Trarrrr

Newbie
Jul 29, 2020
34
35
I mean, at this point I don't mind going full murder mode on both Ella and Danica. Ella's goal, whatever it is, is gonna be evil or fuck over the protagonist, and she is completely fine with manipulating and murdering anyone in her way. And with Danica, I'm more surprised the MC simply wasn't more efficient in killing her. In fact, shapeshifting is such a versatile power that it's criminal how little he's doing with it. The first time I was impressed was with the Oscar ploy, but given that he caught Danica completely off-guard, she should've been dead instantly.
And on the subject of powers more generally, there are a few issues.
One, the MC really isn't doing a lot with his abilities. So far we have a version of mind-reading, spiky tentacles and body armor. Cool, but what happened to all those animal abilities he collected, like the jellyfish poison? Why doesn't he try shapeshifting into other people to absorb information ever? You could do so much more than just brute force, or at least tailor your style to different opponents, but nope.
And two, the power creep is nuts. It was kind of fine in the beginning, shapeshifting is a very strong power anyway, as is mind control (I generally despise mind control as a power, but that's a topic for another time). Then we get to the sword piercing the heavens, and you start to ask yourself how the fuck this never came up before in-universe. And then we get to Klaus throwing what appears to be plasma, that monster thing creating a miniature black hole, and Alice being able to nuke everything in a massive radius with a special move. And you start to ask yourself how much higher the power level will creep. Or, how they are in any way balanced. Like, being able to kill anyone by just looking at them for a few seconds, is on another level of broken powers (any normal person to be precise). With great power come either great limitations, or the writer having to explain why it doesn't insta-win everything. Better not to open that can of worms, unless you're going for the first option.
To be honest, i am a very dumb person, so i was enjoying this story greatly with my brain shut off but there was always a weird feeling hiding inside and you just showed me what that was, i agree with every critique you gave.

I just disagree with your opinion on mind controling but whatever.
 

John Doe Jr.

Well-Known Member
Jun 11, 2017
1,257
2,519
I have a feeling asking for Ella's help isn't a good idea.
Yeah I don't think I trust her one bit. She's got some weird scheme going on. I love her as far as storyline goes. That twist of her transforming into the MC to drive a wedge between the friendship was so well done and definitely caught me off guard.
 
  • Like
Reactions: collin11
Sep 3, 2018
95
119
I mean, at this point I don't mind going full murder mode on both Ella and Danica.
And on the subject of powers more generally, there are a few issues.
One, the MC really isn't doing a lot with his abilities.
And two, the power creep is nuts.
Danica I admit I spared her hoping for a redemption / harem member route for her, it really doesn't make sense to take the risk of leaving her alive I just did it anyway because I have a weakness for attractive women. I have a save at that choice so I can go back and undo that decision if it turns out to seriously bite me in the ass.

Ella, though, is different. Is she the poster girl for "don't stick your dick in crazy"? Yes. But her motivations are ambiguous rather than outright hostile, she has the capability and has had the opportunity to kill the MC but aside from that one bad ending has not done so. We don't know what her goals are but it's entirely possible we share a common enemy and she's merely doing what she feels like she has to in order to defeat it. Killing her could make things worse, depriving us of both a source of knowledge and a potential ally.

Moreover, I'm getting serious "Broken Bird" vibes from her. We know from Christie and Emily that she wasn't always like this but was instead pretty much a nice and mostly normal girl. Something happened, and it surely has to do with her transformation. Maybe the trauma broke her mind, or maybe she's suffering from a side effect of her powers, but I get the feeling that she's going to be revealed to be more sympathetic once we know more about her. I think that either she's going to be redeemable, or she'll end up a tragic sacrifice, or both.

As to MC's powers, he does seem to have had an intelligence downgrade recently in terms of using them. He's fought more than once without even using his armor, much less progressed more on making steel plate for himself. He's not as creative as he used to be about using or developing his abilities, and in fact he seems to have forgotten some of the techniques he learned. I think it's possible he got a bit overconfident and started trying to brute force his way through confrontations with the abilities he's gotten used to instead of actually creatively pushing his limits like he did when he was starting out. Hopefully getting his ass handed to him several times now will wake him up to the fact that he has to use his brain for effective strategy and tactics and not just rely on power leveling like some shonen anime character.

