Initial thoughts on HSR patch 3.0
Jan. 19th, 2025 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoFirst of all, the main story mission recordings are available for both CN and EN versions.
I'll put the extreme TLDR at the beginning: I liked this better than Penacony. The story telling is fine. The characters are for the most part fine. Looking forward to more.
That said, let's get down to more details.
First things, let's address the elephant in the room, which is the situation with the EN VAs. It really does suck that a lot of EN voices are missing. Poor Dan Heng finally gets to shine in the limelight dialogue-wise, but gets muted for EN. I played using the CN voices, and then watched the EN version, and I guess there are some pros and cons with both.
One thing that stood out for me is the "kiddie voices" like the 3 Tribbios and our MC's new summon Mem. These cutesy voices sound much better in the CN version. The EN version sounds too obvious, a bit fake, like it's obvious that it's a more mature female voice trying to pretend to do the kiddie voice. I dunno, I guess this is just an issue with the average chinese vs caucasian tonal range? Maybe it wouldn't have stood out as much for me if I'd heard the EN version first, but as it is, it really does create dissonance for me.
On the other hand, I think Aglaea sounds much better in the EN version than CN version. In CN, she's just a standard mature female voice. In the EN version, she's got a posh (British?) accent. Yes I know that's a bit anachronistic coming from a Greek themed character, but from the POV of the average player, it's all European, amiright? :p Also, given the fact that she serves as one of the points of exposition for the PCs, her voice immediately gives me flashbacks to BBC documentaries, which is...I guess a bit appropriate in its own way. Anyway, I think the decision on the accent was made more because she's aristocratic (autocratic?) leadership, and so posh upperclass accent does fit.
Next up, this being a gatcha game, let's talk (playable) characters, both for this patch's banners and those introduced in the patch to be upcoming banner characters.
The Herta - She got a bunch of trailer videos dedicated to her, but in the story, only shows up a bit at the end. I presume she'll continue to have a separate plotline going on in the next few patches, so there's going to be more to be revealed. However, based on just what we have for her... eh, her design really doesn't do anything for me. I actually prefer her 4 star puppet designs. The 5 star version doesn't really stand out for me, in terms of visual design, voice acting (both CN and EN), theme, etc. Her motif seems to be extreme cutting edge mad science == witchcraft/magic, which I feel is an overused trope better to be left in the background of worldbuilding than to serve as any sort of focal point. Her visual design as a magic girl also honestly works better with her more teen-modeled puppets than her adult-modeled self. As for gameplay, she's a much buffer version of her 4 star, but still an ice AoE attacker in terms of role. Pass.
Aglaea - Like I mentioned before, her EN voice acting is better than the CN version, with the accent really standing out. Her visual design is very pretty, I'll give you that. The characterization...eh, there are arguments going on online, especially from her detractors. The most you can say is that her actions make logical sense. But, the problem is, she's doesn't got anything *likeable* about her both from our in-game PC's POV, or from a gamer's POV (other than fanservice). Her gameplay role is lightning damager with a summon, which along with her lore role as autocratic ruler, really brings up automatic comparisons to Jing Yuan...and she currently doesn't have much to hold over him (other than pure damage numbers I guess). Pass.
Phainon - Very, very, very obviously the local "main character" of the Amphoreus hero's journey, and a expie of a popular Impact3rd character. Unfortunately, neither of that does anything for me. Yeah, he's got a sob story...but honestly, what character doesn't these days? I find his visual design boring because it's very similar to the various enemy mobs we've been fighting all story (which are in turn very similar visually to Dr. Ratio's visual design, lol), so he kinda just blends in the background for me a lot of the time. The voice acting is nothing spectacular. So it's just a big ball of meh. Pass.
Tribbie - The difference between EN vs CN VA's I've mentioned above. Other than that, she seems to mostly serve as a plot device in the story, teleporting people to different locations as needed. The only characteristic that stands out about her is "cutesy", I guess. But she's not a real child either, supposedly being a demigod that's been around for a looong time (millennia? the timeline is still not too clear for me). If I needed cute, I can do better with Bailu or Clara, honestly. The only thing she's got going for her is gameplay, as a Harmony unit, which tend to mostly be the critical pieces of most teams in the current metas. We'll see how that works out in the next patch.
