Hopping into another game of Initial D Special Stage for the PS2, I finally decided to use my Mazda Roadster RS in arcade mode and since it's got basic tune finished I thought it would be easy... Well some of them were anyways such as Akagi Keisuke which surprised me since I was able to pass him at the start where he usually would always go first. Everything was a first try until Shomaru Pass Wataru where I had a hard time controlling the slight oversteer the car exhibits and had to restart multiple times until I was able to control the steering enough to pass him, block him and speed away. But then... Momiji Line has come back to haunt me with it's lack of traction on the road causing either extreme oversteer or understeer randomly and this had me malding quite a bit due to the random nature, it felt like I had no control over the car and the helpless feeling felt really frustrating. After finishing that track I just first tried everything else including Bunta since their tracks are stupid and annoying. Overall I think the Mazda Roadster RS is a very good car, I would put it as a solid A tier as it is extreme consistant on most courses. It's strengths include above average top speed, good acceleration and controllable oversteer while it's weakness mostly lies in low RPM which means it may lose speed drastically when shifting down, it's also my first time seriously using a 6 gear transmission car which was a bit awkward to get used to but feels more like a benefit that allows it to counter the low RPM issue. So this car is a overall good car, much better than the previous car I was using, the Nissan Silvia K Aero which had understeer, low top speed and low RPM casuing it to underperform on most maps and especially Akina to the point where I couldn't even beat Bunta.
I reinstalled Wuthering Waves and got damn, returning to a gacha is so overwhelming like I have a bajillion event and quests to do along with returning player stuff. I wanted the woman on the banner cuz I saw some good fanart of her and she seemed cute but I didn't get shit so hopefully my luck is good for future gacha game rolls because damn I really want her and I'm broke in the game rn. Anyways the game has so much lesbian vibes when you play as the female MC like everyone just wants to get up close and personal and stuff and that's kinda hot. I don't know how long I'm gonna be playing this game for but I'll probably spend my whole day playing it tomorrow, I just wanna rest and maybe play some Initial D later if I don't fall asleep, I wanna try out the Nissan Silvia K. I heard it has some understeer but overall a decent car but nothing amazing, also I wanna try some technique I found on YouTube that teaches you how to drift in the games but it's pretty vague and only uses like 2 of the easiest maps to set and example. Hopefully it actually works cuz I really need to start cornering better considering how long I've been playing.
This is it... some one has made a rebalance mod of SMTV:Vengeance, it's time for me to go back to this masterpiece of a game. Many many boss changes, new/edited skills, more exclusive skills, changed basic magatsuhi skill buffed many potential skill and much more... I haven't played it yet but I'm liking what I see from the feature list, adjustments to multiple unbalanced skills, adjusted skill potentials for many demons, adjustments to miracle costs (thank god) and MORE MAGIC FOR NAHOBINO! Just seeing the new fire skill "Hinokagatsuchi" on Nahobino in the screenshot is enough to hype me up for this mod. I might start playing either today or tomorrow but I just know I will enjoy this mod.
I have now played Sempiternal Vengeance mod and damn... It really does live up to it's name of the Hardtype for SMTVV. The first miniboss, Glasya-Labolas already gave me quite a bit of struggle. In the base game, he was already a pretty scary fight that was slightly alleviated by the fact that you get strong guest members in your team when you battle him. But in Sempiternal, he gets a buff that lets him make use of his passive that increases crit rate based on his evasion buffs which makes him hard to hit and him hitting hard. Hydra, with just HP buffs and changing his skill element makes him a force to be reckoned with, he needs max attack debuffs and you need max defense debuffs or he'll kill your teammates one by one. He hits hard and can spread poison to your team so it's hard to recover when he does that giving him more chances for him to attack. But you do get quite a bit to fight back with, firstly the Nahobino gets a new ice magic exclusive skill that has a chance to sleep the enemy which Hydra is not immune to, I manage to get him to sleep 2 times and one of them was when it was going to use his Poison Breath so it really helped me with keeping the team healthy. Secondly, having access to multi-target buffs early on is so nice as single-target buffs are quite useless. Overall, I really like the changes the mod makes to the game such as changing Omagatoki:Critial to Omagatoki:Potential, a weaker option that encourages the player to use more variety of their skills instead of spamming their best skills that now always crit. I would rate this mod a definate 10/10 but I only played till the first boss so I'll need more playtime first.
