Birthday Cup Review: Namine/Prompto vs. Suly/Dieter

This battle had alot of strategic maneuvering, healing, and defensive techniques, making judging pure damage difficult, which is no bad thing. Overall our heaviest damage dealers were Dieter and Prompto. This section is perhaps the closet in my mind as both Namine and Suly got pretty battered. This battle also stood out to me as both teams did well at taking the initiative, whereas most other matches i’ve reviewed thus far generally had one team keeping the other consistently in a reactionary state. Ultimately I give this section to Dieter and Sully as Dieter started laying down some real hurt in the closing posts, even through we didn’t have time to see how Suly’s temporal shenanigans would play out.

We had four characters with extremely unique skill-sets with not alot of overlap. Each member played out their thematic territory very well, with Dieter Black Magicking it up, Namine playing her enchantress mind-games, Prompto laying down some serious surpassing fire, and Sully puzzling everyone until chronomantic craziness went down. I feel like Suly and Dieter had far less teamwork going on, with Dieter doing the one many army thing. However I will say this was partially due to Suly being stunned (more on that below) and having more requirements to charge her abilities. However, ultimately I perceive Namine and Prompto’s strategies as being deeper and more creative, incorporating things such as hidden messages, testing the boundaries of protective fields, and other touches that brough the flair needed to claim this section.

This was one of the fairest matches i’ve seen thus far, with only one or two hard to follow evasions in the whole fight. These writers need no introduction, and everyone brought some great descriptions. I felt some of the summaries below could’ve been condescended and clarified, to give a better idea of the bass tacks of what was happening mechanically, but this is really a minor quibble. Players kept good track of both each other’s actions and acknowledged them in their posts, while taking reasonable measures to counteract them or just taking the hits. The only thing that concerned me was the amount of stuns being thrown around by Prompto. There were three explicit stun attempts. I’m unsure if ‘Freezing” from COCYTUS is imbolization or stunning, but if its the later our total goes up to 6. Irregardless, even though only one hit, repeatedly attempting to deprive the enemy of their entire turn seems like poor form in a medium ostensibly about mutual interaction. Perhaps my feelings on turn denial are a bit too strong, and if so take this with a grain of salt, but this minor matter is what determined an otherwise even split for me.

I agree that this fight was too short and thats unfortunate as I wanted more. Very entertaining reads throughout. In regards to damage, I feel Dieter and Sully did moreso however it was a very balanced fight; I feel all characters were utilizing their abilities appropriately and doing sufficient damage to one another. Damage was avoided from both sides not so much, but when it was avoided- abilities were utilized to showcase their effectiveness in combat. Very easy to follow along what was happening too, but I'll have to give the damage output to Dieter and Sully given there was more acknowledgement of the pain on Namine and Prompto.

Oh boy, this is a tough one. I enjoyed reading all of their fighting styles so much. Namine felt like an underdog in the beginning but ended up playing like Namine if she were in a fighting game, using her cannon abilities from the game series to battle effectively- it had me riled up with how cool it was. Dieter's posts as well were very descriptive and his fighting felt methodical and elegant; just really enjoyable to see his character's spirit shine in his fighting style. Sully felt very mechanical and I liked seeing her unique tick system come into play. Prompto was just a joy to read and his character's skills and style being portrayed as goofy and genuine (like his character) was a nice break from everyone else's engaging combat roleplay, but enjoyable and effective on his own. So very tough. I'm going to give this award based on which team I feel synergized better and overall felt more like a team.

Ah, they were all just so fair. Everyone took damage very well, I feel. Everyone reacted to each others' actions. Sportsmanship is going to be out the window here for me as I think everyone did a good job. Winner will be decided by descriptive writing here. I think everyone did a great job overall, but one side fell more so flat in this category due to post length here.