Lurker > colliding

zero chance you get in trouble. it's on them for buying it by mistake.

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ZaziGuado posted...

Tiebreaker: Count Bleck over Garrus by way of total ballots won (24 vs 20)

you people

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I like Vesperia's more than Abyss's, just barely.

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If I have to choose one and one only, probably the Final Fantasy prologue/main theme

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Vote Form:
5 - Magus (Chrono Trigger)
0 - Aloy (Horizon Zero Dawn

5 - Mega Man (Mega Man)
0 - Wheatley (Portal 2)

1 - Hades (Hades)
4 - Goro Majima (Yakuza)

4 - Zero (Mega Man X)
1 - Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles)

4 - Luca Blight (Suikoden 2)
1 - Pit (Kid Icarus)

0 - Count Bleck (Super Paper Mario)
5 - Garrus Vakarian (Mass Effect)

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andylt posted...

Hopefully Tales fans like this game better than the last... five or so.

Hey, we love Berseria! It's really only Zestiria that people don't like (and with good reason, imo). Even Xillia 2 has its fans.

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Birthright - 5
Conquest - 4


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yeah song's not great. It's not terrible but it reeks of black-clover-average-boilerplate op.

animation looks great. this ufotable again?

speaking of can't unsee, I still can't not see Lailah when I look at Fmc

I read somewhere that skits are relegated to one area only. Between that and there not being victory screens I might sit this one out in protest

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Power Rankings (Even More)

Let's just speed through these, shall we

14 - Sebastian Debeste
A good idea on paper, with mixed results. Even though I made fun of him all the time, I liked him in the first four cases, because he was an assistant to Courtney, and I liked the idea of facing an adversary with an assistant, given that AA always has you paired with a plucky teenage girl (fair is fair, after all).

He is actually a bit too stupid I think. Even his big moment in E2-5 is basically still all Edgeworth. I wanted a bit more from him. I know this is to help us feel sorry for him, but it also kind of made me feel like I was bullying him sometimes. His stupidity does lead to some funny moments - they all escape me at the moment though. And once he was actually gone - the last part of E2-5 - I found myself missing him somewhat.

13 - Jeff Master and 12 - Kate Hannah
I feel like these two should be a package deal, considering how well the game does at pairing them together. The bond here is really interesting: it doesn't feel 100% romantic, but it isn't straight up familial either. It also doesn't feel creepy, which is a feat. Kate is a good example of how to make a witness character not annoying, and as far as female characters go she does a good job avoiding falling into cliche. Jeff is slightly less interesting, but he comes across a really earnest dude: a classic AA defendant who you can't help feeling protective of. One reason E2-3 is so strong is because you actually want to help these people - it's so weird that this fundamental aspect of AA is so often forgotten in the Investigations series with bland/forgettable defendants and witnesses.

11 - Tyrell Badd
Unlike Lang, Badd has a successful cameo in this game, mostly because he doesn't have such a huge stake in the case. You expect Lang to do a lot in E2-5, and he doesn't, so that's disappointing. Badd in E2-3 is playing with house money. Not only does he provide some fun investigation moments, but Badd does contribute to the overarching story too, what with his helping out Master and helping Gregory with his "trump card."

10 - Dick Gumshoe
When Gumshoe is here, he's great. He's sidelined for long stretches of this game though, which is a shame, because he has moments of real capability. A proficient Gumshoe who is still somewhat goofy is the best Gumshoe.


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_PandaMaster_ posted...

She is genetically perfect after all.....

that face though

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LordoftheMorons posted...

As long as i can use button controls I'm happy!

I don't really like the sword being mapped to the analog stick


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8

Fun ride, but the end result/overall picture is not as good as the journey. Some character stories are much better than others: they weave together to form a good overarching story, but this doesn't save Renya Gouto from being pure exposition.

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No swashbuckler's in the poll.

