Interesting that seems like a bit of a loophole at least for the outer north province if they have established a base of some sort near the point of the invasion couldn’t they basically just hunt an unlimited supply of powerful ice elementals for soul treasures all year round?
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They certainly try
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I also like Aura Clash more personally, I like how we see our full martial art journey from scratch and our character learning techniques while having a specific style.
It really make you feel like you’re playing through a martial art manga or manwha.
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I wholeheartedly disagree. PoMA’s design is very bad, with all respect to Nicky. It’s all about passing the check or not, and that means the mechanics are very simplistic. It used to be different when damage was calculated from your strength, toughness allowed you to soak damage suffered and vitality decided how much HP you had. Back then, it was complex.
I played it on the default difficulty several times, unlike the majority of his userbase and the game is harsh and punishing, interacting with the mechanics a chore. It always feels like I’m too weak for the challenges the game has planned for me. That goes doubly after we lose access to Inner Energy. At that point, the highest checks were around 5500, which meant as long as you maxed out a stat and infused Energy, you passed it.
After unlocking Qi the narrative tells us we are stronger than ever but mechanically it becomes much worse. Qi is a precious resource, unlike Inner Energy, so you hoard it as much as possible. It allows you to increase the upper limit of your stats but it does not grant XP to invest in them. Moreover, because of that, you don’t know if you can expect the next check will need 6000 or 8000, unlike before the excursion when you knew you were fine if you had 5000.
All of this is a non-issue if you play the story mode but that does not mean the mechanics and gameplay are good or fun.
Aura Clash is easy, at least up until now. That said, the mechanics are well-designed. The game gives you several options to tackle the challenges and a lot of different builds are viable. You can, for example, pick either power or soul core as your way to deal damage, the rest of AP pump into fortitude, and then increase your agility to 3. As long as you have techniques that allow you to surge 2 additional agility cores, you can no-sell an odd agility check that bypasses fortitude.
Or you can go wide, invest in everything, and chug on pills if you surge your cores too fast. Both are viable.
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Thanks for your opinion. To be honest with you, I just use cheats for POMA sometimes.
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Most people who play PoMA do, and I can’t fault them for that. I played my last run by rerolling until I started out with 300+ XP and picked 3 top-tier traits, then save scummed to get as much extra XP from the periodical training. It was a slog still. It frustrated me to no end and I was so, so tempted to at least fiddle with my save file to give myself a legendary trait.
I would like to point out that I don’t just click through the game, I plan out my build, I arm myself in talismans, save scum, and so on. It just isn’t enough to play it comfortably without cheating.
On the other hand, Aura Clash rewards me for learning the system and interacting with mechanics. It feels satisfying to find a way to squeeze out a bit more from my build, to beat Taio without the need to surge cores, and to finish the chapter with still unassigned AP. I know, from the narrative that I’m still a rookie but my character is successful and the game acknowledges that.
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Doesn’t POMA reward you too?
You do get your “cool anime protag” moments there as well.
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As I said, to me it feels like a slog. Especially after we lose Internal Energy and obtain Qi, which from the narrative point of view should be better but from mechanical is worse by a lot.
Prior to that, I could check my stat page, see everything (or rather most) at 5000/5000, and know it was going well. After unlocking Qi, I could assign my XP as before, have an upper limit of stats at 5000 as before, go on a mission, and suddenly there’s a check of 6500 because the game expected me to use Qi to unlock potential. So I have to load the earlier save, invest XP only in the stat that will be needed, unlock it with Qi, and replay that part.
What’s even more ridiculous is that at this point there is no mechanical difference between having 1 in strength or 5000, as long as you fail the check. It heavily encourages min-maxing in an unfun way. And that’s coming from a guy who likes to craft builds for fun. I could, for example, open a browser, and enter a site that allows me to build a character for Neverwinter Nights 2, spend an hour fiddling with numbers, and have fun. PoMA’s build crafting is unfun.
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I’d say it’s frustrating, there are very few fights where you feel like you’re improving, I’d say I only felt strong in the part of the tournament before fighting that damn prince, afterward I’m just suffering and still have his technique easily copied by a simple look, while here in aura clash the cheat mode actually has a visible difference and active participation, in poma your talent doesn’t change at all.
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Guys, not to pick up hall monitor class, but maybe put the PoMA critique in PoMA thread where its author might have some use of it…
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Good point.
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Finally gave this a read after putting it off forever and I am happy to say I really enjoyed it much to my own surprise. I only had one glaring complaint in the fact that I couldn’t be myself as a gay lady, so I was forced to be a dude if I wanted to do anything romance related with my fellow ladies. Which you’ve already explained why I’m pretty sure, I don’t remember cuz I didnt read the other 1900+ posts.
Besides that, I had a great time reading this and I finally put it to be on my actively watching list. All of the fights so far have been great, I like the very good amount of variety we can have in what we do as it gives me an actual valid reason to go back and try different paths when I decide to reread, the cheat mode was also very interesting and well done to peek at since it actually acknowledges itself in the writing.
If ever in the future you ever go back and change stuff so we can be gay if we wish. This would easily be in my top 10 already and it’s only a WIP right now.
I wish you all the best 
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Bro managed to hit everything except the fact that ruos “training” doesn’t have any explanation why they are stronger than every person in their stage without artifacts and talismans by two whole stages💀.
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Tell me about it. I know he’s supposed to be the “Celestial Heir” or something, but no Middle-Houtain should be ANYWHERE near a Late one.
Nor should a Late be able to fight two Peaks to a standstill.
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Next thing you know he’s gonna be fighting Shangtains at Peak-Xiantian.
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Ohhhh. Thanks for the info
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Then some people just start saying but… but he took some elixirs and trained a lot with different masters 
. Like bruh…it would be understandable if the gameplay was more like aura clash where the stats aren’t limited and can continually be increased and everyone had access to this but the game clearly states that the everyone cannot get stronger than a limit of a stage but for some reason how op rival ruo somehow can do that and the whole elixir thing makes no sense to"swimming in a pool of elixirs my ass",every shangtian should easily have access to something a mortal uses and I wouldn’t be surprised if xiantians had those either, talismans Don’t also help the case cause they increase strength too but nobody else but the Tang clan can acquire a mortal body enhancer?
If anything it would have been better if Niki just made there no limits in power level especially considering we always meet people who are stronger than traditional ones.
Or just simply limit the mc to fighting people actually at their level and not make others cracked for no reason
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Just a reminder that this is in fact the Aura Clash thread, for discussion of Aura Clash. The POMA thread is here.
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Will be down to talk about any poma problems in the poma forum if you want.
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Ok guys, no more talk about POMA.
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