Stream - Page 2
Pearl's position within the Ten Stonehearts
As Himeko mentioned earlier, seems like Pearl has a very different personality compared to the Ten Stonehearts we've met so far. While she's still loyal to the IPC and the Preservation, she seems to be taking a more controlled approach to negotiation compared to the pushy Jade/Topaz or the uncontrollable Aventurine. Himeko and Welt even seem a lot more favorable when it comes to cooperating with her.
The situation of the IPC on Planarcadia is a bit different compared to other planets because seems like Preservation and Elation are, on the surface, at least acting on friendly terms. Both Sparkle and Sparxie doesn't seem to like them and treat them as invaders, but everyone else seems to be fine with them being around and providing technology and such.
Of course it's IPC we're talking about so it's almost certain that they're going to be somewhat antagonistic to the player as they'll always prioritize profit, but I'd like to see them at least once in a more positive light.
Also, as seen from the screenshot below, seems like Jade want to make the Ten Stonehearts collaborate and act as a group, but that just isn't going to happen easily considering how differently they try to achieve their goals. It also reinforces the fact that they're all "equal" and they don't really receive order from anyone except Diamond (who is the original Emanator of Preservation).
Also she looks like to not be fully human? Look at her hands and shoulder, those are clearly "puppet"-like isn't it? Intellitron maybe or some other race we haven't met yet?
Who is Sparxie?
Sparxie just appeared after we had a long discussion with Sparkle about Planarcadia (tutorial basically to explain a bit how the various mechanics of the world work). Sparkle referred to her as "her enemy" and one of the people participating in the "Phantasmoon Games", but they're basically identical visually aside from some different color which brings the question about what exactly Sparxie is.
Sparxie herself refer to Sparkle as "older model" so I wonder if she is one of those "paintings" that they mentioned earlier in the story that become alive and started acting on their own. I feel they have to be separate entities also because of the various things that Sparkle got involved with in the recent past, how could she keep her streaming and presence in Planarcadia ongoing if she was traveling all over the universe?
About the new zone. It's honestly the best in my opinion, I love the modern urban design of the city a lot more compared to what we've been used to in the previous two zones (Penacony was more "noire-style" while Amphoreus was ancient Greece/Rome). There's also lots of new mini games like a 2D pixel platformer to a more complicate 3D puzzle with rotating aspects.
Oh and there's a new card game named Cosmicon Collective in which players choose one card to use (with special skills) and use dices to roll attack/defense values. The damage made is the difference between attack and defense (except special skills that may penetrate defense or similar). Seems like a fun thing to pass time with, plus they give a free 4* after playing the event with it so I'm all for it.
Yae Sakura is a rabbit?
Just started the new Star Rail Patch story (4.0) in order to prepare for the article I'll write later today in the main blog and it's pretty hype to be honest, we're going to Planarcadia which is the home planet of of Himeko that has really strong ties with the Aeon Aha and is the place where the Astral Express fell in the past. The first thing we see before even reaching is a small scene with Yae Sakura, one of the ever recurring expy of this franchise. She looks stunning and she even has the same way of talking of Yae Miko from Genshin Impact. She even has a manga/light novel on her face (seems like related to the Astral Express)!
I'm curious about the ears though, as I mentioned in the title those are clearly rabbit ears, but I don't remember seeing any other unit in the game so far with anything resembling those. Is it a special race or just an accessory?
Seems like IPC is still meddling in order to try and create an anti-destruction alliance and they basically made sure we reached this place. The representative this time is Pearl who looks to be a beautiful lady. Himeko says that she has different appraoch compared to Aventurine, but she's still "cut of the same cloth". Black Swan also left us apparently so we technically have a free slot for someone else joining us in this journey? Hope it's someone that will change the dynamics within the team a bit...
Seems like the planet is currently in a ceremony period called "Phantasmoon Games" in which the winner "becomes an Aeon". It's clearly some sort of joke by Aha isn't it? There has to be a big catch to it...
