It's also got large amounts of "this shouldn't be a Servant", "this breaks the rules of the setting", and "those abilities are bullshit". Oh, and "hey, let's have things possess characters rather than bother with new designs", despite the fact gods can't be Servants and this would give a hero older than Gilgamesh. Kind of a lot of the game is character design, therefore...

Too much is farmed out to random people. <_<

And the /GO animation isn't going to be up to the standard of the other recent things. Different studio. :T

basically any character design that's just a bikini. Their fucking heroic spirits not beach babe models.

Also who's post is it at this point? Are we waiting for Atlanta now?

I'm waiting on Raineh Daze for Madea, Rin for Jackie, and I wanted to wait on Tamamo for either of the former people to post, or let Ravel respond to Seyrun.

@Raineh Daze I noticed especially with Florence Nightingale they seem to have thrown the Servant minimum age cap out the window. I think the Heroic Spirit possession thing could be interesting, but not if they change the premise to the original person's personality dominating.

The point of heroic spirits is that people get all excited about them because they are not just another anime character, they have a background thats rooted in old stories. Epic Heroes have a certain smell even if you don't know their legend, if you know what I mean. This kind of gets tossed if they come in the door wearing a bikini, a jester's hat with dildoes hanging off the ends, and pauldrons that look like they are from warhammer 40K. But even more so if their personality is not dominating the body they are using. This is why I still think Hercules was disappointing even now.

@Lonewolf685 Got it, it's not rush. I wouldn't be able to post even if it was my turn right now, finals are coming up. In fact I shouldn't even be writing this right now as I speak.

What I am I doing? I must needs make haste and go.

The whole point of Herc is to be Berserker (and he displays some personality despite it all, albeit better in the VN). I'm not saying that it's a case of "the designs aren't bad", because so many of the designs are awful, but there's a tendency for characters to be Heroic Spirits without rhyme or reason on top of the awful writing and crap abilities. When you're turning people like Marie Antoinette, who didn't do anything into Servants, you've gone wrong. Oh, and baseless genderflipping.

@Raineh Daze Right but why make the berserker class one that can turn its mad enhancement on and off (like a real berserker would) and then have a berserker that never turns it off, and you only get brief glimpses into their personality in the first place? And then why do this twice in a row? Thats some weird storytelling technique.

Completely agree with you on Marie Antoinette and baseless gender flipping though.

Now I really have to go though. :P

Lopsided rarity spread even for literally whos, unjustified character shilling/power wanking, and rampant genderflipping aside, I definitely can agree that their criteria on servant qualifications can get really wonky. Things like allowing proper Divine Spirits to get summoned or the Marie case above, yeah. Oh and why did Onis qualifies as Heroic Spirits, again? Although with how literary characters qualify as HS too for some reasons, in the end I just really stop caring.

For the record not counting the crossover characters or both EMIYAs, the most recent HS so far is Mata Hari and Edison iirc (late 19th to early 20th century). Though personally, I think this is just Nasu softening his stance on HS qualification. I mean despite of everything it's still a project supervised by TM and Nasu in the end.

Mad Enhancement is pretty weird since idk, I think it feels like even TM writers forgot that the steroid itself can be turned on and off in F/SN.

/GO's strength is actually its writing tbh. Rome's awful and really padded with Nerowank and Orleans/London was p'boring, but the orders are mostly have solid writing at worst, while later Orders like Camelot and Babylon was pretty much among Nasu's best writing in my opinion. It's very story-heavy for a mobage (and is pretty much a proper VN by Babylon), and even the zany events (that are mostly barely canon jokes to fill time between order release for the players to have fun) are written competently in a way that's fun.

I'm not that much of a fan of the character writing angle usually used in /GO, although from what I saw it's something that people liked from it too. Some servants having stereotypical character archetype aside, just...I feel like they portray the servants overly positively. While Fate/ in general does that to portray the multiple sides of a figure, in /GO it just feels a lot more forced. The last servant I can recall that didn't get the dindu nuffin treatment was like, Medb.

Designs' hit or miss. Definitely gets better with time but hit or miss regardless. Though for literally bikini designs, swimsuit event servants aside I mainly recall Boudicca and Shuten. Liz Brave is from a joke event and is a walking reference for old bikini armor in DQ, Ushi doesn't even wear enough to count as bikini, Jeanne Lily's top might count, Mary Read wears school swimsuit and bunny ears for some goddamn reasons, and I think I forgot some others. Orite, Mordred 3rd ascension too, it makes barely any sense.

There's definitely good designs there too, and it's not really few.

