Special REM Review – Halloween 2

Halloween is easily the worst seasonal REM, something unchanged from last year. Despite vast improvements to the lineup, there simply isn’t anything exciting as not only is the rehash phenomenon as strong as it usually is in seasonal REMs, they’re mostly of cards that already have a foot in the grave. Add in a lack of meaningful buffs to the returning cards and the now deflated value of its returning silvers, this machine is looking awfully devoid of value from top to bottom.

8-Star Gold Eggs

Grades are given relative to monsters of the same rarity.

Kali – B-
	At a Glance Ragnarok Dragon is available for purchase right now. The heydays of LKali board changes have long since passed. A leader skill with multipliers that are already behind the curve.
	Notes This time last year, HKali was actually considered a good leader. 25x was certainly low, even back then, but when paired with 1.69x to HP and RCV, that was considered a good mix of offense and defense and she was acceptable. She’s been buffed to 1.69/42.25/1.69 for gods and devils, which is certainly respectable, but respectable doesn’t cut it nowadays, especially for an 8-star. Considering she’s already behind the curve (Krishna is 2.25/45.56/2.25) the future doesn’t look too bright for her. Sorry to those (like me) that bought her last year and were hoping to be thrown a bone; maybe next year. As this is a Kali variant, her viability as a sub also needs to be considered. Sadly, LKali board changes have been obsolete for ages and with no awakening buffs, HKali is in no position to justify her rarity or MP cost. Even before hearts became all the rage, we already knew that DKali’s active supplying hearts and guaranteeing healing made her far superior. Some people had to make do with LKali variants since DKali was so rare, but now there are so many DKali variants, many of them being farmable, that problem doesn’t exist anymore. Furthermore, most of the best rainbow leads also factor heart matches into their maximum multipliers, making LKali board changes even worse. There are a few leads like Sephiroth that might get some mileage out of an HKali, but, in general, you’re much better off just buying a Ragnarok Dragon.

