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I had heard that it was meh, didn't think it was actually.. bad. What the heck is this even about? That story just doesn't make any sense to be the follow up of Ep 3 to me at all... Honestly I feel like just skipping through it all. Spent 40 minutes reading some slice of life bs that really doesn't seem to lead anywhere and feels like some bad fan fiction.. Please tell me it gets better before Ep 5....
Ep4 was a train wreck for the most part, it’s only the least couple of chapters where it starts getting better. I enjoyed Ep5 a lot more, and have really liked what I’ve seen of 6 so far
@TEN-SQUARE-3 I ended up skipping everything in EP 4. I just couldn't keep seeing basic highschool student stuff with the stretch that was the plot about 'alternate' universe. Meh. Time to see what E5 is all about. I'm hopeful since it seems to go back to Photoners.
Yeah ep4 was seriously the worst. I forced myself to watch it to keep an open mind because it couldn’t be that bad. Watching it made me hate it more. And I think Kohri is an absolutely terrible person that gets pardoned for being a literal creep because she’s a cutsie schoolgirl. I hate her as much as you can hate a fictional character.
Ep5 was kind of boring to me in the first half but the story starts getting good. I still think 1-3 were superior though.
Both EP4 and 5 were filler content to me. They just have very loose links to the main story, but it's stuff nobody asked for and Sega got repeatedly slapped by the fans for it. We all also learned a lesson.
Isekai doesn't work everywhere...
EP4 is largely hated on because it pulled a few classic tropes (anime episode, 4th wall breaking, fan service.) It feels disconnected because well...it was. The anime was going on at the time so they wanted to "reboot" pso2 with it. Which is why it's kinda in it's own bubble until EP6 where they get roped in a bit more significantly compared to EP5. I don't think it was bad really. Seems like stock anime levels of content and most seem to accept that soooo. I liked EP4 for mother corp and it also introduced the first raid boss (imo) of Deus Esca.
That's kinda what anime does though by in large. It glorifies really gross attributes in the form of things that are not immediately repulsive. There are people out there who really dig the whole obsessive to the point of damaging types of people. (I think she was trying to play into the yandere trope but it wasn't done great.)
EP5 for me is hit and miss. It's more related to the events of 1-3 than EP4 was and I enjoy the medieval fantasy asthetic. It seemed like a better filler episode compared to 4. But it definitely has it's off moments. I still don't get why people like 1-3 so much. It's just a bunch of events happening that our character is semi involved in. EP6 so far is my most favorite episode.
You’re probably right, and I absolutely detest yandere so I just wanted her off my screen. I don’t mind some anime tropes, I like kuudere and to an extent tsundere if not over the top. I just can’t stand Kohri, she single handedly ruined the story for me.
For me 1-3 was good because I adore Quna and Matoi.
@Knight-Raime said in So,episode 4's story really IS bad eh?:
EP5 for me is hit and miss. It's more related to the events of 1-3 than EP4 was and I enjoy the medieval fantasy asthetic. It seemed like a better filler episode compared to 4. But it definitely has it's off moments. I still don't get why people like 1-3 so much. It's just a bunch of events happening that our character is semi involved in. EP6 so far is my most favorite episode.
When you get to the retconned version of Episodes 1-3 (which is what global has by default with the added context of Episode 5 explaining why) it is much better than how the original story was presented via the Matterboards and later the Omnibus. The old system was even more disconnected with the "events" happening and the excuse given was that the player had the ability to travel through time to experience alternative events. As a result you had a checklist of things to "clear" that weren't so obvious so you can be in the middle of a quest in the right conditions and suddenly get pulled out of your party to be forced into a cutscene and have to return to finish the quest or to trigger the next part of the scene (which was heavily dependent on the locations that spawned and the enemies that you encountered). This also required fighting bosses for specific rare drops to progress and waiting for Emergency Quest schedules to actually do the big fights that the story left you on cliffhangers for. In a lot of cases throughout Episodes 1-3 story scenes would be sprinkled in via updates that the player would be "time-traveling" back to see (such as the appearances of Dark Falz [Apprentice]).
