I can’t think of a
lot of games that I’ve fallen for so quickly, but wouldn’t you know it? Teppen is one of them. And to think it’d not only be the very first
mobile game I’ve talked about on this blog, but the very first mobile game I’ve
ever owned. Well, besides some Tetris/Pac-Man
hybrid built into this one phone I had a geologic age ago.
So let’s talk about
Teppen. Briefly. Because God forbid, I get to talk about
something I actually like and/or can be positive about.
I’ve had that card
game itch for a while now. Blame Yu-Gi-Oh
for that, what with me getting deep in bed with the anime a year or
so back. I still kind of yearn for that,
to be honest -- the Pendulum Summon sound effect is my ASMR trigger -- but as
tempted as I am to see if that Duel Links game on the Switch is up to
snuff, Teppen hit me first and hardest thanks to a glowing, multi-week recommendation
from Castle Super Beast. Also, it’s free. Also, also, I needed to justify the new phone
I upgraded to (if only because my brother breaking his gave me an excuse to
trade up).
Hey, guess
what? Teppen is fun. Super-fun.
It’s ridiculously easy to grasp and get into, so you won’t have to spend
hours and hours running through tutorials to get into the kiddie pool of
low-rank online matches. Granted I’d
recommend getting a feel for the game and/or what you want to gear your deck
towards with the single-player content, but I’d say it doesn’t even take an
hour to fully grasp the basic mechanics.
The nuances? The strategies? Not as clear-cut, in that “easy to learn,
hard to master” nature of the beast.
Still, the barrier of entry is about as high as the average street curb.
What I’ve found the
most surprising -- yet strangely refreshing -- about Teppen is its
blistering pace. While there’s a rule in
place so that the person with the most life after about 5 minutes is the
winner, I’ve never run into a situation where I’ve hard to worry about timing
out. You can win a match in one minute
if you’ve got strategy and luck on your side, if not less. It’s weird, because there is a timing-based,
real-time element to it rather than raw turn-taking. In theory, it should be a constant,
overwhelming deluge of information.
In practice, the
flow of battle is as natural as breathing.
With it being a card game, there’s no guarantee you’ll have everything
you’ll need to counter every single enemy attack at every single moment. That said, you’ll have more than enough time
to build up your resources, deploy your units, buff, debuff, shield, heal,
setup, and the like -- and time to process it, more importantly. It’s a card game, yes, but it really does
feel like a fighting game (helped by having so many Street Fighter all-stars
on the roster). The key difference? With the gates of execution torn down, it’s
less a matter of raw dexterity and combo recital as it is about -- for lack of
a better descriptor -- the heart of battle.
It certainly helps
that, compared to something like Street Fighter V, it takes at most
about ten seconds to go from one match to the next. And that’s an outlier. Really, it tends to average two. So if you’re like me? Good luck saying “Just one more match” and
then actually meaning it.
I’ve half a mind to
talk about Teppen more at a later date, assuming nothing else leaves an
overwhelming, lasting impression on me.
And it just might, depending on what great/terrible life choices I make
in the next…oh, let’s say two hours or so.
The key issue is that I already have a strong mental image of what’s on
the docket. What I need to write about,
because otherwise it’ll just be like a pair of carnivorous worms gnashing their
maws as they tunnel through my brain. I’ve
been putting them off for a while, and I’ve reached a point where I can’t for
much longer.
The first thing I
want to write about is one of Sunrise’s latest productions, Gundam Build
Divers Re:RISE. Depending on how you
classify it, it’s the fourth season of the Gundam Build Fighters spinoff
franchise of the classic Mobile Suit franchise.
I wouldn’t, though, because that would imply that this fourth
installment is in the same league as the first.
It isn’t. Frankly, I think it’s remarkably
bad, and as of writing it’s taken ten episodes to squeak its way up to the
level of “mediocre”.
I adore the
first season of Gundam Build Fighters.
I think that the second season (Build Fighters Try) was
unequivocally a step down, but still ultimately a fine show with plenty to
like. As soon as it switched from Fighters
to Divers -- as it did with the third season -- there was a MASSIVE
drop in quality. I never got around to explaining
why in full detail, but let’s just say “it
got killed by a waifu” and leave it at that. In theory, I shouldn’t even be bothering with
this fourth installment. But I did. I guess I just wanted to believe. Give the showrunners a chance at redemption.
And now I’m pretty
much hate-watching it every Thursday.
The pacing is dismal. The
characters are inoffensive at best and abysmal at worst. The spectacle of previous seasons is
generally on the wane. The spirit of the
Build Fighters series is almost completely gone. The focus is on all of the wrong
elements. The experience is shallow and
somehow manages to introduce some pretty distressing implications in episode
after episode. The entire narrative is still
being killed by a waifu, so clearly no one learned anything from the last
go-round. And oh, dear God, I hate
the main character.
