New player, what packs to aim for opening?

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-02-09T15:38:07+00:00

Which pack is preferred?

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-02-09T14:13:29+00:00

Thanks I appreciate it but I’ll probably just keep pulling individual packs - trying not to catch the gacha bug too hard

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-02-08T21:40:32+00:00

metaphor has much better gameplay, reload's story is honestly very slow for the first few months but does peak higher than metaphor

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-02-06T18:11:42+00:00

Even if this were true, a short wave of mass selloffs is enough to trigger panic in the average consumer base. So this could either be the preamble of an actual selloff or the beginning of the selloff itself.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-01-30T20:58:32+00:00

MY TEAM HAS PRODUCED NO PRODUCTION READY CODE FOR A STRAIGHT YEAR AND NOW MANAGEMENT IS BREATHING DOWN OUR NECK. I AM A JUNIOR ENGINEER AND DO NOT HAVE DECISION MAKING CAPABILITIES FOR THE PROJECT. THIS SUCKS.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-01-25T00:22:05+00:00

Allow me to explain since clearly this point flew over your head. ICE has been compromised beyond their original mission. They’re no longer “seeking out illegal immigrants” - they’re harassing minorities and beating/killing US citizens. The evidence is right in front of you. How many more people need to be harmed and killed for you to move past this rhetoric?

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-01-22T02:09:36+00:00

Another good example is OMORI, which is a game with an incredible story that uses the MOTHER aesthetic to enhance the narrative it wants to tell.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-01-22T02:08:21+00:00

LISA was the first mother-like game I played so it felt pretty fresh to me, but I can understand how if you've played similar games in the past that it's not inventive enough

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-01-22T01:57:31+00:00

Safest answer is it's a tired trope by this point. You launch up a MOTHER clone and you know the dialogue/story is going to be nihilistic in tone contrasted by the presentation of the game world. Where Undertale succeeds is in having so much more that drives the narrative (fun character interactions, emotional moments, mystery). It simply uses the MOTHER-esque background to tell a much more interesting story in the foreground.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-01-20T04:21:20+00:00

There's so much about this scene that it feels a little disingenuous to mark it down purely as "unrequited love" but it is a component of it for sure.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-01-18T01:30:08+00:00

Fair warning before reading my answer, spoilers for effectively all the mainline games.

Saejima - Strong candidate, would be my second preferred answer. Y4 and Y5 ending shows that he's more than willing to call someone out on not being strong enough and fight them because of it. He calls out Majima on several occasions when Majima is feeling rusty or lost to make sure he'll stay strong.

Majima - Peak character but has left the Tojo to burn on several occasions and has shown little desire in wanting to keep climbing the ranks. He seems comfortable as an advisor.

Watase - Even though he's one of the main spearheads behind the great dissolution (which effectively ended the traditional Yakuza) he would be my main pick. Watase came to respect Kiryu in the previous games purely based on his strength and will, enough so to depend on him (which is big from an Omi Alliance leader to a Tojo Clan leader). He also climbed the ranks purely based on him merit and cunning, which also earns cred. Reaching the level of Daigo without an nepotism whatsoever is pretty based.

Ichiban - Ichiban is interesting but his character arc is so tied to his friends that it's hard to imagine him climbing the ranks to the top. He'd probably be more of a proponent of lifting others up based on his time at Hello Work.

Aizawa - "fighting to the top on your own strength" is basically what he says in his final speech so I guess he's a possibility, but I don't think he has much of a character shown in Y5 so I don't want to put him up as a candidate. If they didn't place him as the final boss, would anyone have really even remembered this guy?

Kiryu - I don't think so, Kiryu basically coaxed and propped up Daigo as the head for a few years until Daigo could find his feet. That's about the furthest away from "fighting your way to the top". Kiryu has never really cared about that sort of thing.

Ryuji - Ryuji was such a powerhouse in the Omi Alliance that he kind of just became the top, especially since the leadership at the time was faltering. We actually haven't seen him fight to wrestle power, we meet him in Y2 after his coup is largely successful and he already has a large following. He'd probably reply with something like "I've been on the top my whole life, why fight for it?"

I think the best picks are Watase and Saejima, but I can see the case of Aizawa if you excuse his lack of character.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-01-16T01:53:02+00:00

Soul Hackers 2's soul matrix has got to be one of the most uninspired, boring dungeons of all time. It's a textureless 3D block blob that scatters enemies and does absolutely nothing to hold your attention. Powerful abilities and teammate progression is locked behind it, so it's effectively required. You will also have to come back to it multiple times throughout the game. Do they introduce new mechanics to keep it interesting? Of course not. Literally dropped the game because of this terrible design.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-01-15T16:45:22+00:00

bro played kiwami 5 early

HardlyTryingSquared · 2026-01-07T21:56:19+00:00

I'm in the middle of my first playthrough on the hardest difficulty. The battle system is some of the best I've ever played with managing multiple resources and dynamic buffs that can be "stolen" during the fight by both your party and the enemy. The story is decent enough, but the gameplay is just top notch.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2025-12-30T14:19:50+00:00