Voted Troupe Gramarye in its absence

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I kind of think Cases 4 and 5 should be switched somehow. I have no idea how that would work, but it makes more sense to me in terms of Simon vs. Blaise. I'll discuss this more in the eventual case write-ups, but E2-5 just feels weirdly anti-climactic to me (even beyond the De Killer/Dogen confrontation, which was a complete dud as seabass points out).

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Vote Form:
5 - The Boss (Metal Gear Solid 3)
0 - Fiona Belli (Haunting Ground)

5 - Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII)
0 - Guybrush Threepwood (Secret of Monkey Island)

4 - Carmen Sandiego (Carmen Sandiego)
1 - Yoshimitsu (Tekken/Soul Calibur)

5 - Captain Toad (Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker)
0 - Cuphead (Cuphead)

3 - Agent 47 (Hitman)
2 - Yoshi (Super Mario World)

0 - Chloe Price (Life is Strange)
5 - Auron (Final Fantasy X)

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Power Rankings cont. cont.

19 - Nicole Swift
I'm as surprised as the rest of you that she's this high. She's mostly here for her role in E2-1, which in hindsight ended up being one of the game's best cases - wish I'd spent a bit more time on it at the beginning of this topic. She's a classic AA damsel in distress mixed with a healthy dose of Lotta-inspired witness nonsense. I still don't quite get her gimmicks: I guess she's meant to be like a hiker or something, which explains her off-brand North Face gear and her bear trap. She's less good in E2-5, but we can blame that on Lotta's negative influence. Decent character design; very colorful, though her character portrait is ugly af.

18- Lang
A disappointing showing. Lang was one of my favorite parts of AAI. He has some decent moments in AAI2, but for the most part he's just kind of there. I was waiting for his big moment in E2-5, but it never really arrived. Probably the character most harmed by the game's bloated cast.

17 - Shelly De Killer
If you read comics, you know the Joker was originally like a normal guy who did bad things, and he eventually became something... different. Like writers gave him a supernatural quality. That's kind of what has happened to De Killer. So they went a little overboard with his character is what I'm saying. I dig the idea of him being a creepy ice cream salesman. Also,he is able to retain a lot of what made him good in 2-4. But he also is a bit fan-fictiony.

16- Simon Keyes
Speaking of the Joker, Simon was almost certainly going to be third from last on this list until a third of the way into E2-5, when it became obvious he was the mastermind. The twist here certainly makes him more interesting, but I don't love him as a "final boss." An Ace Attorney final boss needs to feel threatening in some way: you either need to hate them or fear them. With the best Ace Attorney final bosses, after you beat them you also pity them. He never feels threatening, nor do I ever feel sorry for him. At most, I am annoyed.

Like it's all well and good that he's the son of Gustavia and did a lot of manipulating behind the scenes. That's great. I like how even as early as E2-2 he was playing mind games. Part of Simon's intended character is that he's meant to come across as meek and boring - I get that. But I can't help but compare him to Engarde, where I actually liked his "fake" persona, which made his reveal all the more powerful.

Plus, I hate clown/circus characters. This isn't a 2-3 thing, this is personal: I always have and I always will. I guess his "objection"/voice manipulation gimmick is cool, but like I said in the playthrough he should have done it more.

15 - Blaise Debeste
Speaking of final bosses, I still feel like Blaise is the actual final boss of this game. That's weird, right? Because it's clearly not true. But the game goes so far to make him feel like the big bad, I kept expecting him to make a final appearance at the end. On one hand, it's interesting that the game subverted expectations, but on the other that does leave me with a somewhat unsatisfied feeling. Unlike Simon - I do feel anger/hate/revulsion toward Blaise, for his philosophy about "truth," for his mistreatment of Sebastian, for his overall appearance. He even has a better "objection" than Simon!

In retrospect, Blaise is Damon Gant if Gant hated his kid. And had substantially worse hair.

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Renne sucks

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9/10

really quite good. I also usually don't like meta-commentary in my video games, but undertale is one of the few to do it right.

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I watched the video and decided on DD's without thinking about it very hard.

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Sure, it's real but it's unlikely that two master chefs both get it and it serves as a motive for a murder. It's a little on the nose.

