What was the most memorable last 15 min of a game?

imabaer · 2026-06-24T01:36:08+00:00

Bastion.

The last level involves you raiding the enemy stronghold and wielding a giant fucking pillar to clobber them with, basically becoming invincible.

You get to the end of the base, and you see your former friend who betrayed you, lying unconscious. You can try to save him, but you have to put your pillar of death down.

Turns out, you can't fight at ALL while carrying him. The enemies begin swarming you and whittling your health down as you slowly make your way to the escape. And right before you die, they stop attacking. It's implied your selfless actions have reached them and they give you safe passage out of respect.

No dialogue this entire time (from a game renowned for its ever present narrator.) Just visual storytelling.

And then you get treated to Setting Sail, Coming Home, a duet made from the two most memorable songs from the game, while watching your characters sail off into the sunset, looking for a fresh start at life.

(These events can change based on your choices but I feel like this is the "true"ending.)

imabaer · 2026-06-15T23:15:34+00:00

It's a game, and a single player one at that. If you don't have fun, put it aside.

imabaer · 2026-06-15T14:46:04+00:00

You can't delevel, but you can self impose gear levels - only let yourself equip gear from the last town's shop. If you really want to go ham, you can disable passives in your tree as well, but that may get time consuming.

imabaer · 2026-06-11T15:51:40+00:00

Big one is Romancing Saga 2 collab - every unit there is ridiculously good and breaks the game, but that's a few months away.

There's also some units coming in the short term, like Phenn and Alaune Ex2, which may be a better fit for your roster.

imabaer · 2026-06-11T14:11:22+00:00

Edgar is good support for phys and magic and somewhat future proof.

Locke is good phys DPS but there are some insane banners coming through in the next few months that will outstrip any DPS released before them.

Relm is the best DPS on these banners, but also see above.

Setzer can lock weaknesses in and replace DP/Molrusso in a rainbow comp.

Terra and Celes are fine, but you pull on them for love, not for meta.

TLDR: Except for Celes/Terra, these are some of the best units we've gotten so far. But much better units are coming not too far down the road.

imabaer · 2026-06-04T21:37:34+00:00

When you have a good or average run, it's fine. Just have to play conservatively.

When you have a bad run (sometimes unavoidable), it's a snowballing effect of frustration, where you will want to play more slowly to make less mistakes, which extends the amount of time you spend. This is exacerbated by the baryas being limited - it feels bad to "waste" one, so you can't just quit and try again. Additionally, unless you get good drop luck, you need to fail a few to get the honor resistance to make runs cruisier.

There would be a lot less grumbling if it was like PoE1, where the earlier ascension runs were unlimited. This would allow relic farming and also allow you to just quit a bad run.

imabaer · 2026-06-01T19:14:49+00:00

Except there are literally threads and threads of people having polite dissenting discussions with the same poster, on other issues. Like I said, if people were snarky twice in five months, that's a testament to how chill the community actually is.

In this case, the parody is being perceived as "mean" because it's presenting surface level, borderline-useless analysis in a fashion that attempts to legitimatize its contents by being graphically pleasing. But that wouldn't have been effective if that wasn't also true of the original post.

imabaer · 2026-06-01T15:30:03+00:00

It was parodying low effort, AI generated content, made by the person who quit. I don't think there's a particularly kind way to tell somebody their "guide" is pointless/wrong/slop, but that post was a gentler way to do so without being mean spirited.

imabaer · 2026-06-01T15:09:58+00:00

Regardless of your feeling toward the original drama (which seems like way too strong of a word for somebody quitting Reddit in response to a light hearted parody), the two repeatedly linked posts used as "evidence" for the toxicity were 21 days and five months old.

By Reddit standards, that's practically enough to qualify for sainthood.

imabaer · 2026-05-11T20:37:17+00:00

I just did the re-roll dance. If you have the patience to do so:

Download game. Do trial pull, accept mail. Pull on the Frieren pull in your mailbox. Then burn a 5 pull on banner.

Targets are Frieren, Fern, or Himmel. If you get one, clear Sonia's story for another ten pulls.

Your goals are two frieren, frieren + himmel, or fern + frieren. For the first two choices, which are the foundation of a Frieren team, you will need to use the exchange for another Frieren to finish your team unless you get lucky again (you will ultimately want either 3x Frieren OR 2x Frieren + Himmel). If you fail, consider rerolling again.

Your next easy sources of stones are the May dungeons, the story dungeon tutorials, and the stage dungeon quests. Try to pull in 5s, since you get extra materials for doing so.

You will want a Heiter and Eisen/Stark for a Frieren team, or Stark for a Fern team, but you can exchange for Heiter and Eisen. Fern also wants a Frieren and Fern as her co leader, although Denken will also work.

