Board 8 > Andy Plays Final Fantasy IX

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yeah my FF9 disc 3 was scratched so I could never get to disc 4 after the first time (until my recent Switch playthrough)

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Me, my brother and sister first rented FF9 from a videoshop (nostalgia) to play it.
But disc 1 was scratched so the cutscenes had to be skipped with some trickery. (I never learned what happened to Black Waltz 3, lol)

Then we just bought the game because we liked it so much.

(if only it was FF7, where one could just swap discs if they got stuck somewhere, since the whole game sans cutscenes was playable on any disc)
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Glad I'm not the only one who had issues with scratched discs. And I didn't know FF7 did that!

The Outer Continent is home to Cactuar (woo!), which are usually buried in the ground this time round, and cast 1000 Needles on defeat. I manage to get 1K for Quina, along with a couple other Blue Magics here. The first location we find is a marsh that is almost identical to the one on Mist Continent, right down to Quale and the tutorial moogles. Weird!

We find the dwarven village of Conde Petie (Lali h- I mean, Rally ho!), and I guess this is just... Scotland if it were a desert. The dwarves are nice (I wonder if the dialogue is difficult for Americans to read lol), but the major feature here is a local black mage! Vivi understandably doesn't want to let them out of his sight, so we follow the mage through a short Phantom Forest-y place and wind up at Black Mage Village (coolest font choice so far).

Everything here is great. We finally get a bunch of Black Mage info, though it's less lore based and more just... life and death stuff. It's all pretty heavy, and we learn that some Black Mages seem to be suddenly 'born' into sentience, and they 'stop' about a year after being manufactured. Each mage is developing their own personality- some have drawn art, some are looking after a chocobo egg, and they have varying levels of knowledge about life. Black Mage #288 is the most aware of his own state, and shares with Vivi what he knows. I don't think poor Vivi was quite ready to hear everything quite so plainly, but the scene between the two at night is really good. The cemetery is a great setting. Vivi longs to find a place of belonging, but #288 tells him that life is in the journey, and he should go with his friends.

At the same time, Zidane gets uncharacteristically vulnerable and tells Dagger about his own childhood, under the guise of a story. He doesn't know where he was born, only that there was a blue light there, but realised his adopted home (where he was beaten >_>) was where he belonged. I don't know where that was or how he left, but this was a great scene for Zidane. I like that even when he finally opens up he still keeps himself shielded a little by distance.

Also a little note: I have too many moogle letters so can't pick up the one here! Don't know if I missed some moogles somewhere. Anyway just putting this here as a reminder to go back to the village later.

After the great nighttime scenes, we head back to dwarftown where Zidane and Dagger must marry in order to gain access to the Sanctuary. Zidane reverts back a little to his annoyingly flirty self here but I'll take it as him overcorrecting for opening up the night before. More importantly, Vivi and Quina get married. I laugh out loud irl at Quina's 'I... so happy', that completely caught me off guard. Funniest line in the game so far. Good for Quina!

On the mountain trail we discover a stubborn wise-beyond-her-years young girl who had a close relationship with her grandfather. Following in the footsteps of Porom, Krile and Relm, I see. Eiko doesn't make much of an impression at first, though we quickly learn that she is a summoner (nice touch having the gang discuss her magic in battle!). We travel the mountain, see a second (!) massive tree, this one going by the name Iifa, and we have a boss fight that isn't worth mentioning. We get to use Float for the first time, I guess!

Having two healer+summoners in the team is pretty unusual. And with Quina's exit (lol at how inelegantly the devs throw Quina out of the party whenever they need to make room for someone else) Zidane is the only physical attacker here, so I can't Steal very much. We pick up some stones on this route and put them into a shrine, but I can't have gotten all of them as nothing happens (I got R+B+G).

On the other side we reach Eiko's home, a destroyed Village of the Summoners that is full of moogles. There are two very different tones at play here. I'm not sure how I feel at first, but the Eiko kitchen shenanigans are pretty fun in the end. Not sure if I pick the right choices but the meal turns out pretty well and Quina is very fun (also major lol at Quina making a great grand entrance twice within the span of 5 minutes). Are there people who don't like Quina? S/he is great!

