#rode plays: honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

So I was going through some stuff and just now realized that during Penacony's final battle when you use the train, it does show up on the action bar.

I just was a little pre-occupied every time with all the health bars and animations so I never looked up there when pressing it, and it's just so funny to me.

THIS SCREENSHOT SHOULD NOT BE THIS FUNNY

#rode plays: honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

Happy Birthday to me~

Dear god I'm 23 now... damn you passage of time. I don't really have anything to say or do so here's my mediocre celebration

Firstly, thank you Pom-Pom and Astral Express friends. (Sunday playable when)

Lastly, a screenshot ft. all my Genshin favourites to wrap this up

(Sorry Jean I was too lazy to move you into a better spot)

#rode plays: honkai star rail #rode plays: genshin impact

[haloguyfttp]

Y'know what? I've had my gripes, and stil ldo frankly about the Penacony story. And in 2.2 I'd say they overstepped the line between interesting antagonist and cartoonish villain a little. The extremely obvious religious imagery certainoy didn't help, it frankly took me out of it quite a few times.

But none of that really matters because god DAMN that final boss was fun. Fun buildup, fun mechanics, fun animations, the whole damn ending chunk made up for the things I didn't like by just... being fun.

Ultimately that's really all that matters to me.

Anyways once I get Fu Xuan I will be saving for Sunday until the end of time thank you very much.

#rode plays: honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

As Sparkle's banner has now begun, and a barrage of Sparkle guides were released by multiple youtubers on the dot, I would like to remind everyone that you got this far without her.

Busted characters and "must roll" supports are almost always a trap to run you dry. If you don't like her, and especially if you want someone else coming soon like Acheron or Aventurine, you don't need to roll for her. Don't be tricked by every youtuber telling you that you need her. You don't. HSR is a very F2P friendly game. Bronya, Silver Wolf, Jingliu, Sparkle etc make your life easier and are great for min maxing, but they are not compulsory for enjoyment.

This is just a PSA from me, someone who's played a lot of gacha games for a long time, to those who may not know as much and might be swayed by fancy infographics and catchy thumbnails and titles.

I firmly believe in rolling for love, not for meta.

(Btw if you do like her or you like min maxing and stuff then go ahead. No one's stopping you lol)

#rode plays: honkai star rail #honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

Didn't think I'd post about HSR for a bit but.

Completed Clara's side story thing in Belobog. The one with the robot that we keep trying to fix by moving it into different shells. (Edit: The quest name is "Rarely Affectionate")

...If I were able to cry, I really would've right there. I really felt it. Like I knew how this was going once we got near the end but...

Damn. Out of all the character side stories i've done, that one hit hardest.

I should mention at the end I sided with Svarog. It was a really tough choice, and the moment I decided on it I knew it was gonna be sad but...

I didn't expect it to hit that hard. Goddamn...

#rode plays: honkai star rail #honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

Finally caught up to and completed Penacony's main story.

SPOILERS FOR PENACONY

Enemies: Fucking great. I like the new enemies and hope they stay this way instead of whatever the hell they did with Aurumatons, both the main ones and those Spiritcaller (I think that's their name) ones. Speaking of which...

Bosses: Completely split on this one. The "Something Unto Death" has a fantastic build up, an amazing BGM that I'd put in my top 3 for HSR, and is just supremely cool in all it does. I love the mechanics, the style, everything.

And on the flip side: Stellaron Hunter Sam. This was someone I was excited for mainly 'cause he looks cool. His build-up was decent if too obvious from the first corpse. That being said his fight was... underwhelming. My primary team consists of Bailu and Preservation MC (I do not have enough DPS no matter who I use so yes this is extreme tank to compensate), and he was incapable of doing any damage to me. On the other hand, due to his gimmick of "Hit me with 5 skills to do anything", it took goddamn ages to kill him in turn. This made the fight go from interesting to really boring once I realized what I had to do. Besides that, he just felt lacking in animations, music and sound design.

Penacony: I will not say much on the exploration as I am still searching for all the goods, but what I have experienced is good. The perspective-related stuff being a theme is fun and interesting, and the puzzles are okay. Unfortunately puzzles are still way too easy, which is a shame since some of the later puzzles in the Luofu were actually decently tough. Maybe I just haven't found/unlocked the harder ones yet. NPCs are interesting thanks to the emotion stuff but god is the place way too damn big. Not looking forward to combing these maps for things I missed, especially the ones that let you walk on walls.

And finally the elephant in the room, The Story.

