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I liked Hollow Knight's map system because the game was, in general, fun to get lost in, and not having the map fill out room by room as I explored encouraged me to throw myself headlong into new areas instead of constantly checking the map and making sure I wasn't skipping anything. (Needing to equip a charm to see your position on the map was dumb though.)
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Oct 29, 2018 03:14
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I enjoyed the option of not having the compass- it was part of the fun and hey- free charm slot.
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Oct 29, 2018 03:17
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Symphony of the Night is a game that's just chock-full of tiny details. They went absolute ham on cramming in a million different little things. The level design isn't especially amazing, the balance is so out of whack that the "naked challenge" (where you never equip anything and punch every enemy to death) is totally doable, the music is repetitious and the voice acting is unbelievably corny...but you can find peanuts, throw them into the air, stand underneath them, and press up to catch them in your mouth for cheap healing. There's a sword that powers up by getting covered in blood. If you do a fireball input with the Fist of Tulkas weapon you throw a hadoken. When you morph into a bat, your bat familiar falls in love with you. Alucard reacts with disbelief if he gets glitched into the terrain. And, yes, the Secret Boots, that "discreetly increase height", stretch Alucard's sprite to be 1 pixel taller. As a game (that is, a cohesive collection of rules and mechanics), SotN is so-so. As an experience, it is amazing. Hollow Knight pissed me off with several of its decisions, most importantly the one where they didn't put checkpoints before the bosses. Apparently like two days after I completed it they added that in a patch. 
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Oct 29, 2018 03:17
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Just Offscreen posted:You can enjoy both you know. I can't hear you over the sound of Count Dracula summoning defeated bosses and crushing them with his freakish demonic wing-hands in order to suck their sweet, sweet blood. Also, holy crap the Shield Rod + Medusa Head shield combo is loving broken. I love how easy it is to break this game over your knee, even the bare-hand challenge makes the game a breeze because Alucard is apparently a Kung-Fu master.
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Oct 29, 2018 04:15
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"TooMuchAbstraction" posted:
What are you talking about? Hollow Knight doesn't use checkpoints....just save spots exactly the same a sotn.
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Oct 29, 2018 04:18
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Just Offscreen posted:What are you talking about? Hollow Knight doesn't use checkpoints....just save spots exactly the same a sotn. Many of which are annoyingly far away. Checkpoints would be a good addition.
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Oct 29, 2018 04:23
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:
Hollow Knight doesn't have checkpoints. It did put Dream Portals in a patch though, which let you put down one (and only one at a time) portal in the world that you can warp to, and a good use of them is to stick it next to a boss door for when you die. Most of the bosses aren't super tough though. There's a couple of particular roadblocks for a first time player - Mantis Lords, Watcher Knights, Soul Master - but outside of them you can take on pretty much everyone else your first try. (yes, that includes both iterations of Hornet, I have no idea why she's such a stumbling block to some people)
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Oct 29, 2018 04:34
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Far be it from me to judge if people have trouble with a given boss- but having an explicit checkpoint right before a boss just sucks all the tension and fun out of it for me. A good example of this was Okami- it straight up stopped the game to intoduce checkpoints just before the first boss and it kinda soured the experience knowing there was a safety net.
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Oct 29, 2018 04:43
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Hollow Knight has Cornifer. And now you have his little tune he hums in your head. And now you're thinking of his hot wife.
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Oct 29, 2018 05:03
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bewilderment posted:Hollow Knight doesn't have checkpoints. That's probably what I'm thinking of, then. They certainly didn't exist when I played the game, and I found myself walking back to boss fights from save points an awful lot. Hollow Knight has...I guess I'd call them tightly-designed boss fights. Like, there's generally a fairly specific dance you need to do to win the fight, and if you don't figure that dance out, you're going to have a hard time because Hollow Knight punishes mistakes relentlessly. I think in retrospect I had trouble with either being too aggressive or failing to read boss tells. I loved the Mantis Lords fight, which is one where you very clearly can't attack the boss except at certain points. Oddly, I had no trouble with the Soul Master either. But that laser guy in the mines, the, uh, fungus-infested clone (with his random ceiling drops), and a few others, I remember dying repeatedly to and getting very salty about having to retread ground over and over again to get back to them. They also pretty clearly designed several bosses such that if you tried to heal mid-fight, it'd take just long enough that the boss would knock you out of it. If you don't want me to heal, just disable that ability or something, don't make it look like I'm going to get away with it and then punish me for trying. Just Offscreen posted:Far be it from me to judge if people have trouble with a given boss- but having an explicit checkpoint right before a boss just sucks all the tension and fun out of it for me. A good example of this was Okami- it straight up stopped the game to intoduce checkpoints just before the first boss and it kinda soured the experience knowing there was a safety net. I can go both ways on this. There's more tension to a fight if you stand to lose something, and the only thing the player really can lose in a videogame (i.e. their only stake) is their time, so losing progress or having to retread ground is the only real way to raise the stakes. However, it also pisses players the hell off to have to redo content. So the right line to tread is to make players be worried about what they stand to lose if they fail, without actually pushing them over the line into failure too often. Of course that kind of fine balance is impossible to achieve in one game for everyone unless you have god-tier dynamic difficulty adjustment. As for Okami, it's very much not a game about pushing your technical skills. For safety nets, it has a huge number of consumables and of course the food-wallet things that instantly revive you to full health if you die. I don't think I came in any danger of dying in that game until I was taking on the later combat challenge gates. I mean, I'm sure it can be made to be challenging by limiting your health upgrades, refusing to use consumables, etc. But if you're taking advantage of the options available to you, you should generally be pretty safe.
