That night, Brad takes comfort in Sam being around. Feelings are starting to blossom between the two.
It's Autistically heartwarming. That's part of my new segment, "
I dare you to put that on your website's download page."
The following Meatmech segment is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst one yet. Before I get into why this is, I want to get into character balance, because there isn't any, and this has been apparent since the Brad/Lianna fight. Each one has their own gameplay style and one of two primary attacks, a unique secondary ability, and a unique passive ability.
The TL;DR is that due to how the game mechanics work, Lianna is far and away the strongest one. It isn't even a contest. She goes twice as fast as the other competitors and due to her secondary (a forward dash) this she has the best approach game (easily above Sam) and second-best recovery game (right below Cass). She also uses Crush, which is the better of the two punches because it inflicts a lasting status effect that weakens the enemy more than bash. Even better, if you time the punch so you do it when using her movement boost, the momentum will launch the enemy further, and while it's not as strong as Brad's YEET KICK, it doesn't fuck you to use.
So Lianna's blatantly overpowered. Cass and Sam are basically all right. Still with me?
Brad is
awful. While he's
potentially a very good defensive character, his passive requires him to be disadvantaged and his secondary is the only one that's as much of a hindrance as it is a help, since launching an enemy leaves you immobile and unable to act for about three full seconds. Worse, his turning seems to be bad and he handles like he's a defective truck carrying a heavy load when he takes damage. Every time you use Brad, you're effectively handicapping yourself. But Lianna is fucking
insufferable, so the choice becomes using a weaker character or putting up with Lianna being an asshole.
Nothing can prepare you for the sheer difficulty spike of the next area, especially if you elected to play Brad. The area opens with a 2v1, then a 3v1 with a giant, then another 2v1 with another giant, followed by a fucking 5v1 with a third giant over increasingly bad terrain and the game keeps starting you in positions where your back is to the killzone. You are
beyond screwed on this map, and this one truly drives home why the game included a "Skip Battle" command: because this thing is blatantly unfair and took me around an hour of real time to complete, and the only reason I was able to beat it without skipping is because I was basically forced to swap to Lianna, who as we've discussed, is blatantly overpowered.
And since we've used Lianna, we get to see her be fucking insufferable again:
Anyway, the character you chose chews Emmy out for fucking with their mech without asking by installing a comms system. In the case of Lianna this results in a rather hilarious exchange between her and Moss because they're both assholes and neither of them are right.
The bright keeps fucking up, however, and it's clear we're close now.
We scale the mountain as Sam. It's hard, but the fights are all 2v1s and it ultimately proves to be vastly easier than the Brad vs Lianna fight
or the previous map. The bright keeps pulsing, and we keep climbing higher and higher until we can no longer; the road's been knocked out.
Moss offers to use what is effectively a teleportation device to lob Cass up to the summit, and we go now to the big reveal.
At the top of the mountain, we run into our old "friend."
The mysterious man knows Cass well. Having watched as the sun was stolen, along with the future of the world, he has come to the conclusion that order must be beaten out of anarchy, lest chaos reign.
As the first test of his device, he intends to vaporize Hopeville.
Determined to stop this outcome, Cass fights him.
She is also
mechanically the absolute worst choice for this fight, even if the best from a character perspective.
Cass is an incredibly defensive fighter. This guy is incredibly aggressive, has absolute priority, Lianna's passive speed boost, Sam's short-ranged teleport, and the most broken of all, he can attack - and use abilities - while under the effects of a status effect. This makes Crush essentially useless against him for the active effect and Knockout is not a guaranteed free hit. His sheer speed and power means he can effortlessly pin you against a wall and ream you, if he doesn't just send your ass sailing off a cliff. In short, Cass is even worse than Brad here.
It's a supposed-to-lose fight, but it is one you can win, especially if you're an asshole and swap in Lianna starting round 2 because, as we established, she's by far the most powerful character in the game. However, this comes with it its own problems.
Have you ever played through
Final Fantasy VI? I'm bringing it up for a reason beyond me wanting to play literally anything that isn't
EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER - there's a story beat from it that this segment kind of reminds me of in a way, so hark to the tale of this old man a few minutes and listen. In
Final Fantasy VI, about 60% or so of the way through the game, a major event happens that screws the entire setting as you knew it up forever. You wind up with one character, alone, on an island, with one of the only people she was close to, and by all accounts, everyone else in the world is dead. That one person along with you is sick, and becomes bedridden. You are then tasked to catch fish, since he can't do it and he has to eat. While it
is possible to save him if you catch only the best fish, it's partly dependent on the RNG and
by far the better narrative happens if you fail (which is what the game expects):
She tries to kill herself, and only in surviving the attempt does she find something to live for.
I bring this up because this is
the exact same thing that happens in
EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER, albeit in reverse. If you lose the fight, he lives and escapes, and a host of potential storylines from this incident emerge. If you successfully beat him.... It's infinitely worse. Not only do you still ultimately fail to save Hopeville, but anything you could have learned about how the mystery man did this or who he was working for has been lost because Lianna murdered his ass. And Lianna's spiel that follows only adds salt to the wound - Lianna has no idea how to disarm the device and would rather posture about how cool and badass she is than even try to begin disarming the device.
I need to point out that not a single character has "whined" about their loss that we've seen, and Lianna openly declares that she murdered them while they begged for their lives. And this is the character that Heather Flowers believes we're supposed to root for.
......You could go about finding that remote any time, Lianna.
The thing is? Like I said - this is a supposed-to-lose fight. And you know what that means?
It means that Lianna, for all this bluster and bravado,
fails.
A roar unlike anything. Light so bright that you can't look upon it.
But look upon it they must.
The fucking sun has arrived. Hopeville is gone. Everything is ash.
Cass and Sam head down to check on the others. It does not go well.
Sam asks to help out. It goes as you might expect.
They're on their own now.
But Cass has an idea.
And thus, it all comes to a conclusion. Join me next post for the afterward and a big penalty shot session.
Also enjoy my context-free line to headline the entire review:
