Board 8 > SaveEstelle/LeonhartFour in Different Houses: Far From Houses Edition [SELF]

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm triggering support conversations left and right now. It's pretty fun. Dedue gets better and better with each one he's in.
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I turned Edelgard into a Wyvern Rider. Flying Axe Death for all.

And I've had convos were Edelgard straight up mentions "Strange, I never mentioned this to anyone before but I feel like opening up to you." Main Protagonist Rank EX at work, everyone!

Major Black Eagle Spoilers
I already know about the route split. Like hell am I gonna fuck that choice up and lose one of my best units.
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Also, I thought Felix was just an unlikable jerk at the start, but support conversations are slowly starting to open him up a bit. There's still this tension between him and a few other party members, but now I'm actually curious to see where it leads.
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Speaking of which, current Blue Lions rankings:

Dedue > Mercedes > Annette > Ashe > Dimitri > Felix > Sylvain > Ingrid

They're all pretty solid though.
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Hahaha, Ingrid and Sylvain are the only Blue Lions I recruited <_< (Sylvain just came to me right at the start though. Maybe he's an auto-recruit if you go with female MC?).
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Yeah, I haven't had high enough stats to recruit anybody yet outside of Cyril as an adjutant. I can imagine Sylvain would immediately jump ship for a hot teacher though, yeah.

Also, I've received user SaveEstelle's current ranking of Black Eagles:

Edelgard > Petra > Bernadetta > Ferdinand > Hubert > Linhardt > Dorothea > Caspar
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Caspar in last is the one that matters!

(I'd rank Hubert higher tho)
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Mission 4 complete. Well, we went full Final Fantasy Tactics on this one. Sylvain's brother takes damage just from holding the Lance of Ruin since he doesn't have a Crest, and after a long winding road to get to him and kill him, the Lance transforms him into a monster. Dimitri says this is the power of the Hero's Relic, which basically means they're like the Zodiac Stones, which can be used for great power in the right hands or great evil in the wrong hands. Since this is our first time fighting a monster, Sothis lets us in on a few special features of monster fights. Thankfully, it wasn't too difficult because I wouldn't have wanted to redo that entire fight again since it took so long.

At first, Sylvain has zero sympathy for what his disowned brother has done, but after seeing what the Lance of Ruin did to him, he changes his tune a bit. After the battle, Sothis poses the relevant question as to whether Byleth possesses the power to transform into a monster like that, too. Rhea warns us not to speak a word of what happened there because it would cause the people to lose faith and Fodlan would fall into chaos. Yeah, the more I talk to her, the less I like her.

Then Dimitri gives us a history lesson about how the people of Faerghus value Relics and Crests very highly. If a member of the nobility does not bear a Crest, they can potentially lose the power to lead their house. It happened to Dimitri's uncle even though he was the oldest son. Sylvain's family in particular requires its leader to bear a Crest because its power is needed to defend the northern border of Fodlan from invaders. Honestly, this would explain some of Sylvain's support conversations where he seems disdainful of the nobility's obsession with Crests. At the same time, Dimitri thinks there's merit in valuing Crests because their power is useful in defending the kingdom, and if they were ignored, the number of people who could use them would dwindle. Dimitri wonders what's best between just cutting away what's unacceptable or learning to accept it anyway.

As Rhea is about to give us our next mission, Seteth rushes in to tell us that Flayn has gone missing. With that, this part ends and we move on to the Horsebow Moon.
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LeonhartFour posted...

Also, I've received user SaveEstelle's current ranking of Black Eagles:

Edelgard > Petra > Bernadetta > Ferdinand > Hubert > Linhardt > Dorothea > Caspar

That top three tracks.
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I've been trying to recruit Petra and Dorothea.
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I spent most of the day in Indianapolis today, and apparently there was something called Gen Con there all weekend, so I saw a lot of people cosplaying all over town. My favorite was literally seeing someone cosplaying as Mega Man

and the guy who was dressed as a piece of pizza
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Took a bit of a break from this but finally beated Zero no Kiseki.

