Hey everyone, thanks so much for doing this podcast series. I really enjoyed listening to all your comments and your tastes regarding anime. I too love all the tropes the game unashamedly incorporates.
I was surprised that no one mentioned how Olga was solely responsible for killing the village girl that Asura thought resembled his daughter. This led to a strong motivation for Asura to want to take her out, but he lost his mind in the process. It also showed that Asura truly embodied the title of a Guardian General because he cared about the well-being of the humans. In one of the illustrations, they talk about the Black Wrath Asura went on a rampage attacking both Gohma and soldiers, but didn't harm the villagers.
I was pretty annoyed about the DLC Ending process as well. The way I justify it in my mind now is that the game wasn't a big enough hit to make a sequel, so they just released a small expansion in place of a sequel. That's probably not the truth, but it's easier to digest. After playing Part IV though, the last 2 episodes trump all prior episodes combined for me and makes it all worth it.
The gameplay was definitely clunky, and playing Episode 18 over and over again to unlock stuff was such a chore. Playing a lot of DMC and other Hack n Slash series made the combat pretty standard and not too difficult, just tedious.
If I can get a capture card, I plan on playing through the game with the Blind Master gauge, because this seems to be the closest way to portray the game as an anime as it removes the hud. Now if only they could patch it so we could record our gameplay andremove the button prompts.
Thanks again, I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion. It's nice to hear others that appreciate all the small details.