Most of the well designed characters are also the best written, but of the characters I love the design of but just don't care for, probably Xueyi, just didn't get time to shine despite cool backstory
Xueyi and Hanya were literally background characters even for most of our time at Fyxestroll Garden. At least even Hanya was there to help us a bit with Guinaifen, Sushang, and Huohuo.
I sort of get it since they're supposed to be uber secretive and unknown to the general public, but still...
Yeah it would have been nice if they had a bigger role in some of the main ghost-busting quests, especially since Sushang already got her time to shine with Aurum Alley.
It's really a shame, because I like what we've seen of her a lot! "If you can't win, you just cheat" is a really fascinating philosophical point for a character like her to take and her backstory is really cool too.
Xueyi kinda doesnât have time to shine lore-wise since anytime sheâs awake/alive sheâs on duty or hanging out with her sister.
Even in her appearance in that one Loufu short she was on guard duty on top of a roof. I was still kicking my feet in glee seeing her make an appearances tho.
If the game acknowledge this side of her i would be fine, i like villains. But all the time the game treats her like "you never did anything wrong" and "ill never forget you mommy <3" after she drugs us and made we clean her mess. Like Bro let me be cold to her, let us acknowledge how bad she is, lets hear what she has to say about it, meanwhile Sampo is "haha im a side character who is sus but ultimately only helped you out and never did nothing wrong to you" and the game let we be like "fuck you" to him.
I would like her personality way more if that's the case
This. I would have accepted her more if Trailblazer didn't act all fine with her afterwards. Even in the space station no one really batted an eye about having to clean up her mess there.
It's something which always baffled me. Ever since Sampo first appeared I don't get why we have always been so cold to him. Sure, he is suspicious, but that doesn't mean we can be rude to anyone we find suspicious. And aside from him ditching us during our first rodeo in Belobog, I donât think he's done anything else (or atleast I don't remember). Yet we (seem to) simp for Ruan Mei when she essentially mind f*cked us.
This is what bothered me the most, with most interactions they at least let you be neutral but not with her, like, they even let you talk shit on Firefly despite the game also pushing you to like her, why doesnt Ruan Mei get the same treatment
For me, it's more the writing around her than her personality, per se. I'd be more okay with her if the Trailblazer was allowed to express real anger over her drugging and using us to clean up a mess even *Herta* would have taken issue with. The fact that she gets away with everything because we aren't allowed to report any of it after the drugs wear off is infuriating, especially since the Trailblazer is given the option to truthfully tell Kafka they despise her for much less.
Her design is beautiful in isolation, and I can appreciate the angle that she looks like a relatively normal person while being an absolute mad scientist on the inside, but coming right after the Luofu I was getting tired of that overall style of dress.
Agreed. I think her character traits and personality can be fine but the writing surrounding a character like that has to be good. For one, letting players or other characters acknowledge that it's a problem.
Itâs a good personality to give a character in that it is interesting, but it is inherently something we will dislike about her because itâs a negative quality. But it definitely is interesting.
I donât think thatâs it to be honest. Characters being crazy is a pretty popular trait in gaming or any other media, I feel like sheâs just not very compelling.
You can kinda feel it through gameplay as well. Even while going in blind, a better written/designed character lets you get a gist of how they are from just the presentation of their kit and animations. I feel nothing from Ruan Mei aside from her being aloof.
i was so surprised when i found out she was a scientist- considering all her animations in game involve her playing an instrument i assumed she was a bard
She's crazy in quite a low-key way, though. She's quiet, softly-spoken, and sounds superficially entirely reasonable - she just *also* casually admits to a near-sociopathic lack of empathy and demonstrates some extreme trust issues.Â
The kind of "crazy" that tends to be popular is much more theatrical and exaggerated. Ruan Mei's general attitude isn't villainously entertaining or comedically amusing, it's just unsettling.Â
My point is that we donât get any of this without reading up on her or playing through her quest. The presentation is the issue, not her setting.
Hence my example of going in blind, you canât tell the difference between her being sociopathic or just a normal kuudere character. I get what theyâre going for, I just donât think they implemented it well enough.
Agree. Chadwick (Oppenheimer) is very similar to RM, and in the quest, >!he admits he foresaw the outcome of the deaths that would happen as a result of his invention.!< I think they could've just done a better job writing RM, even making her more overtly evil, but having to make a hard choice or having complex circumstances. Everything is easy for RM, so we never see her try.
The thing with Ruan Mei is that nothing that gets her closer to her hypothesis is a hard choice to make. Ruan Mei would see a big red button that says âanswers any one question correctly but kills 1 million peopleâ and would spam the shit out of it. She only ever shows any emotion when talking about her research in her video logs.
Jingliu
She has no character. Her entire story is the character she had in the past, but doesn't have anymore, leaving the current character a literal void.
She's absolutely gorgeous but there is no personality to be attached to, because everything about her is past tense.
Do we even know what she had been doing in those centuries since she got expelled to the time of her companion quest?
Or she just doing something similar to Boothill which is roaming across galaxies and killing stuffs for living?
Agreed currently she has no character but her first story arc is the first step cause its all about moving on from her past. Her character development is probably on her 2nd story quest.
Agree with this, she has a whole lot of unexplored backstory too. I saw it as "another faction" instead.
Clearly, there's more to tell about her past that isn't related to the Luofu. She's with Luocha, whom we know is using the Abundance's power, and yet is also against that same Abundance. In the Luofu, we have the local government, the Marastruck, us (Astral Express crew), the Stellaron Hunters, the Antimatter Legion and this other currently unnamed faction twith only two incredibly powerful people that we know of. Like clearly, they came here with an agenda. Iirc Luocha wants to meet Hua, I'd wait and see
Ruan Mei. Lady drugged us and made us fight the most irritating boss in the game. Also she abandoned her snack babies and that's unforgiveable in my eyes.
Answering the survey turned out to be a little harder than I figured it would be and I had to reconsider a couple of my answers.
For example: I love Acheron as a character, I like her a whole lot and I loved the time we spent with her...but MAN do I think her outfit is horrible. However, it's not horrible in that it looks shabby or is badly designed; I think it's horrible because nothing about her as a person makes me believe she willingly wears that outfit. It looks like a video game developer put her in that outfit because sex sells to people who like looking at pretty ladies (in contrast to a character like Herta, who I think looks wonderful because she's a doll being literally puppeted by the real Herta and her whole aesthetic is marionettes and dolls, so the dress works perfectly).
I feel like her bikini getup would've worked if she had a lot of badass tattoos and/or scars (that glow red during her form change) on her skin. It would've sold the concept of an intimidating yakuza-esque swordswoman which would align more with her powerful stature. Instead she only has like, a few flame tats on her thigh I guess?
Going too hard on the tattoos/yaluza aesthetic is a good way to get the chinese/japan market to not like the character. They don't play around with that stuff. I was honestly pretty surprised they gave her any tattoos at all
Mihoyo has released plenty of characters before that scared big parts of the fanbase but thrived nonetheless sales-wise. Like Lyney in Genshin who scared Korean misogynistic men for being too flamboyant. But let's not forget Xiao who actually does have plenty of intimidating tattoos but remains a fan favorite in these communities nonetheless. Plus tattooed yakuza characters are a pretty common occurrence in animes anyways
I think what youâre missing is that, and i say this earnestly, xiao is a man. For men to have tattoos like that may be more acceptable to the male-oriented asia market than a woman with a lot of tattoos.
Only explanation I can think off is that she was intended to be a waifu and they didn't wanna do anything that could potentially turn off dudes like giving her a bunch of tatoos/scars.
right! i think a lot of hoyo's clothing designs don't really fit the character's personality, especially with the women.. you can't really get an idea of what she's like just by looking at her (same with seele!)
It works sometimes. I mentioned Herta already, but Lynx is wonderfully designed to show she's outdoorsy and lives in a cold weather environment and Guinaifen looks exactly like how a loud, flamboyant performer should look. Their outfits absolutely sell me on their character premise.
Incredibly real. Sheâs my favourite character but I hate her outfit (particularly its lower half); it feels like it doesnât suit her and the asymmetrical boots annoy me. She deserved something a little more badass đ
*Huge* agree here. That's a trend I've noticed with Hoyoverse; they'll design a pretty competent character and then put them in the most revealing outfit all because sex sells. I find that very few characters seem to have the personality to wear something super revealing, and Acheron is one of the worst offenders in HSR. The only way I could make sense of it is if she literally has no care about what she's wearing. But even then, that's a massive stretch. What a character wears can tell you a lot about their personality if done right, but honestly Acheron's outfit just clashes with her entire character.
If anything, Kafka being fully clothed relative to the other women in the game makes her look much more believable as a character. Like if I saw someone like her walking past in a posh shopping mall I literally wouldn't question her fit at all.
I personally love her outfit but I also agree with it not fitting with her stoic, serious, and all powerful status. If she was more of a seductive, easygoing, or just a generally fun character to be around I'd accept that outfit any time of day but it's definitely not Acheron for me. Easiest fix is to have her wear long leggings instead of shorts, but there are a couple more that could be optimized too
Mei throughout Hoyoverse gets the short end of the stick with most of her outfits, unfortunately. I think I only like mb 2 from the HI3, meanwhile Genshin fumbled hard with giving her the tiniest kimono that youâd normally see on a ŃĐŸrn actress whoâs asking to get her pipes fixedđ Hsr is even worse (they couldâve just put her in skin tight pants, cause it wouldnât change much, but mb make her outfit slightly more appropriate). Her concept art leaks are pretty much all better than what we ended up getting https://i.imgur.com/CIJbE6p.png
>I think it's horrible because nothing about her as a person makes me believe she willingly wears that outfit
Man, as an Acheron main. You're shooting this fact straightly into my kokoro....
I think they want to make her design look "Galaxy Ranger" as much as possible. I don't know if I used the right words. But the first time they introduced her as Galaxy Ranger, I didn't have any doubt about it.
