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if anything the implication is that they're going to remaster it, considering he went out of his way to acknowledge the idea and that people want one.
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Nov 24, 2019 19:27
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Also, apparently Arise's "theme" (note: not 'characteristic genre') is "Inheritance and Evolution".
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Nov 25, 2019 00:20
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 Getting back into Berseria and I can't believe it took me this long to find the option to resize your accessories.
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Dec 23, 2019 14:37
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Just finished Tales of Berseria. I had a sudden urge to play through a long-rear end JRPG and remembered that I picked up Berseria in a PSN sale awhile back, so that was the game I decided to play. Berseria is my fourth Tales of game (the others were Graces f and Xillia 1/2; I somehow even managed to plat Xillia 1). And yet, I still haven't truly understood the combat systems of any of the ones I've played. They're just too drat complex for me to grasp very well. I pay very close attention during all the tutorials, thoroughly read all the explanations in the menus, and even look at combat guides on the internet but I still just don't "get" it. I always end up devolving to just button mashing, praying, and hoping that the AI-controlled characters pick up my slack. There's absolutely no strategy involved. Fortunately, this mindless flailing always ends up being good enough to allow me to complete the games on their default difficulties; I'd feel really dumb if I ever had to dial the difficulty down from the default. For example, my playstyle for Berseria was to exclusively use Velvet, leave X set to "you decide" x4, and frantically mash R2 and X. When Mystic Artes were introduced, I added frantically mashing L2 to my repertoire any time my BG hit 3. Any time I ran too low on stars to use my break soul, I just kinda got confused as to what to do.  And don't even get me started on trying to figure out good settings for the AI or which of each characters' artes to disable. I just left all of that on the defaults and hoped for the best. I'd like to think I'm not simply too stupid to understand Tales game combat but I put a lot of effort into "getting" it but always fail. It's funny because one of my favorite games of all time is Resonance of Fate. That game is constantly accused of having a combat system that's way too obtuse for most people to understand, but it "clicked" for me pretty much instantly and I absolutely love it. Setting up tri-attacks and then absolutely owning everything in sight never gets old. I even instantly understood all the added wrinkles Resonance would start throwing into the combat system. Yet trying to understand Tales combat always makes me feel like my brain is going to explode.  I could also write volumes on how much I hate Berseria's equipment system. Even though I can never understand the combat, I've still really enjoyed the Tales games I've played mainly because the stories are great and the characters are excellently written. In Berseria, I especially enjoyed Velvet and Magilou (I always love a well-written antihero) but I honestly thought that Artorius and Innominat were two of the blandest, least interesting villains I've ever witnessed. Their storylines and connections to Velvet were interesting but they just had zero personality. And the game's opening did get a little heavy on the foreshadowing. It spent so much time having Velvet dote on her brother that about halfway through the opening, I started thinking "something REALLY bad is gonna happen to this kid soon, isn't it?  " They laid it on pretty thick.So that's my Tales story; I've rambled much longer than I intended to. Now I ask you guys: is Vesperia one of the good ones? The PS4 remaster is currently on a PSN sale and I'd be interested in picking it up if it is.
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Dec 23, 2019 18:44
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vesperia has a trainwreck third act so a lot of people here who care about cohesive storytelling don't like it including myself, but it's one of the more well-liked tales games overall outside this board so ymmv also if you hate berseria's equipment system, imagine if basic combat mechanics and quality-of-life options were tied to it rather than just buffs and that's vesperia's. it's real bad.
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Dec 23, 2019 19:07
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i still think the part where vesperia starts wrecking it is way before the third act, way back at like the earlier midpoint of act 2. everything they do with estelle in that game's plot can go to hell
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Dec 23, 2019 19:11
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Tales of Woe posted:vesperia has a trainwreck third act so a lot of people here who care about cohesive storytelling don't like it including myself, but it's one of the more well-liked tales games overall outside this board so ymmv  Also from the combat itself to unlocking stuff to make the combat almost passable to the plot, the game is just slooooow and bad.
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Dec 23, 2019 19:13
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Vesperia has a trainwreck most of its plot, but everyone thinks it falls apart at a late point because before then you can still imagine that all the various dropped plot threads are going to pay off and form a coherent whole.
