Hoyo games update
Nov. 10th, 2025 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoFinally took the time out to do the latest HSR story update this weekend. I had already read the spoilers online, and accordingly adjusted my expectations. The results were...pretty much as expected.
The big sci-fi space battle that was hyped up in the trailers didn't amount to much in game. The allied space navy was barely background mention (and even there, marred with dirty politics), and was barely relevant to the actual climatic fight.
The build up and climax fight was of course given stage to our MC and Cyrene. The latter being the banner character for both banner periods this patch, a H3rd expy and dev waifuu... I pretty much expected the big chunks of monologue (disguised as dialogue) filled with purple prose and abstract metaphor to interrupt the flow of actual action sequences.
I mean, they did the same thing with Castorice. The best way to tell who the dev favorites are is by the excessive purple prose monologues -- all tell and no show (the only show they get is excessive animation graphics). It's ironic then that it's the "throwaway" characters like Cipher and co. who actually shoulder the "show" part of the plot, and don't get much "tell" time monologues to themselves. The irony is that these "castaway" characters are much better developed characters. Eh.
Also, I agree with a lot of the forum feedback I've read, in that the geniuses group as a whole, carried the metaplot far better than Cyrene and the whole Remembrance paradox plot. Lycurgus was a great villain, though half of that is maybe due to the voice actor. Herta went from somewhat annoying stuck up genius in my impressions, to a tsundere but decisive and altruistic person.
The small cameos made by the Xianzhou...didn't really do them any favors. More ugly politics that don't really make any sense. The whole thing about the Astral Express giving Luofu the sample of Nanook's golden blood that Phanion sacrificed himself to obtain as a spoil of war feels...badly written, to put mildly.
Like, Jing Yuan says getting it is one of the ways Luofu can redeem itself... like, what redeem? Redeem of what? Didn't we already resolve the completely untrue charges about conspiring with the Express levied against JY during the Wardance arc? Also, what exactly is their problem about "conspiring" with Dan Heng of the Astral Express? Like, the Yaoqing is perfect fine to becoming nearly a puppet of the IPC but no one else can cozy up to another faction? As well, it's pretty clear in this arc that the Astral Express is a renowned and respected faction in the cosmos despite being few in numbers. So what's the problem?
Or is it about redeeming themselves from Dan Shu's faction and the Vidyadhara elders conspiring with Abundance? Except that problem only erupted due to Phantylia, and it feels like victim blaming to say that the Luofu is at fault for being affected by a goddamn Lord Ravager who specializes in social manipulation.
Like, no one blames the rest of the cosmos for being useless when Irontomb's ascension outright destroyed all mundane life in the cosmos. Of course, Cyrene's ascension into pseudo-Remembrance restored everything right afterwards, but that's all on her (and MC + Herta's) laurels. All the factions that sent ships and stuff to the fight barely amounted to much in the face of that one act...
Honestly, no one was surprised to see the IPC tied down by corporate politics and capitalist greed, because they were never cast as pure "good guys". But even then, the fact that the Strategic Investment Department was willing to throw in logistics support, especially in dissemination the vaccine for the early stages of Irontomb's effects, is a pretty big thing, even if they're not doing it for free.
Penacony being able to send some aid under the private support of Robin is also expected, because they are just a very small factor in the overall harmony faction of The Family. The Galaxy Rangers were there, just didn't talk to anyone...I guess because they don't have central representation and is just there for anti-Destruction grudges. Herta brought her space station and Screwllum brought a whole dyson sphere mecha...planetoid...thing.
The Xianzhou in the end just sent the Luofu, and that's cuz Jing Yuan volunteered. As did Feixiao, but her Yaoqing was still put on reserve for the fight. While somewhat understandable decision if you look at it from raw numbers and politics... it's a really bad look for them in terms of narrative and storytelling.
These are supposed to be a "good guys" faction...but in practice they feel closer to the IPC than the likes of the Galaxy Rangers or the Genius Society. The feeling that every major decision they make is rooted in dirty politics also does them no favor in a fantasy/space-opera story that doesn't do politics well.
At this point, I am not even holding out for hope that the other Xianzhou ships will be any better than what we've seen of Luofu's dirty politics. Nor that the other Vidyadhara factions will be any less filled with backstabbing than what Dan Feng had to weather. -_-
Eh... with that off my back, I want to reiterate again that there are good parts of this story, both in this part in and of itself, and as the coda of the entire Amphoreus arc.
There were four major Paths that this meta arc was focused around...
1. The Destruction -- We learn a lot more about the philosophies of this Path and the identities of the various Lord Ravagers. The latter is adding plenty of fodder to the various versus battle discussions. The former is actually interesting stuff. Destruction is aimed at mainly destroying the other Paths, rather than the bland goal of just destroying the cosmos. Because as we've seen in this patch, just destroying the cosmos is useless and there are probably plenty of ways for other Paths to just lolnope. Of the characters representing this Path, Lycurgus definitely gets the the love-to-hate best villain award. And even Khaslana/Phanion grew on me after we got away from the bland good-boy characterization of early patches.