As to the other powers... well we saw Alexis and Clarke undergo an entirely new forced evolution process that pushed their abilities far beyond what they were. In her inexperience and near-berserk state of mind, she lost her shit and unleashed an amount of power far more than she intended and in fact more than she even remotely considered possible. Maybe those two are the strongest out there right now, or perhaps more likely whoever is out there that's stronger is also more experienced and wily about revealing themselves unnecessarily. Bottom line, she fucked up.

The three new enemies have had their powers longer than MC has, and we don't know how they stack up against Ella but we do know she can kill him easily anytime she wants to. We don't know the full extent of her capabilities either, only that she could handle Alexis and Clarke before their forced evolution but afterwards had a much more difficult time to say the least.

In all, we don't have enough information to know what the real scale is, how much the maximum is and how close what we've seen is to that theoretical maximum. One thing, though, Ella described the monsters who transformed them as far beyond her ability to kill --so strong it wasn't worth even trying. So the original monsters, whatever they are, possess pwoer on an entirely different level beyond anything we've seen transformed humans capable of. For all we know they're some form of eldritch abomination with godlike powers beyond human comprehension.

Regardless, this whole humans getting a portion of their powers thing seems to be a pretty new phenomenon, or if it existed prior it was a lot more covert and not out of control like it is now. Either way, I'm very interested in learning more and seeing how this all plays out.
 

Vitklim

Active Member
Feb 22, 2018
880
1,230
Danica I admit I spared her hoping for a redemption / harem member route for her, it really doesn't make sense to take the risk of leaving her alive I just did it anyway because I have a weakness for attractive women. I have a save at that choice so I can go back and undo that decision if it turns out to seriously bite me in the ass.

Ella, though, is different. Is she the poster girl for "don't stick your dick in crazy"? Yes. But her motivations are ambiguous rather than outright hostile, she has the capability and has had the opportunity to kill the MC but aside from that one bad ending has not done so. We don't know what her goals are but it's entirely possible we share a common enemy and she's merely doing what she feels like she has to in order to defeat it. Killing her could make things worse, depriving us of both a source of knowledge and a potential ally.

Moreover, I'm getting serious "Broken Bird" vibes from her. We know from Christie and Emily that she wasn't always like this but was instead pretty much a nice and mostly normal girl. Something happened, and it surely has to do with her transformation. Maybe the trauma broke her mind, or maybe she's suffering from a side effect of her powers, but I get the feeling that she's going to be revealed to be more sympathetic once we know more about her. I think that either she's going to be redeemable, or she'll end up a tragic sacrifice, or both.

As to MC's powers, he does seem to have had an intelligence downgrade recently in terms of using them. He's fought more than once without even using his armor, much less progressed more on making steel plate for himself. He's not as creative as he used to be about using or developing his abilities, and in fact he seems to have forgotten some of the techniques he learned. I think it's possible he got a bit overconfident and started trying to brute force his way through confrontations with the abilities he's gotten used to instead of actually creatively pushing his limits like he did when he was starting out. Hopefully getting his ass handed to him several times now will wake him up to the fact that he has to use his brain for effective strategy and tactics and not just rely on power leveling like some shonen anime character.

As to the other powers... well we saw Alexis and Clarke undergo an entirely new forced evolution process that pushed their abilities far beyond what they were. In her inexperience and near-berserk state of mind, she lost her shit and unleashed an amount of power far more than she intended and in fact more than she even remotely considered possible. Maybe those two are the strongest out there right now, or perhaps more likely whoever is out there that's stronger is also more experienced and wily about revealing themselves unnecessarily. Bottom line, she fucked up.

The three new enemies have had their powers longer than MC has, and we don't know how they stack up against Ella but we do know she can kill him easily anytime she wants to. We don't know the full extent of her capabilities either, only that she could handle Alexis and Clarke before their forced evolution but afterwards had a much more difficult time to say the least.

In all, we don't have enough information to know what the real scale is, how much the maximum is and how close what we've seen is to that theoretical maximum. One thing, though, Ella described the monsters who transformed them as far beyond her ability to kill --so strong it wasn't worth even trying. So the original monsters, whatever they are, possess pwoer on an entirely different level beyond anything we've seen transformed humans capable of. For all we know they're some form of eldritch abomination with godlike powers beyond human comprehension.

Regardless, this whole humans getting a portion of their powers thing seems to be a pretty new phenomenon, or if it existed prior it was a lot more covert and not out of control like it is now. Either way, I'm very interested in learning more and seeing how this all plays out.
For Danica, I will spare you the needless tension and inform you that the choice doesn't matter, Oscar saves her anyway. Unless this comes into play later down the line, I expect her to end up as a casualty a few updates onwards.

