straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2018-01-26 02:37 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2018-01-26 02:37 pm
178 | TAZ live shows, and my first run through Devil Survivor Overclocked
► Since my last update, I’ve listened to the live shows for The Adventure Zone (plus one and a...third, maybe? of the Switcheroo episodes). A few thoughts: Overall, I didn’t enjoy the live shows as much as the episodes, mainly because of the time issue? All but one of them ended with “shit, we’re running out of time, let’s speed things up”, and some genuinely interesting plot got cut out/condensed because of it.
The casino heist one was amazing, though, and not because it was the only one that wasn’t rushed. Lup!!!! Lup and the main trio!! The inter-dimensional travel! The wrap-up of the Greg Grimaldis incident! Also, I love how the cuts between past and present worked, especially in regards to Lup’s reaction to the contents of the vault. Yessssss. ♥ I did like the wrestling one too, but it suffered from the most interesting parts needing to be rushed through because of that time issue.
As for the Switcheroo episodes… I liked them well enough, especially Scales, but had to stop listening to the second one because the “not having a gift” thing made me surprisingly anxious on their behalf, and, since it turns out that that particular episode isn’t finished on TazScripts archive, I couldn’t even sneak a peek at how the scene goes to reassure myself. So...I might finish it one day? But probably not any time soon.
► I also finished my first playthrough of Devil Survivor Overclocked recently. Well, I say first—I did a playthrough of the original version on the DS back in 2012, so I was already familiar with the game. My memories of that playthrough had almost completely eroded by the time I started playing Overclocked earlier this month—all I knew was that 1) Keisuke died, but that was also something you could prevent, 2) the Yuzu ending involved running away, 3) there were characters named Gin and Haru—Haru was a singer—and they were integral to the Song of Hope ending, somehow, 4) that the Song of Hope ending felt very satisfying to me, though I couldn’t remember a thing that happened in it, and 5) Atsuro had something about binding/controlling demons, maybe??? I’d completely forgotten about Honda’s existence, remembered nothing about the Kaido and Mari plotline, and my reaction when I first saw Midori was “I think I liked this character… but I have no idea why”.
Part of this was that I’d only played through the DS version once, as I only found out about Overclocked and all the additional content it has when I neared the end of my first playthrough, and decided that I’d collect all the endings when I picked up that version.
Anyways! About my current playthrough. I don’t have too much to say about most of it. I still loved Yuzu and Gin and Haru, and rediscovered my love of Midori; I also found myself liking Atsuro more than I did the first time through, though he’s not a favorite. I also started this playthrough with the intent of actually saving Keisuke this time, but… completely failed at that, mostly because I set down the game for a few days between the beginning of that day and the Kaido-Keisuke battle, and completely forgot to take care of any of that. WHOOPS.
I decided to do Yuzu’s ending, “Desperate Escape”, first this time. I’d been told that it was the shortest one, and while I felt like running away sounded like a dissatisfying end to the story after all the work I put in, I was/am intending to go through all the routes eventually, so I may as well do it now.
Overall, I liked it better than I thought I would? I still don’t think it’s a very satisfying ending, and I winced every time a character questioned why we were giving up after all the effort we’d put in, but there were some little things that lifted it up for me. The Loki reveal delighted me, and made me much fonder of the “gigolo” character, who I’d never liked—it just made so many things snap into place. This was also the first time I’d ever found myself liking Naoya? I’ve always been baffled by the popularity of Naoya and Naoya/Protagonist when glancing at the fandom, but his interactions with the group were delightful (even if I’m mostly sure that he was only helping because it meant releasing the demons out into the wider world). For the first time, I could understand why Atsuro and the Protagonist could have liked him so much pre-canon.
The Izuna and Amane moments were also not as painful as I was worried they’d be. I hate moments of betrayal, and was really scared about how they’d play out, but it wasn’t so bad, and one of them—I think Izuna, maybe?—even showed some understanding about their actions in her final lines. The actual ending after they escaped was bleak, but it worked for me well enough. (And I think it’s actually pretty promising for fic, though I’d first need to see how Day 8 plays out.)
