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

(+) Yeah! (+)

Mac Arrowny posted...

I saw Whose Line live a few years ago. It was definitely excellent.

Speaking of which, they're still doing new episodes and it's still hilarious. Sounds Effects best game.

Sound Effects is indeed the best game on the show. It's the one game where the audience participation actively makes the game better, and even when they're bad, it's still great.

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So, Square is sending us press kits for First Soldier. There's a lot I probably shouldn't show (none of it is crazy or anything, standard fare) but this is OK and really amuses me:

https://imgur.com/InPUdFo
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Famed SOLDIER candidate RPGSite

Rumors say their potential may even rival Sephiroth's

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I finished the Ratchet and Clank reimagining. Overall good. I don't remember the original too well, but I appreciate most decision regarding gameplay and added weapons. Adding Nefarious was a good move, probably preferred how Qwark was handled in the original.

Time to play Rift Apart!

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Yeah, Qwark just being a straight up heel in the original game was better than him being a guy who made the wrong choice in a moment of weakness.

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OBJ was dropped in my fantasy league after the Browns cut him

I was just wondering who to waste a spot on waiting for him to maybe play after I had to drop Michael Thomas

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I agreed to write like 20-something guides on FF13

I always knew that game would come back with a vengeance
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SaveEstelle posted...

I agreed to write like 20-something guides on FF13

I always knew that game would come back with a vengeance

why would you do that to yourself

are you allowed to delegate tasks

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Why FF13 after all this time?
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Team Rocket Elite posted...

Why FF13 after all this time?

lightning returns

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Lightning always returns

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she must never be forgotten

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Team Rocket Elite posted...

Why FF13 after all this time?

It's kinda weird, right? There's a bunch of stuff TheGamer.com needs mopped up from when FF13 dropped on Game Pass recently. They often go back to stuff when that happens.

in other news omfgggggggg I haven't been affected so much by a game trailer since ME3's

endwalker is almost here
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but also slightly less almost here than it used to be

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The Mana Sword posted...

but also slightly less almost here than it used to be

true ;_; I be tweetin' the news
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yeah those FFXIII trailers were pretty good

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man FFXIV's main party truly is the best
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You guys...are the best

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I've begun Rift Apart and played the first three worlds. Really liking the atmosphere here - you can feel it's a new game and not a PS2 game remade. The use of the controller's capabilities are good.

I don't have a big impression of Rivet yet, but she's fine. Nefarious is great. I'm really liking the purple dimensions with platforming challenges, those are a good add. Most of the weapons so far aren't particularly interesting, but there are some decent ones that are a lot like previous ones. Fungi is cool, but it's no Mr. Zurkon.

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ya go my Vols

I'm a little worried about how this UGA game is going to go next week though not gonna lie

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happy time change everyone

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nothing happy about it

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I'm happy!
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i needed that extra hour of sleep so i am also happy

but also still tired

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I'd happily trade away an hour of sleep for not being stuck in 4 months of misery.

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yeah time change sucks when you're on the eastern edge of your timezone because then it starts getting dark at 4 PM

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that's my secret. i'm always miserable.

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Speaking of misery, Brady is on bye with week and Tua is out with an injury so I had to last minute scrape up a QB from waivers and the best I could do was Dan Jones.

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The real motive for being a Jet fan

It prepares you for all of life's other miseries

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My opponent somehow managed to trade Aaron Rodgers for Lamar Jackson this week

Playing fantasy with people who don't know how to play fantasy is the worst sometimes

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Leonhart4 posted...

The real motive for being a Jet fan

It prepares you for all of life's other miseries

it's lifelong character development

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going to lose in fantasy because of that silly Lamar/Rodgers trade

my opponent's backup was Tua so he would've been scrambling for a probably not great option and instead he gets nearly 34 points from Lamar

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Yeah Ive basically given up on fantasy this year. Not much fun when your first 3 picks of the draft are permanently sidelined halfway through the year.

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yeah I went from thinking I had a really good team to not caring at all very quickly

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after 4 months Ive finally finished the platinum for assassins creed valhalla

Im finally free

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it's so weird seeing the Titans play good defense this year

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Big win for the Titans and we've got a "houses collide" situation next week as my Titans play my wife's Saints

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Finally going to get to start Tales of Arise tonight. SaveEstelle would be proud.

