Kryomaani

There's something really wack with the scale of things in the potion scene. Like, the potion bottles fit comfortably in GS's hand, meanwhile they appear bigger than the rhea girl's head who is basically supposed to be hobbit sized but not really smaller than that? Weird.

Overall the art isn't quite as crisp but it gets the job done, and at the very least there wasn't any scenes with CGI Slayer (at least not yet, we'll have to see once we get more action on screen) which is a huge win.

Shield Hero

the content/story is much more mature than Frieren.

Goddamn Robbie Rotten has deeper motivations than any Shield Hero villain.

I'm surprised they didn't make the list given the general popularity, but let's be real here, Goblin Slayer is honestly mediocre and Shield Hero has been spiraling down the drain ever since it started.

While I do often feel that way too, it needs to be pointed out that Anime Corner is a bit of a niche site and this reflects only the opinions of 5408 people. Their polls are known to have a bit wack results at times. If you look at other sites, MAL for example has had 25k people rate the list's top entry, Sousou no Frieren. If you want to truly gauge something's popularity, it's worth looking at more than just one site.

The player characters are generally adventurers fated to achieve greatness, for them the extraordinary is just ordinary.

No offense to any potential fans but I do have to say how depressing I find it that any even remotely original anime are never getting a second season yet a million cookie cutter faux medieval European fantasy harems are greenlit every day. I get that they produce whatever sells but surely people will have to grow bored of the same thing being done over and over again? Surely...?

Yeah, it's depressing how much of wasted potential the criterion dungeons are. They fill a nice niche of 4 player hard content and being generally somewhere between extreme and savage, but the fact that the rewards are garbage mean most raiders aren't ever going back in after their first clear solely for the experience. All content sorely needs rewards to bring people back in to keep it alive and criterion dungeons are doing the absolute worst of all content except maybe rival wings.

This is definitely interesting and I look forward to see how it plays.

At the same time, I remain slightly skeptical, as big brand name tie-in products often tend to be less than stellar. It takes a lot of effort, testing and polishing to put out at truly good TTRPG system and it's not easy even for big companies that are dedicated to the industry. I'd love to see this succeed and continue to get extra material in the future, but at same time I've seen one too many fail trying to do things like this.

Brings to mind the Dark Souls TTRPG book built on top of D&D 5e, which was a thick tome absolutely chock full of gorgeus art and just as full of baffling, contradictory and clearly not at all playtested rules. Such a shame.

People tend to not realize how often something is going to be happening with a one in twenty chance and that you are going to be rolling your basic attack roll a gazillion times per session. When you start rolling the dice, making attacks every turn, that is going to come up very often. In fact, statistically this rule would mean that your character would be carrying on average ~13½ arrows. By the time you've rolled 14 times it's more likely that there was at least one 1 in there than not. With multiple attacks per turn that's going to happen infuriatingly often.

The way a party is going to be adjusting to a backstabbing murderhobo is to throw them out of the party at the earliest convenience. It's the only realistic outcome. If you want your character to be a part of the party, it's your job to come up with a backstory and personality that makes them willing to work with the party, not the others'.

The reason all of this is skipped on a meta level is that most people want to get to the actual adventuring instead of trying to figure out one good reason why they'd ever keep someone's unique evil snowflake in tow.

If theres going to be a party then the players are responsible for coming up with a justification why their character would agree to work together with the rest of the party. I will always welcome even evil characters if and only if their player can actually show that they are capable of the necessary teamwork. The evil guy helping good guys begrudginly because they get something out of it is a classic trope and that's all fine.

Meanwhile, if your alignment is the classic Chaotic Stupid and you go full murderhobo and backstabber, why would the rest of the part ever tolerate that? They'll turn up face downwards in the nearest ditch and the player can try coming up with a new character that actually wants to be in the party.

Sure, but the equivalent here would be stealing the cars from your family. Just no.