I come back to the game properly after all these years and now 40 boxing is a cinch. Took me a couple hours of attentive grinding every day for a week straight in the past, and now it took me a few hours of pressing one button. God bless powercreep.

Granblue IP has been winning too hard lately for me to ignore, between Relink standing tall after 7 years of tumultuous development, and Rising commanding the accursed FGC's respect. Eased myself back into it during the 10th (that's right, 10 years) anniversary festivities, read some dissertations that would make an FF11 player tremble to get myself caught up, and then boom, it was like I never left. Hit 1b honors of my first GW back, gave a gold ring to Sakura Kinomoto, and I still have every version of Narmaya. There is great peace to be found in doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Time to physically and emotionally prepare myself for the next Guild Wars. This one will be a doozy.

Tevi is a great metroidvania in its own right, with strong level design and great combat. But the game's much greater focus on story did not do it any favors. Every boss and ability is locked behind plot progression, which resulted in a very linear experience, with little-to-no sequence breaking, and unrewarding backtracking. Worst of all, it wasn't even worth it as the story is so thoroughly unengaging it's unreal, tanking the game's pacing with copious amounts of infodumps.

It's pretty tough to follow up an act as phenomenal as Rabi-Ribi, but Tevi sure did try.

Mega Man fans are too receptive to Capcom's bullshit. Their sheer incompetence during the 7th gen has been well-documented, and all they've done since to rectify their countless missteps is a single Mega Man game. Despite the fanbase turning around and making MM11 the best-selling game in the franchise, we're at 5 years since its release, the 35th anniversary has came and went and Capcom has shown no sign of a new game. Instead, we got X Dive.

Now unlike most people, I'm no stranger to gacha games. I've tried many, and I've enjoyed many. As a result of my lack of seething hatred for them, I was more hopeful than most when the game was first announced. I went into it with an open mind, lasted about a week, and then dropped it out of boredom. It's not a good gacha game, nor is it an acceptable Mega Man game by any stretch of the imagination. Haphazard level design that felt AI-generated. Grindy progression that is simultaneously boring and tedious. Borderline incomprehensible english translation. From head to toe, the game hardly had any redeeming factors. Playing as various characters across the entire franchise would be neat, if not for the fact that playing the game itself is a complete slog. I would genuinely rather beat X6 and X7 back-to-back than consider booting this garbage up again. And then they had the gall to charge 30 bucks for this slop, despite essentially just removing the gacha system and leaving the rest of the game's myriad problems. You can buy entire series' in the franchise for that price.

The existence of the game is damn near insulting. Hell, we can't even say the game is funding new projects, like the Star Ocean gacha or Fate/Grand Order did, given the game failed and died after a woeful 2-3 years (and there are no new projects to speak of). Not to mention they're making and selling NFTs to promote it too.

It's basically another episode of Bad Boxart Mega Man. The fanservice at least could've been cool if it weren't for Capcom's continued incompetence and the franchise circling the drain. And if I hear one more Capcom cockguzzler say "this should be the standard for mobages", you're gonna see me on the evening news.

"Atsui~
Atsukute hikarabisoouu~
Ugoite nai no ni atsuiyoo~"

One of the greatest voice lines in all of video games. I needed it for myself. Dumped 200 rolls on Mika's banner the other day. Mika's cute and all, and the 6% rate was tantalizing, but what I was really chasing was that heat. Even with so much saved, it was still a 0.3% rate. Fate/GO players shot for the stars with more, and died in disgrace for less. It was a steep price to pay for missing the train back in January. I wasn't a believer then, but half a year of Twitter art forces a man to acknowledge the sheer strength Blue Archive commandeered as the head honcho of the cute and funny genre. Come April, I knew what I had to do. I installed, started grinding, and bided my time until the fated day would come. Ohhh I waited. Banners came and went, and my gem stock slowly grew. They called me a fool for skipping Himari. But there is no virtue chasing higher ranks in a future without Summer Hoshino. Days became weeks. Weeks became months.

Until Judgement Day. 7/25. The red carpet was rolled out for Mika. Fanfare, Twitter campaigns, displays, advertisements. She had it all. Even Arona Hot Dog was there. But I was only concerned about my pink, 0.3% prize. I only had a 45% chance to get her. I had nothing else but hopes and prayers; I prostrated before the numbers, completely at the mercy of a coin flip. And it flipped.

It was a silly little thing. One moment I didn't have her, and then in the next, I did. 70 pulls in. It's an unbelievable feeling, to entrust the culmination of several months of dreams on a dice roll, and win. At that time, at that place, for a fleeting moment, through no power of mine, the whims of reality and my wordly desires were one and the same. With no rhyme or reason, the Mandate of Heaven bestowed upon me Hoshino. Don't you see what this means? I walked the path forged by the stars, and it was written in indelible celestial text that Victory was my lot.

Anyway +3 stars for Ui, she's my favorite.

May this piece of complete dogshit be the Ark that delivers Capcom back into the hells of abject failure, full of horrors they haven't seen since the 7th gen. I want this bastard company dashed across the fucking rocks and scattered into the wind, just as they did with Mega Man. Inshallah the locusts will devour the flimsy goodwill they gained (certainly not earned) over the past several years, so that their cowardice will be layed bare to even the redditors that kiss their feet. Inafune was never the problem, just a symptom, and I want the disease GONE.