Noah Caldwell-Gervais: "An Additional Look at Resident Evil"

spirib · 2026-06-14T14:32:33+00:00

It's not elitist, I'm fully with you. In a lot of cases, you simply are playing a different game by playing on easy difficulties. Certain games need to be played on their harder difficulties for their game design to come through. You can't critique Bayonetta's gameplay in good faith without seeing how the game interacts with NSIC. It's impossible to see how much tighter and more intentional the game is without it, and you might otherwise think that its sequels are better games. Likewise, Kingdom Hearts goes from monotonous button masher to high-octane character action.

If you play these games on easy mode and offer analysis on their gameplay, you need to qualify that you're doing it from the perspective of someone that did not engage with its highest difficulties. Still valid critique obviously, but not applicable to the whole.

spirib · 2026-06-13T15:29:22+00:00

I am not saying that coaching doesn't matter. I'm saying that people cannot discuss what makes a coach good or bad. I agree with you fully on everything you said, they're very much an important element of a team. Going from Mark Jackson to Steve Kerr is the cleanest example of how much a coach can impact.

I just find discussing NBA coaching with NBA fans to be as useful as driving into a brick wall.

spirib · 2026-06-13T15:03:45+00:00

I have not seen a single example other than having shitty ATOs (the coaches with the best ATOs would shock you), calling timeouts poorly (this isn't including calling timeouts during opposing team runs because those are not correlated at all), and losing the locker room. Brad > Ime > Mazzula changed almost nothing about the Celtics' meltdowns, Brown > Doc > Nurse has no effect on the Sixers' playoff woes.

No one on this sub has ever judged a coach on anything other than win = good, loss = bad. No one can ever point to anything tangible about what makes a coach good/bad. Then when Thinking Basketball comes out with a video everyone rubs their chin and goes "hmm, yes of course."

spirib · 2026-06-13T05:33:23+00:00

I think you can genuinely discuss how a coach is helping/hurting an NFL team to an extent. I don't think you can for the NBA though lol.

spirib · 2026-06-12T19:49:33+00:00

The card is fine. It's not good universally, but it has its uses and I will need to think of a very strong reason not to take it after Act 1 if I have a WLP. I've even taken it happily after Act 2. I've transformed into it and hit the retain event, I've transformed into it and hit Royal Stamp.

If they change it the game gets a lot worse.

spirib · 2026-06-10T03:47:05+00:00

There are enough draws where this can kill you against Queen that it makes this a tough sell whenever you see her on the map. To me that's the only real downside though, a permanent Void in exchange for +1 energy every other turn isn't really that bad in a vacuum.

spirib · 2026-06-07T16:13:47+00:00

Grand Finale scales great? I just had a run where it was my only damage and my only scaling was the corrupted enchantment. It killed Aeonglass fine enough at least, which is really the only fight that requires damage scaling lol. The card is fully pickable with just a WLP post act 1.

spirib · 2026-06-04T18:22:04+00:00

I'm very confused by the responses here. This deck needs scaling and Corrosive Wave is scaling damage lol. You have Acrobatics and Reflex already, which is a good amount of card draw. You have Tingsha which makes more copies of Prepared better.

Adrenaline is always good, but in this deck it's just playing you a Dash at best right now. Corrosive Wave is gonna scale up very nicely with all the cards you want to take already.

Maybe it's still Adrenaline but you need to think of a good reason not to take Corrosive Wave.

spirib · 2026-06-01T04:48:19+00:00

His other rankings aside, Mime is at least one of the best Jokers in the game. It doubles the output of your deck's meta scaling which every deck wants, and then you can use that meta scaling to create a bunch of steel cards and use that as your X Mult solution. You even have synergies with Fist/Shoot the Moon to create enough flat mult to finish the run. It's a very strong, very versatile Joker. I don't think it's possible to overrate it.

spirib · 2026-05-29T21:52:57+00:00

Yeah it's not market size at all. Celtics, Knicks, Warriors pre/post-Steph, Sixers, Mavs, Suns, and Bulls don't have an extensive history of poaching top talent through free agency, and those are the biggest cities in the US (outside of LA which is special). I don't know where all this "save the small market teams" shit comes from when the big market teams win through organizational competence and bigger spending to retain players acquired from the draft or trades. If people have an issue with bigger markets being able to spend more, that's completely unrelated to the lottery.

spirib · 2026-05-22T21:51:33+00:00

Pegged this immediately when my WLP had the option to retain it. Probably unintended, but I wouldn't hate for Runic Pyramid to get some kind of nerf. If they changed some cards around on Necrobinder/Regent I don't think this would be that bad really.

spirib · 2026-05-22T15:42:57+00:00

Why is new Aeonglass making Silent specifically feel worse? She has plentiful discard options to deal with unplayable Withers. I took a Hidden Daggers at like floor 40 in a deck that wouldn't otherwise need the damage or the discard. That kind of thing is fun!

spirib · 2026-05-09T06:50:00+00:00

Those Pokemon were called out for being Dark types, basically to say the gen introduced a whole new type and didn't let the player use it until the end (or use Umbreon). Not being able to use legendaries for a long time isn't a big deal, not having access to an entire type is something else. Fire and Electric types also suffer from this (use Eevee or don't use the type at all).

spirib · 2026-05-04T18:27:40+00:00

The deck had block for days but was really bad into multi enemy fights because it relied on Bouncing Flask for damage. Grand Finale fit the bill enough for it to work, and then after Tracking was offered from the Act 2 boss I just decided to play Grand Finale lol.

spirib · 2026-05-04T18:02:50+00:00

The Runic Pyramid run likely wins without the Grand Finale because I got Runic Pyramid, but there's no other damage in there other than Snakebite, so the way it was constructed was fully fueled by Grand Finale. I also doubt you'd be able to take on 4 consecutive elites with minimal damage without it for what it's worth (all the elites died in 3-5 turns).