Date Scene with Zhuang Fangyi
I'm just continuing with the story of Wuling and I went through the scene where Perlica and Chen leaves us alone with Fangyi after the experiment with Xiranite and seriously this seemed like a date scene between Endmin and her. Walking around the city, watching the blooming flowers, buying a balloon each, her narrating about the old times (that protagonist doesn't remember) and even taking Endmin's hand when chasing a robot with clearly camera angles to show this in a romantic comedy way.
I mean they even had a firework show at the end of the date with some special illumination being set to please the crowd. Kind of a contrast considering the city is supposedly one step away from disaster.
I'm not sure what kind of relationship Endmin and Zhuang Fangyi had in the past (maybe they'll talk about it later), but it must've been quite a close one. Are they trying to ship her as a possible romantic interest? Curious also to know her age to be honest, I'm guessing late 20s / early 30s is the most likely bet considering the time skip since Endmin went to sleep, but they seem tight lipped when it comes to this.
On gameplay news, I haven't looked in detail at the new structures needed for Wuling yet, but the first few I've seen in action don't seem much more complicated than the Valley IV ones. The tube/fluid connection system is cool and could be interesting to see how to keep the interconnections working once the entire map is filled with facilities.
Shion Basquiat's truth!
And we finally got the bombshell and, while it didn't resolve the final mystery, it at least closes one of the story threads that has been bugging me for a few days now.
Shion Basquiat was a girl that died long ago that looked almost identical to Mayuri, the screenshot below is a portrait of this girl. Suou and the others investigated in a series of letters they found written by her and turns out she had a relationship with another girl named Kifune Sayuri that was really similar to the Suou/Mayuri dynamics.
The event sequence narrated in the letters was basically identical to the first game of the series except what happened at the end during the festival. In Suou case everything went fine, but in her case the two fought and ended up separated. Kifune regretted her actions (in a final letter that they found together with the others) because then Shion died (unknown reasons as of now) and they never managed to make up.
We don't know precisely how many years ago this happened which makes it hard to understand what kind of relationship she may have had with Mayuri. Was she a grandmother or aunt of Mayuri? There has to be some blood connection as the visual similarity is way too precise for pure coincidence.
I remember Mayuri said that she was raised mostly by a house helper (and she fell in love with her), but I can't remember precisely about the rest of her family structure. How is Dalia connected to all this because she technically share the same surname?
Yaegaki Erika is back safe! Chidori's anger!
It is a relief that Erika is back safe and sound after her day at the hospital. Honestly, I felt quite annoyed with Suou in the aftermath of the event. While Erika was still in the hospital and her condition was unknown, Suou kept hiding the identity of the attackers to protect Nerine and Yatsushiro. This caused even more grief among the other students, especially Takasaki Chidori, who was absolutely enraged and ready to fight everyone, including Suou. Suou has a habit of simply stopping mid-conversation at times. While it might look cute to us as the audience, it must be incredibly irritating for the people standing right in front of her.
Ichigo and Ringo acted as mediators to calm the group, which was necessary since even Rikka was starting to get agitated. I was worried the situation would explode into a real fight at any moment. Chidori and Erika are my favorite couple in this franchise, and this segment showed exactly why they work so well together. The imbalance between their personalities actually makes them more interesting when they are paired up. Chidori worrying that Erika might be in love with Suou was also incredibly endearing.
I am not sure if Erika will reveal what actually happened to the others, but I certainly hope the culprits get their comeuppance later in the visual novel. What they did was completely inexcusable.
On a side note, I found an interesting fact. Chidori’s voice actress is Suzaki Aya, who also voices Ningyohime in Mary Skelter 2. Ironically, that is a game I am playing right now in another category on this stream. I swear it wasn’t on purpose; I only just noticed the connection. Their voices in these roles are not very similar, so it didn't click until now.
Yatsushiro Yuzuriha and Komikado Nerine are the enemy?!
Shocking revelation just happened with Suou properly deducing that Yatsushiro is the source of the letter that was sent to discredit and damage her that I talked about in the previous post. She initially thought there was some secondary reason for this, some key or information to be given, but according to Yatsushiro herself in this scene, it was purely to stop her from trying to get closer to the "goddess of truth". What is this goddess of truth is unknown, but I guess it's related to why Mayuri is basically hidden somewhere...
