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

(+) Yeah! (+)

The Mana Sword posted...

Usually that kind of stuff comes in more discrete packaging.

At least that's what I've heard. From other people.

There's actually a piece of the thong hanging out of the envelope. It was a strange temptation to sniff it to see what this guy is paying for.

And you're correct about discreet packaging. When I worked at Amazon, sex toys and things like that had to be black wrapped.

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maybe the exhibitionism is a feature?

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It must be because this guy lives with his girlfriend, so she's probably going to find out! Maybe they're both in on it and he wants her to wear it or something, who knows!

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I looked it up and it sells itself as a prank item. Idk if that really solves the mystery

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Yeah, it's probably just a joke gift or something like that.

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just a prank bro

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Yeah probably but that's not as interesting of a thought exercise

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What If...? Episode 4 complete!

This was basically "what if the plot of Dr. Strange became the plot of Steins;Gate?" And the result was as great as you'd expect.

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speaking of steins;gate...

Robotics;Notes DaSH beated.

I have... conflicting feelings about this on the whole. So much wasted potential and concepts IMO. Daru as the primary protagonist is actually pretty great. It's refreshing to have a protagonist who pretty much identifies and solves all the mysteries almost immediately as well as one who adequately plans countermeasures because he has an idea of the kinds of threats they might be facing. And as I said at the start, having the OG Steins;Gate cast as his twitter friends is A+.

But so much of the game feels like it doesn't really know what it wants to do. The common route is just... bad. Like it's super dumb and should not have happened and seemingly only did for unwanted "fanservice" stuff. Thankfully it's a short common route but still.

The character routes are a marked increase in quality but still possess similar weaknesses there at times. Last two routes are solid but at that point we're talking like 20% of the game tops and it pretty much makes the previous 80% feel largely unnecessary. That's not totally true but yeah.

To get into detail with a lot of my issues requires spoilers though: Basically, the game opens with an extremely tantalizing hook from a series-wide perspective with the divergence meter shown to start fluctuating, threatening to knock them out of the Steins;Gate worldline. It then precedes to never address this ever again until literally the final chapter. The entire rest of the game I kept trying to put together theories on how the changing divergence meter played into the plot. I started thinking that all the character routes - being the same week just differing in who Daru primarily hangs out with - were representing different wordlines as the situation became unstable as a result of the EM emitter's pseudo-Gigalomaniac powers. Technically this isn't directly disproven and I could easily headcanon that the routes were indeed representing minor differences in the worldline but canon seems to be that it was Common Route -> Akiho Route -> Final Phase in a straight line and the character routes just didn't mean anything.

Speaking of those routes, at first I thought they were going to be themed with the EM wave device reacting to realize the suppressed hopes/dreams/wishes of the various Robot Club members because I played Airi and Frau's routes first and that was lining up well. While each route did kinda deal with their issues it turned out the EM device became more coincidental with it just no showing for Junna and Nae's routes. Which seems like a waste. I also thought for a second that perhaps Kimijima was aware of worldline theory and his EM experiments this time around (and therefore Daru's inadvertent keeping the device around to research was accidentally continuing) was specifically designed to build towards forcing a worldline change to one more favorable to him/the Committee but it turns out to also be a coincidence.

Also this Chaos;Child erasure is unforgivable. Obviously Steins;Gate will get the most reference because your main viewpoint character is literally a Steins;Gate main character but C;C got done dirty here. I think it only really came up a single time in a character route where Daru internally references it as a "Well, explaining the plot of Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child to these guys would be a pain so I won't give them the technical explanation of what I just did here." There was one moment where I thought he might be referring to Kunosato but it very well could have been (and Occam's Razor probably suggests it was) Kurisu. At least they lampshaded stuffing Chaos;Head into a corner here, C;C didn't even get that!

I will grant it this though. The title/main menu screen music changing to incorporate Gate of Steiner into it after you unlock the final phase was hype af and gave me chills.

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Speaking of VNs, I've been playing Tsukihime Remake, and man, this really reminds me of how much more dynamic the direction in Type-Moon VNs is compared to pretty much any others I've read. They manipulate the character in interesting ways to give you a feeling of the characters being in different places, and use all sorts of clever angles to change things up. Good use of SFX too. I think it's real neat how you'll get conversations framed like this https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/730228879364456462/883831620283551764/unknown.png rather than just having two portraits next to each other talking or whatever. Makes me wish other VNs tried harder with scene direction.
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Those Tales of Arise reviews are shocking.

I never should have doubted user SaveEstelle.

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Ahead of the curve

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Will Tales of Symphonia finally lose its title of most critically acclaimed Tales game???
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Tales of Arise to the top

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berseria was robbed

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xp1337 posted...

berseria was robbed

I guess I'll have to go on a Tales kick soon and knock out Vesperia, Berseria, and Arise to give my own verdict.