2. The Erudition -- While we didn't learn all that much more about the Path itself, the characters representing this Path definitely were the best written throughout the entire story. Herta and Screwllum honestly felt like they were the MVPs, partly because of their actual contributions, and the other half because they talk like normal people and give the player clear information. Kudos also go out to Anaxa, who is my 2nd favorite character within Amphoreus (Cipher being #1). For that matter, kudos to Dr. Ratio and the Intelligentsia Guild for developing the Irontomb vaccine in the small amount of prep time they had. And even Lycurgus, for even though he chose to walk Destruction, he's still born from Erudition. The characters of this Path definitely took the spotlight by force.
3. The Remembrance -- In stark contrast to the Erudition, this path and its walkers are completely ruined by excessive purple prose, repetitive metaphors, and long winded monologues. This is the Path where all the dev favorites, demographically targetted waifuus, and sales targets, were part of. And it shows that you get the feeling the writers were trying their hardest to pile adjectives onto them. It's just... they had the opposite effect. (At least for me.) Eh.
4. The Trailblaze -- Pretty much just the MC, really. Because March got bumped over to Remembrance, and Dan Heng is still stamped under Permanence. And because this path is just a placeholder for the MC, and every patch tried to ship someone with MC to boost sales or whatever... it reeks of Mary Sue-ness. But at the very least, a lot of cases, we get options for dialogue, where we can choose to tone things down. And it's better than being a bystander to the plot, at least. So I get where it's coming from gameplay wise. And I honestly don't mind too much being shipped with Castorice and March and Dan Heng and Cyrene, because we all know it's only temporary until the next patch comes out.
Aside from these Path factions, there's also Amphoreus itself as a setting. I think that overall, it was done quite well in a lot of places. The 10 Chrysos Heirs (not counting March and Dan Heng) were sometimes hit and miss, but I think they more hit than missed.
As mentioned before, Cipher and Anaxagoras were my favorites and they also got really good roles as often the bringers of change in the plot. Mydei also had a well written background and characterization, surprising philosophical for a noble barbarian archetype, without being preachy. Hyacine's story, in retrospect, made for a more gripping climax than the final fight, perhaps because it was all about the background story/conflict, and not centered on her as a person. Phanion was too bland for my taste, but Khaslana was a tragic hero to be lauded, even if the devs have no sense of numbers/scale when coming up with his tragic background.
On the flip side, there's Castorice and Cyrene, which both fall into the pit of trying too hard to be mysterious/philosophical, when the writers don't have the skill to handle it.
Hyacine and Cerydra didn't get enough time to their characters. Tribbie felt too much like a background character. Similarly, while Aglaea also improved in my impressions, she was also too much in the background.
Overall though, that's still a good number of characters which succeeded in their story telling and character presentation. Which is more than can be said about some of the previous arcs/characters... >.>
So that's pretty much it for HSR. I pulled for Hyacine and E2 Castorice to fill up the meta Remembrance team, which should hopefully last through the 4.0 arc with its JP themed setting. This is all using saved up pulls, so didn't actually spend any $$ on the HSR side.
Oh, and the events that came along with it... I've only played a few matches of Currency Wars, but it feels pretty fun. A breath of fresh air from the Simulated/Divergent Universe, which has gotten rather boring.
Anyway, part of the reason it took so long for me to do the story update is because I have also been splitting my daily play time with Genshin. *sigh* It really is taking me back to the days of GW2 and the time investment needed.
The time needed to complete dailies for HSR is only like 15 mins tops nowadays. But Genshin requires 1-2 hrs for dailies. And then I also have a big list of quests in the backlog. It actually took a significant effort to get back into the groove of MMO-esque time investment. We'll see how much patience I have for it going forward...
Also, the base game install on PC took up over 100GB. WTF. Like, GW2 has realistic graphics rendering and it only required like 45GB at the time I left. And then when I loaded the CN voice update, it took another 17GB. Just. Wow. (I need to look into ways to see if I can move the install directory from C: to my much larger storage drive...)
EDIT: Moved my Star Rail install first from the SDD C: drive to the larger standard storage drive. There is now a noticeable lag now on all loading screens, but doesn't matter too much with HSR's turn based gameplay. Not moving Genshin for now though since reaction speed matters more there.
Zhongli's banner ought to be coming up on Tuesday (11/11). I already plan buy (up to C2?) for him, plus at least one full attempt at the weapons banner. Aside from him, the only other banners I might pay to pull in the future might be Xiao or Hu Tao, depending on which comes up first.