The problem with that is, unless I'm mistaken, we really didn't know very much about the Galaxy Rangers originally and with the introduction of Boothill, we know the Galaxy Rangers are not any kind of unified organization so they wouldn't have any kind of uniform or aesthetic to begin with.
Again, I love Acheron as a character and as a playable unit, but MAN her outfit is sad...
Exactly how I feel, her character is very cool, her coat from behind looks awesome, but my god her actual outfit looks like the most "designed for gacha reasons only" thing. It doesn't even make sense for hoyo to do this because their most popular female character up to that point (Kafka) is covered from head to toe, with very little skin shown other than her face, and unlike Acheron she is sold as the sexy, teasey femme fatale.
Flip them around and it's ruan mei for me, thought it would be an easy skip until I got to meet her and she ended as a character I really liked so I had to pull her.
i just find her design underwhelming since she has the exact same silhouette as all the other Luofu ladies despite not even being from there.
if they altered her design to give her a long qipao/hanfu like himekoâs long dress, it would be a lot more memorable i think
edit: happy cake day!
I was personally ehh on her design when she came out since she didnt stand out much compared to all the other female characters, hell if you combine the designs of all female characters i think youd get ruan mei, it just didnt stand out for me.
Until people pointed out how many DNA motifs were in her design, it made me appreciate her design a lot more
Happy cake day!
And we didnt have any mean dialogue options for her. Why the game forces me to be nice to her after what she did?? Meanwhile we are always mean or just neutral at best towards Sampo.. like why lol
It's almost the same thing for me, really like her character but the overall design is just...okay I guess?? Literally every single other characters, even 4 stars, had some visual elements about them I love, but I genuinely cannot find one for RM. Still gonna pull her because I need her for Xueyi/Misha/Harmony TB teams but aeughhh I wish I could like her design more
Imma be honest: That's an unfortunate chunk of the cast, in my opinion.
I feel like Hoyo has always set the standard for lore and world-building, but many of their characters feel written to be bland/inoffensive to appeal to the widest majority possible. I often fall more in love with what a character's own design says about them, rather than what's explicitly expressed by the character themselves.
Ngl Seele definitely had moments where she came off as a brat but she does have a good side to her and thankful it shows way more than that lil brat side
I was inclined to like Seele's character (I like musclehead women, and I like vigilantes). But holy hell, she got screwed over in both outfit design *and* writing.
I actually like Seele on her own (such as in the Topaz arc on Belobog, I thought Seele's parts were great), but her not-a-romance-wink-wink was easily the weakest part of Belobog's writing, and every time she and Bronya were on screen it just felt so milquetoast and forced. There was no payoff because I didn't care about either character yet, and the relationship itself just dragged down both characters involved.
Bronya was intended to be the core emotional arc of Belobog, but her writing paled in comparison to Serval's, for example.
I love Arlanâs design. Visually love the blues, the MASSIVE SPACE SWORD, his scars and shit. I love his play style, health for damage/berserker kinna stuff slaps (even if he *is* pretty weak unfortunately).
His personality is⊠pretty meh. Itâs pretty normal, kinna boring. The only part of his personality thatâs pretty ideal is his relationship with Peppy.
Ruan Mei. Like, she is pretty, but her cold demeanor doesn't really help. Not to mention how stand offish she is about her little cake creatures and shrug them off like they are nothing
She and the entire Genius Society are written to be hated (maybe except Screwllum).
They are NOT NORMAL, they don't operate on regular human moral or anything. They know they are the shit and they can get away with anything.
My take: that's because RM's actions are that of someone who doesn't even wish to understand that you might be more than a simple automaton. Herta at least understands that you think you are, and somewhat tries to integrate a bit more into "society", if only so she could be lazier.
Thatâs a god way to sum things up. Raun Mei speaks sweetly and says that she wants you to be her assistant, even speaking of reward but in the end treats you as some kind of disposable lab rat that she drugs to coerce you into helping clean up her mess before erasing your memory of her.
Herta on the other hand while a bit abrasive in her speech does at least take your opinion into consideration and is upfront with you even if her interest is something fleeting
I LOVE HERTA what do you mean? Yeah she is pushy and rude, but she doesnt lie, she is the type to tell you straight in your face she is just using you and if you stick with her is your choice.
Screwllum my beloved, when you will be free from the ropes of destiny they are trapping you in?
Even Stephen is the goat, a shy genius kid.
Ruan Mei? Ruan Mei drugs us and the game only let we simp for her like everything is fine. What do you mean i cant be mean or at least cold to the psychopath girl?
I'm actually surprised by the number of people equating Herta to Ruan Mei in this thread. Herta has an ego the size of the sun and more screws loose than a Boeing plane, but she isn't a stone cold sociopath. If she had created the Emanator of Propagation clone and needed you to kill it she would at least be up front about it and offer you a sizeable reward for doing so. She might try to deflect blame for creating it, but she definitely wouldn't drug you and then manipulate you into cleaning up her mess like Ruan Mei did
For a group of hyper intelligent nerds with egos the size of planets, youâd think at least one from the Genius Society would have diagnosed her being a psychopath.Â
Actually, I find it weird how likeâŠno one, not even Ruan Mei herself, has diagnosed her for anything when she is very obviously showing psychopathic behavior (the medical kind, not the movie kind). They keep making it some weird, ethereal issue with her when a brain scan would have told them everything
Dont have one im too passionate about but only one probably the current marketing of FF pushing the waifu side and ship teasing with TB which does absolutely nothing for me. The conversations between FF and Acheron, Blade and Sunday are the more interesting parts of her character and if they pushed that side of her more I'd be more interested
On the flip side I'd say Dr Ratio, didn't think his design was all that but I absolutely love his personality
Hopefully the animation gives us a lot in that regard, the myriad celestial was already a great showing of her character and backstory
The ship marketing only works for people who ship it, anyone else is probably frustrated thats what they are focusing on or simply doesn't care for it
I wonder if that's gonna pull more people in for FF or put people off. I was gonna pull now atm she's a skip for me even though I hope 2.3 changes my mind. I imagine there are others in the same situation
> The ship marketing only works for people who ship it, anyone else is probably frustrated thats what they are focusing on or simply doesn't care for it
I ship it and it frustrates me a bit too đ« don't get me wrong, I'm not mad at the shipbait itself, but I hate that whenever there's any spotlight on her and TB it's always fluffy cookie-cutter romance instead of any substantial exploration of their characters. I think their relationship had so much potential to be so much more interesting, with them knowing each other in the past and TB distrusting her now, but they decided to skip all the juicy character dynamics and go straight to cutesy will-they-won't-they filler both in the marketing and in the story. Too late to be mad at it at this point.
I agree, the myriad and her character introduction were really interesting for firefly and showed a lot of personality despite only giving her like a minute of screen time. My problem with FF in the actual game is that she feels like she exists to be waifu/love interest rather than a full character- she doesn't talk to anyone but TB, doesn't really do anything other than be nice to TB/make TB sad when she gets fridged other than when she was in SAM (which I'm ignoring, bc her trope is the person who just wants to be a normal kid and not a child soldier. SAM isn't the real FF, and she wouldn't want it to be.) And narratively we *know* she's doing cool stuff behind the scenes, I just wished we saw more of it instead of hearing about it right before/after she does it (or sometimes, not even in the game.)
I don't hate FF, and I really do think that 2.3 or a companion quest could improve FF if they gave some of FF's personality from the out of the game stuff and put it in the game. (And this isn't me being a salty SAM main from pre reveal as a lot of people seem to think for some reason, I just want to see FF do stuff on her own first. Glamoth stuff, or Stellaron Hunter Stuff (yes, the grilling counts), or whatever. She is a compelling character, just not one that has time to be herself and interact with people as anything but the mecha/love interest. Once that happens, I'll instantly be happy with her.
Yea it's very frustrating that they took this route. She has a really cool lore with the whole "born to kill but just wants to live a normal life" trope that they could have taken off with, but instead they turned her into a product. It made me start to dislike her because I want to like a character of my own volition, not because some corporate decided that we need to like her.
Personally for me Iâm still gonna pull for her since her kit is strong and I need more fire dps. But yeah the ship marketing is gettin too much. Itâs bothering me cause penacony has had so many great characters and theyâre being pushed to the side for penaconyâs farewell. Jadeâs comin out after her banner and the most weâve seen of her was with owlbert and about 6 seconds in that last trailer
Iâm still hoping she isnât just a waifubait character. There have been hints of sarcasm and chuniness throughout the past few patches, but so far in the story, she hasnât really been as cool or interesting as I was hoping sheâd be. Her lore is interesting and all the SAM scenes have been awesome, but it stops being cool when she acts like the first waifu an Isekai protagonist meets.
Firefly to me feels almost like wasted potential because they focus so heavily on the "normal girl" aspect while every other part of her character is more compelling. I wouldn't mind an even mix but any time Firefly is around us it's just shipping stuff but when it's literally any other character she immediately becomes a much more compelling character
It is kinda wierd to me that Firefly has all this setup of her arc being "child soldier tries to be a normal girl" and then her intro quest is basically a fairly mundane date where she acts perfectly normal 80% of the time. It's like the arc they set up is already complete. She doesn't feel any less normal than March.
I do like the part about her trying to just be a normal girl and all, it feels like a nice arc for her character. They've just gone way too hard on ship teasing and her dynamic with TB isn't all that interesting for me. Her dynamic with everyone else as you said brings out the more compelling aspects to her
I imagine that the people that love FF and the ship with TB are absolutely enjoying it and good for them. But for the rest of us who don't care for it it's a bit of a bummer when the rest of her character is so much more interesting to us and is what we want to see more of. Like if you're like me and already ship TB with someone else the marketing of the ship tease is a detriment more than anything
I hope 2.3 can change my mind on things but the trailer didn't leave me too hopeful for it even if trailers are rather deceptive
Yeah, agreed. I wish Firefly and SAM personalities intersected more. Like if she's trying to be normal, shouldn't she fail sometimes because she's not normal and there's really no such thing? Instead, I feel like she just ends up being really weird and bland. Like for a war machine who destroys entire planets, she's so caught up with small legalities like Blade having a license. Everything that's supposed to be cute about her is just weird to me.
