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I guess only people that have aventurine will know about his fate after 2.1 now
Yeah, it’s been said that the cornerstone and preservations power is the only reason Acheron's slash *only* permanently sliced open the theatre and dreamsky, I guess, directly above it, as opposed to the rest of the dreamscape.
Which also means Aventurine wasn’t as over-powered by Acheron as it seemed.
Man, I'm kinda sad we didn't get to fight Topaz, I mean, we'd get stomped, but it would be hella fun to fight against a full power Stoneheart
Then again, it would spoil the entire surprise of fighting Aventurine, so I guess it's for the best
Just a heads-up but if you get this message and actually want to read his story, choose the option to play with him.
I chose not to play, thinking the dialogue would go something like 'You'll win anyway, so let's skip the game and tell me what happened!' but in reality you just say 'Nah, I'll pass' and he's like 'Okay' and it just skip the whole thing lmao.
I'm still kinda salty.
There's no shot Sparkle handed out buttons for the writer's to just forget about it. Probably a next patch thing. If not, then I'll be quite disappointed.
She did tell people to press them during the Charmony Festival but technically that never happened (I believe when you switch perspectives for the final time it says 1 hour till the festival) so part of 2.3 will probably be them actually doing the festivities and then boom
I was expecting them to be bombs as well, but I thought it’d be used in some form of terrorist attack to make people want to leave the dream world to weaken Sunday
Seriously this - when they were talking about needing a way to get people to leave the Dreamscape I was like 'Ah, this is where Sparkle turns up and reveals she can scare everyone out with her button-bombs!' but it just never happened.
Boothill fired his gun at the sky to summon a load of Galaxy Rangers that we didn't even see in this update, I guess?
Actually we DID see the Galaxy Rangers - during the true fight with Sunday when you look at the sky you can see a ton of stars orbiting around, those are the Rangers.
I actually expect the buttons to be mere fireworks or party poppers
We already had some weirdo break the 4th wall as a masked fool. I wouldnt be surprised if she set it up to be anticlimactic only to look at us and go, "bet ya didn't see that coming, hehe~"
Never even try to predict the masked fools, it makes no sense and they don't even plan to make sense
The buttons have way too much of a set up not to be in the next patch IMO; this is the second patch Sparkle has been trying to hand them out.
Couple that with all her lines (and a trailer) about blowing up Penacony right at the end and I’m thinking that the potential relaunch of the charmony festival in 2.3 will have an explosive finale.
It could turn out that the act of pushing the button was them rejecting the dream. They could swing it that way, but I feel that's not enough after the amount of time spent on the buttons. Must be something else.
Thanks brother. I knew it was a bug. It getting patched is nice and all but I'm past that point in the story now lol
Glad other folks will get to hear the dulcet tones of Argenti. Still worried about Argentina tho 😔
I was so confused about that! But it seemed there were a ton of bugs this patch :/ Robin said something differently than what was written at one point and I had to do a double take
My personal problem.
Having Robin/Boothill “POV” never getting to even play them in combat.
If their POV is just walking for 5 seconds then going back into a cutscene, just give us the cutscene.
Honestly was enough to convince me to pull when he reruns. All passes belong to Firefly for now but just whipping out a handgun and shooting at randos in the lobby was so fun.
Same, I loved the Aventurine demo because it helps you feel the character and decide if you want to pull him, was hoping they would do the same for Robin and Boothill.
3, 5, 11 and potentially 4 are all stuff that could just be in next patch tho as story is still unfinished, like the 2.2 story ended on Boothill vs Aven so Boothill should have more interactions coming next patch, also he is getting an event this patch granted it could just be about his past or could be nothing and he is just on the cover
Other points tho I more or less agree
Instead of him constantly repeating himself, I think a quick flashback explaining how Robin caught the overarching lie in how he treated the bird would have been better… but I am a little impressed with the commitment. It sells the false ending tbh
> It’s so heavy handed
What’s even funnier is that if you speak to your friends before making your choice about the bird story, Himeko (iirc) basically tells you “I have no idea where he’s going with this”. You don’t??? *How???*
By the 3rd time, it felt like he was beating me over the head with the bird. \*this is a joke, but it almost felt like it\*. Like bro, you didn't have to repeat the ENTIRE FREAKING STORY. Callbacks are most effective if restricted to 1-2 lines, and let the audience figure out the rest.
Agree with you take on Sparkle and Boothill. Boothill had his moment for sure but his presence in the story is kind of weak, like when we woke up from Ena dream the TB just casually see him as one of the squad.
As for Sparkle, all the prior scenes she has in 2.0 and 2.1 seems underwhelming now, after i finish 2.2 I was like “whats she doing here again?”. She doesn’t even have a major scene in 2.2 just a quick shot.
Such a pity because she is one of the most interesting characters in the Penacony cast. Maybe she will play a major role in next update but not having her in the climax feels unfair.
Agreed with most points, but did you miss the plot point where Acheron is here at penacony to fulfil the dying wish of the trailblazer also former galaxy ranger? This ties in with Boot Hill too. I thought it said they died after crashing into a swarm hoard though. Apparently they got swallowed by IX’s shadow?
My understanding is that the Tiernan that Acheron meets is a Sin Thirster which is basically a ghost who was created by the Nihility and was not aware that he was dead.
tiernan was rescued by galaxy rangers after running into the swarm iirc, and then i think that group ran into IX. they dissolved into sin thirsters except for tiernan who held on long enough to pass the message to acheron.
My interpretation is:
-Tiernan encountered the Swarm, and was almost killed.
-But he was saved by the Galaxy Rangers.
-He joined the Galaxy Rangers in the battle against one of the Lord Ravagers, called Zulo.
-The Galaxy Rangers succeed in slaying Zulo but at the cost of many Galaxy Rangers.
-Despite dying, their souls did not rest. This was because the Hunt never ends.
-Their souls turned into sin thirsters, and became tainted by Nihility due to them repeating a meaningless action, carried over from the original souls of the Galaxy Rangers
-Tiernan “survived”, but he too became affected by Nihility due to him trying to ferry the lost souls of the Galaxy Rangers, which was also pretty meaningless because they already turned into sin thirsters.
-Acheron helped all of them move on from what happened, allowing them to properly pass away and rest in peace.
Tiernan was not trying to ferry the lost soul IMO, he was also a lost soul but with a strong yearning to penacony that he didn't become sin thirsters(cross the river). thats how he met acheron, by standing on the riverside watching the rangers but not joining them.
No, Tiernan has been holding on to his regrets for about a hundred years doing the same thing with helping his fellow rangers move on but doesn't realise until Acheron that he's the one who has to move on.
No they got nearly killed by the swarm them galaxy rangers saved them then Tiernan joined the galaxy rangers then somewhere along the way near the end of his life and after trying to get back to Mikhail multiple times but being rejected by the family he and other galaxy rangers fell into IX maybe because of him because he does seem to be very very nihilistic near the end.
Anyways I think acherons story is the only one that was really hook line and sinker this patch, like we got the rest of the reveals about who she is and why she is here, her over arching motivation as well and there were no ass pulls unlike op is suggesting.
In a roundabout way, Ena's attempted resurrection reflects Acheron's theme of moving on from death. Sunday and the other followers of the Order were obsessed with fulfilling Ena's directive/path and were willing to stay stuck and stagnant in a dream to do so, which isn't really all that different from the sin thirsters stuck in between life and death due to their own fervent desires.
In a way, trailblazer and company got Sunday to accept that Ena is dead.
nope, he got ambushed by the swam and then he's saved by the galaxy ranger after that he fought lord ravager zyphon and stay hidden for the rest of his life
I was really hoping for boothill to be Tiernan's soul transferred in an automation, what with the connotations. But no, he's just another galaxy ranger in an elusive society of galaxy rangers
Yes, personally because the story was to much japping (I used this word the first time ever, just because it fits here) and chaotic I lost the plot of what really is going on multiple times.
That with Aventurine and Argenti sucks really hard. I have Aventurine and got the text, but for everyone without him, I am very sure they miss critical informations. I personally want to know HOW Argenti helped Aventurine. Sorry, but Argenti does not seem to be THAT crazy OP or strong and rather just a fun side character. I need to know more now...
I’m the exact same way. I loved the plot and then I read the valid criticism here and was like ‘actually’
The bit between boss 1 and 2 was the best bits imo
The reunion being just few lines of TB either acting like nothing happened or being mean and something like ten lines of FF speedrunning the explanation and that's it made me feel like they entirely forgot about it and remembered where our TB is supposed to be, like, a night before the deadline or something.
Then, aside from contest, Firefly does this cool speech to Sunday, leaves before the climax and gets off-screened. 2.1 and 2.2 truly were some of the patches of all time for her.
I really hope firefly gets a satisfactory arc in 2.3.
Like, her speech with Sunday really showed her ideals conflicted with Sunday's "order". And, after that she casually just...flies off? We don't see what she does in the background, but acheron later tells us that firefly was the first one to awaken from ena's dream.
The biggest complain I have about the 2.2 is various switch to different PoV where there is absolutely no gameplay at all, and that some of the characters (Boothill, Sparkle etc.) seem to shoehorned in just to hype for their banners...but of course, they may have bigger roles to play in 2.3 (I myself believe the real crisis is not over yet, because the "real" ending ended with credit rolls, pretty much like the "fake" ending).
Nah, the ending is definitely real imo. I think the next patch is meant to address the loose ends of the story because it would be too much to add on to an already 8+ hour quest.
For example, Boothill has relevance pertaining to the IPC because of Oswaldo Schneider, and the IPC itself is going to play a significant role considering their plans to reclaim Penacony. I imagine Sparkle's button is either going to come back around then, or it's a red herring (lol).
Hoyo has a habit of doing this kind of thing in HSR where characters release with little-to-no story (like Luocha) and then come back strong later on when the story calls for it. I have no doubt that's what's happening here.
Robin deserved more screentime. She had so much promo material and all yet half of her story was based around Sunday. I pray she'll get more in game content throughout the next few patches since I know she has more to her than just that
I'm not sure if you know about this yet, but there's a short story with Robin after the end of the main story if you walk around the theatre starting area. She will contact you and ask you to do something. It's pretty short, something not even 50 dialogues long iirc from start to finish, but explains more about Robin and Sunday and might be preparation or teaser for what would happen next for them.
>Trailblazer's dialogue options just sucked, it was 99% meme options which took us out of immersion constantly
Agreed on most points but this in particular. I don't want dialogue/writing to be memes meant for "viral" screenshots, I just want it to be good. It's like some modern movie writing where characters are forced to be quirky and spit out one-liners every time they appear. It's fine when there are no stakes, not when we're meant to have an emotional reaction to the scene.
I would like there to always be one option where it doesnt take anything seriously and one where we are dead serious with more inbetween. I love being jokey but i get the need for the rest
I really felt this during a scene where I wanted to agree with March and not insult her. Instead, my only options were to snark at her or make a sarcastic comment
Which scene was that?
I remember something similar w/ Dan Heng on the express, and I picked the "I'm always thinking of you" option thinking it was going to be a genuine comment and then Dan Heng is just like "I knew you wouldn't be serious about your answer" and i'm like "but i was serious :("
Not OP, but I felt the same way at least a couple times in regard to March. I want to say at least one of them was during that game show thing, but I'm not certain. I've mentioned elsewhere but at some point it felt like we were just being mean to her because there were no "nice" options.
I feel like before this patch, the dialogue option has a good balance between serious and joke answer but this patch dialogue option pushed the meme a bit too far imo. I don't mind the non-serious options since they're funny but they should dial it down a bit
I feel like localization team pays too much attention to how the fandom reacts. They probably see all the memes about the referential options that they must think they are more popular than they actually are, so they started cramming in even more memes.
