Alright, it's been a hot minute now and a lot of people got to play it. Now that I don't have to put anything in spoilers, I'll give my full thoughts on this update. This will mostly cover the update as a whole and not so much dive into the theories, monster lore and other stuff. I've finished all of my playthroughs this update for my 4 characters. I haven't seen all of the variants of scenes just yet. I'm also waiting for Public release so I know what my stats are for Level 3.
So to start with the battle or battles. Laurie put in a lot of work this update, which shocked the hell out of me. I like that she developed her powers like I thought she would with the mini darts. Her growth and confidence made what happened later all the more devastating but let's move on to the other people. Alice with her evolution and Michael with his powers unlocking. They progressed about just how some thought. I like that Alice did develop the ability to pull her target toward herself for her attacks. That was another thing I thought would happen since she favors close fights so much. As for her evolution itself, I'll save that for the Monster Lore and Numbered posts because there's a lot to unravel there. Michael, I'll get to later.
Moving to what I consider one of the big highlights this update. Ella vs Nico, Malik and Nyx. Before that, I would like to say I like Ella's redesign a lot here. I'll have to do another top list for designs because she's back in my top 5. Anyway, I said I thought Nico would get messed up when she went out to hunt Ella but she actually held her own. She did get a bit fucked up like I predicted but she actually was pressing Ella, a lot. Those two and Malik basically said fuck the environment this update. Like it's so much to cover in that fight alone that I'll have to make another post. We did finally get to see Ella get owned badly, even before Nyx one hit killed her, though she undoubtedly survived. I'll save the how for later as well. Though, I think it settles how Ella compares to the top HERO Members.
Now to the MC. A lot of theories became confirmed here, with even newer ones, like the MC being able to use stored memories to transfer them into other characters like Mia, being confirmed. Even him setting it up without touching her seems possible but that was vague there and he cut her first. We'll have to wait until he trains his Memory trait a bit more. Anyway, the MC has a huge can of worms to unpack. From him becoming a papa this update to reaching Level 3 and evening as far as beyond Level 5 via the Origin, which is a whole other bag of worms. We got to see his growth from his training and then watched his potential explode with Level 3. His armors looked amazing. His Middle Armor especially. Some resemble Jackie's Darkness Armor a lot now, which I liked. MC getting acknowledged by the homie Val but he's out of pocket for calling our milf a whore. I hope the baby is a female monster with real daddy issues.
After that, we arrived to the aftermath with Ella's "death", Laurie's fate, Deryl becoming whole and a shit ton of other info. We got Hex saying fuck everybody to dip with SIN while Nico said fuck the humans and left with HERO. We then got that fucker Jared, who seems to have Ice or crystal powers, being cocky and Cole actually not being as enthusiastic to fight the MC now. Before all of that though, we got Shen, who I forgot about actually. It seems he reached Level 4, which explains his looks. There was also the Charlie bit there about how he did it but I'll leave that for later as well.
All of that said, the update was fantastic. I would like to go more into more detail but this post is getting too long. I do have some critiques about some scenes though. Like putting huge amounts of Lore behind multiple choices and basically gating it for majority of the players. Then there's the Deryl stuff, which had way too much importance put on it to the point that you can't save Laurie unless you uplift him. Other than that, it was fantastic, like I said. I'll probably do an Ella post next. When I'm done with all of my posts, you'll see why I had to separate them all. It really would be a wall of text if I went in too much detail with all of this update.