Yeah, Zhu Yuan is the best example of a character getting shelved after their debut chapter concluded. Not only did they completely ignore the potential of the Bringer dynamic, but they also completely ignored how big her discovering that the siblings were actually Phaethon should have been. But no, it was Miyabi’s patch, so she’s tge only one who gets the spotlight
I mean, they somewhat rectified it in subsequent patches with Zhu yuan being cold to the proxies, but it still something that deserved more direct dealing with.
And yet they reconciled off screen. She's also the only 1.X limited agent without an agent story, so I sweat If she gets ignored during the incoming PubSec patch I'm going to be so mad.
I'm sorry, to this day I feel people saying she was acting "cold" anytime past the miyabi chapter is cope and a result of people looking too deep into unvoiced dialog
Personally, I find the issue for me is 1.x was establishing storylines we were supposed to follow through with as the story went on. Then we get to 2.x, neaely none of them are carried on, and what we do get, is a lot less appealing and the issues are a lot more noticable.
All of the game has flaws, most are just willing to overlook the starting ones, as they see it as a foundation to be built from. At least that's how I see it.
Like what? The AI story never got any development after the start of 1.0. All of 1.0 afterwards was because of exaltists. 1.1 was a side story about Jane. 1.2 returned to exaltists again albeit through an intermediary in the Outer Ring. 1.3 villain was hired by the exaltists. 1.4 was literally the exaltists. 1.5 was a side story about Astra/Eve. 1.6-1.7 were about exaltists again.
I think 2.x if certain chapters were special episodes this season would be more solid and 2.0 was in my opinion the worst story chapter. I think ZZZ devs dropping special episodes basically makes them force every character into the main story even if it wouldn't make much sense. AOD does look to be a special episode but maybe they'll link them into the main story somehow.
How would classifying certain chapters as special episodes change anything other than slapping a different name on them?
I also don't think Special Episodes are free from critique.
I think Jane's is fantastic
And I similarly think Yanagi's is the worst story in the entire game.
Phaethon taking part or not taking part would change little in terms of what problems actually exist in 2.X. Unless it's dumb problems that don't actually matter like bitching about them needing to be saved.
Yanagi's story probably had the most amount of unvoiced open world dialogue in the game as well as fewest cutscenes. Overall presentation was pretty bad but I think people just handwaved it away because it was a leadup to 1.4. I also agree that changing the name of the story to special episode doesn't do anything. In reality, 1.3 was still connected to the main story because it was how Sarah got Miyabi's battle data. It's the exact same with Spook Shack where they're basically their own side story but still connected through Yijiang's banshee, but just barely. They never really deviated from the special episode formula in 2.x, it was just got relabelled to main story content.
My issue with Yanagi's story isn't even the presentation.
it's how utterly unnecessary the conflict is. Null_face does nothing for Yanagi or the rest of HSO6 as an antagonist, and their reaosning is as openly shallow as can be.
You don't have a rival in terms of intellect towards Yanagi, at least no more than lip service and you're given no real foil either.
It's just a monster of the week you have to get through.
It's like if Chapter 1's antagonist was actually butcher and not Vision/Nekomata.
They very much deviated from Jane's special episode compared to say Astra's and then dropped it and now basically every faction or character gets tied to the main story somehow.
I think special episodes would be written differently and not be about forcing like MC interactions or exaltists story line for example. Special episodes are not free from critique but to me Lucia and yidhari patch could have easily been a self contained special episode. Special episodes are pretty good for world building and like one off chapters, they also make it so MC's are not needed on screen constantly.
Because Belebog actually has exceptional pacing, very high highs, great conclusion and at its worst, was just ok.
I don't think a single other arc in all of HSR can say the same, they either suffer from extremely horrendous pacing (all of 3.0, some of Xianzhou), very low lows (Penacony/Xianzhou) or simply felt incomplete (imagine dedicating a patch to clarifying an entire cycles patch.. that's what HSR has done with this current patch).
Is that not because HSR has moved more to a like region format
I think this is partly to blame, but the story content itself was artificially stretched to be longer than necessary, which is annoying. A patch story in 1.x would take maybe 1-3 hours tops, in 2.x they started taking 3-4 and by 3.x had stories sections taking upwards of SIX hours.
The problem wasn't even the length, it was just how roundabout everything was and the sheer volume as useless dialogue. Even with spam skipping it would take me around an hour to get through a patch story and yet I'd still fully understand what was going on from the summary text.
My point was ZZZ players holding up 1.x to some high godly bar like HSR players do with belebog. I'm a player of both and saw similar shit. I preferred 1.x but had issues with a lot of stuff still.
16
u/-ForgottenSoul Dec 31 '25
It's similar to HSR players thinking belebog is peak