Wuthering Waves
part 2
This article is the second part in a series. See Wuthering Waves part 1Wuthering Waves part 1
for the first part.
Finally reached this Rinascita area (version 2.x content). Bunch of new characters coming in, maybe I’ll find some new favorites. I noticed this continent unlocked two new events with quite nice rewards, but their (partial) deadline is in 30 hours… I now started the Tidal Defense Simulator (tower defense minigame) event.
Completed a large part of the Tidal Defense Simulator event. Not bad, but too easy. It’s been a long time since I played a tower defense game, maybe this gave me the itch again.
I’ll just skip the other event with deadline today, whatever that was. If it’s good content, it will probably come back later somehow.
New characters
Version 2.7 of Wuthering Waves came out today. I was eager to test play the featured resonators, and now having done so, I like Lupa but not Galbrena (the new one). Also the 4 star resonators with increased pull rate are all to my liking: Sanhua (had her already but never used), Mortefi, and Lumi. I realized playing with 4 star resonators is kind of nice because their mechanics and visuals are simpler; all the 5 star ones tend to cover the battlefield with particle effects and are otherwise way too flashy. But having some 5 stars in the roster seems like great fun, and probably also good for progressing throught the harder parts of the “endgame”.
So I think I will be pulling starting now. I’m not sure if I will go all the way to end if I happen to get something nice earlier. Using all of the 80 pulls to my understanding should now guarantee Lupa since I the previous 80 pulls at a featured convene did not yield me Carlotta. I’m most looking forward to Chisa, not really for any rational reason, but just because it’s fun to be hyped about something. She could turn out almost anything from trash to perfection. Probably 6 or 9 weeks until she comes out, I’ll have time to build my astrites by then, and if I’m lazy, I could also spend some more real money.
Oh wow, I got Lupa on 50 pulls and also all of Sanhua, Mortefi, and Lumi, the latter two for the first time.
Had quite fun playing today. Leveling up Lupa seems to require accessing later parts of the map/story, so I’m going with Sanhua now. Reached union level 45 which was the last milestone in some event that has been going since the beginning of the game. Got 1000 astrite and my first 5 star weapon (I didn’t choose yet among the 5 types).
I thought earlier I might be taking a break from the game, but it now looks quite fun to continue so I renewed the subscriptions that had just expired. Maybe I’ll get to have a break after 30 days when the lunite subscription expires…
I wonder if I’m not the only one bothered how most the “monsters” in this game seem to be sleeping, partying, or doing something else harmless when the player suddenly attacks unprovoked.
This Lottie Lost plushie Tacet Discord (monster) is so cute. I wonder if I can get that as a real plushie from somewhere… Some time back I actually searched for this kind of creepy bunny plushie aesthetic which I’ve grown to like after seeing it in anime so many times. I think initially I found the creepy bunnies somewhat ugly, as in I understood the intention but the designs just didn’t work for me.
This game has a very clear flower motif, and it’s never explained or I missed it every time. Sound waves and music are another, for example many monsters carry instruments (also Phrolova and Ciaccona, plus Shorekeeper plays piano).
Anon talks about pulling a girl in another game:
I did the same for Seia in Blue Archive. Grinded through everything to get her, did her hangout or whatever, jerked off a couple of times and deleted the game.
Finally progressing the plot in Rinascita (versions 2.x). Carlotta looks so great, such a shame I failed that very first 50/50 pull to get her and couldn’t afford another. Something I didn’t realize during test play is that her model is very small, nice touch. There was a fun video (below) that shows what gameplay effects it has. She clears obstacles of different heights differently, and there is even some area with vertical bars where she or the the other small characters can slip between the bars.
Events
There is this recurring combat event in the Somnoire event family which is kind of cool, called Fantasies of the Thousand Gateways (not to be grandiose or anything). The basic gist is that there are 14 fights and between each one you select one bonus among three options, and at the very beginning also one major option. The thing is, those options are super powerful and stack like mad. By the final fight you will be dealing orders of magnitude more damage than normally. First time I played that I feel like I got to 500x normal damage or something, instantly gaining several achievements for damage dealing.