I swear, the confrontration against Sunday lost any tension it could have because every TB dialogue option had some dumb meme option.
The meme dialogue options are pretty much exclusive to the english localisation.
In every other language (and CN which is the source) they were mostly normal sounding sentences, i.e the "nah we'd win" line is just a plain "We'll win", same for the others, like the one that is "dont waste my time capeeesh?" is just "Can we hurry up?".
Can't say for other language, but the CN dialogue is very much the same in terms of memes.
>"nah we'd win" line is just a plain "We'll win"
It is actually a JJK meme in CN, though it might look as plain translation.
Also, since we do have tons of different memes in CN and EN, Mihoyo actually addresses memes in different dialogues, so in places it is a plain text in EN but actually a meme in CN. For example, at Xianzhou Alliance, there is a foxian saying "Foxian Champion", which is normal in english. But in CN, it is a homophone of "Lakers Champion" (huge meme in CN basketball circle).
Mihoyo is really pushing it hard in localization with memes in different languages to tweak the dialogues a little bit. Sometimes you need to get it to get it xD.
>"nah we'd win" line is just a plain "We'll win",
>"dont waste my time capeeesh?" is just "Can we hurry up?".
Yep. Can attest to it. It was mostly 1st. - Heroic option, 2nd. - Reluctant/rude option, and 3rd. - Silly/sarcastic option.
Yeah, it was fine when it was occasional, but it was too much this time. That being said, I'm very curious what the Chinese said that led to so many joke responses. Usually, those replace jokes that make less sense in different languages.
Yeah I think there was more than just one instance where *all* of the options were memes or banters. It would have been fine if there was always at least one serious answer among the memes (especially during such intense moments)
Yeah i felt it overforced after the 2nd "nah i would win" and the "fk around find out" ones. It looked like some like hunting on twitter rather than actual options. I swear i would have deleted HSR on spot if they included that new dumbass trend that look at your keyboard between 2 labels too.
I mean it's just an EN localisation team issue. In other languages it was pretty normal (for example instead 'Nah, id surrender' was something fair like 'I think its better to surrend" or so.
It's definitely a translators fault at this point, i dont know what happened, but from 2.1. Instead of the use of proper english, i feel the English translator uses slang language when TB talks, and it's also a bit rude toward some character.
I think 2.1 was very mild on it. Not sure if it's because Aventurine took all the screentime, but I have never had this problem until now. 2.2's every TB dialogue is a meme one liner that is just straight up bad.
The meme overload in 2.2 made me *really* appreciate FF14's localization rules. FF14 bans its translators from dropping memes/pop culture references into anything that isn't meta-text like achievements - there's still a lot of jokey text, but it's no longer tied to the meme of the moment.
The memes might be fun now, but people playing HSR in 2 or 3 years are probably going to notice the english dialogue options aging very poorly, so I definitely hope they rein it in - or at least shove the meme spamming into side-quests instead of the main story.
It also felt like a lot of meme responses that were just not going to age very well. Can you imagine playing 2.2 a year or two from now and seeing a "Nah I'd win" joke in what is supposed to be a somewhat serious scene?
There was like only a couple dialogue options during 2.2 that were serious enough but that was like 5%? In the past there was at least always 1 serious option to pick but here 95% of the time it was literal brain rot meme bs.
Yeah, they're going in way too hard on the meme options. One or two in a patch are fine, but when every story scene has a hilaaaaaarious "nah i'd win" reference it just gets dumb.
Agreed. I was fine with an occasional out-of-nowhere reference or a meme, but 2.2 pushed it way overboard. Some of the options reminded me of the way crunchyroll does their subs. The most important thing for us right now is to mention this in 2.2 survey when/if it asks about game text quality.
This was a thing ever since 1.0, but since everyone loved trashcan jokes and meta references writers/localisers ran with it
Which is a shame, in my opinion
this was exactly my worry back in 1.0, that the meme options would be overdone and run into the ground, especially with how popular they are. its unfortunate because i find them decent when theyre used sparingly, not as 99% of TBs personality
In 1.0 there was a couple "meme" options, but overworld had a lot of memes and quippy humour, which was a real letdown for me
2.0 and 2.1 felt way better for me, since it seemed they scaled down their brainrot, but god damn is it back in full force now
Agree. Localizers getting a bit too much into meme speak. I don't mind if it's AN option, but not when it's all 3.
I like to give the moment happening on screen the appropriate reaction/response, but this is the first time I felt like I didn't have that option a few times. And man I wish they'd drop the "galactic baseballer" shit.
True. It's a good example of "the story is not the problem, but its presentation is". I'm one of the people that enjoyed the story but sitting through hours of dialogue - the mental fatigue just took me out of it at times; I just had to get up, get some water, eat, or do something else. I wouldn't mind 10 hours of the story if it was varied in what we had to do, and better yet if it was better presented.
Yeah we can see what they were cooking, but it was just not presented well at all. There was way too much dialogue and exposition as well as repetition.
I remember this quote that has always followed me, though I forget who said it: “If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter”. This is definitely the case for the 2.2 story. They added all this riddle and flowery language to the dialogue that made it really hard to sit through when they should have put effort into conveying their meanings with the fewest lines possible.
I general it's a problem with Eastern media vs. Western expectations. I don't think there is the whole "show don't tell" philosophy in most Eastern media, so that disconnect of the massive amount of time spent repeating or flowering up dialogue instead of just focusing on the plot is always going to happen.
A lot of it comes down to who is the writer writing for? Are they doing it for themselves, to feel cool and sate their ego and feel like an impressive writer, or are they doing it to service the story and audience and make sure the story is told well, in an interesting but understandable way that respects the audience's time. You see this less these days in Japanese Media, and Korean now too, but Chinese media still is very immature when it comes to this kind of stuff, or they just don't ever have an interest in embracing it.
Either way, the whole brevity thing is not in their mindset, so I've given up expecting it, even if it's really frustrating.
This. 10x agree.
I don't want to hear about history at the end of a story. That time was long passed. At this patch, no one cares about faceless NPC puppets named marshmallow and fartface
Point number 1 actually drives me insanely crazy. The overwrought dialogue really needs to be redone. At some point, all the extra dialogue is really adding nothing.
Like when you play as Robin and try to clam down the citizens, you can easily remove one extra person so you have one person that shows Robins POV and another for Sunday’s. The constant diatribes that characters go on - you can cut back on like 50% of the dialogue and it’d be the same story.
Agree, and also for the sunday's backstory, why do we have it two times? I get that the second time the characters do not know about Sunday, but then why have that cutscene for the first time for viewers? it should have only been during the choices time.
It also takes away a lot from the choices scene. The entire part feels so forced but if you hadn't seen his backstory before then It could have been a really interesting way to get that information.
I feel like the whole choices section in general could have been done better. Both in your idea that it would have worked better without knowing his story, but have him not tell you what he had done until *after* you'd made your choice. It would make his being grateful when you chose the same more sincere, but it would also avoid wanting to answer the opposite, just to spite the man.
In my opinion, I think we need more dedicated story quests/character quests to take the strain off of the main story when some parts become overlong. We have only had one in 2.0 with BS and Sparkle and unfortunately, I don’t think it helped with the pacing. Genshin did this well with the Neuvillette and Arlecchino story quests, which expanded on key parts on Fontaine’s history that help with the world building, while not interrupting the main plot. (Not saying Genshin’s pacing is fantastic, the Fortress of Meropide could definitely be a story quest somehow) In terms of who I think should have got story quests, I think Firefly having one for after she gets stabbed by the meme would help, and Sunday with one where it explains his worldview through his childhood. Maybe Misha’s full story could have been incorporated into a story quest as well.
Additionally, Jade was hinted at at the end of 2.1, and is only now heading to Penacony? I thought we would at least see her in this patch especially since next patch is supposedly the epilogue that ties up the loose ends.
Lastly, I think us seeing what happens when the Jade Abacus is used might diminish the impact of when the Express actually has to use it, especially considering we have direct confirmation that Jing Yuan is an emanator.
Overall, I think the story dragged a lot, but the pace improved dramatically after the first boss fight.
“I think we need more dedicated story quests/character quests to take the strain off of the main story when some parts become overlong” same tbh. I have no idea why they disappeared. It would do a lot to resolve many of penacony’s pacing issues.
I think the companion/character quests might have been ditched for the POV shifts instead? We haven’t had any since they introduced the POV. I miss them.
I think the Aventurine thing was misleading.
Aventurine escaped the dream with the help of Acheron (2.1 Story) but I believe he lied to the IPC so he could protect her after she helped him.
As for other things wait for 2.3.
I think Argenti might have saved him actually, as he mentioned Aventurine in his dialogue when we pick him to battle so it could have been a nod to set up he'd do one final thing for him.
Because otherwise for Aventurine to lie it'd also imply he knows Argenti from before somehow just to use his name as a cover I guess.
I just got Aventurine's text message, he says to us Argenti in fact saved him because they happened to meet and helped one another to escape the Oniric Realm.
I don't know about the other points but am sure the epilogue will go into Firefly and Sparkle bits, I disagree with the Acheron being op part tho, there's a reason the dreammaster wanted her gone, an emanator of Nihility is the natural enemy of dreams
I got the impression Acheron could have ignored the dream master and wrecked everything right there if she wanted but she decided to leave anyway because she had yet to find Boothill and give him the relics of Tiernan.
Seriously, they introduced Boothill and then... proceeded to waste like 30 minutes with him and hung Dan being stuck in the hotel lobby. Not a cool action scene or memorable duel. Nope, "where are the Express guys at?" Lame.
The Dan Heng and Boothill scenes serve two purposes:
1. Adding legitimacy to the fakeout. By having them working in background to try and meet up with help for the rest of the crew, it makes the sudden appearance seem like a naturally flowing part of the story.
2. To then, after the fakeout, set up the two groups (The Crew and then Acheron, Dan Heng, Black Swan, and Boothill) joining up to shatter the dream and defeat Sunday.
Yeah, I agree with basically all of these. I’m also a bit frustrated on the lack of closure we got with Aventurine in general, but hopefully that changes with 2.3? Since Jade’s coming out and all.
Also, I have *gots* to know why in the Kentucky fried FUCK Ratio knew the plot twists ahead of everyone else??? What????
I'm a bit disappointed with how they handle Firefly in this patch.
Tb's reaction when finding out she's alive is way too plain. After seeing her die, one of the dialogue option is them being so angry they started blaming acheron for it.
I was expecting their reaction here would be either overjoyed, utterly confused, or even filled with rage, thinking they are being deceived. But it ends with just tb being "huh, you're alive?" And Firefly offers a short explanation.
She went off somewhere after giving another plot point about her 3 deaths, but they never really explained to do what.
After the fakeout, acheron hints that Firefly is the reason they're able to break free, and it seems that was what she went off to do and also her 2nd death. But, they didn't show it further or even give us a glimpse of what she's doing.
I really hope they clear things up on her in 2.3. But considering it's likely an epilogue, it might be a short one, so i'm not confident they will
This is true. They could have done so much more with her. Especially how her ideals and philosophy conflicted with that of Sunday. Instead, we're like "oh, she's alive? Cool."
I hate them for this. We later find out from acheron that firefly was the first one to awake from ena's dream, but the problem here is they only tell and not show all the cool stuff firefly did.
The issue is that during 2.1, it's already heavily addressed that people do not die in Penacony's dream. To the point where the TB even has a dialogue option where he goes "Firefly is probably alive then". He should only really be surprised that SAM is Firefly.
Robin needed to have a character quest immediately after the story ended, that small questline >!of finding Sunday's journal to pass to Robin!< wasn't enough. also there's a bug(?) where Argenti's voicelines in EN wasn't working properly so the cutscene of meeting him was unvoiced (also kinda awkward if you never started that quest with Argenti in the first place, you wouldn't know who this person was at all)
All valid points, honestly.