Also, this is pure self-indulgence, but I want to talk about my strategy for that final battle. I actually beat it on my first try, which surprised me, because partway through I was convinced that I was going to need to fix up my strategy and try again. I honestly had a lot of luck, though.
I’d decided right away that I’d deal with all the smaller opponents before moving on to the two main bosses, and that I’d try to keep all my characters close together so that they wouldn’t be swamped by enemies. Amane and Izuna’s appearance was one of my biggest set-backs, and when Amane revived one of the enemies I’d already defeated, I knew I’d have to take her down first. I’d managed to skill crack “Judgement” (which halves all enemies HP) from one of the lesser enemies with the Protagonist not long after she appeared, and used it on her (it didn’t actually half her HP, since she had one of those ??? graphs, but it did take a sizeable chunk from her), and then just focused on attacking her until it was gone.
Midori’s team helped a lot too—which surprised me, because her team was the one I couldn’t outfit properly, as I’d fused away too many demons to make my main trio stronger before I realized that I’d get her back. But I managed to get her set up with Kresnik (drain + null curse; I can’t remember if those skills came from fusion or naturally), and also one of the Kishins—who I thought would be a liability, and was, in terms of being the weakest/most easily killed demon in my set-up, but was invaluable in how it allowed Midori to attack twice. Midori also had drain + null curse, which helped a lot with the MP sapping.
Yuzu ended up being useless at the end of the battle because she and her team had all their MP drained (despite having a Tyrant on her team, which was the reason why I felt comfortable giving Midori the Drain skills), but she was my magical powerhouse (Fire Amp + Maragidyne; also Mana Surge and strong magical allies) for most of the fight, and in fact took out a team of angels completely on her own in her first fight. Plus, she had Samerecarm, which was invaluable.
But what really saved me was Atsuro’s team, which was actually a complete accident. In fact, in the beginning of the fight, his team was near death or actually killed a lot, and Yuzu blew a lot of Samerecarms on him—a decision which I was really, really grateful for when facing the final two angels. His two demons were Laksmi (who I’d given Drain through fusion) and Tao Tie. Tao Tie is of the Vile race, which means I could attack with Atsuro’s team from far away, while Laksmi naturally reflects curse attacks—which meant that the two final bosses MP draining attacks didn’t affect her.
Finally: there was only one space through which those bosses could move. A space which I blocked with the Protagonist. I’d focused on magic with him, and he and the Spriggan on his team were both out of MP too, but he also had an Odin on his team—which naturally has Shield All + Resist Curse, and who I’d also given Drain via fusion.
In short: I had the Protagonist block off the only avenue through which the bosses could move, which meant that only one of them could attack, and they could only attack him. The Protagonist + Spriggan guarded themselves while Odin used Shield All; if Odin got a second turn, he used Drain to recoup some of the lost MP from the boss. Meanwhile, Atsuro attacked from a distance—Brutal Hit from Atsuro (+ Drain Hit as a passive skill, a set-up I’ve been using successfully for a while), a normal attack from Tao Tie (since it was out of MP), and Drain from Laksmi. Laksmi also took care of any healing with either Affection or Mediarahan.
It was incredibly satisfying. They basically couldn’t make any real leeway against me, despite being so strong and using moves which either made it so that the first physical attack or magical attack against them is reflected—because Drain doesn’t count as a physical or magical attack! When the second boss’ HP was pretty low, I even sent in Midori (since Kresnik has Phantasma, which meant she could jump over the obstacles) and had her and Kresnik use their Drain attacks against it a couple of times, before finishing it off with a Drain attack from the Protagonist’s Odin. Just. So satisfying. ♥
Next, I want to play through Day 8, and after that… I’m not sure if I’ll start my next playthrough right away or not; I’ll have to see how I feel about it. I’m already thinking about which ending I’m going to go for next time—I was initially thinking “Song of Revolution”, because I do genuinely agree that the demons could be useful if you could avoid abuses (those healing abilities!!!), and think it’d be interesting to see how that plays out. Plus, I’d have to save Keisuke to get it, and I definitely need all the motivation I can get in that regard so I don’t mess that up again. ._. On the other hand, Yuzu’s ending did make me intrigued by Naoya (and his relationship with the Protagonist) for the first time, and I kind of want to see what his ending might be like… So idk. We’ll see.
