Genshin Impact Update 2.1 – My little Baal can’t possibly be this weak! (mild story spoilers)

Yo! I hear today is Genshin Impact’s first anniversary. According to Paimon, my own first anniversary is 11/11/2020 so any looking back on the year will have to wait till then. Except I won’t do that because I’ve written about it many times before. Besides I’ll be busy still sinking my teeth into Genshin Impact‘s Inazuma updates. I kinda wish they had rationed out the islands so the Inazuma experience would last longer though. Seirai Island in particular could have been kept till the next patch.

I’m not really complaining though. It was good. It is still good. And it will be even better when they release the last island. I see a big bump in the world map next to Seirai Island where it might be located. Looking forward to it!

Quick thoughts on my experiences with patch 2.1 – 2.2

💎The major sidequests are a bit tedious but also kind of fun. Obviously I used a FAQ or guide for about 50% of them, and I’ve abandoned the more annoying ones. But the ones I’ve done so far like the Sakura tree quest and part of the Orobashi Legacy quest and Tatara tales quest feel rewarding because you’re actually changing terrain and making lasting differences. Or as lasting as a game that could go offline any day can be, anyway.

genshin impact anniversary theater

The anniversary theater was fun to watch.

💎I didn’t think much of the main archon quest, though. It all seemed a bit silly to be prancing around with Yoimiya and Ayaka and the resistance when Raiden Shogun could have wiped us all out in one go if she had wanted to. Worst parts of the quest were

1) Having to play Ayaka’s awfully boring character quest. What was that thing at the end, a mating dance? I cringed so hard.

2) Traveler getting all worked up over one generic NPC who was obviously forced on us just so he could die and make us “angry.” So obvious. It’s like animes have some random little girl give the MC a flower or something. You just know she’s going to get kidnapped so he can go save her.

Anyway, really glad to get the archon quests over with so I can get those primogems and get back to overworld exploration! Plus when Sumeru or The Chasm comes out I’ll be ready to dive straight in.

💎It’s insane the amount of AR EXP needed to level up ranks after AR55. I’ve been doing quest upon quest, opening chest upon chest and I’m still only halfway to AR56. I heard someone reached AR60 the other day. Whoa.

💎I pulled Baal or Beelzebub or Raiden Shogun or Ei or whatever you want to call her. I got her in 30 pulls so either I got really lucky or I may have had some pity built already. Probably the latter from my failed attempt to pull Zhongli. I’m saving for his eventual re-run or for the next must-have shielder character. That’s the only hole in my my lineup right now.

I have Diona, who is working hard but is still a bit squishy. I have Beidou but can’t figure out how to use her shield consistently. I don’t have C6 Noelle yet. So I’d love to pull Zhongli and just set-and-forget the shields. As a character he irritates me somehow, but his shields are the easiest to use of all the characters I’ve trialed.

💎Back to the topic of Baal, there was some controversy about how “weak” she is and when/if Mihoyo is going to buff her and the Electro element in general. There was a lot of squalling and crying and threats to quit the game etc. I didn’t follow the saga too closely, but apparently the main problem was that Mihoyo gave a skill description for her, offered a different skill and changed the description to match. It’s definitely a scummy move, but am I going to quit over it? Nah. And Mihoyo knows it, which is why they hunkered down until it all blew over. I need to keep that move in mind for real life applications…

💎So anyway, I got my Raiden Shogun. Leveled her up to 70/80. Got a basic set of Emblem artifacts for her. Even leveled up her talents a bit. There’s just one small problem: her weapon. Her best weapon can be gotten for “free” but the catch is that you have to do the horrible fishing minigame to get it. And not just once but over and over and over again. I normally love fishing in games, but in Genshin Impact it’s too tedious and goes against everything I enjoy about the game.

I won’t spend a lot of time describing it, but basically you can get locked into a lengthy battle of attrition with a single little fish. And then you have to do it again and again, hundreds of times. I want to say “I’ll never do it!” but maybe when I absolutely run out of stuff to do, I can drop a line here and there. But that will be a long time coming because when I play an open world action RPG, I want action. And when I run out of stuff to do, I’d rather drop the game for a while until it gets its act together again.