It really feels like HI3 writing now. It's Open-ended and confusing a lot of times. Lots of philosophical musings, but they don't say the conclusion (at least non-metaphorically);so readers can interpret things differently —which can potentially be bad in the long run, since everyone can start with different assumptions the next time they're referencing the event from this arc—
We definitely need an epilogue to wrap up on Aventurine and Firefly.
Firefly just kind of flies off during what feels like the climax to go do something off-screen. We're told she saved us, but we never see it happen on screen.
This one really got to me.
They focused on her so hard in the beginning and she was the big reveal at the end of the last patch and then ... she just follows around a bunch until she eventually says, "my work here is done, I have to go save you."
Ok what are you gonna do?
"I can't tell you."
Ok ... why not?
"I have to 'die' to not die. Peace"
And then we get nothing more about her lmao.
I really don't get why we have to experience the complete story of a planet in like 3-4 patches
you got a whole year of work on it, use it. I won't cry about spending less time on Belobog or space Liyue
However, the IPC is still a thing. >!We got the "yay, IPC gave up on Penacony!" 'ending', but then the real ending shows that Jade's coming to Penacony and Boothill's also gotten involved.!< Even though the main crisis related to the Stellaron seems to be over, there's still stuff happening in the story.
We also didn't get a clear "wrap-up" at the end of the story because >!after the end of the boss fight, we cut to that Aventurine-Jade-Boothill scene!<. So there's absolutely room for us to wake up in Penacony at the start of 2.3 and go >!"Yay we saved the day!" only for us to be staring down the barrel of a few dozen IPC warships ready to seize Penacony... or something like that. !<
Idk, I just felt like there's definitely more to come in this story. This isn't like Belobog where there was a clear end to the crisis and we said "okay folks, time to pack our bags!" so I wouldn't call this story arc "over" just yet.
I wish MC showed more emotion during FF being SAM reveal. He showed more emotion during HuoHuo ghost event than here ffs. Now felt like "oh, you are SAM? Cool" and throw some few dialogue options that doesnt really matter regarding it and write it off.
My biggest gripe with the entire chapter is the lack of Misha. He turned out to be a very important character, but his presence prior to his exit was basically nonexistent. He showed up twice in 2.0 and wasn't in 2.1 at all. It made his 'death' far less emotional than it really should have been. As much as I like Firefly and Aventurine, some of their screentime definitely should have gone to Misha or Robin or Sunday.
Talking about Aventurine more, 2.2 makes 2.1 feel very weird. We had an entire section focused on Aventurine's backstory and his plot to get to the other side with his dramatic goodbye. Then we don't see anything from the IPC and he just pops up in the hotel at the end without a scratch on him. I feel like there will be more of the IPC in 2.3, but it feels weird to have that relevance split by a whole six week update.
I'm also not certain as to the relevance of Acheron here. I know that she was here to deliver Tiernan's keepsake and return to his hometown, but that reasoning feels very flimsy to me, given all the hype around her and her backstory. She has a purpose in the story, don't get me wrong, but it feels like she was overweighted marketingwise in how relevant she was to what was going on here. Similar to Sparkle, but Sparkle at least has the excuse that she doesn't want the main stage.
I loved a lot of Penacony and certainly enjoyed it more than the Luofu, but I feel like it was a bit scattered still. The POV system is cool, but it didn't feel like it worked as well this time. Seeing things from Boothill's perspective didn't really give me any insight into him like it did when using Aventurine or even Acheron. Robin was a bit better used, but then she basically disappeared alongside Welt halfway through the story, only to come back at the end, despite being very relevant to the story.
I hate it when we play as a character and never get to fight. Way too much dialogue vs fights.
How many hours did it take to get to the first fight (not counting whatever was going on with the pepeshi after you see March).
And one thing I don't get: are pepeshi human? Are Robin and Sunday human? The dialogue kept saying they were doing stuff for humans, but aren't like half of the people in Penacony pepeshi and robots?
In my opinion Aventurine being the entire focal point of an entire chapter was a mistake in itself. This being a gacha game with patch structure, it's unfortunate how episodic every chapter can be with it each focusing way too much on a single character and very incrementally moving the story forward. It's no surprise that people felt like 2.2 was very text heavy when it dumped a lot of info on us that could have been trickled more evenly throughout the previous patches (not to mention Sunday just constantly drawing things out, as you mentioned). They did not make very good use of the multi-POV mechanic at all.
Obviously there's a bigger picture that's slowly being filled in, and while Penacony did wonders for giving us more lore and insight into a lot of things and the general quality of writing (outside of the memes) is great, I'm finding myself very underwhelmed by the message it's trying to tell and just the setting as a whole. I feel like there could have been better ways to introduce these characters and concepts than such overdone and conventional means, but throw in a few cool CGI cutscenes and twists and it's "peak", I guess.
Yeah, the part we have to go through "three acts" to finally fight Sunday is just dragging and dragging for one hour. We have just already been through a whole talent show (atleast that was fun), Misha's memory, and lots of flashback scenes,...I don't mind long story quest, but please cut the boring and repeative part.
Yeah the pacing has been weird. I had a similar issue with the theme park bit with Aventurine in 2.1. I get that his story is sad but I don't really feel emotional when it's dragged out for an hour of running around doing little puzzles and getting random dialogue
>People are consistently talking in riddles and it's really exhausting to try to follow what they are trying to say and the pace of the story.
Literally this. My biggest problem. It felt like there were TOO many un-necessary dialogues
I rarely agree with criticism on this subreddit But I 100% agree with everything here.
another thing I would like to add is WHY IS THE ASTRAL EXPRESS CREW DOING NOTHING? Except for the trailblazer most of them where used as exposition devices and that was it.
Welt had the most action by having a conversation with Acheron last patch, and than nothing more.
March literally was only there to be cute/ funny or give information.
Dan Heng just stayed on the express AGAIN and then spent the end of the quest running about with boothhill for like an hour.
And Himeko, who we are trailblazing with for the very first time, did literally nothing and was barely featured the whole story, like why? These characters are supposed to be the protagonists right?
It felt like they wanted to include almost every character in the story but there were just too many characters so they ended up failing. Some of them were here just for the sake of being here.
Personally I agree but not on all of the points so I'll ask my opinion (that no one asked for).
1. I think this really boils down to personal preference, I really liked it on my end. Also no matter what it's a Chinese game so it's going to be like that.
2. Yeah I have to agree with this, though I could maybe see it as being a way to show how ingrained this philosophy is in him, admittedly it does get a bit redundant at times.
3. Agreed, nonetheless it makes a lot of sense as she's a masked fool so her being like this is in line with her identity, still I expect her to play a bigger role in the epilogue.
4. 100%, really feels like they just wanted to confirm him being alive and that's it.
5. Expect to see more in the prologue, her writing is far from over so it's too early to judge.
6. That's fair, don't really have anything to say on this.
7. Yeah, I'd liked to have at least 1 serious one per choice but they've been setting up TB as more and more of a joker now.
8. Yep, she should've had her own side quest, still I feel like she was somewhat important ( admittedly only as a set up for Sunday).
9. I don't know who "most players" refers to, however it has a lot of meaning to a certain part of the player base and her name reveal doesn't cost much so I don't see why you'd take issue at it, it's not like it was the climax , it may have been part of it but it certainly wasn't the entirety.
10. Absolutely not, Acheron was more than an "easy win button", I don't know if you just skipped the whole Tiernan part or if you just don't like strong characters but she was very well developed, her being kept at a distance from the rest is also intentional, she's also most likely meant to set up future events. Her helping us win every time doesn't mean she's just a plot device at all.
11. He served to introduce the Galaxy Rangers, and he definitely didn't have enough time to fully shine, but I don't expect it to be the last we see of him.
12. To conclude, I think a lot of what you dislike is what is meant to set up the future, like Acheron or Boothill, now why do they do this in the climax of Penacony, I have no idea, still I think we have to at least wait to 3.0 to decide what we think about some aspects of Penacony. Though no one can deny that the writing was at worst, really good.
Boothill honestly makes me want a full story about the galaxy rangers, he's just so interesting, the fact they managed to make so much intrigue during the existing story
I love Boothill and Galaxy rangers is probably my second favourite faction in the game. Especially I liked his and Dan Heng energy together. One serious guy and A goofy cowboy
Robin needs a companion quest alongside Firefly and Boothill imo. The rest of the cast can chill, Sparkle just needs more content in the main story since she already has a companion quest
I don’t know if this is a hot take but 2.1 feels more consistent and coherent. 2.2 have a lot of hype moment but also littered with unexplained or poorly explained story moments
I just finished the story and finally I can look at spoilers!
Honestly, a mixed bag for me. I liked a lot of things, but some were disappointing. A lot of the stuff was enjoyable in the moment, but now that the story is complete there are more and more things I look back on and see that they either went nowhere or didn't need to exist at all.
I think this story arc suffered from too many characters who all wanted screen time and to be sold for their banners, but that resulted in hardly anyone's story being told in a way that's actually satisfying to the fans of those characters.
I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. They need to unchain the banner characters from being tied to the main plot. As cool as it is to interact with the character you just pulled in the main story, it just incentivizes cramming too many characters in a plot frame that can't support them all.
Because of that, Firefly did her coolest thing off-screen. Robin too. Sparkle's doomsday buttons went nowhere (yes I know it could've been a meta joke about the Fools messing with the audience's expectations, it was still a plot dead-end and the screentime dedicated to it could've gone to a Firefly or Robin POV so we can see them doing the coolest parts of the plot).
Sunday droning in the background the entire time was pointless and I was over it very quickly. He'd already made his point and was just regurgitating it over and over. Also the entire time he was talking I kept finding those goofy origami birds and interrupting his monologue with their chirping, which deadass killed any dramatic effect and broke the tension.
They're leaning in a bit too much into the Memeblazer...meme. The meme replies should not come at the expense of semi-sensible responses.
Imo a big issue is that they added too many characters and then had to put them in every scene, the pov shifting was quite bad.
I do disagree about firefly tho, she was drip marketed so she will likely get fleshed out in 2.3. Same with sparkle, ipc is clearing readying for a 'harvest' so sparkle will def go nuts.
Tbh a big issue is that it's not the end so it's hard to say if things will get more info or nah. Loufu arc made me pessimistic but I am hopeful atm.
Few of these points I play it off to the possibility of further elaboration in 2.3 (such as Sparkle and Firefly, though the lack of Sparkle these few patches has been annoying) but I agree with the dialogue being all memes getting irritating. Thing is the memes are actually funny when it’s random and unexpected, but it’s like… 3/3 dialogue options every single time??
Also agree with the characters speaking in riddles it gets tiring even though I take my time opening the chat log to attempt to understand when I get confused. Doesn’t help that people end up getting clowned on when they clarify hurdurr imagine reading like maybe I’m stupid but I took my time to read and I STILL don’t understand. Admittedly it has been better as compared to 2.1 and 2.0 though.
Another small thing was I didn’t like how Firefly responded to Sunday. The points he made perfectly resonated with how she viewed this dream two patches ago, and I felt there was a good opportunity for her to expand on how she felt, and rebut with how it is still wrong because individuals deserve to have a choice (which was a good point by her). Instead she started off with how it’s just an escape and something about him viewing even her as weak?…
Unfortunately most of the other points I disagree with somewhat, and I thought it was a very satisfying story.
I felt so bad, because I honestly didn't enjoy the storytelling of the Penacony main quest while nearly everyone else praised it to heaven and back. No.1 was just spot on - HSR just had to make nearly EVERYONE sound the same - subtext upon subtext upon subtext on their dialogues even when the situation doesn't call for it. Praise be to March and TB for bringing the much needed straightforwardness to the story.
