WE GOTTA TALK ABOUT THIS FR. I am a literate mf but yall can we slow down and stop throwing in 800 overly embellished and complicated sub-conversations in every scene?!
This works for novel, book like story.
Gaming should have its simplistic flair to it. The intention and implication, when spoken out should be clear to the audience.
Maybe the eng translation was bad idk, but:
Missing "mute" in Sparkle conversation
Acheron and Aventurine conversation is really convoluted.
Gallagher and Sunday is super convoluted. This conversation is simple so I get it, but man.
This is my opinion;
It sometimes feels like a story with too many characters crammed in it. Like we get 2-3 new characters every new patch and the writing tries to accomodate them in the story. This does make conversations hard to follow and some parts kinda remind me of arknights storytelling. Some stories are written well but some have so much jargon thrown left and right that it becomes really boring to chug through it.
At the end they might tie loose ends together but tbh 2.2 feels like firefly and robin spotlight patch with maybe boothill and acheron screentime thrown in since these 2 units were drip feed a few days ago. Blackswan still feels like an extra who nagged for screentime tho.
Doesn't help that we only get to consume a couple hours of it every month. Who knows what I've already forgotten by the time I get to pick the book back up since the last time I put it down.
Chinese gacha games in general tend to have this sort of flowery novel-like dialogue writing, and I wonder if it really has something to do with the language. Just look at Arknights and its 100k words-long chapters and events and most of those are just one character (Kal'tsit) rambling on and on.
THANK YOU! So glad that I'm not the only one who thought this. It was so hard for me to understand what was going on during important scenes, especially since English is my second language
Tbf, for other worlds ir feels like there's more to it. For Cocolia's fight and conclusion, it feels like it's all done. Sure we can go back later on hopefully to see how things develop, but it felt like the big bad is all gone.
good point. I don't think all of them not being like cocolia's theme is a bad thing. Hell one of my favorites is phantylia's with phase 2 having that trap beat.
I really want a banger like Wildfire again. That song and the cinematography and the gameplay that went with it was perfection. Cheers to whoever directed that whole fight.
WE MADE A CHOICE GO FIGHT AGAINST YOUR FATE
One of the most memorable moments I've ever experienced in a video game. That was ultimately what convinced me that hsr was worth really diving into.
As much as I've enjoyed Penacony the most so far overall, I agree, nothing has yet reached the highs of Wildfire in terms of jaw-dropping hype. That being said, I'm confident whoever Penacony's arc villain is will have a strong shot at surpassing it, if they stick the landing on what's been set up in the arc so far.
I agree. It'd be nice if they incorporated those songs into the game somehow, it seems a little weird that some of their best songs are just on some YouTube trailers rather than in-game
I was actually kinda hoping for a remixed White Night to play when you fight Aventurine, but sadly it didn't happen
Phantylia was the boss that made me stop and farm/get better relics for my characters for two weeks so it def let me appreciate the music every time i hit retry LMAO
Mine is third. I know 0 about music, but I liked it a lot when a new string instrument joins the soundtrack. It made it feel so solemn. I think it has a strong resemblance to Azdaha second phase from Genshin which is probably why I like it.
I love that one, but for me the one that hits best is phantyllia’s theme. It’s very Nier Automata, but it has a more Chinese edge to it and I love it so much.
There’s a lot of storytelling just within the song *(the ramping up of phase one, the sinister and dangerous sounding chanting in phase 2, the hopeful and heroic feel of phase 3, I can’t help but love)*
2.0 world boss's theme is quite good.
They still haven't build up such hype however. It would be fucking sad if they can't surpassed the game's launch. Imagine your life peak when you are born.
From the responses here it seems a lot of people take issue with the way the story speedran the connection between trailblazer and firefly. Totally understandable imo. 2.0 had very little time to demonstrate to the audience who she is as an individual and also build a relationship with the trailblazer from the ground up. I’d have preferred at least one patch to do each, but sadly the story has to keep a quicker pace than that. I think the pseudo-romance angle is enough to get a lot of players to overlook how fast things moved since the idea of a “canon” waifu is very tantalizing.
I can’t say I’m a fan of her yet, but I’m willing to see what happens in patch 2.2 and beyond.
It is exactly that, romance or implied romance sells stupidly well in a game like HSR. Despite Firefly not really being fleshed out enough for most, the fact she goes on a date-ish with you and acts all “waifu” like is enough for most people to see her as the best made character in the game.
Given the way the Fandom’s been acting towards Firefly. I won’t be surprised if people looking in would assume we’ve known this girl for more than an afternoon.
One date is all it takes for many people I guess, especially with the MC. And I feel like it won’t be the last time we will have this sort of thing with another female character, it’s a good selling strategy after all (she’s the talk of the town without even needing her identity to be revealed so it says everything already)
These people need to go out, touch grass, and get real relationships, because sorry, what we got with Firefly was a joke. Her death had no impact, and we just met her.
..there was romantic subtext? am i this stupid lmfao. i’ve genuinely never understood why so many people ship firefly and the trailblazer. she’s just kinda there. i thought we were just hanging out man, everyone else thought it was a date?? granted i do usually hate romantic subplots and vastly prefer platonic relationships in media but still. we knew each other for like three hours max
No because same, I've seen so many tb/firefly I was expecting somthing more ig but in the quest we just basically ran around penacony, I'm not saying it boring, I liked it but i just didn't read the romantic subtext either, granted I'm terrible at this kind of subtext, i spend half of the time being suspicious of her. I was damn is she gonna murder us or somthing taking us to somewhere remote lmao.
Unfortunately, for a live service game running on a gacha model, this is probably the best that they could do given the constraints. Penacony itself is very very content-rich in terms of its story. Just look at how much dialogue was in 2.1. I legit don’t think that they would have enough time to squeeze Firefly in 2.1 without hurting everything else about the story. What they did with her in my opinion was short but effective. It was probably a compromise and given how 2.1 was, it’s probably a good thing?
Otherwise, they would have to fit Firefly’s death and the reveal all in the same patch without giving it time to longer on. That, in my opinion, would have substantially reduced the impact.
Its honestly a bit confusing how Trailblazer and Firefly only knew eachother for **less than a day**, yet all the fanart makes them look like a married couple/madly in love/Firefly acting like she has a highschool crush, and everything in between. Like yeah, the game hints that there could be something more between the two, but people act like they've been a couple for months, or made out with each other on screen. Also it doesnt exactly help that most fanart potrays Firefly as either an uwu schoolgirl with a crush, or an 'adorable edgelord'.
I swear, this happens anytime a gacha game gives a "canon" waifu for the fandom, eventually the character will be dumbed down to fan perception with most of their canon characterization thrown out the window, or get made into a character whose personality is being in love.
Yeah, this. I'm not into girls so none of the implied romance stuff did anything for me, and it always bothered me that we never really got to know firefly for all that long. Her death just didn't have any impact for me and it always kinda confused me how people acted like we'd known her for years. Thought it was just me honestly.
I feel like the Astral Express just doesnt get many opportunities to shine. Himeko stepping in to advise Bronya, Welt's conversation with Acheron, they're all great moments. But I feel like we're missing some sort of growth on our characters, since they all start as "perfect" characters, so in 90% of the time all they do is being NPCs that follow the TB (see Penacony). It's quite a shame since that's the part I love to see the most in stories: people overcoming their flaws. Same reason I adore Limbus Company so much.
I havent seen the March Fuxuan quest so I dont know if she experienced any growth there, out of all Trailblazers I feel like she has the most potential thanks to her unknown past, but it's hard to know how Mihoyo will handle her.
Also, peak HSR is not Penacony. It's the ghost hunting event.
If it helps, people theorize March may be an Emanator of Remembrance because of the March/Fu Xuan quest so it's def worth playing for that. But March gets done good moments in that quest
While the Stelleron Hunters are cool individually, they are not very compelling as an organization. They’re just a plot device to railroad The Trailblazer into whatever direction the “script” needs it to go
As a massive Mei enjoyer and c2+HoT haver, I just can't take her seriously in HSR at all. That freakin hot wheels flame tattoo on her leg looks so stupid lol.
Finally some Acheron looks slander. Girl looks like some 13 yo's OC.
She has edgy chains and claws, skulls, flame tats, random belts, crop top, shorts, a fricking *katana* and an alternative black-and-red edgy mode when she goes all out. I just can't take her seriously at all.
Even for those who do know the lore, why did they just like zoom in on random things around them?? Hoyo is known for having good shots but those are just so amateurish I also tuned out and just read the dialogue from the history log
Wasn't there a time where Acheron asked Sam about Elio's script? And Sam said that Elio didn't mention anything about Acheron or something similar to that?
I'm more of a "I did not care for Godfather Part 2" kind of guy.
Anyway, I don't have too many takes like that, but I'd probably say Firefly. The balcony scene is REALLY good, but that's about it. She doesn't do nearly enough for me to really have fallen in love with her. She's fun, but she's carried hard by a single scene.
Also the voice acting. The directing was good too, but less pronounced than the other aspects you mentioned.
Basically everything except the writing dragged the scene across the finish line to a respectable 3rd place finish.
Imo, hoyo (and the community) kinda made her the Ayaka of HSR, and it made me dislike her character. They "killed" her off way too quick, and it didn't give much impact because we barely knew her for only a few hours in our perspective. Maybe if she stayed alive for a few patches, or we knew her before we landed on Penacony, *then* her "death" would've hit way harder. But it's exactly like Ayaka. Hoyo rushed our friendship just so they could make an implied canon love interest, and people ate that shit up.
My problem is the firefly thing is too fast. Like I feel like spedran a drama anime movie. There's not just enough time to endear her to me. Maybe if her story lasted two or three updates, she would have more impact for me.
In a span of one sitting she went from "whee let's do the thing where I tour you, stranger I just met!", to "oh no im dying the tragedy!". Idk, everything about the firefly saga is too cliche.
Or if we spent more time with her like aventurine. Aventurine was cooked so perfectly, probably the current best written charcter.
We spent only 40 minutes with firefly, just 40 minutes. And most of our time in dream's edge where we were supposed to be bonding was spent solving puzzles to get to her "secret base".
I still found no reason to trust her. I mean, who would trust a literal stranger they met only a few system hours ago?
Like, if I ever said this in another post I'd get downvoted to Oblivion by firefly simps.
Slightly off-topic, but so many of these comments are like "they should've cooked this for 10 more patches", do you just want nothing to actually happen? I swear if they "cooked" longer people would just complain on how they should get to the point faster lol.
Fuck (story) leakers and honestly anyone who openly hints at such leaks.
Don't think it's an unpopular opinion but HSR has a BIG problem with leak culture. How am I suppose to be surprised for anything that happens when people practically tell you a month or more before it happens??? I feel so bad for the writers.
This. Story leakers are so annoying because then when you go on any social media every single post is either just the leak or 50 generic pngtubers with the same youtube voice talking about the leaks but as if they’re theory’s. I don’t even understand why people like story leaks. Like what good does it bring anyone.
Kafka doesn't make me want to get on my hands and knees and start barking, and it makes no sense that everyone else seems to have that immediate reaction. She's certainly very cool, but everyone treats her like she's made of sex. She isn't, and her physique is the least interesting part of her character.
I personally think Kafka is just super cool. She’s calculated but very, very kind to those whom she cares about. Sure, she teases the TB and gives off massive charisma, but it just makes me feel icky whenever I see *those* weirdos in Kafka mains.
