#playing nte

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.

Progress report:

(Original) map is mostly done, rewards are all in.

I'm missing the hospital anomaly commission (laziness), two side quests at the museum (laziness), and one gift from "21" because I can't freaking find it. Overall, good enough!

Beyond the Rails:

Missing two stars. I could probably get 9 stop to three stars with buffs (which I hadn't used) since I was at about 4:30 when clearing. But it's pointless because the only rewards are from full 30 stars, and 10 stop was at like 3:45 or something with buffs.

In 1.1, this resets every two weeks but they also added stops 11 and 12. I'll try the new stages later, after I hit Hunter level 45. I'm at 44 at the moment, so should have 45 soon enough. Given the slow progression of the later levels, I doubt I'll hit 50 before the next reset though.

Teams were Zero, Jiuyuan, Nanally, Adler one side, Daffodill, Fadia, Haniel, Hotori other side. Yes, Hotori is just there to add brute force damage because her ult stops time, so it's "free" damage that doesn't require any thinking or rotations for the most part.

Tycoon Level is 29. There was no chance of hitting Tycoon 30 before reset, which is the last level to update the store, so I didn't bother pressing it.

Exploration guide, Cafe guide, and housing guide are done.

Pulls have been:

Baicang at 46 (standard)

Jiuyuan from 50 pull selector

Nanally at 75

Hotori at 17 - very lucky!

Fadia at 72 (standard)

Jiuyuan A1 at 73 (standard)

Chaos savings:

Plus 7 pity.

It was... hm.

Because this is NTE's first version and everything is still being introduced, it's kind of hard to talk about the story. There's a lot that's still in the "potential" phase, and while the structure is episodic, it's also obviously building into some greater plot as well.

But also, it's very mixed in a way I'm not entirely used to.

On the positives, I think they do a fairly good job getting across the most relevant parts. They do a fair amount of focus on the Eibon crew, actually building the idea that we're found family and giving enough time to build at least some familiarity with the characters. They do that for Sterry as well, since those are presumably going to be recurring characters too. They also do a reasonable job of establishing the basics of the setting, without needing to read extra materials (which have more details). It comes across fairly naturally, with the main story directly mentioning how, back 50 years ago when Dolores was alive, the public didn't know about anomalies yet, but also by implication The Circle existed before the public reveal, which dovetails well with the names of the Circle's subsidiaries being so different. Some are fantastical (older organizations) while some are government alphabet soup agencies (newer). Or Tageydo's citizenship ID quest doing like three things at once in a fairly neat little package. Stuff like that.

This is also the case for the final episode of 1.0, with Renee. I understood the plot and the main points just fine. I think they were conveyed sufficiently well, though I wouldn't say it was amazing or anything like that.

However. At the same time, there is a definite feeling of... the t's not being crossed, the i's not being dotted.

In Renee's quest specifically, I did zone out in parts because the story took a while to get where it was going, but as far as I recall, we just never circle back to who Fuuka was. Obviously, she's part of Scarlet Letter, and the simplest guess would be that she's Zankou in disguise. But based on Pawn Moonlight, Zero should be able to see through disguises. Did the writers remember that, and Fuuka is just some other member of Scarlet Letter (as well as the delivery person)? Or is it all Zankou and we just have to presume she has a way past Zero's perception? Hard to say, since it's not discussed.

That part is pretty irrelevant, but this kind of just keeps going. We never actually discuss the Ledger and the Debt Collector either...? In fact, I am genuinely confused about how and why Renee survived. I guess we might have somehow managed to actually kill the Debt Collector, but I didn't feel like our last fight with it went any differently than the previous ones. Rule-based anomalies are supposed to be inherently difficult to nullify, so I'd assume it would just continue returning until it fulfilled its conditions, but we also just don't know what those conditions even are or where this thing came from.

Zero presumes that it was Dolores's esper ability that gave life to the puppets, but her own diary iirc gives no indication of this and just says the puppets were given to her by an old acquaintance. Did this dude just give her a bunch of life-size but otherwise ordinary puppets that her otherwise never mentioned personal abilities gave life to? Seems kind of... unlikely? The more natural explanation would be that the puppets were a trap from the start, that they were created by someone (Scarlet Letter) to come to life but also to have the Ledger built in, which would start counting down once Renee awakened. That seems the cleanest explanation, but.... it's never actually hinted at in the story from what I recall. Zankou is a completely unreliable narrator, so we have 0 info on the Ledger as a whole. I don't even know if we're supposed to read into the fact that Renee is so visually different from the other puppets, who all have white hair like Dolores, while she's the only brunette. Is that a visual cue to her connection with the Ledger, or is it just to keep us from assuming her relationship to them too early in the story?

And that's before we get into the weird vibe of the relationships, with Daffodill saying that Dolores genuinely loved her children, but Dolores's diary having a very selfish streak about wanting "family" that would love and serve her and her alone. Like, what Dolores describes isn't a real, loving family, it's just 24-7 servitude with extra emotional labor on top. Is her sending Renee out to grow up and live on her own a way of her getting past that, or...?

How far do you read into all this?

Impossible to say.

That said, at the same time, this stuff is actually not important to the main points of the story, which came through clearly enough. It's genuinely immaterial whether Renee survives. It just gives a happy ending to her personally, which is like... fine. I don't mind. It also doesn't actually matter where the puppets came from or how the Debt Collector worked. It's just a plot device to create her backstory. At most, it could add a layer to Scarlet Letter's manipulations.

First, about the guy situation in general.

Somewhat infamously, NTE doesn't currently allow bond interactions with the guys. For some female characters, you can walk around holding hands with them, get them a casual outfit at bond 4, ask them to move into your apartment and do some additional stuff with them. You do not have this option for any guys.

