Board 8 > SaveEstelle & LeonhartFour in New Houses: Anniversary Edition [SELF]

(+) Yeah! (+)

Trails to Azure prologue complete! I honestly didn't expect to play the whole thing, but one of the problems with Trails is that you never know when you're about to get roped into a long sequence with no opportunity to save! At the same time, for a Trails prologue, it was kinda short, but I had planned to stop right before the boss fight. Unfortunately, I didn't save right before you enter the room because I expected to encounter a charging station first and I hadn't saved in a while, so I was stuck!

It's so fitting that they made Ernest Ries a throwaway prologue baddie. He's the Winston Payne of Trails, for sure. I did enjoy teaming up with Arios and Dudley, and it's cool that we have Noel and Wazy on the SSS while Randy and Tio are away. I knew they temporarily joined the SSS because of stuff from Cold Steel, but yeah.

Also nice to get a Kevin and Ries cameo, but I doubt this'll be the last we see of them, based on what they were talking about there. I hope we'll get to delve more into this incident about why the Gralsritter are banned from Crossbell. I feel like we will because they kinda teased it a bit.

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Finally got around to wrapping up the disc 4 sidequests in FF9 (besides Ozma and jump rope, the latter of which I will never do) and started the final dungeon (which I have never gotten to in any of my previous playthroughs!)

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Congrats! FFIX's final dungeon is pretty good.

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haha what paper mario just went full wind waker
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That's actually a fun chapter! I enjoyed exploring the sea there.

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Yeah purple streamer is great

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man and now i'm getting power, wisdom, and courage

love it!
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Yeah that chapter is awesome

( hate the courage thing though)

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yeah the courage part is a huge pain, really the only part of the game I got stuck on

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FF9: Four fiends beated! Now I could pick up Excalibur II if only I had gotten here a slight... 56 hours earlier...!

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You can still get it!

It is possible to reset the game clock to allow a player to gain the Excalibur II again if missed the first time by allowing the game's internal clock (not the displayed time) to overflow and restart from the beginning. However, this means 2^32 / 60 seconds (over two years) of gameplay, assuming that the game is continually on for that time.

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Excalibur_II

It's worth it I swear!
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Tempting, but I think I'll pass...!

Anyway, FF9 beated, leaving my list of FFs where I got almost to the end and then quit for some reason (3, 10, 13) and joining my completed FFs (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 14). Still need to clean up a few optional things (Hades, Ozma, and maybe getting the last 11 cards I need if it isn't too annoying), and then on to finally get past disc 1 in 7...!

FF9 was also probably my favorite game that I hadn't technically beaten. Not sure what that is now; maybe DQXI?

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I'm trying to think of my favorite game that I never actually finished. Maybe Metroid Prime? I got all the way up to the Meta Ridley fight and stopped.

I guess I do need to get back to Mario 3D World and finish those last couple of levels, too (although I did technically finish the main game!).

Oh yeah, I still need to beat the last boss of Tropical Freeze, too.

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wait so is there a gimmick to the final courage trial
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what do you mean by "gimmick"

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Oh hey, my wife got a free 1-year subscription to Apple TV with her new iPhone, so I guess I can finish Ted Lasso!

Also, dunno if anyone else has Apple TV, but what's worth watching on this thing?

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Ted Lasso is the only Apple TV original Ive even heard of

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Leonhart4 posted...

I got all the way up to the Meta Ridley fight and stopped.

That basically counts. You just had another pair of bosses after

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Yeah, but you still need to beat the last boss to count as finishing the game in my book.

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The Mana Sword posted...

Ted Lasso is the only Apple TV original Ive even heard of

Wolfwalkers is fairly popular.
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LeonhartFour posted...

what do you mean by "gimmick"

the "stuck" part seemed to imply there was some sort of trick you needed to figure it out

i lucked into it though
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nah there's no trick as far as I know, but the last part is just difficult and you have to redo the whole thing when you screw up, which is annoying

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Ted Lasso Season 1 Episode 3 complete!

It's kinda nice to see the groundwork he laid in the first couple episodes starting to pay dividends as he's beginning to get through to people.

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Ive noticed that P5R is on sale on PSN for a price Im considering. Are the changes significant enough to warrant replaying the game?

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Yeah, I was just looking through their sales and noticed that, too! It's on sale on a fairly regular basis, actually.