Story wise, I have completed the Mondstadt archon quests. Still have a bunch of side quests in my log though. Meh. Planning to take things slow... I just don't have that much time and energy to go hardcore on this.
The big sci-fi space battle that was hyped up in the trailers didn't amount to much in game. The allied space navy was barely background mention (and even there, marred with dirty politics), and was barely relevant to the actual climatic fight.
The build up and climax fight was of course given stage to our MC and Cyrene. The latter being the banner character for both banner periods this patch, a H3rd expy and dev waifuu... I pretty much expected the big chunks of monologue (disguised as dialogue) filled with purple prose and abstract metaphor to interrupt the flow of actual action sequences.
I mean, they did the same thing with Castorice. The best way to tell who the dev favorites are is by the excessive purple prose monologues -- all tell and no show (the only show they get is excessive animation graphics). It's ironic then that it's the "throwaway" characters like Cipher and co. who actually shoulder the "show" part of the plot, and don't get much "tell" time monologues to themselves. The irony is that these "castaway" characters are much better developed characters. Eh.
Also, I agree with a lot of the forum feedback I've read, in that the geniuses group as a whole, carried the metaplot far better than Cyrene and the whole Remembrance paradox plot. Lycurgus was a great villain, though half of that is maybe due to the voice actor. Herta went from somewhat annoying stuck up genius in my impressions, to a tsundere but decisive and altruistic person.
The small cameos made by the Xianzhou...didn't really do them any favors. More ugly politics that don't really make any sense. The whole thing about the Astral Express giving Luofu the sample of Nanook's golden blood that Phanion sacrificed himself to obtain as a spoil of war feels...badly written, to put mildly.
Like, Jing Yuan says getting it is one of the ways Luofu can redeem itself... like, what redeem? Redeem of what? Didn't we already resolve the completely untrue charges about conspiring with the Express levied against JY during the Wardance arc? Also, what exactly is their problem about "conspiring" with Dan Heng of the Astral Express? Like, the Yaoqing is perfect fine to becoming nearly a puppet of the IPC but no one else can cozy up to another faction? As well, it's pretty clear in this arc that the Astral Express is a renowned and respected faction in the cosmos despite being few in numbers. So what's the problem?
Or is it about redeeming themselves from Dan Shu's faction and the Vidyadhara elders conspiring with Abundance? Except that problem only erupted due to Phantylia, and it feels like victim blaming to say that the Luofu is at fault for being affected by a goddamn Lord Ravager who specializes in social manipulation.
Like, no one blames the rest of the cosmos for being useless when Irontomb's ascension outright destroyed all mundane life in the cosmos. Of course, Cyrene's ascension into pseudo-Remembrance restored everything right afterwards, but that's all on her (and MC + Herta's) laurels. All the factions that sent ships and stuff to the fight barely amounted to much in the face of that one act...
Honestly, no one was surprised to see the IPC tied down by corporate politics and capitalist greed, because they were never cast as pure "good guys". But even then, the fact that the Strategic Investment Department was willing to throw in logistics support, especially in dissemination the vaccine for the early stages of Irontomb's effects, is a pretty big thing, even if they're not doing it for free.
Penacony being able to send some aid under the private support of Robin is also expected, because they are just a very small factor in the overall harmony faction of The Family. The Galaxy Rangers were there, just didn't talk to anyone...I guess because they don't have central representation and is just there for anti-Destruction grudges. Herta brought her space station and Screwllum brought a whole dyson sphere mecha...planetoid...thing.
The Xianzhou in the end just sent the Luofu, and that's cuz Jing Yuan volunteered. As did Feixiao, but her Yaoqing was still put on reserve for the fight. While somewhat understandable decision if you look at it from raw numbers and politics... it's a really bad look for them in terms of narrative and storytelling.
These are supposed to be a "good guys" faction...but in practice they feel closer to the IPC than the likes of the Galaxy Rangers or the Genius Society. The feeling that every major decision they make is rooted in dirty politics also does them no favor in a fantasy/space-opera story that doesn't do politics well.
At this point, I am not even holding out for hope that the other Xianzhou ships will be any better than what we've seen of Luofu's dirty politics. Nor that the other Vidyadhara factions will be any less filled with backstabbing than what Dan Feng had to weather. -_-
Eh... with that off my back, I want to reiterate again that there are good parts of this story, both in this part in and of itself, and as the coda of the entire Amphoreus arc.
There were four major Paths that this meta arc was focused around...
1. The Destruction -- We learn a lot more about the philosophies of this Path and the identities of the various Lord Ravagers. The latter is adding plenty of fodder to the various versus battle discussions. The former is actually interesting stuff. Destruction is aimed at mainly destroying the other Paths, rather than the bland goal of just destroying the cosmos. Because as we've seen in this patch, just destroying the cosmos is useless and there are probably plenty of ways for other Paths to just lolnope. Of the characters representing this Path, Lycurgus definitely gets the the love-to-hate best villain award. And even Khaslana/Phanion grew on me after we got away from the bland good-boy characterization of early patches.
