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Well, we know one place there probably isn't a Sapientes Gladio base... anymore.
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Oct 16, 2019 01:29
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So the Tarot isn't 100% random... only 99% As in, if you get the sparkly card it will never be reversed. So the actual effect you get is random, but at least it will always be a beneficial one. At least, I've never gotten a reverse-sparkly card, and every time I've played this game Lucia was one of my main-liners.
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Oct 16, 2019 01:51
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Weeble posted:So the Tarot isn't 100% random... only 99% Oh no, the sparkly card just has double effects. It's still randomized...
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Oct 16, 2019 06:54
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That ellipses hints at a story and I'm now picturing you saying that, taking a drag off your cigarette, and staring off into the distance.
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Oct 16, 2019 07:19
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Tarot seems incredibly bad. So it seems to have a flat 50% chance to be actively detrimental to your team and probably worse than most actual boss attacks. And even if you get a good effect, the chance of you getting a good effect that is actually helpful at the moment is probably only 25-50% of the possible good effects. So the odds of something bad are 50% and the odds of something helpful are probably 12.5-25%. That is not a good bet. Edit: and of those helpful effects, some can probably be accomplished through less risky means, like an AoE heal through that crest Id just found. Making Tarot even more worthless. Schwartzcough fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Oct 16, 2019 |
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Oct 16, 2019 07:58
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:That ellipses hints at a story and I'm now picturing you saying that, taking a drag off your cigarette, and staring off into the distance. Hierophant is a 50% heal, I imagine getting a sparkly reverse Hierophant just instantly kills everyone.
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Oct 16, 2019 08:03
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BisbyWorl posted:Hierophant is a 50% heal, I imagine getting a sparkly reverse Hierophant just instantly kills everyone. The Dark Id posted:maybe she'll bungle one of her abilities so badly later in the dungeon that she locks in a permanent benchwarmer spot. 
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Oct 16, 2019 09:32
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BisbyWorl posted:Hierophant is a 50% heal, I imagine getting a sparkly reverse Hierophant just instantly kills everyone. I was expecting it to heal the enemy. "All right, just one more round and I'm going to beat this games super boss" *50% heal*
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Oct 16, 2019 10:40
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Tarot is basically worthless and only gets worse the more cards you get. Although I must say it was pretty neat of them to put the effort to redraw the Rider-White tarot. It's just as well they gave Lucia Aromatherapy which can be useful, it's just a shame you need to actually use a mixture first to figure out what it does - and a vast amount of the time crest magic will be simply better. There are some neat things with it later on though...
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Oct 16, 2019 11:12
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Schwartzcough posted:Tarot seems incredibly bad. So it seems to have a flat 50% chance to be actively detrimental to your team and probably worse than most actual boss attacks. And even if you get a good effect, the chance of you getting a good effect that is actually helpful at the moment is probably only 25-50% of the possible good effects. So the odds of something bad are 50% and the odds of something helpful are probably 12.5-25%. That is not a good bet. That's pretty much the problem with "lolrandom" characters in any (J)RPG - yes, if you win the slot machine it can be pretty powerful, but it fucks you or is utterly irrelevant most of the time which is not something you want at all when you're fighting challenging enemies (which I'm told exist in this game) where consistency is the name of the game. It can be funny to pull out on trash fights though, and even effective - most trash fights are over in two turns regardless so if Lucia wastes her turn it's no big, and if she drops the encounter to one turn it's all gravy. IIRC Lucia has decent magic stats so it's also not entirely a waste to bring her in just to do general purpose healing, buffing, aromatherapy (which is really good) and slot in the occasional attack spell. But yeah, I don't think she's on anyone's A team. (TBH Joachim's rythms are kind of in the same boat - trying to game out how to have in in Grand Papillon mode for a hardcore boss, or conversely having to do a boss fight with him in bat form can be a pain in the dick ; but at least you know exactly which pain exactly where on your dick from the get go)
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Oct 16, 2019 14:13
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Kobal2 posted:
and as those steroids indicate, there are ways to force a specific form, Lucia is too Save or Suck with her tarot.
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Oct 16, 2019 20:14
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Kobal2 posted:(TBH Joachim's rythms are kind of in the same boat - trying to game out how to have in in Grand Papillon mode for a hardcore boss, or conversely having to do a boss fight with him in bat form can be a pain in the dick ; but at least you know exactly which pain exactly where on your dick from the get go) They're still more predictable than any of Lucia's effects. Joachim's status screen straight up tells you what form he'll turn into next and in how many battles.