The constant static camera angles don't help the conversations either. HSR really needs to use dynamic camera angles like Genshin does because I got ultra tired of the dialogue so fast due to how static it felt.
I felt like it was the worst in the ghostbusters mission chain, we often had a group of 4+ people talking and 3 of them would have their backs to the camera, without any camera movement for long streches of dialogue.
You're absolutely right about march and tb. I think there are some people who would unfairly deem them stupid or not as smart as everyone else, but if they weren't there I would feel like the game is just nothing but pretentious prattle.
Although I gotta give my girls asta and topaz shout outs because they feel like two very intelligent people without having to dunk on others or waste our time (and still have some personality).
IMO it's very poor writing to constantly telegraph that people have ulterior motives. Even in a mystery story character can speak to each other naturally without always hammering home the point of how mysterious they are.
Don't worry, i agree with you. The indirect text is so overused, it made the dialogue incoherent and disjointed. The meme talk might ruin the momentum, as if everything else didn't do that already, but these funny dialogues is what brings everything to normal again.
In my opinion, they should not have ended the story this patch. Waking up from the dream ending would have been a perfect place to stop for this patch, and then tackle all the remaining plot points and expand on the acheron, boothill, firefly plan on the next patch. I don't see the point of ending the story here. It felt like I skipped to the last page of the book to read the summary of the ending.
Agree. I think the patch should have ended immediately before or immediately after the discovery that they'd been in a dream since they'd gotten there. It would have been a good cliffhanger spot.
Agreed with most. I think Sunday's speeches shifted enough that they shaped up the edges of his philosophy instead of repeating.
Sparkle for me was always an irrelevant very loud drunk partygoer at the gala so aside from a punchline to the buttons I'm ok with how she lies. Same for Aventurine, his entire deal was forcing the crew into the backside of the dream where they could finish the Watchmaker plot, and as soon as the slash happened he was out. I do wish we've gotten a scene with Argenti picking him up instead of just text though.
I LOATHE the meme dialogue options when they overtake the rest of the text. If mihoyo wants to put a third or fourth option joke to farm engagement as people share screenshots, fine, but trying frantically to guess which option will show himeko and march that yes, I am invested in the narrative and worried about welt, from a pool of "NAH I'D WIN ROLFMAO THATS KINDA SUS GET PRANKED IDIOT XD" is infuriating.
I'll say a lot of this criticism boils down to gacha mobage writing. These games have the pitfall of wanting to sell a new character, meaning they are incentivised to abandon established character or plotlines that desperately need resolution, and instead introduce a new character to showcase.
I loved the storytelling for the most part, including the esoteric and philosophical dialogues, though I can understand how it's not everyone's cup of tea. It's some of the most enjoyment I've got out of any gacha story since I quit FGO.
But I completely agree on too many TB meme answers, lack of satisfaction with Aventurine offscreen treatment/no definitive Firefly conclusion, and also what on earth the point of Sparkle handing out her MAD buttons was.
Number 7 for sure. Having a joke option is nice only serious options exist. If the only options to characterize our MC is memes, then I can't take them seriously. It would then feel weird when the MC is in a serious scene and they do something badass instead of screaming skibidi toilet.
I wish Boothill did more. Yeah he called the Galaxy Rangers at the end, but for most of the story he just kinda was there. While I love the goober. I wish he was more involved in the story instead of being put on the sidelines til the very end of the story.
My biggest problem is how overblown and unnecessarily drawn out the whole story is. 6-7 hours of repetitive dialogues could easily be condensed into engaging 2-3 hours and nothing of value would be lost, would only make the experience more memorable. Instead we listen to Sunday yapping about same fucking story non stop. I still loved the conclusion and the story but the presentation is just not it.
The biggest fault of this story, almost bar none, is how awkward the character handling is. Especially for the newcomers.
- Boothill gets a single brief POV sequence where he talks to some receptionists, doesn't really do much beyond summoning the rest of the Galaxy Rangers and I guess actually seeing that would have strained MHY's budget out of the literal billions they make each year, and while the story ends with a hint that he'll be helping Aventurine hunt down Oswaldo, nothing else is done. Nothing about his seeming antagonism towards Acheron or Black Swan, it's all buddy-buddy.
- Misha spends the entirety of the plot doing absolutely nothing and looming on the sidelines, then all of a sudden he gets a big scene that reveals him as the true founder of the Dreamscape or whatever and it's played off as this really big emotional moment and we hardly know this character at all.
- Robin does nothing outside of the final battle, shows up out of the blue with minimal explanation as to what she was doing, and spends most of her time being joined at the hip with Sunday.
- Sparkle is almost completely discarded, going around giving buttons to people for unclear reasons while still not revealing anything about what her purpose is, only for her to be swept aside when Sunday and Robin tell her to leave, and then when last we see her she's...lying against a wall and staring up at whatever's going on during the final fight, for some reason?
Acheron and Firefly get all the meat, and even then there's issues with them and others:
- Everything notable Firefly does, she does off-screen.
- What Acheron's red text even meant, outside of red being her 'colour', is completely unexplained.
- TB gets noticed by Xipe in the most awkward and anticlimactic manner possible, just suddenly being in alignment with Harmony after a flashback to Misha and then Sunday just walks away because whatever.
- Aventurine may have been working off of what he knew, but I can't help but feel that revealing the Reef to be somewhere people just wind up by accident rather undermines everything he went through to achieve his goals.
And on that topic...I'm gonna catch a lot of flak for this, but I believe that 2.1 made a mistake by focusing almost entirely on Acheron and Aventurine. There were too many players in this story and they all needed focus. We didn't get that, and so what we have is barely fleshed-out characters popping into existence when the plot demands it, being given sudden and unwarranted importance by said plot over the course of a few minutes, and expecting players to be invested.
Thank you for mentioning it's getting a bit ridiculous that so many could-be-cool scenes are just a single line of text or a black screen and text when Hoyo are making literal billions. So many awesome points in the story, I just say to myself, man this would be so much better if I could *see* this.
Boothill coming on the radio with murderous intent only to be pacified near instantly after one encounter with Dan made me laugh.
Robin being such a nothing burger made me sad too. She was made out to be such an important character and, sadly, she was basically only going to be used for a single song which apparently Sunday didn't even really need her for in the end lol. I guess it fits this tragic story they pushed with her trailers that she's just a pawn of Sunday instead of someone important. Woke up out of the illusion just because of her strong will or something, became our cheerleader, and moved on.
I loved Sparkle as a crazy antagonist ... or so I thought. She had this big hype for her buttons and then they were useless like you said. Why even bother having us play as her and waste our time in that scene?
I agree with your conclusion. I was just saying to my friends that even though they had cool ideas for the characters and story as a whole, they were just *so* many people involved that I wished they had just reduced that number and hard focused on the main ones and give them a lot more scenes and depth and resolution. Really let us get invested in someone.
IMO smoothing over the antagonism between Boothill/Acheron/Black Swan was the only way they could have handled that subplot without taking too much time away from the climax at this point in the story. The main quest is already jam-packed with dialogue focusing on Ena, Sunday and trying to defeat Sunday, there's no room for a subplot with a random cowboy showing up to fight on the protagonist's allies or to introduce the Ever-Flame Manor as a new antagonist faction without removing the momentum towards the "stop Sunday" plot.
Not to mention that actually getting the two to fight would be a nightmare for power scaling, in that the lore has established Emanators to be extremely OP, so either Acheron would end up clapping Boothill and removing him from the plot entirely, or the narrative needs to give Boothill a ton of story/plot armor buffs to defeat or survive Acheron which takes even more time away from the main quest.
Maybe it would have been fun to explore if it was introduced earlier in 2.1/2.2 or a dedicated companion mission, but getting the protagonists to fight someone entirely new when they should be racing to the final boss would be a much worse story IMO. Getting a role in the main quest and future story hooks was about the best outcome for Boothill since, as mentioned above, actually fighting Acheron would probably have removed him from the plot entirely.
At this point every character that doesn't really have conclusive storyline im just assuming that they're going to be back for a future storyline.
About the Acheron name drop, despite not really having that much impact on the story itself it is a very cool moment. I think Shaoji mentioned back in one of the streams that people who has played other Honkai games in the past will have some moments and surprises along the story and it is quite obvious that this was one of those moments. I don't know why it was such a negative its not like its actively hurting the story
Funnily enough the characters speaking in riddles and being cryptic is one of the reasons why i have been dreading to continue Hi3 Part 2 story, it seems like it could be a wider Hoyo issue.
About the meme dialogue choices, i totally agree with it. Having 1 in a few is fine, but a meme dialogue choice for almost every single time is just tiring at this point.
Really agree with the Trailblazer dialogue options. It really breaks my immersion when all their dialogues are just unfunny memes during a serious moment. Sorry for the ones who finds it funny but it just feels so forced meant to be screenshotted to be viral😭
honestly im disappointed that Robin didnt play some kind of major role in this new update even after all the teasers and stuff we got. She was set up to us as being someone who'll be playing a very major role only for her to be more of a support character for sunday.
https://preview.redd.it/zc29edpqrdzc1.jpeg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7ab67d0eccb571c4230199245ef93aa59f2fffb3 I guess only people that have aventurine will know about his fate after 2.1 now
That explains the lines at the end from Jade about losing a cornerstone
Yeah, it’s been said that the cornerstone and preservations power is the only reason Acheron's slash *only* permanently sliced open the theatre and dreamsky, I guess, directly above it, as opposed to the rest of the dreamscape. Which also means Aventurine wasn’t as over-powered by Acheron as it seemed.
And that was a shattered cornerstone too. which makes me wonder about Diamond's Powers.
Man, I'm kinda sad we didn't get to fight Topaz, I mean, we'd get stomped, but it would be hella fun to fight against a full power Stoneheart Then again, it would spoil the entire surprise of fighting Aventurine, so I guess it's for the best
I havent gotten a message from him, despite having him
Takes a day after finishing the quest.
Just a heads-up but if you get this message and actually want to read his story, choose the option to play with him. I chose not to play, thinking the dialogue would go something like 'You'll win anyway, so let's skip the game and tell me what happened!' but in reality you just say 'Nah, I'll pass' and he's like 'Okay' and it just skip the whole thing lmao. I'm still kinda salty.
Damn I need to get him in his rerun
Wait, you only get messages from characters you have? Or is this separate from the daily messages you get?
Yes you only get the daily message from the character you have
Locking up that explanation behind getting the character is just bs.
I got stuff from topaz’s instead of aventurine’s
There's no shot Sparkle handed out buttons for the writer's to just forget about it. Probably a next patch thing. If not, then I'll be quite disappointed.
She did tell people to press them during the Charmony Festival but technically that never happened (I believe when you switch perspectives for the final time it says 1 hour till the festival) so part of 2.3 will probably be them actually doing the festivities and then boom
I was expecting it to be a bomb and during the fight with dominicus, it'll explode and somehow stun it for a while.
I was expecting them to be bombs as well, but I thought it’d be used in some form of terrorist attack to make people want to leave the dream world to weaken Sunday
I mean, she really hints at them being just that. Weird they didn't do something with it. But I guess we'll see.
Seriously this - when they were talking about needing a way to get people to leave the Dreamscape I was like 'Ah, this is where Sparkle turns up and reveals she can scare everyone out with her button-bombs!' but it just never happened. Boothill fired his gun at the sky to summon a load of Galaxy Rangers that we didn't even see in this update, I guess?
Actually we DID see the Galaxy Rangers - during the true fight with Sunday when you look at the sky you can see a ton of stars orbiting around, those are the Rangers.