2. The Erudition -- While we didn't learn all that much more about the Path itself, the characters representing this Path definitely were the best written throughout the entire story. Herta and Screwllum honestly felt like they were the MVPs, partly because of their actual contributions, and the other half because they talk like normal people and give the player clear information. Kudos also go out to Anaxa, who is my 2nd favorite character within Amphoreus (Cipher being #1). For that matter, kudos to Dr. Ratio and the Intelligentsia Guild for developing the Irontomb vaccine in the small amount of prep time they had. And even Lycurgus, for even though he chose to walk Destruction, he's still born from Erudition. The characters of this Path definitely took the spotlight by force.
3. The Remembrance -- In stark contrast to the Erudition, this path and its walkers are completely ruined by excessive purple prose, repetitive metaphors, and long winded monologues. This is the Path where all the dev favorites, demographically targetted waifuus, and sales targets, were part of. And it shows that you get the feeling the writers were trying their hardest to pile adjectives onto them. It's just... they had the opposite effect. (At least for me.) Eh.
4. The Trailblaze -- Pretty much just the MC, really. Because March got bumped over to Remembrance, and Dan Heng is still stamped under Permanence. And because this path is just a placeholder for the MC, and every patch tried to ship someone with MC to boost sales or whatever... it reeks of Mary Sue-ness. But at the very least, a lot of cases, we get options for dialogue, where we can choose to tone things down. And it's better than being a bystander to the plot, at least. So I get where it's coming from gameplay wise. And I honestly don't mind too much being shipped with Castorice and March and Dan Heng and Cyrene, because we all know it's only temporary until the next patch comes out.
Aside from these Path factions, there's also Amphoreus itself as a setting. I think that overall, it was done quite well in a lot of places. The 10 Chrysos Heirs (not counting March and Dan Heng) were sometimes hit and miss, but I think they more hit than missed.
As mentioned before, Cipher and Anaxagoras were my favorites and they also got really good roles as often the bringers of change in the plot. Mydei also had a well written background and characterization, surprising philosophical for a noble barbarian archetype, without being preachy. Hyacine's story, in retrospect, made for a more gripping climax than the final fight, perhaps because it was all about the background story/conflict, and not centered on her as a person. Phanion was too bland for my taste, but Khaslana was a tragic hero to be lauded, even if the devs have no sense of numbers/scale when coming up with his tragic background.
On the flip side, there's Castorice and Cyrene, which both fall into the pit of trying too hard to be mysterious/philosophical, when the writers don't have the skill to handle it.
Hyacine and Cerydra didn't get enough time to their characters. Tribbie felt too much like a background character. Similarly, while Aglaea also improved in my impressions, she was also too much in the background.
Overall though, that's still a good number of characters which succeeded in their story telling and character presentation. Which is more than can be said about some of the previous arcs/characters... >.>
So that's pretty much it for HSR. I pulled for Hyacine and E2 Castorice to fill up the meta Remembrance team, which should hopefully last through the 4.0 arc with its JP themed setting. This is all using saved up pulls, so didn't actually spend any $$ on the HSR side.
Oh, and the events that came along with it... I've only played a few matches of Currency Wars, but it feels pretty fun. A breath of fresh air from the Simulated/Divergent Universe, which has gotten rather boring.
Anyway, part of the reason it took so long for me to do the story update is because I have also been splitting my daily play time with Genshin. *sigh* It really is taking me back to the days of GW2 and the time investment needed.
The time needed to complete dailies for HSR is only like 15 mins tops nowadays. But Genshin requires 1-2 hrs for dailies. And then I also have a big list of quests in the backlog. It actually took a significant effort to get back into the groove of MMO-esque time investment. We'll see how much patience I have for it going forward...
Also, the base game install on PC took up over 100GB. WTF. Like, GW2 has realistic graphics rendering and it only required like 45GB at the time I left. And then when I loaded the CN voice update, it took another 17GB. Just. Wow. (I need to look into ways to see if I can move the install directory from C: to my much larger storage drive...)
EDIT: Moved my Star Rail install first from the SDD C: drive to the larger standard storage drive. There is now a noticeable lag now on all loading screens, but doesn't matter too much with HSR's turn based gameplay. Not moving Genshin for now though since reaction speed matters more there.
Zhongli's banner ought to be coming up on Tuesday (11/11). I already plan buy (up to C2?) for him, plus at least one full attempt at the weapons banner. Aside from him, the only other banners I might pay to pull in the future might be Xiao or Hu Tao, depending on which comes up first.
Story wise, I have completed the Mondstadt archon quests. Still have a bunch of side quests in my log though. Meh. Planning to take things slow... I just don't have that much time and energy to go hardcore on this.