On the other side of things, there is a serious tone as Vivi and Dagger contemplate life, and even Eiko's stuff has a darker undertone as we learn that the summoners all died here and she's been alone for a long time. Makes her annoying pestering of Zidane more sympathetic. I like that Vivi hasn't just shaken off the massive revelations from the mage village, and the poor guy doesn't exactly 'get over' his fears about life and death here. For the second time today Zidane impresses me greatly, providing some comfort to Vivi while still being real with him. My fav line here is "You'd think with all the problems in the world, there'd be more answers." It's a great scene (I'm saying that a lot today!) that somehow ends in Zidane and Vivi pissing together under the stars.

We need Eiko to help unseal an Eidolon that was sealed by an Eidolon blah blah so we can get into the Iifa tree. She sticks with us for now, team balance be damned. That's all for today. I have to say, going into this playthrough I did not expect the narrative and character arcs to so prominently feature philosophising over the nature of life and death, and the anxieties that come with that. Whew!

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Didn't have a problem with understanding the dwarves in Conde Petie.

And Zidane is so up and down as a hero. He occasionally has these profound moments, and then he suggests he and Vivi should pee together to cement their male bond.

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There should be a yellow stone as well; I'd recommend going back and getting it

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andylt posted...

and we have a boss fight that isn't worth mentioning.

damn bruh this guy kicked my ass so many times

oh wait nvm wrong boss

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That boss is only a jerk for having The Single Most annoying item to steal.

Also he buttslams you. Rude.
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Yeah I think that's seriously one of the only bosses where I considered not stealing everything because of how much lower that fairy flute percentage is.

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I can't wait for andy to find out about one thing in his writeup

Also for the record, because it threw me off for forever, that is indeed a capital I for the tree. It is not the Lifa tree.
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pjbasis posted...

Yeah I think that's seriously one of the only bosses where I considered not stealing everything because of how much lower that fairy flute percentage is.

I gave up on the Fairy Flute after 10 minutes of trying. Figured it must be a 1/256 shot and I was getting sick of the attack cycles. Sidenote: I unlocked Mug on Zidane but it doesn't seem to work? I'm not noticing damage when I steal, not sure what I'm missing there.

Emeraldegg posted...

Also for the record, because it threw me off for forever, that is indeed a capital I for the tree. It is not the Lifa tree.

Yeah I saw it was an I, no idea why they did that. Is it pronounced 'eefa' or 'eye-fa'? I remember in the opening (which I haven't watched in full since I first started) there was a place on the map I read as 'Tifa', but I guess it was Iifa lol. The places have weird naming conventions in this game, the towns are all named nicely like actual medieval towns but then you have stuff like 'Evil Forest' and 'Iifa Tree'.

Leonhart4 posted...

And Zidane is so up and down as a hero. He occasionally has these profound moments, and then he suggests he and Vivi should pee together to cement their male bond.

Yeah I really wasn't liking him at the start but he's growing on me now with his profound moments, I figured that stuff is just part of his arc but I'll see if he continues to grow as the game goes on!

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From what I'm reading, mug doesn't do damage if you fail the steal. AKA it sucks.

Also I have no idea how it's supposed to be said but I say ee-fa
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Always thought it was Lifa Tree for like 10 straight years. Still wish it was called that instead of Iifa tree

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I did too (everyone did I think)
Because it sounds close enough to be a version of the Tree of Life.
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Don't really get why people thought that was the only place to use a lower-case letter at the beginning of its name in the entire game...!

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I mean logically it would make sense that it would be a capital I, but like htaed said, there's just a natural inclination to make it something resembling the tree of life, considering the game says it's the Ancient Tree of Life when you find it.
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Ancient Tree of Life, yes.

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Yes? I was explaining why me and others likely thought it was the Lifa Tree instead of the Iifa tree, despite it being obvious it was Iifa if you think about it like you said.
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I will now exclusively call it the Tifa Tree.

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Well yes, I get why people want it to be Lifa Tree instead, but all the locations are weird names, so I went right into eye-ee-fuh Tree, which may be the wrong pronunciation, but hey.

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andylt posted...

I will now exclusively call it the Tifa Tree.

It does have giant...roots?
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Leonhart4 posted...

