Lurker > Mac Arrowny

xp1337 posted...

it was vgmc3 so are you really surprised?

now vgmc6 is inexcusable given that godsibb is like top 5

It's the contest with the two best Umineko songs!
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Neat, I didn't quite get that part! I thought that the Elidibus there was like the "reborn" version or something, but that makes more sense. Very cool detail. Wasn't Azem a she though? That's the ancient whose soul MC and Ardbert have, right? And Emet-Selch always refers to that soul as "her" or "she"... Or does Azem's gender change depending on what gender you pick?
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

I beat it all now, yeah. And it's fair in some ways, especially since Elidibus hadn't really outright worked against them in the past.

5.2 wasn't really my favorite because of that plotline, though it did still have enjoyable stuff and fun Ascian revelations. 5.1 was nice epilogue-y content though, and 5.3 was fantastic as a sort of 'true ending' for Shadowbringers. Warrior of Light was real good stuff story-wise. Glad I decided to keep going and play up to that. Before I started on Shadowbringers I was feeling a bit burned out on the game and unsure if I wanted to continue. Even after I started it, I was thinking I might quite once I was done 5.0, but it was so good overall that I was happy to continue. Excellent experience overall! Game timer has me around 287 hours, though probably at least 10 of those are idling, if not more. Mostly very enjoyable hours, thankfully. Much less grindy than I expected it to be.

For the new boss content:

Weapons: cool battles and great fanservice. This is the best of the three ongoing side plots if you ask me. The bad guy seems a bit too evil, but eh, it works. The kids are a little lame sometimes though.

Eden: Re-using bosses, even if they are changed, doesn't make me feel particularly hyped, and I'm not that into the story either. Rejuvenating the Empty is a great goal; it's just they don't tell a particularly interesting story around it. Gaia is... okay. They could've done a better job with her, but her development by the end was still solid The only one of the eight bosses that was really cool was Shiva. Wonder if we'll get to fight Edea or Ultimecia in the final set...

Nier Raids: I feel like these should be better? In a few aspects they're great: the area design is totally Nier, the music is all there, the pods are fun, and some of the bosses are quite good. Most of the bosses aren't that exciting though, and the framing story is just okay. I did enjoy them, just wish they had a little more punch.

It's funny, before this patch I was thinking about how 14 had major references to basically all the older FFs other than 7/8/10/13, and the 5.X stuff adds quests for both 7 and 8. Good timing there.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

how does 4 still not have a release date...
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Some of that is due to weird adaptation choices I think. S3 kept basically every Yui scene from the books and cut a good number of scenes for the rest of the cast. Not exactly sure why they went that way!
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Other than the rushedness, the weakest part was probably the humor? I know Studio NUT can do this well, since Tanya was hilarious, but it felt like most of the jokey moments here were trying too hard and didn't land. Better comedy writers or a more serious atmosphere would've helped a lot.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Completed Deca-Dence. Kinda disappointed in this. Feels like it's all half-baked and needed another dozen episodes if it wanted to fully realize its ideas. The sci-fi ideas don't make much sense when you think about them, and I was always more interested in Natsume than Kaburagi, so it sucked that she got so much less focus than him. The main highlight was the cool action animation. Guess it's alright for a "turn your brain off and don't think about it too much" type show, but I wanted more than that from it.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Would agree that Haru kinda sucks and they trust her too much though yeah. Surprised they don't see her as more villainous.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

It's good when Shizuka talks about her.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Burn the Witch was supposed to be a movie, as I recall.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

I feel like the main characters are kinda overly passive in 5.2 and it's not super believable.

So they give this big speech about how the Warriors of Light were actually heroes, and they only caused the Flood of Light because they were deceived by Ascians.

And then and Ascian appears to deceive people in the present, but they don't say anything to oppose his deceptions because the people would never believe an Ascian could be deceiving them???

