Kyogre

Unfortunately, it is... ridiculous:

lmaooooo

I already barely got through the previous threshold level. It is insanely dependent on getting the exactly correct equations and blessings, and it's very easy to just... not get them, and there's nothing you can do about that. You can't even just give up on a failed run because you lose a point toward completion from doing that. Combined with the forced negative curio, which you have no reliable way of ditching...

And it was... okay but definitely nothing outstanding. I can understand everything they're going for, more or less, and they have the basic pieces, so it feels like a passably complete story. It's like... it's whatever. Fine if your expectations weren't high (and there is no reason for them to be high, frankly).

I would say though that they fall short on the presentation. They are trying really hard to translate these ideas into visuals using the in-game assets, and sometimes that just doesn't quite work out. It's the opposite of what HSR Amphoreus got dragged for, where everyone was just standing around in circles to talk or talking over CGs. NTE is trying to have the models do things but doesn't seem to be accounting for what is not really possible. Where some other story would frame shots or cut away when they couldn't make something look good on screen, NTE tries to show it, but unlike older games where this was kind of an expected aspect of technological limitations, here it's like... the models look good, so why does the action look comparatively not as good? It just feels jank. But on the other hand, they do try, and that can be worth something in itself. Still, for me, this breaks immersion more than retreating to a CG would.

As for the story, there are some bits that are particularly nice. I appreciate the focus on Eibon, and Zero even takes a moment to be like "wait, did I just think of these weirdos as my family?" and also to question their own missing past. The Daffodill sections do a fair job conveying that she fucking hated Scarlet Letter, and the Nanally sections make it clear why she'd be sensitive about her found family. Probably the weakest part is Thyme. The confrontation with her comes out of nowhere in terms of the extended philosophical debate that is part of it. She is just not present in the story enough to go into this kind of thing, but the story as presented also doesn't have room to give her more presence. Probably they needed to have her appear and speak to Zero during the Daffodill and Nanally sections, but you can also see why they wouldn't want to do that and instead focus on, you know, Daffodill and Nanally...

Thyme is the worst about this, but there are other instances of the pacing being rather brisk. But, again, I can see why they'd prefer to keep things moving along.

Now, some speculation.

So far, Scarlet Letter has specifically targeted three anomalies. One was First Branch, which is said to have abilities related to time, I believe it was something to do with prophecy, since Hotori brings that up during the auction. Two was Eternal Present, which grants immortality. Three is now... I think it's called Helm of Theseus. It's quite hard to understand which parts of the Corridor were from Thyme (a seemingly separate anomaly) and which were from the Helm, but it seems to be related to "returning to the past."

It was also mentioned that the people of OG human!Thyme's village were all killed due to the secret of their immortality, she was the only survivor, and she and (current) Thyme encountered each other in a "game," which is seemingly set to occur again soon.

It was furthermore stated by child Daffodill that she already killed Mother when trying to leave Scarlet Letter.

Which creates some interesting questions.

Mother/Inanna seems to be immortal already, so she shouldn't have any need for Eternal Present, unless we assume her current immortality has limits of some kind. And even then, why does she want the other two anomalies?

My simplest guess would be that she wants to resurrect someone. Or rather, recreate them using some combination of the Helm and I guess First Branch, then make them immortal. The base assumptions would be a child/family, or else perhaps she is also an anomaly that took on the appearance of a previous contractor, since it was specifically mentioned that there are many cases like Thyme.

Of course, there's no real basis for this, just speculation.

Mmm, I'm going to be honest. I have not actually personally played through any HSR story since the end of 3.4. Amphoreus was my favorite Hoyo story by far, but just seeing the spoilers for 3.5, I knew I wouldn't like it, so I kept putting it off, and everything afterwards just made me want to play it even less. Until I just gave up.

And if they could screw up even Amphoreus, well. What was I even expecting from any other story from them?

So I haven't actually played Planarcadia at all. But! I was sometimes tempted by the devil to try.

Fortunately, my good friend AC did me a solid and took the hit for me. She gave me the play by play while going through Plananana up to this patch, and let me tell you... I no longer have any desire to play it. At all.

But I will still give my two cents.

One thing that is blatantly obvious even from the bits of stuff I've seen is that HSR... does not have things like characters arcs planned out in advance. Not in advance-advance, I mean. You can see the point where they shifted on at least two notable points: the treatment of Sunday and the Stellaron Hunters.

At the start of Plananana, Sunday very suddenly became "part of the Astral Express family" in a way that he was not before. They just took the early parts of Amphoreus to look at fan reactions based on his joining in 2.7 and, presumably going by the many fanarts of him with "the trio," chose that as his direction. So in 4.x, when we hit the content made post this decision, we suddenly have lots of materials really blatantly grouping him in with the crew, emphasizing how he's one of them. It is a very abrupt and noticeable shift.

Same for the Stellaron Hunters. Between their last appearance and 4.x, it was decided to retool them as a found family. They weren't before, but now we gotta show them having game night together, we gotta make Blade into SW's "girl dad" (paralleling the even more blatant emphasis on Astral Express Family stuff, with you just repeatedly calling Himeko "mom" now), which leads into stuff like having to play dice games with Blade because we're totally cool with him now.

(But hey, so it Dan Heng! Honestly, what I've heard of the Dan Heng situation, what they did to him is just criminal.)

Anyway, in regard to Blade specifically, my impression is that he's just not the same character.

They took the previous guy's (back)story beats, threw out half of them, and just made a whole new guy with the remaining ones. The two guys are similar in some ways because they share some of those backstory elements, but they're not the same character going through any growth or change. They're just different characters.