Both her and Nerine acted almost like different persons. Nerine especially was acting like the typical annoying and irritating guard dog of Yatsushiro with spiteful voice acting (really good job on the voice artist here). And well, they did something that is basically nonredeemable in my eyes. They shoved Erika to the ground for no reason whatsoever. I mean I'm sure nothing bad will happen to her, but the very act of doing it knowing the possible consequences is just a big nono regardless of whatever thought they may have had.
Seems like they are on the villain side this time around and I'm stoked now to know exactly what they're hiding. It's the first time in the series that there is a clear cut villain instead of just misunderstanding and similar things.
What does Dahlia knows about this is the question. She clearly knew that Yatsushiro was the source and stopped Suou from saying her name when she confronted her. And yet she does nothing, just watch the things unfold...
Chapter 2 Aquarium Ruin - Little Mermaid
Completed the second dungeon of the game and it seems to be configuring as a similar pattern as the first game of the series. Each dungeon (except for the tutorial one) are linked to a particular Blood Maiden and you go around searching for the core needed to weaken the Nightmare and be able to kill it in a multi-part battle against it destroying the many pieces that it is composed of. The Nightmare and the dungeon design clearly show who is the owner of the dungeon which, in this case, was Little Mermaid (water based, lots of blue, etc...).
Apparently it was here that Otsuu first found her and immediately declared to her. She doesn't even know why, but knew she loved her at first sight. I'm still unsure about what is the fairy tale that Otsuu is based on, the name itself makes me think something Japanese, but I wasn't able to find definitive proof in the few posts online I searched. I didn't want to go too much deep to avoid spoiler so I guess I'll wait until they reveal more themselves.
I'm a bit puzzled about the final scene that was shown after defeating the nightmare and coming back to the base. Again, we take for a very short moment control of another individual (or Nightmare considering the sounds) as it moves escaping from something in the dungeon. Who is he and why is he connected to Jack? Is it because they're both Nightmare or is it because it's something very strictly linked to Jack (Alice). I hope it's not Alice because I really want her to be playable...
Either way, seems like next stop will be Red Riding Hood. Let's see how it goes!
Hookman mystery
As usual, Suou arrived at the building to try to speak with Mayuri. She managed to find her again, though they only spoke through the walls without actually seeing each other (even though there was a CG showing Mayuri's full body). Mayuri insistently repeated that Suou shouldn't be there. When Mayuri's voice eventually faded, Suou caught a glimpse of the mysterious figure shown in the screenshot, which is apparently what everyone at school has been talking about.
In urban legends, the Hookman is a dangerous wraith, but he didn't seem to do any damage here aside from looking intimidating. I am leaning toward the usual "there must be a more reasonable explanation" routine that we have grown used to. I hope the upcoming deduction section clarifies things as Suou thinks it over, because honestly, I am completely confused at this point.
I don’t see anyone having a motive to fake being a wraith except perhaps Mayuri herself, who might want to scare Suou off. Suou ruled this out, however, because they were speaking just a moment before the appearance, leaving Mayuri no time to switch roles (she wasn't wearing that costume when the CG was shown). Hopefully this would also link to the Basquiat mystery that we are still searching an answer for.
Hikari Chapter 3 Wellgrove - Arms Deal
Just finished Hikari Chapter 3 and it was quite an experience as everything seems to line up for the final confrontation against Mugen in Ku. Hikari manages to defeat the general of Ku in one-to-one combat and retrieve the weapons they were trying to buy. This should give Kazan's forces enough equipment to begin the final battle to take back the kingdom, especially considering Mugen used lots of his troops to defeat a neighbor country called Sa, but didn't accept to take in any survivors to bolster his forces.
Ritsu was there when the battle between Hikari and the general happened and used the opportunity to betray the general and try to raise up in ranks even more within the kingdom. Mugen didn't believe him of course, but he was amused by how bold he was by trying to use even the death of an ally as a way to gain more power. His past was surely sad as his father was killed without reason by a soldier, but he's now becoming pretty much the same as the people that caused that.
Mugen is definitely going down in the next chapter, but there are many questions that are still unknown. Why does Hikari's bloodline have these absurd tendencies and split personalities? They refer to it as cursed blood, but can such a thing exist?