With Ella, she is too dangerous to be kept alive. For one, there is no way in hell she is acting without either backing of one of the many sides, or having raided them. All those bottles of pills and knowledge had to have come from somewhere. And then, she is continuously experimenting on people (the guy we cut down at the party, Kenny I think, Jake and at least one more person), her dialogue makes it sound like the person who she is looking for will be some sort of sacrifice (which is why she is disappointed that the MC seems to be the only success), and she is willing to backstab anyone immediately. Obviously we have more information than the MC, but if it comes to her death later, which is likely, I won't shed a tear.
Yeah, yeah, tragic backstory n shit, but her wantonly killing people for the sake of her goal does not engender sympathy.

Then the last two points. I do not believe that things could be kept covert for this long with the level of powers we're talking about. If most monsters were eldritch abominations that only reveal themselves and trigger powers in a few people, it would be plausible. But we have months and months of disappearances at the hands of monsters, and no one bats an eye. We have tens of powered people running around, duking it out sometimes in public, and barely concealing their activities. If nothing else, the fact that the whole casino gig involved a living fucking monster makes me think that the writer didn't think this through. Because if a random casino knows about monsters, how did the information not spread at all previously? And you also have the upper limits of powers allowing you to wreck everything around, and no one questions it.

But what really gets me is the power creep. I kinda outlined it in my previous comment, but it does feel like things from hereon will be impossible to balance. The only reason the super-OP monsters were fine before is because they didn't interfere with the story. But now, I don't think I'll ever get over Danica's special move. The way it is described, is that she can form a cross on whatever target by looking at it, and the size scales with duration. Ok. But to a normal person, getting a few centimeters of hole in the heart or brain is still lethal. And she will always have sight on a normal target long enough for that to happen. So now you just made a character who can kill 95% of people in the story in a matter of moments. And, you know, most of people with powers too. There are no specifications of the power of this attack, whether its depth/power scales with duration too, whether there is a minimum duration required to do damage, or if breaking sight even removes it. You've just made a character too powerful to not be killed instantly or kill everything in sight. And because you can't (or at least shouldn't) retcon, congrats, now you will have to scale everything accordingly and let the power creep begin.
Truly, if you wanted this to work, limit this attack to inanimate objects, so it's useful for destruction of cover or doing damage using the environment. Make it a variation on the regular crosses, so it sticks to the target and grows for a while before activating and dealing a ton of damage. Or just literally make it based on anything other than sight.

Anyway, rant over.
 
Nov 10, 2017
418
376
usually in these types of games you don't go on a murder spree until you've figured a person out, say

a certain someone in pathfinder wrath of the righteous.
the muggers in the diner tho, it was a coin toss.
mostly tho, you nip real dangerous ones at the bud, tho if you can get into their head somehow, why not.
 

mcmng

Member
May 19, 2020
304
1,018
Even though I agree Danica is too dangerous to keep around as is, there is something else the player doesn't know about her. I mean, yes she is a walking timebomb who could just decide to kill you without warning and because of that trying to ally her is not worth the risk right now. Still, she doesn't inspire respect or fear on her allies which tells me there is another way to negate her powers besides staying out of her line of sight.
 

jkrino

New Member
May 3, 2020
1
0
I really like the gender-swap aspect of the game. Are there any similar games with this kind of transformation (forced or voluntary idc)?
 
Sep 3, 2018
95
119
For Danica, I will spare you the needless tension and inform you that the choice doesn't matter

With Ella, she is too dangerous to be kept alive.

I do not believe that things could be kept covert for this long with the level of powers we're talking about.

But what really gets me is the power creep.

Anyway, rant over.
Thanks for the heads up on that, it means the plot still has things in store for Danica or else they'd let us kill her.

Ella, I acknowledge she's dangerous but you're ignoring the sheer amount of unknowns here. We know she has an agenda, and... really not much else that's solid. She isn't on the side of the monsters, or seemingly allied with any of the other major factions we've been introduced to, and seems to be operating alone while attempting to gather allies and / or agents. What her overall goal is, we have not the first clue. However, we do know she isn't doing this out of sadism and probably not selfishness, she has expressed remorse at what she feels she has to do. And Emily, a quite trustworthy source, has vouched for her having at one time been a quite nice and normal person.

She has knowledge we need, and power that could possibly benefit us as well. Killing her, even if we can, might easily be a mistake and acting without all the facts could bite us on the ass in severe, maybe even unrecoverable ways.

