152 insights into my soul

So the DW/SW popularity poll I posted about yesterday inspired me to make some lists of my own. I don't think I could end up doing a top 10 DW characters list, because it would end up being mostly Wei, so to be fair, I'll do a top 5 in each faction:

Wei
1) Xu Huang- I've always loved his character design, I guess its the hood, and he's a bad-ass to boot.
2)Xiahou Dun- he just oozes bad-assedness. I've always been a fan of his character design, but I especially love the move to the long coat in DW6/7.
3) Wang Yi- by far the baddest ass chick in the DW series.
4) Zhang Liao- Another bad-ass. Am I sensing a theme here? Anyhoo, his halberd moveset in the previous games was great, but he really shines with the twin axes now.
5) Cao Pi- by far the most awesome of the "leaders". I love his arrogant attitude, and I've always loved his twin sword move set.

(Actually I just like the Wei too much, so I'll do top 10)

6) Jia Xu- He's just such a great character design, I like the Arabian/Ninja look and the assassin feel to him. (I especially love his Assassin's Creed DLC costume in DW7 as well)
7) Zhang He- He's got speed and style, and I love his desire to add a tinge of grace and beauty to the slaughter of opponents.
8) Dian Wei- This guy is just a beast!
9) Zhen Ji- Cao Pi's better half, making them the best couple in both series. She's hot and I love her attitude, she and Cao Pi suit each other.
10) Cao Ren- I just love his dwarven warrior feel.

Wu:
1) Zhou Tai- Its a dude in black and red armor who uses a katana in the iai-jutsu style, you would expect someone else as number one?
2) Gan Ning- If there was no Zhou Tai, he'd obviously be the baddest ass of the Wu. He just has an awesome look and personality.
3) Lu Xun- He's young, but I've always like his character design and his moveset. Especially what they did with it in WO3.
4) Ling Tong- Gan Ning's frenemy/partner in crime. Both are great warriors in their own right, but together they're even more awesome.
5) Ding Feng- I love his look, his mix of wrestling and throwing bombs moveset is fun as hell, and he warrior poet personality is great.

Shu:
1) (tie) Ma Chao and Zhao Yun- I struggled over which one to put over the other, but I like them both too much. They both have great designs and movesets, and by far my favorite Shu to play.
2) Guan Ping- The epitome of the young warrior seeking to prove himself and live up to the lofty standards set up by his dad. Alas, his DW7 moveset isn't as great as his original one.
3) Wei Yan- I love the whole beastman thing and his almost berserker fighting style is great!
4) Yue Ying- I'm not a fan of the changes they've made with her since DW6. But thankfully, her old armored costume is available, and she's back to using her scythe in WO3.
5) Xing Cai- Great character design, and I always like her and Guan Ping as the children of two of Shu's previous bad-assses, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei.

Jin/Other:- (There just weren't enough in either faction to make a decent top 5, so I combined them)
1) Lu Bu- The baddest of the bad.
2) Zhong Hui- I just love his design and totally arrogant personality.
3) Wang Yuanji- The hottest of the DW girls, and a bad-ass with the throwing knives.
4) Xiahou Ba- The armored knight thing he has going is great. And his special in WO3, the super speed boost is just too awesome.
5) Diao Chan- The hottest DW girl until Wang Yuanji showed up.

Samurai Warriors:

1) Kojiro Sasaki- I love everything about this guy, his character design, his moves, his personality. He's the best swordsman after Musashi, but revels in the killing.
2) Mitsuhide Akechi- He's just the epitome of the traditional bad-ass samurai. Again, great looking design, and his moveset is phenomenal.
3) Muneshige Tachibana- the best addition from SW3. I love the heroic knight thing he has going, and his moveset is great!
4) Ginchiyo Tachibana- Muneshige's wife, and the baddest ass chick in SW, and the baddest in either series until Wang Yi came along. Like her husband, she has a great all-around moveset.
5) Keiji Maeda- The wild warrior of SW, he just oozes bad-assedness.
6) Kotaro Fuma- I just love his look, its so demonic and sinister.
7) Tadakatsu Honda- The baddest of the bad in Japan.
8) Toshiie Maeda- He uses two short spears and a serrated katana, his moveset looks awesome. Like Guan Ping, he's the epitome of the young warrior seeking to make a name for himself.
9) Kiyomasa Kato- He just looks cool, and he uses a giant scythe!
10) Masamune Date- Great design, and his personality is hilariously awesome. Plus, he uses dual pistols!