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Really, saying "____" music is all bad is just dumb at this point. We're just trying to get you to have an open mind Anagram.

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Leonhart4 posted...

Lotta was already a tabloid reporter in 2-4!

oh yeah, I guess that's right. I kind of forgot about Lotta in 2-4. Which is weird considering this whole game is like a sequel to 2-4 in a lot of ways.

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Power Rankings, cont.

24- Body Double (aka President of Zheng Fa "Di-Jung Huang")
For such an important character, we don't really get to know or see the Body Double in action. In E2-1 he's played as a joke. We know he's supposedly an isolationist/strong military/ dictator type. We then later learn he's the head of this big conspiracy to overthrow the government of Zheng Fa. On its own this is kind of interesting, but I wanted more. I never really got a sense of his motivation beyond wanting to get out of the real President's shadow. I think we needed a little more explanation about how and why the power trio got together. His character design doesn't do him any favors.

23 - Sirhan Dogen
Dogen is such a whiff / missed opportunity, and that's why he's below other characters on this list. There's so much to like about him: one of Edgeworth's earliest convictions, an assassin to play foil to De Killer, lots of gimmicks to play with (dogs, chess, his vision). However, he never really comes into his own as a character, and this is because the game largely just treats him as a red herring. He's somewhat mishandled in E2-2, where we are told that Edgeworth finds him suspicious and that Roland is afraid of him, but we aren't shown anything to warrant this. In 2-4, De Killer radiated an aura of cunning malice: that just isn't here with Dogen. A strange mix of trying too hard and not trying hard enough.

22 - Patricia Roland
There's stuff I like about Roland. Out of the three conspirators, I feel like she is also a victim. Like Blaise and the Body Double had this plan, and they wanted to use the orphanage. In my head canon she reluctantly goes along because they were going to pay her/provide for her kids/family. That's the only way she really makes sense to me. I appreciate how her obsession with running the prison like a "family" is connected to her past in running an orphanage. She's such an obvious culprit in E2-2 though that she kind of ruins the case; that's not really her fault so much as the writers/character designers though.

21 - Lotta Harte
Good ol' Lotta. You can always count on her to be fun; for a few minutes, and then she runs out her welcome. Lotta is fine in E2-4, although I don't quite buy her transition from paranormal photographer to investigative reporter. She's less good in E2-5, where she exists to bring Nicole back in to the narrative and to make some dubious claims about Moozilla.

20 - Dane Gustavia
Bad dad. Really bad dad. This baker from hell is an interesting character, but to be fair he was in a coma for most of the only case he was in (E2-3), so we don't get much time with him. In the short time we have, we get a sense of how self-centered he is. I like how he's also a killer who, for the most part, gets away with it (barring some statute of limitations technicalities).

I don't really like how hackneyed "can't taste disease" is, but this is the kind of ridiculous nonsense that I expect from AA and DR. If ridiculous nonsense is handled well, like it is in 2-3, it's fine. I don't really know what else to say except he's a bad dad. Given the events of the entire game, he might be worse than Zak, but I don't know.

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9/10

nominate persona 3, persona 4 golden, and persona 5 royal

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Leonhart4 posted...

Personally, I think the only Edgeworth story from that era that needs to be told is where the heck he was when Phoenix lost his badge. I don't know if they could tell that story well (I guess they could do something along the lines of Edgeworth being overseas and somehow getting taken hostage for a period of time), but it might be better than just he "couldn't do anything" like he says in DD.

I think I said this earlier, but if this game had ended with Edgeworth not getting his badge back or remaining disbarred and him making the decision to go overseas and "do it all over again" (go back to law school, learn to prosecute the "right way" etc) this would've made a lot of sense to me. He could've taken Gumshoe and Kay with him and we could've had an Investigations 3 set in Europe or something.