Mydei - Aka Mydeimos. The name is kinda weird, it's pronounced sorta like "mighty". I do like his visual and character design; the noble barbarian prince archetype is new to this game, at least. His lore also got vibes of Sparta, and the legend of Perseus (what with the self fulfilling prophecy surrounding his birth and the slaying of his grandfather). Honestly, of all the characters so far, he's the one that feels the most authentically Ancient Greek so far. The only downside is that rumors say his gameplay role is imaginary/destruction, which is the same as DHIL. So currently a Pass.
Castorice - A little sad that the last syllable of her name is pronounced as "rice" instead of "ri-ke", but somewhat expected I guess. I do like her visual design, thematics, voice, and character design. The only flaw IMO is the white strips in her dress, but that's ignorable for the pretty purple butterflies. Rumors say she will be Quantum/Remembrance, and I currently don't have any 5 star quantum damagers, so she is the one I am currently planning on pulling!! She's slated for 3.2 update though, so there's plenty of time to stock up.
Finally, let's get to the story.
The main story missions do feel longer than previous patches, including the Penacony story. However, I don't think it really tested my patience. IMO it should be fine as long as you aren't trying to do the entire thing in one setting, and just pace things out.
I know some people online have complained about an excessive amount of room puzzles stalling out the play time of the story. But honestly, Penacony had a lot of those too, and worse, because Penacony's room puzzles gave me motion sickness. I'll reiterate here: I like the map design of Amphoreus a lot, it's got a lot of wide open areas and warm color palette which don't give me claustrophobia or motion sickness.
I feel like the pacing is better here as well. Maybe it's because the Amphoreus arc is planned to span a longer amount of time than Penacony (which only spanned about 4 patches). So they don't have to rush setting up plot references and stuff like the did with Penacony. This patch does it's job as an opening patch by explaining the setting background (in small words as needed, lol), so that our PC's have about the level of knowledge that's slightly above the average citizen, but haven't really gotten into any deep twists and turns yet.
What I do like about the patch is that it is also its own self contained story. We came in, got attacked by minions of Nikador, the Titan of Strife, then helped in the discovery of how to defeat, and assisted in the actual defeat of said god. While the larger adventure is still to be continued, we don't actually end the patch on a cliffhanger, but rather at a natural pause in the storytelling. I think I prefer this to the cliffhanger style of plotting, which honestly, doesn't really work all that well when your updates happen over a month apart.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the patch's miniboss. I was honestly expecting it to be a "mad monster" kind of end boss, kinda like the Penacony's plot device Death Meme boss, or at most a caricature like Hoolay. But then came Gnaeus, who should get an honorable mention as one of the star characters of this patch were it not for the fact that he's not a future playable char.
I'll be honest, when we first meet him in the story, I kept wondering if he's related to Dr. Ratio, what with him constantly going on about getting rid of ignorance and stupidity (by violent force!). Later on, I started wondering if he might be a past version of Mydei under that helmet of his, and we were going to watch the history of him slaying his father and taking over the leadership of not!Sparta according to prophecy. But no, shocking surprise! He's actually the 5th fragment of Nikador, the facet of Reason that was stripped away from the Titan when it (not-so-shockingly) descended into madness.
It is this voice of Reason which tells us that Nikador's corruption is irreversible and needs to be slain so that his power can be recycled. He helps us free the other fragments of the Titan, restoring its power but also ending its immortality protection. We then do the real boss fight, yadda yadda. But before that, he also explains the role of the "calamity titans". The true role of "Strife" isn't to just spread suffering everywhere, but to force people to learn and become strong in response to challenge. 生于忧患、死于安乐 I guess?
Personally, I found this philosophical element of the story much better presented than the stuff about utopia vs free will that Sunday tried to shove down our throats in Penacony. (Yeah, I am still bitter that it's looking like Sundary's gameplay looks like it's core to the summoner mechanic, but I really don't like his character and don't want to pull him.)
Now, to take a bit to sorta respond to the other point I've seen a lot of complaints about, especially from the CN fandom. People took exception to the part in the story where our MC gets railroaded by the plot into making a promise to Aglaea, and then forced by the plot to break the promise, and then we get tied up and interrogated, with the threat of execution. Some people have also turned this into a dislike of Aglaea, as the spokesperson of this plot point.