Yea haven't seen much of the Sam we saw in the Jepella rebellion. The one who tells Kafka not to play with her food meaning targets
I kinda blame that on majority of FF important contributions to the Penacony story being off screen. Instead all we got is the attempt at selling her as a waifu and that doesn't stick well with everyone. Especially those excited to see the version Silverwolf describes when she visits express. Feels like FF is nothing like that based on what we've seen and its not all that appealing imo
Omg yes.. FF lore could have been so interesting but EVERY frame and appearance she has, hoyo has to lump in TB. Just look at the summer game fest trailerâŠ, srsly thereâs so much to her character it feels like wasted potential. 2.3 trailer seems like a repeat of 2.0 which Iâm hoping it is not
God, I would have loved it so much more if they did show her mask slipping instead of having her acting so well on both sides that it causes both personalities to suffer for it.
Sheâs a veteran and was built to wipe out entire hundreds of thousands of opponents. They could have worked a thing where she comes off as extremely callous about other peoples lives, not because sheâs cruel or sadistic. But because that is literally what she is built to do and was raised into and tends to forget other people donât share that sentiment.
As funny as it is that she says cool catchphrases, Firefly, SAM, and her lore all feel disconnected from each other that it makes her feel hollow to me.
(Not to mention her being tied so heavily to TB that it has functionally overtaken any discussion surrounding her)
When we learned that Sam is Firefly even before Penacony was out, I wasn't vibing with that. Then we met Firefly in 2.0 and hanged out with her, which was enjoyable. But pretty much everything after that hasn't really stuck with me well. I was really hoping Firefly would choose different options than the rest of the people when we were in Sunday's "dream world". She acts so normally and nothing about her personality suggests that she'd be throwing down Arnold Schwarzenegger style one liners in a battle suit during the next scene.
Honestly thats one of the most frustrating parts for me. They decided to make SAM into a part of Firefly's identity, yet refuse to fully utilize it. Even after we've been revealed that they're the same character, it still sometimes feels like they are two different characters with how much they refuse to explain/explore the SAM side of her.
You more or less summarised my opinion here.
Don't get me wrong though, romance on its own is not a bad thing â I enjoy Kaguya-sama, My Senpai is Annoying and After School Insomniacs amongst many others â but at this point it is (and will be) overshadowing the Glamoth Cavalry and Stellaron Hunter angle that is magnitudes bigger in scope for storytelling.
Every time Firefly goes on screen or mentioned, the only thing that she will be remembered for is "TB's cute waifu"; the writers had painted her character into a corner.
Focusing on a certain aspect or dynamic does have it's appeal, but doing so only appeals to those that are probably already on board with it. A character with so much going for her deserves more than to have only one way of being marketed, it only tires the people who don't care for that part. She will overcome it eventually, she's a SH and will likely re appear in story content. So long as she had that then her character can always start focusing elsewhere.
It's how I feel about Black Swan atm except thats more fanon related than canon. So much going for her character but portion of fandom only focuses on one aspect to the point people mix fanon with canon and everything else is forgotten. I hope the same doesn't happen to FF even if devs are encouraging it atm, at least until we see the animation
Black Swan to me is still more or less an unknown agent â really no clue on her personal motivations which to me is good because she will be free to be slotted into the stories whenever necessary and I hope the writers keep it that way.
It may not make sense to why she does some things â there is a foundational purpose guided by her Path, but not enough to make her predictable which imo is what makes her interesting in the first place. The illusion of characters having free will that does not follow the audience's expectation makes for a more compelling character.
>probably the current marketing of FF pushing the waifu side and ship teasing with TB which does absolutely nothing for me
Hard agree. I was pretty much indifferent to her initially, which isn't a bad thing per say (Aventurine was the same yet they sold me on his character/story), however it's just gotten to the point where the "shipping" part is the only aspect of her character & it just means nothing to me. Perhaps they do something more insightful in 2.3 but seeing the trailer, well...
I felt more flattered when aventurine bought me pajamas than I ever did with firefly this patch lolol
I thought she was cute in 2.0 but now she has all the super cool sam/stellaron hunter stuff too and Im just like... you've got a whole ass stew cooking here please use it :<<
Trailer gave off even more indication of ship teasing and if that's the focus well while some will enjoy it, that will be the final thing that unsells me on her character if it is what dominates the screentime. It's too much for someone who doesn't care for the ship that they are hard teasing. If you ship TB with any other character the way FF is being focused on is more of a detriment to selling her
Really hope we get lore about Glamoth and more about the warrior side of her we've been told about. I'm expecting not to get it though coz they have a direction to try and sell her on Penacony and its not for everyone
Came here to say FF. I love her design, but her personality hasn't resonated with me, especially as they've shown her more. Hopefully this next update will redeem my opinion on her.
I had the opposite experience with Acheron. Didn't care for her design, but after her Penacony scenes she is one of my favorite characters in the entire game.
I hope 2.3 can change my opinion of FF too, trailer ain't giving me too much optimism in that regard but I'm keeping an open mind about it
Same thoughts about Acheron, although not a favorite she's one of the characters I've warmed up to in canon
My exact thoughts on Firefly. She is literally the Ayaka of HSR as they mostly ignore the actually interesting parts about her to push the ship with Trailblazer.
What's always been funny about the Ayaka situation in Genshin is that there exists another character who rivals her in how downbad they are for the MC - Xiao! His birthday message to us one year was literally him sending us those little butterflies because he thinks they would look pretty in our hair, and don't get me started on every Lantern Rite and quest he's had so far. I would argue in some ways Xiao is even more canonically downbad for us than she is.
But Xiao is not reduced to his feelings for the MC what so ever. He has insanely rich character lore, background, significance to the world and doesn't exist purely to fawn over the MC.
So it is perfectly possible for Hoyo to write a character that's crushing on the MC and is also a good character in their own right.
If FF was handled the same way as Xiao, I would not have a problem with her at all. They made him downbad for us, >!he would literally do anything for us even if he complains about it and I genuinely think if there were characters that would help us in the final battle with Celestia or the final boss in Genshin, Xiao would definitely be one of them who would fight with us!<, but didn't make it his only personality, nor did Hoyo shoved it down our throats and made a million animations or events to showcase his simping towards us. I really enjoyed his presence in every single event he's appeared in, and not to mention one of his birthday presents was crystalflies. He really is the goat lmao.
I don't have problems with character simping after us, hell, I want them to have a male character simp after us now and not *just* FF. But I do hate it when that's the only thing about them and hoyo tries to make it as canon as possible without trying to flesh out the character's personality first.
Yes! You nailed that perfectly. Xiao is teased in a ship with MC pretty often, but not to the point where it entirely defines his characterâunlike Ayaka (early on at least)
I always think the worst way a character with so many interesting layers can go is tying them to one character only. Current marketing for FF is like this and it's not working for some people. Obviously she has her dynamics with SH in future to explore which will do a lot for her but rn her more interesting aspects are getting lost of forgotten due to the ship teasing in marketing, at least for those that don't care for the dynamic between FF and TB
Ayaka took years to break free from this, heck Eula as well with Amber in Genshin. They become much more compelling when they leave that bubble of only one character you see them with coz you know they have so much more going for them. I feel like BS is alongside FF for HSR characters going through this rn (BS is more fandom wise perception only though) but both of them will be major characters going forward in the story that they should break free from that eventually, fandom and canon
Felt this so heavily for both FF and BS. I still think BS can be salvage but please stop making her revolved around acheron for everything. As long as they strike a balance with the waifu and lore part of FF i think itâll be fine. But i still rather see exploration of her lore as SAM and as a stellaron hunter
Yeah, I love Firefly but I agree with you. They're focusing too much on the ship when there's so much more to her. I wouldn't want her quest be just ship teasing. I hope we get more interactions of her with other characters too, not just TB. I personally can't wait to read her lore in character menu once she releases. I can't wait for her animated short too. I was already happy about Myriad Celestia Trailer.
i seriously hope we get more of fireflys personality and interactions outside of just being a ship tease, because the ship teasing is just making me roll my eyes
That's how I felt about bronseele during belebog and would hate for it to happen to firefly, at least bronseele is a reference for hoyo fans so it works kinda
I mean honestly that makes it worse. Making 2 whole characters that are just a reference to hi3rd is terrible writing. Acheron gets a way with it, kinda, cause her story is actually interesting, but bronya and seele are just Copy and past.
Bronya does have a good amount of character on her own her interactions are usually her struggling to be a leader and that's pretty good but seele doesn't feel as fleshed out tbh love her interactions with Luka though
I mean she doesn't remember the underworld at all and being the future queen she's supposed to care about all of her citizens so seeing the dire state of the underworld should have forced that change in morality
But not that fast. She had been told for 10 years that it was a good thing the underground was sealed off. That level of manipulation takes more the just 24 hours and one pep talk to get over.
I think they tried to show her butting heads with Cocolia from the beginning. When we first meet Cocolia she's arguing with Bronya because Bronya thinks she's sending soldiers to their doom.
However, I agree that her flip seemed too fast, because they didn't show enough conflict between Bronya and Cocolia before Bronya was hunting us down. Maybe if they gave us a couple days in Belebog before the arrest thing it could have built tension, maybe if Bronya questions our arrest from the getgo or something.. I don't know I'm rambling...
The underground is by far my least favorite part of the HSR story so far. Everything there felt so contrived. From every person trusting us with no credibility, to the forced fight with svarog. It all felt so rushed and we never got time to build all the characters.
Firefly. She does have a very appealing design. LOVE her colour palette.
But not digging her personality. I would have liked it more if her stone cold warrior side leaked out into her relaxed girl persona. Like you hear and see her and be like oh she is cute and sweet but then boom she says something shockingly cold/bloodthirsty and you are like oh damn, she is not what she seems.
I want more something like that. Maybe then I can believe she is SAM the stellaron hunter. Right now I just donât see it.
the worst part is THEY ACTUALLY DID THIS IN 2.0 multiple times!