Obvs it's not a great look, though it's a bit less bad if you consider the numbers in terms of characters. There is currently only one S rank guy in the game, Baicang, and he's a standard. The others are A ranks, and they are a buttoned up older man, a child, and a furry at that. To begin with, no A ranks aside from Mint, the tutorial character, have bond interactions. And of the standard S ranks, only two of six have bond stuff. Yes, Baicang doesn't have it, but neither do Daffodil or Hathor (or Sakiri the actual child).

The real test is going to be what they do with Chaos, the S rank limited dude on the second half of 1.1 (live stream coming May 23). Ideally, he would get the bond stuff (interactions and outfit), the gacha skins, and the BP icon border (current BP has Nanally namecard and Hotori icon border). But if he's missing that stuff, then yeah, it's not looking good.

(That said, I started playing for Jiuyuan, so... not necessarily a deal breaker for me personally.)

Aside from Chaos, who already got drip marketing, and Exe who is in various promo stuff, we additionally have some guys who seem to have playable models but haven't been confirmed either way.

From what I recall, Jenson and Illica from Sterry were both present but not unlockable in the bonds menu at some point, so they were at least planned for being playable.

For them, I would say they're kinda underwhelming, mostly because of the color pallet. Chaos has the same issue. It's all black-gray-brown with very muted bits of color that don't really come together into a good sense of identity.

It's the most obvious if you compare Illica and Haniel (who is playable already). They're treated as a duo, but Haniel is all bright colors, while Illica is just drab:

Photos I took while trying to get a better look at him:

Like, you can't even tell what his color pallet is supposed to be. It's just too bland and generic while also being a hodge-podge. And again, Chaos and Jenson have similar issues.

Jenson photos:

To be honest, I liked him a lot in the quest, and I can understand making his outfit largely black, but like... look at him and Nannally next to each other. Her main color is the same red-pink on her hair, ears, hair accessory, tie, arm-band, coat plushie... It's very cohesive. While Jenson has a washed out teal for his hair, but with a purple streak, dark blue detailing on his top and ass cape, but bright teal on his gloves? None of this goes together. What is this? Why make it like this? Just pick two colors and use them for everything!

Comparatively speaking, at least Mismo and Otro look better.

Though they're basically the same design. The differences are just in the hair style, Otro having some black where Mismo has white (shirt sleeves, vest, shoes), and some mirrored details like their earrings being on opposite sides and the chest decorations.

Presumably, only one will be playable... probably Mismo. He has the slightly more detailed hair, the two moles on his face, and the extra ripped? feather? details on the chest.

Still, a much better design imo. There's a few different shades of blue used, but they're close enough to feel cohesive.

So just jotting down some thoughts.

First, to get this out of the way, the localization. It has issues.

It's not immediately noticeable (and I'm not going to speculate about whether it's the result of using AI or what), but you can start to see where some sentences don't really make sense in context. Specifically, the words are right, and each sentence seems fine on its own, but the meaning is slightly off and the chain of logic gets messed up. Since I had finally dialed in to the story, I could see it in both Pawn Moonlight and Deal Deal.

Here's an example. Hotori is talking about the anomaly you come to auction for, the First Branch, which is supposed to have prophetic abilities. Taking the entire exchange, you can understand that we're supposed to be discussing whether prophetic abilities are really a thing. Can this anomaly really foretell the future? But Hotori's lines barely make sense in this context. Most obviously, "this prophecy" should be more like "prophecy" in general but there's other stuff too.

There's a lot of cases, and it gets particularly bad when you get to explanations of how anomalies work. The details of Mismo and Otro's powers were basically incomprehensible because it's an abstract topic and the details got smeared in translation.

Speaking of Pawn Moonlight, it's in a bit of an odd position.

It's a side story, not a main story, but it contains a weekly boss, it's required for one of the account progression tracks, and it's canonically your first real commission with Eibon (presumably discounting the photo studio thing in the first episode) and introduces Sterry Express.

Online gossip is that it was originally part of the main story during a CBT but got pushed out into a side story after player complaints.

I'm not sure what the complaints could even be. It's a very whatever quest on the whole. The Taygedo dating quest we have as episode 2 now is something with a much more obvious point for player dissatisfaction (the fact that Taygedo is annoying).

As for the details of these quests...

Pawn Moonlight is fairly obviously chaining into something regarding Mismo and Otro, since it hints but does not address some issue with Otro and also has a strange angle in the fact that they seem to be on the run, even if they don't say it. Their designs are pretty obviously playable, so you have to assume they'll be back at some point.

The quest as a whole has a very common premise with the anomalies that take a heavy price in exchange for granting a wish. The records of the exchanges were pretty hamfisted. It's not terrible but not amazing, though I did appreciate that we get a moment with regard to Sakiri and her wish for a place to call home.

(I skipped the Taygedo quest btw)

Deal Deal, the auction house quest with Sterry, is a bit more involved, though it's ultimately just set up for the ongoing story that continues in the fourth episode and, to my understanding, isn't complete yet, regarding the Scarlet Letter group. The 4shadowing is unfortunately one of those things that gets hard to follow because of the loosey goosey translation.

I did like the details of the quest, especially before the pre-auction phase. Being able to steal a bunch of food, get drunk, listen in one some dialogue with references to worldbuilding stuff, and also the Hotori disaster trash talk game was fun.

Speaking of which, the character dynamics are definitely, shall we say, done with wide gestures, but they're at least baseline understandable. I like both Eibon and Sterry, even if the annoying kids are indeed annoying. It's an in-character type of annoying, you know?

For both the characterization and the overall presentation, it could use more polish, but I see what they're going for.

Of course, the real question is Will They Improve...