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Xiang Mei – A+
	At a Glance The original Xiang Mei is still strong and so is the Halloween version. The dark-devil sub pool is deep, making her a consideration for those that have heartmaking subs but no leader for them. Costs 500k MP for a relatively mediocre lead.
	Notes The original Xiang Mei (XM) is still a great card and her Halloween version (HXM) is an overall improvement even though she’s basically a straight recolor. Elemental-based mechanical differences aside, HXM is superior due to the quality of the dark-devil sub pool. This doesn’t make her overwhelmingly better than XM, though, and since that isn’t the case she doesn’t justify her 500k MP price tag. Something I’ve seen discussed plenty since her reveal is how good she is relative to XM. Which makes sense because we can use what we already know about XM to shortcut to a conclusion on HXM. However, in the process some faulty assumptions are being made, mainly that HXM has to play exactly the same way as XM. The difference in sub pools means that HXM has much more flexibility in what she can do. As everyone knows, XM team building is severely constrained by her limited sub pool. Much of her success has been dependent upon finding ways around that shortcoming. The fact that she has seen success has lead people to believe that methodology is the only way to execute the team. I’ve seen arguments that HXM lacking RCV to tank or lacking 1:1 replacements for Uriel and Gadius makes her worse, but little thought was given to the advantages afforded by her expanded sub pool beyond Pandora or Akechi being nice things. First, HXM doesn’t have that much of an RCV deficit. Let’s compare a “typical” team for each: Gadius and 3x Uriel for XM and uuevo Pandora, Awoken Pandora, dark Akechi, and Armored Batman for HXM. For HXM, I purposely avoided most of the devils with high RCV to make a point. The RCV difference isn’t as large as one might think: 6,355 vs. 5,196 when hypermaxed. Considering that you’ll be using a heartmaking active almost every turn — even in long dungeons thanks to haste — most turns you’ll have at least two heart matches. This has the HXM team healing 15k-30k per turn depending on combo count, more than sufficient for most cases and could reach higher if you wanted to stack high-RCV subs like uuevo Pandora or Gremory. When comparing the sub pools between XM and HXM, I often see the lack of a direct replacement of Gadius as some kind of knock against HXM. Let’s be clear, Gadius is a mediocre sub at best and, much like how Rozuel fits well on Ronove, is a beneficiary of the circumstances. Need a bind clear? Gremory. Board change for orb change combinations and hazard clears? Armored Batman. HXM doesn’t want Typhon, anyways. As for Uriel, he was alright upon release, but he effectively has five awakenings — auto-heals being almost useless on a healer team — which can’t compete with newer cards. Even if you count auto-heals as real awakenings, Pandora and Akechi still trounce him in terms of quality. This dark-devil awakening advantage manifests itself in other ways as well. Foremost would be killer support where not only are more types are covered, but there are a few cards with two or more killers. Next would be Gemstone Princess support where HXM can support Cameo, Carat and, depending on the team, Sheen where XM can really only support Carat when using multiple XMs. These are important distinctions since dark has plenty of ways to burst. Instead of being reliant on Gadius + Uriel or any other orb change combination, HXM can use one of these methods with a single orb change to burst instead. One last thing to keep in mind is that HXM subs don’t have to be limited to heartmakers so you can’t just throw those out of the equation. As demonstrated by many Myr teams, base subs don’t all have to make hearts to be useful. For example, if Summer Claire’s machine killer gives you the damage you need to clear a dungeon, slap on a good assist skill and by all means use her. I could go on, but I’ll stop here. It’s a bit one-sided in favor of HXM, but I wanted to clarify what I thought were misconceptions about her and her team. If you’d like to discuss the topic further, please do so in the comments and I’ll reply as soon as I can. Even if you disagree with my above points, I think most can agree that HXM is at least in the same ballpark as XM meaning she’s still a very good leader. However, that level of quality, even if you think she’s better than XM, certainly doesn’t justify her 500k price tag. Summer Myr was a bit different because you were getting an elite leader, not just a good one. Xiang Mei is a more valuable sub than Myr, but that doesn’t even begin to make up the difference. I could see her being somewhat appealing to players lacking a dark heart-based lead at 300k MP, but that not being the case this should be an easy pass for almost everyone. It seems most would rather save up another 100k and buy two Ragnarok Dragons, and rightly so.

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Sonia Gran – B+
	At a Glance A bad reskin of a leader that’s already on the decline.
	Notes What exactly had to go wrong in the past year for a 110.25x lead with an HP multiplier to be considered unimpressive? Gran is basically a reskin of Sherias Roots, swapping his board change and RCV multiplier for that terrible Gran Reverse active (15 turns, really?) and an HP multiplier. Roots, like Xiang Mei, has been on the downswing for a while now and Gran, an obvious leader pairing, does little to remedy this. Combined, they give 1.5/110.25/1.5, but, much like the Ra and Zeus Dragon pairing, it isn’t as great as it sounds. Surviving large preemptives is valuable, but the team healing becomes so poor at 1.5x that it almost defeats the purpose of the HP multiplier in the first place; what’s the point of having a bigger tank if you can’t fill it up? Dragons are hard pressed for RCV, especially when one of their best, Ragnarok Dragon, provides none. I’ll point to Krishna again: his type-unconditional 2.25/45.56/2.25 puts this pairing to shame, the ability to stack fire combos more than making up for the deficit in base ATK multiplier. Worse yet, due to her active, she isn’t even a good sub. A completely unimpressive card; GungHo has failed miserably at generating excitement from this set of 8-stars.

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7-Star Gold Eggs

Grades are given relative to monsters of the same rarity.