By Episode 4 and 5 this was streamlined so that you can easily see what scenes you needed to clear and which scenes were optional or can be skipped. But with Episode 5's later updates and retcons the entire Epsidoes 1-3 story was streamlined so all of the extra fluff and side-stories (there were many of them) were cut from the game and put into the "Event Chronicle" so that new players had a much more straightforward experience. My impressions of Episodes 1-3 were really that the people behind the writing were trying very hard to shotgun ideas off of a brainstorming session and applied absolutely everything to see what would stick and it continued all the way about halfway through Episode 2. I recall that Quna was originally intended to be the Heroine of the story and only really was given the limelight because it turned out they needed something to end Episode 1 on and Episode 2 was largely more-of-the-same with retcons and rewrites introducing a new race and undoing story events. By the time you get to Episode 3 the story starts to condense and become a bit clearer but it reminds me of Halo in that regard where they tried to end the story on something that wasn't exactly built up or established.
In the grand scheme of things when you see how Episode 6 tries to retreat on familiar territory I feel that the story is interesting and entertaining but it definitely is something that is chunky to sift through. For the players who aren't expecting such a grand story I feel that it's entertaining to glance at because everyone has different standards and experiences even with things that can be poorly executed.
I can't really stand Matoi personally. Maybe it's just because the English VO is a raspy whiny voice. Maybe it's because her character seems like nothing more than a helpless person that always needs player character to do anything or have any sort of character development. I dunno. She just rubs me wrong. Then again I was also REALLY not into Melfonsina until after her husbando died because she was just a walking abuse victim.
I like Quna too but I don't think she shines much till the end of the arc where she's actually given a chance to develop instead of just chasing some dragon around and being upset. I don't mind Yandere characters. It's just hard to get them done decently as most people just go skin deep and well. That's a problem with writing in general. Khori is annoying not because she's a Yandere but simply because she isn't a character. She exists purely for Hitsugi's sake and to glorify the individuals out there who love Shota.
Yeah i'm very well aware how terrible the story board system was. I dabbled with it a little on JP when I had to but I mostly avoided it. I was more so talking about how it's written. My memory of the 1-3 Arc isn't great. But all I do remember is that it felt like several things were happening at once. You have whatever the falz are, whatever quna is, matoi and her relation to us and other characters, who the heck Scion is and why this dude named Luther is obsessed with her...you get the picture.
They were very obviously trying to lay out the foundation for everything to come in later episodes. But the way it was introduced just made it overwhelming. Instead of my character being a guide through it they felt like they just existed in scene for exposition dump or for me to see what's happening. There just doesn't seem to be a good pacing or pattern to any of it. People can give a lot of shade for 4 and 5 but at least the story it was trying to present felt cohesive and my character had real involvement instead of just being a witness.
Interesting to know that Quna was originally intended to be more important though I wasn't aware of that. I really like EP6 because it manages to respect (as far as i'm aware,) more or less everything important/significant that's happened by involving it and putting it in such a way that makes sense in terms of progressing a story. I don't mind them making call backs and inclusions of 1-3 stuff because it manages to fit. Essentially it feels like whatever story that's attempting to be told in PSO2 is finally coming into focus. Also the music is pretty great. And it seems like saving people from dying at the last second has been trimmed down a bit. Which is a small nitpick. But it's an important one and i'm glad it's happened.
I actually love Matoi from the past, not necessarily her current version. She’s more likable in the anime as well. Quna is my girl though, I just really adore every scene with her in both anime and game.
Don’t honestly care that much about other characters in the game but the anime made Afin pretty great.
I'll just say: since the story has time travel and multiverse crap, it can't really make any sense no matter how much gibberish they put in pretending to explain it. I decided to skip it all. I wish those conversation "choices" weren't there to waste my time. To me, it's not worth my time and i wouldn't even skip through it if it didn't have SG in it. So simply skip through it to get the rewards and forget it even exists.
Yeah EP4 starts of pretty bad and cringy, but I feel like it starts to get much better once Hitsugi finally decides to ditch Mother Corps though. I still think they could have done the parallel universe thing better without using the lol is PSO2 a videogame thing in the actual story though. And I think how Kohri acted like in the beginning towards Al is kinda brushed under the rug because she doesn't do it anymore in any of the other times they interact after the part I mentioned before that I found to be when the story gets better.
In the end it seems like Kohri is genuinely nice to Al in a non creepy way. (By the way she does act kinda creepily with Hitsugi at times in the story too, so I think she's just so awkward at times that she's kinda creepy. I mean she literally goes crazy while being literally brainwashed and laughs like a maniac. In the beginning you think her brainwashing is just her being too stupid to realize she's being used, but no, she's literally being mind controlled).
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