💎So how strong is my Baal? Lol, dunno. I haven’t tried her out yet. The title was misleading, just like what Mihoyo did with the character. I haven’t leveled up her artifacts much, and she’s holding a level 20 Favonius Lance, so there’s really nothing to see yet. My current teams can clear most content reliably, and whatever they can’t clear I simply won’t do so… yeah. But I played her story quest and she was pretty powerful + kinda cool. It will be fun when I can also hit all those big fancy numbers, pew pew pew.

💎Apart from Baal, I’m currently focused on building Ninguang. I tried out Childe, Yanfei, Ganyu and Ninguang during the Hyakunin Ikki event, but only Ninguang really blew me away. For a 4-star, her damage was no joke at all, and she was very easy to use unlike Ganyu and Childe. Plus I have her already, so why not build her? The only downside is farming that annoying Domain of Guyun with the flying Ruin enemy. I hate those guys.

💎As a matter of fact, I need to farm a lot of artifacts for everyone. From around AR45 to AR50 I worked hard to get everyone a basic, but not optimum set of artifacts. Now it’s time to go back and get the really good stuff. My main problem is getting enough Crit DMG without sacrificing Crit ATK. All my characters look like this when you look at their stats.

Great crtical hit rate, not enough damage. At all. Luckily I used barely any Fragile Resin during my artifact farming days, so I can pull them all out now. Even better, I’m strong enough to farm the domains by myself so I don’t have to depend on tedious co-op. Winning! Except… I get bored and tired after one or two runs of a domain so it’s going to take ages to get this done. I’ll think of it as a very long-term project for now.

Current and Future Teams

The biggest dilemma now. I have so many characters, and I’ve built many of them to 70/80. My 5-stars are Xiao, Venti, Mona, Keqing, Baal and I just pulled Qiqi on the standard banner. For 4-stars, I have them all except Sara, Sayu and… someone? I might be missing one. Otherwise I have pretty much all the 4-stars in the game.

I usually field a team of Xiao, Bennett, Xiangling and Fischl for reasons I explained last time. But lately I’ve been thinking of different teams as well. I tried the so-called “National” team of Bennett, Xiangling, Xingqiu and Sucrose, but without Xiao dishing out the big numbers, it was a DPS loss. I’m going to try the same team but with Xiao instead of Sucrose. But where can I fit in Fischl? Oz auto-ing away in the background is such an easy source of extra damage and reactions that I’m loath to put her away.

Bennett and Xiangling power each other + give pyro resonance so I want to keep them both. But I’d like to have Xingqiu for the vaporize and additional heals… And then I’ve heard good things about Mona so I built her up a bit, but where to fit her in… instead of Xingqiu? What about Beidou who is supposed to be really good? And what do I do with Baal and Ningguang once they’re ready for the big show? Decisions, decisions…

Don’t mind me, it’s a good sign that I’m engaging with the game a little more. I will actively try out new teams going forward, if only because I’m sick of hearing the same voice lines all the time. I had a good time with a freeze-melt team of Xiao, Bennett, Xingqiu and Diona last time I played so there’s still fun to be had in Genshin Impact yet.

As for other games… yeah haha. I’m going well in Another Eden, Shining Nikki and Love Nikki, at least. I’ll just think of 2021 as “the year I took a break from regular games.”

Another Eden: The Cat beyond Time and Space – Grindier than I’d thought

As I’d thought, there’s always a catch in these supposedly stamina-free mobile RPGs. Another Eden: The Cat beyond Time and Space bills itself as a JRPG that just happens to be on mobile platforms. But you’d be crazy to think you can just zoom from story point to story point freely. I mean you can, but you’ll get your heiney handed to you. You’re supposed to fight and grind levels and ability points. Plus also collect enemy drops to make new weapons Etrian Odyssey-style. If you run out of materials, you have to go back and fight some more.

cyrus from another edenSpeaking of Etrian Odyssey, this game also has high-level F.O.E.-like enemies littering the maps that you have to dodge until you’re strong enough to take them on. Some of them are also gatekeeping more powerful weapons in either chests or drops because hey, why not?