And Zidane is so up and down as a hero. He occasionally has these profound moments, and then he suggests he and Vivi should pee together to cement their male bond.

yeah, he's a little inconsistent. they couldn't pick just one characterization, they needed him to be everything

i actually was thrown for a loop every time he went into "superhero" mode where the plot demanded it. it's almost like he was vaguely aware he was in a video game

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I just chalk it up to him trying to act up too much..
(also whats not profound about peeing???)
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I head all the way back to the mage village, but the moogle letter isn't there anymore. Bah. Onto the *ifa Tree!

Not what I expected, we wind up going down the tree, not up, and the enemies are all undead themed. The light keeps fading, until we get to the bottom where everything is green and there's a massive waterfall streaming below. Interesting things to note here- Dagger can't hear the Eidolon like Eiko can, and she can't use any of the gemstone Eidolons except Ramuh. Wonder why. Also- and this is ignored by the cast but it felt very important to me- the descending platforms only trigger when Zidane steps on them. He must have some connection to this place.

At the bottom we meet Soulcage, who reveals that they spread the Mist from the roots here all over to other continents, in order to spur humanity to violence. It also claims to have seen the end of its 1000 year lifespan, and that today is not that day. I'm inclined to believe it, there must be something deeper to this thing if it's actually the cause of so much suffering and we just off it in a random boss fight here. Vivi decides we should kill it, even though it means no more new Black Mages.

Soulcage isn't super tough to beat as we have two healers on side, but I cannot steal the Brigandine no matter how hard I try. There's some cool gimmicks here- Level 5 Death thankfully misses me as my team is all Level 24 (that could've been very very annoying!), and hitting the tree with fire magic starts a fire, enabling more attacks until we douse it with Blizzara. I decide not to risk things and just avoid fire magic after that. Later on there's an annoying move called Mustard Bomb, which seems to kill a party member if they act. Unfortunately the timing doesn't work so well for me, and Zidane dies multiple times instead of failing to steal the Brigandine some more. Ah well. Vivi finishes it off and... the Mist dissipates.

Part of me is wondering about the fate of people back on the Mist Continent, and if any airships suddenly fell out of the sky >_> But we really did remove the Mist just like that, and instead of waiting for Kuja we head back to Eiko's village, where Lani kidnaps Eiko. Eiko has a jewel much like Garnet's pendant, interesting to note. Thankfully we don't have to fight the boring rogue again, as Mr Scarlet Hair shoos her away in order to have a fair fight with Zidane.

The 1v1 here is simple, I use Detect first and see there's no interesting things to steal so I can just focus on attacking. He darts around the field but I get some attacks in whenever he's in close range, and heal as appropriate. I wind up using Elixirs for safety as Hi-Potions weren't healing enough, between them and Zidane's Counter triggering a few times we manage to down him and he runs off, absolutely unable to parse Zidane's lack of murderous intent.

Eiko is fine, Vivi gives her advice back to her ("Don't lie to yourself", another good line), and we wind up with Zidane and Dagger in a boat in a cove. This area looks really nice, the framing of the cove around the edge of the screen and the boat/sky/water in the middle, I like it a lot. The two have another nice chat, and Dagger is still doubting herself. As the boat drifts, she is suddenly struck with memories of her childhood (that I think we saw in the opening), and it is revealed that she spent her childhood in this village, witnessing a horrible hurricane (though she doesn't mention the GIANT EYE IN THE SKY) with her birth mother on a boat.

This all makes sense, and there's still the question of why she was taken in particular and why she doesn't have a horn. Part of me wonders if this is just a cheap way of distancing Garnet from Brahne so it's not her 'actual' mother who we will fight, but this is quickly laid to rest by upcoming events as Dagger absolutely still treats her like a mother.

Eiko decides to come with, and Amarant shows up and joins us unexpectedly. Weird time to open up party choice, but OK. I don't think I know of any other character names, so this might be it for the party! No idea where Quina is.

Anyway it's time to head back to the Ancient Tree of Life and confront Kuja. You don't have to tell me this is an end of disc sequence, it speaks for itself. Hilariously the game has me decide which party I want to face Kuja with, then has me pick again a few minutes later, and then it doesn't matter because we don't even fight him! There's not even a boss here! Nice bait and switch, although... we really should have had a proper boss fight here. It's a bit anti-climactic without one.