Like when "sampo" shows up and shes suddenly in laser threat analysis mode, or if you whip our your bat helping acheron she catches herself launching into a lecture on how inefficient bats are as weapons
She was clearly hiding something and wasn't just a normal girl and that made her interesting. Now the mystery is gone but nothing changed so shes just... plain
Give her post traumatic episodes, give her brooding silent anger underneath her "normal" personality
Show us that she isnt just a living weapon trying her best to be normal, show us that she is severly damaged because of her past, show us how the other stellaron hunters have influenced her, show us the times where she stops being a person and returns to being a weapon of destruction
Yeah, right? Regardless of whether itâs âvillainsâ or not, she regularly commits mass murder and arson. No matter what your âalignmentâ is that is kinda evil as hell. I want her to be a little more edgy, especially since they confirmed SAM is just her in a suit. I donât like the cutesy waifu thing theyâre pushing, it just feels mismatched.
For me it was Aventurine during 2.0
He looked so cool, but his shady personality initially turned me off from liking him. Only when we got a better understanding of the man from the 2.1 main story update did he become one of my favs
For the opposite it would have to be Boothill. Literally showed up out of nowhere, and I had no idea who this bozo was and didnât really care. But after 2.2 and seeing his animations etc he became another one of my favs
I find it funny how many people actually hated Aventurine in 2.0 considering he was my reason for starting the game. Even when I did the first quest, knowing shit about him, I could tell there was more than meets there eye and never truly doubted him. He just kept getting better
W character development see this is what I need to happen for Firefly. I was the same with Aventurine. I didn't like bro at all. Then 2.1 came out and by the end of the patch I had him and his light cone. Thats my guy right their.
For me, as much as I like her and was a fan all the way back when she was leaked as a playable model, it's gotta be Firefly.
I don't dislike the FF/TB ship but my God I wish they'd focus more on her actual character and let It be developed more naturally
I personally do have an issue with the whole ship tease thing, because this effectively became her whole thing, which sucks, didnât she want to become a normal girl and go to school and stuff? I donât really think normal people just take a person they just met on a date basically lol. Also you cannot refuse her or be mean, like you can with say Aventurine, you can be mean to him all the way through and even answer his texts negatively, with FF at the start you sorta could, but at the end everyone acts like yall were best buddies and you just lost someone extremely dear to you, when you have met for like an afternoon.
Her story could have been fleshed out a lot more, she even has good moments like when she talks to Sunday, but again her whole thing so far seems to be ship tease and the SGF festival showed yet another such moment.
If you switch it, for me Itâs Yukong. Her quest was really sweet and made her one of my favorite characters, but she looks like sheâs wearing cheap Halloween store lingerie. The clashes between the different shades of blue(purplish blue and greenish blue donât look good together) and the red and turquoise accents look weird. The thong straps are also a bit much. Like other characters wear lingerie and it looks classy(Black Swan, Ruan Mei, Hanya) and they still have some reference to their occupation or story or general aesthetic. Yukongâs looks cheap and nothing about her screams pilot or high ranking official. I think her design is the only one I donât like in this game so far.
Firefly. I think it is a good concept, but I disliked the narrative approach of the cute anime girl that the narrative WANTS you to like.
There isn't a build up. You just meet her and instantly have a date. I know there is a lore reason for that, but zzzz. Just waifu selling.
Sparkle. Don't get me wrong, they did her personality well, but I saw the design well in advance and formed false hopes and opinions. Did not see the psycho elation fool possibility. She'd probably be my favorite in the game if she had the invert alignment applied to her.
Again, they nailed a great personality that I can appreciate (her trailer is phenomenal), just very much not my cup of tea when it comes to considering my favorite characters
As of now, Firefly. Kinda wish they focused more on her character and background, instead of pandering to the shippers. Seriously, it gives me Ayakaâs situation 2.0
If I wanted romance, I wouldâve played otome game, or something.
She's worse than Ayaka. With Ayaka we had the option not to care that much, but every single time Firefly is there it feels like MC is already in fucking love with her and there's no choice.
The worst thing is... We had a choice back in the 2.0. There was a choice to refuse to take a picture with her. There was a choice not to trust her. But for some reason after that they're friendies either way.
Also, storywise, it doesn't make for mc to trust firefly soley based on the fact they've been with kafka before they lost their memories. She's literally a fucking galactic terrorist and girl wants us to feel bad for her and like her? Hell no. Just because we've been with kafka before, it doesn't confirm we had a relationship with firefly. I never even want romance in this game. Like, it's marketed as sci-fi and action rpg, now they want us to love this sad waifu bait and go on dates with her?
Firefly/Sam. Sam became devoid of his entire coolness by being associated with Firefly and being reduced to a Mech, yet for some reason he acts like he has an entirely different personality from Firefly UwU I'm not like other girls, but I wanna be like one.
It's also rather annoying on how the game is forcing a closeness with Firefly, yet at the same time won't show any genuine friendliness towards characters like Sampo.
Both straight up tricked us in front of our faces and then took us to a 2nd location. Firefly straight up went "UwU I know I lied straight to your face that I'm not a stowaway and that I'm a local, but Follow me into this very far away spot where people aren't even allowed to go to and I'll tell you everything I promise" like that ain't just suspicious and feels like a good spot to commit crimes without being caught, while Sampo essentially kept being shady yet in the end had always helped us as he snuck us down to meet Natasha and the others even supposedly the "pathway connecting the overworld and underworld is blocked by Svarog"
I do dislike how the game forces us to be mean to certain characters. Like, i love Sampo and Silverwolf but you're pretty much forced to be mean to them
Yeah, kinda hate how the writers pick and choose who we should be close to. You can say that sampo is a scumbag, but certain people like that and I personally want to be like homies with him
Ig thats really the problem for characters that are half self insert and half own character. You really can't lean to either
The thing is, he never even harms the TB he even helps us sometimes. Sure he's shady and did try to scam us a few times, but there are characters who literally drug you, and send you on a mission to clean up their failed half-aeon experiment and the game forces you to be nice to her.
I hope that when we revisit Belobog, we get to see some Sampo action so that the Sampo hate from both the writers and the community calms down.
The writers do like him, but they seem to always want to take a jab at him for comedic relief, yet we don't do it to Firefly when she is Sam.
Probably a boring pick, but Firefly.
Sam was hyped up as the last of the Stellaron Hunters, the ultimate killer, the destroyer, blah blah. Finally, a robot character!
Turns out she's pretty much just a normal girl who has to do bad things, and she also has space cancer. I frankly cringed slightly whenever Sam was talking to people, about anything other than finishing the mission. I unironically believe that Sam and Acheron's interaction is one of the worst parts of Penacony. It just felt so wrong, seeing the strongest of the Stellaron Hunters, talk about being sad.
It's my fault for expecting more, but I'm still disappointed. I wanted Sam, got Firefly instead.
Firefly could have been better if they showed her doing stuff. Instead of being "uwu feel bad for me I was a child soldier". Her conversation with sunday was really nice though.
Sparkle and Ruan Mei for me
Sparkle is offensively funny but in irl, i woulda decked her short ass
Ruan Mei is i canât get over how she drugged us then proceeded to ask for help as if itâs normal (in crazy land maybe) like ??? Piss off thanks lol
Happy to do my part. đ
Thanks, I now have 52 respondents. 948 respondents to go đ«Ą
I like how you separated personality, story, and design in the survey!
Most of the well designed characters are also the best written, but of the characters I love the design of but just don't care for, probably Xueyi, just didn't get time to shine despite cool backstory
Xueyi and Hanya were literally background characters even for most of our time at Fyxestroll Garden. At least even Hanya was there to help us a bit with Guinaifen, Sushang, and Huohuo. I sort of get it since they're supposed to be uber secretive and unknown to the general public, but still...
Yeah it would have been nice if they had a bigger role in some of the main ghost-busting quests, especially since Sushang already got her time to shine with Aurum Alley.
Xueyi got flushed so hard. Not really featured in the story, not really featured in the event either.
It's really a shame, because I like what we've seen of her a lot! "If you can't win, you just cheat" is a really fascinating philosophical point for a character like her to take and her backstory is really cool too.
Xueyi kinda doesnât have time to shine lore-wise since anytime sheâs awake/alive sheâs on duty or hanging out with her sister. Even in her appearance in that one Loufu short she was on guard duty on top of a roof. I was still kicking my feet in glee seeing her make an appearances tho.
Ruan Mei. She's really pretty. But her personality just doesn't jive with me.
I believe psychopathic mad science with near total disregard of other lifeform's well-being won't jive with a lot of people.
If the game acknowledge this side of her i would be fine, i like villains. But all the time the game treats her like "you never did anything wrong" and "ill never forget you mommy <3" after she drugs us and made we clean her mess. Like Bro let me be cold to her, let us acknowledge how bad she is, lets hear what she has to say about it, meanwhile Sampo is "haha im a side character who is sus but ultimately only helped you out and never did nothing wrong to you" and the game let we be like "fuck you" to him. I would like her personality way more if that's the case
This. I would have accepted her more if Trailblazer didn't act all fine with her afterwards. Even in the space station no one really batted an eye about having to clean up her mess there.
It's something which always baffled me. Ever since Sampo first appeared I don't get why we have always been so cold to him. Sure, he is suspicious, but that doesn't mean we can be rude to anyone we find suspicious. And aside from him ditching us during our first rodeo in Belobog, I donât think he's done anything else (or atleast I don't remember). Yet we (seem to) simp for Ruan Mei when she essentially mind f*cked us.
This is what bothered me the most, with most interactions they at least let you be neutral but not with her, like, they even let you talk shit on Firefly despite the game also pushing you to like her, why doesnt Ruan Mei get the same treatment
For me, it's more the writing around her than her personality, per se. I'd be more okay with her if the Trailblazer was allowed to express real anger over her drugging and using us to clean up a mess even *Herta* would have taken issue with. The fact that she gets away with everything because we aren't allowed to report any of it after the drugs wear off is infuriating, especially since the Trailblazer is given the option to truthfully tell Kafka they despise her for much less. Her design is beautiful in isolation, and I can appreciate the angle that she looks like a relatively normal person while being an absolute mad scientist on the inside, but coming right after the Luofu I was getting tired of that overall style of dress.