BSonia – B
	At a Glance Active is as strong as ever. Inferior awakenings compared to her seasonal REM sisters. An embarrassing leader.
	Notes Much like her sisters, BSonia is a strong card, but still doesn’t have a great home. The two-color board with two-turn haste is most valuable on co-op farming teams — because the haste is key in recharging your subs’ actives when you effectively have half the turns to do so — but of the three seasonal Sonias, BSonia’s board supports the two worst farming elements (on NA). Her types preclude her from inclusion on popular teams like Pandora and Lucifer and of course she doesn’t make any hearts; this leaves her with very limited relevancy on teams like Persephone, Anubis or Okuninushi. Not receiving any new awakenings is a huge insult, especially considering what her sisters have. Sadly, this also makes her an unimpressive base sub as six awakenings is relatively poor amount nowadays, a problem only escalated by many of her present ones being underwhelming. The silver lining for farming teams is that they’ll most likely use her as an assist skill meaning her awakenings don’t matter, but that’s not much consolation. Her one buff was to her leader skill which brings her in line with Sonias of all types, improving from 3x to 3.75x ATK (or 9x to 14.06x when paired with another Sonia). Not exactly awe-inspiring in today’s game. She’s perhaps even worse than her brethren since she’s off-color to her more common leader pairs like the normal BSonia or I&I. She does have some other niche applications, like as a system on teams like Zaerog∞ or Rukia, but as the game becomes more reliant on co-op and introduces better farming alternatives, such a thing is even less necessary than it was before. Maybe someday this BSonia will find a good home, but that isn’t today.

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6-Star Gold Eggs

Grades are given relative to monsters of the same rarity.

Laila – B-
	At a Glance Row change feels underpowerd at six-turn cooldown. Arguably inferior to Diadem.
	Notes Laila was a less than stellar roll last year, mainly due to how poor her active was, six orbs on six-turns cooldown being a terrible deal. Despite her awakening buffs — two additional dark rows — the active is still the overriding reason why she’s bad. I still don’t understand why she’s one turn slower than the RGB Wizard girls from the standard REM. I originally thought it was because she created dark orbs, using the cooldown discrepancy between the Sirius brothers’ and Osiris and Nut’s column changers to bolster my suspicion, but the CyberBeast and CyberDragons didn’t follow suit so one can only scratch their heads. Speaking of CyberDragons, the cooldown comparison gets worse when you look at Diadem who has superior awakenings and for two additional cooldown turns gets a haste on his row change, leaving Laila’s devil type as her only real advantage. For co-op farming, the cooldown matters less. Not because it’s particularly good in that capacity, but because it’s the shortest cooldown row changer available in dark. So for those that don’t want to puzzle when farming, but are also skill boost constrained, there’s little other choice. Although, skill boosts willing, one would much rather use Diadem or even Shantoto. Considering dark isn’t the greatest farming element, I guess such a difference means little since the bigger picture problem is that there’s no team where Laila would want to be used anyways. As for where she could sub normally, I don’t really have any great ideas. Most of the dark row-based leads would much rather have an orb changer that at least had the potential to make more dark orbs. All I see here is another aggravating troll gold.

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Vampire – B+
	At a Glance 2 TPA + God Killer is a lot of damage. Suffers like all heartbreakers in a heart meta.
	Notes After his buffs, Vampire has a striking resemblance to Summer Claire. He comes with one less row, generally worse types and a god killer instead of machine, so mostly inferior, but consider that this is all at 6-star instead of 8-star rarity. The waifu markup appears to be fairly high.On his own merits, much of his value is riding on his god killer. It might be the most plentiful type, but combining it with two TPAs leads to huge damage numbers even considering his somewhat lackluster base ATK. Due to this, I found him to be pretty impressive at first glance, but after doing some digging I realized he’s basically on par with Dill Sirius and I was left wanting. Even if we were to concede that he was a decent card, he shares a similar problem to Summer Claire: what teams even want him? There’s the old broken record again, repeating: “heartbreaker in a heart meta”, but even excluding the heart-crossers, many of dark’s remaining leads are tanky — Nobunaga, Lucifer and Pandora — and would rather have their hearts than not. There are leads like Okuninushi and Durga where he’d be a good fit, but that seems awfully narrow. There’s also something to say about his value as an inheritance base, but unlike Claire’s machine killer, there is a huge selection of god killers among which Vampire isn’t particularly impressive. I can definitely see him helping some people’s teams, but this isn’t something most people will be thrilled about rolling.