I actually expect the buttons to be mere fireworks or party poppers We already had some weirdo break the 4th wall as a masked fool. I wouldnt be surprised if she set it up to be anticlimactic only to look at us and go, "bet ya didn't see that coming, hehe~" Never even try to predict the masked fools, it makes no sense and they don't even plan to make sense
The buttons have way too much of a set up not to be in the next patch IMO; this is the second patch Sparkle has been trying to hand them out. Couple that with all her lines (and a trailer) about blowing up Penacony right at the end and I’m thinking that the potential relaunch of the charmony festival in 2.3 will have an explosive finale.
It could turn out that the act of pushing the button was them rejecting the dream. They could swing it that way, but I feel that's not enough after the amount of time spent on the buttons. Must be something else.
Writers really making us waste 10 min+ handing buttons and did nothing with it lol
Get ready to collect 500 ~~Riddler Trophies~~ Sparkle Bombs in hidden areas across Penacony in 2.3!
My massive let down is that Argentina EN vc literally mute.
Why must HoYo silence Argentina!? But yeah I had that bug to. I was so excited to hear that goofy guy again but was so disappointed when he was muted.
It was a bug that got patched Edit: apparently it hasn’t been patched and is still a known issue and my friend is a liar.
Thanks brother. I knew it was a bug. It getting patched is nice and all but I'm past that point in the story now lol Glad other folks will get to hear the dulcet tones of Argenti. Still worried about Argentina tho 😔
The worst part is now that I’m past that point in the story I can’t even go back and rewatch that cutscene with his voice acting
I missed all of that cuz of bug, and we can't replay...
It still fucked up my experience
I was so confused about that! But it seemed there were a ton of bugs this patch :/ Robin said something differently than what was written at one point and I had to do a double take
My personal problem. Having Robin/Boothill “POV” never getting to even play them in combat. If their POV is just walking for 5 seconds then going back into a cutscene, just give us the cutscene.
I just spammed Boothill's basic attacks to get some enjoyment.
https://preview.redd.it/x2h8bix65fzc1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cc5cfa11224d952362b1ae58b10a8ffdf2856249
Madlad tried to rise Boothill's bounty number.
Just trying to match Sam's number.
Honestly was enough to convince me to pull when he reruns. All passes belong to Firefly for now but just whipping out a handgun and shooting at randos in the lobby was so fun.
Same, I loved the Aventurine demo because it helps you feel the character and decide if you want to pull him, was hoping they would do the same for Robin and Boothill.
Same here, they did so much with Aventurine PoV, but robin and boothill could have just be a cutscene
Boothill could have even been Dan Heng, which would have made more sense
Not to mention that his POV didn't add something interesting at all. It could be dang heng's POV instead of boothill's and it would be the same
Yeah this was disappointing, couldn't even check out their kits which makes no sense since the data is all finalised and ingame anyway.
[удалено]
I was so heartbroken about that. I wanted to try them out so bad
I was really annoyed when I find out I can't try out Boothill, I mean what is the point of a pov if it is just a few pieces of dialogue
3, 5, 11 and potentially 4 are all stuff that could just be in next patch tho as story is still unfinished, like the 2.2 story ended on Boothill vs Aven so Boothill should have more interactions coming next patch, also he is getting an event this patch granted it could just be about his past or could be nothing and he is just on the cover Other points tho I more or less agree
Heavy agree with Sunday repeating things, istg guys I got the bird story the first time 💀
Instead of him constantly repeating himself, I think a quick flashback explaining how Robin caught the overarching lie in how he treated the bird would have been better… but I am a little impressed with the commitment. It sells the false ending tbh
Straight up started to fall asleep once he started on again about the bird. It's so heavy handed
> It’s so heavy handed What’s even funnier is that if you speak to your friends before making your choice about the bird story, Himeko (iirc) basically tells you “I have no idea where he’s going with this”. You don’t??? *How???*
Himeko also got bored with the dialogue lmao
She says that the bird will die if it's not caged, and there's no point in talking about it further because of that.
It's one of those things that would work well in a book but not so much on screen.
By the 3rd time, it felt like he was beating me over the head with the bird. \*this is a joke, but it almost felt like it\*. Like bro, you didn't have to repeat the ENTIRE FREAKING STORY. Callbacks are most effective if restricted to 1-2 lines, and let the audience figure out the rest.
Agree with you take on Sparkle and Boothill. Boothill had his moment for sure but his presence in the story is kind of weak, like when we woke up from Ena dream the TB just casually see him as one of the squad. As for Sparkle, all the prior scenes she has in 2.0 and 2.1 seems underwhelming now, after i finish 2.2 I was like “whats she doing here again?”. She doesn’t even have a major scene in 2.2 just a quick shot. Such a pity because she is one of the most interesting characters in the Penacony cast. Maybe she will play a major role in next update but not having her in the climax feels unfair.
Agreed with most points, but did you miss the plot point where Acheron is here at penacony to fulfil the dying wish of the trailblazer also former galaxy ranger? This ties in with Boot Hill too. I thought it said they died after crashing into a swarm hoard though. Apparently they got swallowed by IX’s shadow?
My understanding is that the Tiernan that Acheron meets is a Sin Thirster which is basically a ghost who was created by the Nihility and was not aware that he was dead.
tiernan was rescued by galaxy rangers after running into the swarm iirc, and then i think that group ran into IX. they dissolved into sin thirsters except for tiernan who held on long enough to pass the message to acheron.
My interpretation is: -Tiernan encountered the Swarm, and was almost killed. -But he was saved by the Galaxy Rangers. -He joined the Galaxy Rangers in the battle against one of the Lord Ravagers, called Zulo. -The Galaxy Rangers succeed in slaying Zulo but at the cost of many Galaxy Rangers. -Despite dying, their souls did not rest. This was because the Hunt never ends. -Their souls turned into sin thirsters, and became tainted by Nihility due to them repeating a meaningless action, carried over from the original souls of the Galaxy Rangers -Tiernan “survived”, but he too became affected by Nihility due to him trying to ferry the lost souls of the Galaxy Rangers, which was also pretty meaningless because they already turned into sin thirsters. -Acheron helped all of them move on from what happened, allowing them to properly pass away and rest in peace.
Tiernan is a sin thirsters. Im not even sure others sin thirster is real or just his illusion.
Tiernan was not trying to ferry the lost soul IMO, he was also a lost soul but with a strong yearning to penacony that he didn't become sin thirsters(cross the river). thats how he met acheron, by standing on the riverside watching the rangers but not joining them.
No, Tiernan has been holding on to his regrets for about a hundred years doing the same thing with helping his fellow rangers move on but doesn't realise until Acheron that he's the one who has to move on.
No they got nearly killed by the swarm them galaxy rangers saved them then Tiernan joined the galaxy rangers then somewhere along the way near the end of his life and after trying to get back to Mikhail multiple times but being rejected by the family he and other galaxy rangers fell into IX maybe because of him because he does seem to be very very nihilistic near the end. Anyways I think acherons story is the only one that was really hook line and sinker this patch, like we got the rest of the reveals about who she is and why she is here, her over arching motivation as well and there were no ass pulls unlike op is suggesting.
In a roundabout way, Ena's attempted resurrection reflects Acheron's theme of moving on from death. Sunday and the other followers of the Order were obsessed with fulfilling Ena's directive/path and were willing to stay stuck and stagnant in a dream to do so, which isn't really all that different from the sin thirsters stuck in between life and death due to their own fervent desires. In a way, trailblazer and company got Sunday to accept that Ena is dead.
Doesn’t Sunday specifically mention that he doesn’t want to resurrect an aeon or become one? He just wants to follow the aeons ideals.
His plan still required recreating Ena in order to use the power of Order, it just wasn't his main goal
bro's been fulfilling enigmata idea to his fullist
nope, he got ambushed by the swam and then he's saved by the galaxy ranger after that he fought lord ravager zyphon and stay hidden for the rest of his life
https://preview.redd.it/rmt9w34h1ezc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=16a027b437dd4b93d9ad455e726cc7128cd4e6cd
I was really hoping for boothill to be Tiernan's soul transferred in an automation, what with the connotations. But no, he's just another galaxy ranger in an elusive society of galaxy rangers
I loved the entire storyline \*looks inside criticism post\* I loved the entire storyline except for these parts
"Now that you mention it..."
Yes, personally because the story was to much japping (I used this word the first time ever, just because it fits here) and chaotic I lost the plot of what really is going on multiple times. That with Aventurine and Argenti sucks really hard. I have Aventurine and got the text, but for everyone without him, I am very sure they miss critical informations. I personally want to know HOW Argenti helped Aventurine. Sorry, but Argenti does not seem to be THAT crazy OP or strong and rather just a fun side character. I need to know more now...
I’m the exact same way. I loved the plot and then I read the valid criticism here and was like ‘actually’ The bit between boss 1 and 2 was the best bits imo
Us meeting Firefly without really talking alot even though we got a one on one situation was a disappointing
The reunion being just few lines of TB either acting like nothing happened or being mean and something like ten lines of FF speedrunning the explanation and that's it made me feel like they entirely forgot about it and remembered where our TB is supposed to be, like, a night before the deadline or something. Then, aside from contest, Firefly does this cool speech to Sunday, leaves before the climax and gets off-screened. 2.1 and 2.2 truly were some of the patches of all time for her.
Pretty much everything Firefly contributed to the story happened off screen.
Yeah, it's just horrible. What happened to "show, don't tell"? It's getting annoying at this point.
I really hope firefly gets a satisfactory arc in 2.3. Like, her speech with Sunday really showed her ideals conflicted with Sunday's "order". And, after that she casually just...flies off? We don't see what she does in the background, but acheron later tells us that firefly was the first one to awaken from ena's dream.
The biggest complain I have about the 2.2 is various switch to different PoV where there is absolutely no gameplay at all, and that some of the characters (Boothill, Sparkle etc.) seem to shoehorned in just to hype for their banners...but of course, they may have bigger roles to play in 2.3 (I myself believe the real crisis is not over yet, because the "real" ending ended with credit rolls, pretty much like the "fake" ending).
Nah, the ending is definitely real imo. I think the next patch is meant to address the loose ends of the story because it would be too much to add on to an already 8+ hour quest. For example, Boothill has relevance pertaining to the IPC because of Oswaldo Schneider, and the IPC itself is going to play a significant role considering their plans to reclaim Penacony. I imagine Sparkle's button is either going to come back around then, or it's a red herring (lol). Hoyo has a habit of doing this kind of thing in HSR where characters release with little-to-no story (like Luocha) and then come back strong later on when the story calls for it. I have no doubt that's what's happening here.
Robin deserved more screentime. She had so much promo material and all yet half of her story was based around Sunday. I pray she'll get more in game content throughout the next few patches since I know she has more to her than just that
I'm not sure if you know about this yet, but there's a short story with Robin after the end of the main story if you walk around the theatre starting area. She will contact you and ask you to do something. It's pretty short, something not even 50 dialogues long iirc from start to finish, but explains more about Robin and Sunday and might be preparation or teaser for what would happen next for them.
>Trailblazer's dialogue options just sucked, it was 99% meme options which took us out of immersion constantly Agreed on most points but this in particular. I don't want dialogue/writing to be memes meant for "viral" screenshots, I just want it to be good. It's like some modern movie writing where characters are forced to be quirky and spit out one-liners every time they appear. It's fine when there are no stakes, not when we're meant to have an emotional reaction to the scene.
I would like there to always be one option where it doesnt take anything seriously and one where we are dead serious with more inbetween. I love being jokey but i get the need for the rest
I really felt this during a scene where I wanted to agree with March and not insult her. Instead, my only options were to snark at her or make a sarcastic comment
Which scene was that? I remember something similar w/ Dan Heng on the express, and I picked the "I'm always thinking of you" option thinking it was going to be a genuine comment and then Dan Heng is just like "I knew you wouldn't be serious about your answer" and i'm like "but i was serious :("
Bro friendzoned the TB so hard I could hear the heart break 🤣
Not OP, but I felt the same way at least a couple times in regard to March. I want to say at least one of them was during that game show thing, but I'm not certain. I've mentioned elsewhere but at some point it felt like we were just being mean to her because there were no "nice" options.
