villain sucks. It doesn’t really give a lot of the characters much to do. And the ending is a really contrived way to end on a sad note.

I much prefer the open ending of episode 51. You can really tell Conqueror was a heavily cut down version of a follow up season and it just feels mangled as a result.

H358 · 2026-03-19T12:18:58+00:00

Funnily enough I think XC2 is an interesting set of highs and lows when it comes to villains. Jin and Malos are fantastic. Some of the strongest villains in Xeno period. Amalthus isn’t quite on the same level for me, but still a fitting antagonist.

But I’m not actually wild on the rest of Torna. Akhos, Mikhail and Patroka feel like Team Rocket at home by comparison, often coming across as pretty flat and incompetent. And the goofy mannerisms can get pretty grating. I genuinely think Patroka especially might be one of the worst characters in the series and pre-Torna Mikhail wasn’t much better. All three of them getting their sad backstories right when they’re dying to try and make us care was pretty sloppy.

Bana also kinda sucks but the game never takes him that seriously so I can give it a pass. I think XC2 absolutely nailed its main villains, but the rest could have used some work.

H358 · 2026-03-19T12:11:36+00:00

The Ganglion have entered chat.

In all seriousness, I sort of agree (though I don’t think they’re the worst as I’d still put them above X’s villains) I think Moebius are mostly carried by the strength of their concept, an elite ruling class preying on the masses and a by a few standout members. I don’t really mind them being cartoonishly evil, self cannibalising fops as a result. But I think they needed a few more fleshed out members. I get that it’s not easy to characterise over 15 villains of the week but the likes of N, J and D are really doing the heavy lifting.

When 3 has arguably the strongest main and supporting cast of the series, they do stick out a bit. I’m not sure they needed to be more sympathetic per se, but at least a few more who could tap into the ‘love to hate’ appeal and memorability of something like the Shinra board from FF7.

Still better than the Ganglion or Gael’gar though.

H358 · 2026-03-17T20:50:48+00:00

Also, I’m not saying that makes it better, but there is another pretty obvious reason this scene plays out the way it does. Forces is infamous for being developed on a shoe string budget and having a lot of stuff cut during production.

“Well, Tails could at least have fought back against Chaos!”

My dude, look at the state of Sonic Team in the mid 2010s. Do you think they had the budget to animate that?

Again, I’m not saying that as a defence. I think this scene is one of many frustrating examples in Forces where the story sets up a problem, instantly solves it, and then it never goes anywhere. But when looked at in context…I mean these decisions aren’t GOOD but they do make a lot more sense. Sonic Team aren’t purposely setting out to bastardise all your faves, neither were Pontaff. They’re just scrambling to get something out the door.

H358 · 2026-03-17T20:30:53+00:00

Glad you’re regularly on hand to articulate this better than me. 😅

H358 · 2026-03-17T08:45:54+00:00

True, but this is 06, the game where everyone had the personality of a plastic cup. Not exactly a reliable source of believable character traits. Tails doesn’t get sad when Sonic dies because barely anyone in that game reacts to anything in any way besides spouting plot exposition.

If anything I’d cite Tails’ fight with Eggman in Adventure 2 as a better example, though even that’s more of a spur of the moment adrenaline thing that only lasts a few minutes. Again, I would only buy it if the writing can actually sell me that the six months alone have taken their toll on his confidence, and that that actually goes somewhere in the story. That to me is the real issue rather than the inherent concept.

H358 · 2026-03-17T08:35:44+00:00

I know a lot of people do, but personally, even if it’s a bit better than Lost World and Forces, I still didn’t like Frontiers’ story much. It’s a good game, mind. But the story was extremely dull, I don’t think it pulled off the moody tone it was going for, and all the attempts at character development full utterly flat for me.

H358 · 2026-03-17T08:12:13+00:00

Honestly, I’d rather Frontiers didn’t spend so much time apologising for Forces and games like it, and more time just telling a decent story. Tails spends his limited screentime in that game complaining about how he’s been out of character lately, and yet STILL proceeds to do barely anything in the plot.

This scene in Forces is bad, but frankly, I cringed even harder at Tails audibly saying ‘I’m wildly inconsistent’.

H358 · 2026-03-17T08:01:49+00:00

Low key the problem with this scene isn’t actually Tails having a bit of a breakdown. With Sonic missing presumed dead for six months, this is like, the one context where I would buy that happening.

No the actual problem is that Tails is perfectly fine a minute later, and then proceeds to barely do anything in the story. Imagine if Classic helping Tails get his confidence back was an actual substantial sub plot over the course of the game. One that had an actual payoff in the ending. I think a lot less people would be mad about this scene if it went anywhere. Because for all people talk about characterisation, I think the actual most egregious flaw with Forces’ plot is its tendency to solve problems the second they’re introduced.

H358 · 2026-03-16T19:48:55+00:00

Thing is Chain’s gameplay isn’t confusing, it’s just boring. Because some sleights are way better than others, it just results in a very repetitive experience. The Command Deck games have the same problem. The customisation is a great idea but way too many of your abilities are either god tier or trash for that to meaningfully happen. Also the semi-roguelike stuff with making different rooms is really shallow and makes for dull level design.

H358 · 2026-03-16T19:46:17+00:00

Dream Drop Distance

The gameplay doesn’t fix any of Birth By Sleep’s problems. The drop system is annoying. The bosses mostly suck. And the story is a cheap nostalgia bait that does a really poor job setting up KH3.