Kuja is much more open here than he has been so far, though his explanations are still pretty vague and cryptic. Seems like he's not from this world. He taunts poor Vivi, and refers to the black mages as soulless beings made from the 'dregs of souls', his way of describing the Mist. He's really not that interested in us though, he's just here to kill Brahne. Dagger manages to take Leviathan and insists we help her mother, but we have to stand and watch the ensuing events. To Brahne's credit she does manage to summon Bahamut, and Bahamut does wound Kuja. But Kuja pulls some weird magic stuff and summons the Eye from Dagger's memories, taking control of Bahamut himself. He handily mentions that Act 2 of this play will be set in Alexandria, and the final act offworld where he will face his nemesis (maybe the moon if we're doing throwbacks to SNES era!).

And then we get a string of scenes. Brahne is free of whatever control Kuja had her under, and passes in her daughter's arms. Kuja just pisses off somewhere. But maybe the most shocking thing here is that... things just seem to hit a reset button. The war seems to be over, the black mages are gone, there's no mention of Mist, Brahne's destruction isn't even a talking point (in Alexandria at least), Garnet is to be coronated imminently, Steiner and Beatrix are just fine (?! we didn't get to control them and see what happened? boo!), Zidane is depressed, and just like at the start of the game, we're controlling Vivi in Alexandria.

Not gonna lie, this is a weird as hell tonal shift! I assume it's intentional, and of course things are gonna go down again, but wow, this is not what I expected to happen. I wondered if it even might be a dream sequence for a min there. I save in the chapel and leave it here, I'm sure things will make sense soon but I've played for long enough tonight. This game has earned enough trust in me that I have faith the writers know what they're doing. Onto Act 2!

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The mustard bomb thing is a status called Heat and it does indeed KO a party member if they act while afflicted with it.
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The Fairy Flute is indeed a 1/256 steal (possibly the first one? There may have been one in one of the Beatrix fights). It teaches Eiko some good stuff, but you can just buy it later.

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Emeraldegg posted...

The mustard bomb thing is a status called Heat and it does indeed KO a party member if they act while afflicted with it.

Ah yes I remember it in the tutorial now, that's cool in theory but sucks when it gets cast and you already have an action queued up <_< And yeah I get why Zidane is depressed it just all happened really quickly lol. Probs works better with an actual disc split.

I wish there was a way to tell if something was a 1/256 steal or not so I know whether it's worth wasting my time on failed steals! I do have Bandit learned btw.

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Bandit is the ability that eliminates the overall failure chance of steal. The one that raises 1/256 chances to 1/32 is Master Thief (apparently it also raises 1/16 chances to 1/8... wasn't aware of that!).

If an enemy has four steals one of them will always be 1/256. I don't know if there's any way to tell if they don't have four steals, though.

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I see I am not the only one who sets that Soul Cage Boss on fire (Its a tree, it must burn good!)

Also its always funny to use soft on enemies made of stone (especially disturbing ones like the Roper)
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Always use healing items on undead monsters

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Yeah iirc you can ohko soulcage by casting life on it, or maybe even just using a phoenix down?
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Emeraldegg posted...

Yeah iirc you can ohko soulcage by casting life on it, or maybe even just using a phoenix down?

Yeah, although I think Phoenix Down has a chance of missing.

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I feel I've been conditioned to not do that because of a game that gives you no exp/AP when you do.

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I just dont do it because it feels lame

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andylt posted...

There's some cool gimmicks here- Level 5 Death thankfully misses me as my team is all Level 24 (that could've been very very annoying!), and hitting the tree with fire magic starts a fire,

Sure was surprised myself to see the tree actually counter with a fire attack first time through.

Also sure I had 3 people level 25 too.

Also yay, onto disc 3!

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I had been using Cure magic on the random enemies but didn't think to on the boss. Weird that it's an undead creature at the heart of the Tree of Life, hmm.

But yeah I wouldn't have done that anyway, partially because I wanted to steal its stuff and partially because it's just such an anti-climax. The fire gimmick was pretty fun. It turns out to be the last boss fight on the disc (with a full party), too!

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Didn't get to play too much today!