And that ended up being much longer than I expected (I thought I only had 1-2 paragraphs of things to say about this game, ahahahaha), so I think I’ll cut this update off here.
The casino heist one was amazing, though, and not because it was the only one that wasn’t rushed. Lup!!!! Lup and the main trio!! The inter-dimensional travel! The wrap-up of the Greg Grimaldis incident! Also, I love how the cuts between past and present worked, especially in regards to Lup’s reaction to the contents of the vault. Yessssss. ♥ I did like the wrestling one too, but it suffered from the most interesting parts needing to be rushed through because of that time issue.
As for the Switcheroo episodes… I liked them well enough, especially Scales, but had to stop listening to the second one because the “not having a gift” thing made me surprisingly anxious on their behalf, and, since it turns out that that particular episode isn’t finished on TazScripts archive, I couldn’t even sneak a peek at how the scene goes to reassure myself. So...I might finish it one day? But probably not any time soon.
► I also finished my first playthrough of Devil Survivor Overclocked recently. Well, I say first—I did a playthrough of the original version on the DS back in 2012, so I was already familiar with the game. My memories of that playthrough had almost completely eroded by the time I started playing Overclocked earlier this month—all I knew was that 1) Keisuke died, but that was also something you could prevent, 2) the Yuzu ending involved running away, 3) there were characters named Gin and Haru—Haru was a singer—and they were integral to the Song of Hope ending, somehow, 4) that the Song of Hope ending felt very satisfying to me, though I couldn’t remember a thing that happened in it, and 5) Atsuro had something about binding/controlling demons, maybe??? I’d completely forgotten about Honda’s existence, remembered nothing about the Kaido and Mari plotline, and my reaction when I first saw Midori was “I think I liked this character… but I have no idea why”.
Part of this was that I’d only played through the DS version once, as I only found out about Overclocked and all the additional content it has when I neared the end of my first playthrough, and decided that I’d collect all the endings when I picked up that version.
Anyways! About my current playthrough. I don’t have too much to say about most of it. I still loved Yuzu and Gin and Haru, and rediscovered my love of Midori; I also found myself liking Atsuro more than I did the first time through, though he’s not a favorite. I also started this playthrough with the intent of actually saving Keisuke this time, but… completely failed at that, mostly because I set down the game for a few days between the beginning of that day and the Kaido-Keisuke battle, and completely forgot to take care of any of that. WHOOPS.
I decided to do Yuzu’s ending, “Desperate Escape”, first this time. I’d been told that it was the shortest one, and while I felt like running away sounded like a dissatisfying end to the story after all the work I put in, I was/am intending to go through all the routes eventually, so I may as well do it now.
Overall, I liked it better than I thought I would? I still don’t think it’s a very satisfying ending, and I winced every time a character questioned why we were giving up after all the effort we’d put in, but there were some little things that lifted it up for me. The Loki reveal delighted me, and made me much fonder of the “gigolo” character, who I’d never liked—it just made so many things snap into place. This was also the first time I’d ever found myself liking Naoya? I’ve always been baffled by the popularity of Naoya and Naoya/Protagonist when glancing at the fandom, but his interactions with the group were delightful (even if I’m mostly sure that he was only helping because it meant releasing the demons out into the wider world). For the first time, I could understand why Atsuro and the Protagonist could have liked him so much pre-canon.
The Izuna and Amane moments were also not as painful as I was worried they’d be. I hate moments of betrayal, and was really scared about how they’d play out, but it wasn’t so bad, and one of them—I think Izuna, maybe?—even showed some understanding about their actions in her final lines. The actual ending after they escaped was bleak, but it worked for me well enough. (And I think it’s actually pretty promising for fic, though I’d first need to see how Day 8 plays out.)
Also, this is pure self-indulgence, but I want to talk about my strategy for that final battle. I actually beat it on my first try, which surprised me, because partway through I was convinced that I was going to need to fix up my strategy and try again. I honestly had a lot of luck, though.