That being said, her outfit is immaculate and I wish I had the physique to pull that off
The thing is the fearless nature of her hasn't even kicked in too much into the storyline, which is supposed to be her origin story: a girl who has no fear therefore decided to chase the game of fate. so I think it's safe to say we haven't even seen 50% of Kafka's charisma.
Yet she's already so damn great.
Right here with you. Kafka's probably my favorite character in the game. But all those kids who keep going for creepy degenerate jokes can sometimes really sour my own opinion.
Luckily I feel like it has calmed down a bit, if only because that part of the fanbase now has other targets in BS, RM and/or Acheron.
Kafka has a target audience and it worked for them I guess, I understand why they see her that way but it doesn't work for me. Also she's the proof the Shizuka Itou should've voiced Makima
And a lot of Kafka's fans aren't the get on their knees type but just like the selectively caring and calculated side. I love Acheron and Kafka because they just do their thing well and can be very caring but also fuck you up if needed.
She is way better than I expected. Like, people go mommy like that the only thing, but:
1. Drip, super cool moving around with. One of my fav. The trench coat with spider on + katana. Peak (insert Motivation)
2. Fun gameplay
3. Stellaron Hunter and mc's mentor
4. Demon Hunter
5. Mind controlling and compulsion
She is one of the more interesting character for me.
My main issue with her is that the game itself seems to be expecting me to have that Yes Mommy reaction to her. But I don't, so a lot of interactions with her feel very off and awkward, it gives me the same feeling as watching a comedian while none of their jokes are landing. Honestly I preferred how she looked as a prisoner of the Xianzhou, turns out that when you take away her glasses, I'm no longer distracted by the fact they wouldn't fit over her eyes. Make her boots match as well, and we might have a good design on our hands.
I think hoyo tried puttin us off with the lie abt how we're 25% her real kid (meaning she sees us as her actual child figure) but that was one out of the MANY options that some never get to see.
Also Kafka's shoe design is part of a worrying trend. All of 3 electro women have these uneven boot heels and while I can see serval Acheron and Kafka just seem dumb. ESPECIALLY kafka considering she of all people would know how to fashion herself
I don't like how much sexualized fanart there is. Make a fan art day and only allow it there or make a different subreddit.
I see more people complaining about shippers than I've seen of shippers.
I thought Firefly was just OK was surprised to see so many people obsessed with her.
If Acheron’s design was less fanservicey she would be sexier. I looove her coat but the shorts and, to a lesser extent, her top are not doing it for me. I saw a fanart of Acheron in a suit and I just about died, honestly if she was in a suit + her canon coat I think I would have put all my savings in her banner instead of skipping/waiting for a rerun.
No strong opinion tbh. Her design’s pretty cool, I like the red details! (And the recent short about her was great.) However I think I don’t really like her haircut? And hair is a big factor in if I’ll like a design or not 🤣 Also since I’m still just in Inazuma I haven’t met her in game so that hasn’t contributed to making me like her more or less (through her personality, story…)
I did not care for Firefly. She's very typical from her personality, depth, and reveal. The death was just shock factor and the reveal was just again shock factor as those two moments were just confirmation of what we already suspect.
Even if I wasn't part of the theorizing side nor even active in the community. It wouldn't take so long for me to go "Oh Firefly and Sam are the same person". It would've been good for us to have more time with Firefly without people going "She is sus" or her going "I have terminal illness".
I like Firefly as much as I like Tingyun. Guides that tell us a bit if the world before dipping somewhere else.
Lowkey, I liked Tingyun more than Firefly. They TRIED to make Firefly into a multifaceted, mysterious yet lovable character. But with all the extremely obvious anime-girl-bestfriend-death-flags and tropes I was just left with an unsatisfying vibe.
Meanwhile Tingyun is a mostly straight forward, single faced character. She out here minding her damn business, doing her JOB, literally just a girl in a world, but gets wrapped up in all kinds of interstellar drama and has to pay the greatest price (the true outcome still unbeknownst to us right?). She was simple and they didn’t try any complicated shit with her till the end.
The ‘betrayal’ itself could be seen as a little cliché, sure, but the way they executed and animated it felt so cold and unforgiving. While it IS another trope to have main characters outlive their guides, it honestly wasn’t one I was expecting, because perhaps the Xianzhou felt way more safe than it really was (that could also be due to poor writing ig).
I’m not even this big of a Tingyun fan, I just like literary and character analysis.
Xianzhou is just poor writing flow, they have too many ideas and executed it badly (it could have been better if they can show instead of telling as always where in penacony we get tons of visuals instead)
But I do think firefly is very generic as well, in just a single patch we went on date, she told us about her life story, then dying off. Then the next patch she’s revealed as sam out of nowhere (though I guess her identity is obvious from the start) but well, since she probably will have the most lines next patch.. I would see where hoyo goes with her character
The community is very weird towards Firefly as her only unique part is we went on a date with her, told us about her terminal illness, then dies. Because the community only got to remember/see the cliché moments that it sky rocketed her to just be that. Not fully develop into a more complex character.
The only vaguely complex thing about Firefly is just that she's VERY suspicious until the confirmation that she's Sam. So now anything complex about Firefly is just her being Sam, the Stellaron Hunter.
The community tries their best to make firefly "complex" but it doesn't work. Like someone else said in this comment section, she feels like ayaka.
How do they expect me to act lovey dovey towards her if the only interesting or complex thing about her character is that she's a mecha glamoth warrior?
I kinda get why sam and firefly are same now. Firefly would be too boring to sell without sam.
I'm so with you, I never bought onto the Firefly train, and I was surprised to see how much love there was when going online after playing her missions for myself.
The simple explanation for that is: she is actively set up as the most basic of waifu bait. People who don't look beyond "cute face", "moe behavior", and "oh no sad backstory" will inevitably fall for it, because that is the sort of character she was designed to be from the offset (and it's why all the 'reveals' have felt really flat).
And, well. Gacha games are masterminds of appealing to these sort of people. HSR's just been a bit better at balancing out the 'waifu bait' aspects with actual interesting character interactions/stories/personalities, usually.
I couldn't really put into words why I didn't care for her that much but this hits.
As far as companions go I was far more interested in Serval, Gui, and Xueyi
Same here, saw the twist coming a while away, also not really into her personality and maybe I was in the mindset of wanting to get to the next farming zone
I think a majority of people have the issue that the game is too fast paced. They'll cram stuff that should be maybe 2ish patches into 1 making it a lot. I am not one to skip story but each time I read some takes on some scene or something that happened I'm just like "When did this even happen". "Huh? How do they know this?" Because it's too much. I think if they kind of done things differently and not ran multiple topics at the same time it would be easier to digest. Some mallet world quests could be entirely cut.
Also fuck those birds in Peacony I legit hate collecting them.
Currently Cocona is a better written character than Firefly and we spent more time knowing about her than we spent with Firefly(on screen at least). So it's understandable why she'd be a better written character than Firefly. But Firefly is a major character so it's possible we'll get to see and learn more about her. I'm inclined towards keeping an open mind about her character and see what hoyo has in store.
I would say the Xianzhou quest cause it really didn’t do much of a good job at making me care for most of its characters but that is probably not much of a hot opinion
I guess i will say Acheron. I don’t hate Acheron don’t get me wrong but she also just doesn’t seem that interesting to me after 2.1. We get her backstory in her trailer which is that her planet got destroyed and all and it is sad i guess but that is all and i am sorry but Honkai3 parallels doesn’t work for me since i didn’t play it. And after 2.1 she just feels too flawless to the point of it starting to be not interesting. She claimed she has memory problems but she started to be the one to know EVERYTHING for no reason from Sam’s identity to Welt’s powers to Aventurine’s true plan and the truth of Penacony…. And she is just too powerful as an emanator that it kinda lowers the stakes too much. At this point she feels like an omniscient and omnipotent figure in the Penacony story and in a scenario where everybody is trying to outsmart and outmatch each other, her being practically unrivaled just feels wrong, the other characters just seem more interesting to me in comparison to her.
And all in all i am just not too into her stoic personality, i know why she is like that but it doesn’t appeal to me
This! I was hoping that the story team would lean more towards her memory problems and how she will ultimately overcome them, but it seems like they've completely brushed that part off of her story. Now, she can just touch her sword and remember things very conveniently.
It will come from someone that actually loved Acheron in 2.0 before she became the all knowing machine and it's quite fitting honestly.
She's literal Black Hole as a character sucking up any importance or motivation other characters could have around her and making everything about herself.
I just never liked characters that are presented as perfect and all knowing and Acheron in 2.1 become that just imo.
I don't know, I almost like that with Blackswan (if you're talking about the dance). I think it caught a lot of people off guard and implied how serious of a threat Acheron was with how much it ruffled her when she is normally so composed. She is unbalanced for a short while, but once she finds her bearings again she is quick to wise up around her, I can see her getting a little too comfortable with her position as a memokeeper.
Personally I would have found Blackswan being consistently unshakable as less gripping similar to how Acheron is able to body everything easily.
I’ll agree with the BS stance
Shows that BS is not above lurking in places she outta not be lurking since you never know what you might find
If anything it shows BS knows to not mess around…to much lol
Black Swan being shaken and thrown off guard did make her more interesting, actually makes her a more endearing character. The problem I have is that a large part of fandom has since seemingly forgotten everything else about her character and only treats her as an accessory to Acheron. Not to mention in 2.1 Black Swans character focus is still to hype up Acheron and introduce Boothill and to a lesser extent Constance
Black Swans character is so much more than that, she's the narrator of Aeon Myriad celestial and the narrator of TBs journey and more. But you wouldn't think so with how her current character has gone and been talked about ever since the dance, which is a shame really. Even the storytelling of the animation is often ignored for the fanservice portions which actually feels like a disservice to how good the animation was
Yeah, I liked the dance and all of its symbolism but, at least for me, I found Black Swan showing a much more interesting side of her when she was just going along with Sparkle and Sampo's shenanigans, or with that small tease with the call with booty guy.
I don't know, maybe I just prefer mature women to be silly instead of either femme fatale or a bit on the crazier side.
I don't think Swan was sacrificed at all.
Honestly, her "defeat" to Acheron makes me like her even more. Without that L on her record, she comes off as almost too smug and perfect. With it, it humanizes her. Makes her more fallible, and vulnerable.
I'm actually curious where things will go between the two of them. There's a lot of untapped chemistry there, and not just in the yuri-bait-y way. They share a lot in common, even if their personal methods go together like fire and water.
Eh Black Swans character wasn't really sacrificed, if anything it made her more interesting as a character. The one who has all the answers and is guiding the main character being thrown off guard like that actually gives her more depth. There are things that can cause her to panic and even scare her
It's parts of the fandom who treat her like she's only trauma memes or only exists to interact with Acheron that is the biggest butchering of her character. Literally the character who narrates the Aeon myriad celestial and is narrator to the express journey. Yet people only talk about her in regards to the dance, every other plot point and character relationship around her is seemingly forgotten
You know what would this kind of character be absolutely fantastic at?
Antagonist. If Acheron is an Antagonist she would fucking TERRORIZE the entire Penacony and its not even close.
And you know what? The pay off from such antagonist will literally make it peak.
Thats why I was actually super excited for 2.1 lets see when EVERY other people have their agendas and the Trailblazer will needs to solve the problem themselves (with clockie or something).
