Please no "all of them are bad" (or at least not without explaining what could be done better, always love the criticisms with breakdowns in discussions), since I do agree that all of them are flawed in one way or another but I can sort of imagine what the writers were going for with some of them. I was wondering if anyone else had thoughts on what turned out decent and what was unbearably bad.

As requested, I revisited the concept from my older post but with gunner this time.

Although I wasn’t able to create a look as close to the default as I managed to with the scout, I tried to imagine what a gunner’s default head would look like as he ages. Thus the receding hairline turning from widow’s peak to horseshoe (stuff of nightmares), and the long sideburns growing into friendly mutton chops.

I’d love to hear your feedback and/or your headcanons about this "veteran" gunner.

Most noticeable height difference here between Imran and Devlin and they're not supposed to be too far apart from one another. In some of the pre-release material I feel like there is a difference between the height of characters yet in the current version everyone's model appears to be the same height?

I think the design looks rather odd with the default ski mask, as if it lacks something

A remake of the biome themed outfits collection for all classes from 2 years ago.

I changed some outfits to add variety, remade some biomes' sets to fit their theme better and/or to generally look better, and made some changes based on the feedback I got from the last time as well as my own observations.

The outfits are made to resemble the biome's color palette and/or to look fitting in said environment. The ones that seem less clearly connected to the biome for one reason or another I took some artistic liberties and essentially made head canons of how I imagine the dwarves working there.

OBVIOUSLY SPOILERS AHEAD

TL;DR: I do not know what I was expecting from the Needy Girl Overdose anime, and I am left with conflicted feelings about many aspects of it. I feel like the plot and its presentation often come off as pretentious, whether justifiably or (in my opinion more often than justifiably) not.

I want to start with the positives, because while I was left confused about certain production decisions, I ultimately did not find the show bad (or maybe I just do not want to think I did).

Ame/KAngel’s voice actor, Sally Amaki, did an impeccable job. It was already a treat to hear the character(s) voiced last year through the songs, Angel Radio, and other smaller things, and the anime gave even more of that. The range of emotions and the distinct depiction of the voices by a single voice actor was easily one of the highlights for me. Her voice can sound silky smooth one moment and like she is trying to curse your very soul the next.

Certain visual elements and scenes were very pleasing to the eye, even though I found the editing as a whole questionable, which I will get to later. Overall, it is a pretty beautiful series. In many scenes, it feels like the creators made up for the lack of action or movement by making them look like paintings or just pretty as standalone scenes.

The soundtrack is also pretty nice. Aiobahn is a good artist and it shows, even if I would have liked more original tracks or at least less of the fucking Pachelbel’s Canon.

And now, the main purpose of this whole wall of text: the things I disliked or found weird.

A lot of the negative aspects for me revolve around a feeling of pretentiousness. I cannot say exactly why that feeling is so present. Could the budget not fit the full scope of Nyarla’s ideas or integrate them better? Maybe some higher-ups cut that vision down? Or maybe the vision just "sounded better in the head"?

Starting with something related to the positives: the overall animation felt rather cheap. That is not a bad thing on its own (I'm not picky) but some scenes clearly had more attention put into them, which made the lower-quality ones stand out more. There was also an attempt at what I'd jokingly call "studio Shaft style editing", with cuts to abstract(-ish) visuals or to something vaguely related to represent a certain action. It reminded me of how Shaft sometimes worked around lower budgets with more stylized editing. It was not all bad, but sometimes it felt too forced or abstract, which added to the feeling of pretentiousness I had.

The soundtrack is also pretty repetitive. Aiobahn is good, but there are only so many times I can listen to the same few tracks seemingly reused ad nauseam, especially since some of them are already from the game’s OST. And that damn Pachelbel’s Canon. Man, that song/motif being reused so many times really got under my skin by the end of the anime.

Lastly, I want to go over my gripes with the plot without extending this wall of text too much (and I think I failed at that) :

• What was the point of Kache? I felt like her only real contributions to the plot were being Michica’s high school friend and showing the perspective of a non-streamer person. Besides that, could literally anyone else not have given the same gifts and said the same things to move the plot forward? She had a purpose in theory, but in practice she often felt more like a plot function than a character.
• The P-chan "mystery" was as shallow as a puddle. In the main game, the reveal of P-chan being an imaginary friend, tulpa, or whatever exact term fits best, was a substantial moment that you had to go through quite a lot to see. It recontextualized many aspects of the story. In the anime, it is not hidden very well and gets resolved within what feels like a few scattered sentences across a few episodes. I guess they just could not fit it into the plot better?
• There is also a pressing amount of references that either made me want to roll my eyes, feel dumb, or just feel confused. By the end, I got the impression that to grasp the full picture, you need to understand the significance the Bible (the story of Judas), Dostoevsky’s works (The Brothers Karamazov), the biographies of Marilyn Manson and David Bowie, as well as the significance of the repetition of Pachelbel’s canon...?  And it still feels like I might be missing some of the references. The point is that the plot has so many allusions, direct references, and retellings of other stories that even seemingly simple plot points felt overly complex.
• What do you mean Ame is not your real name? And what was with that final two-minute bit with KAngel and an otaku leading into the credits??

In the end, while I am left confused by many things, some of which I probably forgot to even mention here, I cannot say that I am disappointed in the show because... I do not know what I was expecting. Even Run With My Sick seemed to have difficulties properly adapting the game without changing many aspects of the plot, so I am not exactly surprised that the Needy Girl Overdose anime came out rather messy. Maybe that is just how the style and plot of the game translate to this medium? As in the general vibes, the structure, the internet-poisoned metamodernistic feeling and whatnot... Is this even making sense? Do you get what I mean?

Before anything else, I want to make this clear: this is not meant as a "the specialist system was actually good" post, or a defense of KF3's launch state. I understand why people disliked specialists being tied to perks, and I am not saying the system should have stayed exactly as it was.

Has anyone tried to imagine what a good version of the "hero shooter" style character system could have looked like? I feel like most people immediately hated the specialist system, which is understandable, but I wonder if the idea itself could have worked better with different execution.

During the betas and around the time KF3 launched I had an interesting moment while playing with the default Obi/Medic look. Some players seemed to seek said look out when they needed healing. That might not be the best justification of course but it made me wonder if clearer identity could have helped the specialists. What if more than just Obi, Devlin, and Nakata had strong colors or standout features? What if they don't stop there and go beyond on character identity?

My basic thought is: what if the specialists were fleshed out more, made easier to recognize at a glance, and given more personality to justify them being tied to specific classes? Something like short conversations/exchanges between characters, like in Vermintide or Darktide, could have helped make them feel less like restrictions and more like actual characters with roles or, well "specialists". KF2 already had some weapon preference voice lines, so a "stronger version of that" could have helped sell the idea.

Maybe with all of that the system would have felt less like "you are forced to play this character for this perk" and more like "this character represents this role"?

What do you think? Could a well-made "hero shooter" style system have been a tolerable stand-in for free character selection or is the idea not fit for Killing Floor no matter the form or quality?