Also it feels like there should be at least some people who want to be Warriors of Darkness, considering the popularity of the MC...
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Day I Became A God was delayed to next year... you might want to find a more up to date chart.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Since when is Dark Legacy not Nekomata Master...?

Ah, Bastet's just another of his aliases.

I'd probably have it ~70 spots higher.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Warriors of Darkness felt like more of a real moral conflict, I guess? Like the things you learn from them change the whole nature of the game. They're sympathetic, and there's lots of interesting mysteries about them where you have no idea what's up with them. They kinda try to make Emmet-Selch sympathetic, but I found that it didn't really work, especially anything to do with Zodiark. Like I said though, the whole endgame with him was excellent, so he fulfills his role well in that regard.

And yes, I didn't mention it in my post, but Zenos ACTUALLY returning rather than it just being fake Zenos is extra stupid and bad and I really hope that plot's over and done with by the time the post-Shadowbringers patches are done blah.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

There we go, Shadowbringers complete! This was mostly real great stuff! I was feeling a bit burnt out on the game before I got here (224 hours in a bit over a month will do that to you...) but this was a return to form in every way. First, the environments: one of the things I liked about HW as opposed to StB is how it felt like I was adventuring in a whole new world no one had been before. ShB brought back that feeling but at an even greater level, since it's literally a whole new world. The atmosphere was great, the Crystarium is one of the best cities, and I basically just loved exploring everywhere. It's so colorful! I love all the purple. Even the desert areas managed to be interesting since they had cool ruins and such in them.

The main story was probably the best yet. I liked HW's story a lot too, but this one had more emotional impact at the end. The last few sections were all fantastic, and it was good early on too. There were basically two sections I thought were relatively weak: doing fetch quests for the fae felt incredibly fetch questy, and the trolley section was just bad. Both of those had good payoff at least, so I didn't mind that much in the end. Feo Ul becoming the new Titania was real good. I wasn't a big fan of Ran'jit either. He felt ridiculously powerful for no good reason, and they messed up when to kill him off IMO. Really should've had him die after the Thancred fight. That was an epic fight with a lot of emotion in it, and the final battle against him was just an ordinary battle...

Luckily, the other villains are quite good! Vauthry was effective as a new kind of villain, and I wasn't expecting all the twists with him mainly the part about him being merged with a Lightweaver as a baby. It was nice to bring the focus back to the Ascians with Emmet-Selch, and he gave us a lot of good development for them. I'm not as big a fan of him as some people seem to be - I feel like the Warriors of Darkness might've been more interesting as villains, even - but he facilitated a lot of excellent story moments, so it's all good. Amaurot rocked.

The new characters were good in general, though I think having a few less random groups/towns to visit might've been better. Crystal Exarch and Ryne were fun times. Tying the story back to earlier story content was a cool effort. As I said before, Dulia-Chai was a lot better than I'd expect from someone like her. And after switching the voices to Japanese, Feo Ul was good too (man the English pixie voices are terrible).

The music was probably a step up from StB? Sad piano song was excellent, if a little overused. Some real cool stuff like the Rak'tika Forest music.

Hope the next expansion manages to be in an interesting new area. Not sure what's left. There's the regions of Garlemald, the other 5 worlds, and the moon, that we know of. Maybe some Aetheric regions? Or some unexplored regions of Hydaelyn. I feel like Garlemald would be the least interesting in terms of fun exploration, but I guess we'll see what happens.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Beated SAO: Alicization and War of the Underworld. Alicization was mostly pretty good, other than some dumb stuff, but WotU not so much. Worst SAO arc. It did have real nice animation though. Definitely way above something like MHA.