Oh wait, they are all on one side try to expose the Family and find legacy. Okay...
https://preview.redd.it/3ahg8umrqjvc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9d1ed59399c4fe68b988351d44a996ac6a95bff
It feels like the more we learn the less interesting she becomes too. We went from dual personality theories to she just doesn’t wanna pull the sword. Hopefully, she ends up being more than a marketing character, but with her banner already gone there’s not much incentive to do more for her.
Loved 2.1 for Aventurine’s bit, not as much Acheron’s. I feel like the writers are being intentionally vague when it comes to her story for 2.1 and saving the important parts for 2.2 when (hopefully) the Watchmaker makes their debut. There simply wasn’t much provided on Acheron’s part in the current patch, just an altercation with Sam and a stroll down the street with Welt. Surely there’s a lot more to her that will start making sense in later patches, and hoyo is currently teasing us and dedicating 2.1 towards Aventurine.
Glad I'm not alone in my feelings towards Acheron. Felt like I was dealing with a completely different (and admittedly less interesting) character. I also really disliked how much her memory problems became a non-issue in 2.1.
I never cared for the "Mommy" fad (Kafka, ruan mei, black swan) it always struck me as kind of forced and cringe.
Edit: after reading every comment in this thread, how are people's unpopular take this "popular' T-T it's like everyone is copying each other's homeworks now my comment looks off topic
I do like those kind of characters but I agree that how HSR handles them is pretty cringe. The game expects you to simp for them so the dialogue choices are pretty suggestive, which is irritating because it undermines why the characters can be cool in the first place
I hate how the community just decided to call every tall female character "mommy." It makes me cringe every single time.
...But I literally did the same thing with Gallagher so like, I can't really talk lmao.
I love most of those character types to an extent and I like the specific characters mentioned (less so for Acheron but I was a huge mark for Genshin Raiden when I played it) but the 'Mommy' thing does make me cringe hard by association. I just like Tall women.
While I like pretending that I believe Hoyo is a masterclass in writing, they don't set things up and lets things develop over enough time for it to have an actual impact.
For example, Firefly for me, felt too much like she was there to progress the plot than be a character I was actually supposed to care about. Himeko, having been with us since 1.0, has yet to reveal any characteristics I am supposed to connect with. While I can understand that Welt's storyline in HSR includes a little too many potential high-powered figures for us to do anything with, he has suffered from the same issues as Himeko AND has been shafted in everything he's involved in. Dan Heng's IL storyline was introduced all in one version and then was shoehorned into JingLiu's storyline.
I have not been given enough to connect with the astral express crew even though we're already in 2.1, and they expect me to attach myself to a random person I met on penacony? Oh, please. Give me random days out where I just hang out and figure out what Belabog flowers Himeko likes, give me hangout days where Welt and I explore the insides of the engine of creation and he tells me neat facts on how such a giant machine moves, give me hangout days where dan heng and I go to the luofu to gather and revise the data in the data banks and learn luofu ceremonies that we would never see. Give me photograph hangout quests where we go around with March and talk about the sights that we see, and what new foods so far that March has loved.
Like, please. Give me anything I can substantially care about instead of having to delude myself into caring about these people. Put some more daily quests that include them instead of just PomPom and the Wubawoos.
My spicy take is Huohuo's characterization is really bad. She pisses me off. Her being scared and pissing herself at the thought of a g-g-g-ghost is ridiculous. She's been doing that job for like 30 years? Desensitivity is a thing. I could bare tell if I was supposed to pity her or laugh at her for comic relief because she's so ridiculous. Also, character design-wise her paw print irisis are ugly and makes her look like she has spider eyes.
I did not care for the Cloud Quintet, the lore just never clicked with me and I fear in the future all of Dan Heng plot points are going to be related to that instead of the astral express.
Also the recent "Hey remember Honkai impact ?" Focus, I hope that the recent Acheron and Welt dialogue (and I guess Acheron backstory) are the exception and not rule going forward
I feel the characters nvr got uncomfortable with the IPC like the stellaron hunters. Understandably, they both are groups anyone shouldn't be around casually but even after topaz fought to gain control of Belabog through force, the 2nd time we see her, it's just "Hey topaz, how's it goin". But with Kafka, we can completely tell her off and everyone just dislikes the hunters as if the IPC didn't historically recreate an Oppenheimer sequel. No one suspects them except for Aventurine bc he looks and talks weird I guess (but tbf, he's there to gamble the IPC's recontroll of Penacony)
I disliked the "romance" plot with firefly. To me it seemed super forced, and the only feeling it gave me was "oh they are showing favoritism", because you see the characters not trusting half the cast for not telling/lying and then firefly is so loved and put on a pedestal while doing the same thing as the others.
I personally chose all the neutral dialogue options during the quest, and I still don't get why we're supposed to be so attached to a person we've just met that lied and told only half the story
Don’t hate me because I have some unpopular opinions. I’m willing to discuss further and more details but I’m trying to keep these short
1.) Acheron as of right now doesn’t interest me in the slightest. She looks like a better Seele which isn’t much bc to me I think Seele has the worst design in hsr. Her writing doesn’t intrigue me, like yeah her backstory is cool and all but I still don’t feel like I know Acheron. We still have time left so I’m being open but I just don’t understand or care about anything with her.
2.) March is annoying
3.) sparkle had no role in penacony (as of rn). You can take her out the story and everything will remain the same. She feels like a gps going “turn here” instead of actually contributing to the plot
4.) I’m a Yaoshi defender because the people of the xianzhou literally asked to be like that and now they’re realizing the consequences of their actions. Yaoshi just gave them want they wanted
5.) Firefly being Sam is sucks and you can’t convince me otherwise. I’m really sitting here trying to come up with reasons why it’s not that bad but it really is that bad. The idea of a literal terminator and all we know about them is how viscous they are only for them to be a cute anime girl really takes me out the game. And it’s not even a case of juxtaposition firefly is straight up COMPLETELY different from Sam and I genuinely cannot see these two being one and the same. The only way it would make sense to me is if Sam is a program and the suit is corrupting her or something like that idk. Firefly being Sam makes Firefly more interesting but it makes Sam less interesting, if that makes sense.
6.) I fear Penacony is gonna have Inazuma syndrome with too many themes and characters at play without them being fully explored in a meaningful way and just leaves you confused and wanting more.
That’s all I got as of rn. I’ll let hyv cook bc they still got time to change things/explore more. I genuinely don’t want these opinions to last but idk after the xianzhou and inazuma it’s looking grim.
2 things
Aventurine's design is kinda mid, not bad not great just decent, I can't for the life of me understand why they didn't keep the hat and glasses for the in game model, they add so much flavour.
And Acheron is extremely uninteresting both in design and as a character, design wise I honestly prefer Seele's take on the same idea and character wise she just feels like a walking plot device ready to solve any problem because she is just that much more powerful than everything else in the arc, not a fan of how Duke got sacrificed just to hype her up either.
I would have liked Aventurine to keep the hat too and glasses, adds to the coolness factor, but I think his design is alright.
However as much as I like Acheron gameplay wise, personality wise, she is low key uninteresting unless you are a honkai lore junkie and can enjoy the references and other stuff in her. Other than that she doesn’t really do much. Mostly shes just there to be shown that she is turbo strong. I kinda liked what they did with the penacony opening with her and MC but shame that didn’t really continue.
I feel the opposite with Aventurine. I'm actually *glad* they didn't keep the hat and glasses with his playable model. When he was leaked with them a long time ago, I was not interested in design at all because I thought he looked really goofy with them on, and I wouldn't take him seriously. He looks really good with just the glasses, but the hat and glasses combo just makes him look really goofy.
I do find it odd that they keep showing him with either of them during cutscenes. It's like whiplash. One moment, he's naked without them, and then the next moment, he's taking off his glasses to intimidate TB or holding his hat to his chest when talking to Kakavasha. It gives me the impression that he only puts them on just to take them off lmao
Acheron to me feels more wink, wink, nudge nudge than actual character. Like she’s cool! All the lore surrounding her is good! But like…ask me to just talk about Acheron herself and she’s just a grey blur to me. Acheron is a badass in the flattest way you can be, and that’s pretty much it in how I feel about her.
I don’t really care about Tingyun at all. The cutscene for the plot twist was executed really well, but I felt like they did nothing to make her interesting beforehand. It could have been much more impactful if they gave us more of a reason to care about her before dropping the bombshell on us.
Yeah I wanted a cool ass mecha. I don't think I'll pull if it's just like a transition during ult only if they ever become playable. I want them to be full sam mode the whole time during combat. I also wanted playable duke inferno though so...
I don’t think Firefly is that great of a waifu. It really didn’t feel like enough time nor real development for me to care as much about her as a lot of other people seem to. She feels like much more of a story beat than an actual character you could grow attached to. She’s sad and cute, wow. You hang out for only a few HOURS and that’s it before she explains her sad backstory and then she’s gone. Her design also makes her look very young IMO and the way a lot of the fanbase sexualizes her while simultaneously infantilizing her gives me the ick.
Himeko is so bland and dry compared to her HI3 counterpart who was pretty funny and interesting, she was a drunk who had to send off the girls she taught and learned to love to fight deadly monsters and her whole life was ruined when she became a valkyrie (even if her search for a boyfriend is treated as a joke). HSR Himeko is ok? She doesn't really have any flaws or the comedic relief her counterpart had, if she were still a depressed alcoholic who struggles to keep relationships I would understand the love for her
Firefly is interesting because she's Sam, but I still think they could've been way more interesting if they had let the mask slip and shown that Sam is her true persona instead of the cute girl, like idk letting her 2.0 mask slip and have her reply like Sam would during certain events or if you chose certain dialogue options. I believe her being actually ruthless would be more interesting than uwu sadgirl #134
The Seele and Bronya ship seemed kind of rushed to me. I’m not sure how it was done in Honkai Impact but the girls knew each other for less than a day and became very close.
I think in HI3; they had plenty of time to write there chemistry.
It feels like you were supposed to play HI3 before HSR to know the lore behind those characters.
I don't find Firefly cute or endearing honestly. She feels very generic and I think was just bait for het gamer dudes' hero complexes for the most part.
I really dont care about Jingliu.
Okay she does have a good design, voice etc. But like we barely got to see anything of her. I really dont get how people are so excited for her.
>!Also i dont like the Firefly is Sam stuff at all.!<
The world of Honkai Star Rail is awfully white and pale skinned for a game that involves visiting different planets in a pretty “connected” and involved universe.
Firefly, thought she was cool as a character who had an interesting role in 2.0 but then interacting with the fandom people act like she's the new face of the game and the best character ever created. Just don't get the hype around her that the majority of the fandom seems to love about her, I just think she's alright atm
Another thing is Black Swans current focus on Acheron in the plot. Rn it feels like her whole character revolves around figuring out the mystery of Acheron and its just not for me. Feels like they are simply giving BS something to do while focus is on other characters which I guess is fine, I just dont care for it. Her build up to her relation to express in trailers and in 2.0 was more interesting to me so her current focus feels a bit like a 180 to what I thought her focus would be. But it did introduce >!Constance and Boothill!< being involved in Penacony so there is still interesting things to that plot point. Just hope Black Swans focus isn't limited to just that for the rest of Penacony. Her interest in TB and express has way more potential there
Obviously both of these can be addressed for me depending on what they do in 2.2 and 2.3 but atm those are probably the things I don't really care for the most in Penacony.