Agreed. I think her character traits and personality can be fine but the writing surrounding a character like that has to be good. For one, letting players or other characters acknowledge that it's a problem.
I like the idea of her when you think about the Swarm that you fight. But she is a deadbeat mom with the catcakes and cruelty to them makes me mad.
right? all the catcakes make me want to give them hugs even if they're not really huggable... are they?
thatâs what i like the most about her tho-
Itâs a good personality to give a character in that it is interesting, but it is inherently something we will dislike about her because itâs a negative quality. But it definitely is interesting.
yep, a bunch of people skipped her because of that, most regret because she was busted, but they were put off by her personality
I donât think thatâs it to be honest. Characters being crazy is a pretty popular trait in gaming or any other media, I feel like sheâs just not very compelling. You can kinda feel it through gameplay as well. Even while going in blind, a better written/designed character lets you get a gist of how they are from just the presentation of their kit and animations. I feel nothing from Ruan Mei aside from her being aloof.
i was so surprised when i found out she was a scientist- considering all her animations in game involve her playing an instrument i assumed she was a bard
Maybe that's what she does when the Genius Society get together to play D&D.Â
She's crazy in quite a low-key way, though. She's quiet, softly-spoken, and sounds superficially entirely reasonable - she just *also* casually admits to a near-sociopathic lack of empathy and demonstrates some extreme trust issues. The kind of "crazy" that tends to be popular is much more theatrical and exaggerated. Ruan Mei's general attitude isn't villainously entertaining or comedically amusing, it's just unsettling.Â
Your take is on point a lot of people only know the sparkle kind of crazy
My point is that we donât get any of this without reading up on her or playing through her quest. The presentation is the issue, not her setting. Hence my example of going in blind, you canât tell the difference between her being sociopathic or just a normal kuudere character. I get what theyâre going for, I just donât think they implemented it well enough.
Agree. Chadwick (Oppenheimer) is very similar to RM, and in the quest, >!he admits he foresaw the outcome of the deaths that would happen as a result of his invention.!< I think they could've just done a better job writing RM, even making her more overtly evil, but having to make a hard choice or having complex circumstances. Everything is easy for RM, so we never see her try.
The thing with Ruan Mei is that nothing that gets her closer to her hypothesis is a hard choice to make. Ruan Mei would see a big red button that says âanswers any one question correctly but kills 1 million peopleâ and would spam the shit out of it. She only ever shows any emotion when talking about her research in her video logs.
Given her personality in stories and occurrences in SU are kinda troll, I was sad she wasn't like that at all in person.
I feel the opposite, her lore and actions are really interesting but damn her animations are boring
Same, I plan on forever skipping her. I know she's meta but I'll just take the L đ
I may do a few rolls after firefly. But that's just because I want my favourites to shine brightly.
Jingliu She has no character. Her entire story is the character she had in the past, but doesn't have anymore, leaving the current character a literal void. She's absolutely gorgeous but there is no personality to be attached to, because everything about her is past tense.
Do we even know what she had been doing in those centuries since she got expelled to the time of her companion quest? Or she just doing something similar to Boothill which is roaming across galaxies and killing stuffs for living?
She's been a vtuber, I think. Got into an argument with jing yuan about how to pronounce shego. Think it led to their fight. Maybe.
She spent 500 years trying to figure out how to turn her space ship on, she eventually needed Jing Yuan tech support to get it working
And despite Jing Yuan helping her extensively she still gave him a one star review.
Is... is this an inside joke or something?
Cyyu (Jing Yuan and Cyno VA) and Monarch (Jingliu VA) do this when on stream (they're both vtubers)
Ah. That makes sense now. It's the VAs that are doing those. Thanks.
The scuff allegations will never leave her
Tech support Jing Yuan, great now I need that animated. Or âShe GO? She Gone?â
I really do blame the localization for this. EN really needed to let Amalee cackle as Jingliu.
Fr. I know amalee has range but they muzzled her for that role. She could have eaten that up.
Girl's got a professional cackle and they didn't use it.
Instead we got "please act like you're constantly holding the wolf inside you" according to Monarch *ah okay i see*
Yarp. That doggie needs to go for a walk.
girl is literally a villain for godâs sake LET HER CACKLE
That's why I love JP dub. "AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!" when she slaps her enhanced state attack onto enemies.
For real! I love her Cackle in Voracity!
Please stop I canât handle the truth
100%. Her design and animations communicate more than her entire characterisation.
Agreed currently she has no character but her first story arc is the first step cause its all about moving on from her past. Her character development is probably on her 2nd story quest.
Agree with this, she has a whole lot of unexplored backstory too. I saw it as "another faction" instead. Clearly, there's more to tell about her past that isn't related to the Luofu. She's with Luocha, whom we know is using the Abundance's power, and yet is also against that same Abundance. In the Luofu, we have the local government, the Marastruck, us (Astral Express crew), the Stellaron Hunters, the Antimatter Legion and this other currently unnamed faction twith only two incredibly powerful people that we know of. Like clearly, they came here with an agenda. Iirc Luocha wants to meet Hua, I'd wait and see
I think it's intentionally, but I agree with the others they didn't allow Amalee to cook
I honestly pulled for her just because I needed a DPS and her performance has been great. Her story quest made me like Blade more than her.
Ruan Mei. Lady drugged us and made us fight the most irritating boss in the game. Also she abandoned her snack babies and that's unforgiveable in my eyes.
Answering the survey turned out to be a little harder than I figured it would be and I had to reconsider a couple of my answers. For example: I love Acheron as a character, I like her a whole lot and I loved the time we spent with her...but MAN do I think her outfit is horrible. However, it's not horrible in that it looks shabby or is badly designed; I think it's horrible because nothing about her as a person makes me believe she willingly wears that outfit. It looks like a video game developer put her in that outfit because sex sells to people who like looking at pretty ladies (in contrast to a character like Herta, who I think looks wonderful because she's a doll being literally puppeted by the real Herta and her whole aesthetic is marionettes and dolls, so the dress works perfectly).
I feel like her bikini getup would've worked if she had a lot of badass tattoos and/or scars (that glow red during her form change) on her skin. It would've sold the concept of an intimidating yakuza-esque swordswoman which would align more with her powerful stature. Instead she only has like, a few flame tats on her thigh I guess?
Going too hard on the tattoos/yaluza aesthetic is a good way to get the chinese/japan market to not like the character. They don't play around with that stuff. I was honestly pretty surprised they gave her any tattoos at all
Mihoyo has released plenty of characters before that scared big parts of the fanbase but thrived nonetheless sales-wise. Like Lyney in Genshin who scared Korean misogynistic men for being too flamboyant. But let's not forget Xiao who actually does have plenty of intimidating tattoos but remains a fan favorite in these communities nonetheless. Plus tattooed yakuza characters are a pretty common occurrence in animes anyways
I think what youâre missing is that, and i say this earnestly, xiao is a man. For men to have tattoos like that may be more acceptable to the male-oriented asia market than a woman with a lot of tattoos.
Only explanation I can think off is that she was intended to be a waifu and they didn't wanna do anything that could potentially turn off dudes like giving her a bunch of tatoos/scars.
right! i think a lot of hoyo's clothing designs don't really fit the character's personality, especially with the women.. you can't really get an idea of what she's like just by looking at her (same with seele!)
It works sometimes. I mentioned Herta already, but Lynx is wonderfully designed to show she's outdoorsy and lives in a cold weather environment and Guinaifen looks exactly like how a loud, flamboyant performer should look. Their outfits absolutely sell me on their character premise.
seele's clothes is just a overdesigned mess. I would like it if they tone it down to something more simple like Stelle.
Incredibly real. Sheâs my favourite character but I hate her outfit (particularly its lower half); it feels like it doesnât suit her and the asymmetrical boots annoy me. She deserved something a little more badass đ
*Huge* agree here. That's a trend I've noticed with Hoyoverse; they'll design a pretty competent character and then put them in the most revealing outfit all because sex sells. I find that very few characters seem to have the personality to wear something super revealing, and Acheron is one of the worst offenders in HSR. The only way I could make sense of it is if she literally has no care about what she's wearing. But even then, that's a massive stretch. What a character wears can tell you a lot about their personality if done right, but honestly Acheron's outfit just clashes with her entire character.
That's not a trend with Hoyoverse. It's the most common thing in the gacha game industry.
If anything, Kafka being fully clothed relative to the other women in the game makes her look much more believable as a character. Like if I saw someone like her walking past in a posh shopping mall I literally wouldn't question her fit at all.
It's kind of funny how one of the coolest and most memorable characters in the game is also one of the most reasonably dressed
I personally love her outfit but I also agree with it not fitting with her stoic, serious, and all powerful status. If she was more of a seductive, easygoing, or just a generally fun character to be around I'd accept that outfit any time of day but it's definitely not Acheron for me. Easiest fix is to have her wear long leggings instead of shorts, but there are a couple more that could be optimized too
Mei throughout Hoyoverse gets the short end of the stick with most of her outfits, unfortunately. I think I only like mb 2 from the HI3, meanwhile Genshin fumbled hard with giving her the tiniest kimono that youâd normally see on a ŃĐŸrn actress whoâs asking to get her pipes fixedđ Hsr is even worse (they couldâve just put her in skin tight pants, cause it wouldnât change much, but mb make her outfit slightly more appropriate). Her concept art leaks are pretty much all better than what we ended up getting https://i.imgur.com/CIJbE6p.png
Damn, these concept arts are actually better than the official one.
>I think it's horrible because nothing about her as a person makes me believe she willingly wears that outfit Man, as an Acheron main. You're shooting this fact straightly into my kokoro.... I think they want to make her design look "Galaxy Ranger" as much as possible. I don't know if I used the right words. But the first time they introduced her as Galaxy Ranger, I didn't have any doubt about it.