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Oct 16, 2019 21:43
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I never really used the Party Deck feature in the game, but if I'm not mistaken swapping Joachim out of the active party puts his Joachythms on pause, so you could certainly be going through a dungeon, realize the next fight is Grand Papillon, and shuffle him out until the boss for maximum effectiveness. Mind you, SH2 is...not a hard game, so honestly the extra effort is probably not *actually* worth it if you're put off by it. But of course, Joachim is his own reward so it was never a bother.
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Oct 16, 2019 21:58
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Schwartzcough posted:Tarot seems incredibly bad. So it seems to have a flat 50% chance to be actively detrimental to your team and probably worse than most actual boss attacks. And even if you get a good effect, the chance of you getting a good effect that is actually helpful at the moment is probably only 25-50% of the possible good effects. So the odds of something bad are 50% and the odds of something helpful are probably 12.5-25%. That is not a good bet. It's almost like Lucia is a terrible character who isn't worth using and who was ejected from my party the first chance I got.
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Oct 16, 2019 22:19
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CmdrKing posted:Mind you, SH2 is...not a hard game, so honestly the extra effort is probably not *actually* worth it if you're put off by it. But of course, Joachim is his own reward so it was never a bother. The character in FTNW with a similar gimmick is improved a bit in that all of their forms are pretty close in power, just in different areas though you're right that Joachim never feels like a burden even in bat form.
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Oct 17, 2019 00:27
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CmdrKing posted:Mind you, SH2 is...not a hard game, so honestly the extra effort is probably not *actually* worth it if you're put off by it. In general, but there are a handful of bosses where you actually do want the extra power. Not many, but not none. And Lucia is perfectly fine if you ignore her special abilities and just load her up with crests.
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Oct 17, 2019 00:33
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Mokinokaro posted:The character in FTNW with a similar gimmick is improved a bit in that all of their forms are pretty close in power, just in different areas though you're right that Joachim never feels like a burden even in bat form. Mechanically I feel they made it worse though - Joachythms are passive; if you wait long enough, through the battles, eventually he'll be in the form you want - and random dungeon wandering is pretty part and parcel of that. The other character has to actively expend an inbattle action that can only be performed once per enemy, for a tiny blip on a 200 digit scale. I mean, yeah there are the items, similar to Joachim's but it's still kinda tedious. That said, yeah they had sense enough to make the forms all pretty viable - and same for Joachim.
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Oct 17, 2019 01:10
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The FtNW character is better thought of as 3 characters in one, so just figure out which suits your party build best and park her there.ultrafilter posted:In general, but there are a handful of bosses where you actually do want the extra power. Not many, but not none. On paper, Aroma Therapy is perfectly good. Eventually. If you want to do some *comedy* to your damage multipliers. As with Joachythms, SH2 is mostly not very hard so it tends to be overkill! But comedy is fun. But yes absolutely never ever bother with the Tarot, and for times her buffing package isn't what you want... she's a bit faster and almost as good at damage/MP as Gepetto (before Doll shenanigans), so she's probably the superior Crest mage because speed is good in this kinda RPG. Of course, by that metric... Blanca is substantially faster than either and can usually score KOs on trash mobs as long as he can hit a weakness. Larger point being that SH2 party balance is actually quite solid, and more measures whether you as a player want characters you can set and forget (meaning your ideal party is Yuri, Blanca, Karin, and one of the remaining 2 PCs), or if you want to fiddle with them to min-max your damage from fight to fight, in which case you can get good numbers out of Grand Papillon or a properly-dolled Gepetto, and Lucia enables a lot of Comedy Options.
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Oct 17, 2019 01:22
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the nice thing is yeah, much as I don't like Lucia's tarot being very suck or die that really all the characters are viable, compare to other jrpgs where there's characters that are just bad
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Oct 17, 2019 02:55
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Robindaybird posted:the nice thing is yeah, much as I don't like Lucia's tarot being very suck or die that really all the characters are viable, compare to other jrpgs where there's characters that are just bad Hats off for Ricardo.
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Oct 17, 2019 03:09
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I benched Lucia because of her gimmicky Tarot nonsense too, though looking at the wiki for some of the Aromatherapy stuff? drat, some of those lategame moves are pretty cheap, and in a game that's pretty easy as is, just ignore the Tarot nonsense and focus exclusively on the part that can result in screwing over the enemy bigtime. Even Setzer and Cait Sith only had one slot ability that worked against you, no excuse for Lucia's skillset to be this wonky. Needless to say they cleaned up the FtNW version of her, though that character works better simply because of durability issues both in terms of stats and the long lasting effects of the skillset. As in, I just learned if Lucia happens to bite it in battle, so long aromatherapy effects! Shitenshi fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Oct 17, 2019 |
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Oct 17, 2019 03:54
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Yeah, (FTNW spoiler) Ricardo is pretty much better Lucia in every way.
