Board 8 > SaveEstelle/LeonhartFour in Different Houses: Trails of ColDexit Edition [SELF]

(+) Yeah! (+)

The Mana Sword posted...

I lost my match this week because Mahomes took a knee on the last play, taking his rushing yards down from 60 to 59, and losing me a point

...

O O F
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I mean its not the end of the world, Im still good for playoffs

but yeah, p. salty about that one
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https://twitter.com/quinton_chloe/status/1196679664590155777?s=20

I love the multitude of customization options in this game so much

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I also went with red hair

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customization options are a double-edged sword for me

I love them generally but then there's the times I spend an hour+ on character creation screens in Mass Effect/PoE/other RPGs with them or even Bloodborne/Dark Souls lol.

That looks cool though.
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LordoftheMorons posted...

I also went with red hair

That is because you have excellent taste

xp1337 posted...

customization options are a double-edged sword for me

I love them generally but then there's the times I spend an hour+ on character creation screens in Mass Effect/PoE/other RPGs with them or even Bloodborne/Dark Souls lol.

That looks cool though.

Yeah, its honestly very savvy in Sword and Shield. Lots of hairstyles and eye colors to choose from, plus plenty of other stuff. And League Cards are kind of addictive. You gain new art assets and backgrounds and poses and such as the game goes on. Theyre good for in-game lore and great for collecting friends cards as well!

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I never mess with customization in games. Just give me the default appearance please.
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also I am feeling the Ring Fit Adventure next day soreness

saving the world isn't as easy as it used to be
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Interesting how CS3 seems a lot more anti Erebonia than the first two did, after those two games tried to fix the Crossbell and Sky games' negative image of Erebonia.
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I'm getting my biyearly urge to play chrono cross
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Mac Arrowny posted...

Interesting how CS3 seems a lot more anti Erebonia than the first two did, after those two games tried to fix the Crossbell and Sky games' negative image of Erebonia.

I kinda feel like this is more a result of the intersection of Erebonia on the whole and Osborne.

I think the consistent message is more anti-Osborne than Erebonia, but because Sky and Crossbell take place in a foreign country the two get understandably conflated because you've got mostly an outsider's view of Erebonia and it's largely through the lens of the foreign policies pursued by the Imperial Government -- Osborne.

It isn't until CS1 and 2 where you're actually in Erebonia that you see the political situation fleshed out and how things are going from the inside. Now you see the various political forces at play in the empire instead of just Osborne's and so Erebonia as a whole gets disentangled from him to the viewer's perspective and you see there's a lot more going on.

As for CS3 (end of CS2 spoilers): By the time of CS3 though, Osborne has all opposing political forces crushed beneath him so you have Erebonia and Osborne closely intertwined again because there's no longer any credible political opposition to him, he damn near is Erebonia now which kinda brings the situation close to what it appeared to be when you looked at it from the outside from Liberl and Crossbell.
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I agree with xp but with the caveat that I don't always feel like the games themselves always treat the issue with that level of analysis and relies a bit too heavily on the player already having appropriate context.

(I suspect if I were to think about it in detail I would decide that CS1/2 not emphasizing "anti-Osborne" enough is the main source of the issue)
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Even with the Osborne thing I kinda feel like CS1 and CS2 were more anti noble than anti Osborne.
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Eh, I don't think CS1 and 2 are pro-Erebonia. They just aren't the Nazi Germany that the other two series almost paint them as. It just adds some nuance by showing that there are people who acknowledge it has a lot of problems that need fixing and want to do something about it.

Mac Arrowny posted...

Even with the Osborne thing I kinda feel like CS1 and CS2 were more anti noble than anti Osborne.

I mean Crow's entire group is anti-Osborne. That might get lost in the shuffle in CS2 a bit because Osborne's barely in it, but I think you're meant to sympathize with Crow's cause even if you can't entirely agree with it.
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Leonhart4 posted...

I never mess with customization in games. Just give me the default appearance please.

But in games with customization the default usually looks terrible!

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Eh, default MaleShep is pretty solid. And if I try to make it look like me, I'm never happy with it because I guess I look too weird to replicate. And I'm not creative enough to want to spend a lot of time to create a cool appearance.
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I feel like there's a world of difference between rolling default male Shepard and swinging by salons in Pokemon Shield. There's far more emotional weight riding on how you choose for Shepard to look like across a game/entire trilogy of games. In a Pokemon title, you're rolling through a far breezier, lower-stakes adventure story, and there's more justification for your trainer to take a few hours out of their busy day and get a full-blown makeover just for the heck of it.