Moved on to Deca-Dence. Wasn't expecting another VRMMO anime. One question - the robots are called cyborgs. Is that just a mistranslation, or are they actually augmented humans?
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Thinker: Is Dulia-Chai the best Shadowbringers character?
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Omega raids - these were a bit of a slow starter, and they felt like more of a gameplay-focused thing than something that was happening for a story reason for the most part. They followed a pretty different style from the Coils or Alexander, which had its negatives and benefits. The Alexander exploration sections were pretty samey, but they also had good music and atmosphere. Omega basically cuts the filler and just gives us the bosses themselves. The battles were mostly solid, particularly the last few. Phantom Train was my favorite of the others by a lot. Great atmosphere and fun mechanics. The story started out slow, but got really good by the end. The final cutscene with Alpha was fantastic and emotional in a unique way for this game. He was kinda the star of the raid series.

4.5 and 4.56 were good, albeit brief. The revelations about the Empire were neat. I dunno how enthusiastic I am about Gaius coming back from the dead. His character here is cool though.

Started Shadowbringers and it's instantly more compelling than basically anything in Stormblood. The thing that was great about Heavensward is that it basically introduced us to a whole new region that was completely different from everything we'd seen before. Shadowbringers is doing the same, but to an even greater extent. The Crystarium's a great city, too, probably my favorite design-wise. The music's not quite as good as Ishgard's, but it's still great. I get a real sense of wonder here that I didn't get much with Stormblood. Mostly good characters too. Vauthry seems like a fun villain. Not too sure about Ran'Jit though. He reminds me too much of Zenos at this point, what with the randomly being ultra strong for no apparent reason...

One thing I'm curious about: it feels like there are 14 parallel universes with all the parallel versions of the planet, but those only affect the planet itself - how does that work with the rest of the universe? Can aliens like Omega and Midgardsormr only visit the Source, or can they visit all worlds? And would it be a parallel version or the same version...?
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Getting pretty close to finishing the Omega raid quests, yeah.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Some more thoughts on post-Stormblood and Stormblood itself:

First, the music. The music of Stormblood is generally real good, and it took a certain lesson from Heavensward. One of the cool things about Heavensward's music is the way it uses its themes in other tracks. The four different variations of Ishgard's music that play in the city are great, and the variations on it elsewhere are good too. Unfortunately, they use the themes from Stormblood EVERYWHERE. The sameyness of the music gets kinda tiresome, no matter how good it is. I was generally more excited to hear the more different tracks, like Lakshmi's music.

4.3 was an improvement over 4.2 overall, particularly near the end where they started focusing on new stuff. Alphinaud going to the Empire is great. 4.4 was generally cool too (hell yeah Xaela). The first 3/4 of 4.3 still weren't great though. Like, what is the point of Asahi? I assumed at first the goal was to be like, "not all imperials are bad" but then he's bad anyway (which was pretty unsurprising). Yotsuyu's return was lame too. I mean, they kind of did the same thing with Nidhogg in the post-Heavensward stuff, but his return was epic and exciting and resulted in one of the coolest battles in the game. Yotsuyu's return... did not. At least the scene where she killed Asahi was cool. Also, blah at bringing Zenos back, even if it's a fake.

I feel like the post-Stormblood patches have been less climactic in general. They feel more setup-y, moving around pieces. Post-ARR and post-HW had some of that too, but they also had exciting and complete storylines of their own. Warriors of Darkness was entirely post-HW and was fantastic! Don't just do setup - give us some exciting climaxes too!

Random comment: Estinien's appearances in Stormblood were amazing, short as they were.

Return to Ivalice Raids: the raids themselves were very good. I liked exploring the ancient cities a lot, and the bosses were cool, especially Agrias and Cid near the end. Definitely among the coolest battles in the game. I didn't think the framing device was good at all though. Present Ramza/Alma/Dad/Theater company all sucked. I didn't like any of them, and though there motivations were lame. The Dalmasca stuff was more of a highlight, and having Fran appear was a lot of fun at least. Too bad they couldn't have figured out a way to focus more on the good stuff here.