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13 Sentinels beaten, though I still need to go back through and get S'es on a couple of the battles.

When they revealed "it's all VR" I kind of rolled my eyes bit (another layer? come on) but thinking about it for even a second it was pretty much the easiest way to explain things like the world resetting, so sure.

Also kind of funny how the 15 people they banked their futures on mostly made sense - they were a bunch of scientists, engineers, military/company people - and then there was a professional assassin in there just because.

The Area 3 final boss felt like a really big difficulty spike, but I was probably doing it wrong - didn't realize until several minutes in that the smaller enemies would just keep respawning. Last fight was a cool idea; I was a bit worried when Miyuki said 5 minutes because a minute in these battles is a really long time but it went by a lot faster than I expected.

Probably about as good an ending as could be expected. The "five years later" scenes were all kind of adorable.

Great game, some of the routes got a little repetitive but the cast carried it really well. Think my favorite characters were Natsuno and Hijiyama, though Sekigahara probably had my favorite route.

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That's a good top 3. I really liked Juro as well, both versions of him.

And yeah, the last couple of battles are a different animal, but I think it works for storyline purposes. The second to last fight was probably the toughest one for me because I initially approached it all wrong like you did, haha.

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Also, Ted Lasso Season 1 Episode 4 complete!

Nice to see Jamie get a bit of comeuppance here, although it was a bummer to see Rebecca's ex put on his act and get away with it.

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The Mana Sword posted...

Ive noticed that P5R is on sale on PSN for a price Im considering. Are the changes significant enough to warrant replaying the game?

3rd Semester is really, really good imo. Most of the base game is prettty similar though just with a lot of little QoL improvements. Like, I think P4 Golden probably did more for the base game than P5 Royal, but the all new stuff in P5R is leagues ahead of the new stuff in P4G.

I'd say yeah, especially if it's on sale.

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I'd like to play Royal with my wife sometime since she actually spent four months in Tokyo, so she'd probably enjoy seeing it represented in video game form like that.

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Ted Lasso Season 1 Episode 5 complete!

You can tell this is made by the Scrubs guy because it knows how to hit you in the feels at the right time.

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Ted Lasso Season 1 Episode 6 complete!

Man, it feels like every time something goes right for him, something has to go wrong to cancel it out.

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Ted Lasso Season 1 Episode 7 complete!

This show makes it so easy to root for nearly everyone involved in it.

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Ted Lasso Season 1 Episode 8 complete!

Wasn't expecting them to form Diamond Dogs in this show!

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Alright, starting up FF7 on Switch!

(Technically resuming... I have a save from like a year or two ago right before Guard Scorpion and Ive done that part of the game like five times so I dont see a need to restart)

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The past like month and a half I've been doing a replay of Breath of the Wild on the side (well I have the DLC Expansion Pack now which is new content for me) and it's closing in on the end. I'm circling around on my approach to Hyrule Castle which I again save for last because DRAMA. 118 Shrines... and perhaps most frustratingly, ~753 Koroks atm. I feel like this could plausibly reach 800 by the time I wrap up some loose ends which'll have me warping about some and that's like... close enough that I might just pull up a Korok Seed map to finish it off.

If I was waaaay off the 900 number I'd just go "korok seeds are whack no thanks" but I've actually done a pretty good job nabbing them this time. And a lot of that without the Korok Mask too which I didn't pick up until like the 65% mark.

also i intend to start 13 Sentinels tonight but i said that each of the past three days before falling asleep instead so who knows

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I havent played the DLC, but I did get all of the Korok seeds during my playthrough of BotW! I think pretty much the only thing I didnt do was get some horse stuff from a dumb horse mini game or two that I was too bad at.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Alright, starting up FF7 on Switch!

(Technically resuming... I have a save from like a year or two ago right before Guard Scorpion and Ive done that is part of the game like five times so I dont see a need to restart)

Good luck! I think Midgar is great, but it takes an hour or two to get going.

Also I think about replaying BotW every now and then, but I just haven't worked up to it yet.

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LeonhartFour posted...

Good luck! I think Midgar is great, but it takes an hour or two to get going.

Also I think about replaying BotW every now and then, but I just haven't worked up to it yet.

I was having fun during my one playthrough where I passed Midgar! I think I ran into scratched discs or something (which shouldnt be a problem this time...!)

