Yui Does Monster Reviews 2019

[yui 574]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand cut! That's 2019's Masquerade wrapped up. In my reviews thread for last year, I said the following, and I quote:

"I'd say I hope we can do better next year, but honestly, I'd be concerned if we couldn't."

And with that in mind, I'm quite pleased this year! This wasn't the wildest (that'd be 2016) or most successful (2017) Masquerade, but people seemed to enjoy it! And that's all I really cared about this year, for multiple reasons I'll get into when I review the event itself at the end of this thread. For right now, let's dip right into those monsters! For the sake of being thorough, I'll be reviewing everyone, but let's start with 2019's newcomers.

Ainz Ooal Gown: My one and only gripe with Ainz was his activity level, being quite on the lower end for monsters that were active this year. He was a good choice of monster, he was portrayed excellently, and while his game was a bit last-second, it wasn't all that bad. If he'd been consistently active throughout the entire event, he'd easily be in the upper echelons of monsters for this year, but alas, that wasn't the case. 7/10.

Box Ghost: Felt kinda... subdued? Was quite active near the start of the event, but wasted no time falling off and only occasionally asking for duels or posting box-themed songs in my music thread. A pity, tbh. While he was kinda one-note, this was a pretty entertaining monster to watch. 5/10.

Dullahan: Aight, brutal honesty time. I'm rather disappointed, because I did have some hope for this monster. After being excited to see a new forum member interested in the Masquerade and hoping it could even give them some RP street cred, I was met with a monster who was so inactive that I actually forgot they existed while reading the monster list they were in. I can only hope this isn't indicative of your potential performance in future Masquerades. 0/10.

Kurumi Ebisuzawa: My own monster, and the one I put the most prep work into out of any monster I've played so far... only to have no idea how to Kurumi once the event started, even though I went to the trouble of reading the entire Gakkou Gurashi manga (would recommend!) right before the event. Despite choking like that, I like to think I did a pretty decent job. I'd be upset that this wasn't some magnum opus monster of mine, but I didn't want that to be the case this year. I'll give myself a 7/10 and be happy with it.

Larry the Cucumber: Oh, boy! In the first half of the event, Uncle Death was my favorite monster, with Larry threatening to take the spot as the event went on. By the end of things, he did indeed take that place, becoming my favorite monster of 2019. This was a monster that was executed on incredibly well, and you went above and beyond what I expected of you. Quite an accomplishment! The real icing on the cake here was factoring in all manner of things from the show that I actually forgot about entirely, despite having watched quite a bit of VeggieTales as a wee Christian lad. (I'm agnostic these days.) 10/10!

Post-Crisis Carlos: You shouldn't sell yourself short on your performance. Every year, we get a monster that I'm initially skeptical about, but I realize I was gravely mistaken and they're actually great. Last year it was M. Bersback, in 2016 it was Pepsiman, and this time around, it was you. The combination of shitty puns and existential depression were a real treat, and my only real regret with Carlos is I won't see him again. 8/10.

Segata Sanshiro: You've probably heard this one before, but it felt a lot like you were trying to fill the shoes Pepsiman left behind in 2016. This is not an easy task, so don't take it personally when I tell you this was a pursuit you failed in. It felt to me like you funneled too hard on the one thing and neglected everything else. 5/10.

Sou Hiyori: If there's one thing I hate, it's squandered potential, and Sou basically bleeds the stuff. I was in the know on this monster's eventual gimmick and looked quite forward to it, but much like Ember did last year, you succumbed to the ghost bug before you had a chance to see it through. Quite disappointing, since you were doing rather well before that point. Although I can pardon this for I know you were moving and there were some complications, my score will not. 3/10.

Spooky: Speaking of ghosts, let's talk about actual ghosts. As a concept, Spooky was pretty neat. But... it didn't really feel like it was Spooky. It felt like it was just the same member doing the same shit, but wearing Spooky as a mask. This isn't squandered potential like with Sou, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing. 4/10.

Uncle Death: Now this was a cool dude! From the moment you locked this monster in, I was super excited about seeing him in action, and the wait paid off even more than I expected! This also had the most unique forum game I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few of them. I'd have absolutely no complaints if Tower of Barbs 2 (3?) became a more permanent fixture in the Games section. The one and only thing I didn't like is you started to become a bit more withdrawn as the event went on, but it looks like you noticed near the end. 10/10.

Yami Bakura: Moderately disappointing. You did a pretty good job portraying the character, but your activity was lackluster, which was a hindrance to your game that I honestly liked Ainz's more. Better luck next year. 4/10.

And with them all sorted away, let's talk about our returning monsters for the year! I was expecting the veteran monsters to be the real stars of this event, but it may be for the better that I was mistaken.

Bram Stoker: You were technically active, but might as well have not been. Quite a shame, since I remember Bram being one of the better monsters during his year. 1/10.

Ivan Ooze: The Ooze... is... back! Quite pleased that Ivan's portrayal was still the winning performance I saw in 2017, but you dropped the ball very hard at the end there. Very, very hard. Had you simply not posted further content as Ivan, you'd likely have scored higher than you're going to. The talk about "my host and his FGO" and such was so... not good. Quite upsetting after you were starting off so strong. 2/10.