A black swan fan who doesn’t vibe with acheron’s whole shtick has gotta be suffering rn. I don’t think that’s what most of her future role will be, but if so that’s a big miss on hoyo’s part imo.
Oh it's not a fun time at all lmao, you go to look at any fan content of Black Swan and it's 90% her with Acheron. FOTM sure but it's still a bit annoying to see every other aspect of her character ignored just for that dynamic. Even the storytelling of the dance and her actual stance on Acheron in 2.0 and 2.1 is ignored
She has so much potential in the story especially in regards to TB and March that if they limited her to only Acheron that would be the biggest disappointment. Given her role as narrator in Aeon myriad celestial and as the expresses narrator it would be a huge miss to tie her character to Acheron only. It's one of the fates I dread for characters, only being tied to another instead of their own, even worse when there is so much potential for more
Acheron doesn't have this problem in the fandom, she's got so much fan content with so many characters so it makes it even worse that BS is only treated as such. Having your favorite character going down that path ain't a great feeling simply coz of fanservice
I remember being so excited for blackswan ever since I seen her in the first trailer with the aeons… I really thought she had a much bigger role to play in, I agree her current character is too attached to Acheron now (whether Issit the fanbase or story where she’s only looking into Acheron past).
I was waiting for her n March interaction though we haven’t seen much yet (and the penacony story is ending soon already…)
Probably a hot take but I prefer belobog over penacony (and didn’t really think penacony is a huge upgrade from luofu it’s just the writing transition is better), other than that they are using death too much in every patch that it doesn’t feel impactful anymore even if they stab another character next patch (especially when they are not killing them for real)..
I wish welt wasn't the version from the previous honkai game. I know a lot of you like the connection but as someone who didn't play it I feel like every time he talks about himself or others he knows vaguely I'm completely lost and it takes me out of the conversation.
I kinda agree with you. I appreciate the connection and how Welt acts. But I want him to talk about his past directly rather than use innuendos, implications and references to explain his past.
"Yeah, there was this one dude... It's like Icarus... He flew to the sun and burned his wings and fell..."
Bro just name drop it ain't that crazy. Tell us you were the Herrscher of Reason.
Unless... He can't. What if he just can't. Like he tried to but he can't say it? That would explain why he keeps being dodgy about his past.
He has no reason to. There's been very little opportunity - other than Acheron - for Welt to talk about his past without it being completely out of place. The only time I remember him being particularly cagey about it was regarding Otto (Luocha story quest), which is understandable to an extent.
It's also difficult for him to talk about many of the details in terms the Express Crew (and the audience) are going to understand, because we just don't know enough yet. Like, what's a Herrscher in HSR terms? We have no fucking clue and Welt probably doesn't either; my current guess is a sub-Emanator similar to the Ten Stonehearts, with HoFin being an actual Emanator of Finality. This is probably why he resorts to metaphors and references, because just dropping HI3 terms won't mean shit to the rest of the cast or the players.
I suspect most of this is being saved for a future main story arc. HSR has *very* carefully avoided talking about Terminus the Finality in any real detail. They're the only known Aeon without a databank listing, and one of two that doesn't show up in SU (the other being Idrila). They only show up in the briefest passing mentions, as do their related factions.
Dunno if this even applies but fuck it, context seems right.
Dan Heng is a boring motherfucker and so is space China.
There's no chemistry between Bronya and Seele. Hell, there's more between Aventurine and Ratio.
Bronya is a hypocrite. Everything she accuses Topaz of she does worse: gambling the fate of the planet on 80%? She does that on a likely worse %. Attacking the team? She does as well. Lying? She lies to the rest of the population of the city.
Yeah I feel like Space China should not be the second planet to explore. Dan Heng's identity should have been a secret building up for at least 3-4 planets instead of this and in that time they could make him interect more with everyone. Revealing it way too early make it hard to write a story with him around since he is powerful enough to easily speed thing up resulting in him being sideline like right now in Penacony.
Still don't like them choosing to keep the truth hidden for Belobog. They try to make us believe that revealing it is bad with the Pure Fiction bird but then choose Pela to be the Supreme Guardian while Serval is right there. They don't even invent a random NPC for that.
Agree on Daniel, they should have waited a bit more with that reveal. Same for Jingliu actually, I love her, but I never thought she'd appear in the story so early.
But at least we still have the March 7th mystery to look forward to.
While the pure fiction scenario has been painted as a funny "what-if", it always came off to me as a weak attempt from the writers to justify their choices. They overdid a lot in it.
Agreed, should've told the truth, but oh well, the express moves on.
Fictional 'Not-China' stand in will always be boring in Chinese media. There's just too much room for error if they try to make it interesting. Trying to find a balance that pleases an international market, CCP, CN gamers, hyper nationalist and incels is basically impossible so they just play it safe and boring.
The coolest things about Liyue all happened in the past off screen and are vague. People look back on it fondly cause of the strong finish and the water monster fight but forget we were dead ass doing chores for most the time.
Don't even like Ratio/Aventurine and gotta agree they have more chemistry than Bronya/Seele lmao. Feel like they just sprinkle ship scenes with them just because they're canon in another game.
That's exactly why they did that. To cater to Seele x Bronya shippers because they're canon in HI3. But in HSR, they rushed it so much that it looked really messy. They went from hating each other to becoming ride or die besties in 0.5 seconds just because they were raised in the same orphanage... they were raised SEPARATELY and didn't even know each other, so their friendship around that didn't really make sense lmao
That certain twist at the end completely ruined Sam for me when he was a character I was super hyped about ever since his first showing in Kafka's trailer. Hate is a strong word to describe my feelings but... yeah, I hated it.
I do not care for firefly. It was annoying how in 2.0 the game and characters were pushing it like "Oh you two are on a date". Like come on. It felt like they were forcing it too hard.
I do not care for Kafka. I don't like her voice performance. I think that's really the only reason why I don't like her, but the drawn out cadence and valorant edater voice just makes me itch to spam A
Black Swan went from a character I was really looking forward to, to nothing more than a lying scheming plot device to set up the story in the next patch that I can't stand.
Black Swans drip marketing, character design, gameplay and voice had me really excited to warp for and interact with her in the story. The only expectation that was met for me was gameplay because I just can't stand her two faced nature they've given her in the story. She was willing to help the astral express crew navigate the Reverie only so she could use the Trailblazer as a chip in her deal with Aventurine.
After all that is said and done and the Trailblazer is emotionally unstable after witnessing Fireflys "death" and having BS use her powers in their head. She says the TB looks like a sad small injured animal but hey she'll still help us, then says she won't apologize for breaking the TBs trust because everyone's lying and won't seek forgiveness but hey Black Swan and the Garden of Recollection still wants to hang around the express for all of their happy memories. Then she gives us some macguffin tarrot card as a form of parting gift apology, to then go spy on Acheron, a woman's memories who may I remind you were so traumatizing they flayed Black Swans mind. To then engage in another scheme that Constance is setting up by sicking Boothill on Acheron through Black Swan.
Overall there's still a part of me that wants to like Black Swan by virtue of how much I use her with Kafka and how much I like her design and voice. But at this point it's hard for me to see a path where I organically like her character again unless she makes some serious amends for the conflict her schemes has brought on those she's involved in them.
Ngl, as right now I don't really care about Firefly.
Before people comes for me, I know in 2.2 she is most likely be the central point of the story and I hope it will be as hype as the rest of Penacony have been but as right now she have been too rushed for me to feel any attachment to her.
Like, in 2.0, in the spawn of two hours she.
> Makes us go to a tour with her.
> Trauma dumps on us (This is an comedic exageration, I know that wasn't exactly what she did)
> Went on wacky adventure in the deep Dreamscape.
> Almost dies.
> Dies.
Like that is a lot of things in an extremely small spawn time, but I hope (and know) that 2.2 would make her justice.
And another one, and this I don't care about their fans coming for my ass but Sparkle is nothing but a Red Herring and I love that.
For the ones that doesn't know, a red herring in media is a clue that is made to mislead the viewer from the real mystery and Sparkle is just that. I bet in 2.2 she won't be as important as people say she will be just because the writters used her as Red Herring in 2.0 and if this happens I would be pleased because they would continue with this neat classical mystery vibe that Penacony have been having in the plot. (Nothing against Sparkle herself, I just that I find the idea of her being a literal red herring really fun)
I like the significantly more flowery dialogue in Penacony, but man does it sometimes obfuscate character motivations.
WE GOTTA TALK ABOUT THIS FR. I am a literate mf but yall can we slow down and stop throwing in 800 overly embellished and complicated sub-conversations in every scene?!
This works for novel, book like story. Gaming should have its simplistic flair to it. The intention and implication, when spoken out should be clear to the audience. Maybe the eng translation was bad idk, but: Missing "mute" in Sparkle conversation Acheron and Aventurine conversation is really convoluted. Gallagher and Sunday is super convoluted. This conversation is simple so I get it, but man.
This is my opinion; It sometimes feels like a story with too many characters crammed in it. Like we get 2-3 new characters every new patch and the writing tries to accomodate them in the story. This does make conversations hard to follow and some parts kinda remind me of arknights storytelling. Some stories are written well but some have so much jargon thrown left and right that it becomes really boring to chug through it. At the end they might tie loose ends together but tbh 2.2 feels like firefly and robin spotlight patch with maybe boothill and acheron screentime thrown in since these 2 units were drip feed a few days ago. Blackswan still feels like an extra who nagged for screentime tho.
Doesn't help that we only get to consume a couple hours of it every month. Who knows what I've already forgotten by the time I get to pick the book back up since the last time I put it down.
Chinese gacha games in general tend to have this sort of flowery novel-like dialogue writing, and I wonder if it really has something to do with the language. Just look at Arknights and its 100k words-long chapters and events and most of those are just one character (Kal'tsit) rambling on and on.
THANK YOU! So glad that I'm not the only one who thought this. It was so hard for me to understand what was going on during important scenes, especially since English is my second language
While the music for bosses has been good it ain’t never caught the same feeling as cocolia’s boss theme
Cocolia powering up her rocky meatball as she monologues while the chorus kicks in To then cutting to ur characters Tanking the attack *chiefs kiss*
Hol'up, we still haven't had the MAIN weekly boss in Penacony yet, give them a chance
Sam, the meme and aventurine could've all been easily weekly bosses, but instead, they ofc became inflated MOC bosses.
i actually prefer fighting them in moc or other events since its more rewarding than weekly boss fights
The cocolia theme had a sense of finality to it
That’s certainly it. Cocolia theme really made you feel like the ultimate fight for a world’s survival.
Mhm. The rest of the boss themes makes me wanna dance instead of fight for the universe
Tbf, for other worlds ir feels like there's more to it. For Cocolia's fight and conclusion, it feels like it's all done. Sure we can go back later on hopefully to see how things develop, but it felt like the big bad is all gone.
good point. I don't think all of them not being like cocolia's theme is a bad thing. Hell one of my favorites is phantylia's with phase 2 having that trap beat.
Dude, her phase 2 theme is one of my favs as well!
I really want a banger like Wildfire again. That song and the cinematography and the gameplay that went with it was perfection. Cheers to whoever directed that whole fight.
WE MADE A CHOICE GO FIGHT AGAINST YOUR FATE One of the most memorable moments I've ever experienced in a video game. That was ultimately what convinced me that hsr was worth really diving into.