As usual from this series that was a top notch game. In many ways this felt like the most...well-balanced story of the series so far? Like, at many points the Sky series feels like it focuses on its characters at the expense of the world, whereas Cold Steel focuses on the world at the expense of the characters, but this one feels like a nice balance between the two? Now, I really like the characters in Sky, so it remains to be seen whether or not this will actually translate into a better experience for me personally, but I do feel that's an accurate description of the Crossbell games so far. The series has not yet reached the emotional highs of the Sky series yet other than perhaps the Renne scenes, which is a direct continuation of a Sky plotline and also sometimes feels out of place with the overall story in Zero sometimes? On the other hand though there's still a whole second game to go, so who knows where we'll be after that.

Final chapter was real good. Somewhat mixed feelings on the villain though. The Cult itself as an entity was really cool, but I was lukewarm on the actual priest himself. Maybe it works better if unlike me you didn't know his identity going into the game, but it felt like the villain dial went from 0 to 10 a bit too quickly to me, and he himself wasn't really that compelling as a villain anyway. I love though how when shit hits the fan all the various "good guy" factions just immediately team up to take him down.

Random comment: This has been bothering me more and more the deeper I've gotten into this series, but I really don't like the way the Sky games introduce the player to Ouroboros as an organization.

Best characters so far: All 4 main party members, Rixia, Cao Lee, maybe Sergei?

Chapter ranking (counting 4/5 as one chapter): 4/5 > 2 > 3 > 1 > Prologue

Tentative game ranking: SC > 3rd > Zero > FC > CS1 > CS2
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Zero's final villain is 100% forgettable, yes. I don't think anyone cares about that character. Azure's villains are better in general.

Azure has a lot less focus on Sky characters I think.
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Mac Arrowny posted...

Azure has a lot less focus on Sky characters I think.

I didn't particularly mean to imply I thought this was a problem with Zero. Certainly it isn't in general since I think the inter-connectivity is one of the strengths of the series overall. It's more like I consider some of the stuff in Zero focusing on Sky characters to be almost like a side story? Obviously that's not always true because it converges again once the Cult becomes involved, but yeah.
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Oh, I'm not saying it's a problem. I loved the Sky characters in Zero. They were my favorite part of the game. Just stating a fact.
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Glad to see user SaveEstelle has a high opinion of Edelgard. my future choice of black eagles increasingly justified

Finally beat Act 2 of CS2. need to cut part 4 out of that tbqh. fold the shrines into the other 3 parts. IIRC, I only need to make one more "grand tour of Erebonia NPCs" so that's nice. Also, I believe I was mistaken partially before when I said (End of Act 2 spoilers) that the Thors students you fight are locked in. Patrick/Celestin are locked to Rean/Group A and Vincent/Sariffa to Angelica/Team B but the other 4 (Ferris, Edel, Lambert, and Friedel) are free lancers I think and the game tries to shuffle them depending on who is on what team for match-up hype (Ferris v Alisa, Edel v Fie, etc.)
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I could have done without the shrines in the game at all to be honest.

Though I guess one of them had a cool scene with Vita and Grianos so that was nice.
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I've gotten to chapter 14 of Three Houses Black Eagle route

(Spoilers below are for up to that chapter)
It's going to be very interesting of what the overall future opinion on Edelgard is. For the game's part, they really try and push S-Ranking her throughout the story scenes, haha
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Oh right, after being cruelly denied in CS1, Vivi is now voiced. Twice! At least I think that's new, don't recall the bridge crew being voiced originally in those scenes.

Also thankfully S and V are too. I want to say they were completely unvoiced in the original which was some of the most jarring stuff imaginable. Alisa's Act 2 Part 3 Bond Event is also voiced which while cool, should have done all the A2P3 events them imooooo. (actually should have voiced all bond events period but i digress)
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Mission 5 complete, but I don't really have time to talk about it right now, so I'll have to save it for tomorrow.
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Oh wow, they finally finished DGS2-2 on that LP. Note to self to check out later.
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also they apparently teased Snake being in Tekken 7 at EVO and it turned out just to be a joke

which in the grand scheme of things is fine because I didn't want to have to buy Tekken 7 anyway
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Oh right, before I talk about Mission 5, I suppose I should mention I activated my first Paralogue in Three Houses, this one starring Dedue and dealing with the people of Duscur trying to take back their homeland. We were put in a tricky situation of having to try to force the people of Duscur to retreat so they wouldn't get slaughtered without outright helping them defeat kingdom troops. Basically, we had to defeat the Duscur troops so they wouldn't get killed by the "ally" troops, since we would just spare them and allow them to retreat.