I am extremely divided on this. Let's start with the most stand out part of the whole thing that frankly I made this whole post to rant about, Firefly's death. This was a really good moment. And it's something I've said about Genshin and even more so in HSR, Hoyo is really good at making good story moments. Everything leading up to this is great. Finding out she's still in the dreamscape, we're still thinking about what her true motivations are, we're worried for her, and then we reach her just in time for it to be - ironically - too late. This cutscene, the way the "Something Unto Death" killed her and immediately escaped like an assassin, the MC rushing to hold her corpse and not even being given that much, the fact that MC throws away their bat just to get to her body at all, forgetting all semblance of self-defense just to reach her, and the immediate moments afterwards are painful in the best way possible. And unfortunately, that's where my praise ends.

After this scene, her death becomes almost meaningless. I mean they immediately launch into normal story stuff. Search the area, look for information, find Sam and fight him, get dragged before Aventurine, and of course the Robin reveal which feels like it's designed to make you forget about Firefly.

MC was clearly super close to Firefly. And yet as soon as the "Firefly Mourning Section" ends, it's as if she got deleted from memory. All of MC's frustration and sadness disappears into the wind, and no one acknowledges this. I know Black Swan got us to calm down, but she didn't do anything beyond talk to us (and if she did, the writers/animators didn't show any hint of such). Now I can excuse this part. After all, maybe MC's way of grieving is silence. From what I remember, we do not, or at least barely speak from after Firefly's death until we meet Sam.

And speaking of, Sam's arrival should have been a key moment. We found it he was using her as bait, she died because of his "plan", whatever it may be, he's right in front of us, frankly MC should be chomping at the bit to kill him, but instead we get none of that. Even when Black Swan betrays us and brings us to Aventurine, MC at that moment should still have something. But no. At this most crucial of times, MC turns into a bland silent protagonist who calmly goes along with anything that happens.

And as previously mentioned, they end this section on the Robin reveal, which is... bad. This moment at this time completely falls flat to me. We haven't met her beyond 2 extremely short conversations, and we know nothing about her beyond "Important Performer and Sister of Sunday". All of this is setup to make whatever happens in the next patch more hyped up but for me... it's just a sad attempt at building more hype when frankly letting it end after Firefly's death would've been painful enough.

(To elaborate on that point, IMO the best way would've been to end it on Firefly's death. The cutscene plays, the "Something Unto Death" leaves, you get teleported out and that's when they hit you with the "Wait for next update!" message. Then next update when we return, let's be honest everyone's gonna remember exactly what happened last time, and the switch to this silent protagonist stuff feels less jarring if some IRL time has passed since the moment. For future players, they won't have to wait, but they'll also have the rest of the story to play through instead of a bunch of unanswered questions.)

Also, being forced to follow Aventurine for the "big reveal" is really annoying, since the whole build-up before Penacony and even in the intro w/ Acheron had to do with Choices and Freedom. A thing I really liked about HSR was how much actual choice you got in quests. Sure you still had to clear most of them, but they were still infinitely better than Genshin's where your dialogue changes nothing. Hell Kafka's quest, the one where choice and shit are most important, lets you straight up leave early and not help her in the slightest. Being greeted with this forced Aventurine shit is super irritating because of that precedent.

As an aside, the Express Crew disappeared from existence. Aside from the intro, the crew has done absolutely nothing together. Getting Black Swan to rescue us is the only thing they actually did. Besides this, the rest of the story was fine. The early Garbage King section was funny, the whole dream stuff was interesting, etc.

But seriously the execution of the entire ending from Firefly's death onwards was just awful. That's really soured my opinion on Penacony, and I can only hope they redeem themselves in the 2nd half (God I hope it's only split into 2 halves).

Anyways that's my extremely long Penacony rant complete. If you've read this far, then holy shit I'm so sorry. Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

#rode's rants #rode plays: honkai star rail #this got way longer than I planned #but damn did I really need an outlet for my thoughts

[haloguyfttp]

Goddamn the stupid finale of Penacony still fucking kills me.

"The night is still... too short." As he falls, THE GODDAMN MUSIC! ROBIN FUCKING DESCENDING FROM THE SKY TO HUG HIM AS HE FAILS TO FLY! I ain't smart enough for the symbolism shit but god IT HURTS!!!!

I fucking love Sunday. I need him to be playable. Pls Hoyo you've already made me go through hell with Beidou and Sara and Dehya please let Sunday be playable and S-tier I am begging.

#rode plays: honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

So I got a new sphere for my Qingque thanks to the 2x drops. Leveled it, went back to the main page and realized.

123 Speed

Exactly the same Crit Rate and DMG

How the fuck? To the decimal???

I guess this too could be considered "lucky"

#rode plays: honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

So I frequently default to "Friend" as one of my like common neutral term thingies. But even though it's been months now when I say or type "Friend" while talking to someone I just hear Aventurine in the back of my mind. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

#rode plays: honkai star rail #I guess this goes in the HSR tag

[haloguyfttp]

So I have some big things I wanna get off my chest. Penacony Spoilers mainly for 2.1 and 2.2 if you haven't watched/done it yet. Also this got ungodly long because thoughts kept flowing so if you bother to read this I'm sorry.