Four Lords quests were fairly neat too. Was surprised how long they were. Suzaku was insanely difficult for some reason - hardest boss I've fought other than the Extreme ones. None of the others were particularly hard. Soroban was a total bro. Lots of good/funny moments for him here (also Tataru). Nifty side content, though it probably could've been a bit shorter.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Fire Punch started in 2016 <_<
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

or read Fire Punch first
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Magnai being rejected is the best running gag. It brings me joy whenever he gets sad about being alone.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Okay, finished Stormblood and a bit after that. Some thoughts:

Ala Mhigo area design sucked. All browns and rocks, nothing interesting, and some of the Currents were a pain to find. Kinda disappointing when the game has good area design in general. Doma was much more colorful and interesting. I especially liked the underwater areas. At first I thought swimming would be lame (as it is in most games), but they basically just used the flying mechanics, so it worked well. The underwater towns were especially good stuff. Unfortunately, Kugane kinda sucked. Worst of the five major cities so far IMO. Getting around feels like a pain, and the architecture is boring.

Storywise it felt consistently okay, but not very interesting. Zenos sucked as a villain, and they never really answered why he was so absurdly strong. Yotsuyu felt mostly one-dimensional, even though they tried to give her a tragic backstory later. Fordola's better, but she didn't really get her development until 4.1 anyway. The good cast wasn't much better. Lyse was a big step down from Yda, IMO. Yda was always the funniest Scion, but Lyse is super serious. I always thought Yugiri was fun as a concept, and she's good in the post-ARR stuff, but now that she's getting focus, there's not much to her. She doesn't have much of a personality. Gosetsu feels like he should be comic relief, but he's not that funny. Hien's pretty flat too.

I think one of the flaws with the main story is that there weren't many diversions. Earlier stuff would focus on main plot for a while, then there'd be an emergency somewhere else to deal with, but here, it was all Ala Mhigo, then all Doma. Felt too straightforward. Ala Mhigo's main plot was probably the more interesting part, but Doma had the highlight of the plot, which was the Azim Steppe stuff. The stuff with the Xaela was a bit silly, but it was also a lot of fun, and there were characters who were actually interesting. Cirina mix of being adorable and bloodthirsty was great, and Sadu was super entertaining whenever she was on screen. The Dotharl actually had some interesting traits too, unlike the Domans, which had nothing unique or interesting about them other than just being Japanese. The climaxes of the stories were better, just because they were well executed climaxes, so there was at least that. Also, the scene from the opening FMV was fantastic. Love when games do stuff like that.

I actually thought 4.1 was a lot better than the main Stormblood content. The story felt more complex, and Fordola's development here was awesome. Would be great to see her become a Scion - I love seeing villains join the good team. The story fight with Lakshmi was a real cool change of pace, too. 5.2 isn't as good, alas. Bringing Gosetsu and Yotsuyu back was stupid, and the amnesia thing is stupid too. Seeing them stuck on the island together could've been fun, but we don't see that. I also feel like Gosetsu losing his memory would've been more entertaining than Yotsuyu losing it. Oh well.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

A few updates and thoughts since I last played:

Finished the Binding Coils of Bahamut with help from BK (thanks BK) - the story stuff here was good, the area design was cool, and the bosses looked cool too. Glad I did this before finishing Heavensward.

Hildibrand ARR and HW - Both were great stuff. I like them using Hildibrand to add fun references to past games quite a bit, and they somehow manage to be both hilarious and good in the serious parts, too. Most of the characters specific to this questline are excellent. I think the Grand Sers (the old knights) were my favorite part. The first "battle" against them had me rolling.

HW main story - This was consistently great. The story itself was interesting, with it being a big change of pace, switching between different compelling plotlines, and adding excellent characters. Estinien is definitely my favorite character in the game at this point, so having him along with the party was a highlight. The pacing was generally brisk, too. All the new areas here were very good and unique. Ishgard's my favorite of the cities so far. It has a cool atmosphere, the best music, and is easy to get around. No real missteps here.

