Category: maxeditpls

Holo Vs Robo – a Plants Vs Zombies inspired Hololive Fan Game

I tried to cook bacon this morning after removing 2-3 feet of snow from around my car. As a result, I type this in an apartment filled with an incredible sort of grey haze, like a small cloud of carcinogenic fog has decided to take a nap, sprawling from the kitchen toward the general living room space.

None of this has anything to do with Holo Vs Robo, but if at any point my thoughts wander a little too far, it’s probably from the smoke inhalation.

Anyway. Holo Vs Robo. It’s a Hololive themed Plants Vs Zombies clone. It’s a perfectly okay game, if a bit underwhelming currently in some areas. If you like Hololive, and never played Plants Vs Zombies, you’ll probably like this. If you don’t know what Hololive is, it’s a Japanese VTuber company, and if you don’t what VTubers are, you can either watch this video, or live in blissful ignorance.

On the other hand, apparently Plants Vs Zombies came out 16 years ago, back when I still had hope for the future, and joy in my heart, and given that it’s been turned from a lovely polished single game, to a franchise that included a class-based shooter (that I actually really liked) and a billion terrible mobile games, I figure it’s probably worth discussing the mechanics at least a little bit.

Gameplay

Overall, this is a Tower Defense game. If you’re not familar with the genre, it goes something like this: Waves of enemies spawn in, and you the player need to build structures to attack and stop them from reaching your base. When I call Holo Vs Robo a Plants Vs Zombies clone, it’s not because the two are both tower defense games, it’s because HvR pretty much lifts all of it’s mechanics wholesale from PvZ.

This includes things like the pre-battle screen. Here, you’ll select the up to 8 units you’ll be able to use in any given battle that you want to bring in, while on the right side of the screen being given a preview of the enemy types you’re going to face. Enemies start out as fairly simple robots, and evolve into fancier versions as the game goes on, most of which are some sort of Hololive callback or in-joke.

Once you’re in a level, you’ll spend Cheer (sun/money) to place down towers. Towers have a variety of properties, best demonstrated by going over the ones I have in the above image.

Furthest on the Left, we have Ollie, the red-haired one. Ollie doesn’t attack, but does generate additional Cheer to buy more towers. In the second lane from the left, we have Gura (White Hair/Blue Shirt) and Aqua (Pink Hair). Gura shoots bullets that travel down her lane, and the lane above and below her, while Aqua shoots fast weak attacks down the lane she’s placed in. The green one is Fauna, who heals towers in front of her, and the brown haired one is Nodoka, who acts as a wall.

So there’s your general list of tower behaviors: Generate resources, attack, heal, or generally serve as a wall.

You might notice that there’s no enemies actually visable on the screen, because they’re getting pretty much as fast as they spawn in, at least in this specific case.

There are some special robots, and a few levels that are a fair amount more challenging, but overall, this is not a very hard game. In my case, I found everything but the bonus content and sliding pannel levels to be pretty easy, taking about 11 hours total to do 90% of the games content.

Complaints and Praise

I don’t think Holo Vs Robo is a bad game, but that’s mostly because Plants Vs Zombies wasn’t a bad game. There are some things I am more tolerable of, and some which I am less tolerable of. There’s also a few things I quite like.

As a small thing, the menu options is a bit shit, and following a grand tradition of a certain types of games, I had to launch the game with custom unity flags to make it run on my ultrawide, something I’ve found myself doing a lot more then I’d like to as of late.

As a larger thing, the game doesn’t really do as much to solve the fundamental problem of tower defense games: Once you find a setup that works, you tend to just run that setup until it stops working. This was also a problem that Plants Vs Zombies had, but again: That game came out 16 years ago. While a few levels spice things up, there are still really limited options for Cheer generation, and many of the “good” units… just stay good throughout the entire game. As a result, I don’t really remember what I did during the last 10 levels prior to the finale.

I did really enjoy a lot of the bonus content. There’s some fun goofy little mini-games in addition to the story mode. The art for the little chibi Hololive members is pretty great.