I will agree that the plot shoehorning was very heavy handed. I didn't like any of the options we were given when making the promise, but didn't think it was that big of a deal at the time, because our character was never given an explanation of why it was a big deal, or what the potential consequences of breaking it was. Secondly, I actually didn't want to break our promise just to prevent some rando dude from dying by pulling an Icarus. Like, who are you and why should I care? But we weren't really given another option to select either.
That said, during the interrogation, I actually passed it during my play through, so didn't really get to suffer much consequence other than being briefly tied up. From the feedback I've seen online, though, it seems like most people failed the interrogation, and thus get an near-death cutscene only to be rescued by Phainon at the last minute.
I'll admit, after watching that version online, it does feel quite out of character. Like, back on Belobog, we were only threatened with jail, and our dynamic trio immediately attacked our guards and pulled an escape. I can't see our MC and Dan Heng just standing there letting the execution go through without any attempt at resistance.
Its obvious that entire sequence was meant to have Phainon come to the rescue and to build closeness between him and our away team. But the execution also comes off as building up Phainon's "main character" aura by trampling over our PC's protagonist aura, which I can understand how it would tick people off who do invest a bit of self-insertion into the main character.
But still, I don't think the problem here is with Aglaea's character. But rather, with the shoehorning of the plot forcing our MC and Dan Heng to act out of character.
EDIT TO ADD: Actually, after watching some story analysis videos, I think I agree with with the sentiment that it could also be Dan Heng being politically savvy enough (which he is, according to his showings on the Luofu Wardance arc) to pick up that Aglaea wasn't serious about execution, and is actually using this entire sub-arc to force the locals hands and reveal more information that they've been trying to dance around.
Anyways, that's about it for first impressions. Oh, and there was one more thing that stood out for me. The background government system in Okhema, consists of a "元老院" per the CN. This is the term for "Senate", which makes sense, because obviously there's the historical Roman Senate which is obviously what its based on. But the EN version localizes this to "Council" and "Elders" rather than "Senate" and "Senators", which I found to be a really weird decision. I mean, were they concerned people will think it's referring to modern US Senate and taking offense over that?
I'll put the extreme TLDR at the beginning: I liked this better than Penacony. The story telling is fine. The characters are for the most part fine. Looking forward to more.
That said, let's get down to more details.
First things, let's address the elephant in the room, which is the situation with the EN VAs. It really does suck that a lot of EN voices are missing. Poor Dan Heng finally gets to shine in the limelight dialogue-wise, but gets muted for EN. I played using the CN voices, and then watched the EN version, and I guess there are some pros and cons with both.
One thing that stood out for me is the "kiddie voices" like the 3 Tribbios and our MC's new summon Mem. These cutesy voices sound much better in the CN version. The EN version sounds too obvious, a bit fake, like it's obvious that it's a more mature female voice trying to pretend to do the kiddie voice. I dunno, I guess this is just an issue with the average chinese vs caucasian tonal range? Maybe it wouldn't have stood out as much for me if I'd heard the EN version first, but as it is, it really does create dissonance for me.
On the other hand, I think Aglaea sounds much better in the EN version than CN version. In CN, she's just a standard mature female voice. In the EN version, she's got a posh (British?) accent. Yes I know that's a bit anachronistic coming from a Greek themed character, but from the POV of the average player, it's all European, amiright? :p Also, given the fact that she serves as one of the points of exposition for the PCs, her voice immediately gives me flashbacks to BBC documentaries, which is...I guess a bit appropriate in its own way. Anyway, I think the decision on the accent was made more because she's aristocratic (autocratic?) leadership, and so posh upperclass accent does fit.
Next up, this being a gatcha game, let's talk (playable) characters, both for this patch's banners and those introduced in the patch to be upcoming banner characters.
The Herta - She got a bunch of trailer videos dedicated to her, but in the story, only shows up a bit at the end. I presume she'll continue to have a separate plotline going on in the next few patches, so there's going to be more to be revealed. However, based on just what we have for her... eh, her design really doesn't do anything for me. I actually prefer her 4 star puppet designs. The 5 star version doesn't really stand out for me, in terms of visual design, voice acting (both CN and EN), theme, etc. Her motif seems to be extreme cutting edge mad science == witchcraft/magic, which I feel is an overused trope better to be left in the background of worldbuilding than to serve as any sort of focal point. Her visual design as a magic girl also honestly works better with her more teen-modeled puppets than her adult-modeled self. As for gameplay, she's a much buffer version of her 4 star, but still an ice AoE attacker in terms of role. Pass.