All that is normal grindy RPG stuff, I don’t mind it too much. What I draw the line at is grinding to rank up characters. Specifically story-important characters like the main character Aldo and his sidekick Riica. After a very early point, their ability board is locked because they’re stuck as 3-stars. You have to go through some very tedious stages known as “Another Dungeon” to farm enough items to rank them up to 4-star.

For Aldo, I need one Swordsman tome, 30 Murmur Scripts and 10 Prayer Scripts. If you’re very lucky, one run through Another Dungeon will drop two (2) measly Murmur Scripts. Usually just one. Veeery occasionally you will get a Prayer Script. I still haven’t seen a Swordsman tome in all the days I’ve been playing.

30 Murmur Scripts = 30 dungeon runs, another 10 for prayer scripts if the RNG smiles on you… ugh, I’m annoyed just typing it, but it’s doable. It’s just tedious as hell, why is why I haven’t actually unlocked Aldo and Riica’s ranks yet. Instead I’ve benched them in favor of gacha characters. Right now I have three 5-stars: Tsukiha, Mighty and Isuka. A whole bunch of 4-stars as well. Elemental and weapon weaknesses are very much a thing in Another Eden, so you need to build a couple of teams for various situations. But that’s still going to be a 4-5 star affair, so who needs measly 3-stars?

All that said, I’m still making some progress here and there with the main story. I just finished chapter 16 and learned of Aldo and Feinne’s true origins. I appreciate not being made to wait all the way to the end of the game for some clarity like many RPGs would do. There are several sidequests and side stories available that I’m tempted to dive into, but I’m largely restraining myself until I’ve gotten a little further in the story. I know I won’t be able to avoid Another Dungeon forever so I’m trying to unlock the “Very Hard” option with better drops to reduce the tediousness somewhat.

Last note for today – I mentioned last time that Another Eden ran very well on my phone. Past tense: ran. For the past few days, it has been shutting down unexpectedly after about 10 minutes of play. It’s very annoying and a real buzzkill. It doesn’t even get hot or laggy, just goes off. I tried to free up space on the phone, I tried to close all other apps while it is running. No such luck with the problem, so I’m going to see if there are updates available that hopefully fix the problem. I’ll also check if I’ve enabled some settings on my phone that shut down apps that consume too much memory or something crazy like that.

If all fails, I might have to move to playing on an emulator, but I really don’t want to do that. It worked for Atelier Online because I really wanted to play it, but Another Eden isn’t that great. I’d rather quit than spend another 5GB+ downloading it again. Will keep you guys posted if anything interesting happens, but don’t expect much.

Started Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space (very early thoughts)

You might look at the dearth of posts on this blog this year and think I’ve quit gaming. Nothing of the sort has happened. It’s just that I’m playing mostly casual browser and gacha games where nothing much happens from day to day. Those games provide a nice dopamine hit when I need it, and they’re easy to fit into my busy schedule of sleeping, working and sleeping again. And eating sometimes. Wait, I think I’ve explained all this before.

Anyway, I had a little free time last week and naturally I wanted to fill that time with games. So did I play any of the many games on my massive backlog? Noooooo. I went to QooApp, browsed through their RPGs, and Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space caught my eye. It promised to be a stamina-free single-player RPG with gacha elements, and that’s right up my alley.

No stamina means I can play as much as I want without running out or worrying about refills over time. Stamina-free usually also means the game is grindy or heavily-padded because they don’t want you to finish too fast, but it’s not too bad so far. Single-player RPG means there’s no pressure to join a guild or compete with other players or race to complete events before a deadline. What’s not to like? So I downloaded it and I’ve been playing on-and-off for about a week now.

