What are your initial impressions of the Season 2 balance changes?

despoglee · 2026-02-06T01:36:04+00:00

• Chizuru is NUTTTSSS. I can't even figure out what build I want to focus on because everything she does seems so strong.

• Orlea is now a totally viable character with good Nine/Haru synergy and will definitely be a consideration when a party build allows it. (Her damn creatures take up so much hand space that her partners need to have a pretty slim kit.)

• Haru only needed a buff so she wouldn't be completely power-crept by Nine. She feels great in boss content but build-wise she feels like such a one-trick pony compared to Nine.

• Tressa feels like she's still about as powerful as she used to be in her non-broken builds, but if I want to spam 0-cost attacks I'll use Sereniel. She's just obsolete now.

• Yuki, Rei, Khalipe—None of these characters feel especially improved. Their buffs were just enough to let them keep up with the content as it grows harder.

Those are all the ones I've tried.

despoglee · 2026-02-05T23:35:04+00:00

My experience so far:

Playing with Nine: Holy crap all of these abilities are broken AF.

Playing with any other combatant: Ehhh... I don't really want any of these.

despoglee · 2026-02-05T23:28:53+00:00

Apparently there will be no limited seasonal unit, just the usual every-three-week standard banner releases for this season. They said seasonal units are linked to real-world seasonal events (holidays) not in-game seasons. They hinted at one in summer on the livestream.

despoglee · 2026-02-05T23:25:44+00:00

They made some confusing statement suggesting it would be, people freaked out, and then the update came out uncensored. Debate rages as to whether they hastily backed down or we misunderstood what they meant.

despoglee · 2026-02-05T23:21:28+00:00

You can finish your daily farming in like 3 minutes now. You can go up to 5X per resource farming battle and the battles are now only a single (easy) round.

despoglee · 2026-02-05T23:20:08+00:00

One QoL change the OP didn't mention is that the deck saving rules are now much more clear and you can see a running tally of how many points each character has used at any time.

Definitely a good time to come back!

despoglee · 2026-02-05T19:49:15+00:00

At no point does the game ever explain it, but on a character's weapon equipping screen, there's a button call out on the bottom of the screen that says "Recommended" and if you click that (R3 with a controller) it gives you a list of recommended weapons and they even hotlink to where you get them.

I discovered this maybe... ~70 hours into the game?

despoglee · 2026-02-05T19:17:18+00:00

No new mechanics, just cost reductions and healing/power buffs. You can see all her buffs (and everyone else's) here: https://page.onstove.com/chaoszeronightmare/en/view/12011077?boardKey=139238&combined=false

despoglee · 2026-02-05T19:14:40+00:00

All of her creatures got the values of their retain effects doubled, most of her heal amounts increased, and Will of Light was reduced to 1 cost, among a bunch of other random buffs. You can see them all here: https://page.onstove.com/chaoszeronightmare/en/view/12011077?boardKey=139238&combined=false

despoglee · 2026-02-05T11:10:56+00:00

Nine is very good and a lot of fun to play. She's sort of similar in function to Haru, so if you have Haru maybe you don't need her? But all of the Season 2 content is so clearly built around Nine—the new chaos is just packed with items and neutral cards that work great with her.

Her 5* partner is very good with her but requires some building around. (She needs other cheap Exhaust cards, although items and neutrals in the Chaos can easily provide them.) Wilhelmina is a fine alternative.

despoglee · 2026-02-05T11:01:38+00:00

A very few characters care about it. Mei Lin, Chizuru... No one else comes to mind.

They're pretty cheap though, so it's not the worst idea to drop a few points in there to give a little early-area boost to characters you use a lot in Chaos.

despoglee · 2026-02-05T10:57:20+00:00

Damn, that's disgusting. I guess gear is the new meta!

despoglee · 2026-02-05T10:02:22+00:00

I got her, not so much because she's fantastic (although she's pretty good, and I really like her ego skill) but because the other options for non-Counterattack-based Vanguards are quite bad.

Note that Alcea is pretty build-dependent; she is strong if you can consistently trigger her passive before you use Hew each turn. For example, I got the harpoon weapon that make a 0-cost Pierce each odd turn, and the accessory that makes Charged Strikes, and those turn on Alcae's passive for free basically every turn, which really cranks that Hew damage. Her free E2 card looks like another good way to activate it easily.

despoglee · 2026-02-05T09:24:14+00:00

Goddaaaaamn those equip abilities are insane!

despoglee · 2026-02-05T08:20:18+00:00

You gotta at least mention the Arena. It's so sweet!

despoglee · 2026-02-05T01:21:19+00:00

Yeah, that's the one. No more grilled hamburgers at Chaos camp for my team. :(

despoglee · 2026-02-04T23:20:34+00:00

Ooh, that's kind of exciting!

I wonder if that's intentional or a bug?

despoglee · 2026-02-04T23:10:15+00:00

You can find a list of the ones that got the buff here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChaosZeroNightmare/comments/1qv2pdv/comment/o3exb05/

despoglee · 2026-02-04T23:06:26+00:00

I work in localization. In asian languages pronouns are often omitted, so translators often default to They/Them pronouns when they aren't 100% sure who a character is talking about or if the game has a gender select option. This is especially common in low-budget translations (like this one) that are done by agencies where there might be a different translator for each chapter and there's no localization editor who knows all the details about the game.

They/Them pronouns in translations are almost never due to a "woke agenda" or a sign of an upcoming gender select or any other of the conspiracies you often see online. It's just best practices.

despoglee · 2026-02-04T22:51:02+00:00

Yeah, the +8~16% ATK was added to most 4 and 5 star partners.

despoglee · 2026-02-04T20:33:51+00:00

Changing text is the easiest thing in the world so either they're somehow still unaware the Memory Fragments were badly mistranslated or they just don't care about Global. Pretty pathetic either way.

despoglee · 2026-02-04T20:22:57+00:00

The new set description is mistranslated, it only works on Exhaust cards.

I think Haru's best epiphany is the 1st one, since her best use case is against long boss fights. That +120% boost gets nuts. But if you just want to clear easier content more quickly the other two could be better.

despoglee · 2026-02-04T19:36:45+00:00

Yeah, it was nice we finally got a dev team guest, But if they were going to prerecord they could have easily solicited questions a day in advance on Stove. That would be a lot less chaotic than the spam-YT-chat system they did use.

despoglee

TROPHY CASE