So this is gonna be a take and someone's probably gonna hate me for it but... I really don't like that in both 2.1 and 2.2, Acheron's stuff involved such heavy reference to HI3. Now I get it, it's fanservice for the HI3 fans, and fair enough it does have Honkai in the game's name. But it really soured me on some parts.

First is 2.1, her first real chunk. The entire conversation between her and Welt rests on you knowing what the hell they're referring to. As someone who did not play HI3, and does not care about HI3's story, I didn't like that scene. Like I'm watching 2 people talk about events that I just didn't see and have no context for and am supposed to care about? And as much as I would be fine with that if said context came, it never did. HSR makes no attempt to fill this gap, so if I ever want to know what the fuck they're on about I have to go watch a video or something about HI3 instead.

This is especially annoying when just before this they said on the livestream something like "There'll be references that HI3 fans will enjoy, but newer players won't have to worry" or whatever, which turned out to be a fucking lie for this version.

2.2 was much better. While 2.1 had some glimpses of Acheron that weren't related to HI3, this gave us the scenes with her and Tiernan, which was way more enjoyable. Gave me a real look into who Acheron is beyond "walking powerhouse who's a HI3 reference". EXCEPT for the ending.

The name drop holds no significance if you don't come from HI3. And when it happened all I could do was roll my eyes because yes we get it it's Raiden Mei, everyone who comes from HI3 already knew this last version, and anyone who doesn't know this will have nothing to take from this name drop into cutscene combo beyond just "well it's cool so I'll turn my brain off and enjot the lights and music". The big cutscene before we return to face Sunday again is also weird because we fall from the sky, Acheron pulls us, and we.... appear in the boss fight? This made no sense already, but finding out it's a HI3 reference just made me annoyed yet again, as it's yet another scene that holds no meaning unless you already came from HI3, in which case it still doesn't mean anything, but is a fanservicey callback to get those players excited.

Now those previous ones are subjective, and frankly I don't expect people to agree with me on disliking those. But the last thing is the one that irks me the most, and it's almost completely independent of the game: Fan response. From what I gathered, Acheron is Raiden Mei, but something(s?) happened that made things diverge massively from HI3's storyline. This is something I like about Acheron, because while she's an HI3 reference, she is also mostly her own character, meaning I don't need to go find HI3 content just to know what's happening like I'm watching the goddamn MCU.

Unfortunately, some of what I've seen just uses Acheron as a stand-in for Raiden Mei. Or more specifically, the same Raiden Mei as in HI3, even though I thought the whole point is that this is an alternate universe and alternate timeline etc, and by extension these 2 characters, while likely sharing an origin and backstory, are by this point vastly different people. Idk how else to phrase this, but it's most common in playthroughs and stuff where you know it's an HI3 fan because they won't stop talking about Raiden Mei when the story is focusing on Acheron, it feels like they often ignore Acheron's actual story and just want Raiden Mei again.

2nd last segment here, I am very worried for Luocha's story. He's clearly being set up to have more importance in future, specifically in regards to the Xianzhou and Yaoshi. And to this point I'd been fine because he's been his own character, and Welt and Himeko have been their oen people too. But Penacony, the undoubtedly biggest and best chapter Hoyo's released, has all the issues I just ranted about w/ Acheron. And Luocha is another character who bears a striking resemblance to someone from HI3, who Welt also knows and is not so subtly being hyped to meet.

Lastly, this last one's entirely me and even more so than the rest I've ranted about is definitely subjective, but I don't want Kiana to be in HSR. She's already the main character of HI3 anyway, it'd bring us back to square one with Acheron as I don't doubt for a second they'd write it so they get back together (see also BronSeele, a pairing I like now too, but which felt like it had the most forced start ever just so we could pair them up as fast as possible), continuing my fear of Acheron not being allowed to be her own character and keep her stuck in the shadow of Raiden Mei. And she'd no doubt become extremely important if she were to exist here since Hoyo does have favoritism to HI3 characters, and I was already sick of the Astral Express' lack of impact in the Luofu arc.

Well that's all this time. I will stop bitching now because no one wants to read these walls of text full of subjective views. As is customary with these things, all my thoughts and opinions are... well, exactly that, MY thoughts and opinions. I still like Penacony, I still like HSR, and I hsve no quarrel with those who like the things I didn't or vice versa. I mostly make these rants just to vent since I don't have anywhere else to let anything out. If you bothered to read this far then uhh thanks I guess, and I hope you have a great day/night.

#rode's rants #rode plays: honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

HUH?!

So I open up my HSR and see the usual red exclamation mark on the notices.

It's the usual text, except if you scroll down...

Oh no.

Oh dear God pls no.

