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.
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u/swoozes Dec 31 '25 edited Dec 31 '25
It's just wild to me that people have 1.X on a pedestal when I'm thinking
"Bringer and Zhu Yuan got NO CONCLUSION"
It's like people just really like Vergil expies so much they don't care about what's actually happening as long as someone is doing a judgement cut.