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good to see ramza and estelle pull through against some tough competition


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Vote Form:
3 - Aerith Gainsborough (Final Fantasy VII)
2 - Crash Bandicoot (Crash Bandicoot)

3 - Locke Cole (Final Fantasy VI)
2 - Bartz (Final Fantasy V)

5 - Revolver Ocelot (Metal Gear Solid)
0 - Octodad (Octodad)

5 - Kat (Gravity Rush)
0 - Knuckles the Echidna (Sonic the Hedgehog)

1 - Robo (Chrono Trigger)
4 - Kaine (Nier)

1 - Joshua Bright (The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky)
4 - Solid Snake (Metal Gear)

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SSBM_Guy posted...

Not sure if I want von Karma to be a lackey to Roland! I liked Sahwit. It was honestly a really fitting cameo. I guess the worst thing about Sahwit's cameo is that it preps you to believe the locked down prisoner to also be a former AA character.

Absolutely; there would be some serious re-writing needing to happen, but I honestly think Edgeworth confronting Von Karma post 1-4 is a story that should be told.

Which sort of brings up Investigations 3. Probably will never happen, but there's lots of places they could go.

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29 - Frank Sahwit
Our toupee-throwing phenomenon is back. He's still a really bad liar. Kind of a fun cameo, but imagine if this game played E2-2 a bit more seriously and had someone important to the lore fill this role like... Von Karma or something.

28 - John Marsh
I've already talked about this character's bad name. It's possible to have a bad/forgettable name and still be a decent character (see: Kate). But John is so boring. People give kid characters flack for being super annoying, but maybe annoying is preferable to the vast vacuum of space that is this kid's personality. There's just a lot left on the table here, I think. And his big moment at the end (where he has the chance to take revenge for his father) doesn't land because never for a second do we, as the player, think this kid has the guts to take on Dogen. In the end he comes across as more of a plot device/motive creator than an actual character.

27 - Delicia Scones (nee Crepes)
I honestly have no idea where I got "crepes" earlier. I wasn't trying to do a funny bit. Maybe I was just hungry for crepes. Delicia's a weird one. She's clearly meant to be a wacky character, but she's also like a pharmacist/spy who's apparently very capable.

I absolutely cannot abide her character design though - totally out of place in the Ace Attorney verse. I know the game has always had these weird mutants who occasionally spring up who are super cartoony compared to the rest of the cast, but AAI is bad in this regard. I don't think the franchise needs to go all "Days of Ruin" on us (buy the Advance Wars remake) and have hyper realistic characters all the time, but a little consistency would be nice.

I did come to appreciate her unique vocal characteristics, yessie. I was a little surprised she didn't show up in the final case, once "Sleepytime zZz" was introduced.

26 and 25 - Bonnie and Karin
They're a package deal. If I had to choose one over the other, I'd choose Karin for being able to actually talk. I love the idea of AA having a recurring coroner/morgue character, but please let's not have it be Bonnie. We can do better. We must do better. Not much to say here.

We'll start talking about characters I actually kind of like next time, I promise.


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Vote Form:
5 - Estelle Bright (The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky)
0 - Giovanni (Pokemon)

4 - Ryu (Street Fighter)
1 - Andrew Ryan (Bioshock)

1 - Geralt of Rivia (The Witcher)
4 - Olivier Lenheim (The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky)

5 - Ramza Beoulve (Final Fantasy Tactics)
0 - Little Mac (Punch-Out!!)

1 - Irvine Kinneas (Final Fantasy VIII)
4 - Bayonetta (Bayonetta)

5 - Nenji Ogata (13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim)
0 - Spyro the Dragon (Spyro the Dragon)

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As others have said, it's pretty anime tropey, but there's something about it that really works. Maybe it's the earnesty of the main characters, but it succeeds.

8/10

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y'all are way overselling it in my opinion. Definitely go the ebay route but don't be surprised if for some reason yours don't go for as high as others - there's a lot of bid inflation on there.

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8.5/10

balances philosophy and adventure in a way few games have ever done. takes risks and they largely pay off. subject matter often veers into mature/uncomfortable territory, but never feels like they're just doing it for shock value.

the way the story is told in disc 2 is disappointing and a little derivative of evangelion but overall excellent.