Will Ritsu survive or become another casualty of the war? I'm leaning on survive and change, but who knows at this point.
Suou and Rikka Valentine Day Scene
I'm at the fourth chapter of the main story (out of six) in my first playthrough and this scene came and I was completely frozen watching it in awe. Rikka and Suou both prepared chocolate cookies for each other for Valentine Day without knowing if the other would and they're now helping each other eat in a friendly non-romantic manner. I know that they passed quite a bit of time together already (it's nearly a year since the beginning of the story of the first game), but these scenes bring their closeness out even more and it makes the "Amitie" system feel more "real".
There have not been much developments on the main story side (Mayuri and the mystery of Basquiat) for these last few hours of gameplay, but we got plenty of nice scenes all along.
Chidori's birthday party was amazing, Erika preparing the cake for her was the cherry on top. The two moved past their initial hesitations and are now completely open about their feelings and it feels like watching an old couple just having fun together at this point. They even have that chemistry that allows them to plot things together like when Chidori acted to get Suou to do the staged reading instead of them.
Oh and the ballet scene with Ringo and Ichigo wearing a cat costume was also ultra cute. I have a picture saved I may use for the final review of this visual novel.
I read that there are four main endings in this game with the grand finale being in the fourth iteration. Really curious to see how the entire franchise will close down the story. Will we be able to see a small epilogue for all the couples I wonder...
Zhuang Fangyi's character design is perfect!
The Vice-Roy of Wuling Zhuang Fangyi was just introduced and, just like many other characters, she knows the Endministrator pretty well. Apparently she was an intern back when they first met and look at her now becoming the most influential and powerful person in Wuling. When I first saw her defending the city with that special form, I honestly wasn't that impressed. She felt a bit generic, but the moment we enter the city and see her real form I was completely blown away.
She has a soft contours on her face that makes it easy to see that she's soft, calm and not the "stern leader" I was expecting. Add to the top the amazing voice of Houko Kuwashima (also known for her role of Lauma in Genshin Impact) and we have a really memorable character).
I'm absolutely gonna roll for her once the banner drops and yeah, she's definitely going to be a 6*, her design is way too perfect to be anything else. Hopefully can manage to accumulate enough rolls as I want Yvonne too...
The city of Wuling is gorgeous in both design and visuals. It seems like a modern city in terms of services while also retaining some of the chinese inspired elements from the historical standpoint making it blend almost perfectly that it doesn't feel jarring. They did an incredible job here and I'm quite excited to explore it in the future. At the moment I'm focused on trying to get the first PAC in the area so that I can gather the materials needed to uncap the characters to level80 as I upgraded my exploration level just recently and I don't want to be too low level for the areas, but I will get back to explore the city fully afterward.
There are various problems at the moment in Wuling with Aggeloi attacking the city pretty much nonstop and the supplies of Xiranite are running out so we have only three months to solve the situation before the city will fall. But surely they can wait until I set up my PAC right? *looks away*
Tangtang introduction! She's so cute!
Just arrived in Wuling and we almost immediately had after a meeting with Nefarith and her associate/boss named Ardashir (who also seems to know us from before memory loss). There seems to be way too many connections between Endmin and these for it to be coincidence, just what exactly happened the last time we awakened? Were we ally with them? The story seems to imply that we kept sleeping and awakening every x years to solve the issues of humanity and this time it may be the last time due to the damage we accumulated.
Either way, we just met the cutest new character being introduced so far in Tangtang. Apparently she's the leader of some bandit group called Qingbo Stockade roaming the area and had a past with Chen. She's extremely easy to please and manipulate and we're playing interested to join her group to avoid a direct confrontation. Honestly quite like these stupid skits with even the Endmin playing along.
Tangtang doesn't feel like a 6* character so I expect her to be the 5* released next patch. Curious to see what other characters are there as we're supposed to get two 6* characters. I would guess Rossi from Valley IV could be a good option too as her design is way too well made to be purely an NPC.