Story and Sound

The main character is Aldo, a generic orphan kid. Bad dudes kidnapped his sister Feinne, and he’s totally going to save her one day, but first he has to travel through time to save the world because that’s just how video games work. Another Eden is supposedly inspired by Chrono Trigger, hence all the time-travelling. Apparently Yasunori Mitsuda did the main theme of the game. Unfortunately I can’t tell, because the sound is low on my phone even when I crank it up to the max. I’ll look at the settings next time. I don’t mind a good soundtrack, but I’m not tempted by “Chrono Trigger-inspired” games. I used to be, then I played the fetid waste of space called Chrono Cross and that cured me sharpish.

BTW, you might be wondering about the “cat beyond time and space” part of the title. I’m wondering about it too, because cats show up all the time leading people here and there. But why? Why cats? I don’t get it, but I’m only 6 chapters into the game so I don’t expect all the answers so quickly. I’ll let you guys know if the catspiracy is ever solved or if the developers just added the cat motif to be “different” and “cool” and stuff.

persona 5 another eden crossover spoils cast

Or maybe the developers just like cats.

Gameplay

Simplified turn-based RPG mechanics. There’s Attack, there’s Run, there’s Skills. There’s no Defend unless you use a skill. No Items either. You have four characters in the front line, two in the back. Characters in the back recover HP and MP every turn, and they use a special move called a Valor Chant that attacks/buffs/debuffs when you switch them in. The system reminds me most of Mana Khemia, actually, the way you have characters in the backline who can jump in and out every turn. Controls are basic, just tap or hold to do everything.

I forgot to take a screenshot of my part in combat so I’ll just google a random one (source). There’s nothing to see, really.

It would be better if it had an Auto-battle feature, because it gets boring tapping the same options every single time. [update: there’s a feature to Save the last commands you gave so you can repeat them easily. Makes things a little easier. Thanks for the reminder, Nirinsi.]

Gacha

The main way to get new characters, aside from the occasional free unit. The game is very much against re-rolling for the best units, so it took me days of collecting Chrono stones (gacha currency) when playing irregularly to save enough for a 10-pull. A more serious player could get that much in a few hours of sidequests and monster battles, but it’s still a long process. And lots of reading, which I can already tell I’m going to hate. It reminds me why I don’t play more RPGs these days.

Back on topic, since your party is limited to 6 characters, you probably don’t need more than 10-12 well-built characters in your roster to clear content. Thanks to my good gacha luck, I have a number of 4-star characters, including the supposedly top-tier ones like Miyu, Ciel and Bivette, as well as one 5-star (Tsukiha, Extra Style).

What’s more, I hear the game will eventually reward me with Joker and Morgana from Persona 5 for free. And maybe some characters from the Tales games too? Either way, my basic party is set and will stay set until/unless I pull or otherwise get any 5-stars someday. All this to say, you really don’t need to pull much in Another Eden.

TL;DR: you can play Another Eden perfectly well without spending a dime. You can get a good party either by drawing with free Chronos stones or by progressing the story. Though I do support the developer by watching ads because I get a few Chronos stones for it.

What I really think about it so far

Another Eden is a mediocre JRPG so far. Sorry fans. There’s absolutely nothing special about it, whether it’s the story or the graphics or the music or the combat. The main character is the usual ultra-passive gofer who talks a good game but in the end always goes along with whatever a random voice in his head or passerby on the street says. And the talking… so much talking… And no cutscene skipping option.

I gotta wonder though, what happened to me? Why can’t I endure long talking sequences in gaming any more? I think it’s because I’ve seen it all before. RPGs aren’t that clever or inventive. Blah blah blah, long talking sequence… so deep and intriguing… NOT! You’re not reinventing the wheel, you’re just wasting my time before pointing me at the next boss to kill or quest to fulfill. You know it, I know it, so why don’t we all get on with it?

I should take my own advice and end the post here. For the record I’m enjoying Another Eden, more or less. It’s average but not actually bad. Plus it’s free, and works fine on my phone so I can play it once in a while. If I play a little more and it turns out to be “Kyaa best game ever sooo sugoooi!” I’ll be back to report it. Otherwise, peace out for today!

Genshin Impact at level 55 – Inazuma at last!

