Ding! Time for this month's news roundup. With the Ignition event wrapping up, I took the remaining Maximum Growth Potions to speed through these two levels. That means I'm now Level 270, which hits another important milestone, as it unlocks the next Grandis symbol from Hotel Arcs. Next milestone: Level 275! Should be possible this Fall.
To my pleasant surprise, I ended up liking the Hotel Arcs and Kalos storyline a lot. When they were revealed back in early 2021 and 2022 respectively, I kinda shrugged them off and felt indifferent to it. But after seeing these chapters in-game myself and going in spoiler-free with no expectations, and a weird instance of perfect timing where the original Korean voice acting happened to be included when I did these, I found myself having enjoyed it. Kudos, Nexon.
Unfortunately I can't say the same about Neo Tokyo 2, as I really did not enjoy the story direction post-Core Blaze. That was the turning point for me. I'm not going to write an entire blogpost about it because that's currently too much to write about, and I'd rather wait for the full release of NT2 before I jump to conclusions. But man, I find myself asking where it went wrong. The original Neo Tokyo is perhaps one of the most important updates in Maple's history, as it laid the groundwork for almost everything that is still relevant today. That cannot be understated. It was Nexon's magnum opus, and they've always treated it with an adequate amount of care. Not when they developed NT2, apparently.
When every major World Tour and mainline content adheres to the foundations that Neo Tokyo laid, it says a lot about the consistency, attention to detail and the quality of writing. The production quality of recent World Tour content has only gone up, with that jaw-dropping Phantom Forest makeover, the gravitas of Asura War and its ability to give even the flattest of characters some meaningful development and growth, or Showa Town's revamp being actually useful when it comes to maintaining Wings of Fate. It says a lot about the barren state of NT2 when it fails to adhere to the mere basics of its predecessor, when all other content made it look so effortless. NT2 has even less content than when Asura War was just an event, and it has less content than Neo Tokyo fifteen years ago. It then also destroys all the good writing and characters the original had. But I digress, I'll save this dissection for another time.
Anyway, an update on that Destiny blogpost. After spending weeks on that damned Power Stance chapter, I've just wrapped up the initial 4th Job draft. There are still three chapters left: Hyper Skills, 5th Job and my closing thoughts. That's all I have to say about it, for now. Hopefully I'll receive my big overseas Bonkles parcel next month...
But that's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!