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Alraune – B
	At a Glance Devils no longer have a lack of bind clear options. The number of double SBR options has increased, but the need for them has decreased.
	Notes Alraune was released at a time when there were very few double SBR options and even fewer devil bind clearers. This scarcity inflated her value and it made it easier to ignore how unimpressive she was otherwise. Now that there are quite a few good alternatives she has lost most of her appeal. The additional bind recovery and time extend awakenings are nice, but not enough. For those looking for a budget bind clear option, look into snagging an Aamir.

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Karin – B
	At a Glance Water and dark main forms give her sub flexibility. About as useful as her sisters. Didn’t receive a unique board change like Summer Meimei.
	Notes The cycle has been completed. Sadly, outside of the art, there’s little reason to rejoice. I was hoping Karin would follow in the footsteps of Meimei and offer a new board change combination — maybe water, light and dark — but alas, we don’t even get that to look forward to. Considering the past performance of the seasonal Chinese, there’s no reason to believe Karin will be any better. A three-color board change always has its place, but as long as we’re stuck in a heart meta it will have limited use in the endgame.

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Rozuel – B+
	At a Glance A good mix of offense, defense and utility. Unlike fire, dark has good heart support, but none really want a TPA-based sub. Element change makes her mostly irrelevant for Ronove.
	Notes The original Rozuel never had a good home in fire, but has seen an uptick in usage lately on Ronove teams. Long story short is that she provides unbindable coverage to the team’s weakest colors, enabling it to otherwise run its most powerful subs. She has the advantage over similar cards by providing good offense as well as heartmaking and bind utility. So what does a change to dark and fire mean? While her qualities will still be appreciated on the team, losing water coverage basically invalidates the main reason for her inclusion on the “ideal” team in the first place. Outside Ronove, what really wants her? Her main problem in fire was that there weren’t many teams that wanted her hearts. Dark definitely has more quality heart-based leads, but none of them seem all that receptive to TPAs. I could see Typhon Ana embracing TPAs, especially if Satsuki gets a Kanna-level buff, but Rozuel’s types preclude her from being a serious consideration. Gremory is another option, but outside Summer Pandora there’s very little incentive in her sub pool to stray from rows. It looks like there’s little reason to consider Rozuel on such teams for now, but if for whatever reason dark also gets a Myr variant or something similar, things could get more interesting.

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5-Star Gold Eggs

Grades are given relative to monsters of the same rarity.

Chiyome – B+
	At a Glance A solid sub, mainly because of the dragon killer. Currently searching for a good home.
	Notes I’ve been high on the seasonal Ninjas in the past, but as it stands, I don’t think I can continue to do so, at least not under the same reasoning. New Year’s Hanzo came out before skill inheritance and due to his unique traits — a fire to light orb change and a rare dragon killer in light — I think it was justified to rate him highly at the time. Then post-inheritance he found added relevance as a member of the MZeus SUDR farming team. As such I was very optimistic about Summer Sasuke, but as it turned out he amounted to very little. Even NY Hanzo lost relevancy as SUDR can be farmed by the easier-to-assemble Liu Bei team and the heart meta took over. So instead of overrating a card on speculation, grades are going to be more based on immediate relevancy. Potential will still factor into the grade, just not as much. In respect to Chiyome herself, nothing about her really stands out as much of which she brings can be replicated by other dark cards. To me, her main appeal is the dragon killer paired with two skill boosts which makes her a potentially great inheritance base, but dark already has access to that in the form of fire Lucifer whose active is also one turn shorter. While her orb change could potentially have relevance, much like how NY Hanzo’s has on the SUDR team, I wouldn’t put too much stock into that. In short, Chiyome has some potential, but considering how past seasonal Ninjas have turned out, I can’t in good conscience recommend them too highly. She is solid, though, offering almost everything you’d want in a quality card with good awakenings, types and an orb change, but while that makes her a good addition to many players’ teams, that isn’t exactly a scarce commodity these days. If you can’t envision a clear use for her dragon killer, then she isn’t worth chasing. As someone that wants all the niche farming cards even if they don’t pan out, Chiyome is the card I want most for its functionality, but considering what else is in the REM, that’s not saying much.