(I did check btw, the 2.1 Trailblaze Mission Details, which is the same notice but for 2.1, did not have this section)

#rode plays: honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

Dammit why'd Fu Xuan have to rerun in phase 2 I really wanted Xueyi and Hanya Eidolons.

Besides the Master Diviner I'm just gonna save for Sunday who hopefully will release in 2.4.

I like Robin and Firefly but Fu Xuan takes priority.

Gonna be a slow 4 months for my account

#rode plays: honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

Aventurine really is luck incarnate huh?

Every time I've pulled I had to go to at least 70 to get a 5*.

Aventurine showed up in 30 pulls AND won 50/50.

Thanks to that I had enough left over to get his LC too, which took the usual 70 but won 75/25.

Best gacha luck I've had between both Genshin and HSR.

#rode plays: honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

It's time to make a "brief" rant about my biggest reason for being disconnected from the big moment(s?) in Star Rail 2.1 aka Penacony Part 2. Spoilers for said story ahead.

Sunday is a character I have become very interested in. His strong desire for vengeance for Robin, the way he talks, I like this kind of idk the word, kinda an antagonist but not really? Anyways seeing him die should've been bad. But unfortunately I can't be bothered to care or worry, and this comes down to the following.

When Firefly died, I felt it. I wanted to know her more, she was cute, and the suddennes of it all in my opinion added to the moment. Not everyone gets to die in a glorious way after tying up all loose ends. But then they brought her back, and fully revealed it just 1 scene before Sunday gets stabbed.

Robin was a plot advancing death. We never knew her outside of like 2 brief dialogues, but as an important character to Penacony dying early, it set the stage for the story's future. She is still MIA, but seeing as she's been drip marketed, I originally thought maybe they'd make dead characters playable. After all, that'd mean that even if a character gets leaked, it does not mean the character will survive the story they're in. I still hope this is the case, but...

Aventurine's death and subesquent talk with Acheron confirms there's something. The dialogue is very vague, but there's clearly a way to come back if you are "killed" in the Dreamscape. Aventurine himself takes this as his potentially final gamble. This is all well and good, but this is the crux of the problem for why I can't bother to care.

Of the 3 examples we have, 1 of them has stayed dead, 1 has confirmed the dead in the Dreamscape can return, and 1 has actually returned from the grave, and seemingly very quickly at that, as we met Sam very shortly after Firefly's death.

How am I meant to care about Sunday or hell any character for that matter's death in the Dreamscape if this is the background? Sure Firefly's a Stellaron Hunter and they're special, but Robin and Sunday are important characters in the hierarchy of Penacony, and Aventurine is also canonically lucky as hell. Do they really expect me to worry about their safety in this context? Not to mention the mysterious still vague "Watchmaker/Watchmaker's Legacy" they refuse to elaborate on so we can keep the mystery going through sheer vagueness. I mean prove me wrong Hoyoverse but as it stands my concerns about "Death Doesn't Matter" seem pretty justified right now.

And unfortunately I will have to wait even more months just to get my answers. So forgive me for being a little apprehensive about this goddamn story people are praising to the moon and back.

#rode plays: honkai star rail #rode's rants

[haloguyfttp]

This is a post about Honkai Star Rail 2.1's main story, aka Penacony Part 2. It does not contain spoilers.

For the no one who asked, I haven't posted at all about HSR 2.1's story because it only gave me a couple of answers I had from 2.0, while instead increasing the amount of questions I have for 2.2/2.3.

There's a few things I could talk about, but it'd mostly be me rambling about things I currently dislike, biggest one being the complete inability for a single character to just speak straight, instead forcing me to spend almost every dialogue reading between the lines and shit. Which can be fun, but it feels very artificial as they're frequently showing us shit we don't have enough context or background info to fully understand, and it gets exhausting since so much of the story is written this way.

It might be better for future players, as instead of waiting between patches they can play the full story start to finish and get conclusions in a smoother way. I'm just tired after spending 2 months waiting for at least some answers, only for the big update to give me almost exclusively more questions while spending most of the patch on Aventurine's backstory instead of the actual questions and main story.

All that being said, I really liked Sunday in this one. If he gets a chance to shine in future like Aventurine did this patch, I'll likely pull for him if he's playable.

#rode plays: honkai star rail

[haloguyfttp]

Penacony Spoiler

Why I am of the opinion that Firefly is not Sam.

I just want death to fucking matter. The shocking death scene, the sadness and anger, Acheron's mini-funeral, all of that gets undone if she turns out to be alive.

I'm just sick of so many series killing a character only to bring them back in some way down the line, even if only briefly or slightly different. Death is the end, and every series that fails to stick to that makes me lose interest because why should I worry about anything if an on-screen death isn't enough? (rhetorical question, don't answer)

#rode plays: honkai star rail #rode's rants