The Inazuma region of Genshin Impact was partly released in update 2.0 that went live in late July 2021. But just because the something is released doesn’t mean I’m going to play it. Once I got out of the habit of playing Genshin Impact regularly, it was harder than I thought to go back to logging in. It’s actually a pretty tedious game when there are no new areas to explore.

When I finally dragged myself back in, I discovered I had to do a lengthy series of quests involving Beidou, Kazuha, Thoma and a bunch of randoms before I could finally be free to explore as much as I wanted to. All right, I’m game… I thought. I hate the lengthy talky quests in GI but the pay off would be worth it once I could go round grabbing Electrolus and murdering mobs for their common chests… I thought.

Once I actually tried to play, though, I quickly ran into a garbage sneaking mission involving tailing a corrupt official named Keijirou. I’ve already explained my feelings on sneaking missions in Genshin Impact, and indeed everywhere else. After failing twice, I tossed the controller aside and went back to Love Nikki (and new release Shining Nikki, more on that some other day) and Happy Color. It’s only this past weekend that I had a little time to kill and decided to give the mission one last try. Okay, so it wasn’t that hard and I finished it pretty smoothly. But I stil hated it. I’ll have to compose a special poem on how much I hate it to include in my survey response next time Mihoyo pretends to care about our opinions.Welp, so, after all that hassle and bother, I now have mostly free run of the three Inazuma islands released. Yay! I’m pretty excited, actually. I just lack the IRL time to properly enjoy a long gaming session. Maybe this weekend I’ll sink my teeth in properly. So far I’ve unlocked the two Statues of the Seven and caught 7 electrolus. I’ve triggered a bunch of quests as well, but as I said, the quests in this game are so lengthy and wordy that I’m not motivated to do them. Go talk to that guy, go talk to that other guy, come back and talk to this one again, repeat 200 times. GI really need a Skip+Summary button like Granblue Fantasy eventually got.

That said, I’m eventually going to do all the quests and explore as much as possible because, well, what else can you do? That’s what the game is about. Plus, more importantly, I need the quests to save primogems for Baal / Raiden Shogun. At this point in time I have no idea of her skillset. She might not even be all that powerful. But the past two Archons (Zhongli and Venti) are considered must-haves so I figure Baal must be good as well. Even if she sucks, the fans will riot until Mihoyo buffs her, so I’m not worried.

I don’t want any other characters besides her for now, mostly because I don’t want to farm new artifacts or learn how to fight any of the new bosses. But also because I spent a lot of time and effort raising my party and don’t intend to throw them away so easily. Right now my main party is Xiao (DPS), Bennett (sub DPS, healer, buffer), Xiangling (pyro res + off-field attack) and Fischl (team mascot lol. Also Oz hits like a tank).

Their artifacts could be better and their talents are only around 7 so there’s room for improvement there. But they get the job done on the world map (Abyss? wot dat?) and in most events, so I’m happy with them. On the backburner, I’m idly raising Venti for the crowd control, Diona for the shields and Xingqiu because I need a good water attacker and I hate how Mona sprints. I have a ton of other characters as well, but I can’t/won’t raise everyone since 1) I can only use 4 in battle at a time and 2) Better characters will come out eventually. Conservation of effort and all that.

To summarize this whole not-even-that-lengthy post, a long-awaited new area came out in Genshin Impact. But I’m too busy right now to explore it properly. Luckily enough it’s a permanent area, so there’s no rush. I’ll just have to chip away at it every weekend at my own pace. I won’t have much else to say about GI until update 2.1, and possibly not even then.

This is where I would normally add a section about what else I’m playing/planning to play right now, but I know I won’t play anything anyway, so I won’t bother. I really want to play Undernauts a.k.a Yomi wo Saku Hana when it comes out in October and I may or may not buy a Switch OLED for that, but that’s it as far as plans go. See you when I see you!

Really, really final word on Atelier Online + a few tips

The last area released before I dropped Atelier Online

I hear “that garbage Atelier Online game” finally got released in English this week. It doesn’t mean much to me because I dropped it already, but I figure some people might make their way here wondering whether it’s worth playing or not. To them I say yeah… it’s worth a try, but don’t spend any money on it.