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Nice, hopefully I won't be too far behind. I am almost done with Rayman Legends, and then I'll move on to Rift Apart and TWEWY2. Then it'll be Tales time.

Oh wait, I guess I still need to play that Yuffie DLC for Remake. I keep forgetting about it!

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Speaking of which, World 5 of Rayman Legends beated! I guess the last world is considered a bonus world because they rolled the credits as if I had completed the main game after defeating the boss here.

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My patience finally bore fruit and while I suspect Disney+ becoming a thing prolonged my wait, Rise of Skywalker made it to regular TV so I watched it tonight.

My only real knowledge of it going in, besides the pre-release info/trailers, was that a lot of people hated it so I was actually better off than usual in terms of spoilers.

Since my expectations were thus in the ground I suppose I was pleasantly surprised? Don't get me wrong, definitely had big issues with parts of it, but it was okay for a good 70%ish? Think it leaned too hard into nostalgia bait/everyone is here but basically most of the first two-thirds were pretty solid. It was the ending that started careening off the cliff.

Basically, bringing back Palpatine was a big mistake. I mean, I love the guy, and he still steals every scene he's in with that god-tier voice/mannerisms but like his presence just caused everything to unravel. Why's he back? idk just cuz. Some rebels are like "DARK SCIENCE? CLONING? ONLY SECRETS THE SITH KNEW!" and it's like "wow kamino really thrown under the bus" (real talk i can forgive that because it's just some random grunt tossing ideas and also i could beleive the empire buried that info) but it's otherwise just completely unanswered.

Palpatine having an insanely massive fleet just chilling on bootleg Malachor V (actually a cool place ngl both Malachor and Exegon it appeals to the edgelord in me) all casually equipped with planet-busters is just "oh my god why." Not only does this massively devalue the Death Star (though we jumped that shark all the way back in TFA with Starkiller Base making the Death Star look like a kid's toy) but it's like... dude just why are they all sitting there undeployed? for decades?

Rey's heritage is also just an unnecessary retcon (lmao at Kylo damage control. "They *were* no one!") but I could live with it if Palpatine were just dead and this was just some grappling with the legacy thing. But the whole, "I AM ALL OF THE SITH!" vs "I AM ALL OF THE JEDI" such a cheesy and dumb way to resolve this conflict. Like between that apparently being a thing now, Palpatine apparently being able to body surf (because it's clear the plan was to possess the corrupted Rey), force lightning an entire fleet like it just makes OT Palpatine seem super dumb. Why bother with apprentices at all? Dude could have just been an immortal God Emperor. He nearly managed it anyway!

And of course the worst thing of all is the Rey/Kylo "romance" ugh why is this still a thing. This didn't start with ROS but still ugh. Feels like they rub it in that Rey/Finn have had the best chemistry since the beginning, tease it even more here, and then just drop it and leave it unresolved.

The Rey/Kylo fight was good though, that is probably one of the better fights in Star Wars IMO.

Basically, my biggest disappointment with ROS is I feel like it actually had a lot of build-up to what could have been an actually compelling story/conclusion - even in spite of its flaws - but then just throws it away out of either cowardice or just bad storytelling. Like Rey's fear of herself after thinking she killed Chewbacca could easily play into the fear of her bloodline being who she was - and to be fair it did for a while, oh but Chewbacca's okay, can't risk killing a fan favorite. I think if she actually did kill Kylo there it could have built on that too, but nah we'll save him too. Like even if you keep the Palpatine plot intact if you had Rey reeling off of the accidental killing of Chewbacca, followed by a much more intentional killing of Kylo, and carrying *that* into her confrontation with Palpatine I think that's way more compelling a struggle for Rey to choose her path than what we got.

idk i'm kinda rambling. maybe a movie ranking later. TLJ still the best though.

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xp1337 posted...

And of course the worst thing of all is the Rey/Kylo "romance" ugh why is this still a thing.

it's so bad

there was audible groaning in the theater when they kissed

I don't think Rise of Skywalker is bad, per se. The movie just moves at such a breakneck speed that I barely remember anything that happened.

also boo all the cowardly retcons of TLJ

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i just found RoS impossible to take seriously. the fanservice was already a bad enough problem in TFA but it got so ridiculous in RoS that it felt like a self-parody.

"chewie got a medal" come on, really?