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Parvati – B-
	At a Glance Double killers. A reasonable heartmaking active. No skill boosts.
	Notes A part of me wishes Parvati was a 6-star as that would increase the chances of her getting the awoken version of her active. That would at the very least guarantee a great assist skill should you roll her. Although if that were the case, we’d likely just get a rehash a la Summer Lakshmi, but that might be worth it just to have access to that active. As is, Parvati is a pretty mediocre card, especially when you compare her value to modern silvers. At first glance, a heartmaking active and damage from double killers that can be further boosted by a TPA seems pretty good. Upon further inspection, three of her awakenings are essentially useless. The total package puts her on the same level as Makimachi Misao, a silver from the Kenshin collab. Yes, she has a stat advantage, the poison resists aren’t actually totally useless, and the heartmaking gives her limited relevancy on wood’s heart-based leads, but I still expect more from a gold egg. Relative value aside, Parvati will be worth holding onto if only for her potential as a skill inheritance base, but considering she has no skill boosts she certainly isn’t worth going out of your way to obtain. Especially so when there are four other wood cards with the same killer combination: Fafnir, Ceres, Susano, and the standard REM Parvati. At the very least, she’s a better troll gold than the Sticker Girls.

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4-Star Silver Eggs

Grades are given relative to monsters of the same rarity.

Izanami – B

Notes As I’ve noted in past REM reviews, the bar for what qualifies as a great silver has risen significantly in the past few months. No longer do silvers with decent actives and a smattering of mediocre awakenings legitimize them; see: Summer Awilda, Mamiya and this Izanami. The new bar has been set by skill inheritance (Sado, Thouzer, Juza, etc) and utility like Kamatari from the Kenshin collab. In addition, as teams have become more tanky, damage shields and resist awakenings have plummeted in usefulness. Subs now make more efficient use of each awakening slot offensively, meaning OEs look even weaker in the face of 4+ rows and TPAs. In short, Izanami is now just a mediocre silver; still nice, but not exciting, either.

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Thoth & Sopdet – B
	Notes Thoth & Sopdet are still my go to leads for S-ranking, but for those few times I need to clear an awakenings disabled dungeon, I now turn to Myr instead. While the duo definitely suffers from the same issues as Izanami, the fact that they make hearts helps keep them retain marginal relevancy.

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Undine – C

Notes This version of Undine is basically unchanged from the original, the only differences being an added devil type, swapping a water sub-element for dark and trading a water row for two enhanced hearts. None of these changes are particularly interesting and losing the row could be seen as a downgrade. Oh, she has a reworked leader skill, too, but as expected of a silver it’s largely irrelevant. Since there’s not much distinguishing her from her normal REM form, it’s hard to get excited about this card. Her most valuable trait is her active which nullifies fire damage, but unlike her fellow Elementals Genie, Thanatos and even Shaitan, she doesn’t have many practical uses. You’ll want to save one of these, especially if you don’t have the normal one, but that’s about it. Who knows, since Shaitan gained a modicum of relevancy due to MAthena, maybe Undine will follow suit when Machine Goemon or some other oppressive fire dungeon eventually comes out. Edit: As pointed out in the comments, this version can’t be used as an assist skill since it’s only a 4-star, making it even worse!