Once I finish GAA, TWEWY2, and Ratchet & Clank anyway! So much on the backlog!

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but why preorder if you aren't playing right away?

xp1337 posted...

berseria was robbed

Maybe Berseria would've gotten better reviews if its dungeons weren't absolute garbage.
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how do you explain symphonia then

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Haha, that's fair. ToS dungeons at least have a lot more effort put into them though. Berseria might have the blandest dungeons of any RPG I've played.
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I have an Amazon credit card and I earn points I can use on Amazon purchases, so I was able to get Arise for 25 bucks anyway.

Also, I think Symphonia's dungeons are mostly not bad, but it's got a couple that are all-time bad (looking at you, Latheon Gorge)

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Re-watching the MGS2 cutscenes has reminded me of one of my favorite lines in the series, mostly for the delivery than for the line itself.

"A DUD?!"

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Speaking of MGS2, something I've noticed from just watching the cutscenes is how much Snake screws up. I don't know if it's meant to humanize him to show that reality doesn't live up to legend or if it's meant to be a hint of his advanced aging, but it's really standing out to me.

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Probably more a function of needing the player character, to be the one to solve problems.


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pjbasis posted...

Probably more a function of needing the player character, to be the one to solve problems.

I mean Raiden screws up plenty, too! But Snake screws up on the tanker even when he's the playable character. I get that they can't have Snake do everything for Raiden, but it feels like it's more than just that.

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I really doubt it was meant to hint at his aging. Trying to humanize him is definitely the better guess there. I actually didn't think about it when replaying about a year ago, but it's probably also just hyping the villains by showing that even the legendary Solid Snake screws up trying to stop them.

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If so, it's a bad move because Dead Cell sucks and having Snake get beat by them feels bad!

But MGS2 definitely hints at Snake's aging at different points, so it could be a result of that.

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They're definitely more powerful than foxhound even if you don't like them! Well maybe not fat man.

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I dunno about that! But regardless, it's more than just fighting the bad guys anyway.

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Man someone being a really good sniper is not gonna stand up to people who literally cant die or be shot

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That's actually an instance I don't necessarily hold against Snake. Raiden had the better view for the shot. I don't think there was much they could have done to stop it.

But I guess it's the difference between being the player character and not. It's not like Snake doesn't make mistakes or get duped in MGS1. It just feels more noticeable here.

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ESPN is canceling Highly Questionable and replacing it with a new Max Kellerman show. So basically he went from doing morning TV and afternoon radio to morning radio and afternoon TV.

R.I.P. HQ, I knew it was not long for this world after Dan left ESPN.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIQ3xNqkVC4

oh man Spider-Man 2 feat. Venom and Kraven the Hunter hype

2023 release window un-hype

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Darn. HQ wasn't the same after Le Batard left but it was still pretty much ESPN's best show still.

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What If...? Episode 5 complete!

I guess every universe needs a zombie plotline, but at least this one was pretty good!

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hd boar drifting as magnificent as i imagined

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In boarious HD as it was always meant to be

Tabletop RPG in a world of cards

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I'm interested just because of the lineup but I wish they had more than that 20 second teaser.

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well at least the Cowboys covered the spread and Lamb had a good game in fantasy

also Succop is my fantasy kicker so at least I got some points from that

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i remembered to participate in ladder for i think the 2nd time in like 17 years and passed level 1 so that was something i guess

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seriously though there's a reason to be hopeful as a Cowboys fan because Dak looks like he's picking up right where he left off before the injury

unfortunately it looks like this is going to be a repeat of last year where we literally need him to throw for 400 yards every game because our defense will always fold at the most inopportune moments

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Ted Lasso Season 2 Episode 8 complete!

Strong emotional episode.

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I am experiencing the suffering LotM mentioned a while back about the flower harvesting in Nier without the benefit of the system clock cheat. Apparently you can sorta cheat it a bit with time zones but eh whatever not gonna bother we'll do this legit.

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I would advise against doing most Nier sidequests but it's your funeral
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and miss that weiss snark? never

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Weiss doesn't even have snark in half the sidequests
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yeah but he doesn't know which half

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Yeah clock manipulation can get you out of more than half of the growth time iirc, but the biggest advantage is just skipping ahead to check if crossbreeding was successful and if not reseting to an earlier save and replanting

Speaking of which, I need to get back to Nier at some point; I didnt even get to ending A.

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it's the most MGS2 thing ever to follow up one of the most emotional moments in the series with the awkward confession of Otacon admitting he was sleeping with his stepmom while his dad was drowning in the pool

although after what we learn of him in MGSV I don't feel as bad about that last part, I guess!

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just like one of my japanese animes

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https://twitter.com/DannyWQAM/status/1436835559264202759

this is crazy

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