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zarenillia · 4 hours

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zarenillia · 4 days

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Welp time to obscure post

Honestly I'm really glad that Reyna was introduced so late into the game cause like, low level scouts just suck, because you don't wanna play a scout how their initial playstyle would tell you to (cloak, dash, this is a run and gun close up heavy hitter), because like while that's generally true, at the same time the Gnasher is kind of bad at killing the things you want dead the most because they have the health pool to sustain that damage. But once you're at the levels you can get like proximity mines and frag grenade mastery? Now you're getting there. Full UIR set and you have yourself a scary bundle of explosives that can kill big threats like a kantus or Theron in two actions in one turn or do really big chunks of a boomer or disciple or something. It's great and you also basically never have to worry about swarms of wretches or anything because guess what kills them in basically every part of its blast radius especially if you have full buffs to them? Fucking grenades. And they're stupid little gremlins, they'll basically always be within radius of each other that with one you'll kill either the entire pack or if it's that big at least like 5. And then you have your grenades back in like 1-2 turns. It's just that easy.

Bottom right top tier for scouts. No question.

#gears of war #gears tactics

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zarenillia · 11 days

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zarenillia · 12 days

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To add on cause I wanted to go into combat a little more, more specifically the boss fights:

The bosses are generally similar to RR's, with a couple differences.

States, for example. Combat in TEVI revolves generally around two states, with bosses having a third: Submissive, Dominant, and BREAK (which make TEVI sound like a fucking bdsm game lmao). Submissive State to my knowledge is the default state of enemies, where your attacks inflict hitstun. Dominant occurs after a certain amount of attacks, and renders them immune to such hitstun. Seems pretty simple, and it basically is. BREAK is the bread and butter of melee builds, as not only does it deprive them of the benefits of Dominant, this is also the state a boss needs to be in to suffer knockback effects, such as your upper slash, and you can basically juggle them for the entire BREAK state, but it needs you to deplete their BREAK Gauge, which is done basically passively as you fight them. I'd include their, for lack of knowing the proper term, burst state, which carries over from RR. This is just when they do their little portrait thing in combat and do a generally long-duration set of attacks, typically in their last phase. They can't be stunned, knocked back, etc, much like dominant state, and the attack itself is typically very much fixed, it will probably always do the same thing regardless how many attempts you do.

"Phases?" Yes, phases. Unlike RR where the boss has only one health bar (with a few exceptions [looking at you Rumi]), TEVI's bosses can have multiple, signified by the purple-ish crystals above their health bar. You do enough damage, a crystal breaks. Typically as you progress through these, as phases in a boss battle would imply, they introduce more and more possible attacks, or complicate previous ones. It's pretty simple, but absent in a visual sense in RR, where some had health bar phases, but this was basically never portrayed visually (again, with exceptions, as Rumi had stars to indicate it. The only case I remember though.)

Targets!!! I love these things. These are basically additional components of a boss fight, when it shows up you'll see a big target indicator on it, and typically this is how you need to attack the boss in that phase. (The Plagued Forest boss, the boss in the second visit to Ana Thema Palace, the final boss, etc.) These also sometimes play parts in attacks, so if you take one out, the attack lessens intensity. TL;DR, if you see a target, target that shit.

Defense and Dispel. You have a Bomb Gauge. If you see a defense up buff on a boss (or any enemy for that matter), your cross/cluster bombs can clear a stack, or more/incur additional penalties if you have the right sigils. It's not necessary at all, but obviously the less defense buffs they have, the more damage you get out of your own attacks. There's literally no reason not to unless you're actively evading attacks. Speaking of which.

Buffs and debuffs can have their effects displayed while you have your backpack open. Some of these are critical to understanding a fight. Never hurts to look, it pauses your game.

Your hitbox!!! Depending on your settings, you will see this not at all, at the beginning of a fight, or the entire time you're in combat. Like RR and bullet hell games as a whole, your hitbox is different than your sprite, and understanding where it is will allow you to perform better as you can get away with much more.

That's about it on combat, felt like rambling on it because I love the boss fights like I did with RR.

[The following will NOT contain spoilers for TEVI, but is a lengthy rant with basically no direction. Viewer Discretion Is Advised]

There were issues with TEVI's story, and I fully enjoyed it regardless of them, and the music is really incredible.