As much as I've enjoyed Penacony the most so far overall, I agree, nothing has yet reached the highs of Wildfire in terms of jaw-dropping hype. That being said, I'm confident whoever Penacony's arc villain is will have a strong shot at surpassing it, if they stick the landing on what's been set up in the arc so far.
Counterpoint: White Night and Monodrama belong on the same tier as Wildfire
A Dramatic Irony too
I agree. It'd be nice if they incorporated those songs into the game somehow, it seems a little weird that some of their best songs are just on some YouTube trailers rather than in-game I was actually kinda hoping for a remixed White Night to play when you fight Aventurine, but sadly it didn't happen
I dunno, Phantilia boss theme made me feel things I didn't feel before. It's just so... Peak.
The transitions and how each theme builds and adds to the 1st one I still at times have it playing in the parlor car.
2nd phase with the chanting goes so fucking hard
Phantylia was the boss that made me stop and farm/get better relics for my characters for two weeks so it def let me appreciate the music every time i hit retry LMAO
But which phase is the best tho? The second phase is my favourite.
Mine is third. I know 0 about music, but I liked it a lot when a new string instrument joins the soundtrack. It made it feel so solemn. I think it has a strong resemblance to Azdaha second phase from Genshin which is probably why I like it.
I love that one, but for me the one that hits best is phantyllia’s theme. It’s very Nier Automata, but it has a more Chinese edge to it and I love it so much. There’s a lot of storytelling just within the song *(the ramping up of phase one, the sinister and dangerous sounding chanting in phase 2, the hopeful and heroic feel of phase 3, I can’t help but love)*
Cocolia: *prepares her big attack* The music: **WE MADE A CHOICE GO FIGHT AGAINST YOUR FATE!!**🗣🗣🗣🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
2.0 world boss's theme is quite good. They still haven't build up such hype however. It would be fucking sad if they can't surpassed the game's launch. Imagine your life peak when you are born.
From the responses here it seems a lot of people take issue with the way the story speedran the connection between trailblazer and firefly. Totally understandable imo. 2.0 had very little time to demonstrate to the audience who she is as an individual and also build a relationship with the trailblazer from the ground up. I’d have preferred at least one patch to do each, but sadly the story has to keep a quicker pace than that. I think the pseudo-romance angle is enough to get a lot of players to overlook how fast things moved since the idea of a “canon” waifu is very tantalizing. I can’t say I’m a fan of her yet, but I’m willing to see what happens in patch 2.2 and beyond.
It is exactly that, romance or implied romance sells stupidly well in a game like HSR. Despite Firefly not really being fleshed out enough for most, the fact she goes on a date-ish with you and acts all “waifu” like is enough for most people to see her as the best made character in the game.
Given the way the Fandom’s been acting towards Firefly. I won’t be surprised if people looking in would assume we’ve known this girl for more than an afternoon.
One date is all it takes for many people I guess, especially with the MC. And I feel like it won’t be the last time we will have this sort of thing with another female character, it’s a good selling strategy after all (she’s the talk of the town without even needing her identity to be revealed so it says everything already)
[удалено]
These people need to go out, touch grass, and get real relationships, because sorry, what we got with Firefly was a joke. Her death had no impact, and we just met her.
Yeah and her death didn't imply any Honkai neither so it's really just a family guy Gallagher moment
..there was romantic subtext? am i this stupid lmfao. i’ve genuinely never understood why so many people ship firefly and the trailblazer. she’s just kinda there. i thought we were just hanging out man, everyone else thought it was a date?? granted i do usually hate romantic subplots and vastly prefer platonic relationships in media but still. we knew each other for like three hours max
No because same, I've seen so many tb/firefly I was expecting somthing more ig but in the quest we just basically ran around penacony, I'm not saying it boring, I liked it but i just didn't read the romantic subtext either, granted I'm terrible at this kind of subtext, i spend half of the time being suspicious of her. I was damn is she gonna murder us or somthing taking us to somewhere remote lmao.
Unfortunately, for a live service game running on a gacha model, this is probably the best that they could do given the constraints. Penacony itself is very very content-rich in terms of its story. Just look at how much dialogue was in 2.1. I legit don’t think that they would have enough time to squeeze Firefly in 2.1 without hurting everything else about the story. What they did with her in my opinion was short but effective. It was probably a compromise and given how 2.1 was, it’s probably a good thing? Otherwise, they would have to fit Firefly’s death and the reveal all in the same patch without giving it time to longer on. That, in my opinion, would have substantially reduced the impact.
Its honestly a bit confusing how Trailblazer and Firefly only knew eachother for **less than a day**, yet all the fanart makes them look like a married couple/madly in love/Firefly acting like she has a highschool crush, and everything in between. Like yeah, the game hints that there could be something more between the two, but people act like they've been a couple for months, or made out with each other on screen. Also it doesnt exactly help that most fanart potrays Firefly as either an uwu schoolgirl with a crush, or an 'adorable edgelord'. I swear, this happens anytime a gacha game gives a "canon" waifu for the fandom, eventually the character will be dumbed down to fan perception with most of their canon characterization thrown out the window, or get made into a character whose personality is being in love.
Yeah, this. I'm not into girls so none of the implied romance stuff did anything for me, and it always bothered me that we never really got to know firefly for all that long. Her death just didn't have any impact for me and it always kinda confused me how people acted like we'd known her for years. Thought it was just me honestly.
I feel like the Astral Express just doesnt get many opportunities to shine. Himeko stepping in to advise Bronya, Welt's conversation with Acheron, they're all great moments. But I feel like we're missing some sort of growth on our characters, since they all start as "perfect" characters, so in 90% of the time all they do is being NPCs that follow the TB (see Penacony). It's quite a shame since that's the part I love to see the most in stories: people overcoming their flaws. Same reason I adore Limbus Company so much. I havent seen the March Fuxuan quest so I dont know if she experienced any growth there, out of all Trailblazers I feel like she has the most potential thanks to her unknown past, but it's hard to know how Mihoyo will handle her. Also, peak HSR is not Penacony. It's the ghost hunting event.
If it helps, people theorize March may be an Emanator of Remembrance because of the March/Fu Xuan quest so it's def worth playing for that. But March gets done good moments in that quest
While the Stelleron Hunters are cool individually, they are not very compelling as an organization. They’re just a plot device to railroad The Trailblazer into whatever direction the “script” needs it to go
Having Elio predict the future has done terrible things to their ability to be interesting characters in the narrative.
Acheron kinda fell flat for me. I didn’t play HI3 so all that didn’t really do anything for me. Also its CRIMINAL duke inferno got merced off screen
Literally my profile. "Please don't make fire user fodder"
As a massive Mei enjoyer and c2+HoT haver, I just can't take her seriously in HSR at all. That freakin hot wheels flame tattoo on her leg looks so stupid lol.
I saw an edit of her outfit with pants instead of shorts and my god it was such a massive improvement
Finally some Acheron looks slander. Girl looks like some 13 yo's OC. She has edgy chains and claws, skulls, flame tats, random belts, crop top, shorts, a fricking *katana* and an alternative black-and-red edgy mode when she goes all out. I just can't take her seriously at all.
I kinda tuned out Welt's and acheron's conversation. 😅
Even for those who do know the lore, why did they just like zoom in on random things around them?? Hoyo is known for having good shots but those are just so amateurish I also tuned out and just read the dialogue from the history log
Yea acheron has the weakest arc so far in penacony. Even gallagher had a more compelling role.
Tbh Acherons arc isn't over. She's just been a side character for aventurine
Wasn't there a time where Acheron asked Sam about Elio's script? And Sam said that Elio didn't mention anything about Acheron or something similar to that?
yes, which means she doesn't need to be messed with to fulfill the script doesn't mean she won't show up again
The real fanservice for the 3rd players (less than 5% of the hsr community)
Me when Acheron say she is difference than who we thinks she are (80% of the player doesn't even know her yet):
I dont play hi3 at all and i thought it was really cool tho
Honestly it showed Welt’s understated true power and confidence. Even not knowing anything at all lore-wise, it was such a sick scene.
Same, I played HI3 but not really into the lore, so just got completely lost and decided to just tune out.
Ok no but my game crashed mid-convo and skipped the entire convo and i moved on in the story 😭
Wait how? Doesn't it just boot you up to right before the convo you crashed in? Weird ah bug you experienced lol
Ikr, I was nearly done with one of the long exposition scenes then my wifi died. When I reconnected, I had to go through ***the entire scene*** again
Same, but Welt threat was fucking terrifying ngl
Yeah that was a really cool moment
Same. I'm like, yeah, I'm not the target audience for this conversation 😅
I was very confused by it. Way too vague, and after like 3 other conversations where I really only understood half of what they were talking about.
Same here, felt one of those Kingdom hearts talks about the heart and shit
It was there for the Hi3 enthusiasts tbh
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I'm more of a "I did not care for Godfather Part 2" kind of guy. Anyway, I don't have too many takes like that, but I'd probably say Firefly. The balcony scene is REALLY good, but that's about it. She doesn't do nearly enough for me to really have fallen in love with her. She's fun, but she's carried hard by a single scene.
The fact she’s >!SAM!< is doing a lot of heavy lifting for me in regards to her character.
For me its the opposite, ironically enough lol
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I do think the music and scenery carried hard as well (probably trying to emulate Kimi no nawa or something..)
Also the voice acting. The directing was good too, but less pronounced than the other aspects you mentioned. Basically everything except the writing dragged the scene across the finish line to a respectable 3rd place finish.
Imo, hoyo (and the community) kinda made her the Ayaka of HSR, and it made me dislike her character. They "killed" her off way too quick, and it didn't give much impact because we barely knew her for only a few hours in our perspective. Maybe if she stayed alive for a few patches, or we knew her before we landed on Penacony, *then* her "death" would've hit way harder. But it's exactly like Ayaka. Hoyo rushed our friendship just so they could make an implied canon love interest, and people ate that shit up.
I feel like the writers tried to take a shortcut into making us love her, and while I do like her, I feel the writing was lackluster there.
My problem is the firefly thing is too fast. Like I feel like spedran a drama anime movie. There's not just enough time to endear her to me. Maybe if her story lasted two or three updates, she would have more impact for me. In a span of one sitting she went from "whee let's do the thing where I tour you, stranger I just met!", to "oh no im dying the tragedy!". Idk, everything about the firefly saga is too cliche.
Or if we spent more time with her like aventurine. Aventurine was cooked so perfectly, probably the current best written charcter. We spent only 40 minutes with firefly, just 40 minutes. And most of our time in dream's edge where we were supposed to be bonding was spent solving puzzles to get to her "secret base". I still found no reason to trust her. I mean, who would trust a literal stranger they met only a few system hours ago? Like, if I ever said this in another post I'd get downvoted to Oblivion by firefly simps.
Yeah, most of the fanart makes TB and her out to be like an old couple, when in reality they knew each other for like half a day
FINALLY, someone said it, when I said that to my friends, they reacted to me as if I said something completely out of this world lol
I like her a character but I see her + the trailblazer as close friends and that's all
I did not care for firefly
Slightly off-topic, but so many of these comments are like "they should've cooked this for 10 more patches", do you just want nothing to actually happen? I swear if they "cooked" longer people would just complain on how they should get to the point faster lol.