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Oct 17, 2019 05:45
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The Dark Id posted:Oh no, the sparkly card just has double effects. It's still randomized... Yep. One of my two game overs came from pulling a strengthened reverse card. Strictly speaking the card wasn't guaranteed to be a TPK, but I won't say what card it was in case of running afoul of the spoiler policy. That said, I think I'm the only one who used Lucia for the entire game, because I am a sucker for RNG bullshit. Overall, you are way more likely to pull a positive effect than negative. I don't remember the exact ratio, but it might be 3 positive effects for each negative one you pull, or possibly greater. And you do unlock some really fun cards over time.
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Oct 17, 2019 14:35
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SMT: Nocturne still takes the cake for JRPG combat bullshit, just for the potential of "oops, suicide via Reflection" on a newly-encountered Demon.
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Oct 17, 2019 16:34
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Doesn't even have to be a newly-encountered demon. Just do what I did and forget that this low-level enemy reflects wind, mindlessly throw a party-wide wind attack at them, and die like a loving idiot immediately! At the very least though, once you actually learned what the strengths and weaknesses are of each demon in the area, Nocturne is a lot nicer. But learning those weaknesses is very trial and error. I'm sure we could find an even more rear end in a top hat-ish JRPG RNG system if we looked.
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Oct 17, 2019 17:01
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Episode XXXIV: Janus or The Trouble with Tarot.jpg)  Music: Glint of Light ~ Mid Boss in Europe .jpg) You know, the two-headed buff winged part was evident in that previous cutscene. The bulbous testicle lower extremities of the creature...? Not so much. I suppose we're fighting this now because dungeons must have boss fights. This creature is going by the name "Janus" here. You know, two heads and all. Very clever. Though this was such a filler fight that its Japanese title was just Ajitobosu or literally "Hideout Boss".  Janus has a decent 880 HP and a Light elemental affiliation which... could be a problem given we've got two Dark elemental class characters and Lucia is particularly fragile. Indeed, despite being the most nothing boss thus far plotwise (even Grimlock back in the mines had the "malice of a bunch of dead miners" justification), this thing is actually kind of tough compared to the pushovers we'd had the last few major fights. .jpg) For starters, it is surprisingly strong. Its physical attack string will do around mid-60 HP damage to Blanca or Karin and approaching 90 HP of damage to Lucia or Yuri. On top of that, it debuffs Special Attack Defense leaving them open for even more damage in subsequent turns. .jpg) .jpg) Namely, Bright Light a (obviously) Light elemental attack will do 90-100 HP of damage to Yuri and Lucia and WILL two-shot them if they aren't healed before Janus' next turn. It does a good 70+ damage to the non-Dark elemental characters too. Janus also has a slightly less damaging Red Rave Fire elemental attack which still dishes out a good 50-60 HP of damage to everyone but Karin, who can tank it a little bit easier. .jpg) .jpg) While we can set-up a Combo and blast Janus with some Dark elemental spells at our disposal. We cannot really maintain it as well just because, well, Lucia just kind of sucks at offense compared to Joachim, unless we load her up with Crest magic and even then, eh... Meanwhile, Karin is fine sticking to Sword Arts or physical attacks. Frankly, they both deal about the same amount of damage against Janus. Blanca's Soul Comet is probably his best bet. .jpg) But I decided to try to give Lucia some redemption with her poor showing of the Tarot skill and let her take a shot. She was going to get stuck on healing duty for the duration of the battle. Especially since she does have that Arc Cure, which is quite useful for this fight, especially since Red Rave/Bright Light can potentially hit multiple characters if they're close enough together. But... .jpg) ...Mistakes were made. NEW Music: Swoop! ~ Running Wild in Europe (You should probably listen to this because I'm avoiding it at all costs most of the time.) .jpg) So yeah, the Hermit Card reversed AND it was the randomly selected Special Card so its abilities are buffed to max aka Lucia drained the entire goddamn party's SP to 0 making everyone go Berserk at once. I've had zero characters go Berserk up to this point, Lucia. ZERO! We're almost eleven hours into the game. Are you SURE, you're not a Sapientes Gladio plant? .jpg) So now that the entire party is Berserk all at once we have... zero recourse against that. Berserk doesn't just go away on its own. Sanity Points will, in fact, dip into the negative digits and keep going down. So where does that leave us...? .jpg) .jpg) Well, an uncontrollable party beating the poo poo out of itself and wasting consumables in a fit of berserker rage while a fairly formidable mid-boss smacks the poo poo out of them occasionally to help along the downward spiral. Though, there was one choice revelation in this cock-up...  