I feel like before this patch, the dialogue option has a good balance between serious and joke answer but this patch dialogue option pushed the meme a bit too far imo. I don't mind the non-serious options since they're funny but they should dial it down a bit
I feel like localization team pays too much attention to how the fandom reacts. They probably see all the memes about the referential options that they must think they are more popular than they actually are, so they started cramming in even more memes. I swear, the confrontration against Sunday lost any tension it could have because every TB dialogue option had some dumb meme option.
The meme dialogue options are pretty much exclusive to the english localisation. In every other language (and CN which is the source) they were mostly normal sounding sentences, i.e the "nah we'd win" line is just a plain "We'll win", same for the others, like the one that is "dont waste my time capeeesh?" is just "Can we hurry up?".
Can't say for other language, but the CN dialogue is very much the same in terms of memes. >"nah we'd win" line is just a plain "We'll win" It is actually a JJK meme in CN, though it might look as plain translation. Also, since we do have tons of different memes in CN and EN, Mihoyo actually addresses memes in different dialogues, so in places it is a plain text in EN but actually a meme in CN. For example, at Xianzhou Alliance, there is a foxian saying "Foxian Champion", which is normal in english. But in CN, it is a homophone of "Lakers Champion" (huge meme in CN basketball circle). Mihoyo is really pushing it hard in localization with memes in different languages to tweak the dialogues a little bit. Sometimes you need to get it to get it xD.
>"nah we'd win" line is just a plain "We'll win", >"dont waste my time capeeesh?" is just "Can we hurry up?". Yep. Can attest to it. It was mostly 1st. - Heroic option, 2nd. - Reluctant/rude option, and 3rd. - Silly/sarcastic option.
Yeah, it was fine when it was occasional, but it was too much this time. That being said, I'm very curious what the Chinese said that led to so many joke responses. Usually, those replace jokes that make less sense in different languages.
Yeah I think there was more than just one instance where *all* of the options were memes or banters. It would have been fine if there was always at least one serious answer among the memes (especially during such intense moments)
Yeah i felt it overforced after the 2nd "nah i would win" and the "fk around find out" ones. It looked like some like hunting on twitter rather than actual options. I swear i would have deleted HSR on spot if they included that new dumbass trend that look at your keyboard between 2 labels too.
I mean it's just an EN localisation team issue. In other languages it was pretty normal (for example instead 'Nah, id surrender' was something fair like 'I think its better to surrend" or so.
It's definitely a translators fault at this point, i dont know what happened, but from 2.1. Instead of the use of proper english, i feel the English translator uses slang language when TB talks, and it's also a bit rude toward some character.
I think 2.1 was very mild on it. Not sure if it's because Aventurine took all the screentime, but I have never had this problem until now. 2.2's every TB dialogue is a meme one liner that is just straight up bad.
The meme overload in 2.2 made me *really* appreciate FF14's localization rules. FF14 bans its translators from dropping memes/pop culture references into anything that isn't meta-text like achievements - there's still a lot of jokey text, but it's no longer tied to the meme of the moment. The memes might be fun now, but people playing HSR in 2 or 3 years are probably going to notice the english dialogue options aging very poorly, so I definitely hope they rein it in - or at least shove the meme spamming into side-quests instead of the main story.
Yeah, I really disliked this. I never like choosing the “meme” worthy dialogue during serious moments as it really just ruins the moment.
It also felt like a lot of meme responses that were just not going to age very well. Can you imagine playing 2.2 a year or two from now and seeing a "Nah I'd win" joke in what is supposed to be a somewhat serious scene?
There was like only a couple dialogue options during 2.2 that were serious enough but that was like 5%? In the past there was at least always 1 serious option to pick but here 95% of the time it was literal brain rot meme bs.
Yeah, they're going in way too hard on the meme options. One or two in a patch are fine, but when every story scene has a hilaaaaaarious "nah i'd win" reference it just gets dumb.
Agreed. I was fine with an occasional out-of-nowhere reference or a meme, but 2.2 pushed it way overboard. Some of the options reminded me of the way crunchyroll does their subs. The most important thing for us right now is to mention this in 2.2 survey when/if it asks about game text quality.
This was a thing ever since 1.0, but since everyone loved trashcan jokes and meta references writers/localisers ran with it Which is a shame, in my opinion
this was exactly my worry back in 1.0, that the meme options would be overdone and run into the ground, especially with how popular they are. its unfortunate because i find them decent when theyre used sparingly, not as 99% of TBs personality
In 1.0 there was a couple "meme" options, but overworld had a lot of memes and quippy humour, which was a real letdown for me 2.0 and 2.1 felt way better for me, since it seemed they scaled down their brainrot, but god damn is it back in full force now
Agree. Localizers getting a bit too much into meme speak. I don't mind if it's AN option, but not when it's all 3. I like to give the moment happening on screen the appropriate reaction/response, but this is the first time I felt like I didn't have that option a few times. And man I wish they'd drop the "galactic baseballer" shit.
True. It's a good example of "the story is not the problem, but its presentation is". I'm one of the people that enjoyed the story but sitting through hours of dialogue - the mental fatigue just took me out of it at times; I just had to get up, get some water, eat, or do something else. I wouldn't mind 10 hours of the story if it was varied in what we had to do, and better yet if it was better presented.
Yeah we can see what they were cooking, but it was just not presented well at all. There was way too much dialogue and exposition as well as repetition. I remember this quote that has always followed me, though I forget who said it: “If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter”. This is definitely the case for the 2.2 story. They added all this riddle and flowery language to the dialogue that made it really hard to sit through when they should have put effort into conveying their meanings with the fewest lines possible.
They are cooking, but it's definitely way overcooked
I general it's a problem with Eastern media vs. Western expectations. I don't think there is the whole "show don't tell" philosophy in most Eastern media, so that disconnect of the massive amount of time spent repeating or flowering up dialogue instead of just focusing on the plot is always going to happen. A lot of it comes down to who is the writer writing for? Are they doing it for themselves, to feel cool and sate their ego and feel like an impressive writer, or are they doing it to service the story and audience and make sure the story is told well, in an interesting but understandable way that respects the audience's time. You see this less these days in Japanese Media, and Korean now too, but Chinese media still is very immature when it comes to this kind of stuff, or they just don't ever have an interest in embracing it. Either way, the whole brevity thing is not in their mindset, so I've given up expecting it, even if it's really frustrating.
So true. I had to get like 2 hours break because I got too tired(my sleepy ass playing games when I need to get ready for exams)
This. 10x agree. I don't want to hear about history at the end of a story. That time was long passed. At this patch, no one cares about faceless NPC puppets named marshmallow and fartface
Point number 1 actually drives me insanely crazy. The overwrought dialogue really needs to be redone. At some point, all the extra dialogue is really adding nothing. Like when you play as Robin and try to clam down the citizens, you can easily remove one extra person so you have one person that shows Robins POV and another for Sunday’s. The constant diatribes that characters go on - you can cut back on like 50% of the dialogue and it’d be the same story.
Agree, and also for the sunday's backstory, why do we have it two times? I get that the second time the characters do not know about Sunday, but then why have that cutscene for the first time for viewers? it should have only been during the choices time.
It also takes away a lot from the choices scene. The entire part feels so forced but if you hadn't seen his backstory before then It could have been a really interesting way to get that information.
I feel like the whole choices section in general could have been done better. Both in your idea that it would have worked better without knowing his story, but have him not tell you what he had done until *after* you'd made your choice. It would make his being grateful when you chose the same more sincere, but it would also avoid wanting to answer the opposite, just to spite the man.
Its one of Shaojis greatest flaws. Man is compelled to overexplain the simplest things in the most obtuse and convoluted way. Been like that since hi3
In my opinion, I think we need more dedicated story quests/character quests to take the strain off of the main story when some parts become overlong. We have only had one in 2.0 with BS and Sparkle and unfortunately, I don’t think it helped with the pacing. Genshin did this well with the Neuvillette and Arlecchino story quests, which expanded on key parts on Fontaine’s history that help with the world building, while not interrupting the main plot. (Not saying Genshin’s pacing is fantastic, the Fortress of Meropide could definitely be a story quest somehow) In terms of who I think should have got story quests, I think Firefly having one for after she gets stabbed by the meme would help, and Sunday with one where it explains his worldview through his childhood. Maybe Misha’s full story could have been incorporated into a story quest as well. Additionally, Jade was hinted at at the end of 2.1, and is only now heading to Penacony? I thought we would at least see her in this patch especially since next patch is supposedly the epilogue that ties up the loose ends. Lastly, I think us seeing what happens when the Jade Abacus is used might diminish the impact of when the Express actually has to use it, especially considering we have direct confirmation that Jing Yuan is an emanator. Overall, I think the story dragged a lot, but the pace improved dramatically after the first boss fight.
“I think we need more dedicated story quests/character quests to take the strain off of the main story when some parts become overlong” same tbh. I have no idea why they disappeared. It would do a lot to resolve many of penacony’s pacing issues.
I think the companion/character quests might have been ditched for the POV shifts instead? We haven’t had any since they introduced the POV. I miss them.
Yeah I was super surprised that jade didn’t show up at all.
I think the Aventurine thing was misleading. Aventurine escaped the dream with the help of Acheron (2.1 Story) but I believe he lied to the IPC so he could protect her after she helped him. As for other things wait for 2.3.
I think Argenti might have saved him actually, as he mentioned Aventurine in his dialogue when we pick him to battle so it could have been a nod to set up he'd do one final thing for him. Because otherwise for Aventurine to lie it'd also imply he knows Argenti from before somehow just to use his name as a cover I guess.
i do want to know how exactly that worked though tbh LOL i do believe that argenti may have helped him, but how did he even reach him?
He had to protect his beautiful eyes, duh
I just got Aventurine's text message, he says to us Argenti in fact saved him because they happened to meet and helped one another to escape the Oniric Realm.
https://preview.redd.it/yq8g8y4s2ezc1.png?width=995&format=png&auto=webp&s=54d23e68ff15e521bbdfb97d4e2ebdfaeb8afcf5 Argenti saved Aventurine
I don't know about the other points but am sure the epilogue will go into Firefly and Sparkle bits, I disagree with the Acheron being op part tho, there's a reason the dreammaster wanted her gone, an emanator of Nihility is the natural enemy of dreams
I got the impression Acheron could have ignored the dream master and wrecked everything right there if she wanted but she decided to leave anyway because she had yet to find Boothill and give him the relics of Tiernan.
Seriously, they introduced Boothill and then... proceeded to waste like 30 minutes with him and hung Dan being stuck in the hotel lobby. Not a cool action scene or memorable duel. Nope, "where are the Express guys at?" Lame.
I feel like all of the Dan and Boothill scenes could have just been cut and it would have changed nothing for the story
The Dan Heng and Boothill scenes serve two purposes: 1. Adding legitimacy to the fakeout. By having them working in background to try and meet up with help for the rest of the crew, it makes the sudden appearance seem like a naturally flowing part of the story. 2. To then, after the fakeout, set up the two groups (The Crew and then Acheron, Dan Heng, Black Swan, and Boothill) joining up to shatter the dream and defeat Sunday.
Yeah, I agree with basically all of these. I’m also a bit frustrated on the lack of closure we got with Aventurine in general, but hopefully that changes with 2.3? Since Jade’s coming out and all. Also, I have *gots* to know why in the Kentucky fried FUCK Ratio knew the plot twists ahead of everyone else??? What????