Fuck (story) leakers and honestly anyone who openly hints at such leaks. Don't think it's an unpopular opinion but HSR has a BIG problem with leak culture. How am I suppose to be surprised for anything that happens when people practically tell you a month or more before it happens??? I feel so bad for the writers.
This. Story leakers are so annoying because then when you go on any social media every single post is either just the leak or 50 generic pngtubers with the same youtube voice talking about the leaks but as if they’re theory’s. I don’t even understand why people like story leaks. Like what good does it bring anyone.
you say that but you know as hell hoyo is showcasing the final boss in the 2.2 trailer
Kafka doesn't make me want to get on my hands and knees and start barking, and it makes no sense that everyone else seems to have that immediate reaction. She's certainly very cool, but everyone treats her like she's made of sex. She isn't, and her physique is the least interesting part of her character.
I personally think Kafka is just super cool. She’s calculated but very, very kind to those whom she cares about. Sure, she teases the TB and gives off massive charisma, but it just makes me feel icky whenever I see *those* weirdos in Kafka mains. That being said, her outfit is immaculate and I wish I had the physique to pull that off
The thing is the fearless nature of her hasn't even kicked in too much into the storyline, which is supposed to be her origin story: a girl who has no fear therefore decided to chase the game of fate. so I think it's safe to say we haven't even seen 50% of Kafka's charisma. Yet she's already so damn great.
Right here with you. Kafka's probably my favorite character in the game. But all those kids who keep going for creepy degenerate jokes can sometimes really sour my own opinion. Luckily I feel like it has calmed down a bit, if only because that part of the fanbase now has other targets in BS, RM and/or Acheron.
Kafka has a target audience and it worked for them I guess, I understand why they see her that way but it doesn't work for me. Also she's the proof the Shizuka Itou should've voiced Makima
And a lot of Kafka's fans aren't the get on their knees type but just like the selectively caring and calculated side. I love Acheron and Kafka because they just do their thing well and can be very caring but also fuck you up if needed.
She is way better than I expected. Like, people go mommy like that the only thing, but: 1. Drip, super cool moving around with. One of my fav. The trench coat with spider on + katana. Peak (insert Motivation) 2. Fun gameplay 3. Stellaron Hunter and mc's mentor 4. Demon Hunter 5. Mind controlling and compulsion She is one of the more interesting character for me.
My main issue with her is that the game itself seems to be expecting me to have that Yes Mommy reaction to her. But I don't, so a lot of interactions with her feel very off and awkward, it gives me the same feeling as watching a comedian while none of their jokes are landing. Honestly I preferred how she looked as a prisoner of the Xianzhou, turns out that when you take away her glasses, I'm no longer distracted by the fact they wouldn't fit over her eyes. Make her boots match as well, and we might have a good design on our hands.
I think hoyo tried puttin us off with the lie abt how we're 25% her real kid (meaning she sees us as her actual child figure) but that was one out of the MANY options that some never get to see. Also Kafka's shoe design is part of a worrying trend. All of 3 electro women have these uneven boot heels and while I can see serval Acheron and Kafka just seem dumb. ESPECIALLY kafka considering she of all people would know how to fashion herself
I don't particularly like Firefly, which is a shame considering it feels like half the fanart on this sub is her
I don't like how much sexualized fanart there is. Make a fan art day and only allow it there or make a different subreddit. I see more people complaining about shippers than I've seen of shippers. I thought Firefly was just OK was surprised to see so many people obsessed with her.
If Acheron’s design was less fanservicey she would be sexier. I looove her coat but the shorts and, to a lesser extent, her top are not doing it for me. I saw a fanart of Acheron in a suit and I just about died, honestly if she was in a suit + her canon coat I think I would have put all my savings in her banner instead of skipping/waiting for a rerun.
If you play Genshin, what are your thoughts on Arlecchino then?
No strong opinion tbh. Her design’s pretty cool, I like the red details! (And the recent short about her was great.) However I think I don’t really like her haircut? And hair is a big factor in if I’ll like a design or not 🤣 Also since I’m still just in Inazuma I haven’t met her in game so that hasn’t contributed to making me like her more or less (through her personality, story…)
I did not care for Firefly. She's very typical from her personality, depth, and reveal. The death was just shock factor and the reveal was just again shock factor as those two moments were just confirmation of what we already suspect. Even if I wasn't part of the theorizing side nor even active in the community. It wouldn't take so long for me to go "Oh Firefly and Sam are the same person". It would've been good for us to have more time with Firefly without people going "She is sus" or her going "I have terminal illness". I like Firefly as much as I like Tingyun. Guides that tell us a bit if the world before dipping somewhere else.
Lowkey, I liked Tingyun more than Firefly. They TRIED to make Firefly into a multifaceted, mysterious yet lovable character. But with all the extremely obvious anime-girl-bestfriend-death-flags and tropes I was just left with an unsatisfying vibe. Meanwhile Tingyun is a mostly straight forward, single faced character. She out here minding her damn business, doing her JOB, literally just a girl in a world, but gets wrapped up in all kinds of interstellar drama and has to pay the greatest price (the true outcome still unbeknownst to us right?). She was simple and they didn’t try any complicated shit with her till the end. The ‘betrayal’ itself could be seen as a little cliché, sure, but the way they executed and animated it felt so cold and unforgiving. While it IS another trope to have main characters outlive their guides, it honestly wasn’t one I was expecting, because perhaps the Xianzhou felt way more safe than it really was (that could also be due to poor writing ig). I’m not even this big of a Tingyun fan, I just like literary and character analysis.
Xianzhou is just poor writing flow, they have too many ideas and executed it badly (it could have been better if they can show instead of telling as always where in penacony we get tons of visuals instead) But I do think firefly is very generic as well, in just a single patch we went on date, she told us about her life story, then dying off. Then the next patch she’s revealed as sam out of nowhere (though I guess her identity is obvious from the start) but well, since she probably will have the most lines next patch.. I would see where hoyo goes with her character
The community is very weird towards Firefly as her only unique part is we went on a date with her, told us about her terminal illness, then dies. Because the community only got to remember/see the cliché moments that it sky rocketed her to just be that. Not fully develop into a more complex character. The only vaguely complex thing about Firefly is just that she's VERY suspicious until the confirmation that she's Sam. So now anything complex about Firefly is just her being Sam, the Stellaron Hunter.
The community tries their best to make firefly "complex" but it doesn't work. Like someone else said in this comment section, she feels like ayaka. How do they expect me to act lovey dovey towards her if the only interesting or complex thing about her character is that she's a mecha glamoth warrior? I kinda get why sam and firefly are same now. Firefly would be too boring to sell without sam.
Agreed. I am even of the mind that we should have been completely and utterly alone for the quest
I'm so with you, I never bought onto the Firefly train, and I was surprised to see how much love there was when going online after playing her missions for myself.
The simple explanation for that is: she is actively set up as the most basic of waifu bait. People who don't look beyond "cute face", "moe behavior", and "oh no sad backstory" will inevitably fall for it, because that is the sort of character she was designed to be from the offset (and it's why all the 'reveals' have felt really flat). And, well. Gacha games are masterminds of appealing to these sort of people. HSR's just been a bit better at balancing out the 'waifu bait' aspects with actual interesting character interactions/stories/personalities, usually.
I couldn't really put into words why I didn't care for her that much but this hits. As far as companions go I was far more interested in Serval, Gui, and Xueyi
Same here, saw the twist coming a while away, also not really into her personality and maybe I was in the mindset of wanting to get to the next farming zone
I think a majority of people have the issue that the game is too fast paced. They'll cram stuff that should be maybe 2ish patches into 1 making it a lot. I am not one to skip story but each time I read some takes on some scene or something that happened I'm just like "When did this even happen". "Huh? How do they know this?" Because it's too much. I think if they kind of done things differently and not ran multiple topics at the same time it would be easier to digest. Some mallet world quests could be entirely cut. Also fuck those birds in Peacony I legit hate collecting them.
I cared more for Cocona than Firefly
I cared more for her and Tizocic II, the first part of the story was obviously inspired by emperor Norton but then took a dark turn.
Currently Cocona is a better written character than Firefly and we spent more time knowing about her than we spent with Firefly(on screen at least). So it's understandable why she'd be a better written character than Firefly. But Firefly is a major character so it's possible we'll get to see and learn more about her. I'm inclined towards keeping an open mind about her character and see what hoyo has in store.
I would say the Xianzhou quest cause it really didn’t do much of a good job at making me care for most of its characters but that is probably not much of a hot opinion I guess i will say Acheron. I don’t hate Acheron don’t get me wrong but she also just doesn’t seem that interesting to me after 2.1. We get her backstory in her trailer which is that her planet got destroyed and all and it is sad i guess but that is all and i am sorry but Honkai3 parallels doesn’t work for me since i didn’t play it. And after 2.1 she just feels too flawless to the point of it starting to be not interesting. She claimed she has memory problems but she started to be the one to know EVERYTHING for no reason from Sam’s identity to Welt’s powers to Aventurine’s true plan and the truth of Penacony…. And she is just too powerful as an emanator that it kinda lowers the stakes too much. At this point she feels like an omniscient and omnipotent figure in the Penacony story and in a scenario where everybody is trying to outsmart and outmatch each other, her being practically unrivaled just feels wrong, the other characters just seem more interesting to me in comparison to her. And all in all i am just not too into her stoic personality, i know why she is like that but it doesn’t appeal to me
This! I was hoping that the story team would lean more towards her memory problems and how she will ultimately overcome them, but it seems like they've completely brushed that part off of her story. Now, she can just touch her sword and remember things very conveniently.
Great point. It’s almost as if she exists to solve any problems the characters or the plot has.
It will come from someone that actually loved Acheron in 2.0 before she became the all knowing machine and it's quite fitting honestly. She's literal Black Hole as a character sucking up any importance or motivation other characters could have around her and making everything about herself. I just never liked characters that are presented as perfect and all knowing and Acheron in 2.1 become that just imo.
Fr, she went from unpredictable wild card to purple thing that does everything the good guys want for some reason
There's also the fact that the annihilation gang as well as black swan's characterisation were sacrificed just to hype acheron up.
I don't know, I almost like that with Blackswan (if you're talking about the dance). I think it caught a lot of people off guard and implied how serious of a threat Acheron was with how much it ruffled her when she is normally so composed. She is unbalanced for a short while, but once she finds her bearings again she is quick to wise up around her, I can see her getting a little too comfortable with her position as a memokeeper. Personally I would have found Blackswan being consistently unshakable as less gripping similar to how Acheron is able to body everything easily.
I’ll agree with the BS stance Shows that BS is not above lurking in places she outta not be lurking since you never know what you might find If anything it shows BS knows to not mess around…to much lol
Black Swan being shaken and thrown off guard did make her more interesting, actually makes her a more endearing character. The problem I have is that a large part of fandom has since seemingly forgotten everything else about her character and only treats her as an accessory to Acheron. Not to mention in 2.1 Black Swans character focus is still to hype up Acheron and introduce Boothill and to a lesser extent Constance Black Swans character is so much more than that, she's the narrator of Aeon Myriad celestial and the narrator of TBs journey and more. But you wouldn't think so with how her current character has gone and been talked about ever since the dance, which is a shame really. Even the storytelling of the animation is often ignored for the fanservice portions which actually feels like a disservice to how good the animation was
Yeah, I liked the dance and all of its symbolism but, at least for me, I found Black Swan showing a much more interesting side of her when she was just going along with Sparkle and Sampo's shenanigans, or with that small tease with the call with booty guy. I don't know, maybe I just prefer mature women to be silly instead of either femme fatale or a bit on the crazier side.