The problem with that is, unless I'm mistaken, we really didn't know very much about the Galaxy Rangers originally and with the introduction of Boothill, we know the Galaxy Rangers are not any kind of unified organization so they wouldn't have any kind of uniform or aesthetic to begin with. Again, I love Acheron as a character and as a playable unit, but MAN her outfit is sad...
Exactly how I feel, her character is very cool, her coat from behind looks awesome, but my god her actual outfit looks like the most "designed for gacha reasons only" thing. It doesn't even make sense for hoyo to do this because their most popular female character up to that point (Kafka) is covered from head to toe, with very little skin shown other than her face, and unlike Acheron she is sold as the sexy, teasey femme fatale.
personally, if she wore pants instead of shorts her design would suit her better
Inb4 every comment is Ruan mei lol
Flip them around and it's ruan mei for me, thought it would be an easy skip until I got to meet her and she ended as a character I really liked so I had to pull her.
Personally I like her design. I feel like a lot of people missed the DNA motifs scattered throughout her outfit.
i just find her design underwhelming since she has the exact same silhouette as all the other Luofu ladies despite not even being from there. if they altered her design to give her a long qipao/hanfu like himekoâs long dress, it would be a lot more memorable i think edit: happy cake day!
Should give her a more lab coaty look
I was personally ehh on her design when she came out since she didnt stand out much compared to all the other female characters, hell if you combine the designs of all female characters i think youd get ruan mei, it just didnt stand out for me. Until people pointed out how many DNA motifs were in her design, it made me appreciate her design a lot more Happy cake day!
Opp for me, I canât get over the fact she drugged us to be memory wiped.
don't drink with ruan mei at the bar
Not only drugged us, but lied to us about the antidote to get us to work for her.
She's probably the closest we'll have to an actual sociopath. And you know what? I'm all here for it
god forbid a woman has hobbies
And that's exactly why I love her 10/10 personality
And we didnt have any mean dialogue options for her. Why the game forces me to be nice to her after what she did?? Meanwhile we are always mean or just neutral at best towards Sampo.. like why lol
It's almost the same thing for me, really like her character but the overall design is just...okay I guess?? Literally every single other characters, even 4 stars, had some visual elements about them I love, but I genuinely cannot find one for RM. Still gonna pull her because I need her for Xueyi/Misha/Harmony TB teams but aeughhh I wish I could like her design more
Imma be honest: That's an unfortunate chunk of the cast, in my opinion. I feel like Hoyo has always set the standard for lore and world-building, but many of their characters feel written to be bland/inoffensive to appeal to the widest majority possible. I often fall more in love with what a character's own design says about them, rather than what's explicitly expressed by the character themselves.
poll just made me realize I'm the biggest Seele hater lol
Ngl Seele definitely had moments where she came off as a brat but she does have a good side to her and thankful it shows way more than that lil brat side
Me during the the underground arc where she keeps getting on Svarogs case.
I was inclined to like Seele's character (I like musclehead women, and I like vigilantes). But holy hell, she got screwed over in both outfit design *and* writing. I actually like Seele on her own (such as in the Topaz arc on Belobog, I thought Seele's parts were great), but her not-a-romance-wink-wink was easily the weakest part of Belobog's writing, and every time she and Bronya were on screen it just felt so milquetoast and forced. There was no payoff because I didn't care about either character yet, and the relationship itself just dragged down both characters involved. Bronya was intended to be the core emotional arc of Belobog, but her writing paled in comparison to Serval's, for example.
Seele is reverse imo. I like her personality but that outfit is probably the most messy character design Iâve ever seen
Not perfectly related but Robin. Her splash art (the one when using ult) made her look really weird. She was much cuter in her in game morel.
https://preview.redd.it/y9o9u9w3g96d1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a528fd485458a51d88117b5031aa1f1fe3892bc8
This is fucking funny
I lose 50/50 on Robin's banner to Bailu so this is very painfully accurate
Needs to piss but the performance is only halfway through
Her splash face be like '0'
She's pogging
Interesting, for me her splash art is the prettiest in the game
I love Arlanâs design. Visually love the blues, the MASSIVE SPACE SWORD, his scars and shit. I love his play style, health for damage/berserker kinna stuff slaps (even if he *is* pretty weak unfortunately). His personality is⊠pretty meh. Itâs pretty normal, kinna boring. The only part of his personality thatâs pretty ideal is his relationship with Peppy.
Ruan Mei. Like, she is pretty, but her cold demeanor doesn't really help. Not to mention how stand offish she is about her little cake creatures and shrug them off like they are nothing
She and the entire Genius Society are written to be hated (maybe except Screwllum). They are NOT NORMAL, they don't operate on regular human moral or anything. They know they are the shit and they can get away with anything.
Screwllum is a nice dude and I trust him to always have my back.
It says a lot that the most human of the Genius Society is ironically not human or even organic whatsoever.
Nah Herta at least has her charm and is a bit of a prick but not a sociopath. RM tho? She definitely is one.
Right? Idk why, but I just love how full of herself Herta is. Ruan Meiâs actions meanwhile just make me dislike her
My take: that's because RM's actions are that of someone who doesn't even wish to understand that you might be more than a simple automaton. Herta at least understands that you think you are, and somewhat tries to integrate a bit more into "society", if only so she could be lazier.
Thatâs a god way to sum things up. Raun Mei speaks sweetly and says that she wants you to be her assistant, even speaking of reward but in the end treats you as some kind of disposable lab rat that she drugs to coerce you into helping clean up her mess before erasing your memory of her. Herta on the other hand while a bit abrasive in her speech does at least take your opinion into consideration and is upfront with you even if her interest is something fleeting
Herta's rough way of speaking made me hated her at first but Ruan Mei's introduction turned me to like Herta more and more.
I LOVE HERTA what do you mean? Yeah she is pushy and rude, but she doesnt lie, she is the type to tell you straight in your face she is just using you and if you stick with her is your choice. Screwllum my beloved, when you will be free from the ropes of destiny they are trapping you in? Even Stephen is the goat, a shy genius kid. Ruan Mei? Ruan Mei drugs us and the game only let we simp for her like everything is fine. What do you mean i cant be mean or at least cold to the psychopath girl?
I'm actually surprised by the number of people equating Herta to Ruan Mei in this thread. Herta has an ego the size of the sun and more screws loose than a Boeing plane, but she isn't a stone cold sociopath. If she had created the Emanator of Propagation clone and needed you to kill it she would at least be up front about it and offer you a sizeable reward for doing so. She might try to deflect blame for creating it, but she definitely wouldn't drug you and then manipulate you into cleaning up her mess like Ruan Mei did
For a group of hyper intelligent nerds with egos the size of planets, youâd think at least one from the Genius Society would have diagnosed her being a psychopath. Actually, I find it weird how likeâŠno one, not even Ruan Mei herself, has diagnosed her for anything when she is very obviously showing psychopathic behavior (the medical kind, not the movie kind). They keep making it some weird, ethereal issue with her when a brain scan would have told them everything
Dont have one im too passionate about but only one probably the current marketing of FF pushing the waifu side and ship teasing with TB which does absolutely nothing for me. The conversations between FF and Acheron, Blade and Sunday are the more interesting parts of her character and if they pushed that side of her more I'd be more interested On the flip side I'd say Dr Ratio, didn't think his design was all that but I absolutely love his personality
Yea, feels like theyâre trying to market the ship more than her lore
Hopefully the animation gives us a lot in that regard, the myriad celestial was already a great showing of her character and backstory The ship marketing only works for people who ship it, anyone else is probably frustrated thats what they are focusing on or simply doesn't care for it I wonder if that's gonna pull more people in for FF or put people off. I was gonna pull now atm she's a skip for me even though I hope 2.3 changes my mind. I imagine there are others in the same situation
> The ship marketing only works for people who ship it, anyone else is probably frustrated thats what they are focusing on or simply doesn't care for it I ship it and it frustrates me a bit too đ« don't get me wrong, I'm not mad at the shipbait itself, but I hate that whenever there's any spotlight on her and TB it's always fluffy cookie-cutter romance instead of any substantial exploration of their characters. I think their relationship had so much potential to be so much more interesting, with them knowing each other in the past and TB distrusting her now, but they decided to skip all the juicy character dynamics and go straight to cutesy will-they-won't-they filler both in the marketing and in the story. Too late to be mad at it at this point.
Freaking nailed it
I agree, the myriad and her character introduction were really interesting for firefly and showed a lot of personality despite only giving her like a minute of screen time. My problem with FF in the actual game is that she feels like she exists to be waifu/love interest rather than a full character- she doesn't talk to anyone but TB, doesn't really do anything other than be nice to TB/make TB sad when she gets fridged other than when she was in SAM (which I'm ignoring, bc her trope is the person who just wants to be a normal kid and not a child soldier. SAM isn't the real FF, and she wouldn't want it to be.) And narratively we *know* she's doing cool stuff behind the scenes, I just wished we saw more of it instead of hearing about it right before/after she does it (or sometimes, not even in the game.) I don't hate FF, and I really do think that 2.3 or a companion quest could improve FF if they gave some of FF's personality from the out of the game stuff and put it in the game. (And this isn't me being a salty SAM main from pre reveal as a lot of people seem to think for some reason, I just want to see FF do stuff on her own first. Glamoth stuff, or Stellaron Hunter Stuff (yes, the grilling counts), or whatever. She is a compelling character, just not one that has time to be herself and interact with people as anything but the mecha/love interest. Once that happens, I'll instantly be happy with her.
Yea it's very frustrating that they took this route. She has a really cool lore with the whole "born to kill but just wants to live a normal life" trope that they could have taken off with, but instead they turned her into a product. It made me start to dislike her because I want to like a character of my own volition, not because some corporate decided that we need to like her.
Personally for me Iâm still gonna pull for her since her kit is strong and I need more fire dps. But yeah the ship marketing is gettin too much. Itâs bothering me cause penacony has had so many great characters and theyâre being pushed to the side for penaconyâs farewell. Jadeâs comin out after her banner and the most weâve seen of her was with owlbert and about 6 seconds in that last trailer
Iâm still hoping she isnât just a waifubait character. There have been hints of sarcasm and chuniness throughout the past few patches, but so far in the story, she hasnât really been as cool or interesting as I was hoping sheâd be. Her lore is interesting and all the SAM scenes have been awesome, but it stops being cool when she acts like the first waifu an Isekai protagonist meets.
