Ran'ji > WoD + Oracle of Light + Scorn!?

[PeppermintBrown]

It's all well and good investing in the "Yeah, but I'm the WoL, the strongest peep in the land", but you have to account for the story. Zenos, almost entirely by himself, turned the war on Doma on its head. If someone like him can't go toe-to-toe with the WoL, who is still just a mere mortal (albeit one blessed by Light), then you will never feel threatened by anyone. Same applies to Ran'Jit. Ran'Jit is undoubtedly one of the most powerful characters on the First - a war-veteran for generations, trained in a specific art to perfection (can't recall the name - begins with B).

If characters like these can't go toe-to-toe with the WoL in your mind then you're setting yourself up to be disappointed every time a villain is introduced, seeing as you're the almighty and unstoppable WoL who can never be threatened because WoL is boss, WoL is life. We need to be stopped from time to time otherwise nobody will invest in any threat. As it stands, the vast majority of the game is a case of "We don't like throwing you at our problems, WoL, but let's throw you at our problems, because you're the key to everything and we love you, you're the bestest and strongest and most amazingest person".

I don't mind that they beat us.

I mind that they beat us, and then for no apparant reason, we beat them, only because we 'leveled up.' It's lazy and boring writing.

Take Fordola for example, when we fight her for the last time after she shows off her Resonant powers at the bridge canon thing, we don't just beat her because we leveled up. We come up with a plan that uses her newfound power against her.

With Zenos, we get spanked, we get spanked, we win, for no apparent narrative reason. With Ran'jit we get spanked, have a brief inconclusive fight, then kill him, for no apparant narrative reason. Other than 'we leveled up' which is not satisfying story wise.

Losing is fine, but when a character dominates us effortlessly and then we beat them later for no apparent reason THAT is when I have a problem with it.

I have a similar problem with Shinryu. Shinryu is presented as such a big deal that Popolymo sacrifices himself just to buy us time to come up with a plan to stop it. And we resort to working with Nero to unleash Omega on it rather than fight it normally.

Come the end of 4.0... we just kill it casually like any other primal.

I don't mind that there are people or monsters that are stronger than us, but when they present these massive threats and then in the end we just have a normal fight with them and kill them that's just not satisfying.

[TankHunter678]

Losing is fine, but when a character dominates us effortlessly and then we beat them later for no apparent reason THAT is when I have a problem with it. .

I want to point out that we were actually beating Ran'jit before he figured out how our power flow worked and immobilized us (or at least I was, I got him down to half health before he pulled the move off and I was still topped off in health on my SAM). He showed off his special move, which proceeded to never work again against us when he used it later because our characters had figured it out in return. So the next time we actually seriously fought we straight up beat him, despite him fighting in his powered up form. Were it not for that one move he pulled we would have killed him back at Laxan Loft.

The problem though is that Ran'jit was not our villain narratively. He was the equivalent of a mid-boss for the mid-boss. He was Thancred's major villain and foil, so Thancred should have been the one to give him the final blow.

[PeppermintBrown]

I want to point out that we were actually beating Ran'jit before he figured out how our power flow worked and immobilized us (or at least I was, I got him down to half health before he pulled the move off and I was still topped off in health on my SAM). He showed off his special move, which proceeded to never work again against us when he used it later because our characters had figured it out in return. So the next time we actually seriously fought we straight up beat him, despite him fighting in his powered up form. Were it not for that one move he pulled we would have killed him back at Laxan Loft.

The problem though is that Ran'jit was not our villain narratively. He was the equivalent of a mid-boss for the mid-boss. He was Thancred's major villain and foil, so Thancred should have been the one to give him the final blow.

I agree he should have died after Thancred's fight with him.

As for our rematch with him there I never saw a moment that was like 'hah that's not gonna work now' just the same old 'avoid aoes while fighting him.' The first duel with him also didn't feel like we were beating him to me. When he says 'now i have your measure' it seemed to me he was just testing us and decided he was done toying around and went in for the win.

[FrejyaAthenes]

Much like the "Ran'Jit is part Sin Eater" theory, I never quite saw how Ran'Jit beating us was a result of some strange new technique that we just happened to figure out later.

[TankHunter678]

Much like the "Ran'Jit is part Sin Eater" theory, I never quite saw how Ran'Jit beating us was a result of some strange new technique that we just happened to figure out later.

If you look at the fight in Laxan Loft he disables us with a very specific lightning based attack. When he faced us again in Eulmore he used that same attack but it failed to disable us.

[FrejyaAthenes]

If you look at the fight in Laxan Loft he disables us with a very specific lightning based attack. When he faced us again in Eulmore he used that same attack but it failed to disable us.

That could also be argued as we're too strong for it to work on (ie. "we leveled up"), same with how Zenos stopped being able to stun us except for when we were in Yotsuyu's head.

I mean, I get the idea, but what I want to understand is how did people here translate that to "He's using a special technique that blocks off our aetheric flow that we later figured out while we were doing everything else in the story?" Again, with Fordola we're definitively shown taking measures to overcome her ability. With Ran'Jit, it feels more like people are making guesses.

Like, if it doesn't work because we "figured it out," what exactly did we figure out and how did we stop it?