Music of the Week #434

Things are calming down a bit but that won’t last since it’ll be busy again by the end of the month.

Once that busy period ends though, I really want to get into some other writing projects I talked about. They’re mostly about games because what else do I do with my life? Talking about adaptations to stuff I already know will happen gets tiring sometimes, you know?

Given the series’ rich history with in-universe politics, the military installations in Cold Steel reflect the change in times from the brick and mortar checkpoints and large gates in Liberl, the huge guardian outposts in Crossbell, and the myriad of enormous, advanced bases scattered across Erebonia. None can say for sure if what Cold Steel’s portrayal of Erebonia being a lot different from what the two previous sagas had in mind was either a switch in atmosphere or not but the politics, at the very least, remain consistent, even if it takes a major turn for the worse in quality later down the line. I could take this chance to talk about Elliot since his dad is military and how his arc more or less concludes at 2, but there’s really not much else to talk about him other than the bare-basic “nice guy” trope in the class being filled out. That being said, Cold Steel far more than any other saga, has some serious issue about the parent being more interesting than their kid and most of their importance is focused solely on the familial relationship than their actual character.

Fate Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia Episode 15: Big Smiles

I should have expected this.

So after hyping up the shit that’s about to go wrong, for more or less the entire time talking about Babylon I had the thought in the back of my head about how a mass of enemies would turn out looking like. All the ugallus and mushus should have clued me in but it is what it is.

Music of the Week #433

I have an idea to liven up some posts around here with some other topics that I’ve been enjoying myself with recently but things are going to be busy for another month or two so I’ll see what I can put out.

I’ve already covered of what the combat consists of in Trails 1-2 and more or less 3-4 with the exception of Brave Commands but there is one thing I forgot to mention in most combat in general I feel, the series is incredibly easy to break in terms of combat. The Sky trilogy not only had some incredibly overpowered characters and imbalanced abilities but Earth Walling constantly was a valid strategy. The Crossbell games nerfed arts considerably with the overall EP counts being too low but Combo Crafts trivialized large encounters. Cold Steel followed suit with its Overdrive mechanic in 2, the Break meters in 3, and the first Cold Steel game had Crafts be completely broken because CP recovery and turn-order abuse was just so easily achievable thanks to damn near everything having the AT delay effect. Let’s not forget how quartz counts were completely taken out too.

Fate Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia Episode 14: Mesoamerican Baseball

Hoho boy, here we go.

So unless this Gorgon fight takes longer than expected, we should be due for the fun stuff in two weeks time with a foreboding end to this coming week’s episode

Fate Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia Episode 13: A few more steps

Well there she is.

Let’s just hurry it on along here since we all know what happened here. Eresh is lonely, cute, and is pure waifubait.

Music of the Week #432

Got a bit side-tracked

Babylon is written up but I don’t want to get it out the same day as this so it’ll be up tomorrow

Let’s break away from all the negativity for a bit and shift focus back onto how the music for the sub-series hasn’t suffered compared to the writing quality. While it’s no Looking up at the Sky, this is definitely one of the better overworld map themes in the sub-series for me and it features some beautiful violins. For what it’s worth as the first 3D entry in the series, I will say Erebonia has some great visuals but I couldn’t exactly compare or really tell you a location that ever really matched the visuals and feeling when running around Crossbell’s country-side and the sea-side cliffs in Liberl.

Music of the Week #431

Babylonia is continuing into the new season while the rest of the shows all seem to be primarily made up of 2nd seasons and even some 3rd seasons which I most likely won’t be looking through at the moment. I might change my mind if I overlooked the rest of the Winter season though.

Continuing along my rants for Cold Steel, this week’s tune is the theme of Blade, a card-game that you play on the train-ride to each locale you visit and raise some bond points. Blade as a mini-game gets replaced by the 3rd game and beyond so we’ll be tackling more critical issues with the Class VII members again. Because certain characters don’t exactly get focus chapters or moments outside of bond events, gee doesn’t that sound problematic, we’ll go over Fie next because she doesn’t really have a problem to be of note aside from what when we get to Laura later. Zephyr is introduced as one of the two big Jaeger/mercenary groups in the world of Kiseki. Zephyr was the arch-rival to the Red Constellation group that Sigmund, Shirley, and namely, Randy Orlando from Zero/Ao were a part of and compared to them, Fie doesn’t get that much in comparison. Fie was a part of Zephyr but she was more or less like a pet cat that was picked up by the boss who took care of her, took her everywhere they went, and trained her to fight but not kill others. Following up Randy’s act is no easy task and Fie’s lack of significant character growth from approachable and snarky to snarky but appreciative isn’t all too great comparatively. Her struggle is introduced WAY later in the saga doesn’t really amount to much either since even by the end of the 1^st game she considers Class VII her family now instead of her former group, and even then, it’s hard to antagonize anyone in Cold Steel due to a plot point that ultimately broke the franchise for me. I don’t hate Fie necessarily, I just find her unnecessary, which turns out to be my complaint for most of the cast, but damn does she make evade-tanking solo memes fun.