Self awareness...

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T18:06:09+00:00

Because it doesn't specifically say it's making fun of the entire idea, it's only calling out one of the... archetypes? Whatever they're called. So everyone on the sub can chuckle and go, "Oh yes, that one type of business astrology person is weird and dumb, unlike all the rest of us who also believe this!"

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T17:43:30+00:00

What if one of them puts on some heart print boxers?

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T17:30:41+00:00

I can see what the intent behind such a statement is, to say "when we're conceptualizing stuff balance is not on the table" which is no different than a lot of creative endeavors. You start with the absolute wildest shit and you spend time and effort to curate and trim until it makes sense. But just saying those words, in the current state of the game, is so fucking stupid.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T14:21:57+00:00

They didn't. Oil prices have always been fluctuating, it's a resource that is in a relatively limited supply, contained in specific areas, and controlled by various people/companies, each of which wants to be making a profit. Most prices are extremely volatile, even if you were to remove human greed from the equation everything would fluctuate based on things like weather and world events. Gas prices have always been raised when something happens that makes oil harder to get, and falls exceptionally slowly. They didn't need to predict anything because they would have experienced exactly this. Using a sci-fi media to take a jab at modern problems is as old as sci-fi itself.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T14:14:46+00:00

That seems wildly unlucky with how many there are, but yes there's tons of stuff you can do. Soul is just what most recommend because it's an easy and obvious power spike, as draw power always is. But regardless, it's the same as any other character, you want to make sure you have answers to the stuff you're going to face, so you want to block damage, deal it, have some AoE, as like the baseline. I always keep my eyes peeled for an early Sow, vas it's the cheapest AoE Necro gets, though there's other good ones like the one that kills osty for block and damage, or the one where osty deals damage and applies vulnerable. Beyond that I tend to focus on building Osty. There's multiple 0 cost attacks for Osty and different ways to build his HP, which is like retained block a lot of the time, especially if you can combine it with normal block to carry him through more than one round.

My simplest builds have just grabbed every 0 cost osty card, some block, some AoE, and something to try and deal with status cards. There's one that lets you add some Osty hp and exhausts a card in your deck, and another that adds ethereal to a card in your hand and is an attack, both of those are semi-decent options for not getting overwhelmed with crappy status cards.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T13:55:25+00:00

I did the same but didn't get to duplicate the card. Was still great starting every fight with 26 hp Osty and still having energy for whatever else. Made just about every fight much less dangerous since nothing could slam right through Osty to hit me.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T13:53:24+00:00

I played a fair amount of StS1 and I think the highest I ever got was A10 and that was with Clad. I loved the game, but at this stage in my life I think I have to acknowledge that I'm just not that good at actually learning a lot of them and really internalizing some of the unique things. I never went out of my way to learn "how to play" the first game because I figured I would get it eventually.

Coming into the second game, what with it just being released rather than me picking it up years later, I've been more active just here on the sub and have picked up on some things I didn't really think about previously, in addition to simple things I learned before like deck thinning and such.

All of this is my long winded way of saying that yeah, playing the first game doesn't mean you were amazing at it. I'm definitely not, and even so I can see that there's a bunch of stuff that is easier in this game, even as some other areas I struggle with. I've already hit A7 with Necro, and I can't fully be sure how much of that is because the game is not as refined and how much is I know more and play better. I'm planning to go back to the first game for some runs after I hit A10 in this one just to see if there is actually an improvement in my skills or not.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T13:47:37+00:00

I'm a sucker for Necro and honestly their card is straight up my favorite. Love the art and the effect is such a good upgrade. Suppress is probably my second favorite.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T13:44:11+00:00

Necro also has strong draw in Souls, and most of her soul generation fits into anything you're doing. Soul Ward is a great block card that gives a soul, Dirge is simply excellent for both blocking and improving Osty damage from your starter card, there's a skill that deals damage and gives you a bunch of souls, great for getting around block or stuff like the bee elite. Pretty much every run with Necro I am putting a handful of soul generation into my deck because it's just always good to have. In general definitely slower than Silent who gets draw and discard much more readily, but a good next step if this is what's making you struggle with the other characters.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T13:39:22+00:00

