#broken-clover

I can answer your second question easily enough: when it was first released around 2001, Shadow (sometimes referred to as "Shadowed" in old news) pets were solid black fills with white outlines—quite a bit different than what you'd expect from a normal black pet.

After a few years, they were updated to literally have heavy shadows on them, as shown below. Eventually, however, the "shadow" aspects of shadow were scrapped, but the name was never changed.

(TNT themselves seemed to have been aware of the discrepancy, because the matching petpet colour is called "black" instead of shadow.)

Anyway, there's not a lot to talk about beyond that when it comes to shadow, as it's basically just a plain base recolor. The biggest issue I have with it is that it's never been consistent—sometimes shadow pets are light gray, sometimes they're dark gray, sometimes they have bluish-purple accents, sometimes they're monochromatic, sometimes they have yellow eyes, etc. These aren't really meaningful differences, but rather just a lack of overall coherency. Beyond that, it's a nice colour that works well for customization.

Most shadow pets didn't change much after conversion, so there's nothing to talk about there.

Favorite Species:

Xweetok: All shadow pets are fairly similar so there's not a lot to talk about here, but the shadow Xweetok does look nice, with a lot of different shades of dark gray being used for contrast. The blue eyes really pop nicely here. The Acara is similar and also looks pretty nice.

Shoyru: I'm giving the shadow Shoyru a spot for one simple reason: I really like that cyan color used for the eye, which is used on this pet and no others. The blacks in the eye could've been darker, but this still looks really pretty. I like the very dark gray used as well.

Aisha: I'm honestly not the biggest fan of the shadow pets with purple-blue mixed in as a main color (outside of the eyes), but the Aisha looks pretty good. The collar is an optional wearable as always, but it also looks nice and doesn't overwhelm the design. I also really like the reshaded "A" tag, which has almost an obsidian look to it.

Least Favorite Species:

Grundo: The one on the left is a shadow Grundo. The one on the right is a grey Grudno. I think the problem should be obvious. Second-place "winner" is the Uni, which has a pretty jarring combo of blue and magenta for no real reason, but at least I can tell that one's shadow.

Weirdest Species:

and dont forget the random incessant instances of her calling ragna a pedophile thats supposed to be played for humor somehow in some world bc lord knows i sure cant literally any time they encounter each other in story mode or fight . my fucking god that bit is bad and is often the biggest reason i can never recommend blazblue to anyone

and it SUCKS for plat specifically bc even outside the whole goofy botched magical girl thing there was SOOOO MUCH GOING ON?? TRINITY'S GHOST BEING IN THE MUCHOURIN. JUST IN GENERAL THE INSANITY OF THE MUCHOURIN, A STAFF MADE SPECIFICALLY FOR ONE OF THE BEST ALCHEMISTS TO EVER DO IT WHO HATED FIGHTING, FALLING INTO THE HANDS OF A FERAL LITTLE GREMLIN BABY WHO USES IT TO KICK PEOPLE'S ASSES UWUISHLY???? theres so much potential in various places for various things but it feels like they had no broad direction they wanted to go in and fell back on it being Mature and Subvertive by........ having a child call people a pedophile for telling her to stop bothering them typically? or making weird sexual comments comparing herself to adult women like that one gag reel in continuum shift with litchi iirc? dont remember how much she does That one but i do remember it happening. groundbreaking stuff there fellas. im sure the loc team didnt HELP but theyre definitely not entirely at fault considering the number of times plat does say the phrase "lolicon" out loud in jp is most certainly nonzero. ugh

Admittedly though it is also funny because for some reason Thieves in Time was really goddamn weird in terms of villain threat scaling compared to the original trilogy like why did they decide to make the literal war general and military strategist who had canonically conquered nations the first guy you fight?? And then the next one is just a LARPer?? (to a lesser extent as well I feel like his boss setpiece was also the most grandiose and cinematic and the others felt a lot simpler comparatively. Like...come on, doing a swordfight while you hop back and forth across a burning scaffold?? That's awesome!!)

In my heart there's an alternate version of Sly 2 where chapter 3 instead takes place in El Jefe's military base in Cuba where Rajan went off to hide with the Clockwerk Heart. The mission would be less scaring him out of hiding and more slowly working your way deeper and deeper into the camp's defenses while riling up Rajan and pitting him against El Jefe. El Jefe being a contractor for the KLAWW Gang who supplies them with all their muscle and extra security for their shipments of Spice. Rajan's bombastic and dramatic personality would be fun to watch clash with El Jefe's more pragmatic, subtle, sadistic approach to things.

I feel El Jefe was the first boss very specifically so Sanzaru could have something exciting to show off to the public as soon as possible. His boss fight was the first major gameplay thing we ever saw. And yeah that does kinda mess up the threat progression.

Like the first three Sly games were really good with that. First one had you against, in order, an engineer in charge of a small isolated part of the ocean, a gangster taking over a large city in the Utah desert, a Voodoo practitioner setting up a giant army of zombies in a Haitian swamp, than a Warlord terrorizing just about anyone living anywhere near the Kunlun mountains, before climaxing with the guy who presents a more personal and existential threat to Sly himself.

Sly 2 was even better, the KLAWW Gang being an established gang of thieves like you whose operations work in tandem with each other and fill different roles. Dimitry with his nightclub providing funding with counterfeit money along with distributing and selling the Spice, Rajan who's the main supplier of their merchandise and a strong foothold in the Indian black market, Contessa (plus Neyla) being their inside connection in Interpole to help them stay ahead of the cops and on schedule along with eliminating any criminal competition in a perfectly "legal" way, Jean being their big time distributor via his trains all along both the US and Canada, and finally the head mastermind and the one who provided the rest with the technology they needed to get the plan in motion at all with Arpeggio. With the last second twist being a villain who has always been out only for themselves at the cost of everyone else being a great thematic end for a game about teamwork and working together.

Sly 3 was a bit looser but had more variety and different types of threats. A taste of the old style of villain with Don Octavio, an impersonal sort of destructive force along with more "manmade" (for lack of a better word) callousness with the Mask Of Dark Earth and the mining company, a "villain" who not only plays fair but turns out to be the very person you were trying to recruit and has wanted out of this for ages, teaming up with an old antagonist to face off a newer and viler villain that represents everything that can go wrong if you only think of legacy and bloodlines to define yourself, an intellectual villain who needs to be beaten on multiple fronts at once to be properly defeated, and finally ending with a villain born from the same legacy that birthed Sly himself and can only be beaten if Sly chooses to define himself by his own merits and the people who stand by his side instead of the ghosts of people he will never meet and only ever read about.

And in Sly Thieves we have El Jefe, who has a really fun boss fight that is a really smart and frantic mix of the series' platforming and combat....and than the LARPer, and the threat and connection between villains just gets more and more cheap and tenuous as it goes, including the WORST TWIST VILLAIN IN ANY GAME EVER THAT TAKES A GREAT STEAMING PISS ON ONE OF THE BEST CHARACTERS FROM THE PREVIOUS GAME FOR NO FUCKING REASON, and the lamest platformer villain ever Le Paradox (EW) who ends this fucking shamble of a game with...a series of quick time events. fan-tucking-fastic. great. awesome. i hate this fucking game.

Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - MCR

Dingo Days: The True Lives of Languorous Chill-dudes (Book)