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Nah, it's worth it to go the ebay route. You're looking at a difference of hundreds of dollars.

Our store just had a bad experience shipping in envelopes (our post office apparently had a thing for putting heavy things on top of our packages) so we switched to boxes - maybe they're okay generally but I wouldn't risk it. The extra shipping cost for safety is worth it, imo.

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Jakyl25 posted...

Whats a good way to ship games? Is a padded shipping envelope sufficient?

Absolutely not. Maybe this is ok for a DS game for but a cartridge or a jewel case you're going to want to wrap them in bubble wrap and a thick paper and affix them in a hard box (so they aren't rolling around).

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Jakyl25 posted...

Also a question based on your experience: are local game stores generally even equipped to handle someone walking in with 50 games from retro consoles, regardless of what they offer for them? I presume theyd want to test them all.

Call /email them first. It depends on the place. The dedicated vintage game stores will definitely want to test them before they fork over a decent price. If you just take them to a "used entertainment store" they'll take them off your hands but just offer you 600.

And yeah, I probably under estimated it in my earlier post. I'd say 700.

ChainLTTP posted...

No you don't. Original SNES carts are insanely expensive now. Earthbound alone is ~$250.

Yeah, on ebay/online directly to a consumer. A used game store isn't going to give you that for resell. It's going to try and sell it for 250 so they'll give you 80.

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meh on FFX

but tag nevertheless

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Also, I just noticed, but the fact that you said "also has the box" for only Superstar Saga leads me to believe you don't have the original boxes/manuals for the rest? If that's the case, you need to lower your expectations for what to expect in terms of compensation.

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I had a collection pretty much the same as yours and I had good results on ebay. That was about 8 years ago though.

Also, lol at getting $1500 from a local game store for those. From my experience working/managing one, it's very unlikely you break $600 taking those to a retailer. Nothing personal, they're just going to try and make much more profit than that. And selling these things is not easy.

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azuarc posted...

...so phenomenally the worst entry in the series when it surpasses the first two games' strengths in almost every regard.

nah. a case can easily be made that 2 is better in terms of characters and pacing, even taking endings off the table.

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Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations: Prosecutor's Path: Power Rankings

There are a lot of characters in this game, some new, some old. Let's rank them, because that's what Ace Attorney fans do.

35- The Victims
I'm cheating by including four characters in one entry, but a list of "35" sounds better than "34" in my opinion. One of this game's strengths is that all of the victims have relevance to the overall plot. Di-Jun Huang (the real one) is the President of an entire country, father to a suspect/defendant, and icon to Lang. Even as a victim, Dover is an antagonistic and mysterious figure in the game's most interesting case. Even the case one victim, Rooke, is apparently principled and dangerous enough to impress De Killer. We'll talk more about Knightley later, but I just wanted to start off by giving credit where credit's due. They're all pretty good by victim standards... but they're still just victims and as such don't contribute much (again, except for Knightley-boy).

34- Regina
I have no words. One of my least favorite AA characters, in this game and in her original case.

33- Penny Nichols
Gotta say, I was actually looking forward to the return of Penny Nichols. In 1-3, her relative "normality" really helped center the case when dealing with a bunch of crazy folk (at least until you brought up collectible cards). Here though she just comes across as bland; also surprisingly dumb, as she mistakes a covered camera crane for Gourdy. Maybe she realized she was boring so she decided to take a page from Lotta's book.

32- Ema
Look - Ema's great. We all love Ema. She's #9 best board 8 waifu. But she's barely a character in this game. She is literally here so we can borrow her luminol and fingerprint powder. The brief cameo of Ron DeLite in E2-3 has more character than she does.

31- Will Powers
I liked his interactions with Edgeworth, but does this guy even do anything in E2-5? I honestly can't remember and I just played this case a few days ago. He lets us investigate the trailer where we find John's rehearsal tape. Nice seeing him, but give the man more to do.