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Oct 29, 2018 05:39
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AMISH FRIED PIES posted:Hollow Knight has Cornifer. I've heard of a bugchaser, but this is ridiculous!
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Oct 29, 2018 06:51
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I'm playing through The Cave and it cracked me up that an emergency alert announcement declared code "0451" during the Scientist's section. In a game with no keycodes or passwords, it was still really fun to see that nod creatively added in. See games like Deus Ex, Fallout, Thief, System Shock, and many others
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Oct 29, 2018 08:42
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:If you do a fireball input with the Fist of Tulkas weapon you throw a hadoken Fist of Tulkas rules, you can do the Hundred Hand Slap input to do that move too, which has like no range but does more burst damage than anything, crissagrim included. SOTN really has so much great stuff we could go on for days.
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Oct 29, 2018 10:25
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In all my time playing SotN, I never used Fist of Tulkas, and never knew this. I usually favor fist and knife weapons earlier in the game, so I'm not sure why. Maybe I just never acquired it except in runs where I farmed for the Crissaegrim, in which case I used that.
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Oct 29, 2018 10:59
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To be fair I don't know where you'd farm it outside of inverted library and that's hardly early game. It has been like 15 years though so I may be off.the fist will freeze you in mid air when you trigger the HHS too, very useful. One of a million weird weapons in that game.
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Oct 29, 2018 11:08
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I had to look up what other neat weapons I might have overlooked, and there are a few. I have never seen this knife. Ever. I had no idea this sword was a more powerful version of the Shield Rod! There's a hell of a lot more to the Muramasa than I ever suspected. Not sure if I ever used the Heaven's Sword, but I definitely didn't know there was a special attack if you equipped two of them.
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Oct 29, 2018 11:49
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:the balance is so out of whack that the "naked challenge" (where you never equip anything and punch every enemy to death) is totally doable I think in some ways games being too easy is nice because it allows the myriad weird weapons to be viable. On my last run I equipped two chakras (or whatever the boomerang things you throw that come back to you are called) and just ran through everything with two spinning blades of death 10 feet ahead of me. That's the same reason I love final fantasy tactics. Sure there are a hundred ways to break the game using basic abilities, but being easy also allows things like single class challenges to be fun and interesting.
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Oct 29, 2018 16:22
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Running your horse through thick brush and getting clotheslined by a tree or riding into town at full speed and flipping over the front of your horse when you hit the post you're supposed to tie off your horse to is more fun than it has any right to be. Trying to figure out if you can fly through the door of whatever building you do that at but haven't had much luck yet. e: oh talking about RDR2
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Oct 29, 2018 17:08
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Oh, just remembered something that I liked in the Spider-Man DLC: so, like any PS4 game, it takes a picture for your trophies. Completely inconsequential, though I like looking at some of the pictures, usually because they end up bad, typically a black screen with a trophy notification, or the middle of some character animation while playing, or, in my favourite cases, a picture of some PS4 menu since I opened the menu immediately after getting a trophy, only for another one to pop while I was looking at the first. ANYWAY. You get a trophy after each major story beat, it pops up right before you get back into the city. I was looking through the trophy list, but what I found is that the game actually takes a picture during the cutscene of that story beat, showing a dramatic moment that occurs in it, and not when the actual notification pops up. So, for example, after you finish your first meeting with Black Cat and Spider-Man returns to chilling out in the city the trophy pops, but , the picture isn't of a black screen, or of Spider-Man perched on a ledge, it's a picture during the conversation. Thought that was a nice little thing. Absolutely useless, but nice.