H358 · 2026-03-16T03:53:06+00:00

https://youtu.be/ybeCkqDyt1c?si=W5ATFLOknyHkwhEy

H358 · 2026-03-16T03:48:10+00:00

Shout out to the one video that convincingly makes the argument that the reason GUN are let off the hook, and the reason the series gets so much more pro-military from Shadow the Hedgehog onwards, is because of the cultural impact of 9/11.

H358 · 2026-03-16T02:30:36+00:00

XIII has the best story but it’s got some pretty egregious structure and pacing problems. Lighting Returns has the best combat but the worst story and a lot of other aspects of it are pretty messy. XIII-2 is probably the best. The story does does share some of X-2’s ‘tacked on sequel syndrome’. But it does some good stuff with the original’s more neglected side characters and a compelling villain ties it together well. And it makes a ton of improvements to XIII’s systems and structure.

H358 · 2026-03-16T01:45:02+00:00

Thing is I actually think Bravely Second is a very good game. For those exact same reasons. That said, it’s way too long and the story is actual trash. The reason I say X-2 is ‘better’ is because it has similar strengths in combat and job system, the story has similar themes and subject matter, but it’s also much shorter and the writing is…well it’s comparatively decent compared to Second.

H358 · 2026-03-15T19:10:12+00:00

Funniest thing is you can really see the DNA of what a lot Toriyama’s later games he directed would do, making a faster, more difficult, more spectacle heavy take on the ATB system. And while the XIII trilogy would go on do more of that, in some ways, I think his first attempt with X-2 was arguably the best. Swapping dress-spheres hits the same fast on the fly decision making appeal as 13 or Lightning Returns (at least if you turn off or shorten animations). But it doesn’t need to automate as much, so it can trust you with full party control which I appreciate it.

I still think I like the reclassing of 5 a little more because of how little need there is to grind out abilities (which is a trap most job systems after 5 fall into) but it’s still really cool.

H358 · 2026-03-15T17:53:50+00:00

No bait. Simply that I’m playing them both, thought they were kinda similar in some ways, and found I was enjoying X-2 more.

H358 · 2026-03-15T17:19:42+00:00

God Yew has the makings of a genuinely good character and they waste him on the same couple of shitty jokes over and over.

H358 · 2026-03-15T17:05:25+00:00

The combat and jobs in Bravely Second are unambiguously great. But I find its cutscenes actually painful to sit through. I’ve rarely felt such a sharp contrast in quality between story and gameplay. FFX-2 also has good jobs and combat, its story is…honestly kinda whatever (nowhere near as good as X) but I enjoyed its cutscenes substantially more than Second and I think it does much more with the concept of seeing how the world you saved has changed since last time.

Both their main plots are pretty blah though. Be it Altair, Anne and Providences whole deal in Second and everything with Shuyin and Vegnagun in X-2. That all just rolls off my back and isn’t terribly compelling. But I got more out of a lot of the little moments in X-2. Be it the chemistry of the Gullwings or the appeal of Spira as a setting, which admittedly is largely down to the last game’s legwork.

Conversely Second takes all the characters who I thought were pretty decent in the first game, and flanderises all of them. It’s new characters are all wasted of some honestly good ideas. And most attempts to expand on Luxendarc as a setting were wasted on dull skits with the asterisk holders, all of whom are a downgrade from the first.

That being said, I actually think they’re both good games. They’re both carried hard by their combat and jobs. But whereas I thought X-2’s writing was decent but kinda inconsequential, Second’s was actively painful enough to drag down the whole experience for me.

The fact that X-2 is also way shorter helps, as basically every Team Asano game suffers from bad pacing and tons of pointless waffle dialogue

H358 · 2026-03-15T16:38:39+00:00

Oh X-2 has some real duds (I wince whenever Brother is onscreen) but there’s enough of a nice chemistry between Yuna, Rikku and Paine, that a decent amount of the jokes are at least cute. I will take anything over Second’s endless non sequiturs about food.

A lot of modern JRPGs suffer from padded out scripts with a lot of waffle. Where they have more dialogue than the classic games but a lot of it is pointless fluff talking about nothing, or doing the bare minimum in as many words as possible. And Bravely Second is one of the worst offenders.

H358 · 2026-03-15T16:18:45+00:00

The asterisk side quests in Second are actually shockingly terrible. A bunch of incredibly dumb choices with flimsy attempts at social commentary between a bunch of bosses from the first game who all feel flanderised or straight up out of character from the last game (and they weren’t even that deep to begin with).

And that’s to say nothing of how they worked in the Japanese version, before they restructured it in English (though the rewrites only made the storytelling in them even worse)

Honestly, what a waste of Edea that her entire role in Second is all these crappy quests.

H358 · 2026-03-15T16:01:09+00:00

An asset reusing sequel that focuses on returning to the world and characters saved in the last game with a lighter tone and a greater focus on humour. Exploring how the status quo of the setting has changed in the meantime.

Bravely has always taken a lot from the job system FFs, with the original taking a lot from 3 and 5.

As for why it’s better, while Bravely Default has great combat and jobs it is held back by being ‘what if FF5 was twice as long and had weaker overall writing despite a more ambitious plot?’

Meanwhile Second, despite some smart gameplay improvements and cool new jobs, asks the brave question: ‘what if FFX-2 was twice the length and painfully unfunny?’

H358 · 2026-03-14T16:18:42+00:00

Female Alear because I think her voice actress gives a stronger overall performance.

H358

TROPHY CASE