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I am willing to cut the movie a lot of slack because it basically had an impossible task ahead of it. Most of its problems are tied to the trilogy, which most of all should have planned a clear direction from the start and had one person directing all three movies. The Last Jedi is a big offender in going a different way too, it just doesn't have to tie everything up in too little time so it's not nearly as apparent. On top of everything, Carrie Fischer's passing gave it even more impossible tasks.

I rewatched the trilogy a while after RoS came out, and on second watch RoS was actually the one that bothered me the least (and TFA the most).

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i absolutely blame j.j. abrams for being stubborn and sticking to his own vision and not rolling along with what rian johnson did in TLJ. given that one of the points of TLJ was that rey is nobody, abrams should have just said "oh ok i guess she's nobody." he shouldn't have done the SHE'S THE GRANDDAUGHTER OF PALPATINE CHOSEN ONE bullshit.

and i have mixed feelings about the way they handled leia. on the one hand, i do think it's a flaw, as it's extremely obvious to me that fisher is not actually in the movie and they're using body doubles and recycled dialogue. on the other hand, i do understand that fans would flip if leia would suddenly be dead and they would just mention it in a throwaway line or something. so yeah, it's rough.

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i watched ep 9 for the first time earlier this year (or was it 2020? pandemic had destroyed timescales for me)

it was almost unfathomably bad. i knew a bit about the plot "developments" rey and the villain of the movie, but i was shocked at how poorly it was implemented given that in general the series had done okay with some of its execution up til that point.

the force lightning is just one of the things that jumps out to me for its stupidity. and this is coming from someone who had nothing in theory against the rey kylo enemy romance
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TRoS > TLJ > TFA all good movies but the first two are great. They have a lot of flaws, but they have some amazing high points too. Also Reylo is awesome. I saw them all twice in theaters and had a mostly great time.
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I'm in the throw TRoS in the trash camp. I haven't seen it since it was in theaters, but really have no desire to. The first two have issues, but I think they're both fun watches.

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yeah, i'm fine with reylo in theory but the execution was abysmal.

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LeonhartFour posted...

The movie just moves at such a breakneck speed that I barely remember anything that happened.

Oh lol, I forgot this (mostly because that post was written when I was about to fall asleep) but I was laughing at this the whole time. Not only was the plot moving at breakneck speed, but the idea that this was all happening inside 8-16 hours was hilarious. You open with, "Palpatine is going to invade in 16 hours" then you have Finn/Poe/Rey bouncing around the galaxy on their search and after a bunch of it, "We've only got 8 hours left!" and it makes late stage Game of Thrones timeline blush.

ctesjbuvf posted...

I am willing to cut the movie a lot of slack because it basically had an impossible task ahead of it. Most of its problems are tied to the trilogy, which most of all should have planned a clear direction from the start and had one person directing all three movies. The Last Jedi is a big offender in going a different way too, it just doesn't have to tie everything up in too little time so it's not nearly as apparent. On top of everything, Carrie Fischer's passing gave it even more impossible tasks.

This is all fair. The trilogy really suffers from that. As much as I loved TLJ, a lot of the reason I do is because it veered off in a different direction. And yeah, Fisher's passing added to the difficulty the film had.

SeabassDebeste posted...

the force lightning is just one of the things that jumps out to me for its stupidity.

I actually think the fact that the fleet somehow recovers once he stops to fight Rey made it even worse. I guess it's thematically in line with how I felt ROS lacked the courage to have actual consequences/loss? But speaking about this scene, and this does tie into the whole change of direction from TLJ bit but that massive fleet arriving to help fight was really cheesy too. It's kinda lampshaded in the movie about how no one showed in TLJ but it's like... no one comes to help against a much "easier"/less scary fight in TLJ against Kylo and the First Order when Leia sends out a call for help but Lando and Chewie get the entire Quarian Migrant Fleet in like 2 hours to fight *Palpatine* and his hundreds of capital-class planet killers that can apparently only be reached by flying through a deathtrap?

But this is Board 8 so we're all here for one thing, right? Are you ready? You're not because my Star Wars opinions have always been weird but here we go:

TLJ > (Rogue One) > RotS > ESB > ROTJ > RoS > TFA > AotC > TPM > ANH

Although outside of my eternal dislike of A New Hope I guess maybe this isn't as big of an outlier as I always think?

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