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I've considered replaying BotW. Would be cool to do so with good performance on a Switch Pro...but BotW2 might be out by the time that happens whoops.

LordoftheMorons posted...

(Technically resuming... I have a save from like a year or two ago right before Guard Scorpion and Ive done that is part of the game like five times so I dont see a need to restart)

Wow, you're practically at the end already.
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Ted Lasso Season 1 Episode 9 complete!

Curious to see how this last one goes! Quite the buildup here, and you never know what kind of swerve this show will throw at you.

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Ted Lasso Season 1 complete!

My wife and I got into it and just binged the whole thing in a day, which was fun. Nice to know we don't have to wait too long until season 2, which comes out in July. I'll be curious to see where they go with it.

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Ugh, I assume there's no way to disable the cheat buttons on the Switch version of FF7? I just reflexively press buttons fairly often, and I don't want to accidentally heal my whole party for free (FF9's cheat buttons could only be activated from the pause menu so it wasn't a big deal).

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13 Sentinels started. Think I got through the tutorial. Last thing I did before stopping was getting to choose a battle difficulty (picked normal) and unlocked a mode select. Seemed like a good stopping point for now. I'd say I think I completed the prologue but I guess I technically cleared 7 prologues!

Got pretty hooked from the start. Art style/design is cool and the Thought Cloud is really, really cool.

Prologues completed: Kurabe, Fuyusaka, Amiguchi, Yakushiji, Hijiyama, Sekigahara, Minami

Was going to give a blurb for each before realizing that the way they all intertwine would make that kinda hard. Like Kurabe is the first to go but the whole "uh are they drugging him into amnesia and telling him he's someone else" is kinda sorta answered in Yakushiji's, etc. Yakushiji definitely had the most interesting prologue so far IMO - from Juro crash landing in a Sentinel, to revealing that whatever happened in that battle he ran off to apparently solo resulted in the whole "drugging him into amnesia/thinking he's a different person." But mostly because that damn cat. Getting major Kyubey vibes off of that thing. "Make a contract with me and I'll restore your boyfriend(?)'s memories!" Curious if the backstory on the invasion it gave is legit... or if it's a trojan horse and it's subverting humanity.

Sekigahara had the next most intriguing prologue thanks to the heavy mystery elements. Minami such a doof lmao. I love that she's just living her best life thinking she was in an E.T./MIB crossover. Amiguchi discovering the Midnight Channel is also somewhat interesting.

On an overarching level, the best I can piece together is that humanity is in a desperate fighting retreat against the kaiju/Deimos invasion. I'm thinking it's something like the farthest ahead future got wrecked, but sent what/who they could back to (a possibly alternate timeline?) the past to try and prep, and maybe it has repeated itself a few times? Juro was apparently the only survivor when he jumped back and met Yakushiji but then Amiguchi had his dream. Could be they just got separated and made separate jumps and got scattered. Or this is a cycle that has happened a few times with different results (still losses for humanity but different survivors, etc.) until the final battle got pushed back to... 1985 I think is where the battles are now taking place? Fluffy calling the Deimos like "a virus" also makes me wonder if that's literal and 1985!Juro got infected when he tried to fight in 2024 and that's why they're suppressing his old identity with drugs... like to preserve a pilot candidate or something.

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Glad so many people are playing 12 Sentinels! Have fun!

FF7: made it to Wall Market; so far everything seems pretty familiar. Apparently Full Throttle is a resident of this town, as a random NPC refers to Aeris as a "heifer"

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13* ugh

Anyway, got up to Elmyra's story about Aeris's past. Wall Market was just as weird as I remembered it being.

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Yeah, Wall Market is one of the biggest improvements in Remake. It's still weird but in a more enjoyable way!

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I'm wondering what my favorite game I have not finished is and it's fun to think about.

I'm currently playing Dark Souls and MGSV for the first time and I really enjoy them both, but I'm also actively playing them and I never took a longer break, so it feels unfair to pick those.

After looking at my shelf I think Infamous is my favorite game I have begun but not finished.

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Yeah, I've thought about it a bit more myself and my answer might be Viewtiful Joe

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It would've been easier a 1,5 year ago, because I spent the first lockdown finishing a lot of games that I had gotten away from for no good reason back then.

There's a solid handful of remasters of excellent games I have not gotten around to finish (FFVIII, Galaxy, Xenoblade), but I probably would have if I had not played them before.

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