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Oct 29, 2018 18:22
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The unlockable classic maps in Doom VFR are WAY more fun than the main game, possibly because they don't rely on locked arenas. It feels like you really have to concentrate on ammo management and getting as many telefrags as possible.
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Oct 29, 2018 18:51
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ShootaBoy posted:I think I'm getting weird these days, because I find myself enjoying good sound design a lot more than I used to. Finally getting to the US DLC for Bomber Crew and man I forgot how good the game sounds. Little radio noises for chatter from your crew and the boss back at base, the chattering of the machine guns, all overlaid nicely by the drone of your engines. The base campaign also has the fun of flying in the rain and hear it ping and patter over your plane. Has this game changed much since release? I ended up returning it on steam since constantly micro-ing my guys while having the tell gunners to actually shoot at 4 planes while getting shot while trying to line up a bombing run was too chaotic and kind of really sucked. Great idea that seemed fun, but way too much going on
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Oct 31, 2018 11:44
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Rollersnake posted:I had to look up what other neat weapons I might have overlooked, and there are a few. There are dozens if not hundreds of weapons in SOTN and many of them have some sort of extra move or gimmick, even if a lot of them don't do anything all that special or powerful. And, drat, I thought I knew a lot about SOTN's secrets but I absolutely never knew that the Mablung sword could do that There's also the Jewel Sword, that sometimes turns enemies into random valuable jewels if you kill them with it. It also has a special move that generates a handful of single coins when swung that you can pick up Unrelated to weapons, a little thing in SOTN is that you can turn into a wolf and attack enemies by barking at them, which isn't very powerful but very funny. And later you can get the skill to run at INCREDIBLE HIHG SPEED as the wolf and destroy enemies by just running through them Oh yeah, and as a vampire you take damage from being submerged in water until you get your hands on the relic "Holy Symbol," which grants you immunity to it. The Holy Symbol is a snorkel Kit Walker has a new favorite as of 13:15 on Oct 31, 2018 |
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Oct 31, 2018 13:03
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Kit Walker posted:Oh yeah, and as a vampire you take damage from being submerged in water until you get your hands on the relic "Holy Symbol," which grants you immunity to it. The Holy Symbol is a snorkel Alucard's a half-vampire, so instead of being physically unable to cross a moving body of water, he just never learned to swim. He should've gotten some floaties too. Missed opportunity, that.
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Oct 31, 2018 16:19
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ilmucche posted:Has this game changed much since release? I ended up returning it on steam since constantly micro-ing my guys while having the tell gunners to actually shoot at 4 planes while getting shot while trying to line up a bombing run was too chaotic and kind of really sucked. Great idea that seemed fun, but way too much going on They added a slow time button you can use, but that sort of chaos is fundamentally what the game is about.
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Oct 31, 2018 17:03
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ilmucche posted:Has this game changed much since release? I ended up returning it on steam since constantly micro-ing my guys while having the tell gunners to actually shoot at 4 planes while getting shot while trying to line up a bombing run was too chaotic and kind of really sucked. Great idea that seemed fun, but way too much going on Like the guy above me said, balancing all the poo poo going on is basically the game. To the point where they added a challenge mode to make it harder, and the new USAAF DLC involves you having even more men on more guns so that they can throw a bunch more planes at you.
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Oct 31, 2018 20:19
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I'm playing the new Spider-Man game and just wanted to confirm something - do the miniobjectives during fights (like get x combo or web 5 guys to walls) count towards 100%? I've heard that you can't replay a lot of missions/side content so am I missing out or are they totally optional even if getting all the upgrades?
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Oct 31, 2018 20:45
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I think they're optional as far as the 100% counter goes. You definitely can get more than you need. Where you'll come up short are the challenge tokens. You'll need to get gold on almost all of them to max out everything. But if you just want the platinum, you can get by if you just buy all the suits and wait to upgrade gadgets.
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Oct 31, 2018 20:52
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If I recall, the Random Crime event mini-objectives do count towards 100% - but unlike any of the other map objectives, those actually do repeat (and, thankfully, retain what objectives you beat previously). So if you don't complete them all in one go, you'll have a chance to get that mini later (and get the benefit of extra crime tokens).
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Oct 31, 2018 21:39
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Valkyrie Profile Covenant of the Plume: You can make good use of extra party members by condemning their souls to darkness! Not only does the unit you use the titular plume on get a massive power boost for the map, after which they go away forever, Wyl gains a new special ability.