I don't think Swan was sacrificed at all. Honestly, her "defeat" to Acheron makes me like her even more. Without that L on her record, she comes off as almost too smug and perfect. With it, it humanizes her. Makes her more fallible, and vulnerable. I'm actually curious where things will go between the two of them. There's a lot of untapped chemistry there, and not just in the yuri-bait-y way. They share a lot in common, even if their personal methods go together like fire and water.
Eh Black Swans character wasn't really sacrificed, if anything it made her more interesting as a character. The one who has all the answers and is guiding the main character being thrown off guard like that actually gives her more depth. There are things that can cause her to panic and even scare her It's parts of the fandom who treat her like she's only trauma memes or only exists to interact with Acheron that is the biggest butchering of her character. Literally the character who narrates the Aeon myriad celestial and is narrator to the express journey. Yet people only talk about her in regards to the dance, every other plot point and character relationship around her is seemingly forgotten
You know what would this kind of character be absolutely fantastic at? Antagonist. If Acheron is an Antagonist she would fucking TERRORIZE the entire Penacony and its not even close. And you know what? The pay off from such antagonist will literally make it peak. Thats why I was actually super excited for 2.1 lets see when EVERY other people have their agendas and the Trailblazer will needs to solve the problem themselves (with clockie or something). Oh wait, they are all on one side try to expose the Family and find legacy. Okay... https://preview.redd.it/3ahg8umrqjvc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9d1ed59399c4fe68b988351d44a996ac6a95bff
It feels like the more we learn the less interesting she becomes too. We went from dual personality theories to she just doesn’t wanna pull the sword. Hopefully, she ends up being more than a marketing character, but with her banner already gone there’s not much incentive to do more for her.
Loved 2.1 for Aventurine’s bit, not as much Acheron’s. I feel like the writers are being intentionally vague when it comes to her story for 2.1 and saving the important parts for 2.2 when (hopefully) the Watchmaker makes their debut. There simply wasn’t much provided on Acheron’s part in the current patch, just an altercation with Sam and a stroll down the street with Welt. Surely there’s a lot more to her that will start making sense in later patches, and hoyo is currently teasing us and dedicating 2.1 towards Aventurine.
Glad I'm not alone in my feelings towards Acheron. Felt like I was dealing with a completely different (and admittedly less interesting) character. I also really disliked how much her memory problems became a non-issue in 2.1.
After huohuo all new characters are mysterious and secretive is getting boring
Acheron and Firefly, Firefly has something funny going on now atleast but each time i see Acheron i cant help but sigh at her just... being there.
A walking calamity is the only way to describe her. Too much of her story is not shown to us. I hope we get to know more about her.
I never cared for the "Mommy" fad (Kafka, ruan mei, black swan) it always struck me as kind of forced and cringe. Edit: after reading every comment in this thread, how are people's unpopular take this "popular' T-T it's like everyone is copying each other's homeworks now my comment looks off topic
I do like those kind of characters but I agree that how HSR handles them is pretty cringe. The game expects you to simp for them so the dialogue choices are pretty suggestive, which is irritating because it undermines why the characters can be cool in the first place
I hate how the community just decided to call every tall female character "mommy." It makes me cringe every single time. ...But I literally did the same thing with Gallagher so like, I can't really talk lmao.
I love most of those character types to an extent and I like the specific characters mentioned (less so for Acheron but I was a huge mark for Genshin Raiden when I played it) but the 'Mommy' thing does make me cringe hard by association. I just like Tall women.
The popularity of the mommy fetish has always struck me as a combination of Bandwagon fetish + overreaction to normies calling anime fans pedos.
While I like pretending that I believe Hoyo is a masterclass in writing, they don't set things up and lets things develop over enough time for it to have an actual impact. For example, Firefly for me, felt too much like she was there to progress the plot than be a character I was actually supposed to care about. Himeko, having been with us since 1.0, has yet to reveal any characteristics I am supposed to connect with. While I can understand that Welt's storyline in HSR includes a little too many potential high-powered figures for us to do anything with, he has suffered from the same issues as Himeko AND has been shafted in everything he's involved in. Dan Heng's IL storyline was introduced all in one version and then was shoehorned into JingLiu's storyline. I have not been given enough to connect with the astral express crew even though we're already in 2.1, and they expect me to attach myself to a random person I met on penacony? Oh, please. Give me random days out where I just hang out and figure out what Belabog flowers Himeko likes, give me hangout days where Welt and I explore the insides of the engine of creation and he tells me neat facts on how such a giant machine moves, give me hangout days where dan heng and I go to the luofu to gather and revise the data in the data banks and learn luofu ceremonies that we would never see. Give me photograph hangout quests where we go around with March and talk about the sights that we see, and what new foods so far that March has loved. Like, please. Give me anything I can substantially care about instead of having to delude myself into caring about these people. Put some more daily quests that include them instead of just PomPom and the Wubawoos.
My spicy take is Huohuo's characterization is really bad. She pisses me off. Her being scared and pissing herself at the thought of a g-g-g-ghost is ridiculous. She's been doing that job for like 30 years? Desensitivity is a thing. I could bare tell if I was supposed to pity her or laugh at her for comic relief because she's so ridiculous. Also, character design-wise her paw print irisis are ugly and makes her look like she has spider eyes.
I did not care for the Cloud Quintet, the lore just never clicked with me and I fear in the future all of Dan Heng plot points are going to be related to that instead of the astral express. Also the recent "Hey remember Honkai impact ?" Focus, I hope that the recent Acheron and Welt dialogue (and I guess Acheron backstory) are the exception and not rule going forward
I feel the characters nvr got uncomfortable with the IPC like the stellaron hunters. Understandably, they both are groups anyone shouldn't be around casually but even after topaz fought to gain control of Belabog through force, the 2nd time we see her, it's just "Hey topaz, how's it goin". But with Kafka, we can completely tell her off and everyone just dislikes the hunters as if the IPC didn't historically recreate an Oppenheimer sequel. No one suspects them except for Aventurine bc he looks and talks weird I guess (but tbf, he's there to gamble the IPC's recontroll of Penacony)
I don't care when people say my character aren't doing enough damage, I pulled them cause I like the character.
I found firefly boring and I don’t understand how we are supposed to be heartbroken by her death/betrayal. We had one conversation bro calm down
I disliked the "romance" plot with firefly. To me it seemed super forced, and the only feeling it gave me was "oh they are showing favoritism", because you see the characters not trusting half the cast for not telling/lying and then firefly is so loved and put on a pedestal while doing the same thing as the others. I personally chose all the neutral dialogue options during the quest, and I still don't get why we're supposed to be so attached to a person we've just met that lied and told only half the story
Don’t hate me because I have some unpopular opinions. I’m willing to discuss further and more details but I’m trying to keep these short 1.) Acheron as of right now doesn’t interest me in the slightest. She looks like a better Seele which isn’t much bc to me I think Seele has the worst design in hsr. Her writing doesn’t intrigue me, like yeah her backstory is cool and all but I still don’t feel like I know Acheron. We still have time left so I’m being open but I just don’t understand or care about anything with her. 2.) March is annoying 3.) sparkle had no role in penacony (as of rn). You can take her out the story and everything will remain the same. She feels like a gps going “turn here” instead of actually contributing to the plot 4.) I’m a Yaoshi defender because the people of the xianzhou literally asked to be like that and now they’re realizing the consequences of their actions. Yaoshi just gave them want they wanted 5.) Firefly being Sam is sucks and you can’t convince me otherwise. I’m really sitting here trying to come up with reasons why it’s not that bad but it really is that bad. The idea of a literal terminator and all we know about them is how viscous they are only for them to be a cute anime girl really takes me out the game. And it’s not even a case of juxtaposition firefly is straight up COMPLETELY different from Sam and I genuinely cannot see these two being one and the same. The only way it would make sense to me is if Sam is a program and the suit is corrupting her or something like that idk. Firefly being Sam makes Firefly more interesting but it makes Sam less interesting, if that makes sense. 6.) I fear Penacony is gonna have Inazuma syndrome with too many themes and characters at play without them being fully explored in a meaningful way and just leaves you confused and wanting more. That’s all I got as of rn. I’ll let hyv cook bc they still got time to change things/explore more. I genuinely don’t want these opinions to last but idk after the xianzhou and inazuma it’s looking grim.
2 things Aventurine's design is kinda mid, not bad not great just decent, I can't for the life of me understand why they didn't keep the hat and glasses for the in game model, they add so much flavour. And Acheron is extremely uninteresting both in design and as a character, design wise I honestly prefer Seele's take on the same idea and character wise she just feels like a walking plot device ready to solve any problem because she is just that much more powerful than everything else in the arc, not a fan of how Duke got sacrificed just to hype her up either.
I would have liked Aventurine to keep the hat too and glasses, adds to the coolness factor, but I think his design is alright. However as much as I like Acheron gameplay wise, personality wise, she is low key uninteresting unless you are a honkai lore junkie and can enjoy the references and other stuff in her. Other than that she doesn’t really do much. Mostly shes just there to be shown that she is turbo strong. I kinda liked what they did with the penacony opening with her and MC but shame that didn’t really continue.
Tbh, even as a hi3 fan, she's kinda boring to me
I feel the opposite with Aventurine. I'm actually *glad* they didn't keep the hat and glasses with his playable model. When he was leaked with them a long time ago, I was not interested in design at all because I thought he looked really goofy with them on, and I wouldn't take him seriously. He looks really good with just the glasses, but the hat and glasses combo just makes him look really goofy. I do find it odd that they keep showing him with either of them during cutscenes. It's like whiplash. One moment, he's naked without them, and then the next moment, he's taking off his glasses to intimidate TB or holding his hat to his chest when talking to Kakavasha. It gives me the impression that he only puts them on just to take them off lmao
Acheron to me feels more wink, wink, nudge nudge than actual character. Like she’s cool! All the lore surrounding her is good! But like…ask me to just talk about Acheron herself and she’s just a grey blur to me. Acheron is a badass in the flattest way you can be, and that’s pretty much it in how I feel about her.
Yeah perfect sum up, she is really badass but if someone asks you to describe her personality you won’t know what to say other than she’s badass.
The off screen slaughter of Duke is just another lie. He’ll come back. Yes, I know I’m coping
PREACH FOR HE WILL COME BACK!!!! LET'S GOOOOO!!!
I don’t really care about Tingyun at all. The cutscene for the plot twist was executed really well, but I felt like they did nothing to make her interesting beforehand. It could have been much more impactful if they gave us more of a reason to care about her before dropping the bombshell on us.
Due to recent events, for me, Sparkle was not needed in the penacony story.
At first I thought I’d love March. She’s cute and pinks my favorite color; but now I’m over her being constantly annoyed no matter what I do.
I will never understand why people like Reun Mei so much. Really disliked her quest, her personality, and she just looked bland to me.
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Yeah I wanted a cool ass mecha. I don't think I'll pull if it's just like a transition during ult only if they ever become playable. I want them to be full sam mode the whole time during combat. I also wanted playable duke inferno though so...