I’d decided right away that I’d deal with all the smaller opponents before moving on to the two main bosses, and that I’d try to keep all my characters close together so that they wouldn’t be swamped by enemies. Amane and Izuna’s appearance was one of my biggest set-backs, and when Amane revived one of the enemies I’d already defeated, I knew I’d have to take her down first. I’d managed to skill crack “Judgement” (which halves all enemies HP) from one of the lesser enemies with the Protagonist not long after she appeared, and used it on her (it didn’t actually half her HP, since she had one of those ??? graphs, but it did take a sizeable chunk from her), and then just focused on attacking her until it was gone.
Midori’s team helped a lot too—which surprised me, because her team was the one I couldn’t outfit properly, as I’d fused away too many demons to make my main trio stronger before I realized that I’d get her back. But I managed to get her set up with Kresnik (drain + null curse; I can’t remember if those skills came from fusion or naturally), and also one of the Kishins—who I thought would be a liability, and was, in terms of being the weakest/most easily killed demon in my set-up, but was invaluable in how it allowed Midori to attack twice. Midori also had drain + null curse, which helped a lot with the MP sapping.
Yuzu ended up being useless at the end of the battle because she and her team had all their MP drained (despite having a Tyrant on her team, which was the reason why I felt comfortable giving Midori the Drain skills), but she was my magical powerhouse (Fire Amp + Maragidyne; also Mana Surge and strong magical allies) for most of the fight, and in fact took out a team of angels completely on her own in her first fight. Plus, she had Samerecarm, which was invaluable.
But what really saved me was Atsuro’s team, which was actually a complete accident. In fact, in the beginning of the fight, his team was near death or actually killed a lot, and Yuzu blew a lot of Samerecarms on him—a decision which I was really, really grateful for when facing the final two angels. His two demons were Laksmi (who I’d given Drain through fusion) and Tao Tie. Tao Tie is of the Vile race, which means I could attack with Atsuro’s team from far away, while Laksmi naturally reflects curse attacks—which meant that the two final bosses MP draining attacks didn’t affect her.
Finally: there was only one space through which those bosses could move. A space which I blocked with the Protagonist. I’d focused on magic with him, and he and the Spriggan on his team were both out of MP too, but he also had an Odin on his team—which naturally has Shield All + Resist Curse, and who I’d also given Drain via fusion.
In short: I had the Protagonist block off the only avenue through which the bosses could move, which meant that only one of them could attack, and they could only attack him. The Protagonist + Spriggan guarded themselves while Odin used Shield All; if Odin got a second turn, he used Drain to recoup some of the lost MP from the boss. Meanwhile, Atsuro attacked from a distance—Brutal Hit from Atsuro (+ Drain Hit as a passive skill, a set-up I’ve been using successfully for a while), a normal attack from Tao Tie (since it was out of MP), and Drain from Laksmi. Laksmi also took care of any healing with either Affection or Mediarahan.
It was incredibly satisfying. They basically couldn’t make any real leeway against me, despite being so strong and using moves which either made it so that the first physical attack or magical attack against them is reflected—because Drain doesn’t count as a physical or magical attack! When the second boss’ HP was pretty low, I even sent in Midori (since Kresnik has Phantasma, which meant she could jump over the obstacles) and had her and Kresnik use their Drain attacks against it a couple of times, before finishing it off with a Drain attack from the Protagonist’s Odin. Just. So satisfying. ♥
Next, I want to play through Day 8, and after that… I’m not sure if I’ll start my next playthrough right away or not; I’ll have to see how I feel about it. I’m already thinking about which ending I’m going to go for next time—I was initially thinking “Song of Revolution”, because I do genuinely agree that the demons could be useful if you could avoid abuses (those healing abilities!!!), and think it’d be interesting to see how that plays out. Plus, I’d have to save Keisuke to get it, and I definitely need all the motivation I can get in that regard so I don’t mess that up again. ._. On the other hand, Yuzu’s ending did make me intrigued by Naoya (and his relationship with the Protagonist) for the first time, and I kind of want to see what his ending might be like… So idk. We’ll see.
And that ended up being much longer than I expected (I thought I only had 1-2 paragraphs of things to say about this game, ahahahaha), so I think I’ll cut this update off here.