Normally I hate to do this because I know “free to play” games aren’t really free. Both Koei/Gust and the localizers Boltrend put a lot of money into it, and it’s the small paying population that makes a game free for the rest of us. But in Atelier Online‘s case, any money you put in is going to be wasted, because game content will dry up almost completely after roughly 15 months.

I know that because even though I threatened to quit the game in May 2020, I actually kept playing almost daily until October 2020 and then sporadically until I finally dropped it for good in January 2021. Atelier Online is DEAD in Japan. Very little new story content, what little appeared was just marking time with no real seriousness. One new area released in all that time. If you’re interested in the story or lore or the world of Bressisle and want to explore new continents and stuff… yeah, forget it. Not gonna happen. Same old events repeated and recycled, same rewards, same old battle strategies. No new gacha characters after March 2020, so if you’re interested in a particular Atelier character, it’s best to Google it and check if they ever came. Dead means dead.

I hung in there till October 2020 because that’s when the game’s anniversary is. If the developers were going to make any grand announcements about updates or new features, that would have been the time. Instead they just gave a lot of free rolls and a small update to the Mirror World arc IIRC, and that was it. The writing was on the wall.

Despite all that, however, I wouldn’t discourage anyone from playing Atelier Online. It was a very pretty game, I liked the soundtrack, it scratched my crafting itch somewhat, the crashing issues improved after a while. I also enjoyed getting stronger with better equipment all the time, and the people on the Atelier Online discord were very nice and helpful. It wasn’t all bad.

So if you are able to go in with your eyes open, fully aware that this game will go nowhere, then who am I to stop you? It’s much the same logic as watching or reading a series that was cancelled or dropped without a proper ending. As long as you know from the start and can manage your expectations, there’s no problem.

So you can ignore my advice about not spending money as well. If you want to spend money, knowing you’re not going to get much in the long run, go for it. If you must spend on the gacha, focus on characters. New gear comes out all the time, but because of the nature of the Atelier series, the character pool is pretty limited. The free characters like the MC and Sorrel etc. are all completely crap. They have to be crap, otherwise no one would pull characters from the gacha. Don’t be like me and waste time and EXP and food levelling them up.

Besides, you can only have a party of 4 characters anyway, so don’t bother with more than four or five. IIRC the best characters when I quit Atelier Online were Escha and Vervain? Verbena? (the pirate girl, forget her name). Totori was best for spamming items. And there were one or two others. I think Willbell was the best magic user, but magic is mostly meh in this game. You should probably consult a proper tier list and not take my word for it. Pick your party as soon as you can and use dupes from other characters to unlock their levels. It’s what I wish I’d done instead of stupidly trying to raise everyone naturally. Heaven forbid you’d want to use a lot of Atelier characters in an Atelier game, grumble grumble…

Back on topic, though, I think newbies starting out will have a pretty good time. When I joined the game had already been out for a while, so a lot of the events were permanently available. Summer events, Valentine, Christmas, etc etc. Experiencing all those in real time with a group of friends (IRL or discord because the game’s co-op options are junk) would be fun. It wasn’t for me because I had my eyes on the garbage story with its garbage roadblocks (since the game was almost dead when I started and events weren’t really a thing), but you don’t have to make the same mistake. And remember to focus on getting candy and cole above all else.

Also don’t worry too much about combat. It’s not that hard, most of the time. Forget about using items like bombs and unis to deal any meaningful damage. They’re just there to boost your skill gauge. Every battle was just spam items to boost skill gauge, get off huge skill chain, end battle. Either you have enough strength for that burst damage or you don’t. But that’s a problem for you to worry about. I got out while I could.

So if you want to play Atelier Online, go ahead. I got about 2 months of fun out of it. Sure, I played for much longer than that, but got only two months’ worth of fun out of it. But when it was fun, it was really fun. And I’d probably still be playing if it wasn’t so obviously dead. Go for it and try to have fun!

Update: Koei-Tecmo finally announced that the Japanese version of Atelier Online is shutting down on March 31st, 2022. They’re just burying the corpse at this point.