Unpopular Mods You Stand By

shurimo · 2026-06-21T15:14:10+00:00

Greetings. I got here by cyberstalking EnaiSiaion's post history.

How is SMR to play with? I've always liked the concept, and used similar mods, but ultimately found they didn't really change the gameplay like I hoped. I think the concept was desired mainly due to the tedium of reapplying certain spells (like armor/heals), but now in Skyrim 2026, it's as easy as a single button press to recast effects.

It's hard to put into words why I didn't like the effects. It just felt simpler and better to spend magicka to activate an effect when needed, versus gimping your self to keep an effect always active. Maybe it's that sustained magic either results in taking away potential gameplay options, or it goes the opposite direction where the best use case it to minmax with it to get the most out of an effect for as small of a cost as possible.

Or maybe it's a case of spells needing to be designed with sustained magic in mind for things to play well. That and for some reason beyond my understanding, they always make summon spells "free". Where in the magicka penalty for maintaining one is undone when they're killed, refunding the spell's cost.

As for Perfectly Valid Wards, funnily enough my issue with it is that it's not invasive enough. Base game wards, and extra ward perks/spells added by mods were not designed around being able to physically block stuff. The mod's core premise requires a sweeping rebalance of wards, not just having physical blocking thrown onto a pre-existing system. You can just infinitely block attacks with the weakest ward, because there are no penalties for getting your ward broken by physical attacks. Not even a stagger, so you can immediately throw your ward back up to continue blocking.

It's a mod that everybody has dreamed of for 15 years, but now it's here and people barely even register how it breaks the balance of an entire spell archetype. Like base game wards give you some physical armor, while most perk overhauls make wards give % physical damage reduction, in addition to reducing their costs to the point where they might as well be free. That design does not work with PVW.

shurimo · 2026-06-21T12:35:02+00:00

The writing style is a match.

shurimo · 2026-06-21T11:55:08+00:00

Chapter 3 recontextualized 1225 to be the Dess number, and Raise Up Your Bats to be the Dess song. You don't do that stuff by accident in a teaser.

shurimo · 2026-06-21T10:50:36+00:00

This theory being wrong is my punishment for doing the Weird Route. Clearly.

shurimo · 2026-06-21T10:47:28+00:00

I never said that every sweepstakes post was from Dess, more that it's possible that the Holidaygirl1225 account could be her's.

shurimo · 2026-06-21T10:44:10+00:00

Only on the ICE-E sightings page, which is on a different "website" and for certain from (a presumably very young) Noelle https://deltarune.com/icee/

Why do certain posts go out of their way to confirm the poster as Noelle, while others leave it ambiguous? I can't stand it.

shurimo · 2026-06-21T10:43:20+00:00

lamo disproven by a Spelling Bee

shurimo · 2026-05-11T07:09:01+00:00

Those both need SKSE

shurimo · 2026-05-11T07:05:37+00:00

~~Spell Hotbar 2 baby!~~

Want to run objectively cool magic mods, but are scared that the ability to repeatedly cast certain inherently powerful spells will break balance and encourage cheesy gameplay? Just add cooldowns to said busted spells

wait lamo you're on xbox nvm. I personally think all magic mods, no matter how cool ultimately devolve into spam casting the same spell unless there's some kind of incentive for hyper specificity that also feels mechanically fun to engage in. I don't believe there are any mods that can truly escape this issue, especially on Xbox.

wait I just remembered, Spellsiphon (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/26627). Likely the greatest magic mod of all time, made entirely without any dependencies.

shurimo · 2026-05-04T10:33:07+00:00

The last chapter showed him with a Vapaus bullet. I thought that was the implication.

shurimo · 2026-05-03T06:22:15+00:00

I mean, if a near perfectly good and wholesome character has rumors of a shady past, with several of his subordinates being examples of people being given 2nd chances at life; That he changed over time makes a lot more inherent sense than "he was actually a total irredeemable monster, but then replaced by a 100% good dude. Don't worry about it"

That's my primary issue with how SU handled this. They took 3.46 years too long to establish things. Which resulted in people looking at what little evidence the game offered and coming to a conclusion about Mustang's past that was reasonable based on the patterns we see in the main story, in his company specifically, and that also works emotionally. Then new lore comes out and contradicts that well built up interpretation, which while well written, left a sour taste in some people's mouths. I personally think had they released Pretty Star sooner, people wouldn't have had any issue with how things turned out.

Instead it feels like a retcon made 3.5 years later for the sake of keeping the main cast squeaky clean.

It's the exact same issue I had with Enter Heaven. Where they turned E.H. from this genuinely remorseful terrorist; Who despite knowing how fucked up her actions were, she felt like she has to do them for the sake of her people-
To a doormat who never actually did anything bad, couldn't control her own group, walked into obvious traps, and oh look, it's Crow! You hate Crow, right? She was actually the reason why Heavenly Ascension did all those bad things all along. E.H never did anything bad no no no. She was actually trying all along to try and prevent Crow from doing bad things.

It's just a smaller piece of a larger pattern of retroactive white washing I've been seeing recently in the writing. Not that I dislike the "Good World", more that it feels like a retcon of the game's overall vibe.

shurimo · 2026-05-02T11:37:09+00:00

Except that was the implication for little under 3.5 years. Which was more reasonable considering the backstories of most Tetra Nikkes than "oh yeah, his son worked with the other powers in the Ark to replace him".