Overall, I don’t really recomend Holo Vs Robo to non-Hololive fans at the moment. It’s a perfectly fine game, but so much of the humor and enjoyment here is based on knowing Hololive in-jokes, that I have to imagine it’ll feel a bit non-sequiter for anyone else.

For Hololive fans, if you’ve never played the original Plants Vs Zombies, this might not be a bad place to try it out. It’s $7.00 on Steam.

Side Note: As a Hololive fan, I was a bit bummed to discover that the Hololive member I follow (and whose on my computer case), Mori Calliope wasn’t available as a tower, but as one of the single use powerups, and IMO, the worst one in the game. It’s a not tragedy or anything, but I can imagine folks who discover their favorite member either isn’t available, or just kinda sucks being a little disappointed like I was. I wish the game did offer more ways to use each tower type. It’s a small thing, but something I did find myself thinking about.

Path of Exile 2 – The (Beta) Campaign

The Path of Exile 2 beta is out. I got a demo a few months ago, but now that I’ve fully played through it, I have even more thoughts. I’m going breaking down my thoughts on it into two writeups, one on the campaign, and one the endgame. Technically, they are the same game, but mechanically they are very different experiences.

Now, before I get into that, there’s some brief background that is necessary. Path of Exile 2 is a sequel to my 2nd most played game of all time, Path of Exile. (about 3000+ hours?) My thoughts are going to be at least somewhat in comparison to it’s predecessor.

As a brief filter, I offer the following phrases:
“juicing maps”
“6L”
“Farming blood adqueducts for a Tab”

If you know what any of these mean, just click here to skip ahead. If you don’t, you are likely to find the following background information helpful.

ARPG’s in Brief

Path of Exile 2, hereby abreviated to PoE 2, is a isometric ARPG from Grinding Gear Games.

For those who might not know, ARPG stands for “Action Role-Playing Game.” ARPG’s are defined by having virtually no roleplaying elements, and the action parts dominated by spamming your abilities every second you have the mana/rage/potato points to do so.

Here’s a less cynical definition: ARPG’s are traditionally top-down or isometric real time action games defined by extensive skill trees, character customization and itemization. Combat generally has two modes, fighting against trash mobs, which are pinatas for stacks of loot, and fighting against bosses, which are also pinatas, except this time they have a baseball bat.

Trash mobs are fairly brainless and just rush the player, while bosses tend to be more correographed experiences, closer to something from a Bullet Hell, or Hades.

The first Path of Exile differentiated itself from other ARPG’s by making everything into game an item, and making those items tradable. Skills are items, (skill gems) which got socketed into other items you wore, and those sockets had colors determining which gems could be socketed.

The ability to refund skills points was an item. To enter endgame areas, specific items were needed. Same to fight endgame bosses. To buy items from vendors, it was necessary to have more items to trade them.

It’s other big differentiator was a skill tree so massive that one of my favorite things to do is pop it out as a joke, just to mess with people, who did not believe it was real.

Finally, there was the gem system. Gems could be supported by other gems. Take a fireball, link it to a multiple projectile gem, and now it shoots three fireballs. Link it to a piercing projectiles gem, and now they penetrate. Link it to a faster cast speed, make a few more tweaks, and now your character is a Fourth of July fireworks display.

Changes between PoE and Poe 2

PoE 2 makes a lot of changes to the above underlying systems, most of which serve to make the campaign much less punishing for inexperienced players. Gold exists as a flat currency to use with vendor NPC’s. This makes getting leveling gear a much easier process.

Gold can also be used to refund skill points. This is possibly the biggest change between the two games, because in PoE, a badly built skill tree would softlock a character. This would make it impossible to get the items needed to respec, and pretty much force the player to make a new character.

Sockets on items and their associated colors are also gone. Skill gems are socketed into a general skill gem menu. The types of support gems that can be used are limited by primary stats. There are even more small tweaks to make suggestions to players on what gems to use, and to prevent them from making choices that simply don’t work.

The skill tree is still massive. There’s now a dodge roll. Movement is a much more flowy thing then it previously was.

The general changes though result in much easier on-boarding experience with the games initial systems, instead of purely being thrown into the deep end, like the player was with the first Path of Exile.

