Lurker > SeabassDebeste

that cid minigame was hilarious too. think i died like 4 times.

wait maybe i lied, i do seem to have done new gear to give these guys

freya alone survived that boss battle! but i didn't buy any weapons for my friends at home. here's hoping we've got enough between eiko (as leader...?), steiner, vivi, and dagger

probably gotta protect hard against confusion

maelstorm is fucking annoying

well i'm stuck on this continent atm so sidequests are not an option! but open to hearing ideas once i finish kuja's fetchquest

4 cactuars at once is just stupid, just died to them a second time

only two guys have clearheaded is a problem. the other is that quina/underleveled freya/amarant kinda suck as a party

i mean i guess admittedly it's not like i've done too much interesting stuff gameplay-wise. i never use zidane's techs other than stealing; i sometimes cast slow on bosses with vivi; and the like

but yeah i'd prob take a lot less issue with using steiner if he weren't so ugly.

anyway - have progressed a bit further. i liked revisiting the black mage village. and now i have full control over my party, which is cool, but man i feel sad that freya is underleveled. i also just find steiner boring even though he's incredibly effective, and i also feel the urge to level everyone up. but this new area i'm reaching on the ship - the quicksand surrounding kuja's stronghold - has some tough random encounters. freya dying at <lv 20 is pretty painful when zidane has broken 30!

i've been dragging dagger around with me as my white mage because based beatrix is missing, alas. maybe it's boring to have an OP character but i love her (and in general love controlling major rival characters like in chrono trigger). i guess she's probably not really a permanent party member since we never got to name her, and she's prime death material, but getting to play her a bit was great. wonder if she'll wind up against us again at some point and we'll have to put her down, or if kuja will kill her to prove himself or something.

in the meantime maybe i should swap eiko in for dagger. she's around the same level but maybe could learn some more abilities.

i'm accumulating accessories faster than i can teach characters their abilities! ahh!

random note: zidane's little fetchquest that turns cid into a frog is silly and feels really dumb with little "gameplay" element, but in hindsight i appreciate the world-building - just wish that there weren't the "ask about potion/ask about other stuff" dichotomy, as it slowed me down in order to hear the flavor text. fav part of this was easily the burmecian couple - they're fantastic.

Leonhart4 posted...

You did miss out on an optional boss in the castle library, which could've made up for the lack of fighting for you!

ah yeah i skipped it because i hadn't found a save point, and i thought i might be able to revisit it

i didn't mention it but i died to it really early on in the game

i did enjoy talking to all the staff in the castle in alerting them to leave. does that result in anything?

Emeraldegg posted...

It def took me a while to differentiate the actual castle part of alexander vs alexandria castle

yeah this totally wasn't obvious to me

most_games_r_ok posted...

Also, not sure what you were expecting during the Alexandria destruction sequence? Fights for everyone to do? How would they go about this? We can assume that the Alexandrian soldiers and Knights of Pluto were busy handling things on the ground and the party's first thoughts was to save Garnet only. Well, Zidane's was and Amarant doesn't care, Freya and Vivi aren't particularly connected either and may hold some resentment towards Alexandria and it's citizens so....why would they help out with an evacuation for this? And last time we tried, it went terrible and everyone died. Maybe I'm overthinking this myself but I feel that they would all have reasons for their not to be anything happening but Beateix and Steiner defendinng their kingdom.

this is one way to look at it - the other is that this is an RPG, and a FF at that. these games come up with random stuff for characters to do all the time. like we haven't had a real boss or even dungeon-like sequence since the mist-tree monster dude. this series dropped an octopus out of the sky and made it a recurring boss; it had an inexplicable ghost train. it's not like there was nothing to fight.

Leonhart4 posted...