I think the whole point of that event is to make the player feel powerful, and almost all combat events such as those introducing a new character use this trick to some extent. It doesn’t really matter if the devs completely mess up the balance because the effects are contained to those events. Frankly, this game makes so much use of auto-leveling of monsters that it often feels like my characters are not getting much stronger. I’m often lagging with the upgrades, especially now that I’ve started using more than 3 characters regularly.
Anyway, playing that particular Somnoire combat event again today, it gave me a weird build where the characters constantly lose HP and deal damage to nearby enemies while the “dream mode” or whatever is enabled. But then I selected some upgrade option that lengthened the duration of that mode by damage taken or healing received (which was also automatic), and it turned out the numbers were such that the dream mode became permanently enabled, but the characters took damage at higher rate than they healed :D so I had to run between the battles to avoid dying, and also make a use Verina quite a bit. In this run I didn’t get to deal absurd amounts of damage, but it was a bit funny that just standing in place dealed about 10x the damage compared to mashing basic attack. And it wasn’t dependent on character, so I could just chill with Verina (and for once not worry about Danjin killing herself).
The characters I’m recently using:
- Sanhua: Mainly because I wanted to shuffle the roster. She’s the only glacio type I have/like. Great how she speaks so little.
- Encore: Deals tons of damage. I hate her Forte ability though (makes her immovable for like 5 seconds)
- Verina: Healers make the game quite a bit less stressful.
- Danjin: Best mechanics among all characters available to me.
- Spectro Rover: Has some healing capabilities, I think I’ll need to use her to survive in the Tower of Adversity challenges.
- Havor Rover: There is some synergy with Danjin since both are Havoc.
Photo event, part 1
There is a cool photo event where you get to use slow motion and take photos of the characters doing their cool moves. For example “Photo of Jinshi standing on her sword”. Would be even better if could do this during normal gameplay.
Playing Wuthering Waves. This game probably gets new content faster than I manage to clear the existing stuff. Just now thought I was embarking on some quick mission and it turned out to be a whole new map area (Montelli underground). Took hours to finish and had a big boss too. I’m not complaining.
The way the devs copy stuff from other games is rather brazen, I could see people getting actually offended. There’s a long event that copies the game DREDGE quite meticulously, and now this story area uses gravitation mechanics just like in FF7 Rebirth Temple of the Ancients (though similar almost certainly have been done in other games as well). A while ago there was some new kind of shooting event and when someone asked on /vg/ what on earth that was, everyone just said “megabonk”. That’s a name of another new and popular indiegame (not sure how similar it actually is). There was even discussion which game should they copy next… Personally I don’t mind, but sometimes too direct copying feels tacky and the devs end up hurting themselves.
Then there is of course the opinion that Wuthering Waves is in the first place a direct copy of Genshin Impact, which is probably a bit unfair. I think there’s tons of unique stuff about this game that people just don’t notice the same way.
Anons talking about the DREDGE minigame:
did everyone hate this fishing event when it originally came out? this is some of the most mind numbing gameplay I’ve ever done in any type of game.
i think you just have to do it when you’re in the mood for your mind to be numbed
i listened to like 10 albums while i was doing it, the whole thing was a blur, i don’t remember doing any of it
Finished the Cartethyia questline in one sitting. Great to again have my feet on the ground, so to speak.
Hyped
I got to the Septimont area earlier than I thought, and progressing the story there as well. Might not actually be that long until I catch up with the current story and characters. Still tons to do to level up the current and especially any new characters.
Currently looking most forward to Phrolova. Her design is amazing, and she is so sweet and also quite interesting in the story. I thought it a bit unexpected they made a villain a playable character (I think she is not “redeemed”), but it makes perfect sense really. I don’t know the lore reason how switching of the characters works, but as I understand it only Rover is travelling around and the other characters are kind of “projections” that she has accessed permanently. The characters behind them may even be dead (Jinshi?), so it’s not a big leap that an enemy also has some good side that allows Rover to connect to them and draw on that power.