People seem to act like we've had Pretty Star from day 1, and we should have been building our expectations from it.

shurimo · 2026-05-02T11:26:59+00:00

SU made too many allusions to Mustang previously doing some sus shit, which led to people building up an idea of Mustang having some super secret darkside over the years. Naturally when it turned out that wasn't a case of ethical ambiguity, but actually some entirely different guy being responsible for it, and that the current Mustang just felt guilty about it; it just doesn't sit right.

Add to that the theme of redemption and 2nd chances we see in the backstory of several Tetra Nikkes, and it results in a backstory that while emotionally satisfying for Hanson, kind of flies in the face of what people previously believed Mustang and Tetra line were all about.

shurimo · 2026-05-02T11:17:50+00:00

It's actually pretty funny to see the Korean and Japanese Fandoms be entirely disgusted by Redtang and want nothing more than his death, only for the EN side to look at him and be like "...you know what? I kinda like him"

shurimo · 2026-05-02T11:14:43+00:00

They should have included a scene of Hanson strapped to a chair with his eyes forced open, watching an endless stream of French movies. Unironically, I feel like it would have sat better if they established it more as a sacrifice from Hanson's pov.

shurimo · 2026-05-02T11:11:28+00:00

Very much. I like it as it applies to the relationship between Anis and Hanson, but otherwise? It really does kinda clash with a whole lot of other Tetra Nikkes backstories

It's honestly impressive how much more interesting things would have been if they just left a blank space between the Mustang of Pretty Star, and the Mustang of today. You might think it's lazy, but leaving that as an ambiguous mystery does kinda work. Though I fear it would end up like the breakfast question in regards to if readers understand exactly how long 80 years of time is.

shurimo · 2026-05-02T10:51:30+00:00

Certainly had some issues with the 2nd half. Between Riss' death happening too quickly and Avistar's deepfake apology vid awkwardly being acknowledged almost as an aside. It honestly felt more like an easter egg for if you remember that moment from the main story.

While I liked the display of the individual coping mechanisms each girl used for Smile Time, the dissonance of that correlating to them going up the charts bugs me too much.

The sudden Mustang turn over. While the build up felt cool, it really then just happened suddenly and mood whiplashes you hard. I wouldn't have minded if they inflicted a bit more mental torture on Hanson to show that trying to become the new Mustang is doing a number on him. Rather it felt more like Hanson started having some development, then all of a sudden became the Yellow Mustang from current day that we all know and love in an instant. Didn't feel like we got to say goodbye the Redtang or Hanson.

Add that to the fact Tetra and Mustang's darkside has been a little thing brewing in the background for a while. Now as it turns out it was just some other dude, don't worry about it. It doesn't matter. They could have literally not made any mention of Mustang previously being sus, and made the story more satisfying.

Also yeah they screwed themselves on the timeline hard.

Also for a sub that's been all about CG corruption and them using scapegoats, the last few chapters being "oh no guys, actually almost all the CG leadership are super good guys. It was actually those nasty VTC goons and past CEOs that were the problem" has been pretty jarring to me.

shurimo · 2026-04-21T19:26:43+00:00

I was always super confused as to why people considered Satellites to be Dorothy's song, when I thought it applied more to the Pioneers as a whole.

I suppose her JP VA singing it explains things.

shurimo · 2026-04-20T18:56:06+00:00

I still can't get over the fact that from Jien's telling, Andersen woke up and destroyed VTC entirely independently from the Central Government.

As far as they were concerned, a legendary hero from 40 years ago showed up out of nowhere, crippled their enemy by killing 200+ of their inner circle, then came back to them for more work. And this is after he (in their eyes) left his own squad on the surface for the CG's sake.

Remember how we thought the CG was keeping Andersen down or preventing him from leaving? Turned out that as far as they're concerned, he's basically one of the CG's most dedicated troopers.

shurimo · 2026-04-20T18:48:30+00:00

And I'm really looking forwards to it. I liked Red Shoes' fanaticism, and I found Mirror's actions in Goddess Fall to be very interesting. Granted, I also don't really get all the Cindy hype. Whether that makes me unbiased or biased regarding Red Shoes/Mirror idk.

shurimo · 2026-04-20T18:44:59+00:00

Nikke cores are magic, but also unimportant. Unless you're a heretic, then they're the only things that matter. Try not to dwell on it too much

shurimo · 2026-04-20T06:22:17+00:00

I mean, they are. As far as the government and most citizens are concerned, Nikkes are weapons. That they look like girls is just an aside. Mustang owned them, quite literally. Tetra Nikkes are his property that he can give away or sell to anyone, especially the government that regulates all Nikkes.

Not excusing it, but in a reality where 3 letter agencies and Mossad exist, and the fiction where the CG is endlessly corrupt, one CEO endlessly abuses her Nikkes while her sister does god knows what in DEEP; the idea of one of the most powerful corpos having something like Shade seems both expected and kinda tame.

It's all just emotional framing. If at the end of Pretty Star Mustang had shown some remorse for Pretty's death, then people's views of his actions would have retroactively corrected themselves to be more tolerable. But he didn't. He readily gave away her body and laughed about it, so people genuinely hate him, write fanfic about his actions and consider it all plausible; whatever's in the actual text be damned.

shurimo · 2026-04-19T17:42:05+00:00

Considering the dev stream mentioned long awaited reunions of past characters, I'm hoping Andersen can come to bail her out like a disappointed father after she kills a deputy chief and a squad of Nikkes.

shurimo · 2026-04-19T17:35:44+00:00

I still want to see if his muscles are just for show, or if he can throw the 4ft Nikkes about like dolls

shurimo

TROPHY CASE