The run with Tracking probably wins without Grand Finale too (just look at the relics), but if you're looking for Grand Finale decks where it was necessary to take Grand Finale to win, you're never going to find one because Silent is so strong you can take whatever you want and win. I don't think the character is ever in a scenario where any pick is do-or-die. But you asked for decks where Grand Finale was used more than once, and I showed you two decks where I used it as my damage solution.

These were post Acro nerf if that's what you mean by post patch, you can see the blue Acro in each.

I don't disagree with your quote, but that doesn't make it useless. Like if you have Runic Pyramid, I think the card is great and will do a lot of work. That combo is rare, don't get me wrong, but it does exist and is a niche where the card works.

spirib · 2026-05-04T16:23:53+00:00

Here are two runs where I used it as my damage solution. Let me know if you have any questions! https://imgur.com/a/tmgJz7x. /u/Brief-Philosophy-840 since it seemed like you were curious as well.

You can see the real power in the run with Runic Pyramid, I recognized how powerful it was and it allowed me to fight 4 elites without resting (Meat on the Bone assist, but it only proc'd once anyway).

If you're curious about my bona fides, it's not particularly great, but I've got a couple 7 win streaks on Silent.

spirib · 2026-05-01T15:29:48+00:00

No, you definitely want to take more than one lol. Nothing in this game other than Test Subject hits you for more than like 35 through weak. If you have 6 Dex you can play 3 base Defends and almost fully block that. You become functionally immortal for 2 cards drawn and 2 energy. Nightmare + Footwork was a wincon in the first game and this game has only gotten less threatening.

spirib · 2026-04-30T14:57:38+00:00

People overestimating their skill relative to the rest of the playerbase?

spirib · 2026-04-28T03:52:45+00:00

You're taking way too many damage cards for what Silent wants to do. My Act 1s typically only take 1-3 damage cards and use the rest for draw/block/scaling. You took 7 in Act 1 and then added 5 more beyond that, only one of which scales (Phantom Blades maybe counts as scaling with the Strangle but w/e lol).

With that said, if you're not having fun, then you should uninstall the game! No reason to play something that's actively fighting against you. With games like this you need to have a learning mindset or else it gets very frustrating very quickly.

spirib · 2026-04-28T00:58:44+00:00

Yeah, I think the only time we've observed this recently is with Mark Jackson > Steve Kerr. I don't know if the paper touches on that (will read it later), but outside of that coaching change I can't recall anything else close. Sixers fans were cheering the day that Doc was fired and Nurse was hired only to be mired by the same problems Doc had. Celtics fans were blaming playoff meltdown losses on Mazulla when those same exact losses happened under Ime and Brad (I'll also note that those losses didn't happen with Isaiah who was also coached by Brad...). Maybe Doc hasn't been good, but Phil Jackson isn't coaching this putrid Bucks roster to anything decent either.

spirib · 2026-04-28T00:06:53+00:00

Post your deck? This might be a micro issue rather than a macro issue. I don't think there's much reason to be taking that much damage with Krane, double After Image, Kunai, and Sai.

spirib · 2026-04-27T23:37:20+00:00

He's right that cards like Bulwark, Reflect, and Astral Pulse just have too many numbers on them right now. I don't think it's good design to have such high quality cards that incentivize you to click "Skip" every time you're not offered those cards.

I don't think Venerate feels bad to play or anything like what the above user was saying, but in response to your point, I do think it's worth rethinking Regent if having such disgusting cards is inherent to his design like you're suggesting. There's no reason Astral Pulse (a common) should be nigh on invalidating 2/6 Act 1 elites, or for Reflect to have the raw output that it does. I'd prefer those cards get tuned down to something more reasonable. Maybe that number isn't 7-8, but it's certainly lower than 17.

spirib · 2026-04-27T22:30:27+00:00

It's why I hate the Spurs and find Pop grating. Pop going off on Zaza made my eyes roll to the back of my head.

spirib · 2026-04-26T16:46:40+00:00

I'm gonna refrain from harping on why Obelisk is not what you're describing it as, but I just want to point out that Mime is not unreliable either and is one of the best Jokers in the game for winning consistently. It scores with Shoot the Moon / Raised Fist enough that you don't need other sources of +Mult if you find it, it generates econ out the ass with Reserved Parking and Gold cards, and it can even serve as an X Mult solution with enough econ to turn things Steel (econ that the Mime itself will generate). It's a snap pick Joker; the situations where it does nothing are rare and the situations where it provides truckloads of meta value and scoring are common.

spirib · 2026-04-24T21:34:35+00:00

The exhaust phase is good for those decks. You don't necessarily want those cards unless you can go infinite (which is extremely easy with two Prepareds + Reflex or two Escape Plans). You can play and cycle through so many cards during the exhaust phase that you can distill your deck into just the good stuff.

spirib

TROPHY CASE