As long as I'm making lists, here's my top 5 hottest chyx from the series, in my favorite outfits of theirs: ( under the cut )

I'm hoping next month's WO3 DLC will be the cross over costumes (non-DW characters in DW outfits), because I like the look of a lot of them. Here are some of my favs: ( under the cut )

WO blather- Okay, the more true musous I see of the characters in SW3, the more I think the programmers did not take into account how unbalancing they are compared to those characters not in SW3. I mean, in that game, I assume those were supposed to be the "ultimate" attack, a last ditch effort to save yourself from overwhelming odds when your health is in the red. And doubling the damage and adding flame element to the DW musous, or adding a few more attacks to the end of the non-SW3 SW characters' musou really does not even things out.

Take Kotaro for example, he already had a phenomenal musou to begin with. Well, I'm a fan of the "rushing attack" musous, like he, Gan Ning, Zhang Liao, and Nobunaga have. I mean, its fun to do, and is definitely good for getting out of trouble in a pinch. Of course, the SW chars still have an advantage, because they keep running and carving through their enemies like butter until their musou meter runs out, while Zhang Liao and Gan Ning only rush for a few seconds. But anyways, Nobunaga's true musou, he'll stab into the ground and unleash a big powerful explosion after his musou runs out, which is bad-ass looking. Kotaro on the other hand, after his rush, extends his arm claws and starts spinning around like a blender. Which doesn't do as much instant damage as Nobunaga's, but does constant weaker damage over time that can fill the TTA gauge from empty to full in an instant.

During Rescue at Yi Ling, after the fire attack, I went a long run to rack up a 5000+ combo. I rushed into the fray with Kotaro's musou, which filled the TTA gauge, so I did a triple attack, and since Kotaro has osmosis, between that and the sheer number of enemies getting killed that someone would drop a musou filling item, my musou meter would fill up, so after the triple attack was done, I could immediately go into his musou again, which would refill the TTA gauge immediately, lather, rinse, repeat. I repeated the process at least thrice and just eventually ran out of people to kill.

But yeah, I have both his and Kojiro's weapons set up exactly the way I want them (verity/typhoon/osmosis +10/slay +10/wind +10/absorption +10/agility +10/prosperity +10 for Kotaro, brilliance/typhoon/slay +10/wind +10/absorption +10/agility +10/bolt +10/prosperity +10 for Kojiro, prosperity eventually being replaced with echo once I no longer need to get weapons). Between Kotaro's insane ability to go from musou to triple attack to musou and so forth, and Kojiro's moveset becoming ungodly with brilliance and typhoon, they really are avatars of death, especially given their blood thirsty, murderous attitude.

WO blather- What the frick? Okay, I had to look the Katsuie thing up, and apparently he did have the twin axes in SW2:XL! I have no recollection of that all. I looked back in my LJ (hey, this thing is good for something) under the sw2 tab and I do comment on him having a good moveset, but I don't go into specifics. I didn't mention the weapon, but thinking about this more, I seem to now remember thinking he did twin axes better than Pang De in DW5.

Still, I remember everyone else from SW2's moves pretty well. And its not like I didn't play Katsuie a bunch in SW2:XL, because I fired it up in the old PS2 and apparently I maxed him out! Actually, I was more shocked that I hadn't maxed everyone out, there were 7 people who weren't at level 70: Hideyoshi, Nene, Mitsunari, Oichi, Okuni, No, and Takeda. Which given frigging Yoshimoto was maxed I'm totally skeptical! Why the hell would I play that freak to completion and not some of the aformentioned?