Though yeah, despite its good sides I do feel that its main issues are mainly tied to the fact that it's a mobage that can't have as much character exploration as in other media (even if /GO does this far better than most Mobages already), and also have to constantly cater to whales and such by doing the things that it do.

@Nanashi Ninanai: Literary figures quality as heroic spirits by dint of actually existing in the Nasuverse is the take I always had on it.

/SN didn't forget it could be turned off. Illya was said to be intentionally keeping it active at all times as payback for how much supporting Herc actually hurts (childish but... the obvious) whilst /Zero was stuck with Lancelot being emo. xD

Can't comment on good writing, because... untranslated mobile game. With some vague idea that things should be accepted as canon or something because they're there, even if they aren't necessarily written or directly supported by Nasu... eugh. And if they are, then yay: canon lockout if you're not able to speak the language despite awareness of it anyway! One of my problems with CCC*. : D

* Bathory and the grotesque Sakura things I forgot the name of are the other. :T

@Raineh Daze That was my point. After those, they seem to forget about ME being able to be turned off.

@VitaVitaAR Makes sense for Dantes, Jekyll, Mephisto, and Phantom of the Opera, I guess. Though the weird part is mainly NR/Alice being the first figure that is fully a literary figure that opens the gate for the others to also be around. Iirc it's not only Alice in Wonderland specifically but the whole of children's nursery rhyme so that NR is basically the heroic spirit of childrens everywhere, but her existence is definitely not from a person that could qualify as a HS.

For Divine Spirits, they never bothered to explain why Euryale and Stheno was summonable. Artemis hijacked Orion's summoning to summon herself in a degraded state, Ishtar was summoned like that mainly due to her not being summonable otherwise without her being in a limiting vessel, although why she's summoned as Rin is purely fanservice, and Jaguar Man has the same justification. Quetzal's not really having any explanations on why she was summonable.

It's weird and they doesn't seem to care about it in the end. Oh well.

Nursery Rhyme had the excuse of everything else in Extra: it's not actually a Servant. Like everything else in Extra, it's just the product of the Moon Cell--there's absolutely zero chance of an actual Ryougi Servant (whoops) because that would require her third personality to be okay with such a thing, which seems absurdly out of character. Plus Nursery Rhyme is sort of an... inverse? A normal Servant's legend is represented by their NP, but Nursery Rhyme is the CREATION of the NP. Odd but somewhat understandable.

"Let's have immortal unkillable Divine Spirits ineligible in every way be Servants": lazy.

Right, I forgot about Mooncell's condition while I almost write stuffs about the Alter Egos, silly me. Ryougi's not really a servant tho btw, just like Irisviel she's just tagging along with you.

But yeah, they really have little excuse for how they handle Divine Spirits since there's barely even any consistency with it. So yeah that is what will happen if you're a mobage trying to rake in cash.

Saber Ryougi has worse agility than Assassin Ryougi.

Removing all Servant stuff or logic, that's absolute nonsense. Ryougi with a sword is faster. Who the hell gave stats for that?

maybe void is just pretty lazy and cannot be bothered to do that much hence the low agility but idk tbh. I'm still not exactly sure about what exactly is the Void that was summoned as Shiki Saber.

Shifting back the focus to this RP anyway, when do finals usually end for you guys?

I have a programming final looming over me that's due Friday and a single exam on Monday. Then FREEDOM.

Speaking of which, I REAAAAALLLLYYY want to get to the next arcs. There are quite a few in the backburner, and hoo boy am I hyped to set them into motion.

Yes, arcs. I'm splitting the teams up. Remember when I mentioned specific Servants go specific places? Yeah.
I mean, they'd prob choose them anyways post-debriefing, but not always.

I figure that moving on to the next arc would be a worrying part for me because it's a point of no return in a way. So definitely hoping that we have a clear image of who's still around and who's not by that time hits.

Would make proper pairings clearer too I guess after the rounds of characters that are currently inactive or playerless.

Ryougi's third personality is... maybe the Root, or maybe a subset of it. She's the body's original personality before other stuff got involved and doesn't really have much interested in being involved with anything. Which would make her literally impossible to summon or make into a Servant, because she is part of the Root.

She's quite nice. Very polite.

Yeaaaaaah, which was why I'm wondering what exactly is summoned as her since no way they'd be able to summon something like that fully. But well, crossover events are weird anyway, and it's not like we're counting Ilya as a Heroic Spirit now anyway just due to her being summonable.

@KoL Alrighty, KoL unless I am mistaken I think it is your turn now?

Just finished my Finals, yall in the same way?

KoL had her last final today, and since she hasn't shown up on our chatzy, I take it she's fallen asleep already. I'll be sure to hound her tomorrow to post now that her classes are done.

And yeah, I finished mine yesterday.