The visuals of Wuling are way higher quality compared to Valley IV and it feels like the first real big story arc is about to start. As expected this is the "chinese inspired" zone that almost all these gacha games like to put as second zone. Usually I have mixed feeling about these zones because historically they haven't been great (see Liyue in Genshin or Luofu in Star Rail), but I'm always open to be surprised about them. Let's see where the story goes!
Frontline Rush
After a bit of pause due to many other events in other games taking my time, I'm back to Endfield main story and I hope to finish at least the first arc today. This seems to be the final-ish chapter in which we charge against the Landbreakers and defeat them once and for all in Valley IV. Apparently UWST has a special protocol that allows us to get artillery support in battle to destroy the denstacks.
The pattern is the same as we saw in the previous quests, reach a particular objective mark and then destroy it. Nothing too exciting, but I guess it's the preamble before the inevitable super boss we'll have to face. At least they allow you to skip through most of the minor mobs without forcing you to fight the entire way through.
I'm curious to see if they'll let Nefarith escape after the inevitable showdown battle because the character design seems to be too good to waste it in this prologue of sort in Valley IV.
In the last few days I raised the levels of my characters a bit (lvl60 now), but still far away from maxing them. I also picked Last Rite from the free ticket they gifted us and Pogranichnik from the standard banner.
The factory business seems to be pretty straightforward to expand (even though I've still not fully used all the space available yet), but I find myself always in pain trying to get the rare materials needed to upgrade the characters. Some are placed in particular places hard to reach that require specific quests or other conditions.
Platformer in Wuwa?!
We entered an old facility in a frozen part of the Lahai-Roi region together with Luuk, Nivora (likely another character playable, probably a 4*) and Aemeath to investigate information about an old project that was run there.
All was going smoothly with the usual Quick-Time Event fest of chase sequences between riding on a bike and jumping around the map when all a sudden the gameplay switched entirely to become a platformer. I think I saw the same type of gameplay once again in an old story, but can't point out exactly where.
I was already ultra surprised, but then Aemeath hacked the terminal around me showing herself in a 2D pixel style version and started a new type of gameplay altogether. This time it became a top-down cell based movement gameplay reminiscent of old games from the 80s.
This kind of "changes"/swaps from the standard gameplay in the main stories are honestly quite welcome. Not that I dislike the gameplay we usually have, but these give a bit more of a cinematic effect to the story. I don't think anyone is expecting to have hard battles in the story in the first place so instead of having boring "hack and slash" through ineffective enemies (compared to the level of the player), it's better to let creativity run amok.
Lucilla and Sigrika will be playable?!
Just started playing patch 3.1 of Wuthering Waves and they already started showing multiple "clearly not NPC" characters. The first one was the teacher Lucilla, but there were also two students (Sigrika for example) with the same "aura" that distinguishes perfectly from the others. Leaks indicate that Sigrika will become playable in 3.2.
I managed to get Aemeath with 70-ish rolls so I'm still full with rolls for the future, but I'm not sure I'm going to roll for Luuk in 21 days. Not a huge fan of his bisshie design to be honest.
So far the story is in the initial phases, Aemeath appears while we were attending class, talk with us and then leave. No one else see or hear her making Rover look a bit like a crazy dude. Lucilla then explains that she was a student many years ago (probably back when Rover was also there) and then disappeared completely and was never found. No one has ever heard of her, but there are rumors of a ghost around Lahai-Roi. Then while we're trying to chase for her, we get attacked by a huge mecha and get saved (again) by Aemeath.
She reveals us that she died long ago when trying to resonate with the giant mecha called Exostrider to fight against the Threnodian and save Lahai-Roi. It ended up with her overclocking and her body being decomposed. She's technically alive, but dead at the same time (digital ghost).
Will this stop Rover from making her a wife?! I honestly doubt something as simple as "being dead" would stop the "gathering wives" master Rover from getting her too.
She's supposedly the poster girl of 3.x so I'm expecting that, like with Cartethyia in 2.x, we won't see the conclusion of her story until much later in the patch cycle. Either way, let me continue with the story. I'll make a post about it later once I'm done.