But I digress, my only guess as to not remembering Katsuie is he wasn't in the original WO? But neither were Kojiro and Gracia, but when I played them, nothing seemed unfamiliar. I mean, I know Kojiro was my favorite SW2:XL character, but Gracia didn't feel like I'd never played her before.

Anyhoo, I've started using a new grinding level for weapons- Dong Zhou's ambition. Its a DLC stage, 10 stars, pretty easy though. Well, up until the end, where it can be very dangerous because Magoichi brings a crapload of rifleman who can wipe you out if you don't move out of the way fast and quickly kill them. Well, that and being a hard difficulty, if you get unlucky and get hit by an enemy officer's musou directly, its auto death. As I said, I'd been doing Rescue at Xi Ling, which has way more officers, but takes slightly longer to complete. I was also doing Dueling Heroes, which is another fun stage since you get to take on hordes of demons with several officers, plus Achilles, Kojiro and Nemea (or Musashi if you're playing Nemea). Its about as easy as DZ's Ambition, but one less star, so why not go for the same difficulty, but better rewards?

Although given the randomness of the appearance of gold attributes, it is very frustrating when I don't get anything. Or I get the wrong things, like confluence.

So, it looks like Red and Belle are series regulars now on OUAT? That's cool, particularly the Belle part, because that means more Rumbelle!

So, this tumblr post about VA and the Warblers getting new soloists every year had me thinking. I mean, obviously from a casting standpoint, its because they're not the protagonists of the story, so of course they'd be led by a changing cast of guest stars. But yeah, both VA and the Warblers center the performances around a really strong lead singer and everyone else just dances around them providing backing vocals. Which is a legit tactic. But as I said in the Nationals ep, a lot of people were complaining that VA totally beat ND, and I disagree. Yes, Unique sang damn good, and the choreography was amazing. But that doesn't excite me. I've always said I loved the mixed vocals of ND. Not to discount dancing or anything, because that's a lot of hard work to move like they do, but in a music performance, I'm more impressed by different vocalists working a song together in a pleasing way. I mean, for one thing, the competition is mainly about the singing, and multiple good singers are always better than one. Again, not to discount dancing, but to have a whole group of people who could perform lead if they wanted to seems like a better collection of talent than one really great singer and a bunch of great dancers who can at least harmonize in the background.

WO blather- One tactic I've found works with Muneshige against single officers- stun them with a c6, then finish them off with the c9. And in the case of huge crowds with multiple officers, just spam c8 until you can thin the crowd and then isolate the enemy officer and do the c6 to c9 thing. I think the SW characters that get up to c9 are my favorite to play, just because of the wide variety of moves- him, Ginchiyo, Mitsuhide, Kojiro, Shimazu (among others) they just have so many things they can do!

I'm kinda annoyed that getting the gold abilities is random, because there are particular abilities I want for particular characters. And it sucks to get 8 weapons and not have any of them have the thing you want. Like I still don't have brilliance for Kojiro, and it seems like that ability works best on those SW characters with the really long attack strings. Also, verity for Masamune, since I'm spamming his musou anyways. Now the thing I'm curious about is, does he need both that AND destruction +10 to make his musous that much more strong?

Watching PLL right now as I type this up. Da-yum, that's a nice shirt Em's wearing in the beginning, the practically see through grey one with the black bra underneath? scv('Nice!') Heh, is it me, or do Ezra and Ella have some chemistry going on? Heh, a triangle between Ezra and mother and daughter would be hilarious!

WO blather- So, tried Hojo and Muneshige today. Ujiyasu is okay. I didn't realize he's supposed to be old (though I suppose he was supposed to be Kenshin and Takeda's contemporary). I mean, he uses a sword/gun cane, but I figured that was just an affectation or something, like that's his style. But, he kinda walks with a limp. In any case, he has an interesting move-set, a mix of melee, gun, and bomb attacks. But he's a little slow for my taste.