Chisa is also just around the corner, but I need to see some more of her before I can get hyped (again). Cartethyia is also very nice, I would probably try get her if she came up again (not sure about her combat, although she was playable in the story).
I really wonder what the next play area will be, and if they will try to take the story/setting to different direction. There was some speculation of a “school arc” which sounds a bit too extreme to be real, but honestly that kind of thing would be so cool if they pulled it off. It reminds me of things like how the “big three” shounen all(?) had major timeskips and then Gintama parodied them. That kind of “reckless” change to the whole premise of the work, which probably then gets reverted for the most part, but it doesn’t make it any less real.
I always thought it’s kind of ridiculous how they name every combat move for every character, including the basic attack move. For example Danjin has these eight moves: Execution, Crimson Fragment, Crimson Bloom, Serene Vigil, Overflow, Vindication, and Duality. I don’t remember a single one of them, and trying to understand the combat mechanics is quite challenging because they only use these names. Anyway, I brought this up because I just realized they also name all the outfits for every character — but there are only 4 custom outfits, so all the names are used up to describe the default outfits of the characters. Danjin’s outfit for example is Red Jade. And those 4 custom outfits too they have managed to split into full three categories: Signature outfits, Deluxe outfits, and Premium outfits. I think it’s probably all so psychology to make the characters more desirable.
And those countless names in this game are all translated to 8 languages…
Photo event, part 2
This photo event had me playing as Phrolova a bit. It’s magical. I haven’t thought about waifus for many years now but damn, she just crosses the level. No doubt getting her on the next banner, whatever the cost.
That said, she’s one of the harder characters to photograph. Stills just don’t do justice…
Some more photos I took from the event:
Just about to reach union level 60 in Wuthering Waves which will allow me to level up my characters to the maximum level of 90. I thought it might be a good time to talk about the “meta” of this game, as I have learned it. It turned out quite long so I put it on a separate page: Wuthering Waves metaWuthering Waves meta
Watched “the stream” for the first time properly. Before every new version (every 6 weeks), the developers make an hour long video where the devs “chat” and present the new stuff. The presentation is a bit awkward, and I hate that I have to listen to the English character voice acting if I want to read English subtitles of the Chinese (the Japanese version of course has Japanese subtitles which is a bit tough to follow for me).
Villains
Played through the Phrolova story arc. Great stuff.
Villains often stick out by having plans that take extremely long to accomplish, and when for some fantasy reason they are actually experiencing the time span in full really gives them full persistence points. Even if the world is not at stake, if you live for thousands of years you can affect so many people. Planescape: TormentPlanescape: Torment
worked on this. In this Wuthering Waves episode I understood that Rover dismissed Phrolova’s attempts as futile because of how hadn’t succeeded for a very long time, but Phrolova just answers that there are more ways to try out, no matter how long it takes. That is a scientist mindset, in fiction known as evil.
I think fiction has played its part in creating a strong bias that things that don’t seem to work should be abandoned because “it’s just how the world works”. Death is inevitable so when someone fights against it they are automatically the villain. While there is also some positive message in there, that death trope in particular has been played out for so many times that people would be better off seeing contrasting takes on it.
It’s basically the force of Science whom insists “that person is not necessarily dead yet”, and in real life has prolonged the human lifespan decades and decades now. Yet people keep insisting death is inevitable. Maybe it is, but the moral lessons definitely shouldn’t take the form “you should die already, you are over 80!”
Perhaps first meaningful life extension will fall only in the hands of the very wealthy and priviliged, but even that doesn’t make the technology or fictional knowledge of long life evil. Honestly I wonder if many people just want others to die early so they won’t overshadow their own success too much.
Version 2.8
Chisa released today, with version 2.8, so I’m doing the usual character trial plays. I previously said that I kind of liked the 4-star resonators because they were simpler to play and did not fill the battle field with particles, but to be honest, now these 4-stars often seem too plain. Maybe the developers knew what they were doing all along. My biggest issue with this Chisa convene actually is that I dislike all the the 4-stars that I will end up getting alongside (Aalto, Yuanwu, Taoqi).