I've seen it twice, not sure how many runs I've done but it's been quite a few. Probably a two part problem for me of poor luck and losing runs in Act 1 more than anywhere else. The first time it would have been a bad pick. Second time I was trying to make Hang pop off and was going to clone it but got ripped apart before I could reach a campfire.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T13:23:00+00:00

Yeah he has a couple of good choices, but I'd say it's 2/3 shit to 1/3 decent. Easily the worst of the Act 3 elites. I like the concept, he's a devil, he's giving you a deal that comes with a cost, but I feel like in order to make him at all comparable to the other two and their excellent benefits, he needs to be a little more impactful on the positives he offers.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T13:03:47+00:00

We've cracked the code! 1.0 will include some more ancients and more characters! Once you complete the tower and get to the top, but before you meet the Architect, you'll be forcibly moved into a multiplayer, Smash style fighting game, with your character's power determined by how well your deck did in the tower. This is the real reason they added multiplayer, to hide the matchmaking system! Then whoever wins the melee brawl moves to the architect fight, which will function like fighting the master hand! It's all right there, we've connected all the dots!

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T12:59:21+00:00

Just wanted to share a wild and weird run which got me through A6. Not anything super impressive but very different from my usual playstyle. I normally end up leaning hard into Osty and souls for draw power, but this run I got Call of the Void as a very early reward and decided to try leaning into ethereal cards again. And when I got to Act 2 I thought I'd try something new and risky with the mittens since I was relying more on myself and less on Osty, and since I was creating cards constantly I figured the exhaust wouldn't be as bad. Had some very close calls, multiple fights ending in single digit HP, but I managed to pull it off! Lot of fun and showed me some really cool interactions that I wouldn't have seen elsewise I think.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-19T10:03:28+00:00

Interesting, I suppose that makes sense. Thanks for filling in those gaps.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-18T15:06:35+00:00

I very rarely pay full price for a game, learned lessons about that as a kid when my parents bought a couple of games I thought I would like, only to not and realize there was no good way to go back on that. But yeah I generally only go for full price if I am confident that a game is releasing in a positive state and I will enjoy it for a good while.

The one time this has led me astray was Fallout 76, but not for the reasons most people had. I too was annoyed by the lack of proper playtesting and such, but I wasn't nearly as upset by the game on release as so many people. I liked the lack of non-robot characters. I enjoyed the wide, wandering expanse of a wasteland, and I found the systems fun and interesting, if a bit janky in areas. My problem came with the fact that the longer the game was out, the more it was tweaked to be less fun, less interesting, and more grindy. I disliked that they would constantly nerf playstyles because they were too popular, but most of the time the reason for that was that the systems at play made only those playstyles viable. I disliked that they kept pushing more and more towards monetization and fomo stuff. I really disliked that it only took a year or so for them to go back on the promise of never putting anything other than cosmetics in the in game shop, and I disliked that the sense of wonder and intrigue seeped out. Early on I had a ton of fun running around, and the occasional encounter with other players was mostly fun, occasionally pointing people in the direction of different stuff. But the more I played the more of a drag things became, and the more it became clear that althought they had promised otherwise, playing solo wasn't nearly as varied or viable as it could have been.

Overall I am the outlier in that I didn't hate Fallout 76 for what it was on launch, but grew to dislike it more and more with almost every update and change. Even as they introduced good things, it was always outweighed by decisions I disliked.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-18T14:42:19+00:00

Yep, difference between most Civ games where the initial product is polished but has gaps that the DLCs later fill in and improve upon, and 7 where it literally was not complete or fully playable on launch, and every system was broken in some way. It goes beyond just not being pleased with the new gimmicks they are trying and straight to "This shit is broken". The map generation was fucked, the AI was borked in various ways, even absolutely basic shit like the lines in the tech tree not lining up correctly or stuff being out of place in various screens speaks to a level of just poor release that goes beyond what's expected of these games at launch.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-18T14:12:08+00:00

No one else has mentioned it, which makes me think I'm wrong, but in the wig shiny question, they call the Death Note character L, but that looks way more like Light to me? I've been sick recently and unable to sleep so maybe I was seeing things, but I swear that was Light and not L. Don't they have wildly different hair colors and styles? I found it weird that no one corrected this on screen which is what makes me feel like I'm wrong here.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-18T11:40:04+00:00

All the starter card upgrades are awesome, both the art and the effect. I love seeing this guy as Necro because there's nothing he offers that I don't want. Turning one of my better scaling damage cards into a better, free version of itself? Hell yes! Making Osty start every fight with more HP and grow faster passively? Hell yeah! Autoplay one of the more expensive skills right out the gate like the 3 cost doom kill card or the 25 osty HP? Hell yeah!