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Mulan – B

Notes If we’re to take Takani Megumi as the standard of quality for bind clearers at silver, Mulan is considerably worse, mainly due to her active being less powerful. Three skill boosts are always an attractive trait, especially in dark where Lucifer and DMeta are the only other options (tangent: I was actually surprised that dark had the least; the number for three skill boost cards available on NA by element is: 3/3/4/4/2). However, considering she contributes almost nothing offensively or through her active, this can hardly be considered a positive. If you’re just looking for pure skill boosts, just pick up a Tengu. There will always be some use for a bind clearer, but Mulan is one of the least exciting options. On a personal note, I’m going to be hypering five of these. Why? So I can inherit Ra on them and button in style. Who wants to push ugly cards when you can be pushing a cute girl? Unfortunately, the only other cards that have three skill boosts and are bind immune aren’t exactly easy to access; I have no Orpharions and DMeta and ROdin are needed elsewhere. This is the stupid shit you think of when you have little else to do in the game. At least I’ll having something to do with my silver fodder instead of just selling it for MP I don’t really need.

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Misery – B-

Notes Misery is a card that I like quite a bit, but as a novelty rather than for her merits as a card. I think GungHo’s intention was to make a somewhat quirky card and what better way to do that than make her poison-based and throw seven auto-heals on her. I actually appreciate the design that went into this card rather than taking yet another descended boss, slapping on a few OEs and tossing them into a special REM with a new picture. The way her active, leader skill and awakenings all work in concert is design beyond what I’d expect for what is most likely a throwaway silver. There are almost no legit uses for her. Since she’s silver and shares many attributes with Hel, it’s safe to assume on precedent that she’ll never be relevant as a lead. It’s not like she’s totally incompetent, though, and I can see many people having fun using her to clear difficult content. As a sub, she’s awkward to utilize. A 50% damage shield on a five-turn cooldown isn’t the absolute worst, but what are you supposed to do with the poison orbs, especially when you’re most likely in a HP-sensitive situation when you want that sort of effect? There are some interesting ways to use her, though. As a leader, you can run five her in some kind of demented system. You get a 50% damage shield, 17,500 in auto-healing and almost guaranteed activation every turn. You still have to reach four or more combos to fully activate, but considering Misery’s active makes one for you, it should be fairly easy to achieve even without time extends. There’s also the issue of eating a six-poison match every turn, but the shield, auto-heals and RCV multiplier should cover you in most situations. Her damage isn’t exactly great, though, especially since you only have a single sub slot to dedicate to offense, but it’s a cute team. Here’s an example of the team in action, clearing Arena 1. Her other use is as a sub to take advantage of her auto-heals. GOdin has started to receive renewed attention due to his ability to reliably clear MAthena, but usually when paired with himself. However, if you stack enough auto-heals, you can recreate the same tanking reliability while pairing with a leader with a more substantial ATK multiplier, such as Liu Bei. Here are some videos of the pair clearing Zaerog∞ and MAthena. This isn’t exactly revolutionary or anything, but I find it interesting that seven of what are likely the most maligned awakenings in the game can have some kind of use. If they make more dungeons like MAthena, perhaps she’ll see some more use yet.

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Conclusion

As much as I want to like this REM, there just isn’t anything exciting about it. I love the art, especially on the new cards, but with nothing being particularly powerful I’m not expecting much return per stone. Seasonal REMs have always been hit or miss, but after a decent June Bride and PAD Island, I was hoping things would continue to get better, not regress. You’d think it’d be in GungHo’s best interest to make a better chase card at 8-star, but what do I know?

I’ll personally be rolling two packs, my standard for seasonal REMs. Sadly, I’m mainly rolling for art — Karin in particular — so I’m not willing to spend more whether I get the cards I want or not. I wouldn’t mind a Rozuel or Chiyome either, but if I don’t get any of them, I’ll just wait until next year to roll. Assuming I’m still playing then.