There's also a wildly high number of shirts, slacks, jeans, skirts, gloves, hats, shoes, socks, you name it in recent Pokemon games, Sword/Shield most of all. Things that you can change on the turn of a dime. Fun stuff.

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if you're not spending hours customizing your character before the game begins what are you even doing
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I don't even use costumes and accessories on JRPG characters, even though like every one has it now. Don't mess with canon appearances...!
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Promising start to 5-3!

@_@ Gavin
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lol I made Shepard look like the cover Shepard.
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pjbasis posted...

Promising start to 5-3!

@_@ Gavin

5-3 top ten case
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after i left arni village, i went to save, and my virtual memory card had one previous save:

immediately after leaving arni village

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who would ever want to leave arni village, its so nice there
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well sometimes you gotta leave to go get komodo scales
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I think you get the best CC experience just listening to the full OST on YouTube.
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ok, so chrono cross has always made me kinda upset because i got to the final boss, but the game would freeze during some animation on my crappy PS1 as a kid - it would have run fine on the ps2, but before i got a chance to switch systems my sister deleted my save file

so i never actually saw the ending (and i wanted to try ng+ too), but i didn't want to replay the whole game then. so i feel like its something i need to do at some point
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Chrono Cross is great and worth the time imho (although the ending isnt really that special)
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Mob Psycho 100 Season 2 Episode 3 complete

This season has had a different tone than season 1, but not in a bad way. I like how they're approaching Mob's powers this season.
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Chrono Cross is pretty good. Its audiovisual presentation is incredible and makes it well worth playing despite my tepid response to certain other elements.

I just had an online match in Pokemon Shield that reminded me how uniquely thrilling this franchise can be. My opponent knew so many tricks of the trade that I got caught off-guard multiple times but I always managed to eke by. We finished the match with less than 15 seconds left on the clock.

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Chrono Cross is a fine game. I just don't know that I'd be able to play it from start to finish ever again. It does certain things really well but has a tendency to get bogged down in less interesting things.

also the battle system is dreck and somehow the worst song in the game is the regular battle theme that you have to listen to more than any other song in the game
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battle music is ART

chrono cross is one of my favorite games ever so I have very little bad to say about it. element management can get a little tedious I suppose.
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I love the battle music but I feel like the game would have worked even better with another standard fight track or two. When it fits, it fits; when it doesn't, it feels bewilderingly off-key.

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Boss music is good. Regular battle theme not so good.

And yeah, the Element system is straight up bad.
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Chrono Cross appreciation? I'm down for that!

It's been a long time since I've played. I need to think of some challenge run ideas because it's just too easy.
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i was thinking last night i might randomize the list of characters, and always use whoever was at the top when they were available

but i should instead just focus on finishing the darn game
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Ring Fit Adventure day 2 complete

the game seems to know when I've had enough and tells me to just quit for the day and I cannot find a valid counterargument to their claim
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Yeah, I noticed it was pretty good about giving you just the right amount of work out.

Really need to get back to it, but its been tough to get myself to get motivated to get out of bed early enough to do it the past week.
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Revived my playthrough of Nier: Automata from the ashes.

Man I don't like playing as 9S.
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He takes some getting used to, but I largely enjoyed the hacking minigame.
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Some CS3 thoughts

the way people keep steaming after coming out of the baths even when they're fully dressed is hilarious. burst out laughing the first couple times I saw it

the whole school coming on the field expeditions is excellent. leads to great character development for everyone and a real good atmosphere

Finished day 1 of expedition 2. Good stuff! Tio probably the highlight here, though the nickname they gave her in the localization is bad. Machias has been, uh, pretty uninteresting so far? It's like they stripped away all his negative personality traits and left him with nothing. Maybe he'll get more fun when Jusis shows up? Interesting how they keep shipping Rean with Alisa so hard despite you being able to romance everyone. Definitely some of the most half-assed harem elements in a JRPG. Learning that Vita apparently left Ouroboros was pretty cool if true. Has some good potential. Curious how many of the other Crossbell characters will come back in day 2.

What they're doing with Rean is super cool too. The idea that the Empire is intentionally holding everyone back in order to make Rean look like a hero to the nation is great. I love that all the heroic things Rean does are just part of PR campaign.