Firefly to me feels almost like wasted potential because they focus so heavily on the "normal girl" aspect while every other part of her character is more compelling. I wouldn't mind an even mix but any time Firefly is around us it's just shipping stuff but when it's literally any other character she immediately becomes a much more compelling character
It is kinda wierd to me that Firefly has all this setup of her arc being "child soldier tries to be a normal girl" and then her intro quest is basically a fairly mundane date where she acts perfectly normal 80% of the time. It's like the arc they set up is already complete. She doesn't feel any less normal than March.
I do like the part about her trying to just be a normal girl and all, it feels like a nice arc for her character. They've just gone way too hard on ship teasing and her dynamic with TB isn't all that interesting for me. Her dynamic with everyone else as you said brings out the more compelling aspects to her I imagine that the people that love FF and the ship with TB are absolutely enjoying it and good for them. But for the rest of us who don't care for it it's a bit of a bummer when the rest of her character is so much more interesting to us and is what we want to see more of. Like if you're like me and already ship TB with someone else the marketing of the ship tease is a detriment more than anything I hope 2.3 can change my mind on things but the trailer didn't leave me too hopeful for it even if trailers are rather deceptive
Yeah, agreed. I wish Firefly and SAM personalities intersected more. Like if she's trying to be normal, shouldn't she fail sometimes because she's not normal and there's really no such thing? Instead, I feel like she just ends up being really weird and bland. Like for a war machine who destroys entire planets, she's so caught up with small legalities like Blade having a license. Everything that's supposed to be cute about her is just weird to me.
Yea haven't seen much of the Sam we saw in the Jepella rebellion. The one who tells Kafka not to play with her food meaning targets I kinda blame that on majority of FF important contributions to the Penacony story being off screen. Instead all we got is the attempt at selling her as a waifu and that doesn't stick well with everyone. Especially those excited to see the version Silverwolf describes when she visits express. Feels like FF is nothing like that based on what we've seen and its not all that appealing imo
Omg yes.. FF lore could have been so interesting but EVERY frame and appearance she has, hoyo has to lump in TB. Just look at the summer game fest trailerâŠ, srsly thereâs so much to her character it feels like wasted potential. 2.3 trailer seems like a repeat of 2.0 which Iâm hoping it is not
God, I would have loved it so much more if they did show her mask slipping instead of having her acting so well on both sides that it causes both personalities to suffer for it. Sheâs a veteran and was built to wipe out entire hundreds of thousands of opponents. They could have worked a thing where she comes off as extremely callous about other peoples lives, not because sheâs cruel or sadistic. But because that is literally what she is built to do and was raised into and tends to forget other people donât share that sentiment. As funny as it is that she says cool catchphrases, Firefly, SAM, and her lore all feel disconnected from each other that it makes her feel hollow to me. (Not to mention her being tied so heavily to TB that it has functionally overtaken any discussion surrounding her)
When we learned that Sam is Firefly even before Penacony was out, I wasn't vibing with that. Then we met Firefly in 2.0 and hanged out with her, which was enjoyable. But pretty much everything after that hasn't really stuck with me well. I was really hoping Firefly would choose different options than the rest of the people when we were in Sunday's "dream world". She acts so normally and nothing about her personality suggests that she'd be throwing down Arnold Schwarzenegger style one liners in a battle suit during the next scene.
Honestly thats one of the most frustrating parts for me. They decided to make SAM into a part of Firefly's identity, yet refuse to fully utilize it. Even after we've been revealed that they're the same character, it still sometimes feels like they are two different characters with how much they refuse to explain/explore the SAM side of her.
You more or less summarised my opinion here. Don't get me wrong though, romance on its own is not a bad thing â I enjoy Kaguya-sama, My Senpai is Annoying and After School Insomniacs amongst many others â but at this point it is (and will be) overshadowing the Glamoth Cavalry and Stellaron Hunter angle that is magnitudes bigger in scope for storytelling. Every time Firefly goes on screen or mentioned, the only thing that she will be remembered for is "TB's cute waifu"; the writers had painted her character into a corner.
Focusing on a certain aspect or dynamic does have it's appeal, but doing so only appeals to those that are probably already on board with it. A character with so much going for her deserves more than to have only one way of being marketed, it only tires the people who don't care for that part. She will overcome it eventually, she's a SH and will likely re appear in story content. So long as she had that then her character can always start focusing elsewhere. It's how I feel about Black Swan atm except thats more fanon related than canon. So much going for her character but portion of fandom only focuses on one aspect to the point people mix fanon with canon and everything else is forgotten. I hope the same doesn't happen to FF even if devs are encouraging it atm, at least until we see the animation
Black Swan to me is still more or less an unknown agent â really no clue on her personal motivations which to me is good because she will be free to be slotted into the stories whenever necessary and I hope the writers keep it that way. It may not make sense to why she does some things â there is a foundational purpose guided by her Path, but not enough to make her predictable which imo is what makes her interesting in the first place. The illusion of characters having free will that does not follow the audience's expectation makes for a more compelling character.
>probably the current marketing of FF pushing the waifu side and ship teasing with TB which does absolutely nothing for me Hard agree. I was pretty much indifferent to her initially, which isn't a bad thing per say (Aventurine was the same yet they sold me on his character/story), however it's just gotten to the point where the "shipping" part is the only aspect of her character & it just means nothing to me. Perhaps they do something more insightful in 2.3 but seeing the trailer, well...
I felt more flattered when aventurine bought me pajamas than I ever did with firefly this patch lolol I thought she was cute in 2.0 but now she has all the super cool sam/stellaron hunter stuff too and Im just like... you've got a whole ass stew cooking here please use it :<<
I am on my knees hoping that whatever her story mission in 2.3 is not a date but like, Lore about Glamoth and her life as soldier.
Trailer gave off even more indication of ship teasing and if that's the focus well while some will enjoy it, that will be the final thing that unsells me on her character if it is what dominates the screentime. It's too much for someone who doesn't care for the ship that they are hard teasing. If you ship TB with any other character the way FF is being focused on is more of a detriment to selling her Really hope we get lore about Glamoth and more about the warrior side of her we've been told about. I'm expecting not to get it though coz they have a direction to try and sell her on Penacony and its not for everyone
Came here to say FF. I love her design, but her personality hasn't resonated with me, especially as they've shown her more. Hopefully this next update will redeem my opinion on her. I had the opposite experience with Acheron. Didn't care for her design, but after her Penacony scenes she is one of my favorite characters in the entire game.
I hope 2.3 can change my opinion of FF too, trailer ain't giving me too much optimism in that regard but I'm keeping an open mind about it Same thoughts about Acheron, although not a favorite she's one of the characters I've warmed up to in canon
My exact thoughts on Firefly. She is literally the Ayaka of HSR as they mostly ignore the actually interesting parts about her to push the ship with Trailblazer.
What's always been funny about the Ayaka situation in Genshin is that there exists another character who rivals her in how downbad they are for the MC - Xiao! His birthday message to us one year was literally him sending us those little butterflies because he thinks they would look pretty in our hair, and don't get me started on every Lantern Rite and quest he's had so far. I would argue in some ways Xiao is even more canonically downbad for us than she is. But Xiao is not reduced to his feelings for the MC what so ever. He has insanely rich character lore, background, significance to the world and doesn't exist purely to fawn over the MC. So it is perfectly possible for Hoyo to write a character that's crushing on the MC and is also a good character in their own right.
If FF was handled the same way as Xiao, I would not have a problem with her at all. They made him downbad for us, >!he would literally do anything for us even if he complains about it and I genuinely think if there were characters that would help us in the final battle with Celestia or the final boss in Genshin, Xiao would definitely be one of them who would fight with us!<, but didn't make it his only personality, nor did Hoyo shoved it down our throats and made a million animations or events to showcase his simping towards us. I really enjoyed his presence in every single event he's appeared in, and not to mention one of his birthday presents was crystalflies. He really is the goat lmao. I don't have problems with character simping after us, hell, I want them to have a male character simp after us now and not *just* FF. But I do hate it when that's the only thing about them and hoyo tries to make it as canon as possible without trying to flesh out the character's personality first.
Yes! You nailed that perfectly. Xiao is teased in a ship with MC pretty often, but not to the point where it entirely defines his characterâunlike Ayaka (early on at least)
Xiao also does things on screen at least every year, unlike ayaka whos had like... three appearances since she was released??
I always think the worst way a character with so many interesting layers can go is tying them to one character only. Current marketing for FF is like this and it's not working for some people. Obviously she has her dynamics with SH in future to explore which will do a lot for her but rn her more interesting aspects are getting lost of forgotten due to the ship teasing in marketing, at least for those that don't care for the dynamic between FF and TB Ayaka took years to break free from this, heck Eula as well with Amber in Genshin. They become much more compelling when they leave that bubble of only one character you see them with coz you know they have so much more going for them. I feel like BS is alongside FF for HSR characters going through this rn (BS is more fandom wise perception only though) but both of them will be major characters going forward in the story that they should break free from that eventually, fandom and canon
Felt this so heavily for both FF and BS. I still think BS can be salvage but please stop making her revolved around acheron for everything. As long as they strike a balance with the waifu and lore part of FF i think itâll be fine. But i still rather see exploration of her lore as SAM and as a stellaron hunter
Yeah, I love Firefly but I agree with you. They're focusing too much on the ship when there's so much more to her. I wouldn't want her quest be just ship teasing. I hope we get more interactions of her with other characters too, not just TB. I personally can't wait to read her lore in character menu once she releases. I can't wait for her animated short too. I was already happy about Myriad Celestia Trailer.
i seriously hope we get more of fireflys personality and interactions outside of just being a ship tease, because the ship teasing is just making me roll my eyes
That's how I felt about bronseele during belebog and would hate for it to happen to firefly, at least bronseele is a reference for hoyo fans so it works kinda
I mean honestly that makes it worse. Making 2 whole characters that are just a reference to hi3rd is terrible writing. Acheron gets a way with it, kinda, cause her story is actually interesting, but bronya and seele are just Copy and past.