Post-HW story - Mostly a great followup to HW. Negotiating peace was cool, and while I was disappointed to see them bring back Nidhogg at first, the final battle against him was incredibly epic and awesome, so it was okay. There were a bunch of little fun things, like the battle vs. Raubahn. The concept of the Warriors of Darkness was excellent too, and they're my favorites of the villains so far. The way they were dealt with in the end was a bit rushed I thought, but they were still entertaining. Really hoping we go to the moon at some point...

Post-HW raids - These didn't feel quite as main story related as the post-ARR raids, but they had their own good parts. Alexander had great music, both for the bosses and the dungeons. The story got to have some fun twists in the end, and the best part was the final Alexander fight. I'd say it's my favorite boss in the game so far. The atmosphere of the battle and all the cool moves it used were amazing. The sky pirate raids were more difficult, so they were interesting in that respect, and some of the bosses (like Ozma) had cool designs, but I didn't find the story there to be quite as good.

Think that's most of what I wanted to say. Stuff like the Warring Triad was a lot of fun too, with plot-relevant story and cool bosses with cool music (not sure why it had the Atma Weapon music, but I'm not complaining!). I'm a ways into Stormblood, which is mostly disappointing so far, but hopefully that'll get better.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

S2 definitely better than S1
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I think I actually am gonna watch that new Inuyasha.

The main girl looks cool. She wears a suit!

We have no idea how long that is, right? Could be 13, 26, or 200 eps?
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

I've seen people race about it on multiple sites, but its Mal rating is oddly low
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Wow, Aymeric sure does seem to have the hots for Estinien.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

I chose Halone as my god at the start because I thought she sounded cool, so it's a bit disappointing that her being my patron goddess doesn't even get mentioned once in all the Ishgardian stuff. They didn't have to change anything major, but it would've been nice to get at least one line thrown in there something.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

BotW is the only Zelda game to sell better than its corresponding Mario game. I feel like that means a lot, especially since every Zelda is already stronger here than its corresponding Mario game.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Finished watching what's out of My Hero Academia. Mostly pretty disappointed in this show. I was expecting some awesome fights, but the animation really wasn't anything special for how much people went on about it - none of the seasons looked particularly good. That left the story and characters to carry the show, but those weren't too special either. The lack of creativity with the powers was also a shame (though part of this probably came from watching this shortly after reading Worm, which is infinitely more creative with its powers and their uses). Some of the main characters were solid, but they didn't stand out for the most part. Unfortunately, the villains sucked too, particularly Shigaraki and the League of Villains. They're a boring group with uninteresting motivations, and Shigaraki himself was the worst character in the show.

There were a few good things that helped carry the show and made me stick with it. The main bright spot was the relationship between All Might and Deku. Everything in the first two seasons that focused on this was great, and carried an emotional punch that the rest of the show lacked. All Might's pretty much always a fantastic character, so it's a shame he got less important after S2, aside from his amazing fight in S3. Stain's arc in S2 was also great, though the aftereffects of it were dumb (the heroes really should've told everyone they saw him fighting against the League of Villains... they even had footage of it). Overhaul started out as a fun villain, but his arc got less interesting as it progressed - would've been more entertaining to see him go all out fighting the League or something.

I was also glad the show ended with a bang. Gentle Criminal was somehow the best villain on the show by a long shot, being both incredibly funny and somehow having a more compelling serious backstory than any of the villains do. His presence alone was enough to make S4 better than S3 at least.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Advokaiser posted...

'Cause the final price may be way too high?