I would even be extra mean and say that all they really cared about, with Blade, was getting him settled into a conveniently semi-friendly relationship with the main cast. So we can message him on the phone, have him appear in events, and use him for more sales of stuff to his fans without needing to bend around him having complicated beef with several other characters and also not giving a shit about anyone he doesn't have beef with. Now he's a buddy, like Aventurine and Jade, and he has his own little "family" group to do little skits with.

Which is, again, a way more convenient position for him from HSR's perspective, I feel. No more will we get situations like last anni, where his fans can select him to get a letter from, but Hoyo has enough integrity to make the letter not actually come from him because that was his characterization back then -- not giving a shit about anything except like three other characters. Don't worry, he'll presumably text you himself now, and here, have a cosmetic from pulling him, isn't that cool--

Look forward to his upcoming appearance in Honkai Nexus Anima!

And, unfortunately, Hoyo is totally right in their calculations.

By all indications, the new and improved girl dad Blade is very popular. Most fans are eating up the found family slop. Dan Heng is inexplicably into Blade now, so the renhengs are happy. Just solid wins all around in selling the new guy who replaced the old guy.

Now the only permanent rewards I have left on main are Planana story + maps + DU.

Speaking of which, this is actually after I made some headway in DU. And it's uuuuuuuuuuuh how to put this...

So for the previous version of DU, I basically only completed it by cheesing with Phainon Blazar strats. It was already very close, and I have no idea how people manage otherwise. Like, DHPT was simply not capable of sustaining through the damage higher end bosses did. Was Hyacine enough to let you survive? That stuff could easily oneshot you and then some.

Well, this version is worse. Naturally, because why limit the powercreep? Have it everywhere, why not.

I'm currently on stage 7 of... I guess 9? And I definitely cannot finish as is.

7000% increase in HP?? Get the fuck out of here.

I'm genuinely unsure if I can even get 4 winning runs (much less in a row), but this isn't even going to be the last rank up, there's another one after that.

And the increases between rank is A Lot. I genuinely have no idea how anyone is doing this.

I did mark two strategies that are available inside the game, one for Phainon (with Cyrene and Cerydra) and one with Ashveil-MBlade. But for Phainon, Cyrene's ramp up time is going to be a genuine issue when the enemy speed and damage is this bad, while Ashblade, I have no idea how they survive. Ashveil is squishier than Tingyun.

HSR 4.4 rerun leaks are in. Banners are supposedly going to be:

Himeko Nova

Fate collab part 2: Gilgamesh and Rin

Sparxie, DHPT, Evernight reruns

Anaxa, Aventurine, Jade reruns

Crazy amount of units, all things considered, though some are very throwaway.

On my main, Sparxie, Evernight and Jade are easy skips. I'm also skipping Himenova and collab. Aventurine is... well, realistically he's never getting anything again for this unit. He has nothing unique about his kit that's worth NFing, since DHPT is just him but better on every front, aside from specific enemy matchups. I have E1 already, and while E2 lets him reduce 12% res when hitting with basic, it'll just be annoying to play around and not worth it. His LC is even less worth it, since so much of it is about his personal damage, which doesn't matter now. Skip.

Anaxa... tbh I use him so much that I would like to invest more in him. I just do not have a third team option better than him (and the quadruple skills are so funny). His E2 gives 20% res pen and adds a weakness to enemies when they spawn. I believe with his technique, this will let him double skill immediately. Currently, I often have to just kind of do nothing on his first turn because he doesn't have ult up and his implants aren't ramped up yet. For his LC, it's a toss up between his and Therta's. They both give a very tiny increase over the event LC. His gives 10 energy, same 60% dmg and 12% def shred. Therta's gives 12% crit, same 60% dmg and 1 skill point on ult. Anaxa's def shred situation is kind of headache, and the 12% doesn't neatly match with anything, though it's vaguely useful. I would probably lean toward Therta's just for convenience of building and SP usage, especially if his E2 resolves his ramp up issue.

But I uh pretty obviously won't have pulls after the MBlade circus this patch. And I also want DHPT stuff, since he is pretty likely not coming back for like two years... if ever. We haven't seen Ratio since his singular rerun a year ago.

For DHPT, his sig lets him heal and gives a small buff to the bondmate, his E1 gives res pen and a skill point on ult, and his E2 increases to 4 dragons per ult and increases the dragon damage.

So.

I did get E2 Mblade, and I have 40 pity on LC banner. I guess I will focus on saving until 4.4, and then pull DHPT sig > dupes as far as possible (realistically, S1 but probably not even E1) > pull Anaxa E2 as far as possible on second half.

With the caveat of checking Robin SP's kit. I really like Robin's design tbh, so she might be a pull target depending how solidly she's locked into Himenova or Mono Rem. That said, she'll rerun soon enough, but DHPT? Anaxa? lol. I do also need to prepare for the Ashveil rerun. Thankfully, Aventurine SP can go to hell with Elation.

On my alt, it's also a bit weird because I've more or less made up my mind to reorganize my teams and give up on running Mydei. It just gets on my nerves to use him with Cyrene. And the two options I was considering were Evernight and Himenova. Having them run together is certainly something.

Starward mode is uuuuuuh....

Well, it went. E1 MBlade is indeed all that, I guess. Since his E2 is the big one, that's kind of impressive in its own way. Or maybe this is the shilling at work, hard to say. Phainon E2 had zero useful buff options on Flame Reaver, incidentally.

It's hard to see, but the teams are Anaxa-Cerydra-Robin-Aventurine, Ashveil-Gallagher-Mblade-Moze, Phainon-Sunday-Tingyun-DHPT.

Compared to what is to come, this is almost normal and acceptable.

Here is the real tiktok shit.

Is that two sustains in the FUA team? Yes. But arguably Aventurine was doing more to help there than Luocha was on Knight 1. I did that team last, so there weren't really a lot of options left.