Afterwards, we talk to the leader of the Duscur troops, and there's a lot of built up resentment toward Faerghus, as you would expect, and toward Dedue as a "traitor." However, he insists that Dimitri wants to have a kingdom that accepts the people of Duscur as a vital part of it, and that's why he's so loyal to him. It was pretty good.

Anyway, getting back to the main plot, Seteth's sister Flayn goes missing, so our task is to find her. Our investigation turns up many subjects, but the most likely one turns out to be Jeritza, who always struck me as kind of strange to begin with. Perhaps it was because he reminded me of Joachim from Shadow Hearts Covenant! Either way, if you approach his room on the first free day after your investigation is over, the game gives you the option to skip straight to the end of the month, but I ain't doin' that!

This is where the disconnect between the urgency of the plot and the free time of the game shows up because we're supposed to be in a hurry to rescue Flayn, but we don't actually bother to do it until the end of the month. In any event, when we enter Jeritza's room, we find not only Flayn, but Professor Manuela and one other person. Then the Death Knight (presumably Jeritza himself) shows up and challenges us to a duel. Fortunately for me, I don't have to even bother to fight him directly, as defeating all of his troops brings the battle to an end. The masked dude (calling himself the Flame Emperor) tells the Death Knight to retreat, and so they do.

Afterward, Seteth says it's time to go into hiding, but Flayn is insistent that they stay at the monastery because the enemy could still find them regardless, but at least here they have the protection of the church and the knights. Flayn suggests joining Byleth's class for good measure, and Seteth relents. Then he tells me that they are probably after Flayn's blood because there's something rare and dangerous about it, but he doesn't elaborate on what exactly it is.

Next, Rhea tells us about the other girl we found with Flayn, whose name is Monica. She's actually a student from the previous year's class, who went missing shortly before graduation. Apparently, she has zero gratitude for the Blue Lions, so she's just going to rejoin the Black Eagles once she recovers. Also, the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion is next month, so that seems like a pretty big deal.

Then Jeralt says he's going to try to find out who's pulling the strings behind the scenes because there have been a lot of strange groups around Garreg Mach lately. In the event he goes missing, he tells Byleth that he's going to leave something hidden, so we need to thoroughly search his room to find it. I can't imagine we'll ever actually need whatever this thing is...! Next up is the Wyvern Moon.
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Finally got another student to defect to my class

Welcome aboard, Dorothea. I've got a few others who are interested but my stats aren't high enough.
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And recruiting Dorothea pays immediate dividends because it opens up a Paralogue battle starring her and Ingrid, whose father arranged a marriage proposal with a guy that Dorothea finds personally repulsive. They decide to investigate into his background, and while we don't get to see any part of this investigation personally, they all come to the conclusion that he's bad news. Sure enough, we get ambushed by some of his men, and our goal is simply to help Ingrid escape. For some reason, the battle took place around a volcanic area, but it was fun.
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I also finished a Paralogue battle starring Sylvain, in which we were sent to wipe out the remaining thieves that his older brother led. It was an interesting premise for a battle because they were all trying to escape from us instead of fighting, and I only let one actually escape, so that was cool.

And Mission 6 is complete as well. The Battle of the Eagle and Lion was really, really fun. I only had one unit get KO'd, and that was Ingrid. Dimitri has become a one-man wrecking crew for my team. As a Paladin, he has ridiculous range of movement. He's also like 5+ levels ahead of everyone else, so he can one-shot most opponents, and he takes practically no damage from anything. It's nice. It was also cool that they actually tried to fight each other, too, instead of both ganging up on me like they did during the mock battle earlier in the game. Overall, it was fun to have a breather episode like this after the last mission in particular was pretty heavy.

After the battle, Rhea rewards us with a Blessed Lance for defeating the most opponents, but Seteth quickly ends the light mood by informing us our next mission will be to investigate an abnormal occurrence at Remire Village. Next is the Red Wolf Moon.
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Looks like I might be getting a dog soon.
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LeonhartFour posted...

Looks like I might be getting a dog soon.

