Arcadion T2: Anyone else feel a dissonance between the feral souls and the battles?

(Normal only I'm not a savage raider)
In the first tier, we fight:

• Black Cat, who utilizes the soul of a legendary feline. She transforms into a two tailed cat and while she still utilizes the stage and just punching, she also uses her claws a lot. It feels like she fused with a cat.
  
• Honey B. Lovely, who utilizes the soul of a queen bee. Uses the pheromones of the queen bee to win you over. Attacks with honey and poisons the honey. Calls in group bees since she's a queen bee.
  
• Brute Bomber, who uses a bomb. Very wrestle-y yes, but also uses a lot of bomb explosions and fires like, you know, a bomb.
  
• Wicked Thunder, who very obviously uses an ixion soul. Very lightning heavy which only pairs well with the electrope.

This tier we have:

• Dancing Green, who uses a toad soul. Except his fight is all dance and no toad. The only toads we have are his back up dancers, which don't do anything toad or frog like and are just dancers.
  
• Sugar Riot, who uses a pudding. Supposedly the pudding lets her bring the art to life but... The art to life is just picto. Everything is her painting. There's nothing in the fight to make me think I'm fighting a final fantasy pudding or flan, just an enemy pictomancer.
  
• Brute Abombinator was the only one who felt thematically like he belonged. It's a play on his normal name and how instead of just using his usual bomb, he used a whole bunch of souls and turned into an abomination.
  
• And Howling Blade who, supposedly, uses a Fenrir. Yet when I zoned into the fight my only thought was : "That's not a fenrir, that's a mecha." Sure there are wolf heads in the fight, I guess. If you look at the attack names then I guess it's wolf themed, but nothing visually tells me that.

It really doesn't help that I thought 3/4 fights were extremely unfun and even frustrating, and that was running as a phys ranged. It almost feels like they put way more thought and effort into the presentation than making it cohesive.

Story was great though. I teared up after the fight with Brute Abombinator when his cat tried to reach him.

Dancing Green is also barely even green!

Hopefully the savage versions have things that make more sense thematically. But even if they do, normal mode should lean into the theme more as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EreAsha

[*]And Howling Blade who, supposedly, uses a Fenrir. Yet when I zoned into the fight my only thought was : "That's not a fenrir, that's a mecha." Sure there are wolf heads in the fight, I guess. If you look at the attack names then I guess it's wolf themed, but nothing visually tells me that.

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Howling Blade's design is the one that seemed the most different to me by far. He looks like the combination of a male aura and a fennec fox clad in mecha armor. And I agree, there's not much wolf-looking stuff in the fight besides the heads.

I was honestly very... whelmed by the soul picks for the first two fights. Like a frog and pudding seemed very basic for the second tier. When I saw the dancing theme with Dancing Green I thought, "Okay, maybe this could work. Dancing with frog legs. Maybe there's a lot of hopping around. This could work." But yeah like you said there's very little that ties into frogs aside from the backup dancers.

Sugar Riot, despite her fight being pretty fun and the song being an absolute bop, also doesn't scream "pudding/flan" to me. I thought there would be more pudding like mannerisms in her movements (maybe something akin to the Inklings in Splatoon, which the theme already draws a lot of comparison to), but nope. Nothing. (As an aside, it does make me wish PCT had access to graffiti/street art aesthetics in their moveset)

Brute Abombinator gets a pass. Great theme. Great character. Fun fight. Cool arc. I'm expecting him to show up in tier 3 under some ghoulish circumstances (please make this happen SE).

Howling Blade I was excited for... until he transformed. I'm holding my breath that maybe there will be more Fenrir aspects that will manifest in the Savage-exclusive Phase 2 form but as he is in normal... I just don't... get it? Why is he more machine than animal? It would be one thing if the Gundam suit was more a supplement to his form like the electrope was for Wicked Thunder, but it's like the majority of this design. Unless this shard's version of Fenrir that the soul comes from was more machine somehow, it just doesn't make sense to me. Maybe the soul is from Cloud's motorcycle, idk.

I personally like that they are using feral souls as an outlet for their own interests and individuality, instead of letting the feral souls overtake their entire performance. But it does feel like a bit of a disconnect when there's no obvious tells or references to the beast they are using. Maybe Savage will fix that, I don't know. Still, a non-issue for me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tehmon

I personally like that they are using feral souls as an outlet for their own interests and individuality, instead of letting the feral souls overtake their entire performance. But it does feel like a bit of a disconnect when there's no obvious tells or references to the beast they are using. Maybe Savage will fix that, I don't know. Still, a non-issue for me.

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If Savage makes them more thematically fitting of their feral souls, it'll feel like a kick in the teeth as a semi-casual player. I know they're going to save stuff for Savage. But the whole storyline has to do with the use of feral souls breaking apart their souls only the fights don't feel like the feral souls matter (again, Brute Abombinator excepted). Like, even Howling Blade could have just been an electrode suit for how thematically is tied to fenrir. :/

Teir 1 feels like it's more fitting with the feral souls lining up with their interests to. At least with Honey B. Lovely who is also an idol/some sort of star? Brute Bpmber also in that the arcadion is his whole life.

i think the fights were a lot more fun than previous savage tiers (also the first fight had moonwalking frogs)

are people only complaining for the sake of complaining about ANYTHING?