While in the Berserk status, Blanca gains a unique ability where it will run up to someone (I assume this can potentially happen to an ally as well) and piss on them for 1 HP of damage. Can't say I ever knew that was a thing. It makes me wonder if there are other Berserk only actions. Not enough to test it, though. .jpg) .jpg) Anyway, since there's no way to recover from this save one of the Berserk characters accidentally using an SP restorative consumable at random... welp... Music: Death and Defeat ~ Game Over (I didn't loop this one it's just weirdly long as hell. Also you should listen to it since we're trying to avoid this.) .jpg) Lucia, we need to have some words when this dungeon is over and those words are "get cozy next to Gepetto for the rest of the game cuz your liability rear end is getting slam-dunked onto the benchwarming position" as soon as this is over. Music: Glint of Light ~ Mid Boss in Europe .jpg) .jpg) Let's try that again, by just having Lucia spam Arc Cure every turn and have the competent fighters with reliable abilities do the rest. .jpg) .jpg) Indeed, we can just have this go much faster and smoothly by casting Rage on Yuri's Orexis Fusion and having him go ham with physical strikes. Casting Dark Edge on Karin can also improve her damage output. Blanca was on buffing duty and Lucia on healing like a normal person and not using dumbass RNG poo poo abilities with the occasional Evil Ray blast if nobody needed healing. .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) And guess what? It went perfectly fine this time. No party wipes or mass outbreaks of insanity because a card was upside-down and sparkling. Funny how that works. Music: Result ~ Victory .jpg)  <fans self> Oh, I'm so tired....jpg) At least we got a decent payout from that jerk even if everyone but Gepetto and Joachim died in one timeline. Oh and look, another Tarot Card we'll now never use again after that incident. .jpg) ...The good outcome is everyone gets a full heal but someone needs to waste a turn reviving Lucia? What's the reversed version? Lucia gets a full heal and everyone else gets KOed? Actually it's the Special Reversed result where everyone gets KO'd BUT Lucia. She does not get healed. Normal reversed is just Lucia drops over dead with zero healing done. Well done, Lucia. Music: ENDS .jpg)  That's odd. There's no one here at all. There was that monster. And all of those Sapientes Gladio soldiers. Tch. C'mon, Karin. Guys in battles you don't talk to beforehand aren't real people. <nods knowingly> ...... Weird. Where could they be hiding the old man?.jpg) I'm sure it's fine. .jpg) NEW Music: Strain ~ Assault (Theme of poo poo popping off.) .jpg) .jpg) <rubs head and looks up> ...... What's that...?!.jpg) Hmm... Didn't Nicolai mention something about an airship not too long ago? You don't think... .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) ...Nah. It couldn't be connected. .jpg) Turns out Yuri can tank cannon fire fairly well. I suppose he did get blown up more than a few times back in the Shadow Hearts 1 days and was no worse for the wear. Yuri stands up and brushes himself off. .jpg) Is everyone okay?!.jpg) We're fine. Awroo. Yeah, I know. What the heck...?! I thought this was a filler dungeon..jpg) *grunts* Oww... I think I'm okay! Yeah....jpg)  As hardheaded as usual, I can see. ...I think I'm about to get a headache...Music: Suffocation ~ Grim Atmosphere .jpg) Nicolai!! What are you up to? Nice to see you, Lieutenant. You too, Godslayer. <waves> Yo! Bite me! Ahh! You see? This guy is SO rude. Now now, Lenny. <grumbles>.jpg) Well! Let's see... It's been... two months since the Mistletoe's curse! You still look quite normal. I'm not sure about the company you're keeping these days, though. Outside the Lieutenant, of course. <pats chest and smirks> It didn't work. It's a load of crap. Somebody needs to teach him manners. Ask the foot I put up baldy's rear end. !! The one you're looking for is no longer here. What?!.jpg) St. Marguerite Island. We're holding him there. St. Marguerite... Wait, what? You gave me so much crap for telling him last time! Allow me to finish. <grumble> Call me a bungler and then just tell the guy anyway. I don't get paid enough for this... <leans on the railing smugly> Godslayer, get me the Émigré Manuscript. Do that, and I'll give you Bacon!.jpg) I don't know what you're talking about. Don't lie to me. You most certainly do know. It contains the secret of life. You used it to achieve your victory. Afterwards, you and Bacon took it and hid it away somewhere. ..... That much I already know. <smug dick smirk>.jpg) .jpg) .jpg) And with that, Nicolai and Lenny take off. Presumably to this Saint Marguerite Island where Roger Bacon is being held. Welp, after being sort of a footnote overall in the first Shadow Hearts it seems the Émigré Manuscript (or Document depending on which localization you ask) is coming back to relevance. Tune in next time as Yuri gives a history lesson once more complete with crayon doodles and perhaps reveals the current whereabouts of that way too much trouble than it's worth ancient tome as Shadow Hearts: Covenant continues.    Video: Episode 34 Highlight Reel (You should probably watch this.)   Nicolai Conrad Official Art - Sure, he ditched the church for his evil cult but the aesthetic was solid. If you're a huge douchebag.