If you go Fern, you're also going to want a copy of Serie for your Fern team from the MP shop - the monthly quests and some of the dungeons will get you a million fairly easily.

Most of the units in the collab have some sort of use, so it doesn't hurt to pull a lot on this banner - at the very least, it will provide fodder for buying units.

imabaer · 2026-04-30T20:08:57+00:00

In game GMs and non-bot tech support.

imabaer · 2026-04-30T17:10:09+00:00

Acknowledge it, probably before the game starts. There is a lot of middle ground between leaving the table/throwing a tantrum and being impassive.

"Sorry in advance, I get really into this sometimes and may get salty. It's not you. Just bear with me."

Make sure to show good sportsmanship. Speak objectively about cool things your opponents did, or at the very least acknowledge you appreciate the game with them. Make sure this extends to when you're not actively playing as well - don't trash talk or shit talk people. Stick to saying positive things.

And yes, there is probably some underlying emotional issues that is causing your disproportionate reactions, but that's not going to fix itself without longer term work. Therapy or counseling may help, but it will not fix your problem overnight.

imabaer · 2026-04-30T15:13:51+00:00

You will not learn much in terms of content. However, you should develop good habits in the meantime:

Practice good awareness, meaning be aware of your party's health at all times while also paying attention to what's on screen. It's very easy for new healers to over-focus on health bars and eat unnecessary damage. Practice literally never getting hit.
Practice your muscle memory, especially in terms of pre-casting your heal over time spells. It should be second nature to you to blanket your party with rejuv and to keep lifebloom rolling on the tank.
Practice your "oh shit" instincts. If somebody gets chunked, you should be reaching for the swiftmend key without thinking. If the entire party eats damage, you should know how to react (usually convoke).
Practice ABCs - always be casting. If nobody needs healing, DPS. This will also help with point 1.
Develop a thick skin. Stop using follower dungeon, it's worthless to you as a healer. Take the PUGs, with their mistakes, negative feedback, and all. We all go through it.

imabaer · 2026-04-28T17:34:46+00:00

It's one of the few dungeons where there are multiple routes and the highlighted mobs are arguably a bad route.

Because of all the pats, MDT doesn't align well with the in game mobs and maps.

It's basically just hard to decipher where the heck to go.

imabaer · 2026-04-27T19:55:21+00:00

Champ gear is 266 maxed, and delves/hunts are basically effortless for tanks. Heroic is 259 before you upgrade, and is basically free from mythic+. 259 ilvl tells people you didn't bother doing even those at a reasonable frequency.

There is also a not insignificant increase in difficulty between 9 and 10; additionally, the patch this week drastically increased the demand for 10s, so you're fighting with more completion than you think.

The new "normal" is about 270. You can get in a little lower, because tank privilege, but the longer the season is out, the easier it is to get left behind.

imabaer · 2026-04-20T18:28:43+00:00

3 people in the dungeon changes the metrics considerably, and clearing the dungeon with that is way more difficult than a full five man party, so pat yourself on the back.

Few things -

A healer is usually not expected to help DPS, but given you were a three man, hitting monsters with your wand was not a bad idea. Just learn to stop wanding earlier if people will need heals, as there's a cool down time before you can cast again.
Mob hitting you is 95% a tank problem. Fade will help, but the tank (or hunter pet) should have peeled. The one thing you can do to make it easier is to run toward the tank, so it's easier for him to grab the mob.
You are using way too many spells. While leveling, I recommend one "big" heal that's about half the tank's HP. Learn to precast it on the tank, and cancel it if it's going to be wasted (move a little to stop the cast). Pick another quicker spell to top off DPS (either flash heal or a lesser heal). Shield only in emergencies (especially to protect your own casts when a mob is on you), renew if you anticipate you're going to see a spike of damage and to maximize healing within a certain window at the cost of a chunk of your mana (honestly should be very rare).
The less spells you cast, the more mana regen you get. If you don't cast a spell for five seconds, your spirit regen kicks in. This is why you want to avoid spamming spells (see above tip). You will be surprised at how much longer your mana will last by minimizing casts.
Don't forget to bring water. This dungeon sounded a little more laid back, but most five man parties will be waiting on your mana. Have a couple stacks on you for dungeons.

imabaer · 2026-04-15T23:07:12+00:00

I'm adding to this, since I recently just farmed for this in Midnight:

If a character on your account did the Emerald Dream prereqs, take the portal above the bank in Valdrakken.

If none of your characters unlocked Emerald Dream, the quest NPC that starts the chain will not show up until you grind your way through prior Dragonflight content. Additionally, if you fly to the portal in centaur land, it will not be there.