But the gameplay. Oh boy the gameplay (somewhat affectionate).

To start with, I like the crafting system. Not only is it pretty good game-wise, but it really helps emphasize that component of Tevi as a character.

I like the orbitars, they have some really good options, and their whatever it is Burst Gauge thing is pretty neat too, although can be a bit confusing to try to switch around to the one you want while you're busy fighting, as it's desire to add more quality detail over Ribbon's ui actually kind of hurts it. In RR, Ribbons attack options are color coded, and while switching them not only does the bar near your health change but there's also a prompt near your character. In TEVI that's still pretty much the case but since they're icons that are color coded to the two orbitars themselves, trying to swap between them without looking near your health bar can be a bit frustrating when you use the wrong one. C1+C3, S1+S3 look functionally alike, though C2 and S2 are a little more distinct in terms of icon of the others of the same type. Granted you'll never really be confused on if you're on S or C (which I was on S for most of the time, holy fucking shit does S1 kick ass).

Supposedly ranged builds are pretty powerful, but I mostly used melee, using charged shots to add damage, as one generally did in RR outside of 0% runs, especially as that seems to be encouraged in TEVI due to the amount of sigils that change attacks at certain combo levels, and combos in general are a mostly melee thing, unless you're using basic shots and then you're probably using mana and depriving yourself of charged shots. But maybe magic sigils fix that problem, again I mostly did melee so I wouldn't know. Maybe I could try doing a magic run, it seems like a game I'd like to play again as I did with RR.

Speaking of which, Cocoa Mode 2.0 with Cocoa 2.0 in Vena. Please. I need this. I loved Cocoa's playstyle. I loved her bombs. I want it back. And I'm sure we'll probably get it back since they're working on DLC.

In terms of character design, while I do miss the very gay all girl cast of RR, I do love TEVI's characters (yes even the men, they're good characters), and I do find it hilarious (and comforting to an extent) that despite the changes in theming and in character aesthetics, TEVI continues RR's tradition of not allowing characters to wear pants. Well, quite a few do, but for the most part everyone is still pants-less. Yet also with significantly more details to off put that so the game also doesn't feel as sexualized as RR does. Like just compare Tevi to Erina. They're both wearing bunny suits and have ears, and yet Tevi has a lot of details that put that off to the point that you might not even realize that's what it's supposed to be, with the belt and pouches, the leg strap, whatever the hell she's doing with like some kind of coat or jacket. The characters also feel a lot more developed in TEVI. I mean RR's cast had character to them, but most of it was based on character tropes and "oh yeah she's hella gay, but for Character D, unlike Character C who's gay for Character B who seems gay for Character F but will probably come around to C eventually." But none of them have character moments like what happens throughout TEVI's story. Which I would love to go on a tangent about, and might on a separate post, but not yet (see: top of post).

Also, voice acting???? I do like it, even though I don't really understand Japanese at all, it does still add tonal indications that really emphasize the energy of not only what people are saying, but also of the character themselves. If a character is feeling really emotional, on the verge of crying, you can feel that in the VA, if they're starting to get annoyed, you can feel that. If they're very currently not taking their job seriously and are basically on a vacation, you can feel that in their energy. Along with the words themselves and the character sprites to go along with it, character dialogue feels so much more advanced than in RR. TEVI's story can be a little dark, and sometimes you can hear the effects the events are happening on the main 3 through their voices. There's times you can hear Tevi's voice cracking with just pure unadulterated rage and anguish, and I love that. You can hear characters falter as they realize the full scope of what was happening just outside of their vision all their lives, all the things they never knew, were never told. And I think the VA work really contributes positively to that, even if you don't listen to the full thing. You can hear it in just the first couple words of each dialogue.

I guess that kinda concludes my rant. Standard recommendation that you should play both TEVI and Rabi-Ribi, and I look forward to the DLC of TEVI and eventually when RR2 comes out. Unless you hate metroidvanias. Then they may not be for you. Ender Lilies and Ender Magnolias (which is still in EA during the posting of this) are also pretty good. Hollow Knight and Cave Story+ too. Also Dust: An Elysian Tail, Lost Ruins, Touhou Luna Nights.

Also BASED ROLEO BASED TRANS RIGHTS LMAO

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