Aglaea - Like I mentioned before, her EN voice acting is better than the CN version, with the accent really standing out. Her visual design is very pretty, I'll give you that. The characterization...eh, there are arguments going on online, especially from her detractors. The most you can say is that her actions make logical sense. But, the problem is, she's doesn't got anything *likeable* about her both from our in-game PC's POV, or from a gamer's POV (other than fanservice). Her gameplay role is lightning damager with a summon, which along with her lore role as autocratic ruler, really brings up automatic comparisons to Jing Yuan...and she currently doesn't have much to hold over him (other than pure damage numbers I guess). Pass.
Phainon - Very, very, very obviously the local "main character" of the Amphoreus hero's journey, and a expie of a popular Impact3rd character. Unfortunately, neither of that does anything for me. Yeah, he's got a sob story...but honestly, what character doesn't these days? I find his visual design boring because it's very similar to the various enemy mobs we've been fighting all story (which are in turn very similar visually to Dr. Ratio's visual design, lol), so he kinda just blends in the background for me a lot of the time. The voice acting is nothing spectacular. So it's just a big ball of meh. Pass.
Tribbie - The difference between EN vs CN VA's I've mentioned above. Other than that, she seems to mostly serve as a plot device in the story, teleporting people to different locations as needed. The only characteristic that stands out about her is "cutesy", I guess. But she's not a real child either, supposedly being a demigod that's been around for a looong time (millennia? the timeline is still not too clear for me). If I needed cute, I can do better with Bailu or Clara, honestly. The only thing she's got going for her is gameplay, as a Harmony unit, which tend to mostly be the critical pieces of most teams in the current metas. We'll see how that works out in the next patch.
Mydei - Aka Mydeimos. The name is kinda weird, it's pronounced sorta like "mighty". I do like his visual and character design; the noble barbarian prince archetype is new to this game, at least. His lore also got vibes of Sparta, and the legend of Perseus (what with the self fulfilling prophecy surrounding his birth and the slaying of his grandfather). Honestly, of all the characters so far, he's the one that feels the most authentically Ancient Greek so far. The only downside is that rumors say his gameplay role is imaginary/destruction, which is the same as DHIL. So currently a Pass.
Castorice - A little sad that the last syllable of her name is pronounced as "rice" instead of "ri-ke", but somewhat expected I guess. I do like her visual design, thematics, voice, and character design. The only flaw IMO is the white strips in her dress, but that's ignorable for the pretty purple butterflies. Rumors say she will be Quantum/Remembrance, and I currently don't have any 5 star quantum damagers, so she is the one I am currently planning on pulling!! She's slated for 3.2 update though, so there's plenty of time to stock up.
Finally, let's get to the story.
The main story missions do feel longer than previous patches, including the Penacony story. However, I don't think it really tested my patience. IMO it should be fine as long as you aren't trying to do the entire thing in one setting, and just pace things out.
I know some people online have complained about an excessive amount of room puzzles stalling out the play time of the story. But honestly, Penacony had a lot of those too, and worse, because Penacony's room puzzles gave me motion sickness. I'll reiterate here: I like the map design of Amphoreus a lot, it's got a lot of wide open areas and warm color palette which don't give me claustrophobia or motion sickness.
I feel like the pacing is better here as well. Maybe it's because the Amphoreus arc is planned to span a longer amount of time than Penacony (which only spanned about 4 patches). So they don't have to rush setting up plot references and stuff like the did with Penacony. This patch does it's job as an opening patch by explaining the setting background (in small words as needed, lol), so that our PC's have about the level of knowledge that's slightly above the average citizen, but haven't really gotten into any deep twists and turns yet.
What I do like about the patch is that it is also its own self contained story. We came in, got attacked by minions of Nikador, the Titan of Strife, then helped in the discovery of how to defeat, and assisted in the actual defeat of said god. While the larger adventure is still to be continued, we don't actually end the patch on a cliffhanger, but rather at a natural pause in the storytelling. I think I prefer this to the cliffhanger style of plotting, which honestly, doesn't really work all that well when your updates happen over a month apart.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the patch's miniboss. I was honestly expecting it to be a "mad monster" kind of end boss, kinda like the Penacony's plot device Death Meme boss, or at most a caricature like Hoolay. But then came Gnaeus, who should get an honorable mention as one of the star characters of this patch were it not for the fact that he's not a future playable char.
