Shangri-La Frontier S2 — episode 12 (37) — Smart Girl — blind reaction

Happy New Year to you too. 🙂

Yes, wearing the helmet let you control the robot, but you need the full armor to merge with it, similar to how Kirin transformed during Wezaemon's phase 3 where you could see the sockets of where Wezaemon's armor was meant to connect.
To see what Wezaemon's Legacy is capable of in animated form you'll have to wait another 2 seasons.

The reason why noone has seen any usable robots in SLF so far is because that technology is connected and unlocked through the world story progress, reminder: they are currently only at 12% completion after taking down 1 clossus, also Wezaemon wasn't meant to be the first one to go down. Rei would have seen or heared of it before if something has been there because she's an endgame-player and her clan has tight connections to the Library, because the Professor's wife is a member of Schwarz Vulf.

For Lycagon putting up a "smokescreen", maybe her AI is just programmed to not use more abilities/skills than needed for her opponents, or only rely on them if needed. When Sunaku faced her the first time there were multiple cloud phases without clone attacks, that's how he noticed and figured out that sound shortly before the shadow attack and was able to dodge it, only at the very end she took him out with a clone attack during a cloud phase.
It showed critical hits but those were no threat to her (given that Sunraku was only level 18 by that time he probably critted for 1 damage) and she just shifted into the next gear after x amount of combat time. Something like a soft phase change that triggers either by damage taken or else by time passed.
Some WN reader also pointed out that the colossis AI is able to learn and adapt to enemy behavior, which would also explain Lycagon reacted faster to Rei's last attack and instead of getting staggered did a counter attack.

For how taunt works in pvp: well, as someone that played and plays City of Heroes, the game's solution was simple. Target lock, you can't switch targets for the duration of the taunt, you can only execute attacks on that target, but that doesn't prevent you from using AoE attacks on that target to hit others nearby, or attacks that deal damage to your suroundings like a damage aura or self-explosion. Also worked on healers to prevent them from using direct heals on their allies. xD

Rei's "Attack Master" titel is an actual titel given by SLF, there are other Master-titels too.

Weeeellll…would the ability of hearing matter in a full-dive VR game? You play the game with you mind, it stimulates specific areas of your brain to makes it feel real, that way deaf players could hear perfectly and even (color)blind people could play the game without an issue because everything are just electric impulses in your brain that translates into sensations/images/sounds/taste, it's basically lucid dreaming with full control, there was also a SLF-Mini in season 1 in which Sunraku unlocked the taste limiter. Letting people experience how it feels to run when they are actually sitting in a wheelchair is just scratching the surface. Write a story about someone who is blind that uses those vr games to "see", that would be next level. (that's actually how Geordi La Forge's visor in Star Trek is explained, it simulates the visual impulses from a human's eye and sends them directly to the brain) 😉

[Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker] …not calling it by it's full name is just disrespectful. xD

Adressing Akane Akitsu, yes you can tell by the VA, but in the WN and the manga it was made more obvious in japanese. A japanese reader on reddit pointed out that the kanji for Akitsu could also be translated to to the japanese version of the english word "dragonfly" 😀

Sorry for the essay, i was holding back as much as i could, i will stop now. 🙂
p.s.: yes, no, SLF is just about gaming without bs.