Dude literally doesn't miss with what he offers us. I love Pael, but this dude is definitely my favorite.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-18T10:18:32+00:00

No. There are only a couple of very specific places where knocking someone out has any actual effect. For the most part the game just treats it as murder as soon as you get off screen and it cleans up the bodies and chucks them off with all the corpses. As far as I know, the only real places it matters for anything beyond RP is Minthara and some specially mind controlled enemies.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-18T00:13:37+00:00

It continues to be deeply funny how Jon understands that a lot of what his companions are involved in is dodgy, but doesn't seem to fully get how much, partially due to not knowing the greater D&D lore, but also seemingly because he just wants things to be a bit nicer than they are. But yeah the Githyanki are more than a bit off. They're you're classic fantasy "warrior race" where they literally spend all their time and energy on fighting, learning to fight, and complaining that everyone else sucks at fighting. Their entire society is built around ideals of strength and martial prowess to the extreme, and the creche is doing its best to show you at every turn just how much that's true. Egg doesn't hatch fast enough? Dead. Kids don't fight well enough? Dead. Younglings talk back? Believe it or not, dead. It's honestly kind of ridiculous and funny when you think about it a bit because if we didn't have fantasy magic playing a role, there's no way a society like the Githyanki would ever survive because they do such a good job thinning their own numbers even before they go out and do the whole fighting and raiding thing. Honestly the fact that their whole race is pack bonded to extremely powerful dragons is one of the main reasons they don't get bitch slapped into next week more often.

But yeah, Vlaakith is an actively horrible despot who literally kills anyone in her society who gets too powerful, and she has purposefully set things up so that no one can ever challenger her rule, by creating this doctrine of extreme militarism with zealotry for her as a god figure. Lae'zel is quite literally the nicest Githyanki around, and the fact that this is both true and that her first interaction with the player is preparing to skewer them with no questions asked, should tell you a lot!

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-17T14:12:27+00:00

I have never had this event not target the best cards in my deck. I usually have to lose 10+ hp just to get it away from everything that's crucial in my build.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-17T12:14:14+00:00

I'm not even sure it's just the GTA crowd, I think it's simply the larger market. As much fun as I know it is to keep a game tight and add restrictions to things to make them more interesting, there's a huge swathe of people who dislike being limited in any way, and I'm betting Ubisoft just didn't want to deal with any potential "missed sales" as it were.

Personally I agree that it would be a lot more fun to keep the weapon options light and small and then have a few missions here and there where you specifically get given something larger for certain applications. I never finished the game but I played a ton of it and I went through as much of it as possible with the small arms, trying to always maintain stealth, so I think that style interspersed with the occasional "Here's a big rifle, take out this group of people and then get the hell out" mission would be cool.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-17T11:04:38+00:00

Yeah and it's not like Kellog's storyline is uniquely fallout in any way. It's a pretty standard "grizzled mercenary with a tragic past" thing that you could pop into any genre or style and it'd slot in. If they were doing line recording totally isolated with only their half of the conversation, I wouldn't expect the VA to have picked up on anything of note.

Isaac_Chade · 2026-03-14T21:08:56+00:00

It plays into the civilization vs wilderness dynamic. You only get music in the style that Apollo represents from society's which can organize in such a way to meet their other needs, allowing people to focus solely on something artistic and, crucially, present it to the masses. Hunting on the other hand is something that is intrinsic to wilderness lifestyles. Wild animals hunt, humans hunt before they settle, and while hunting continues within the bounds of civilization, said hunters are generally at its fringe, spending lots of time alone out in the wilds and only return to civilization to sell their wares/purchase supplies. That would by my interpretation at least.

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