Does all of this mean the game is easier?

Well, yes and no.

The Campaign

Generally I like the campaign. There are some incredibly sloggy bits, notably a single map in Act 2 that just goes on forever, and three or four of the Act 3 areas really tested my patience for just wanting to see the next few things.

That said, outside of these, I really didn’t have many complaints. The bosses feel far more diverse and interesting then their PoE 1 counterparts, and also much harder. The final boss of Act 1 in particular killed me about 10-20 times before I finally defeated it. It’s worth noting that I actually killed it right as it killed me, but that still counts, so on I went.

They’re also just much more fun as a general visual spectacle. My personal favorite is probably Crowbell, a giant crow-man thing that tries to beat the player to death with a bell. The fight isn’t particularly hard, but does have a fun transitions, with Crowbell running around, powering up, wrenching a bell off it’s stand, then using it as a bludgeon.

The trash mobs… well, they’re ARPG trash mobs. The nicest thing I can say about them is that they did in fact contribute to my /deaths count.

Finally, there’s the story elements. I generally quite liked these, even if the current content kinda ends on bit of a cliffhanger. I’m also the only person I know who cared about the lore of PoE, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. There are some callbacks to PoE, but I don’t think missing them will have any impact on your enjoyment.

I will say that I personally experienced a moment of glee getting to fight a character whose only ever been hinted at in flavor text from PoE, but another friend of mine who played the game before me didn’t even realize he was a recurring character, and thought he was someone new.

If you’re playing through the campaign without a build guide, or information about the game, I’d estimate it’ll take about 12-20 hours to play through? There’s a good chunk of game here. That said, the campaign does not currently conclude the story, as that’s planned for the games full release, so if you’re playing the game just for the campaign, I’d hold off.

Overall Thoughts

I like PoE 2. I have problems with the game, but they’re not present during the campaign. It changes a lot of esoteric bullshit that was required to play, made the boss fights more interesting, and is just generally more friendly, if not easier.

Some parts are a bit of slog.

That said, I think the main reason to currently play the campaign is to get to endgame. The campaign is not a finished game yet, with a complete story, and the beta is currently $30.

If the full campaign maintains it’s current level of quality for the remaining acts on full release, Path of Exile 2 will be worth playing purely as a standalone ARPG just for that. But for players who aren’t in a rush, or want a new ARPG, I would say to wait.

How to Get the Lorcana Starter Decks for Cheap

So, maybe you read the last post, and despite the fact that Lorcana boosters are currently going for a street value of $5 an ounce, (a ratio that really feels like it should be reserved for a different type of substance), you still want in?

All right. It’s a pretty fun game. But instead of buying those starter decks at prices people are selling them, we’re instead going to use the power of the free market in our favorite for once.

DeckSealed CostSingles Cost & TCG Player Link
Amber & Amethyst$34-38$24
Emerald & Ruby$23-25$16.28
Sapphire & Steel$30-32$24.37

Here’s how it works. First, click on one of the above links. This will bring you to TCG Players bulk entry page. It will look something like this.

If this all looks good, click the add to cart button! And presto, we have a cart with all the cards in the starter deck!

It’s also going to currently be costing you a lot more then the starter deck. No worries. We can fix that by clicking on the Optimize button in the lower left corner, right under the Paypal option.

After this, TCG player will try to optimize for shipping and buying from the fewest number of sellers. If everything looks good, you can send your purchase though, and end up with your very own Lorcana starter deck for less than a retail video game.

Ed Note: This writeup contains links to TCG Player, the management of which is a bunch of union busting corporate weasels. These aren’t affiliate links, (we don’t ever do that) and we don’t endorse their anti-competitive bullshit. That said, they’re owned by eBay, so it’s not like there’s a better place to go buy cheap singles that isn’t tainted by a desire to screw the employee.

Ed Note 2: This was written when Lorcana was being CRAZY scalped. It’s possible that the prices have gone down to a sane range by the time you look at this writeup. Such is the internet, and writing about collectibles. The general approach to using TCG Player, and the optimize functionality for buying singles likely remains the same though.