That said, damn I love Danjin (4 stars). Since they skipped her entirely in the story (early version weirdness), it would be so cool if they made some kind of 5-star new version of her. Seems to be a kind of combat favorite among other players as well.
Phoebe is the old 5-star resonator sharing banner with Chisa and I just playtested her, having also played her in the story. I immediately recognzied her as a “main DPS”, after recently having learned this game essentially has three types of characters: main-DPS, sub-DPS, and support:
- Main-DPS are the characters that deal a shit-ton of damage and which you play most of the time for that reason. The meta corollary is that players generally want 5-star characters that they pay for to fall in this category.
- Sub-DPS is a kind of technical character that usually boosts the main-DPS character(s) somehow (damage bonuses as “outro” etc.). These see the second most field time since they are also somewhat capable dealing damage on their own.
- Support characters are basically healers, which make the (already quite easy) game less stressful. Their main trait is that you can put them in any team and get good benefits.
So the basic composition of a three character team is one of each type, where for “best meta” you sometimes need to think which main-dps and sub-dps fit together, and if you want to replace the support or sub-DPS character with another main-DPS.
Back to Phoebe, she is a main-DPS which I find a bit contradictory to her personality. I also didn’t like her mechanics very much, so it’s a skip for me.
Hmm, after test play of Chisa the last bits of my hype are gone, replaced with more objective appraisal. I think she plays differently enough to be fun. The animations are kind of cool and carry out the vision the devs had about “geometric precision”. The voice acting did not stand out at all. She wears spats under the skirt as expected (“it’s not that I’m a perv, but it’s just unnatural to do that!”).
However… it’s not that the other characters are perfect either. I think she’s just fine. I’m thinking perhaps many players stopped pulling new characters simply because their expectations got inflated beyond the characters they already had and were attached to. I’m thinking I’ll try to pull her now simply because I like this game and I can afford it. Would have been fun to play her story first but I’m a bit too far to do that.
Uwaah, took 70 pulls but I got Chisa. Phew. Also got max level Yuanwu and 4/6 Taoqi — not like I’ll ever use either of them. Missed Aalto completely, which is just a bit funny because I think his mechanics are probably the worst I’ve seen in the game. I’m not too excited to play her because I know it will take at the minimum a week to level her up. Probably will be longer as I focus on other things. The main reason for pulling her on the first day was that I can now properly focus on the next banner which will feature Phrolova…
Might be more exciting pulling in three weeks when Phrolova comes out again, along with 4-stars that I think are okay. And I’ll probably also want Phrolova’s weapon (having not bothered with character weapons so far). Could end up spending actual money then, or perhaps my good luck continues!
Actually I now also got Aalto from spending excess lustrous tides on the weapon convene.
Lately I’m thinking a bit how to optimize my Wuthering Waves play. One anon explains how to play:
you have character 1 who has buffs which don’t dissapear upon swap and affect the whole team (Shorekeeper, Verina, Chisa etc.). You then swap into character 2 who has buffs which are given only to next character you swap into and disappear on next swap (Mortefi, Sanhua, Iuno etc.). And now finally you swap into character 3, your main dps and do all the unga bunga under buffs from previous 2 characters. There’s more advanced stuff like double dps teams and animation swaps but no need to concern yourself with that as new player.
Not using Chisa yet since I haven’t upgraded her enough, but now went through her combat tutorial. Kind of amazing how everyone was hyped about the looks of the character and bad gameplay could have instantly killed that. Same for every character I guess. But I think the devs really pulled their weight here, the gameplay is really cool and matches her personality.
Some random thing ended me up again in the Black Shores. I thought again how beautiful that place was, and somehow instinctively seeked out Shorekeeper with her piano. She is indeed there, and to my great surprise talking to her take you to this insanely photographable special area somewhere around the Black Shores. Having taken my photo, I thought it was a good time to start the companion quest for Camellya (Tsubaki).
Played through the quest, it was really nice. I’m not sure if I have ever seen a “yandere origin story” before, perhaps in Mirai Nikki but that was certainly quite different. It was a great quest, cool fighting, and the ending nothing like I expected: A photo shootout with Camellya! Really great, like this whole thing was made for me.