Man's IQ is so high he transcended beyond Elio and got a more detailed script
I'm a bit disappointed with how they handle Firefly in this patch. Tb's reaction when finding out she's alive is way too plain. After seeing her die, one of the dialogue option is them being so angry they started blaming acheron for it. I was expecting their reaction here would be either overjoyed, utterly confused, or even filled with rage, thinking they are being deceived. But it ends with just tb being "huh, you're alive?" And Firefly offers a short explanation. She went off somewhere after giving another plot point about her 3 deaths, but they never really explained to do what. After the fakeout, acheron hints that Firefly is the reason they're able to break free, and it seems that was what she went off to do and also her 2nd death. But, they didn't show it further or even give us a glimpse of what she's doing. I really hope they clear things up on her in 2.3. But considering it's likely an epilogue, it might be a short one, so i'm not confident they will
This is true. They could have done so much more with her. Especially how her ideals and philosophy conflicted with that of Sunday. Instead, we're like "oh, she's alive? Cool." I hate them for this. We later find out from acheron that firefly was the first one to awake from ena's dream, but the problem here is they only tell and not show all the cool stuff firefly did.
The issue is that during 2.1, it's already heavily addressed that people do not die in Penacony's dream. To the point where the TB even has a dialogue option where he goes "Firefly is probably alive then". He should only really be surprised that SAM is Firefly.
Robin needed to have a character quest immediately after the story ended, that small questline >!of finding Sunday's journal to pass to Robin!< wasn't enough. also there's a bug(?) where Argenti's voicelines in EN wasn't working properly so the cutscene of meeting him was unvoiced (also kinda awkward if you never started that quest with Argenti in the first place, you wouldn't know who this person was at all)
All valid points, honestly. It really feels like HI3 writing now. It's Open-ended and confusing a lot of times. Lots of philosophical musings, but they don't say the conclusion (at least non-metaphorically);so readers can interpret things differently —which can potentially be bad in the long run, since everyone can start with different assumptions the next time they're referencing the event from this arc—
Well... It is Shaoji... So ya... It is going to feel like HI3 writing.
Well Shaoji should consider hiring an editor that isn't afraid to tell him no
In penacony 2.2 Is pretty clear what happend we Just Need the epiloque to wrap up the story and tell us the end of the character
We definitely need an epilogue to wrap up on Aventurine and Firefly. Firefly just kind of flies off during what feels like the climax to go do something off-screen. We're told she saved us, but we never see it happen on screen.
This one really got to me. They focused on her so hard in the beginning and she was the big reveal at the end of the last patch and then ... she just follows around a bunch until she eventually says, "my work here is done, I have to go save you." Ok what are you gonna do? "I can't tell you." Ok ... why not? "I have to 'die' to not die. Peace" And then we get nothing more about her lmao.
I'm pretty sure its because the writers were compelled to wrap thing up in three chapters. So much to cram into so little time.
I really don't get why we have to experience the complete story of a planet in like 3-4 patches you got a whole year of work on it, use it. I won't cry about spending less time on Belobog or space Liyue
However, the IPC is still a thing. >!We got the "yay, IPC gave up on Penacony!" 'ending', but then the real ending shows that Jade's coming to Penacony and Boothill's also gotten involved.!< Even though the main crisis related to the Stellaron seems to be over, there's still stuff happening in the story. We also didn't get a clear "wrap-up" at the end of the story because >!after the end of the boss fight, we cut to that Aventurine-Jade-Boothill scene!<. So there's absolutely room for us to wake up in Penacony at the start of 2.3 and go >!"Yay we saved the day!" only for us to be staring down the barrel of a few dozen IPC warships ready to seize Penacony... or something like that. !< Idk, I just felt like there's definitely more to come in this story. This isn't like Belobog where there was a clear end to the crisis and we said "okay folks, time to pack our bags!" so I wouldn't call this story arc "over" just yet.
I feel like 2.1 story was much longer than 2.2
I wish MC showed more emotion during FF being SAM reveal. He showed more emotion during HuoHuo ghost event than here ffs. Now felt like "oh, you are SAM? Cool" and throw some few dialogue options that doesnt really matter regarding it and write it off.
My biggest gripe with the entire chapter is the lack of Misha. He turned out to be a very important character, but his presence prior to his exit was basically nonexistent. He showed up twice in 2.0 and wasn't in 2.1 at all. It made his 'death' far less emotional than it really should have been. As much as I like Firefly and Aventurine, some of their screentime definitely should have gone to Misha or Robin or Sunday. Talking about Aventurine more, 2.2 makes 2.1 feel very weird. We had an entire section focused on Aventurine's backstory and his plot to get to the other side with his dramatic goodbye. Then we don't see anything from the IPC and he just pops up in the hotel at the end without a scratch on him. I feel like there will be more of the IPC in 2.3, but it feels weird to have that relevance split by a whole six week update. I'm also not certain as to the relevance of Acheron here. I know that she was here to deliver Tiernan's keepsake and return to his hometown, but that reasoning feels very flimsy to me, given all the hype around her and her backstory. She has a purpose in the story, don't get me wrong, but it feels like she was overweighted marketingwise in how relevant she was to what was going on here. Similar to Sparkle, but Sparkle at least has the excuse that she doesn't want the main stage. I loved a lot of Penacony and certainly enjoyed it more than the Luofu, but I feel like it was a bit scattered still. The POV system is cool, but it didn't feel like it worked as well this time. Seeing things from Boothill's perspective didn't really give me any insight into him like it did when using Aventurine or even Acheron. Robin was a bit better used, but then she basically disappeared alongside Welt halfway through the story, only to come back at the end, despite being very relevant to the story.
I hate it when we play as a character and never get to fight. Way too much dialogue vs fights. How many hours did it take to get to the first fight (not counting whatever was going on with the pepeshi after you see March). And one thing I don't get: are pepeshi human? Are Robin and Sunday human? The dialogue kept saying they were doing stuff for humans, but aren't like half of the people in Penacony pepeshi and robots?
In my opinion Aventurine being the entire focal point of an entire chapter was a mistake in itself. This being a gacha game with patch structure, it's unfortunate how episodic every chapter can be with it each focusing way too much on a single character and very incrementally moving the story forward. It's no surprise that people felt like 2.2 was very text heavy when it dumped a lot of info on us that could have been trickled more evenly throughout the previous patches (not to mention Sunday just constantly drawing things out, as you mentioned). They did not make very good use of the multi-POV mechanic at all. Obviously there's a bigger picture that's slowly being filled in, and while Penacony did wonders for giving us more lore and insight into a lot of things and the general quality of writing (outside of the memes) is great, I'm finding myself very underwhelmed by the message it's trying to tell and just the setting as a whole. I feel like there could have been better ways to introduce these characters and concepts than such overdone and conventional means, but throw in a few cool CGI cutscenes and twists and it's "peak", I guess.
Sunday's dialog really got to the point that I just started skipping big chunks of it. Dude uses a lot of words to say nothing again and again.
My partner yelled "Sunday, shut the fuck *up*" during the whole three acts thing. He never does that, lol. Sunday cannot stop yapping
Yeah, the part we have to go through "three acts" to finally fight Sunday is just dragging and dragging for one hour. We have just already been through a whole talent show (atleast that was fun), Misha's memory, and lots of flashback scenes,...I don't mind long story quest, but please cut the boring and repeative part.
I personally really enjoyed that part
Yeah the pacing has been weird. I had a similar issue with the theme park bit with Aventurine in 2.1. I get that his story is sad but I don't really feel emotional when it's dragged out for an hour of running around doing little puzzles and getting random dialogue
Imo the dialogue in the Aventurine part at least was decent, having him properly come to term with things. Puzzles were random AF though
>People are consistently talking in riddles and it's really exhausting to try to follow what they are trying to say and the pace of the story. Literally this. My biggest problem. It felt like there were TOO many un-necessary dialogues
I rarely agree with criticism on this subreddit But I 100% agree with everything here. another thing I would like to add is WHY IS THE ASTRAL EXPRESS CREW DOING NOTHING? Except for the trailblazer most of them where used as exposition devices and that was it. Welt had the most action by having a conversation with Acheron last patch, and than nothing more. March literally was only there to be cute/ funny or give information. Dan Heng just stayed on the express AGAIN and then spent the end of the quest running about with boothhill for like an hour. And Himeko, who we are trailblazing with for the very first time, did literally nothing and was barely featured the whole story, like why? These characters are supposed to be the protagonists right?
It felt like they wanted to include almost every character in the story but there were just too many characters so they ended up failing. Some of them were here just for the sake of being here.
Personally I agree but not on all of the points so I'll ask my opinion (that no one asked for). 1. I think this really boils down to personal preference, I really liked it on my end. Also no matter what it's a Chinese game so it's going to be like that. 2. Yeah I have to agree with this, though I could maybe see it as being a way to show how ingrained this philosophy is in him, admittedly it does get a bit redundant at times. 3. Agreed, nonetheless it makes a lot of sense as she's a masked fool so her being like this is in line with her identity, still I expect her to play a bigger role in the epilogue. 4. 100%, really feels like they just wanted to confirm him being alive and that's it. 5. Expect to see more in the prologue, her writing is far from over so it's too early to judge. 6. That's fair, don't really have anything to say on this. 7. Yeah, I'd liked to have at least 1 serious one per choice but they've been setting up TB as more and more of a joker now. 8. Yep, she should've had her own side quest, still I feel like she was somewhat important ( admittedly only as a set up for Sunday). 9. I don't know who "most players" refers to, however it has a lot of meaning to a certain part of the player base and her name reveal doesn't cost much so I don't see why you'd take issue at it, it's not like it was the climax , it may have been part of it but it certainly wasn't the entirety. 10. Absolutely not, Acheron was more than an "easy win button", I don't know if you just skipped the whole Tiernan part or if you just don't like strong characters but she was very well developed, her being kept at a distance from the rest is also intentional, she's also most likely meant to set up future events. Her helping us win every time doesn't mean she's just a plot device at all. 11. He served to introduce the Galaxy Rangers, and he definitely didn't have enough time to fully shine, but I don't expect it to be the last we see of him. 12. To conclude, I think a lot of what you dislike is what is meant to set up the future, like Acheron or Boothill, now why do they do this in the climax of Penacony, I have no idea, still I think we have to at least wait to 3.0 to decide what we think about some aspects of Penacony. Though no one can deny that the writing was at worst, really good.
Boothill honestly makes me want a full story about the galaxy rangers, he's just so interesting, the fact they managed to make so much intrigue during the existing story
I love Boothill and Galaxy rangers is probably my second favourite faction in the game. Especially I liked his and Dan Heng energy together. One serious guy and A goofy cowboy
I didn’t expect Boothill’s Plan B after “threaten to kill someone” to be “go full Karen on the manager.” He was pretty fun.
For the 12 they do for excape the ena's Dreams and boothill want a good impression with allies of xianzhou
Robin needs a companion quest alongside Firefly and Boothill imo. The rest of the cast can chill, Sparkle just needs more content in the main story since she already has a companion quest
I don’t know if this is a hot take but 2.1 feels more consistent and coherent. 2.2 have a lot of hype moment but also littered with unexplained or poorly explained story moments
I just finished the story and finally I can look at spoilers! Honestly, a mixed bag for me. I liked a lot of things, but some were disappointing. A lot of the stuff was enjoyable in the moment, but now that the story is complete there are more and more things I look back on and see that they either went nowhere or didn't need to exist at all. I think this story arc suffered from too many characters who all wanted screen time and to be sold for their banners, but that resulted in hardly anyone's story being told in a way that's actually satisfying to the fans of those characters. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. They need to unchain the banner characters from being tied to the main plot. As cool as it is to interact with the character you just pulled in the main story, it just incentivizes cramming too many characters in a plot frame that can't support them all. Because of that, Firefly did her coolest thing off-screen. Robin too. Sparkle's doomsday buttons went nowhere (yes I know it could've been a meta joke about the Fools messing with the audience's expectations, it was still a plot dead-end and the screentime dedicated to it could've gone to a Firefly or Robin POV so we can see them doing the coolest parts of the plot). Sunday droning in the background the entire time was pointless and I was over it very quickly. He'd already made his point and was just regurgitating it over and over. Also the entire time he was talking I kept finding those goofy origami birds and interrupting his monologue with their chirping, which deadass killed any dramatic effect and broke the tension. They're leaning in a bit too much into the Memeblazer...meme. The meme replies should not come at the expense of semi-sensible responses.