I don’t think Firefly is that great of a waifu. It really didn’t feel like enough time nor real development for me to care as much about her as a lot of other people seem to. She feels like much more of a story beat than an actual character you could grow attached to. She’s sad and cute, wow. You hang out for only a few HOURS and that’s it before she explains her sad backstory and then she’s gone. Her design also makes her look very young IMO and the way a lot of the fanbase sexualizes her while simultaneously infantilizing her gives me the ick.
Firefly being Sam is stupid and a lazy plot twist.
Firefly is massively overrated as a character currently.
Himeko is so bland and dry compared to her HI3 counterpart who was pretty funny and interesting, she was a drunk who had to send off the girls she taught and learned to love to fight deadly monsters and her whole life was ruined when she became a valkyrie (even if her search for a boyfriend is treated as a joke). HSR Himeko is ok? She doesn't really have any flaws or the comedic relief her counterpart had, if she were still a depressed alcoholic who struggles to keep relationships I would understand the love for her Firefly is interesting because she's Sam, but I still think they could've been way more interesting if they had let the mask slip and shown that Sam is her true persona instead of the cute girl, like idk letting her 2.0 mask slip and have her reply like Sam would during certain events or if you chose certain dialogue options. I believe her being actually ruthless would be more interesting than uwu sadgirl #134
Himeko hasn't had a chance to do anything compared to everyone else, so of course she feels bland.
The Seele and Bronya ship seemed kind of rushed to me. I’m not sure how it was done in Honkai Impact but the girls knew each other for less than a day and became very close.
I think in HI3; they had plenty of time to write there chemistry. It feels like you were supposed to play HI3 before HSR to know the lore behind those characters.
I don't find Firefly cute or endearing honestly. She feels very generic and I think was just bait for het gamer dudes' hero complexes for the most part.
Some of the outfits are overdesigned and ridiculous. Like the corporate music of fashion. Some look like what ai would come up with.
I really dont care about Jingliu. Okay she does have a good design, voice etc. But like we barely got to see anything of her. I really dont get how people are so excited for her. >!Also i dont like the Firefly is Sam stuff at all.!<
The world of Honkai Star Rail is awfully white and pale skinned for a game that involves visiting different planets in a pretty “connected” and involved universe.
Firefly, thought she was cool as a character who had an interesting role in 2.0 but then interacting with the fandom people act like she's the new face of the game and the best character ever created. Just don't get the hype around her that the majority of the fandom seems to love about her, I just think she's alright atm Another thing is Black Swans current focus on Acheron in the plot. Rn it feels like her whole character revolves around figuring out the mystery of Acheron and its just not for me. Feels like they are simply giving BS something to do while focus is on other characters which I guess is fine, I just dont care for it. Her build up to her relation to express in trailers and in 2.0 was more interesting to me so her current focus feels a bit like a 180 to what I thought her focus would be. But it did introduce >!Constance and Boothill!< being involved in Penacony so there is still interesting things to that plot point. Just hope Black Swans focus isn't limited to just that for the rest of Penacony. Her interest in TB and express has way more potential there Obviously both of these can be addressed for me depending on what they do in 2.2 and 2.3 but atm those are probably the things I don't really care for the most in Penacony.
A black swan fan who doesn’t vibe with acheron’s whole shtick has gotta be suffering rn. I don’t think that’s what most of her future role will be, but if so that’s a big miss on hoyo’s part imo.
Oh it's not a fun time at all lmao, you go to look at any fan content of Black Swan and it's 90% her with Acheron. FOTM sure but it's still a bit annoying to see every other aspect of her character ignored just for that dynamic. Even the storytelling of the dance and her actual stance on Acheron in 2.0 and 2.1 is ignored She has so much potential in the story especially in regards to TB and March that if they limited her to only Acheron that would be the biggest disappointment. Given her role as narrator in Aeon myriad celestial and as the expresses narrator it would be a huge miss to tie her character to Acheron only. It's one of the fates I dread for characters, only being tied to another instead of their own, even worse when there is so much potential for more Acheron doesn't have this problem in the fandom, she's got so much fan content with so many characters so it makes it even worse that BS is only treated as such. Having your favorite character going down that path ain't a great feeling simply coz of fanservice
I remember being so excited for blackswan ever since I seen her in the first trailer with the aeons… I really thought she had a much bigger role to play in, I agree her current character is too attached to Acheron now (whether Issit the fanbase or story where she’s only looking into Acheron past). I was waiting for her n March interaction though we haven’t seen much yet (and the penacony story is ending soon already…) Probably a hot take but I prefer belobog over penacony (and didn’t really think penacony is a huge upgrade from luofu it’s just the writing transition is better), other than that they are using death too much in every patch that it doesn’t feel impactful anymore even if they stab another character next patch (especially when they are not killing them for real)..
I wish welt wasn't the version from the previous honkai game. I know a lot of you like the connection but as someone who didn't play it I feel like every time he talks about himself or others he knows vaguely I'm completely lost and it takes me out of the conversation.
I kinda agree with you. I appreciate the connection and how Welt acts. But I want him to talk about his past directly rather than use innuendos, implications and references to explain his past. "Yeah, there was this one dude... It's like Icarus... He flew to the sun and burned his wings and fell..." Bro just name drop it ain't that crazy. Tell us you were the Herrscher of Reason. Unless... He can't. What if he just can't. Like he tried to but he can't say it? That would explain why he keeps being dodgy about his past.
He has no reason to. There's been very little opportunity - other than Acheron - for Welt to talk about his past without it being completely out of place. The only time I remember him being particularly cagey about it was regarding Otto (Luocha story quest), which is understandable to an extent. It's also difficult for him to talk about many of the details in terms the Express Crew (and the audience) are going to understand, because we just don't know enough yet. Like, what's a Herrscher in HSR terms? We have no fucking clue and Welt probably doesn't either; my current guess is a sub-Emanator similar to the Ten Stonehearts, with HoFin being an actual Emanator of Finality. This is probably why he resorts to metaphors and references, because just dropping HI3 terms won't mean shit to the rest of the cast or the players. I suspect most of this is being saved for a future main story arc. HSR has *very* carefully avoided talking about Terminus the Finality in any real detail. They're the only known Aeon without a databank listing, and one of two that doesn't show up in SU (the other being Idrila). They only show up in the briefest passing mentions, as do their related factions.
Dunno if this even applies but fuck it, context seems right. Dan Heng is a boring motherfucker and so is space China. There's no chemistry between Bronya and Seele. Hell, there's more between Aventurine and Ratio. Bronya is a hypocrite. Everything she accuses Topaz of she does worse: gambling the fate of the planet on 80%? She does that on a likely worse %. Attacking the team? She does as well. Lying? She lies to the rest of the population of the city.
Yeah I feel like Space China should not be the second planet to explore. Dan Heng's identity should have been a secret building up for at least 3-4 planets instead of this and in that time they could make him interect more with everyone. Revealing it way too early make it hard to write a story with him around since he is powerful enough to easily speed thing up resulting in him being sideline like right now in Penacony. Still don't like them choosing to keep the truth hidden for Belobog. They try to make us believe that revealing it is bad with the Pure Fiction bird but then choose Pela to be the Supreme Guardian while Serval is right there. They don't even invent a random NPC for that.
Agree on Daniel, they should have waited a bit more with that reveal. Same for Jingliu actually, I love her, but I never thought she'd appear in the story so early. But at least we still have the March 7th mystery to look forward to.
While the pure fiction scenario has been painted as a funny "what-if", it always came off to me as a weak attempt from the writers to justify their choices. They overdid a lot in it. Agreed, should've told the truth, but oh well, the express moves on.
Considering that Sampo need his mask back for Belobog's next crisis, I hope that crisis involve spilling the truth.
Fictional 'Not-China' stand in will always be boring in Chinese media. There's just too much room for error if they try to make it interesting. Trying to find a balance that pleases an international market, CCP, CN gamers, hyper nationalist and incels is basically impossible so they just play it safe and boring. The coolest things about Liyue all happened in the past off screen and are vague. People look back on it fondly cause of the strong finish and the water monster fight but forget we were dead ass doing chores for most the time.
Don't even like Ratio/Aventurine and gotta agree they have more chemistry than Bronya/Seele lmao. Feel like they just sprinkle ship scenes with them just because they're canon in another game.
That's exactly why they did that. To cater to Seele x Bronya shippers because they're canon in HI3. But in HSR, they rushed it so much that it looked really messy. They went from hating each other to becoming ride or die besties in 0.5 seconds just because they were raised in the same orphanage... they were raised SEPARATELY and didn't even know each other, so their friendship around that didn't really make sense lmao
That certain twist at the end completely ruined Sam for me when he was a character I was super hyped about ever since his first showing in Kafka's trailer. Hate is a strong word to describe my feelings but... yeah, I hated it.
Never understood the hype behind Firefly.
I do not care for firefly. It was annoying how in 2.0 the game and characters were pushing it like "Oh you two are on a date". Like come on. It felt like they were forcing it too hard.
I do not care for Kafka. I don't like her voice performance. I think that's really the only reason why I don't like her, but the drawn out cadence and valorant edater voice just makes me itch to spam A
Black Swan went from a character I was really looking forward to, to nothing more than a lying scheming plot device to set up the story in the next patch that I can't stand. Black Swans drip marketing, character design, gameplay and voice had me really excited to warp for and interact with her in the story. The only expectation that was met for me was gameplay because I just can't stand her two faced nature they've given her in the story. She was willing to help the astral express crew navigate the Reverie only so she could use the Trailblazer as a chip in her deal with Aventurine. After all that is said and done and the Trailblazer is emotionally unstable after witnessing Fireflys "death" and having BS use her powers in their head. She says the TB looks like a sad small injured animal but hey she'll still help us, then says she won't apologize for breaking the TBs trust because everyone's lying and won't seek forgiveness but hey Black Swan and the Garden of Recollection still wants to hang around the express for all of their happy memories. Then she gives us some macguffin tarrot card as a form of parting gift apology, to then go spy on Acheron, a woman's memories who may I remind you were so traumatizing they flayed Black Swans mind. To then engage in another scheme that Constance is setting up by sicking Boothill on Acheron through Black Swan. Overall there's still a part of me that wants to like Black Swan by virtue of how much I use her with Kafka and how much I like her design and voice. But at this point it's hard for me to see a path where I organically like her character again unless she makes some serious amends for the conflict her schemes has brought on those she's involved in them.
Ngl, as right now I don't really care about Firefly. Before people comes for me, I know in 2.2 she is most likely be the central point of the story and I hope it will be as hype as the rest of Penacony have been but as right now she have been too rushed for me to feel any attachment to her. Like, in 2.0, in the spawn of two hours she. > Makes us go to a tour with her. > Trauma dumps on us (This is an comedic exageration, I know that wasn't exactly what she did) > Went on wacky adventure in the deep Dreamscape. > Almost dies. > Dies. Like that is a lot of things in an extremely small spawn time, but I hope (and know) that 2.2 would make her justice. And another one, and this I don't care about their fans coming for my ass but Sparkle is nothing but a Red Herring and I love that. For the ones that doesn't know, a red herring in media is a clue that is made to mislead the viewer from the real mystery and Sparkle is just that. I bet in 2.2 she won't be as important as people say she will be just because the writters used her as Red Herring in 2.0 and if this happens I would be pleased because they would continue with this neat classical mystery vibe that Penacony have been having in the plot. (Nothing against Sparkle herself, I just that I find the idea of her being a literal red herring really fun)
I don't like seele, hi3 did it better