These kind of feelings make me think this game truly is extraordinary. Sometimes it lets you down, with sloppy copied game mechanics or uninspired fetch quests, but then other times it’s just “absolute kino” that I previously didn’t think video games capable of. I think what this game needs the most is some kind of continuity with all the great characters, but when I try to imagine something in my mind I realize how difficult it would be to implement cost-effectively. The current form allows the voice actors to complete their character basically in one continuous series of recording session. Still I wonder if they could find a way, just like later Japanese anime seasons are able to recruit the same voice actors to return to the work. The game studio is certainly not short of money, they might be able to pull out something incredible in the way of making fans reconnect with their favorite characters (almost all of them, frankly!).
Found my first “Nightmare nest” and after clearing the nest I finally know what anons meant by the need to “vacuum” multiple echos at once. That feature actually arrived just two weeks ago, hah, lucky me.
Reading some materials on “rentry”, a kind of wiki often used on 4chan, also by the /wuwa/ thread of /vg/.
Very cool! High quality fan created stuff made public on the game studio’s YouTube channel. Probably some kind of competition.
It seems like the fan artists have imposed their own interpretations on the characters in many ways that have become “fan canon”, kind of like is more obvious for Touhou. For example Jinshi seems to be often portrayed as a silly crybaby chibi, or having crush on the male rover.
Kind of interesting that this is so multilingual because the game is popular in four languages I think: Chinese, Japanese, English and maybe Korean. Those are also the languages the game is voiced in. Among these fan works not everything is that great, but the Japanese ones are top tier. I don’t think there was anything with voiced Chinese or Korean — at least the English artists are trying!
My favorites:
- I’LL SHOW YOU! —— Jikom3n / IOSYS
- Animated dance
- First place is mine..! —— BlueSechi
- Funny racing story animation
- For show or for Battle? …Bang! —— 帷幕Vmovie
- Really good hand drawn animation, though not very long
- In Nome dei Montelli —— Nico Jiang
- Cool western style animation
- Allegro con brio | アレグロ —— Haruno 春野
- Kind of an OP/ED animation, very nice art
- 三色魔女っ娘！カプリチパ —— ファル公
- Animated denpa song
There’s a similar event video called “Solaris Seaside Story”, going to watch it later.
Playing Wuthering Waves. The ToA challenge is coming to an end in 5 days, and I thought I would get good rewards this time around but honestly I just can’t do it :D My record is 8/12, 0/12, 7/12. The problem is probably that I can’t deal damage fast enough because of lacking optimization, although I occasionally have my charcters downed too. The characters are at the max level with “standard” 5 star weapons. The characters have all 5 echoes at max level but I haven’t gotten into trying to optimize the echoes at all.
Anyway, the bigger issue, and source of joy is that Phrolova’s banner is coming up 9 days from now on. I’m using the “Ascension planner” seriously for the first time, to collect her upgrade materials (among other things, I apparently have to beat Fenrico 12 times). It may sound a unnecessarily eager, but actually the characters in this game are near useless unless brought to your current max level. For example I got Chisa a week back but haven’t used her seriously once because I just can’t level up her without wasting materials better spent on other characters. I’m pushing Chisa’s upgrades behind Phrolova because I’m not yet even at the part of the story where Chisa is introduced. But I do plan to build a “Havoc team”, with Phrolova + Chisa + Danjin, I guess — not sure yet if I will just immediately die with that composition if Chisa turns out to not be a strong enough healer…
After that I might think more about building other elemental teams, the point being that they work well when a combat challenge has “30% increased Fusion damage” or similar. Could be combining elementals is not the best way to build teams in this game, but it seems most approachable without reading guides.
This video begins with ~8 minutes of animated footage for Chisa, making me realize Wuthering Waves is already a multi-media franchise basically. The developers can do anime, real world events, etc. at will. I wonder if the game could become like 10x bigger than it already is. That everyone knows who Mario the plumber is might be nothing compared to the spread future top games will have.