30 - Jay Elbird
This character - our first real AAI2 original character - just doesn't click with me. One, the series has already done a prisoner gimmick. His name was Terry Fawles, and he ends up being one of the more memorable characters in the series, (admittedly, only because he dies on the stand). You say "It's unfair to compare Elbird to Fawles" - ok fine. If that's the case then Elbird is still a pretty generic tough guy character.

Two, this game's weird "animal" obsession kind of bothers me because the animals themselves are too cartoony for the game's existing artstyle (this problem extends beyond how the animals are depicted to other human characters on this list, as we shall see). Elbird's Koala, Simon's animal tower... it's like a different world compared to Polly and even the whale from DD's DLC case (Orla?). I don't know if I'm explaining this well, but it just feels "off." Like the animals are here to be funny, but they're the laziest, most obvious visual gags they could think of.

Overall, I just don't find him very interesting. He's just a prisoner who was attempting to escape at the same time as the murder was happening. Good pun though.


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Vote Form:
2 - Zagreus (Hades)
3 - Kim Kitsuragi (Disco Elysium)

0 - Edith Finch (What Remains of Edith Finch)
5 - Commander Shepard (Mass Effect)

1 - Jessie (Final Fantasy VII: Remake)
4 - Palutena (Kid Icarus)

3 - Monika (Doki Doki Literature Club)
2 - Mae Borowski (Night in the Woods)

0 - Pablo Sanchez (Backyard Sports)
5 - Jill Valentine (Resident Evil)

2 - Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
3 - Princess Zelda (The Legend of Zelda)

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azuarc posted...

I'm a little amazed that so many people are holding the ending against DRV3 this strongly. Were the games ever really about the ending? Was it anything more than a framing device?

Compared to that, was 3 really so terrible? Was there ever any hope for an ending based on anything else? Can you think of a way to frame a Danganronpa game with any other endings that don't sound equally loony and bad? If you're angry, it's only because this one's actually semi-plausible. In our current zeitgeist, I could absolutely see a reality TV show where the actors have to give up their past and then consequently their lives, just because it makes for good TV drama. But again, I have to maintain that the ending's not the point of the games. Or if it is, then I'm seriously missing the boat.

This is a fair point, which is why I gave it a 7 in my earlier post and not something lower. But to answer your rhetorical questions in your last paragraph, yes, I think there are better ways to end this game that aren't "equally loony and bad."

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7

lukewarm take: the ending is not good

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Vote Form:
2 - Ike (Fire Emblem)
3 - Heihachi Mishima (Tekken)

0 - Mewtwo (Pokemon)
5 - Mario (Super Mario Bros.)

5 - James Sunderland (Silent Hill 2)
0 - The Goose (Untitled Goose Game)

5 - Isabelle (Animal Crossing)
0 - Blue (Pokemon)

0 - SHODAN (System Shock)
5 - Velvet Crowe (Tales of Berseria)

2 - Squall Leonhart (Final Fantasy VIII)
3 - Kazuma Kiryu (Yakuza)

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congrats to that one poster who's a big spinarak fan

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I'm a self-professed Larry fan, I think he's almost always good

(he wasn't good in the first investigations admittedly)

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Here's a quick tier list to tide you over for more detailed character rankings. I plan to write-up the AAI2 original characters only, plus Gregory.

Note: in the image above, 1) characters are not ranked within their tiers and 2) placement is determined by their AAI2 characterization only.

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8/10

Extra points for the world building/planetary flavor text.

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Finished 3 last night - first time seeing the "expanded" ending. I can barely remember the original, but it doesn't seem like all that much was added. Was the Normandy landing on the jungle planet new?

Anyway, it's so weird that the game pushes synthesis as the "good" ending when it's essentially mass brainwashing. That being said I think the outcry over the game's ending is still overblown and undeserved. It's perfectly fine. I guess people are mostly mad that there's no perfect ending where the reapers get blown up, Shepard lives, and so do the Geth and other synthetics. Which I'm sure Bioware is probably wishing they had right about now.

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