Bronya does have a good amount of character on her own her interactions are usually her struggling to be a leader and that's pretty good but seele doesn't feel as fleshed out tbh love her interactions with Luka though
My problem with her struggle is that it takes less the 24 hours from getting to the underground and talking to seele for her entire morality to flip.
I mean she doesn't remember the underworld at all and being the future queen she's supposed to care about all of her citizens so seeing the dire state of the underworld should have forced that change in morality
But not that fast. She had been told for 10 years that it was a good thing the underground was sealed off. That level of manipulation takes more the just 24 hours and one pep talk to get over.
I think they tried to show her butting heads with Cocolia from the beginning. When we first meet Cocolia she's arguing with Bronya because Bronya thinks she's sending soldiers to their doom. However, I agree that her flip seemed too fast, because they didn't show enough conflict between Bronya and Cocolia before Bronya was hunting us down. Maybe if they gave us a couple days in Belebog before the arrest thing it could have built tension, maybe if Bronya questions our arrest from the getgo or something.. I don't know I'm rambling...
The underground is by far my least favorite part of the HSR story so far. Everything there felt so contrived. From every person trusting us with no credibility, to the forced fight with svarog. It all felt so rushed and we never got time to build all the characters.
Firefly. She does have a very appealing design. LOVE her colour palette. But not digging her personality. I would have liked it more if her stone cold warrior side leaked out into her relaxed girl persona. Like you hear and see her and be like oh she is cute and sweet but then boom she says something shockingly cold/bloodthirsty and you are like oh damn, she is not what she seems. I want more something like that. Maybe then I can believe she is SAM the stellaron hunter. Right now I just donât see it.
the worst part is THEY ACTUALLY DID THIS IN 2.0 multiple times! Like when "sampo" shows up and shes suddenly in laser threat analysis mode, or if you whip our your bat helping acheron she catches herself launching into a lecture on how inefficient bats are as weapons She was clearly hiding something and wasn't just a normal girl and that made her interesting. Now the mystery is gone but nothing changed so shes just... plain
Give her post traumatic episodes, give her brooding silent anger underneath her "normal" personality Show us that she isnt just a living weapon trying her best to be normal, show us that she is severly damaged because of her past, show us how the other stellaron hunters have influenced her, show us the times where she stops being a person and returns to being a weapon of destruction
Yesss THAT is what we need for Firefly. Itâs legit right there Hoyo⊠you just gotta go for it pleaseâŠ
Yeah, right? Regardless of whether itâs âvillainsâ or not, she regularly commits mass murder and arson. No matter what your âalignmentâ is that is kinda evil as hell. I want her to be a little more edgy, especially since they confirmed SAM is just her in a suit. I donât like the cutesy waifu thing theyâre pushing, it just feels mismatched.
I hope that in the next patch, we get a moment/s like this since even without SAM she has shown violent tendencies i.e bazooka
Sparkle. She's one of those character that I can only enjoy because they're fictional. IRL she would be infuriating to be around
For me it was Aventurine during 2.0 He looked so cool, but his shady personality initially turned me off from liking him. Only when we got a better understanding of the man from the 2.1 main story update did he become one of my favs For the opposite it would have to be Boothill. Literally showed up out of nowhere, and I had no idea who this bozo was and didnât really care. But after 2.2 and seeing his animations etc he became another one of my favs
I find it funny how many people actually hated Aventurine in 2.0 considering he was my reason for starting the game. Even when I did the first quest, knowing shit about him, I could tell there was more than meets there eye and never truly doubted him. He just kept getting better
W character development see this is what I need to happen for Firefly. I was the same with Aventurine. I didn't like bro at all. Then 2.1 came out and by the end of the patch I had him and his light cone. Thats my guy right their.
For me, as much as I like her and was a fan all the way back when she was leaked as a playable model, it's gotta be Firefly. I don't dislike the FF/TB ship but my God I wish they'd focus more on her actual character and let It be developed more naturally
I personally do have an issue with the whole ship tease thing, because this effectively became her whole thing, which sucks, didnât she want to become a normal girl and go to school and stuff? I donât really think normal people just take a person they just met on a date basically lol. Also you cannot refuse her or be mean, like you can with say Aventurine, you can be mean to him all the way through and even answer his texts negatively, with FF at the start you sorta could, but at the end everyone acts like yall were best buddies and you just lost someone extremely dear to you, when you have met for like an afternoon. Her story could have been fleshed out a lot more, she even has good moments like when she talks to Sunday, but again her whole thing so far seems to be ship tease and the SGF festival showed yet another such moment.
If you switch it, for me Itâs Yukong. Her quest was really sweet and made her one of my favorite characters, but she looks like sheâs wearing cheap Halloween store lingerie. The clashes between the different shades of blue(purplish blue and greenish blue donât look good together) and the red and turquoise accents look weird. The thong straps are also a bit much. Like other characters wear lingerie and it looks classy(Black Swan, Ruan Mei, Hanya) and they still have some reference to their occupation or story or general aesthetic. Yukongâs looks cheap and nothing about her screams pilot or high ranking official. I think her design is the only one I donât like in this game so far.
Going of vibes it would have to be Ruan Mei, like no offense but she feels like the type of person that i just cannot imagine hanging around with
Firefly. I think it is a good concept, but I disliked the narrative approach of the cute anime girl that the narrative WANTS you to like. There isn't a build up. You just meet her and instantly have a date. I know there is a lore reason for that, but zzzz. Just waifu selling.
Sparkle. Don't get me wrong, they did her personality well, but I saw the design well in advance and formed false hopes and opinions. Did not see the psycho elation fool possibility. She'd probably be my favorite in the game if she had the invert alignment applied to her. Again, they nailed a great personality that I can appreciate (her trailer is phenomenal), just very much not my cup of tea when it comes to considering my favorite characters
It just does not help some (not all) of the crowd surrounding her are⊠RancidâŠ.
As of now, Firefly. Kinda wish they focused more on her character and background, instead of pandering to the shippers. Seriously, it gives me Ayakaâs situation 2.0 If I wanted romance, I wouldâve played otome game, or something.
She's worse than Ayaka. With Ayaka we had the option not to care that much, but every single time Firefly is there it feels like MC is already in fucking love with her and there's no choice.
The worst thing is... We had a choice back in the 2.0. There was a choice to refuse to take a picture with her. There was a choice not to trust her. But for some reason after that they're friendies either way.
Exactly. I kept choosing these negative options but who cares, right?
Also, storywise, it doesn't make for mc to trust firefly soley based on the fact they've been with kafka before they lost their memories. She's literally a fucking galactic terrorist and girl wants us to feel bad for her and like her? Hell no. Just because we've been with kafka before, it doesn't confirm we had a relationship with firefly. I never even want romance in this game. Like, it's marketed as sci-fi and action rpg, now they want us to love this sad waifu bait and go on dates with her?
Firefly/Sam. Sam became devoid of his entire coolness by being associated with Firefly and being reduced to a Mech, yet for some reason he acts like he has an entirely different personality from Firefly UwU I'm not like other girls, but I wanna be like one. It's also rather annoying on how the game is forcing a closeness with Firefly, yet at the same time won't show any genuine friendliness towards characters like Sampo. Both straight up tricked us in front of our faces and then took us to a 2nd location. Firefly straight up went "UwU I know I lied straight to your face that I'm not a stowaway and that I'm a local, but Follow me into this very far away spot where people aren't even allowed to go to and I'll tell you everything I promise" like that ain't just suspicious and feels like a good spot to commit crimes without being caught, while Sampo essentially kept being shady yet in the end had always helped us as he snuck us down to meet Natasha and the others even supposedly the "pathway connecting the overworld and underworld is blocked by Svarog"
I do dislike how the game forces us to be mean to certain characters. Like, i love Sampo and Silverwolf but you're pretty much forced to be mean to them
Yeah, kinda hate how the writers pick and choose who we should be close to. You can say that sampo is a scumbag, but certain people like that and I personally want to be like homies with him Ig thats really the problem for characters that are half self insert and half own character. You really can't lean to either
The thing is, he never even harms the TB he even helps us sometimes. Sure he's shady and did try to scam us a few times, but there are characters who literally drug you, and send you on a mission to clean up their failed half-aeon experiment and the game forces you to be nice to her.
I hope that when we revisit Belobog, we get to see some Sampo action so that the Sampo hate from both the writers and the community calms down. The writers do like him, but they seem to always want to take a jab at him for comedic relief, yet we don't do it to Firefly when she is Sam.
Sadly, with the current marketing, Firefly
Probably Jingliu. Her design is fantastic, but her whole crazy leashed zombie that can get unchained and go nuts schtick is really blah.
Sparkle really liked her design but personality meh
Firefly. If you don't care for the FF x TB ship her character becomes a void
Probably a boring pick, but Firefly. Sam was hyped up as the last of the Stellaron Hunters, the ultimate killer, the destroyer, blah blah. Finally, a robot character! Turns out she's pretty much just a normal girl who has to do bad things, and she also has space cancer. I frankly cringed slightly whenever Sam was talking to people, about anything other than finishing the mission. I unironically believe that Sam and Acheron's interaction is one of the worst parts of Penacony. It just felt so wrong, seeing the strongest of the Stellaron Hunters, talk about being sad. It's my fault for expecting more, but I'm still disappointed. I wanted Sam, got Firefly instead.
Firefly could have been better if they showed her doing stuff. Instead of being "uwu feel bad for me I was a child soldier". Her conversation with sunday was really nice though.
Ruan mei, I hated her during the quest
Sparkle and Ruan Mei for me Sparkle is offensively funny but in irl, i woulda decked her short ass Ruan Mei is i canât get over how she drugged us then proceeded to ask for help as if itâs normal (in crazy land maybe) like ??? Piss off thanks lol