=o

Dogs are the absolute best. Do you know what kind?
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Not entirely sure. The circumstances are a bit weird. Basically, a few weeks ago, my girlfriend's mom found a puppy on her way to work. They put up signs around where they found it, posted about it on Facebook, etc. and no one claimed her. However, they already have a few dogs of their own, so they don't want to keep her. Instead, they asked either me or my girlfriend to take her. She wouldn't really be able to right now herself, but I could tell by her reaction to the pictures, videos, etc. that her mom sent that she really, really wants her. So I guess that means I'll be taking her. It's pretty clearly a mixed breed. They took her to the vet, and they think she's some sort of terrier mix.

One of the conditions of me taking her was that I get to name her, and so I chose the name Maya, of course (Would have been Phoenix if it were a boy). I'm planning to visit home this weekend and meet her family for the first time, and I think the plan is for me to take her back with me when we leave. I will post pics when I get home if that does indeed occur.
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Made it to the not final dungeon in CS2. But posting because knowing who to bring where a bit earlier led to some dialogue I found neat.

CS2 Finale Spoilers: Took Millium to the villa so she'd be around for the fight with Altina. No surprise, she has some added dialogue with Altina before the fight starts. First Millium asks Altina if she's her sister. Class VII goes all "!?" and doubts they could be related but Altina answers "In a sense" but goes on to state their purposes are slightly different. Millium then drops it with an "Oh. 'Kay." Then when Altina announces her model number 0z74 (IIRC) right before the fight starts, Millium comments "Oh neat! That's only one off from mine!"

Also, while not new to me, having Gaius and Sara around for the hidden quest before that operation about the traveling priest adds some interesting pieces of info too. Father Barkhorn is like 99.999% a Dominion. He was Gaius's teacher before Thors, and Sara thinks to herself that she's heard of a strong old guy from the Church with the title "Roaring Lion."
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More dialogue fun (CS2 Finale Spoilers): Took Millium to Xeno/Leo since Claire shows up and while she didn't have anything important to say to Claire, she does say when Xeno/Leo power-up (before Sharon/Claire save you) that "now I know why their threat level is 5." Assuming she means the threat levels we saw in the Cassius report from 3rd that's the highest level the Intelligence Division has and the level they raised Cassius to by the end of that Star Door. Not sure if Millium meant Xeno/Leo specifically or Zephyr as a whole, though I assume she means Xeno/Leo.

Also something I noticed is that after each boss fight so far the person with the most personal connection to the fight (Laura for Duvalie/Bleublanc and Fie for Xeno/Leo) get a text update talking about the fight if you head back to the beginning of the dungeon where the spare party members hang out... and Sara gets one each time. Everyone else remains the same. Not sure if the text update only occurs if those characters are present for the fight or not. I would assume so in the case of Laura/Fie but who knows.
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Talking that way about Xeno/Leo feels weird. They always feel distinctly nonthreatening compared to the real big boys, and it was disappointing that they weren't dealt with permanently in CS2. The mercs we see in Azure are way more impressive than they are.
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Yeah, I agree with that assessment and found it a bit weird. Like that's the one fight that really always struck me as one that Class VII should have won on its own and didn't need to be "saved." Bleublanc/Duvalie is pushing it too, honestly, just given the 7v2 and potentially Sara but whatever, I always give Ouroboros some leeway in these matters.
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Yeah, those two always struck me as the weak links in CS2's antagonist ensemble.
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I'm meeting the dog for the first time tomorrow.
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So I got and beat Tokyo Xanadu ex+. Now playing Ys 8. Got Cold Steel 1 and 2 and then 3 is coming out. Guess it's just going to be Falcom for the rest of the year for me.
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Tokyo Xanadu ex+ is excellent! Ys VIII is great too although I don't like it quite as much.
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I didn't like the first couple of chapters of Tokyo Xanadu. It felt really generic. The BLAZE arc was when I really started digging it.

Ys 8 so far has been great all the time. Music does not disappoint.
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Yeah, Tokyo Xanadu takes a bit to get rolling. BLAZE Arc probably is the turning point. I did enjoy the lower-stakes/monster-of-the-day/slice-of-life stuff early on though. They're pretty short chapters too compared to the later ones.

