>>35329752>thread managed to holdWelp, I did promise a better explanation.
I know most people in this thread won't really care about 3 walltext posts that are pretty much a "what if" opinion, but here it goes anyway.
Basically, although Vanillish is kind of bland and uninteresting compared to the other two, the whole line really fails to deliver for me with its last form.
My main problem (and probably the only one) with Vanilluxe is that, even though its aesthetics are pretty solid, the whole design feels like a clump of details with some potential but zero development, with the ice-cream theme eclipsing all of it.
If you go look up Vanillish you will notice that the stalactite structure is not entirely symmetric: there's a really slight difference in size between the two spikes that flank the main one. This is true in the art, the sprites and the 3D models. This is a minor detail but it gives us an idea of how the icicle theme could've been better developed, as the balance of ice-cream vs stalactite in the line is incredibly one-sided. Already on the second stage, this minor element struggles to be noticed through the heavy ice-cream theme.
This already lopsided balance of the idea gets violently thrown through the window with Vanilluxe:
The ice body is perfectly symmetric while mimicking the shape of a double cone and a very important detail is introduced to strengthen the ice-cream theme.... a fucking straw-like structure.
No matter how you try to argue for it, it's beyond doubt that the ice-cream theme has completely absorbed the icicle idea.
The duality ice-cream vs stalactite is an idea with a decent potential, the problem is that by the third stage the stalactite thing is barely even present while the ice-cream theme encompasses almost all of the design. Looking at it, it's obviously an alive ice-cream while the weak icicle elements need help to be noticed at all: the execution failed to properly deliver that duality people use to defend the design.
