Adventure Games

no seriously, i belive arlan is entirely intentionally bad and the way he is bad must have taken some serious foresight, ingenuity and maintanence.

we all know arlan is bad but im going to go over how he somehow has anti-synergy with so many of the games mechanics that it had to be intentional

CHAPTER 1: arlan consumes no SP.

this sounds like a good thing, you need SP to use skills, if arlan doesnt use SP then it free's up other characters to use it. except because arlan is a pure damage dealer he there is no reason to not use his skill ever. basically arlan doesnt consume SP but he doesnt generate it either, he's entirely SP neutral which doesnt really matter because of all the supports we have for SP consumption. This brings me to my main point, we have in this game buffs for consuming SP, all characters can benefit from these buffs except arlan, he is physically incapable of consuming SP for buffs and its never worth it to use him to gain SP to prock those buffs either.

CHAPTER 2: arlan is a destruction character.

Arlan consumes 15% of his MAX hp, this makes building hp on him effectively worthless because he's going to set himself to 1% in 7 skill activations anyway. arlan also has the worst defensive scaling in the game meaning that none of the defensive stats can help him unless they add in an evasion stat into the game, and arlan gains access to it. arlan also happens to be a destruction unit meaning that unless you have a preservation character (which you will need to) he is in the class with the highest aggro value in the game, so he has no natural bulk yet he is one of the most likely to be attacked, he's cooked essentially. also i feel like i should mention that arlans traces increase his HP%, we have been over how hp% is worthless on him so his own traces have anti-synergy with his kit.

CHAPTER 3: did i mention arlan hates HP.

Arlan consumes HP and he has no real way of getting that hp back or keeping himself in his 20% hp goldilocks zone where he is the bulkiest he can be while dealing the most damage he can. you could employ a healer but like, they wont stop healing him at just 20%, and new healers wont wait until he's at 20% to heal him again. you cant use abundance with him because they will take his hp up to high, he does not want to be healed (we all know this but i feel like it deserved a chapter)

CHAPTER 3.5: consuming hp is largly useless.

there is a support for basically everything in this game, except consuming hp which is the only thing arlan is the best at lol. blade similarly suffers from this, but the hp consuming relic set is good on blade and arlans best set it still the lightning one so whatever.

CHAPTER 4: arlans ascension traces and his eidolons are sadly worthless

A2 gives him 20% hp back on kill if he was below 30% hp, this is a boss focused game and arlan is your dps, if you have him killing adds then idk what to tell you

A4 gives him a 50% res against DoT debuffs, this only matters if he doesnt already have the DoT on him, if he for example has 1 stack of windshear then all the other stacks will ignore this trace, for some reason

A6 gives him a one time damage immunity if he enters battle at 50% hp or lower. go into MoC right now and try to activate it (dont waste your time) in endgame content and in story iirc your team is healed to full before a big fight so its never going to activate in a fight where it would actually mean anything.

E2 is useful an extra damage boost is always nice ( i wont comment on giving the only darkskin character the ability "Shackle breaker" or "breaking free", brother i dont see any chains on you)

E4 would be nice, if it were useful. he gains gepards passive for the first two turns of combat. if your arlan is going down in the first two turns of combat you have other issues. this was nerfed before launch where it didnt have this two turn limit.

CHAPTER 5: the problem with being faster than light

arlan needs shields to be useful, sheilds have a set duration based on the number of turns each character takes. the faster a character the faster their shield will dissapear. speed on arlan is like most things on arlan, a double edged sword where the side facing you is a lot sharper than the one facing out. the moment that shield goes down and a falling speck of dust grazes that boy hes cooked.

CHAPTER 6: who even is this guy

arlan is tied with those twins that nobody cares about for the least story relevant character in this game. but unlike they who were given an event, id contest that arlan could be entirely deleted from the game and nothing would change. arlan is in that gwenpool zone where their pet is infinately more liked and remembered. arlan actually has less dialouge than peppy due to the critter pick event.

Epilouge: this is spectacular

arlan is to weakness what satoru goatjo is to strength, his own kit doesnt work with itself, his kit doesnt work with the game, he himself doesnt work with the story he is somehow the least liked character in this game (according to some reddit poll) despite satan being playable. how has this happened, all of these individually would have been enough but all together, the writing team, and the design team both hate this guy? i have my theories.

I’ve been playing the Witcher 3 a lot recently, and their two story DLCs are dirt cheap on Steam currently.

Blood and Wine ALONE is like a sequel game with many hours of content, and I still haven’t dove into Hearts of Stone.

Witcher 3 and RDR2 are two 10/10 games in my opinion, and it just sucks that RDR2 never got any DLCs to make the incredible game even better. Such a missed opportunity man. Imagine what could’ve been