The weirdest thing is that all this is still happening before Azure's ending. Knowing that (Azure spoilers) Crossbell will be free in a few months makes all of the stuff happening in Crossbell feel pretty strange. Has Falcom ever explained why they did it this way?
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Ranked match record is 4-2 right now. Not bad cant wait to see it crumble as I move up in classes!

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Mac Arrowny posted...

Interesting how they keep shipping Rean with Alisa so hard despite you being able to romance everyone.

I mean they've done this in every game

the games all makes it pretty clear that they really want you to romance Alisa, kinda like Symphonia did with Colette
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pyresword posted...

Revived my playthrough of Nier: Automata from the ashes.

Man I don't like playing as 9S.

Where were you roughly again? I know you were on Route B at least because I was crushed about that.

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Continuing on in CS3. Just completed Day 2 of the Chapter 4 Field Exercise.

Man, that could have almost passed for a final dungeon if not for the fact that we're not in the "Final Chapter." We even started collecting Zemurian Ore shards! I caused myself a bunch of grief here trying to juggle MQs, Accessories, and some rare/limited quartz between the parties as I swapped between them. I probably shouldn't have really bothered with that too much. At the end I got so focused on fixing the quartz set-ups again I forgot to equip accessories again so I fought the Dark Dragon with no one having accessories lol. Well, it all worked out so whatever.

lol Roselia and Emma.I see Crow's got a new S-Craft.

Also while patrolling before the dungeon it seems George infiltrated or sabotaged the Courageous so uhh... that's going to be a problem later. Ash also picked up a gun and his chuuni sense pulsed and Musse's plot detector went off so that's sure to come into play. Altina is also remembering flashes of memory and Millium may or may not know/sense something about it.

Also got all the Vantage Master cards. Jingo may well have been the toughest opponent which I guess is fitting on a couple of levels. Her and Rutger definitely in a league of their own.

Anyway, stopped once I got control again. Elliot's dad wants to talk with us and it sounds like a free day for the festival after that unless that conversation goes south real quick or something.

I probably forgot to comment on a lot of stuff because I think it's been a few days since I posted anything from CS3 so yeah.
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I'm closing in on the end of day 1. They're definitely setting up the Calvard arc with the stuff in the underground area.
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xp1337 posted...

pyresword posted...

Revived my playthrough of Nier: Automata from the ashes.

Man I don't like playing as 9S.

Where were you roughly again? I know you were on Route B at least because I was crushed about that

I was about halfway through route B (In the Forest Kingdom), which is still where I am because all I really did last night was a few sidequests after running around like an idiot for 15 minutes re-acquainting myself with the world and controls.

xp1337 posted...

Also got all the Vantage Master cards. Jingo may well have been the toughest opponent which I guess is fitting on a couple of levels. Her and Rutger definitely in a league of their own.

I found Ash the hardest personally. The fact that he uses all cards that can attack immediately makes it a bit tricky compared to others. On the other hand Jingo really likes wasting time using her Master's ability...which is really not that strong. Granted, I never lost a match and only drew 1 (against Ash, after a mis-click) over the course of the entire game so I don't that with that type of data set it's even possible to get a feel for who is the strongest opponent.

Also this part of the game might have been the only part I really struggled with. I assumed we'd still be fighting the dungeon boss with just the "main" party so I mostly concentrated my good stuff on them and didn't really care much about the other two. One of my other 2 groups was pretty neglected as a result and had a really tough time with the boss fight. I was able to do it but it was one of those rough battles where my party was nearly wiped multiple times and by all rights I probably shouldn't have won.
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I'm undefeated in Vantage Masters with no draws it's just those two were the only ones to get me worried! I think both had me at a position where if I didn't put together what I needed to win on the turn I did, I may have lost the following turn. Everyone else was a snoozefest. My Rutger match sounds like what your Ash match was. I got blitzed by all his act immediately cards and was inspired to create my own variant of that style because of it. Jingo just wasn't playing and late in the game played that 5 attack can attack twice and immediately card and almost gave me a heart attack.
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I have one victory in Vantage Masters, and it was forced upon me.
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Leonhart4 posted...

I have one victory in Vantage Masters, and it was forced upon me.

Sorry about that. Couldnt resist

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SaveEstelle posted...

Leonhart4 posted...

I have one victory in Vantage Masters, and it was forced upon me.

Sorry about that. Couldnt resist

It is akin to the Tetra Master tournament in Final Fantasy IX where you are forced to play this otherwise optional card game whether you like it or not.
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