In which case you can just cancel your pre order
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Why would you have to know the price of something to pre-order it? And this is just a list to be on to get notified when pre-orders are made available anyway.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Been playing this for almost two weeks now, and just finished all the pre-Heavensward patches last night. Have been mostly avoiding side quests since I got to L25 or so, which I think is probably the better way to go if I don't want to burn out (especially since most of the side quests aren't super exciting), though I've been doing most of the blue ones. Fun game! The story and characters have been mostly good stuff (some of the scenes at the end of the final patch were a little silly), and the gameplay's been reasonably enjoyable. I've been playing Black Mage, which got a little boring after a while, but it got more fun again once I got Firestarted and had more stuff to pay attention to (and from what I've heard it gets more interesting as you get more abilities). Was surprised how interesting the post-ARR patch stuff turned out to be, though I was disappointed a couple times when it wouldn't give me answers that I felt like it should've (Iceheart totally could've told me WHY I shouldn't be fighting against the Dravonians, lol). Primal battles were generally highlights, and I like that they're acknowledged both story and gameplay-wise together. Everyone seeing you as a god-slayer who beats the Primals single-handedly is great (though it makes the scene at the end where you get arrested by three regular guards seem silly).

The comedy can be good stuff too. I like the sequences where characters go on and on about your eloquent speech-making abilities, and the Hildibrand quests have been great so far (I finished all of them up to the fight with Gilgamesh so far). Not sure what I should do about the Coils of Bahamut now. Didn't have any luck using the Duty Finder or Party Finder there, so maybe I'll just wait and try to solo after getting to 80 or something.

If you want to add me to the sheet, character name is Celeste Vesseau on Ultros.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

pjbasis posted...

Did someone say Shonen Jump

Only 5 volumes huh? Was it cut short or was it meant to be a fairly short series?

It tells a complete story.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

The manga was in Shounen Jump and it's from the author of Sket Dance, in case you didn't know.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Assuming they want to do better than the last adaptation, it's going to be at least 75 episodes, so you'll be waiting a few years for said "last episode."
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Human Equation is definitely a real great album. Also, I'm pretty sure 100% of Loser is from the father's perspective.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

swordz9 posted...

The Eizouken guy got accused of following pixiv artists who draw realistic CG loli porn too a bit ago. All of LtMs favorites are doomed

What do you mean accused? It's not a crime.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Thankfully the first two seasons are shorter, particularly S1. And S2 has great stuff in it.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

S1 kinda sucks, and S2 is a bit mixed, but it gets pretty great. Best cold opens in any comedy.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

amazing pun there leon
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

I've mostly heard Erica is terrible and not worth playing
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Haha, it might be more obvious in the books. He constantly obsesses over the greatness of MAX Coffee.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

I'm not sure if it's there yet, but if you check Events in Materials (maybe after the event ends), you can actually see all the winner scenes.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

xp1337 posted...

F/GO: I'm surprised Team Nobbu won the race in the event. It felt like Team Not-Saber won like 6/8 legs of it.

also had some real "SHEPARD WON'T GO DOWN!" moments in the final Challenge Quest against the Bull of Heaven. Had a friend King Hassan who basically solo'd the entire final bar somehow. I had fully resigned myself to using Command Seals once it was down to just him but he was a machine lmao.

grand assassin indeed

The winner is whoever you pick the most, not whoever gets picked most by the community.

King Hassan is a great solo Servant. He can solo the whole CQ, haha.

I like this Summer event quite a bit. Feels like one of the few FGO stories where the focus is basically entirely on the Servants on their own. Lots of fun stuff.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Awakening is the best one to go for in terms of dating sim elements, I'd say. It's really cool since you can marry just about any guy to just about any girl. Permadeath's been optional since the game before Awakening.

I'm not a huge fan of the multi-route structure, due to repetition. If they had a way to skip more repeated content I think I'd like the game rather more than I do (I already like it quite a bit).
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

Yeah, they can be done well, and the Mario RPGs are extremely creative about it. But I feel like a character like Shepard does everything you would want from a silent protagonist, but better. You get to feel like the character is you, AND she's a strong character at the same time.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.

That's just a game mechanic to let you do the tutorial.
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All the stars in the sky are waiting for you.