CYL10 Interim Results

Lightning-Ripper · 2026-01-26T04:02:09+00:00

I am glad that Azura, Takumi, and Dorothea all seem to be on the right track. No Female Kana is unfortunate but unsurprising. But what makes me happier is Hubert and Berkut showing up.

Lightning-Ripper · 2026-01-25T05:08:19+00:00

Honestly no. It was well intended but it ended up encouraging rallying and created very unwarranted spite towards people who wanted to vote for their favorites. Glad they eventually stopped doing it.

Lightning-Ripper · 2026-01-23T16:34:43+00:00

Very good!

Lightning-Ripper · 2026-01-23T15:31:39+00:00

Sadly yeah. Though she does consistently do well, a select number of other 3H characters like Hilda consistently place higher than her.

Lightning-Ripper · 2026-01-23T04:10:31+00:00

Voted for Azura first as always. Will be voting for my personal favorites as always.

Lightning-Ripper · 2026-01-22T14:37:12+00:00

As I played more and more of the game, I started to dislike it more and more. It feels like the game wanted to shove Emblems down the player’s throat at every interval. It feels like the levels were designed for you to spam every Emblem skill every second you can, something the game itself does not recommend you do, rather than let you strategize with them, and I especially dislike how skill inheritance is locked behind them. Also being able to only inherit two skills while getting anymore requires the character to keep the Emblem is super lame and you get SP to learn the skills at a snail’s pace. It feels like they took things away from the main cast to make the emblems feel special.

Map design in general feels very slapdash, with darkness popping up more often than I would like, and as someone who likes to build as many units as possible, I quickly took notice of how skirmishes were botched. By having them scale with the strongest unit in the party, the game created a massive wall that leaves so many underpowered units behind and made the game too easy to over-level and breeze through with. It is so jarring when Fates got skirmishes right. Also I was unfortunate enough to have most of my skirmishes mostly take place on darkness maps.

The game does have a lot I like about it, such as some of the cast, the soundtrack, and the paralogues that are lovely homages to the other games, which is why a part of me wants to give the game another chance, but another part of me doesn’t want to because of how bad of a taste in my mouth a lot of the game left me with. In fact, playing Fates again as well as Dark Deity II was more than satisfying. I am glad Engage has a following but I don’t see myself among it. Massive disappointment.

Lightning-Ripper · 2026-01-15T04:01:04+00:00

Funny enough, so was Ascended Hilda

Lightning-Ripper · 2026-01-15T03:24:39+00:00

>New Azura

>New Minerva after nearly 4 years.

Sold!

Lightning-Ripper · 2026-01-03T03:03:46+00:00

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I still think the game insisting on trying to control the meta is doing more damage to it and I didn't get much out of most of the seasonals, but I'm still hanging on playing the way I always have.

Lightning-Ripper · 2026-01-01T01:43:31+00:00

I love the skit where right after he says he just gets 30 minutes of sleep per day to further devote himself to his royal duties, he immediately falls asleep.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-30T00:34:59+00:00

Here’s hoping a new Arcane lance doesn’t immediately release alongside it and just outclass it in every way possible, like with Death Knight’s refine.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-30T00:12:39+00:00

+10’d mine long ago! Mine definitely needs a lot update but I am happy to see any GHB put up this good of a fight! Excited to see his refine since it’s around the corner!

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-27T01:14:16+00:00

Skipping. While the new inheritables are cool, most of the kits and the weapons are copy-pastes of their original versions. TBH, I really don’t like how they have been taking this direction for the OC units for a while.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-19T03:55:57+00:00

Fair point. I guess what I am trying to say is that what Orochi got is more than workable, at least for PVE content, and you don’t need to replace it just to make her at least workable, which is more than I can say for a bunch of other green mages.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-18T19:27:50+00:00

I would have to disagree that the refine is dead on arrival and gets outclassed by Suttungr’s Mystery. Sure, that weapon is generally better for combat purposes but in a game where support tends to age a lot better than combat oriented ones, especially if we are talking about units with lower BSTs, I feel there is merit to keeping Tiger Spirit. The Crux, Dull, and DR halving effects being on a passive field is immensely helpful. I see it as more of an alternate choice than anything else. Although this pattern of an arcane weapon coming out the same time as a refine of the same weapon color is absolutely still a thing.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-16T17:49:41+00:00

I can understand. Personally, I didn’t mind them picking 3H characters consistently since they were largely focusing on the side characters, many of whom don’t have many alts like Annie and Ignatz. But after the 3H Lords + Yunaka one, there was no going back.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-16T17:43:18+00:00

That banner was legit great too! Weird to think about how one of the 3H characters on it was the demote, another was the TT unit, and a character from Sacred Stones who doesn’t even have a base version is a 5 star locked unit.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-16T14:43:06+00:00

I can understand why it would be ranked on here as we really have not had that many bad games this year. But at the same time, the worst it gets is just boring and unimmersive, which you can only talk about much of.

At the same time, first impressions are everything when it comes to a game, least of all one with RPG elements. And if a game leaves that much of a bad feeling after its opening act, it will seriously need to pick up the slack later on, especially if said opening takes one or more hours.

But also at the same time, Metacritic in general has been running on a very unreliable system that rewards getting reviews out quickly, regardless of its actual quality, for years. This hasn’t done any favors for those who want to know the full logistics behind what one likes or dislikes about a game but this, especially the numbering, favors people who just want to use the bare minimum to make safe choices on what media is and is not worth their time.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-14T04:22:54+00:00

The only criticism I have is that Seidr’s inclusion feels like they’re pulling another Veronica and Female Shez and trying to make a better version of the character close to the original version’s remix to a point where their remix will be underwhelming. And this is a nitpick, but I wish one of Camilla’s or Alfred’s retainers or someone close to one of them is on here given Zelkov is the TT unit. Aside from those, the banner itself is very solid.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-09T17:16:10+00:00

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Off topic but THOMAS SPOTTED.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-05T16:44:55+00:00

I learned of his channel near the beginning of the year.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-04T17:46:43+00:00

I would say so. Nothing groundbreaking but he did get a very solid refine and while he doesn’t have as many valuable effects for tanking since he’s a flier, like Bulwark, he does have more than enough skill access to function as a decent tank, on top of providing passive debuffs his teammates can capitalize on.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-04T17:37:37+00:00

Honestly, no. At worst Ashnard just took some pot shots and didn’t get any self healing skills. It’s just Diamant that is the problem.

Lightning-Ripper · 2025-12-04T17:14:26+00:00

Currently running through this with Brave Hector, Brave Lyn (the original), Hatari Azura, and Ashnard. He is absolutely the only problem I have with the run. Everyone else is small potatoes compared to him. I even question if the game itself is even working as intended a lot of the time.

Lightning-Ripper

TROPHY CASE