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Oct 31, 2018 22:31
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Glagha posted:I love that the Tyranids despite being a galaxy-devouring hell swarm are possibly the least evil faction in the game. They're not evil, they're just hungry I don't play Warhammer but I absolutely love the lore. I can't put my finger on it but it's just so much fun to read about, every aspect of it is turned up to 11 and it's incredibly entertaining to me. The tyranids are one of my favorites, the way the consume entire planets is so brutal and gruesome. They just turn all living matter into goo and then slurp it right up like a milkshake. There is a well done Youtube channel where the guy makes cool, in-depth videos explaining and detailing all sorts of crazy poo poo in the WH40k universe: https://tinyurl.com/y75exo72 The tyranid one in particular is what made them my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=intJPrVtNh4 Tumble has a new favorite as of 22:54 on Oct 31, 2018 |
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Oct 31, 2018 22:51
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Mamkute posted:Valkyrie Profile Covenant of the Plume: You can make good use of extra party members by condemning their souls to darkness! Not only does the unit you use the titular plume on get a massive power boost for the map, after which they go away forever, Wyl gains a new special ability. Another thing I really liked about this is that the story branches based on how much you've been using the plume, but you still see the same conflicts in each chapter either way - you'll just be on different sides of it. Characters you recruit in one path will be a boss in another. Also, the characters that only join if you don't use the plume give really good abilities if you sacrifice them.
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Oct 31, 2018 22:57
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I can't tell if Kratos is a Bad Dad or not but his interactions with Atreus are great.
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Oct 31, 2018 23:15
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BioEnchanted posted:I'm playing the new Spider-Man game and just wanted to confirm something - do the miniobjectives during fights (like get x combo or web 5 guys to walls) count towards 100%? I've heard that you can't replay a lot of missions/side content so am I missing out or are they totally optional even if getting all the upgrades? The mini objectives don't count directly towards the platinum. The crimes count towards completing each district to 100%, which is a trophy. And the more objectives you complete the more Crime Tokens you earn, which you will need to purchase some of the suits. And purchasing all suits is a trophy. The language here is specific because there are a few suits you earn that you don't need for the platinum. You'll also need Crime Tokens to craft upgrades but you only need 15 upgrades for the platinum, not all, which is why players, like Smirking_Serpent above, usually say to prioritize suits over gadgets (though I did the reverse since the gadgets are way better to have in fights most of the time than suit powers and I was confident I could do well in the Challenges).
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Oct 31, 2018 23:23
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Len posted:I can't tell if Kratos is a Bad Dad or not but his interactions with Atreus are great. At first his actions border on comical but as you progress the writing and actor inflections are genuinely good. Not really spoilers, but there's a bit in the midgame where Atreus is basically like "I like levelling up and getting new cool equipment and beating up bad guys easier! Look sorry if I'm excited all the time, but... it feels good to be strong!" and Kratos just responds slowly "Yes, it does", and knowing the earlier games of the series, but the inflection Kratos puts on it, gives what at first seems like just a filler line so much more meaning and emotion.
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Nov 1, 2018 00:22
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Kratos is exactly the kind of dad you would need to survive in a place such as that and he plays his part well enough, so I'd say Good Dad. In less glamorous games, Rise of the Tomb Raider doesn't have pre-rendered cutscenes, which is cool so you can see all the neat clothes you've acquired through the game in the little vignettes and even cooler when Lara pulls a comically oversized pistol in a kind of serious moment https://i.imgur.com/QVxCISE.mp4
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Nov 1, 2018 02:24
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Len posted:I can't tell if Kratos is a Bad Dad or not He's only cut one of his children in half!
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Nov 1, 2018 02:43
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Len posted:I can't tell if Kratos is a Bad Dad or not but his interactions with Atreus are great. He is ridiculously bad and improves to bare minimum good by the games end.
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Nov 1, 2018 02:46
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I also love the running gag that Kratos can't tell a story to save his life. He knows that they need to be told and that there's an aesop that Atreus has to learn in each of them but it just flies completely over his head how to actually recite one.
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Nov 1, 2018 02:50
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Kratos is also the god of war not the god of parenting so I mean he doesn't exactly have a lot of experience, you know?
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Nov 1, 2018 03:41
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Snake Maze posted:Another thing I really liked about this is that the story branches based on how much you've been using the plume, but you still see the same conflicts in each chapter either way - you'll just be on different sides of it. Characters you recruit in one path will be a boss in another. I also like how they encourage you to use it by making one of the early characters be really bad but give you one of the best sacrifice abilities.
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