I'll be honest, when we first meet him in the story, I kept wondering if he's related to Dr. Ratio, what with him constantly going on about getting rid of ignorance and stupidity (by violent force!). Later on, I started wondering if he might be a past version of Mydei under that helmet of his, and we were going to watch the history of him slaying his father and taking over the leadership of not!Sparta according to prophecy. But no, shocking surprise! He's actually the 5th fragment of Nikador, the facet of Reason that was stripped away from the Titan when it (not-so-shockingly) descended into madness.
It is this voice of Reason which tells us that Nikador's corruption is irreversible and needs to be slain so that his power can be recycled. He helps us free the other fragments of the Titan, restoring its power but also ending its immortality protection. We then do the real boss fight, yadda yadda. But before that, he also explains the role of the "calamity titans". The true role of "Strife" isn't to just spread suffering everywhere, but to force people to learn and become strong in response to challenge. 生于忧患、死于安乐 I guess?
Personally, I found this philosophical element of the story much better presented than the stuff about utopia vs free will that Sunday tried to shove down our throats in Penacony. (Yeah, I am still bitter that it's looking like Sundary's gameplay looks like it's core to the summoner mechanic, but I really don't like his character and don't want to pull him.)
Now, to take a bit to sorta respond to the other point I've seen a lot of complaints about, especially from the CN fandom. People took exception to the part in the story where our MC gets railroaded by the plot into making a promise to Aglaea, and then forced by the plot to break the promise, and then we get tied up and interrogated, with the threat of execution. Some people have also turned this into a dislike of Aglaea, as the spokesperson of this plot point.
I will agree that the plot shoehorning was very heavy handed. I didn't like any of the options we were given when making the promise, but didn't think it was that big of a deal at the time, because our character was never given an explanation of why it was a big deal, or what the potential consequences of breaking it was. Secondly, I actually didn't want to break our promise just to prevent some rando dude from dying by pulling an Icarus. Like, who are you and why should I care? But we weren't really given another option to select either.
That said, during the interrogation, I actually passed it during my play through, so didn't really get to suffer much consequence other than being briefly tied up. From the feedback I've seen online, though, it seems like most people failed the interrogation, and thus get an near-death cutscene only to be rescued by Phainon at the last minute.
I'll admit, after watching that version online, it does feel quite out of character. Like, back on Belobog, we were only threatened with jail, and our dynamic trio immediately attacked our guards and pulled an escape. I can't see our MC and Dan Heng just standing there letting the execution go through without any attempt at resistance.
Its obvious that entire sequence was meant to have Phainon come to the rescue and to build closeness between him and our away team. But the execution also comes off as building up Phainon's "main character" aura by trampling over our PC's protagonist aura, which I can understand how it would tick people off who do invest a bit of self-insertion into the main character.
But still, I don't think the problem here is with Aglaea's character. But rather, with the shoehorning of the plot forcing our MC and Dan Heng to act out of character.
EDIT TO ADD: Actually, after watching some story analysis videos, I think I agree with with the sentiment that it could also be Dan Heng being politically savvy enough (which he is, according to his showings on the Luofu Wardance arc) to pick up that Aglaea wasn't serious about execution, and is actually using this entire sub-arc to force the locals hands and reveal more information that they've been trying to dance around.
Anyways, that's about it for first impressions. Oh, and there was one more thing that stood out for me. The background government system in Okhema, consists of a "元老院" per the CN. This is the term for "Senate", which makes sense, because obviously there's the historical Roman Senate which is obviously what its based on. But the EN version localizes this to "Council" and "Elders" rather than "Senate" and "Senators", which I found to be a really weird decision. I mean, were they concerned people will think it's referring to modern US Senate and taking offense over that?
(no subject)
Date: 2025-01-20 07:10 am (UTC)I really doubt the EN version would be avoiding "senate" and "senators" just because the US political system has a congress. I mean, there are players in other EN countries like UK, AUS, CAN, NZ that will also be playing the EN version and they don't have senators (they have MPs instead). I think the decision to go with "Council" and "Elders" is meant to make it sound "sci-fi". Plus, it's a generic Greco-Roman influence, but Ancient Greek and Rome had pretty different political institutions, so they probably didn't want the influence to obviously lean towards one or the other.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-01-20 07:39 am (UTC)