Superior Sentai
Back on the 16th, the latest Super Sentai series began. No.1 Sentai Gozyuger, written Akiko Inoue(yes, that Inoue), follows a group of outcasts as they come together during their own journies to become “Number 1” and protect the world, competing with each other and past Sentai Reds along the way. It’s a premise that definitely could only come from an inoue, I tell ya, and after two episodes, I’m all for it!
Again, we’re only two episodes in, so we haven’t met all the Gozyugers, but I’m on board even after only meeting Red, Blue, and Yellow. Hoeru, our Red ranger of sorts, is a rude, but ultimately kind young man without any concrete goals who can’t hold down a job, our Blue ranger is a slimy singer who’s been booted from the spotlight, and Yellow is a crazy cultist. Quite a group already, and it’s gonna get even livelier since Green is supposed to be a party boy and Black is a chick who got booted from the police academy.
The energy in these first two episodes has been great. Heroes and villains are pretty out there so far, and pretty enjoyable in their own ways. The current antagonistic force, the Bridans, are pretty cool; They have their own hot-blooded general who chews the scenery as if its his final meal and loves his men and they all have this pretty fun wedding gimmick. On the other side, our first look at Hoeru is him geting fired after beating up a robber using a hotdog, and the 2nd episode has Yellow casually showing absurd out-of-suit strength, carrying around a whole ass piano on his shoulder and later just straight up throwing boulders at a megazord.
This is an anniversary series, not unlike Zenkaiger before it. While they can transform into past Sentai as per usual in anniversary series, the real highlight here is that past reds appear as rivals, but not as we know them. For example, Hoeru’s co-worker, who ends up transforming into a past red, is the protagonist of BoonBoomger, this show’s immediate predecessor, but instead of transforming into his own Red, he transforms into KuwaGata-Ohger. Similarly, The Don Momotaro that shows up in episode 3 is not Momoi Taro, but instead an original character. Having the past reds acting as direct rivals to our heroes, sometimes helping, sometimes fighting, is a pretty cool idea and frankly a fun way to celebrate Sentai’s history, and that Don Momotaro example gives way for the more interesting way for this to play out, at least in a meta sense. That Don Momotaro is an original character, but he’s played by a known toku actor; the actor of Tregear’s human form in Ultraman Taiga. It’d be really cool if the rival reds this season were all or mostly toku actors from other series. That’s way more plausible than having every og red actor show up personally, and it’d be pretty fun to see as a fan of Tokusatsu in general. I’m all for interesting cameos and meta castings.
Virtua Fighter Sidesteps Its Way Onto Steam
Near the end of January, Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. dropped, acting as an enhanced port of VF5 Ultimate Showdown for steam that improved the online, touched up the graphics a bit, and introduced a small balance patch.
VF is probably my favorite 3d fighter in terms of gameplay, barely edging out SC, so this is very welcome. I hadn’t been able to play VF in a hot minute since there are no official ports of any of the games on steam before this and I keep forgetting fightcade exists. I’ve sung VF’s praises on this blog before, but I do wanna just drive home that VF is some crack in a way you probably wouldn’t expect for a game so straightforward. It’s been really fun to play my boy Jean again in better netcode. Now, this netcode is not perfect; I’m very hesitant to call it rollback, to be quite honest, but it’s way better than the ps4 version’s online, so I will take it any day of the week.
Zenless Stuff
Still going strong on ZZZ at the moment. The game’s events do a good job of offering novel things to do to break up the combat. We had a cool little photo-taking event a couple weeks ago, and now we have a nice little fishing event going on.
This current patch had some good banners. I pulled for Astra Yao, and she’s been a great pickup. The 2nd phase is a bit trickier. Evelyn ticks the boxes in my head as far as designs go, but there’d be some role overlap since I already invested in Solider 11 for my fire dps, and I like to avoid pulling for characters who would fight over the same job, especially this early on in account building. I did pull her weapon, though; It’s just an absurd stat stick regardless of whether or not your character can use the chain attack/ultimate part of the passive. Qingyi is the harder skip, though. I am a Zhu Yuan and Harumasa enjoyer, and as far as stunners for the two of them go, it doesn’t get any better than the robo girl. Now, Anby is perfectly fine, but I’d be a liar if I said having the strongest possible upgrade dangling in my face wasn’t tempting. Plus, she’s voiced by Kira Buckland. However, at the time of writing, the plan is to skip; Leaks currently have things looking as if Caesar King is getting a rerun next patch, and she’d be an overall more valuable pickup on top of having a design I’m way more on board with.
I’ve mainly been focusing on getting my builds better for taking on endgame content. Discs are RNG, but I’d say mine are passable at least. The real thing I’m focusing on for the time being is ability levels since they’re guaranteed increases in damage. The plan is to max out my main damage dealers’ primary sources of damage and get their secondary sources to 11. I also intend to invest some more into certain support abilities, like Anby’s EX special.
I’ve been having a lot of fun in the Lost Void game mode. It’s a roguelike type of deal, and it’s really fun to gain different buffs and try out different units against the final boss. There’s this neat feature to auto-adjust a unit for it, so even though I haven’t leveled up Billy yet, I can turn on the feature and use a fully leveled version of him with pre-dtermined gear, but still has my mindscape levels on him. It’s a pretty cool way to have fun with more of my roster while I’m still account building.
Game fun. All I can really say since I ain’t the type to actually recommend a gacha game no matter how good it is. In this economy, I feel like it is my duty to point you away from the casino and not towards it. I’m having a lot of fun, though.