Ginchiyo's husband on the other hand, is awesome! He kinda plays like a slightly slower, but stronger version of Ginchiyo. He has one of the best dash attacks in the game, IMO, a running shield charge which is great for charging into crowds. And his C8 is just ridiculously powerful, a 360 blast all around him. The rest of his moveset is very solid, which combined with his speed and power make him a force to be reckoned with.

TV commentary:

Eureka- So what's up with no one even batting an eye when Holly-gram was all, "Do you know what its like to go through life not being able to touch yourself?" I mean, she obviously didn't mean in that way, but its just a really odd way to phrase it. Given her current predicament she could of said touch others or touch anything, or said what its like to be unable to feel. How can you not think dirty thoughts when someone talks about not being able to touch themselves.

And I forget, are all the Z-wave mishaps involving Carter because he was jacked in remotely? Or is it that he's the main character and thus the only focus when something happens to him? Because if that z-wave interaction with whatever Kevin dosed him with works on anyone who was in the machine, why have they glossed over that? I mean, the only reason they "cured" Jack was because Alison's all, "You're no longer the man I married!" and I was screwing over friends like Deputy Andy in the name of science. But if whatever Kevin did boosted Jack's brain power, I would think one of the Astreus folks would start experimenting with that, since they don't have the same concerns as Jack.

Lost Girl- Was this episode an exercise in having the cast do bad Southern and Irish accents? Also, Bo's hairstyle this ep made her look way hotter than she normally does. clevemire thinks its because it distracted from her striking nose.

WO blather- So, finally got some gold star abilities for weapons of various characters. It seems having high prosperity is almost essential though, that way you get a lot of weapon drops- I've been grinding on Rescue at Yi Ling, and with Prosperity +10, I was getting 5-8 weapons. Of course, it does get frustrating when none of the those weapons have gold abilities, or if they do, its like confluence or something.

Anyways, after tinkering around with the game a bit. It seems the must haves on your weapon are wind, slay, and absorption. Everyone should have these. Not to say other things like agility and bolt are non-essential, most people should have them, but there are a few where it might not be the best. I mean, let's go over the weapon attributes: ( cut for your benefit )

WO blather- Decided to try and do a little farming last night for gold abilities. I took Mitsuhide, his daughter (since Gracia has the fortune skill which gives you better drops) and Kojiro. Of course, the only one who ends up with a weapon with a gold ability (echo) ends up being Gracia. At least Echo definitely works for her.

I went down this route because I didn't realize how much cooler the SW character's true musous were over their normal musous, as one of the gold abilities you can put on the weapon is to always do the true musou (normally it only comes out when your health is in the red. Well, that or max out a bond with another character, and if they happen to be near you, there'll be some lightning arcing between you two, meaning you can do a double musou, which I thought was just more damage on their normal musou/the two characters doing their musous at once, I didn't realize in the case of SW characters it activated their true musou).

Which again makes the SW characters "better" than the DW characters. I mean, I mentioned before that the SW characters had more fun movesets, but one advantage the DW characters had were the more interesting musous. The SW characters, its usually, just hit all around them or in front of them a bunch of times in the same animation. But, the true musous add cool, unique animations at the end of their normal musou, which are usually really powerful hits. I've only seen two so far- Nobunaga's (one of the few SW characters whose normal musou is actually cool and fun) at the end of his air dash sword swipes, he stabs into the ground and releases a huge explosion of dark energy, whereas Mitsuhide sheathes his sword and then does a powerful iai-jutsu type strike. While DW characters don't get true musous, I guess one big advantage is that they're not forced to use their entire musou meter when doing a musou attack, so they still have enough on their bar to still do R1 specials, and if they have osmosis, its shorter to try and refill the meter back to full.

Now onto some character commentary:

Nemea- Eh, he's okay. His 2nd costume is cool looking, and he's strong and powerful, but his moves are rather boring. Its like, he and Achilles are solid characters, they're just not nearly as fun to play as the other crossover characters- Joan of Arc, Hayabusa, or Ayane.