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Oct 17, 2019 18:18
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The berserk remixes of music really do a good job at conveying EVERYTHING'S hosed UP and it's a pity that you kind of have to go out of your way to hear them.
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Oct 17, 2019 18:53
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The whole party going berserk is just the tip of the iceberg for bad things that can happen to you thanks to Tarot's RNG nature.  Good things can happen too, but I never used Tarot enough to notice.And yes, there are other actions that characters can take only while Berserk. Courtesy of the Shadow Hearts Wiki posted:- Some of these might be useful, I guess. I'm surprised there aren't more abilities for Joachim's alternate forms. There were no unique Berserk actions in Shadow Hearts 1. Wonder if we'll get an option to go straight to St. Marguerite Island and kick rear end instead of getting the Émigré Manuscript first. JRPG plotting says probably not.
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Oct 17, 2019 18:57
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I always liked Nicolai, at least partially because he was such a smug dickhole.
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Oct 17, 2019 19:11
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The berserk themes in this game and FTNW are some of my favorite tracks from the series, and some of my favorite music in general honestly (yes, I have wierd tastes in music). Strictly speaking, Swoop! is paired with the random battle music for Europe, but I'm sure TDI will show it off at some point :P
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Oct 17, 2019 19:11
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Sorry for the second post, but phones suck sometimes. Regarding Lucia and the tarot kerfluffle... Yeah, that happens sometimes. I don't blame anyone for benching Lucia because of this nonsense. A sample size of two is very small, of course, but I don't recall pulling 2 reverse effects in a row very often. It's also been like 4 or 5 years since I played, so maybe I'm misremembering. But I think the pull rate of reverse cards went down as I collected more cards. It may also have been an unlisted effect of a Lucia exclusive accessory you get near the end of the game. But that may have been because i had most of the interesting tarot cards at that point, and I was using them most battles at that point. I dunno, it might be worth testing. Sorry for the 
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Oct 17, 2019 19:12
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DiggleWrath posted:Sorry for the second post, but phones suck sometimes.
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Oct 17, 2019 19:19
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Even if it had zero chance of backfiring it would still be a hard sell, just because the range of effects it can have are so varied that you've still got decent odds of drawing something that doesn't help at all in the current situation, effectively just wasting your turn.
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Oct 17, 2019 19:30
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How did Nicolai even know the heroes were right on the other side of that wall? They would've felt pretty dumb just blowing holes into empty rooms and losing their chance for both Dramatic Villain Entrance and delivering their Evil Villain Ultimatum to the heroes.
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Oct 17, 2019 19:44
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Mzbundifund posted:Even if it had zero chance of backfiring it would still be a hard sell, just because the range of effects it can have are so varied that you've still got decent odds of drawing something that doesn't help at all in the current situation, effectively just wasting your turn. 
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Oct 17, 2019 19:47
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Zereth posted:you could also just use abilities that don't have a small chance of blowing up in your face, like the ones every other character use Mzbundifund posted:Even if it had zero chance of backfiring it would still be a hard sell, just because the range of effects it can have are so varied that you've still got decent odds of drawing something that doesn't help at all in the current situation, effectively just wasting your turn. I mean, yes... But muh RNG bullshit
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Oct 17, 2019 20:01
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I think it would make for a decent challenge run to require that Lucia pull a Tarot card in every boss fight after she's acquired, just because of the randomness of what it can do.
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Oct 17, 2019 22:16
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Ubiquitous_ posted:I think it would make for a decent challenge run to require that Lucia pull a Tarot card in every boss fight after she's acquired, just because of the randomness of what it can do. I don't think the pre-fight cutscenes are skippable, so this is actually a very bad idea.
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Oct 17, 2019 23:58
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I like how the fight where Lucia basically kills you with her RNG, she gets a card that tries to do it more efficiently. Good on you girl!
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Oct 18, 2019 02:26
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| # ? May 20, 2024 17:16 |
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Keldulas posted:I like how the fight where Lucia basically kills you with her RNG, she gets a card that tries to do it more efficiently. Good on you girl! Hahaha oh god, you're right.
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Oct 18, 2019 02:36
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