Truth behind the Bloody Mary incident
The mystery is solved by Suou! We all knew from a few games about the Bloody Mary ritual incident that caused various students to leave the school for "personal reasons". Suou thought it is connected with the Basquiat secret and it can lead to know more about why Mayuri is confined in the school therefore she investigate.
It's interesting to see Suou fighting with her own mind when she keep hearing the voice of her mother mocking her in every action with sentences like "she left you" "what's the point?" etc... It definitely doesn't paint her as mentally stable right now.
Turns out it all started when a teacher named Karasumori Midori wanted to help her cousin Akitsu to get in a romantic relationship with Yatsushiro. To do so she started spewing false info about the other students around Yatsushiro and even ended up writing a letter faking the writing. This, however, backfired when the difference in writing got discovered and ended up leaving the school right after. Akitsu also left on her own because she understood what happened. Suou also deduced that the teacher was probably in love with her own cousin too due to the pair items (like the scrunchie).
Dalia knew everything and kept silent because of the "seal of confession". Of course that's assuming we can believe her because her reaction to us mentioning that name made her do a very different face than the usual Dalia we know.
Full on soap opera material here, but I honestly still don't see how this connects to the mystery around Shion Basquiat. Suou thinks that Midori knew something connected to it, but her leaving made the secret go away with her. Now the hope is that she left some hints around that could help Suou solve the puzzle.
Lantern Rite 2026 Event - Istaroth saved Zibai?!
First part of the event ends with a bombshell revelation with Zhongli revealing that Istaroth (Ruler of Time and one of the four Shades) is the reason why Zibai is still "alive" despite dying long ago. Basically Zibai before dying split her soul in three pieces and sent them in different directions, normally they would've dissipated, but Istaroth intervened with her authority over time to make sure they are preserved up to this day.
After Lumine resonated with Zibai's soul fragment, we decided to try and get the three pieces together and revive Zibai. These three pieces apparently are three different aspects of her, so we're going to see three very different personalities. The one we met in this chapter was very silent and serious, but I'm hoping to see a more friendly/happy version of her too.
Her character design and even the animations seems to be heavily similar to Yixuan from ZZZ even though she has, of course, way less skin being shown compared to the former. I'm not a huge fan of these more "lady-like" characters, but I will reserve my judgment until I can actually see her real personality in action (after she merges back).
Lantern Rite 2026 Event - In search of Lang-Gan
The new Lantern Rite event seems to be focused on the new character that was just released named Zibai. There's contrasting info coming from different characters about her origins. Some think she was a contemporary of Zhong Li and she helped him in battle. Some other thinks she come from a precedent era and is actually the "Daughter of Time".
Either way, the only thing that seems to match so far is that she's known as the "White Horse Adeptus from Lang-Gan" and she's heavily present in the legends of Liyue. The whole horse aspect fits with the current zodiac year as from 17 february 2026 we'll be official in the "year of the horse".
Together with the usual gang (Hu Tao, Xiangling, etc...) we're investigating a case of a woman (NPC) going crazy in the middle of the city talking about some relic that she found (she was restrained by Shenhe). This woman belongings seems to lead again to the country of Lang-Gan.
I guess next step will be to try and find the place where to find this country ruins or...maybe we can ask Zhong Li I guess? I mean he should know something about it right?
Last year Lantern Rite was Hu Tao centered and honestly one of the best events we've ever had. The final emotional scenes with Hu Tao are still pretty vivid in my memories. I'm curious to see if this is going to be able to top that.
Laboratory Base Mechanics Explained
I was just going through the menus to see the differences between this game and the previous one and it seems like there's quite a few new features being added both in the base and in the fields.
We have the usual job change one (all with different arts for each heroine, including swimsuits if you got the DLC).
Expand Skill Slots is still the same as before, spend blood to get extra skill slots
Blood Devolution allows you to lose levels to gain extra stats (sort of an end game thing really)
Blood Pack Appraisal/Transfusion seems to be a new one. You can basically gain extra skills (powering up existing ones) based on special types of blood packs you find in your explorations. This is an interesting one as it can make characters even more flexible...
Oh and in the dungeons apparently you can farm blood? Like literally plant it and let it grow over time and then harvest the items that grow out of it. It's actually interesting...