The hate between Chinese and Japanese stemming from history seems everlasting, but I wonder if for people in the entertainment industry it’s all forgotten. Even regular business people loathe wars, so I think there is indeed little to no ill will between the kind of collaboration this game involves. And amongst the consumers, I wonder too. If a Chinese person disliked Japan could they watch anime at all and get into this aesthetic that the Japanese created? And if a Japanese person disliked China, could they play a game created by a Chinese company?
Chinese VA
I really wanted to know how the game sounds in Chinese and apparently I had to go through making a bilibili account to do that.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1JKrLYJEFv Carlotta.
My ultimate motive is to find music or voice acting that sounds better in Chinese than the Japanese dubbing. In my mind it’s obvious that an original should be better than dubs, but apparently the Chinese VAs still have catching up to do. Not that I fault them, English VAs have been doing it a decade now and still universally suck at anime-like media.
Watched multiple videos of different characters now. The main problem is all the Chinese females sound kind of the same. Maybe in gameplay hearing their voices repeatedly I could pick up on the differences, but it’s still completely different to the Japanese level of VA where you can get traits of the character just by voice alone.
Phrolova
Preparing for Phrolova’s banner in two days, I now have all the materials ready that the Ascension Planner lists. Actually I also need shell credit quite a bit but I should be able to amass those by then.
Finally it’s the day for Phrolova’s banner!
Went right into pulling. The first 80 pull period failed the 50/50, granting me at the 70th a Verina waveband instead. Not useless since she is basically the most important character… I also got 3x Buling which is great because I want to play her later. Also got 1x Danjin whom I play quite often still. Chixia 1x and the 4 star weapons I got are useless though. Not to speak of the 3 star weapons that are the base fodder — I wonder if the designers could have replaced those with something even remotely useful.
Starting next sequence of pulls, got Phrolova on the first 10x! Actually the 2/10 pull…
I’ve been thinking, if you did the pulls one at a time then on average you would save 5 pull on each batch of ten that yields the target. But with the 50/50 rule, after getting the wrong 5 star resonator, those extra pull in the 10x batch do get counted for the next. So the saving is more like 2.5 pull if you do it one by one, that is just 400 astrites, c’mon.
Now pulled for Phrolova’s weapon, got it on the second 10x. It’s the first 5 star banner weapon I pulled for in the game.
Builds
Doing the upgrades now, and as I thought, I don’t have nearly enough shell credit for all. I’m also looking at build guides seriously for the first time and examining the echo upgrades more carefully than before. Played the trial and tutorial for Phrolova few times as well.
To be honest, I don’t quite understand the details of the suggested builds. Since I don’t have the recommended characters for those builds (Cantarella and Roccia), I think I’ll just go for a straightforward Havoc group. It feels nice to make good builds, but I don’t think it feels “great” to study how to make the absolute best builds that end up looking weird. It’s so hard to even compare what build is better than another — put the characters on the field to play them, but what if you just play lazily in one game and draw the wrong conclusions? Calculating the theoretical DPS over minutes of gameplay is weird because I don’t actually play that well, I probably get something like 40% of max efficiency with my default play style and it messes up a lot of those computations. So I could very well end up playing the “recommended optimal strategy” at 30% efficiency while I could actually be doing better playing 60% efficiently the style I like the best and have practiced the most.
So my approach to “meta” is to try understand the systems and then play the ones I like the most. There is some correlation to what is “optimal”, but it’s not as large as you might think, so I prefer to make my own builds. Also it feels more creative that way.
I guess the most interesting situation is when I’m faced with a challenge where my current build doesn’t work, and by trying something else I can see it works better. I have recently for the first time hit a few walls in this game, but I feel like I don’t yet have the resources to properly experiment with different approaches that might help me better understand proper builds.
Gacha madness
Playtested also Buling now, she seems cool, and Cantarella who I don’t like at all. I still have a lot of astrites saved and not really any plans for future characters… I also think I might be taking a break from the game soon… So…! I’m thinking I’ll go for a second Phrolova pull and then maybe get a third waveband with the corals. If there is one character I want to try these gacha mechanics with, it’s her.
Okay, remembering again the 50/50 and not setting my hopes too high…. 16k astrites in the bank exactly.