What makes you think things are remaining covert? The authorities now know about monsters, and that they're responsible for the disappearances, and Nightblade, and are trying to learn more and figure out how to deal with these new issues. You're right that things have escalated to the point they can't remain secret and... they haven't. The news is reporting about this stuff openly, and it's reached a point where it's drawn the attention of higher levels of government as well. This is a society that has now begun to learn about things beyond the mundane human world and are still trying to even figure out what exactly the hell they're even dealing with.

As to Danica... you forget that the MC survived her ultimate attack once. In fact, in the bad endings it doesn't even finish him, just disables him long enough for her to come up on him and blast him to bits so that even he can't regenerate. But he's a full range shapeshifter, he should be able to counter it more easily than the crude way of cutting out the crosssmark. Imagine if he sprouts a tentacle from a section below the mark and then connects it to a section above, and then transfers his mass to that lower section. And if he does so with each of the other sections, he can minimixe the loss of mass and survive it relatively easily.

And of course you're ignoring that she has to see her target to affect it. When he was cornered behind that desk he could have shifted into the form of a black cat and slipped away easily in the dark, or a non-reflective black snake with deadly venom and coiled in waiting to strike from a hidden spot like under a piece of furniture, or become a housefly and flew up out of sight to the ceiling to turn into a black widow and drop onto her from above, or become something small like a mouse and hide, hell he can probably camouflage himself perfectly to any environment he's in. He's never even tried to mimic non-living objects, but there's no reason he couldn't. Regardless, if he fought smart he could have hidden and blindsided her anytime. Beating her shouldn't have been that difficult except that he kept trying to overpower her in a frontal assault like an idiot.

If I had to fight her, without powers, I'd bring a can of pepper spray. Blind her so she can't use her X power, evade her blind shooting in the dark with her cross blade things, and then take her down like any normal person. Sword, gun, baseball bat, whatever once you neutralize her vision she's mostly helpless. If I had just regeneration, I'd try a gun since I doubt she can shoot a bullet out of the air with her cross blades nor do I think she could use the X power fast enough to keep you from getting at least a shot or two off. She's not bulletproof, nor does she have powerful healing, so the damage she does to you will heal while that done to her will wound, incapacitate, or even kill her.

Bottom line, she's dangerous as hell but not at all unstoppable.
 

Vitklim

Active Member
Feb 22, 2018
880
1,230
Thanks for the heads up on that, it means the plot still has things in store for Danica or else they'd let us kill her.

Ella, I acknowledge she's dangerous but you're ignoring the sheer amount of unknowns here. We know she has an agenda, and... really not much else that's solid. She isn't on the side of the monsters, or seemingly allied with any of the other major factions we've been introduced to, and seems to be operating alone while attempting to gather allies and / or agents. What her overall goal is, we have not the first clue. However, we do know she isn't doing this out of sadism and probably not selfishness, she has expressed remorse at what she feels she has to do. And Emily, a quite trustworthy source, has vouched for her having at one time been a quite nice and normal person.

She has knowledge we need, and power that could possibly benefit us as well. Killing her, even if we can, might easily be a mistake and acting without all the facts could bite us on the ass in severe, maybe even unrecoverable ways.

What makes you think things are remaining covert? The authorities now know about monsters, and that they're responsible for the disappearances, and Nightblade, and are trying to learn more and figure out how to deal with these new issues. You're right that things have escalated to the point they can't remain secret and... they haven't. The news is reporting about this stuff openly, and it's reached a point where it's drawn the attention of higher levels of government as well. This is a society that has now begun to learn about things beyond the mundane human world and are still trying to even figure out what exactly the hell they're even dealing with.

As to Danica... you forget that the MC survived her ultimate attack once. In fact, in the bad endings it doesn't even finish him, just disables him long enough for her to come up on him and blast him to bits so that even he can't regenerate. But he's a full range shapeshifter, he should be able to counter it more easily than the crude way of cutting out the crosssmark. Imagine if he sprouts a tentacle from a section below the mark and then connects it to a section above, and then transfers his mass to that lower section. And if he does so with each of the other sections, he can minimixe the loss of mass and survive it relatively easily.