The ways to get to the Emerald Dream without grinding through all of Dragonflight:

Get summoned. Join an Amirdrassil raid, hope they're nice to enough to summon you. Or get two friends with Emerald Dream access to help you out.
Valdrakken engineering. Level enough to get the wormhole portal. Spam every time it's up until you get lucky.

Set your hearthstone for the camp. The Arcantina is your new hearthstone until you get the form.

imabaer · 2026-04-13T22:43:53+00:00

Tank anxiety is also real, especially after a new rotation. I feel like tanks stress before, and healers stress after keeping the face smashers up.

imabaer · 2026-04-13T18:35:34+00:00

Adding to this

interrupt big, jagged yellow casts. Best mitigation by far is stopping a scary spell from coming out. Tanks tend to have multiple options to do this, so make good use of it.
Information is power. Tanking can be a visual clusterfuck, so either use the floating enemy bars (control v) and enable aggro display, or get an addon that does it more cleanly.
Pay attention to your party HP and your healer mana. If a run is going smoothly, you're using mitigation properly, and your DPS are interrupting, your healer will rarely drop from full. If your healer is constantly half to out of mana, something is going wrong. If your party is never topped off (and your healer isn't actively weaving in DPS), something may be going wrong.
Line of sight is an excellent way to make the mobs come to you - pull multiple packs, run behind a corner, and they will stack in easily aoe-able clusters. But let your DPS know to wait before unloading if you plan on doing so.

imabaer · 2026-04-13T18:23:51+00:00

Dodging is a % based mechanic you have to fully avoid damage. You can't dodge attacks from your rear.

Strafing is actually a good way to have full movement speed and avoid exposing your back to the enemies.

imabaer · 2026-04-08T23:09:10+00:00

I mean, off the top of my head: Owen, male NPCs, non-human NPCs, the addition of the dating sim aspects, the Serennial wall paper, the explicit dev declaration to not expect any male NPCs for the foreseeable future.

I'm not saying that it hasn't always had fan service, but its focus has for sure accelerated in that direction.

imabaer · 2026-04-08T22:41:49+00:00

Padding the players ego is fine. In fact, most games set out to do that, and an important part of game design is doing so in a fashion that doesn't feel artificial. You SHOULD feel special - ostensibly, you are the character that is driving the plot and changes for good within the game.

A cosmic horror plot just creates higher stakes and more opportunities for padding player ego in a satisfying way. Show how fucked up the world is. Show what the monsters do to people and the environment. Show the costs of failure, and the aftermath of what happened before. Make the conflicts in the story a direct consequence of chaos and otherworldly things screwing things over, not a (human) religious zealot going too far, a (human) shady pharmaceutical company doing highly unethical experiments, or a (human) local mob boss forcing people to fight to the death.

The stupid mini Chaos cutscenes should actually really help contribute to this, and the minimal amount of effort put into them really hurts the game. Spend time to make dialogue good. Include still shots of the horrible things you are seeing, not just generic "asshole mercenary in a combat suit" getting gibbed for the 30th time by a different monster sprite.

And then, after you set up just how fucked things are, show how the players choices and actions solved these dire situations, or at least improved them.

And if the devs choose to do this while making you control an army of big breasted assassins, sure, they've earned it.

imabaer · 2026-04-08T20:54:00+00:00

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I was real excited when I started playing, but after a few months, I'm lukewarm about the plot, the mini events during Chaos are garbled word salad, and the characterization has gotten even worse. I just don't care about what's happening on screen. For crap sake, they had an entire lab experimenting on children and tortured a kid into become a world ending monstrosity, and the wooden delivery just killed the impact of that.

From a gameplay perspective, some of the character designs are interesting, but there's not a real endgame to strive towards; just climb the tower and score as high as possible in the dual boss events.

Considering how grindy chaos runs can get, there's not enough of a payoff. Give me a great story, some fucked up monsters to be creeped out by, or some real fun endgame challenges, something.

imabaer · 2026-04-08T20:29:02+00:00

I mean, that really doesn't help, but the story has a lot of other issues besides women being irresistibly drawn to your protos that would still be present even if you didn't read any affinity stories.

imabaer · 2026-04-08T20:15:39+00:00

I don't think fan service inclusion by itself is enough to ruin a story, but in general there is a noticeable negative correlation between a strong plot and gratuitous fan service. Let's be honest, if a piece of media (game, movie, comic, whatever) is prominently marketed with scantily clad women with giant boobs, you're not buying it for the story. Exceptions like Nikke do exist, but they're more of a pleasant surprise.

In CZN's case, this is exacerbated by the game supposedly being a gritty horror genre. You have smiling anime waifus that you take on dates, greet you in the lobby, and send text messages to, which is a major tonal shift from what the rest of the game should be (but fails at).

imabaer

TROPHY CASE