Cao Cao- I LOVE his new moveset. His C3 is reminiscent of his old DW3 moveset (though he's attacking in an overhand rather than underhand grip in it), and his new C6 is pretty solid as well, a ground pound, followed by a sidestep and a nice 360 swipe around him, which is good for wading into crowds. I've gained an appreciation for his EX-attack, that volley of ice arrows is great for crowd killing, and fills up the TTA meter fast. And unlike other people who have arrow volleys (like Joan of Arc and Yuan Shao) his are ice arrows, I like having the ability to freeze without having to waste a weapon slot on it, since there are better things to put there.

Also, his R1 special is like shades of Nobunaga- he levitates like Nobunaga, then casts a powerful blast of dark energy. Very cool looking.

Cao Pi- After playing around with him more, yes, his C6 is awesome, particularly for building up the TTA, much as I had expected. As I said before, his C4 is no longer the same as the running attack, its still a jump 360 spin attack, but instead of swiping all around him, its more like one focused jump downward slash followed by another, concentrated in front of him. He also has a nice new C3 as well, which is reminiscent of Musashi's musou. Nice to see that both father and son are more bad-ass in this game.

Masamune Date- Honestly, he doesn't have the best moveset, but osmosis is a must on him, because where he really shines is just spamming his musou over and over. Basically just wade into a crowd of enemies and do his musou (which surprisingly fills the TTA gauge way fast) then just keep doing his C3 (at max osmosis, it should only take two or three times to refill you meusou meter) and once its full, unleash your musou at the next crowd. In any case, his move set is more or less the same as it was in SW2/SW3/the previous WOs, but its still cool looking and fun to use.

Ginchiyo Tachibana- I mentioned before how I had forgotten how much fun she was to play. She has a good mix of power and speed. But of special importance is her C6, the 360 shockwave around her. Its good for getting people off her ass, and if she has absorb or osmosis on her weapon, it doesn't take long to refill her life and musou by quickly spamming that (and quick it is, given her attack speed)

As I've mentioned before, I'm disappointed that a lot of people share their big-stars. Particularly since some weapons are obviously the weapons of particular characters, and other characters don't get a big-star version of their weapon. I mean, I have Ginchiyo using what is obviously Kenshin's big star, and they don't have a big-star of her normal weapon, which sucks, because her lightning bolt looking katana was cool. Same for Xiahou Dun and Kojiro, as I mentioned before. Why can't they have a super version of their scimitar and nodachi, respectively.

Its particularly funny in Xiahou Dun's case, because I had said I had given him the Lord of Hell sword. Which is prolly the baddest looking sword of that class, which is shared with Cao Cao and Nobunaga among others. Obviously Xiahou Dun must have the most bad-ass sword, the Demon King can't not have a sword called "Lord of Hell" (plus the purple-black blade matches his color scheme), and the weapon seemed appropriate for Cao Cao as well, so they're all running around with it

WO blather- So since I finally maxed out the big stars for many of my favorite usual characters, decided to start branching out and trying some of the new folks- Kiyomasa Kato and Joan of Arc. Kato had a cool look, and an awesome looking weapon (a giant scythe), and having played him he definitely has a great moveset, he's become one of my favorites. Joan of Arc, I finally see why she ranks so high- her ex-attack (which is off her C5) is ridiculously powerful, as its a series of lightning strikes all around her followed by her calling down a rain of arrows. The fact that she's a wonder type character and can thus follow such an uber-powered attack with a spirit charge makes her even more insane. She's also a new character I like a lot.

Speaking of uber-powerful, I also discovered why Nu Wa ranks so high as well. Just max her out on osmosis and frenzy and just spam her r1 special attack over and over and you'll take out anything.