And of course you're ignoring that she has to see her target to affect it. When he was cornered behind that desk he could have shifted into the form of a black cat and slipped away easily in the dark, or a non-reflective black snake with deadly venom and coiled in waiting to strike from a hidden spot like under a piece of furniture, or become a housefly and flew up out of sight to the ceiling to turn into a black widow and drop onto her from above, or become something small like a mouse and hide, hell he can probably camouflage himself perfectly to any environment he's in. He's never even tried to mimic non-living objects, but there's no reason he couldn't. Regardless, if he fought smart he could have hidden and blindsided her anytime. Beating her shouldn't have been that difficult except that he kept trying to overpower her in a frontal assault like an idiot.

If I had to fight her, without powers, I'd bring a can of pepper spray. Blind her so she can't use her X power, evade her blind shooting in the dark with her cross blade things, and then take her down like any normal person. Sword, gun, baseball bat, whatever once you neutralize her vision she's mostly helpless. If I had just regeneration, I'd try a gun since I doubt she can shoot a bullet out of the air with her cross blades nor do I think she could use the X power fast enough to keep you from getting at least a shot or two off. She's not bulletproof, nor does she have powerful healing, so the damage she does to you will heal while that done to her will wound, incapacitate, or even kill her.

Bottom line, she's dangerous as hell but not at all unstoppable.
I mean, with Ella, unfortunately she is being deliberately evil. Her methods are what would condemn her as an antagonist. And while we don't have precise knowledge of her intentions, some things can be pieced together rather easily. She is acting either alone or with an unknown group. She is trying to find a powerful person who will be able to evolve multiple times and whose powers are suitable, and that person is likely a sacrifice for one of the very powerful monsters she mentioned (I am assuming this based on some of the early bad ends and her expressing remorse that the MC appears to be the only person she is able to find, meaning they are likely to die in the process of whatever she needs them for. Ella does care about MC on some level, but she will still easily backstab him if it suits her.).
Whatever she is, she is not an ally. And while the MC might not beat her in combat, I highly suspect she will eventually be killed by a third party, likely one of the other factions, or whoever she's working for. And I will not feel sorry for her in the slightest, because she was deliberately feeding people into the grinder in her attempts to find the right person. We know of at least two confirmed deaths in the process, and likely more.

In terms of secrecy, some things do not seem to line up. Some factions have clearly known about monsters for decades, but that means either the monsters are a relatively new phenomenon too, or something caused them to begin to interfere, creating powered people. This is kinda unclear. However, what we do know, is that people have been disappearing for a while since the beginning of the game, the news reports confirm as much. We are given very little information on the state of the world more generally, but they seem to be somewhat more advanced in terms of technology, and I would think have the capability of identifying that the victims of those attacks were killed by something completely unusual, or even record the circumstances of death through video surveillance, geolocation, etc. In other words, this should've blown up a lot sooner, and that's even assuming that the monsters are a new phenomenon.
Later on, things obviously are unraveling more, what, with the MC tearing up a highway and an entire building while fighting, but at the same time, things around him don't seem to change. No mention of weird happenings from other people he talks to outside of mainline story, the government doesn't seem to do anything, it just seems like the world remains mostly static after events which should've caused some changes (This could be easily addressed by adding in minor interactions with other characters where they notice some weird things are going on recently). Also, this might be just me, but the full blown conflict going on in the main story does not seem to gel well with most side stories. It feels like the side stories were written for a mostly normal status quo, not the upturning of everything in the world, which we seem to be heading towards.

And with Danica's ultimate power, yeah, the MC is in the miniscule percentage of people who has a chance of surviving that attack. Anyone without regenerative powers is fucked, and since we're not given how powerful that attack of hers actually is, even those more resistant to damage would still likely die. Hell, if Alice tried to fight her, I would expect her to die very quickly, and there's no coming back for her. And this by the way, all rests on the fact that the MC has a unique ability that allows him to learn exactly how that ability works. Which nobody else knows. Meaning anyone else trying to fight her is basically guaranteed to lose. So we have an ability that only a single character that we know of is able to counter in any way, and therefore is the only one able to fight her in straight combat. This is a textbook example of a plot contrivance, where you need a whole array of coincidences for things to make sense.
This is in no way balanced. You need more limitations on that sort of thing.

And this really comes down to the balancing of such things in general. Making abilities rely only on sight, especially very powerful ones, makes them binary. The character either can use them and beat everything, or they have to be instantly blinded in a battle to counterbalance it. Forcing an artificial disadvantage into the situation because you've written yourself into a corner. This is why full metamorphism that the MC supposedly possesses would also be overpowered if he used his abilities properly. If he truly can turn into a fly with zero downsides, and then sneak attack most enemies, killing them instantly, that is also too powerful.
 
4.80 star(s) 402 Votes