Writing this a bit early but tomorrow is the day I start my intern so I might not write this daily but I'll try. Anyways, today's Sempiternal mod playthrough I did a few side quests and beat Naamah. For side quests, the only notable one is Anahita in which due to the buffs/debuffs rework, she did get buffed but her AI seems pretty generous with how she attacks as I was on the verge of losing multiple times but she ends up just not doing much. Overall it's pretty similar to the vanilla fight. As for Naamah though... She got much harder with just the addition of Megido, allowing her to do high damage to the whole team while ignoring resistances. To understand how hard this was, I ended up abandoning my low level for a bit and grinded for Leanan Sidhe's Media at Level 18, without it I would spend too much time recovering from her Megido and she'll be ready to use it again when I was fully healed so I couldn't damage her much. Other than that, her exclusive skill did get nerfed but she now uses multi-hitting Dark skill which are new additions to the game and also debuffs your evasion on top of your attack. All in all, she's a really rough boss and I ended up having to fight a few encounters for the exp to beat her, luckily not a full out grind session but I also spent a lot of time thinking of strategies to beat her but the usual works, she just hits a lot harder now.
Well I didn't have much time to play so I just kind of did my gacha dailies and played Initial D Street Stage of all things. People seem to quite like it more than Special Stage anyways but the 30FPS really kills the game to be honest, maybe I'm just used to 60FPS from Special Stage but it still kinda sucks to play on a newer version with worse performance. It really does suck since there were quite a lot of mechanic and balance changes to the game transistion such as cars being less drifty, overall speed lowered and Integra being nerfed to a bottom 3 car, tragic. I think it's still a fine game but I really wish there was a way to play it on 60FPS without it having bugged out physics.
Made some progress on the Sempiternal mod, the Eligor and Andras fight is so annoying due to Eligor's Critical Wave almost always having a 100% chance to crit on someone and the Andras are tanky enough that it requires a lot of turns just to take them down. I had to resort to a battle of attrition by hitting his weakness and guarding to lower the damage and prevent critcals but it draws out the fight a lot. Honestly I don't really see much of a reason to give them this much of a buff, they're just mini bosses but they're somehow the hardest boss in this world due to their numbers and variety of skills along with your options not being as good. At least Hydra had a Mermaid + Azumi combo to do burst damage during Omagatoki: Potential, but with this fight I could only have one dps or else I risk dying due to needing to reapply buffs/debuffs while healing the team. I used High Pixie as my main dps as her passive that increases her damage based on the number of positive potential on the team onsynergizes well with Omagatoki: Potential which maxes out every potential on every member, I used Leanan Sidhe as a healer due to Media while Nahobino and Nozuchi focus on buffing/debuffing. Though they are hard, the AI seems kinda dumb as he mainly uses his basic attacks on Nozuchi who resists physical and Nahobino who has high HP and Vitality.
Next boss is Nuwa and when I saw her skillset, I thought I was doomed. Turns out her AI is also her downfall similar to the previous boss. Nuwa now has access to THREE elements which are Bufula(Ice), Shockbound(Elec) and Mazanma(Force) which seems hard to cover at first, until you realize she posses the same AI as vanilla which targets Nahobino 90% of the time and rarely uses anything that isn't her basic attack and Bufula. It was still pretty hard due to her magatsuhi gathers not being HP% based and it just being really strong, I actually almost wiped to her from a -2 Attack Sacrifice of Clay on a guarding team. But I was able to recover due to her poor AI and clutched a win. Interestingly enough, I did see her use Shockbound outside of the first turn but it was only one time, she also only used Mazanma one time but I'm not complaining because I don't want to imagine what she can do with better AI.
I only just finished the first world but this mod is pretty interesting, bosses have more variety but just the fact that you need to deal with their magatsuhi gathers makes the game much more interesting already than just throwing out a dampner when that happens.
I tried out the Skyline BNR32 on Special Stage and it's honestly pretty good. Obviously there's understeer, quite a lot actually but it's acceleration is crazy good along with it's top speed too. I prefer the R32 over the R34 just by looks itself. If you can drive well on the R32, the AI will look like they are so slow. 8/10 car, has one weakness and plenty of strengths so it's a really good car.
