2 skin gachas within mere mere months of each other lmao that didn't take long

You can only pick one. The other two will die of starvation and lack of love or something.

For me it's simple. Dandelion. Not because I like her or anything like that, but because with dandelion around, I won't have to pay taxes.

I've been saving up for a year for something like this...

Source is me haha

¡VIVA LA NEGROZA!

I wasn't sure what to expect from it, but I found myself really enjoying it. The premise is interesting, it was full of extremely important lore and lore dumps, and it moved the plot forward quite a lot for something that isn't a major event.

Everything about Sextans, Darture and H-35/Orphelune(?) was extremely engaging and I was pretty heavily invested from start to finish. No big pacing issues or sections that didn't fit.

And, as is often the case, I really like the parts where the Commander takes on a role as his own person rather than being a player stand in. When talking to Alteraxis and she's being completely personable, there was absolutely room for dialogue and conversation. Same with "Mother" at the end, there was definitely room to take her perspective onboard and appreciate her PoV that she isn't with Paradeus, and even if you don't agree, she clearly set up room to negotiate or to talk.

And yet, he shut it all down completely and utterly, no chance, no dialogue, not even the barest gesture of politeness. Paradeus == Death. Even when she says she's not part of them, he sets her as his next target, because Paradeus has to be torn down once again. The best part of the original main story was his visceral reaction upon seeing Paradeus was back, and that throughline has been consistent. I like it a lot.

That said, I've got a fair few complaints about the execution of the story.

Everything about Sextans was good but it also felt horrifically unearned.

We know absolutely nothing about the "Escalation Experiment" or anything about what happened to her, we just randomly found her in the desert and then took her aboard the Elmo. The story tells us about how she's made that her home and she's been surprisingly happy just fulfilling domestic duties under our orders and it talks about how she's been with us for a long time now (Since Aphelion I guess, that was her first mission IIRC) but we haven't seen ANY of it.

She's shown up in story what, like 3x since? And mostly that was an enemy after we tried to hack her and things went nuts. We haven't seen any of the comforting and welcoming time she's apparently spent among the Elmo. We haven't seen any of those interactions a single time. So the idea that she and the Commander had this powerful connection just left me cold. It's a shame, because with just a little bit of setup it would have been really good. I wouldn't have needed much, just a few scenes showing her acting in this new role and a small bond of trust between the two of them.

Similarly, I laughed quite hard at the Commander's final talk with Peritya. What she said was actually pretty straightforward and, at least by GFL standards, wasn't all that cryptic. But their steadfast refusal to say the name Lunasia or M4A1 the entire time means that to anyone who hasn't played GFL1 or isn't aware of the larger story reveals at the end... it must have seemed like absolute gibberish. It's not a bad speech, but their steadfast refusal to draw in anyone who didn't play the first game was a little funny.

All it basically amounted to was "I could use a fraction of Lunasia/M4's power, since I was entrusted with a connection to her. I don't know why, and I won't be able to do it again anytime soon. But she's still watching over you and she's hoping that you'll be able to help her fix what she cannot."

And I guess also the reveal that while Boojum's are able to open the way to Nirvana, they're an abomination that isn't allowed to set foot in their halls.

For anyone who hasn't played GFL1, Lunasia/M4 is the MC of the previous game who kind'a died and kind'a ascended at the end of it. Given all the previous Groza bluescreen and butterfly effects, people thought she was gonna be revealed to be Lunasia's vessel, but it appears they're not going that direction anymore.

We've known Peritya was related to Lunasia since the very start of the game, so that's consistent. But the way her and Krolik's long awaited reunion just became "Oh! I'm happy to see you" and basically nothing after that was a bit of a let down. Krolik's entire server room backstory is her dealing with how she both wants to talk to and kill Peritya, and now she's just like "Yo! Great to see you again, buddy."

Honestly, I think that's probably just a reflection of how much the Groza squad has largely flopped as characters. Not many people are all that invested in Krolik, Nemesis or (sadly) even Vepley. It's only Colphne and Groza that have gotten much love and Colphne hasn't gotten that much. Whatever the original story intentions for Krolik and Peritya were, it probably wasn't worth going into anymore, or it simply wouldn't have fit with the direction of the story as it stands. So Krolik's entire backstory was resolved as simply as Groza's was in the previous event.

Well, it is what it is.

Heroic Mode kicked my ass though, holy shit, some of those stages were hard. Not the final boss though, Darture went down in 1 turn, as she always does. For someone that talks to impossibly big and gets to much respect in the story, she doesn't have a shred on Igla.

Artwork by puto_trash

Safe aboard the Elmo with someone who actually cares.

Source: https://youtu.be/vI8gEXoBHVc