I was okay with the story focus here though because the entire sequence is excellent.

there were just a few things that felt under-written/overwrought - the whole gem stuff feels really silly and has been super macguffin-ish (not inherently bad per se) and uninspired throughout.

then zidane telling everyone "hey i'm gonna do this alone" was just another moment not really landing for me, since nothing is really explained, and there's no gameplay significance to his rescuing garnet alone. garnet herself has also just been mega-dull lately.

i think overall with kuja getting usurped as top dog by garland, there's also some sense of reminder that we never got to beat brahne or her top general beatrix in battle, which feels a little weird. at least we're finally getting to fight kuja soon, presumably.

kuja ate is a twist

Okay, so lots of plot (or at least action). Kuja reappears with Bahamut and invades Alexandria. Steiner and Beatrix take to the streets to fight the Mist monsters and resolve to just go down fighting.

Dagger walks up to the tower of the magically sealed Alexandria Castle where she's mysteriously drawn. Eiko feels a similar compulsion from the airship headed over from Treno, and she dives down and unites with Dagger. Their gems touch and they summon Alexander who manifests only as two giant, feathered wings surrounding the castle, with laser-beams that annihilate Bahamut.

Kuja tries to gain control of Alexander using the same big-ass eye in the sky that he used for Bahamut, but some rando dude (named Garland?) appears in a random cutscene from far away instead, and he takes control of the Eye and makes some assertions about Kuja's cause or backstory or whatever and how he's chosen to stay on Gaia.

Zidane gets to play hero to the damsel in distress randomly at the end as Alexandria Castle is finally razed. No battles happen, which is... a disappointment, I'd say. Steiner and Beatrix's battles vs Mist monsters weren't interesting fights, but at least they provided some action.

We all wake up in Lindblum, and man, this writing is... not good here. Other than Steiner and Beatrix going down with the ship, the dialogue here is all kind of terrible. I also am afraid the game is approaching the endgame already, since a showdown with Kuja feels kind of imminent at this point, but it feels like we haven't gotten nearly enough since we returned from the northern continent. The only highlight really has been Eiko's

It looks like the next major thing to happen will be us gaining access to a beloved FF trope, the airship.

it was okay. obviously setting up stuff to come. i thought the snapshot was decent but a little tedious, which probably the point.

haven't had a chance yet!

that's absolute insanity that this is that random/unpredictable/obscured. why not make the logic at least a little more transparent?! all these zeroes that i can't predict were annoying beyond belief

okay i absolutely have no idea how these card games work but i beat the champion

steiner-beatrix tagteam time

Wordle 688 3/6





decoy
mason
aglow

wordlebot says i had 10 options heading into guess 3. luck is OP

missed another day

Wordle 686 3/6




spoke
blear
anger

according to wordle i was super unlucky with my first guesses (23 38) but i randomly plucked the correct guess oit of 27 on guess three

changmas posted...

i think the suns are cooked regardless. they have exactly 2 players on offense and about the same on defense. if ayton continues to be this invisible and they have to bench him for landale i don't think that bodes well for their chances of winning another 3 games

if the suns escape this round then also just be sitting ducks in round 3 lol

you don't trade wemby for picks, he's the guy you were hoping to get with those picks

MZero posted...

https://twitter.com/Balldontlie/status/1641478820745162752

maybe you were right!

there was a reddit post that showed that this became significantly more severe after lebron threw a hissyfit against the celtics too

Leonhart4 posted...

https://twitter.com/LeBatardShow/status/1653920781493993472

gotta say, i don't watch much sixers outside of the playoffs, so i'm glad i got to witness some of the mvp season

i didn't watch but look at their opponent, they're guaranteed to be playing every game against the refs this series

even more egregiously, two voters didn't have tatum in the top 5

do you mind recapping exactly what the controversy is about?

yeah needing to play durant and booker 45 minutes to beat the 2017 thunder was not gonna cut it versus a complete team

Wordle 682 3/6





shrug
suave
sulky

boston teams are 0-4 in their last 4 games in TD garden

well they also held the best NBA offense in history to 100 points. i didn't watch the game but that suggests a tremendous defensive effort - and defense does require buy-in

between barry and better call saul, these last 12 months have been incredible for final-season time skips

Aecioo posted...