Things really slow down in Alexandria. Don't get me wrong, I love when a JRPG lets its characters interact with each other in a more laid back setting, I just didn't expect this at such a point in the story. There's lots of fun to be had with mismatched love letter shenanigans (Steiner x Beatrix?), and Beatrix says she still feels sorrow but doesn't know why- oh I don't know Beatrix, maybe you feel bad for slaughtering all those innocent people like two weeks ago? No? OK then!

I like that Steiner is still very kind to Vivi. Dagger and Zidane have an awkward reunion (her coronation dress looks nice) and you can really feel the ennui, things have suddenly ground to a halt for everyone and that's just it for Dagger's world adventures. I'm very curious how the writing is going to get her out of this so she can join the party again, and how she develops from this point.

I don't find that boss that was mentioned earlier, but I do get Shiva and Ramuh cards from the bell. Just in time too, as everyone suddenly decides to go to Treno together with Dr Tot for... a card tournament. Well... I guess?!

Everybody wanders off on their own little adventures- Vivi returns home ( :( ), Tot deduces that some ancient crystal was split into 4 pieces that became hidden across the world (hey I bet that's the crystal from the logo!), Amarant reveals his past with Zidane to Freya, and Quina drops in out of nowhere and inadvertently protects Eiko. I love Quina. There's an ATE I seem to miss here, there's three on the list and after I watch one and move to the next area there's only one. Bah!

For some reason Freya is the only person around who seems to show the slightest interest in the plot, everyone else is acting like Kuja isn't a threat anymore! Bless her for that. I also notice for the first time that it looks like there's 8 character slots in the shop selection screen, so I guess Beatrix must've been a temporary member. I blast through the first two rounds of the tournament without much hassle (though I still don't know how the card v card battles work), and then the game flat out tells me to save scum the final. Well, thanks for the heads up! I will see what happens next next time.


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I love how everyone was like "oh it's so refreshing to have a lead who isn't emo like Cloud or Squall" and then Zidane starts sulking so hard that you literally have to take control of someone else lawl

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You're not quite at the optional boss I mentioned yet (though it's coming up imminently)

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Did you follow Vivi to his home?
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htaeD posted...

Did you follow Vivi to his home?

I did not! The thought crossed my mind briefly but I figured it wasn't worth the effort to traipse there as Zidane alone for a slim chance of a scene, as that's not usually how ATEs work anyway. But now that you suggest it that'll be the very first thing I do when I next play! Thanks

Leonhart4 posted...

I love how everyone was like "oh it's so refreshing to have a lead who isn't emo like Cloud or Squall" and then Zidane starts sulking so hard that you literally have to take control of someone else lawl

Lol maybe that counts as a reference! Overall I'd say the mopey lead:non-mopey lead ratio in the series leans heavily on the non-mopey side!

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I wouldn't say that they don't think Kuja's a threat anymore, more that they aren't really in a position to do much atm. They know Bahamut will just roflstomp whatever shambles of an army any of the nations have left. They probably just need to catch their breath before coming up with a plan, especially since dagger and eiko are probably the best chances the world has as they're the only ones left who can also summon eidolons, and dagger needs to get alexandria's affairs in order before being able to do something.
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That's fair and all, it's just weird that none of them have that conversation on screen! Freya is the only one to even mention Kuja. And there's no sense of looming dread from their convos, they just go back to their personal issues as if the conflict is over. Again I am enjoying the slowdown stuff going on it was just a little jarring!

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Yeah, I guess they just figure the player needs a breather or something. It is a hell of a roller coaster!
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andylt posted...

Overall I'd say the mopey lead:non-mopey lead ratio in the series leans heavily on the non-mopey side!

foreal. Actually the devs seemed to not even think Cloud was very mopey because Squall was the one created to be different iirc

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Cloud wasn't even that mopey in FF7, his personality just kind of flattened into that stereotype in the Compilation games. In the original game he was serious, cocky, and (unintentionally on his part) goofy. He just gets that emo image from the fandom that sprung around him and the following games he appeared in which seemed to take more cues from that fandom than his original characterization.

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Preach brutha let em know

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Or they realized Squall was the best and tried to make Cloud more like him

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FF7 Remake didnt make him that mopey either.
More like a guy who hopelessly tries to look cool (and a guy who reallyreallyreally hates doing chores)
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oh **** RIP Alexandria

I suddenly see why they started Disc 3 so quietly, damn

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So good

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