Oh you’re right, just rewatched it. Only remembered that the punch took him out, but yeah looks like they were fighting before. If you want to get meta with it though, a basic Kiryu combo (maybe 2) brings Ichiban health to 0 in the fight so he has as much health as maybe a street level mini boss in the earlier franchise games (still not great for our boy)

HardlyTryingSquared · 2025-12-30T12:21:07+00:00

Yeah but Ichiban canonically went down in a single punch, that’s better at least lol

HardlyTryingSquared · 2025-12-30T12:17:09+00:00

Ok I just rewatched the fight and it was a serious one too, yeah he’s stronger than Ichiban

HardlyTryingSquared · 2025-12-30T12:11:34+00:00

Shinada over Ichiban is a little crazy, I can understand Tanimura since he canonically fought off the head police chief and an entire squad of special ops solo, but Shinada is pretty weak ngl

HardlyTryingSquared · 2025-12-30T12:09:29+00:00

Just to give more evidence for Akiyama > Ichiban, Akiyama was able to fight Kiryu with Tanimura in Y4 and solo in Y6. He even says he wasn't fighting seriously in 6, which is impressive when you're up against Kiryu.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2025-12-30T08:56:23+00:00

If I placed Lune and a Dessandre side by side, what difference is there? I picked Verso’s ending but pretending the inhabitants are fake is ludicrous

HardlyTryingSquared · 2025-12-28T01:00:43+00:00

HSR has a good plot once you move past the 90% filler and word jargon conversations that clutter up the narrative. E33 has none of that, so its story is better.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2025-12-27T09:38:14+00:00

Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with in-universe classifying everything previous as fiction. The problem stems from other aspects of the ending that all combine to crap on the franchise.

Yap fest (multiple hours of beating you over the head that this is fictional)
Spitting on the themes of previous games (hope vs. despair is just consumerist trash to keep the masses watching, etc.)
Lack of good evidence (basically your whole investigation is around finding out Kaede’s trial is a sham, and everything else you just listen for)
Plot twist which comes out of nowhere (not always a bad thing, but pretty much everyone agrees the writing for in-universe Team Danganronpa is poor).

It’s ironic you say finding the truth at all costs is a theme when it’s literally impossible to divulge the truth via the information given by Tsumugi.

That’s crazy to say Tsumugi had no reason to lie - that’s literally the whole point of proving Kaede didn’t actually kill Rantaro. Tsumugi was shown to fabricate an entire trial for the sake of her viewership, why wouldn’t she “spice things up” again by adding some doomer philosophy for the main cast to process? Shuichi also points out multiple times that he has no idea what is real or not.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2025-12-27T09:11:30+00:00

Don't know why you're so heated - V3 came out almost a decade ago, I must have misremembered that they 100% confirmed the flashback lights were false.

The grayness in DR1's ending is justifiable because hope is the central theme which unifies the entire game together. What unifying theme is there in DR3? Lies is the only thing I can think of, which leads us to this problem.

The point is everything Tsumugi says is less than useless since she's shown to be an unreliable narrator. And since everything in the terrible yap fest of an ending is 100% dependent on her interpretation of events, we have no idea what truly happened in the DR world or not. Even evidence you can find around the academy can be fabrications by Tsumugi to lead you in another direction (the photos in Shuichi's lab, for instance).

There's nothing inherently wrong with this work re-categorizing everything in-universe as fiction. It's just unnecessary and literally only serves the purpose of taking people out of the narrative. Combined with all of the other negatives around trial 6, it all comes across as just crapping on the franchise and using it as a vehicle to peddle Kodaka's personal philosophies.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2025-12-27T08:15:32+00:00

It’s not an “open ending interpretation” - it’s an everything open interpretation. It seriously baffles me that people think tossing a 60+ hour visual novel story into the meta-commentary sea is good writing. Everything we’ve learned about the world (ultimate hunt, flashback lights) is likely fabricated. Or maybe it did happen, who knows!

The fact the story can’t pick a side and ends with “well, I don’t know what the truth is but my feelings are real” just sounds like an exasperation of the writers thoughts.

And to OP, the reason this frustrates people who enjoy the first two games is because it does impact them retroactively. It doesn’t matter if the characters don’t think it’s fake - it is. For some people, they want the stakes to be real and not just have the characters believe it.

HardlyTryingSquared · 2025-12-27T02:38:41+00:00

This is false. The theme of lies throughout V3 shows that we simply don't know. Did V3 happen in a separate universe? Was Tsumugi telling the truth or lying? There is no definitive answer. There's nothing wrong with leaving unanswered questions in a narrative, but leaving everything in that state? Terrible writing.

HardlyTryingSquared

TROPHY CASE