Also, started playing Nobunaga as well, since he seems so bad-ass with the black outfit and sword and the light saber sound from his weapon. I cannot believe I forgot how to friggin play him. It was more than a few hours of playing before I remembered you can "charge" his sword up to give him a more powerful moveset. I thought something was missing! So osmosis is a must on him, as the easiest way to charge him up is to use R1. Also, the iron gauntlets are essential given his "charging" charge attacks if you don't want them interrupted (particularly his c1 shadow fireball things, and his c4 shadow blast)

I'm currently working on maxing out his and Joan of Arc's big star weapons (and leveling them and Ginchiyo up, I just don't have her big star yet) But I definitely want to try out that Nemea guy. Also want to start working on Cao Pi, Zhong Hui, and Masamune. I actually haven't broken level fifty with anyone yet (Xiahou Dun, Musashi, and Mitsuhide are my highest and they're only in the low to mid 40s), because I usually switch characters after they're big star (or 4 star, in the case of Keiji, Honda, and Achilles) I wonder if more people spend the growth points outside of battle on raising the people they're playing? Because I actually only use them on the current characters if they're close to the next level. But I've been distributing them amongst everyone (and I did unlock everyone this morning), getting them to at least 20 before I play them, as they have access to all their moves at that point.

WO blather- Huh, since I only started playing Cao Pi yesterday, I did not realize they changed some of the moves for the DW characters with "cloned" movesets. Like his C4 is no longer just the same as his dash attack, his C5 is a throw type move now (its still a launcher, but he stabs the opponent in the chest with both blades and does a vertical scissoring motion with the blades, sending the enemy up into the air), and his c6 is a forward rush of really quick slashes all around him, kinda like Zhou Tai's C6. I'll have to see what Liu Bei and Lu Xun's twin sword movesets are like then, if they changed things up.

I guess I didn't particularly notice if Ma Chao, Huang Gai, Ding Feng, and Sima Zhao's moves differed from the standard spear, club, glove, and sword movesets from DW7, resppectively. And I guess all the other DW characters I played so far just weren't any of the cloned moveset people. I mean, I played Xu Huang and Lu Meng, but they thankfully gave Xu Huang his Great Axe back for this game (and gave Yue Ying her scythe and made Xiahou Dun's big-ass mace from DW6 Pang De's weapon since Zhang Liao stole the twin axes from him), but yeah, Zhao Yun started using the Dragon Spear in XL, so only Ma Chao and Jiang Wei were left with the spear, and I haven't played Jiang Wei yet. I'm like 99% sure Ding Feng's moves haven't changed from DW7, so I guess they might've tweaked Meng Huo a little more? They prolly made his moveset more "animalistic". But yeah, I guess I'll have to see what the diffs between Huang Gai and Xu Zhu now, and Liu Shan and Yuan Shao, and how Sun Ce, Sun Quan, Cao Cao's moves differ from Sima Zhao.

So I'll give the game kudos for taking the time to give the DW characters a little more variety by coming up with new moves for the ones with the cloned movesets. Although technically, I think they did that for DW Next on the PS Vita, and WO just uses the moves from that.

TV commentary:

Royal Pains- Wait, are they not going to address what caused the explosion in the previous ep? I mean, they made a show of having Jill's brother adjusting the propane tanks while he was still sick, making you think that would mean something later. And then the explosion happened at the end of the ep. But this ep, they're all, "Explosion, that was weird!" and don't investigate further. I suppose maybe they'll have it come up later, after the fire marshall or whoever figures it out, then they'll come knocking.

And huh, I thought there was going to be more to Alexa Vega's sickness then it just being "shock bowels" from the force of the explosion. I mean, given her weirdness about the CT, and all the dogs, and her constantly talking about hoping her big family comes to visit and not wanting to be left alone. I suppose she might be a recurring patient, like Mrs. Newman, or the hemophiliac kid with the kinda cute hypochondriac girlfriend.

And finally, how hilarious is it that it seems like Jill had this new job offer forever, because it seemed like she spent last two seasons transitioning away from her duties as hospital administrator and ending things with Hank. And then it ends up falling through? I mean, it sucks for her as a character, but they were never going to have her actually leave the show, and like I said, its kinda funny that they wasted so many episodes on this, and it ends up not happening?