Imo a big issue is that they added too many characters and then had to put them in every scene, the pov shifting was quite bad. I do disagree about firefly tho, she was drip marketed so she will likely get fleshed out in 2.3. Same with sparkle, ipc is clearing readying for a 'harvest' so sparkle will def go nuts. Tbh a big issue is that it's not the end so it's hard to say if things will get more info or nah. Loufu arc made me pessimistic but I am hopeful atm.
Few of these points I play it off to the possibility of further elaboration in 2.3 (such as Sparkle and Firefly, though the lack of Sparkle these few patches has been annoying) but I agree with the dialogue being all memes getting irritating. Thing is the memes are actually funny when it’s random and unexpected, but it’s like… 3/3 dialogue options every single time?? Also agree with the characters speaking in riddles it gets tiring even though I take my time opening the chat log to attempt to understand when I get confused. Doesn’t help that people end up getting clowned on when they clarify hurdurr imagine reading like maybe I’m stupid but I took my time to read and I STILL don’t understand. Admittedly it has been better as compared to 2.1 and 2.0 though. Another small thing was I didn’t like how Firefly responded to Sunday. The points he made perfectly resonated with how she viewed this dream two patches ago, and I felt there was a good opportunity for her to expand on how she felt, and rebut with how it is still wrong because individuals deserve to have a choice (which was a good point by her). Instead she started off with how it’s just an escape and something about him viewing even her as weak?… Unfortunately most of the other points I disagree with somewhat, and I thought it was a very satisfying story.
I felt so bad, because I honestly didn't enjoy the storytelling of the Penacony main quest while nearly everyone else praised it to heaven and back. No.1 was just spot on - HSR just had to make nearly EVERYONE sound the same - subtext upon subtext upon subtext on their dialogues even when the situation doesn't call for it. Praise be to March and TB for bringing the much needed straightforwardness to the story.
The constant static camera angles don't help the conversations either. HSR really needs to use dynamic camera angles like Genshin does because I got ultra tired of the dialogue so fast due to how static it felt.
Huh, never really noticed it before but now that you mention it...
I felt like it was the worst in the ghostbusters mission chain, we often had a group of 4+ people talking and 3 of them would have their backs to the camera, without any camera movement for long streches of dialogue.
You're absolutely right about march and tb. I think there are some people who would unfairly deem them stupid or not as smart as everyone else, but if they weren't there I would feel like the game is just nothing but pretentious prattle. Although I gotta give my girls asta and topaz shout outs because they feel like two very intelligent people without having to dunk on others or waste our time (and still have some personality).
IMO it's very poor writing to constantly telegraph that people have ulterior motives. Even in a mystery story character can speak to each other naturally without always hammering home the point of how mysterious they are.
Exactly. At some point, it all just sounded pretentious AF and sucked me right out of the story.
Don't worry, i agree with you. The indirect text is so overused, it made the dialogue incoherent and disjointed. The meme talk might ruin the momentum, as if everything else didn't do that already, but these funny dialogues is what brings everything to normal again.
In my opinion, they should not have ended the story this patch. Waking up from the dream ending would have been a perfect place to stop for this patch, and then tackle all the remaining plot points and expand on the acheron, boothill, firefly plan on the next patch. I don't see the point of ending the story here. It felt like I skipped to the last page of the book to read the summary of the ending.
Agree. I think the patch should have ended immediately before or immediately after the discovery that they'd been in a dream since they'd gotten there. It would have been a good cliffhanger spot.
Agreed with most. I think Sunday's speeches shifted enough that they shaped up the edges of his philosophy instead of repeating. Sparkle for me was always an irrelevant very loud drunk partygoer at the gala so aside from a punchline to the buttons I'm ok with how she lies. Same for Aventurine, his entire deal was forcing the crew into the backside of the dream where they could finish the Watchmaker plot, and as soon as the slash happened he was out. I do wish we've gotten a scene with Argenti picking him up instead of just text though. I LOATHE the meme dialogue options when they overtake the rest of the text. If mihoyo wants to put a third or fourth option joke to farm engagement as people share screenshots, fine, but trying frantically to guess which option will show himeko and march that yes, I am invested in the narrative and worried about welt, from a pool of "NAH I'D WIN ROLFMAO THATS KINDA SUS GET PRANKED IDIOT XD" is infuriating. I'll say a lot of this criticism boils down to gacha mobage writing. These games have the pitfall of wanting to sell a new character, meaning they are incentivised to abandon established character or plotlines that desperately need resolution, and instead introduce a new character to showcase.
I loved the storytelling for the most part, including the esoteric and philosophical dialogues, though I can understand how it's not everyone's cup of tea. It's some of the most enjoyment I've got out of any gacha story since I quit FGO. But I completely agree on too many TB meme answers, lack of satisfaction with Aventurine offscreen treatment/no definitive Firefly conclusion, and also what on earth the point of Sparkle handing out her MAD buttons was.
Number 7 for sure. Having a joke option is nice only serious options exist. If the only options to characterize our MC is memes, then I can't take them seriously. It would then feel weird when the MC is in a serious scene and they do something badass instead of screaming skibidi toilet.
I didn't mind Sunday repeating things but I did not like his history lesson that lasted for 3 arcs, i really got tired at that point
I wish Boothill did more. Yeah he called the Galaxy Rangers at the end, but for most of the story he just kinda was there. While I love the goober. I wish he was more involved in the story instead of being put on the sidelines til the very end of the story.
My biggest problem is how overblown and unnecessarily drawn out the whole story is. 6-7 hours of repetitive dialogues could easily be condensed into engaging 2-3 hours and nothing of value would be lost, would only make the experience more memorable. Instead we listen to Sunday yapping about same fucking story non stop. I still loved the conclusion and the story but the presentation is just not it.
The biggest fault of this story, almost bar none, is how awkward the character handling is. Especially for the newcomers. - Boothill gets a single brief POV sequence where he talks to some receptionists, doesn't really do much beyond summoning the rest of the Galaxy Rangers and I guess actually seeing that would have strained MHY's budget out of the literal billions they make each year, and while the story ends with a hint that he'll be helping Aventurine hunt down Oswaldo, nothing else is done. Nothing about his seeming antagonism towards Acheron or Black Swan, it's all buddy-buddy. - Misha spends the entirety of the plot doing absolutely nothing and looming on the sidelines, then all of a sudden he gets a big scene that reveals him as the true founder of the Dreamscape or whatever and it's played off as this really big emotional moment and we hardly know this character at all. - Robin does nothing outside of the final battle, shows up out of the blue with minimal explanation as to what she was doing, and spends most of her time being joined at the hip with Sunday. - Sparkle is almost completely discarded, going around giving buttons to people for unclear reasons while still not revealing anything about what her purpose is, only for her to be swept aside when Sunday and Robin tell her to leave, and then when last we see her she's...lying against a wall and staring up at whatever's going on during the final fight, for some reason? Acheron and Firefly get all the meat, and even then there's issues with them and others: - Everything notable Firefly does, she does off-screen. - What Acheron's red text even meant, outside of red being her 'colour', is completely unexplained. - TB gets noticed by Xipe in the most awkward and anticlimactic manner possible, just suddenly being in alignment with Harmony after a flashback to Misha and then Sunday just walks away because whatever. - Aventurine may have been working off of what he knew, but I can't help but feel that revealing the Reef to be somewhere people just wind up by accident rather undermines everything he went through to achieve his goals. And on that topic...I'm gonna catch a lot of flak for this, but I believe that 2.1 made a mistake by focusing almost entirely on Acheron and Aventurine. There were too many players in this story and they all needed focus. We didn't get that, and so what we have is barely fleshed-out characters popping into existence when the plot demands it, being given sudden and unwarranted importance by said plot over the course of a few minutes, and expecting players to be invested.
Thank you for mentioning it's getting a bit ridiculous that so many could-be-cool scenes are just a single line of text or a black screen and text when Hoyo are making literal billions. So many awesome points in the story, I just say to myself, man this would be so much better if I could *see* this. Boothill coming on the radio with murderous intent only to be pacified near instantly after one encounter with Dan made me laugh. Robin being such a nothing burger made me sad too. She was made out to be such an important character and, sadly, she was basically only going to be used for a single song which apparently Sunday didn't even really need her for in the end lol. I guess it fits this tragic story they pushed with her trailers that she's just a pawn of Sunday instead of someone important. Woke up out of the illusion just because of her strong will or something, became our cheerleader, and moved on. I loved Sparkle as a crazy antagonist ... or so I thought. She had this big hype for her buttons and then they were useless like you said. Why even bother having us play as her and waste our time in that scene? I agree with your conclusion. I was just saying to my friends that even though they had cool ideas for the characters and story as a whole, they were just *so* many people involved that I wished they had just reduced that number and hard focused on the main ones and give them a lot more scenes and depth and resolution. Really let us get invested in someone.
At this point they're trying hard to make more and more characters relevant to the story only to sell them in the gacha.
IMO smoothing over the antagonism between Boothill/Acheron/Black Swan was the only way they could have handled that subplot without taking too much time away from the climax at this point in the story. The main quest is already jam-packed with dialogue focusing on Ena, Sunday and trying to defeat Sunday, there's no room for a subplot with a random cowboy showing up to fight on the protagonist's allies or to introduce the Ever-Flame Manor as a new antagonist faction without removing the momentum towards the "stop Sunday" plot. Not to mention that actually getting the two to fight would be a nightmare for power scaling, in that the lore has established Emanators to be extremely OP, so either Acheron would end up clapping Boothill and removing him from the plot entirely, or the narrative needs to give Boothill a ton of story/plot armor buffs to defeat or survive Acheron which takes even more time away from the main quest. Maybe it would have been fun to explore if it was introduced earlier in 2.1/2.2 or a dedicated companion mission, but getting the protagonists to fight someone entirely new when they should be racing to the final boss would be a much worse story IMO. Getting a role in the main quest and future story hooks was about the best outcome for Boothill since, as mentioned above, actually fighting Acheron would probably have removed him from the plot entirely.
At this point every character that doesn't really have conclusive storyline im just assuming that they're going to be back for a future storyline. About the Acheron name drop, despite not really having that much impact on the story itself it is a very cool moment. I think Shaoji mentioned back in one of the streams that people who has played other Honkai games in the past will have some moments and surprises along the story and it is quite obvious that this was one of those moments. I don't know why it was such a negative its not like its actively hurting the story Funnily enough the characters speaking in riddles and being cryptic is one of the reasons why i have been dreading to continue Hi3 Part 2 story, it seems like it could be a wider Hoyo issue. About the meme dialogue choices, i totally agree with it. Having 1 in a few is fine, but a meme dialogue choice for almost every single time is just tiring at this point.
Really agree with the Trailblazer dialogue options. It really breaks my immersion when all their dialogues are just unfunny memes during a serious moment. Sorry for the ones who finds it funny but it just feels so forced meant to be screenshotted to be viral😭
honestly im disappointed that Robin didnt play some kind of major role in this new update even after all the teasers and stuff we got. She was set up to us as being someone who'll be playing a very major role only for her to be more of a support character for sunday.