Ys VIII music is great, yes. Combat is a blast as well. The game also gets a lot better later on, so look forward to that!
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Ys 8 > any Trails game tbqh.
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The 3rd may be the greatest game ever though so I don't think that checks out!
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It's kind of weird considering how much I like Trails that I have basically no interest in any other Falcom games.

Though I guess it makes sense when you consider that my ideal JRPG is basically just a visual novel with combat on the side maybe if it feels like it.
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Well Pyre, you spend more time in a school life in Tokyo Xanadu than in a Persona game. Not necessarily a good thing. I think it slows the game down. But worth pointing out if you do care about the visual novel stuff.
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In CS2 Divertissement now. Probably would have beaten it if I didn't blow a bunch of time back in the finale. At one point I got stubborn about trying to figure something out about S-Crafts and ended up losing like 5 times to Crow and Vita... which all would have been avoided if my first, absolutely perfect run, wasn't blown up by Crow chaining a craft into Deadly Cross in the Divine Knight battle hitting for 90k and killing me there.

But yeah, S-Crafts. I noticed this with both McBurn the other day and then Vita here because those two have S-Crafts that punch through Craft and Art Guard/Reflect sometimes it would hit for a survivable 12-14k and then other times it would just hit for a 19-21k total party wipe if I didn't have Artemis Tear's 200% HP buffing me up. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out any rhyme or reason to the massive discrepancies in damage. With Vita I saw literally 12k and 20k and just could not discern why. No turn bonus factor, I'm pretty sure no debuffs were in play.

My best working theory had been that they kind of had a hidden "Master Quartz" effect like the "Increase Damage as HP decreases" you have with some of them, but then that was debunked on my actual successful try when the 12k hit happened when she was at like 2% HP. The weirdest thing is I couldn't even come up with any mitigation ideas really outside of a handful of MQ effects like Angel's auto-revive and like... Iron's "decrease damage when HP is high" thing. Back when I was fighting McBurn out of curiosity I changed my quartz set-up so I could try buffing DEF and it seemingly had no effect. Then when I thought "well maybe it counts as magic damage" and switched to be able to buff ADF... still no effect!

I don't even know man. My conclusion at the end of it was that CS2 just wants you to break it wide open because I was rolling in with what had to be a party that was slightly overlevelled and rocking top-notch quartz set-ups with all rares or super rares where possible. Only other possible idea is to take that concept to the extreme and stack like every Rare Quartz version that buffs HP. That probably gives you something like +7000 in theory with HP equips but jeez. Proxy Puppets maybe? Forget if those were available to buy at the final dungeon shop.

thus ends my utter failure to determine some game mechanics
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xp1337 posted...

Also, while not new to me, having Gaius and Sara around for the hidden quest before that operation about the traveling priest adds some interesting pieces of info too. Father Barkhorn is like 99.999% a Dominion. He was Gaius's teacher before Thors, and Sara thinks to herself that she's heard of a strong old guy from the Church with the title "Roaring Lion."

oh wow that is a super cool find!
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I knew about the Sara line because she was part of my main party for the last stretch of the game. The Gaius part is cool though.
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Oh cool, apparently the voice of Tifa in the FFVII remake is Britt Baron (Justine in GLOW).

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Adventures of Leonhart and Doggo have begun
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Well I started playing (watching a Let's Play of--whatever) Ao no Kiseki and I got through the Prologue and Chapter 1. Technically speaking not a whole lot happened yet, but I really liked this anyways because:

--This has had some of the best sidequests in the series so far. (Strictly speaking I think the best one was a required quest but it still felt like a sidequest because it was minor NPC focused)
--I am absolutely hyped for what is coming next, both the stuff we already knew about from Cold Steel and otherwise. Setting up Red Constellation vs Heiyue is really cool, and I just love Red Constellation in general already. Also I got chills when Campanella showed up and The Enforcers started playing. Peak Trails right there.

Some other things:
--Dieter is a really cool character, especially already knowing the direction the rest of the game goes because of Trails of Cold Steel.
--I got needlessly excited when Ries showed up and it was revealed that (minor spoilers) Elie was already acquaintances with her. Just a pretty neat touch.
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Ries showing up was super hype yeah. I just wish she had more screentime.
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