There are parts of
me simultaneously itching for and dreading the moment when I actually sit down
and write about the show. Knowing me, it’s
going to take a long, long, long time to go in detail on my many
problems with it -- meaning it’ll probably be a double-post, at a bare
minimum. Given that, I’m kind of
wondering if I should wait until the show’s finished its run. Maybe it’ll get better, because even if I’m
still pausing every single episode to do an aside glance, groan, sigh in
dismay, or lament my existence, it is technically, slightly better
than when it started. So I don’t
know. I’ll mull it over.
The other thing I
want to write about is Kingdom Hearts III.
…Except I don’t
care about Kingdom Hearts anymore.
That was literally
going to be the title of the post. “I
don’t care about Kingdom Hearts anymore.” It’d probably be the most honest thing I’ve
ever written, because, well, KH3 broke me. Or broke the series, more appropriately, and
it was already a vase Nomura and the Squeenix crew had dropped so many times they
were basically gluing powder back together.
And like, I feel as if there’s not even a point in trying to fight back,
or even rage about it anymore.
The Empire’s won,
guys. This is the
best-selling game in the franchise to date, and it didn’t even matter how
many people were disappointed, confused, or enraged by it. All Squeenix needed were sales numbers, and
they got them. Because of the old
standbys: a recognizable name, production values, and nostalgia. (And ostensibly the carrot-on-a-stick of the
promise of a completed narrative after more than a decade of lingering in
limbo, but let’s just lump that under “nostalgia” for simplicity’s sake.)
They don’t need to
learn, or improve, or press onward, or evolve.
If they ever felt the need to put out a high-quality product -- one that
doesn’t just rely on technical prowess -- then we wouldn’t have had such
narrative disasters as, well, pretty much everything after KH2. (Days is debatable, but let’s not get
into that right now.) Nothing in the
story matters anymore except for some shallow fluff here and there. The themes aren’t maturing, the plot’s a
shambling corpse, questions are posed with unsatisfying answers given years
down the line, and there are no stakes because Nomura and crew can just cheat
their way to whatever resolution they want.
The Re:Mind DLC was
supposed to be the saving grace -- the one thing I was waiting for to see if
the game could be redeemed. But I waited
for months with nothing to show for it, and in the meantime? Every time I even thought about KH3 after
beating it, I found something else to be angry about. Those feelings stewed and simmered, so that
when they did start dropping trailers and info, I didn’t even bother watching
them. The damage had been done. I’d been burned too harshly, to the point
where when I did eventually watch -- as in weeks after the fact -- it
was as a third party via a YouTuber’s reaction video. And I could barely make it five seconds in
before more overwrought dialogue made me pause and sigh and groan and wallow in
despair for continuing to exist.
And now there’s
been another trailer I can’t be bothered to watch, because screencaps have
revealed that the
Final Fantasy characters are back.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay, Leon and Yuffie and Aerith are here! Except…wasn’t it a
conscious decision by the devs to leave them out in the first place because
they wanted to focus on the KH3 narrative? (HA!) And
now, almost a year after the fact, they’re backing down because…why, exactly?
The cynic in me has
an explanation. They didn’t pull the FF
crew because of a creative vision.
They just needed a hook for the DLC and the money it’d bring. Or if not the money, then “player engagement”
that’ll lead to brand loyalty and eventually more money. As pessimistic as it may sound, there’s a part
of me that genuinely believes they were rearing and ready to go with this plan,
this “roadmap” of “content”. If not
that, then Squeenix got spooked by fan reactions and course-corrected -- backed
down on the one thing that signaled faith in their work -- for the sake
of pandering. So basically, the answer
to why is either “because they have no integrity” or “because they have no
integrity”.
Real talk? I don’t drink, but if I was ever going to
start, it’d be because Squeenix pushed me to.
I guess that’s
about all I have for now. Teppen stuff
will come later, even though I can pretty much guarantee I’ll be playing more
of it in the interstice. I’m not 100%
committed to next week’s post being on Re:RISE, but there are only two
Thursdays left in the year after this and, well, it would be a welcome filler
for the slot. Really, though, I want the
very last post this year (emphasis on want) to be something related to KH3. I’ve been holding onto that grudge for a
while, so it’s best to capitalize -- even if it’s not a full-on breakdown of
everything wrong with the game.
What really bums me
out about the game is that, as it stands, it’s going to be the worst one I’ve
played all year. My Top 5 is pretty much
locked in at this point, and even among the lesser games I’ve played, none of
them are titles I’d flat-out call “bad”.
Given that, there’s a part of me that wants to scramble to go into
Christmas rush mode to find a game that’s worse than KH3, just so I can
say that Sora’s latest adventure isn’t at the bottom of a very small
barrel. I mean, sure, there are objectively
worse games out there off the top of my head, but I mean among those that I’d
actually be interested in playing/investigating. Something that’d come across my path with the
intent of being intriguing, but in reality, it turned out to be --
YEAHHHHHHHHHHH!
LET’S GO ALL THE WAY TO HELLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
(Or maybe I’ll go
with Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. I
dunno, LOL.)
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