Yeah I listen to it the next day because I need a second to unwind. Think I was the one to first reference it last season. Also, if you enjoy it, listen to The Big Picture podcast, which is the hosts (Sean Fennesseys) main podcast. Their movie drafts are fucking hilarious, while their deep dives into new movies are strangely profound.

i listen to big picture for movies i watch, which are pretty dang few. but i also listened to a lot of their awards season coverage this year because that does interest me even if i don't wind up watching the movies

i assume y'all listen to bill hader on the ringer's podcast, right? he recaps/deep-dives each episode and they publish the podcasts right after the episodes air

yessssssss

yeah, i think lv5 death might have missed on literally everyone, and the fire counterattack was very strong - but having two white mages makes it very safe to turtle and snipe

pjbasis posted...

The iifa tree boss was another roadblock for me. I wonder if they thought it was hard enough to not put another boss at the end of disc 2

if this is the case then I'm highly likely to be overleveled. which i guess makes sense given that I've given everyone the level-up ability lmao

that makes sense!

oh also kuja has given some interesting backstory hints about himself and his motivations, which are actually kinda interesting as a mystery given they're relatively underplayed

whew, lots of progress without many explicit save points

it's not exactly obvious to me why everyone was convinced they'd find kuja on this counting and at the iifa tree, but we've defeated a NORG-like random creature that apparently was responsible for all mist (?!) - feels like mist was a little underdeveloped as a mystery if that's really the long and short of it, but okay! kinda thought that fight was gonna be a storyline loss!

the game gives us lots and lots of warning of big fights to come, though instead of lina we wind up facing off against the other bounty hunter with only zidane. ummmm okay? zidane hits trance immediately so this battle lasts literally two attacks which is hilarious. amarant joins our party and we have our first decision to swap party members and... there's zero story justification for it. i always wonder why they will say we can only select certain characters but no reason is given, whoops

okay so kuja finally shows and we get LOTS of warning it's going down, but... ummm, we fight neither him nor any single boss but just a string of chumps. sure?!

interesting death for brahne, especially following it up with a period of total quiet as dagger has to ascend the throne. any mention of her being remotely good is purely secondhand from dagger, but you still get it from her POV.

in the massive alexandria now!

yeah instructing that having zero depth whatsoever is not particularly winning against a complete team

oh shit eiko can equip phoenix pinions?! had been wondering what use those were!

lmao what

should i be restarting to cook for 11 and get quina back?! that was hilariously unexpected

also zidane and vivi peeing off a mountain together is the true male bonding i didn't know i needed

KommunistKoala posted...

Coach Bud's brother died during the playoffs. Crazy he continued coaching after that

god, that seems incredibly painful. i guess i've heard of players doing stuff like that (isaiah thomas's 53 point outing vs washinbgton after his sister died). but i can also obviously see why you wouldn't be on top of your gane. terrible postaeason for them.

pretty amazing stuff

neonreaper posted...

We did it we avoided a game 7

Quite the stretch in that fourth quarter of tension as like 2 baskets were scored in like 4 minutes ugh

(the answer will be depresssing but do people for real still watch nfl draft)

that last stretch was the complete Marcus Smart Offensive Experience - turnovers, bricked 3s, amazing cuts, sharp passes, and a crafty finish as well to top things off

why not - NFL draft?

celtics are 1-3 vs the knicks this season

but more importantly we're 3-2 against atlanta and 0-0 against philly lol

ScareChan posted...

It's gameday

today we welcome the return of the beam
and hopefully I can see it in person for the first time

good luck!!

KommunistKoala posted...

Kawhi actually had a torn meniscus

well i for one am shocked. SHOCKED.

yeah, might have gotten a little too cute with letting blake griffin into the 4th quarter of a playoff game

traemian lillard

celtics basketball

Wordle 675 6/6








wrong
labor
cover
shift
dumpy
joker

whew

(edit) okay, glad I'm not alone on struggling with this one!

pain

Aecioo posted...

>.>

yeah... i had not finished episode 2 when i said that!

haven't seen episode 3 yet, but excited to!

barry does NOT deserve noho hank's friendship