First 10x looking good, pulled four(!) 4star characters: Buling, Mortefi, Chiaxi and Danjin
Haha, third 10x pull gave me 3x Danjin and also one Yangyang.
Fifth 10x had me lucky, got the Phrolova waveband.
Bought the 35e “special bundle”. I still don’t have enough to play these pulls safely, but I think I’ll try.
First 10x, got Jianxin (5 star). I don’t care for that character, but now the 50/50 is gone.
Oh damn, I did get the third Phrolova on my last 10x pull. Phew, that was a gamble. I have 311 afterglow corals now which isn’t quite enough for the Phrolova waveband (needs 360). Maybe I’ll muster that somehow later, or could instead buy a cheaper Verina or Encore waveband. Converting the corals to the currency for pulling isn’t cost-effective in my understanding, especially if you don’t want the 4star prizes.
Hah, found the perfect picture in /vg/ showing how Phrolova takes precedence over the future girls:
Watching Wuthering Waves livestream for the version 3.0. They made a world area designed for navigation entirely with a motorbike and quite fun looking features like listening to the radio and riding with another character (new voice lines for everyone?). Apparently they also really made the MC enroll as a student, but probably it’s not a very major thing. It’s anyway a futuristic university, not a “Japanese high school”.
A new combat mechanic that affects all resonators, giving each one a new unique(?) skill. Very nice. My main frustration with the game has probably been that the old characters are forgotten so quickly and completely in the story that you wonder if it’s worth getting attached to them. But the devs seem to be improving regarding this.
I started like the new character Lynae a lot more when I saw her in combat with rollerblades, my old hobby.
The two new characters Lynae and Mornye don’t quite pique my interest, but they don’t seem bad either. Could come down to voice acting and the story. Also gameplay and animation always feels a bit different when experiencing it first hand.
I joked earlier that the devs at more story content faster than I play it but it’s not too far from truth… I really should progress the story again and unlock much of the new stuff. I’m still at Septimont, just before where the Augusta chapter starts. They added a “Next Stop” feature that lets you skip to the new area directly, but I probably won’t use it, just like I resisted the previous option to skip to Rinascita.
There was also “The Game Awards” today where Wuthering Waves won the “Player award”(!) and was nominated for “Best mobile game” (I doubt it’s actually great to play on mobile). I happened also to check it because Steam showed it on the first page, seemed like a quite big thing. Clair Obscur won a ton of awards there, as it did elsewhere this year.
Finally leveled up Phrolova to a playable state, but I’m still short some shell credits and decided to try her first at the shell credit challenge. I used to spend like one minute fighting that, having learned how the enemies came in certain waves, but just now Phrolova destroyed the entire thing in 5 seconds :o Granted, the challenge had a 40% Havoc damage bonus and she’s the first chracter I got the signature weapon for, but still, damn good first impression!
Playing the story now. I switched to Japanese again and to be honest I don’t always read the detail of the menus, but I really thought I selected the “next chapter” story quest and ended up in Honami, the Chisa story, skipping Augusta-Iuno-Galbrena-Qiuyuan. I was already suspicious when the quest start took place at the Black Shores which I knew to be prequel to Honami. On the quest list there was another major quest marked with special symbol which I think I tried earlier and thought it was a “segue” (card playing event, and the previous fishing event). But on reflection that must have been the main story quest because it was on the first menu level. The devs must have wanted to allow playing this Honami part already earlier by placing this quest there almost equally next to it. Which is great because I actually did want to play this first.
Pulling for additional Phrolova resonance chains, got a Verina instead, but also enough corals to buy the Phrolova waveband which puts me at three nodes on the chain for her (max is 6). I’m totally broke in the game currency now, and I previously spent some real world money too. Anyway, I think this was another “gacha experience” that I’m glad to have had, but not sure if I’ll need to repeat it.
Phrolova is now way stronger than my other characters and I can beat fights I previously couldn’t, but it does feel a bit unbalanced now :D Maybe I can do something to improve the other characters… A cool thing though is that some of those combat events have quite generous astrite rewards.
