you’re mincemeat

Most of Solution Nine is impeccably cool, but the Nexus Arcade is literally just a big Verizon store. Yeah, I said it.

It’s savage time! We started a week late, because half of us were away for the first weekend. Kan cleared the tier before our first session. On the plus side, we’re ahead of ggg (they’re currently doing uwu) so everyone gets to help figure out strats. Every raid tier we hear about HGR’s incredible math shenanigans in ggg and now WE get them. Mega hype. 

tanks: Dante & Tiro

healers: HGR & Luis

dps: newbie (SAM), numbers (VPR), KJH (picto/RDM), me 

It took us two and a half sessions to clear Black Cat. Fun fight, good arena visuals/music, a solid start to the tier. (Dawntrail character rankings: 1. Koana. 2. Black Cat.)

Let’s talk aesthetics for a bit. The previous tier (P9-12) was a disaster. Kokytos with his munchkin voice acting, John Pandemonium, and Mr. Elevator Music were all bleh. Athena was okay, but a clear beneficiary of Balthier syndrome. Also the composition felt incoherent and slapdash; there wasn’t any theme, just some random dudes (and Athena).

The tier before that (P5-8) was a masterwork. All the bosses—Proto Carbuncle, Hegemone, Agdistis, Hephaistos—were individually fantastic* and played into the same dark fantasy/eldritch vibes. Scream is the best song ever, and White Stone Black is high tier. Absolutely peak aesthetic.

(* when I say “fantastic” I obviously mean the aesthetics. The mechanics were conceptually cool but a little above my pay grade. For instance, it took me forever to memorize our Agdistis strats because of the incredibly weird arena, and I never fully internalized them—I had my sketchbook sitting next to me so I could reference my diagrams mid-pull. Also I screwed up Cachexia nearly every time because CHECK YOUR NUMBER. CHECK YOUR COLOR. NO, NOT THAT NUMBER, THE OTHER ONE. ALSO THE OTHER COLOR. WHICH SIDE IS THAT COLOR AGAIN? Plus, I was flex—my positioning was dependent on our BLM—so I would see no BLM, think “the coast is clear,” then he finishes his cast and runs up to me and OSHIT ADJUST ADJUST.)

Anyway, aesthetics!! This tier is firmly in between the previous two tiers, but in a good way. Black Cat is cool, Mad Bomber and Wicked Thunder are pretty cool. Honey B. Lovely is not my thing, but you can tell a lot of budget went into her design. She landed top 10 on the Japanese popularity poll (Wuk Lamat did not place lmfao). Dante is obsessed with her theme song.