Pepsi Man: The Halloween hero of 2017 makes a comeback! Albeit, with far less activity than in his award-winning debut. Despite the lower activity and the two years since playing Pepsiman, he's still 100% the man I remember regretting ever having doubts about. The fact that you can ghost the event and still score as high as you are speaks strongly of how well you performed when you did. 9/10.

Last and not least, the host monsters. All three - yes, three - of them. Starting with the one that you probably forgot about.

DANGANRONPA: This was something I said not to do. And you did it anyway. And then posted a single status once and that was literally it. After the great job this monster did in their debut, and with all other factors considered, this is an even worse case of squandered potential than Sou was. And I already said how I feel about that. -2/10.

Hades: I'm rather disappointed in you. Had I known you'd be as inactive as you were, I'd have ditched the Mettaton NEO pitch, went with Baron Samedi like I initially planned, and done all the host monster work myself. Especially after Hades was one of the more well-received monsters in his year. I'd say it makes me sad, but I'm not sad. Just very disappointed. 1/10.

Mettaton NEO: A weird case. Frankly, there was no way I'd be able to juggle myself, Mettaton, and Kurumi, so I shoved all the host work from Mettaton onto my main account so I wouldn't have to. Quite inactive, but still the flamboyantly fabulous ghost in the machine I played last year. Meh. 6/10 at best.

And with all the monsters talked about, let's talk about the event itself. As with last year, I'm going to start this off with a story about the development of the Halloween Masquerade, which will double as a behind-the-scenes look at how this shit went down.

In early September I DM'd Blake on Discord with a stupid pun because it fit with the Year of Rebirth that was announced as the theme for this year's events earlier in 2019. The conversation that ensued from that ended with me learning that nobody had actually thought of what to do for the event, but we both liked the idea of returning monsters. With Blake prepping for a big important move, I was put in charge of creating this year's Halloween Masquerade with about a month and a half to do it. I later added the undeath theme for new monsters after being given the Event Planner role a couple days later, to which I said:

"This is just an idea I've only loosely toyed with the notion of here and there, but an alternative approach that keeps the monster hunt intact while still keeping in the "Year of Revival" theme and also being appropriately Halloween-y, would be to theme the monsters around undeath. This has the added benefit of allowing some rather good monsters (Hades, Achmed the Dead Terrorist, Shiki, to name a few) to reprise their role if they really want to, and is a lot more open-ended than last year's entertainment theme. There are far more vampires, liches, gods of death/undeath, etc, than there are actors or singers. I'd like to think of something else to put into the Masquerade this year, but it may just as easily be the case that it'd be best to keep things simple for this year's event."

At some point, I later changed the event rules so that instead of being forced like last year's entertainer theme, the undeath/recurring monster themes were simply encouraged, after getting some input from CowCow. In doing so, I learned that last year's forced theme was a much bigger part in Halloween 2018's failure than I thought, as this year's monsters were having a great time. As the event drew closer, I got the okay from Torm to allow point rewards and Blake's advice to keep them modest, and the final details for Halloween 2019 were set in stone, eventually followed by my posting the event thread as Mettaton to officially get things started.

And frankly, I feel like the work paid off! My only goal for this year was to have a fun Masquerade that was better than last year's flop, and in that regard, the event was very much a success! The monsters had fun, and the people had fun, and although the event wasn't perfect, I was able to learn things from its shortcomings. Overall, an event that accomplished everything I was hoping it would accomplish. I'm quite relieved, since this was the first Masquerade I was in charge of, as well as the first one on the new website, so I wanted this to succeed more than anything else. Enough so that I even threw my usual RP hobbies to the side to keep an eye on this event.

Final Score: 7/10. Good job, everybody!

[yui 574]

PSA kids: Proofread your threads before posting them. There were a few errors in this thread, but if you're reading this post now, they should be fixed.

[reparoni 161]

Yeah I did start not doing as much near the middle of the event, and even at the end despite my attempts at not fading away into nothingness. Kinda the same problem I had last year, although obviously not as bad. Next time I'll try not to fall off!

[Chaos Sonic 442]

I won't lie nor try to fight that score. I got a better score in 2017, so I don't mind this score this year, namely cause it was my bad on dropping the ball. You are correct that I could've just stopped posting content, but I did feel like if I did, I would've just been possibly just smacking the event in the face, plus I didn't want myself to end up being like others who would start strong and end up fading away before the event ended. Maybe I should've, or shouldn't have...but either way, I made a choice so yeah.

As for the talk of FGO and my host, well that part I will attribute to me being honest with everyone. I just wanted to let everyone know what was the reason for my long absence. Was this a good idea? Probably not, but I wanted to be honest...plus I am definitely attributing FGO with some grief cause they did this during the event (probably not something I should've done to begin with, but its whatever). This is also just the half of this, Yui. I only told you the FGO part before...another reason was because I had a slight relapse on emotions because of my dad's passing. That sort of also caused my activity to drop a bit...but I was still trying to be determined to see the event through...cause that's just me.

This is all going to be something I wish and plan to fix up next year. Boss Monster or brand new Monster, I can assure you: I'll be striving for perfection for my next performance.