Finished Special Stage with 2 cars, Impreza GC8 and Trueno ae86. For the Impreza, it honestly feels like a better R32 and maybe even R34. It's acceleration is amazing and it has good top speed with it's only realy weakness is understeer but not as much as R32 and not being as good in rain while the two GTR are really good in rain. 9/10 car, minor weaknesses and really good strengths makes it feel like a pure power type of car without sacrificing too much in cornering. As for the 86, it's pretty easy on control before the engine upgrade and turns well but has a slow top speed. Once you get the engine upgrade though, it's really fast while still turning well but it's much harder to control and shifting needs to be more precise which makes it an expert players car while beginners should probably stay away from this car and maybe try a simpler car such as the FD for better speed and FC for better cornering. 10/10 if you can control it well, 7/10 otherwise. Another thing to mention is the 86 get punished the most from hitting wall at high gears and that's a part of what makes it so hard to use.
Trying Lancer Evo 4 on Special Stage and it's a surprisingly balanced car, it has good acceleration, top speed and turns surprisingly well for a 4wd. It did well on every track and it did about as well as the Integra and Bunta's Impreza. If you're a beginner, I would recommend this car. 9.5/10 car.
Been too busy to try new cars but I continue the EK9 on Happogahara and it was like it was made for that track. The understeer somehow compliments all the turns of the map where I would usually struggle to get the turn in. One of the most obvious examples of a home course. The next cars on my list right now are the Levin ae85, FD and FC, I'm not looking forward to Nissan cars as all of them seem to have understeer and doesn't seem to fit my style.
Started a run with MR-S and it's a pretty good car. Imagine MR2 but easier to control inexchange for its speed which is now really slow, but the fact it turns really well and is easier to control makes up for the less speed this car offers. You can turn just as well as the MR2 and you have much better low gear acceleration too. I stopped at Happogahara as I wanted to play Pokemon Black 2 instead, maybe I'll take about it when I finish it or something.
Beat the game with 2 cars and am halfway through with 1. Levin ae86 is an easier version of Trueno ae86 without the engine upgrade and stuff. Instead, A/D tune has a supercharger upgrade which makes it weaker in it's turning but much faster. But I opted for the B tune which is just a basic engine upgrade that makes the car more balanced, it turns well, has decent speed and good acceleration. Overall a pretty good car, mostly held back by mediocre speed, 9/10. Next is the Suzuki Cappuccino, very infamous for being the hardest car to use and I very much agree. It has amazing cornering abilities and makes maps such as Akagi and Akina a joke, but said amazing cornering ability is also it's downfall because it is extremely hard to control in maps with no much cornering such as Shin Usui and Shin Myogi. It also has another weakness which is its horrible acceleration at low gears, so bad that some of the AI battles actually take the lead when they usually are behind such as Akina Wataru and Bunta so you will need to drive well to overtake and keep your lead or else you will have to deal with your weak acceleration. A very high risk high reward car and I enjoy it quite a bit since my favourite maps are Akina and Shomaru, but it's a bit hard to recommend since it might be really frustrating to control and the AI will mess up your handling much easier than other cars, 6/10 good but very difficult car, maybe try the Trueno ae86 instead. Lastly, Lancer Evolution 7. I honestly thought this was a pretty weak car but it's not that bad. It has 4WD understeer but nothing horrible and it's acceleration is also average but it has pretty good speed. Overall feels like a very average car, 7/10 maybe use Evo4 instead.
To update on a few cars that I used in Special Stage. S13 is probably one of my favourite cars design wise, it looks simple but cool. As for the performance, it's probably the most average car in the game, maybe slightly above average but it's a pretty overall average car. Good speed, good acceleration, decent cornering, this car can do anything just fine. 8/10, can't go wrong with it. Next up is the RX-7 Type R FD3S, think S13 but better in every way. If S13 is an average car overall, FD is an above average car overall. 10/10, easy to drive and effective. Lastly is GDB 6Gear Impreza, it's honestly better than I thought and has better cornering than more 4WDs and has insane acceleration but it loses in top speed and stability in rain. It's not bad by any means, better than the S13. 9/10, weakest Impreza but still good. I'm currently starting a run with the S15 which is probably like a bottom 2 car in the 3 versions of Arcade Stage.
Not updating much lately because I've been playing League of Legends yet so I've only done 2 cars. First being the Levin ae85 which is a slow car that corners really nicely, I used a turbo variant that changes it turning a bit but it's still pretty good. The only downside is it's one of the slowest cars in the game so you really need good cornering to keep your lead. 7/10. Next is the EG6 which in my opinion, is near identical to EK9 which make sense considering they are both Civics. Car doesn't turn well but is fast, 7/10.