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Dec 23, 2019 19:17
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Vesperia is a real slog to play the first time through because loving everything is locked behind equipment skills. I'm not just talking about buffs and stuff, like characters' fundemental combat gimmicks are locked behind mid-game gear in some cases. On NG+ when you can start with all the skills and reduce their SP cost to 1, it's a lot more fun to play, but imo not fun enough that the first slog is worth. Also yes the story is a mess. Act 1 is pretty strong and Act 2 kicks off really well and has some fantastic plot beats, but 2/3rds of the way through it a party member gets removed from the party for an incredibly dumb and arbitrary reason, and the plot takes a nosedive because of the consequences of it. Part 2 ends on a cliffhanger of "oh man [horrible thing] has happened, how are we going to stop it!" but then Part 3 immediately kicks off with a character pulling an until now completely unmentioned solution to like, every conflict in the plot, completely out of their rear end. Then you kinda gently caress around for 15 hours to drag out the game length before fighting a really narratively underwhelming final boss. I'll be honest I had really fond memories of it from being younger, but when I got the remaster I could barely get through it because the combat was so loving awful without all the skills unlocked and the plot devolves into garbage nonsense.
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Dec 23, 2019 19:44
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Vesperia’s plot is rear end but the party dynamic is great and the characters are very fun and have good interactions. Those are where Vesperia’s strengths lie and why it was pretty well received (along with the dub being really good and well above par for a Tales game).
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Dec 23, 2019 19:56
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yeah they have good interactions it's a good thing the game completely mutes all of them for like five hours while dangling estelle in your face like a carrot to keep you playing hoping you might get her back and the game might become okay again
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Dec 23, 2019 20:02
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Estelle's treatment is honestly (and tragically) par for the course, qualitatively. Milla gets nerfed so Jude can separate from the party and literally carry her to a lesson about trusting people. Sophie goes blind so Asbel can, again literally, carry her through an arc about how her mission is his problem now. Colette spends a good half of her screentime sick or kidnapped. Estelle, in addition to the obvious orb arc, also has that earlier segment where she tries to go into the desert and then get caught and told off by the party for trying to shoulder her burdens alone. (In stark contrast to Yuri, who successfully shoulders burdens alone throughout the game and ultimately gets off with a much lighter, more toothless lecture.) It's not an okay look by any means, but what actively irritated me more was Rita. I didn't find her angry lashing out shtick especially funny, but it also underlined how much her own relationship to Estelle was characterized as overprotective, immature, and most obviously in the hamster ball arc, ultimately secondary - there to contrast the real relationship of Yuri
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Dec 23, 2019 20:22
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I am not sure if I would include Milla in that list as it is over relatively quickly and it gives Jude a chance to be something more then a tag along.
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Dec 23, 2019 21:08
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obviously a lot of tales games are weird about the female lead but. i don't feel like milla or colette are nearly as insulting. none of them literally dangle her in front of you for hours while preventing her from being allowed to even have a role in anything like vesperia does. colette has her voice taken away and gets kidnapped like twice but both times it lasts less than like an hour and if anything the game has issues more with forgetting she even exists, and milla still gets to actually hold some kind of position as a party leader even when xillia's plot stuff with her kinda dumps. estelle literally is used as bait lol and yeah just. the way it completely ignores everything about her relationship with rita. loving sucks poo poo and destroyed any good will i would still have left over for it after that. yuri gets all these big scenes while rita gets a couple lines about how she's kinda angry and that's loving it lol The Colonel fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2019 21:09
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It's never over for Milla, much of the last act is Jude going on a big adventure to save her and the Jude quests in Xillia 2 just hammer in the idea that Milla has helped Jude grow into himself and her reward is to stand proudly by his side. The mere fact that Milla was "also a protagonist" was progress, and she does get some good moments in there, and her "trust other people" arc isn't just about her relationship with Jude but is a more specific character trait that includes Alvin and Elise as well, but it's got that DNA in it. Caphi fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2019 21:24
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yes but at the same time milla was allowed to actually exist and not be trapped in a Plot Ball for Sad Scenes where Yuri Reaches Out To Save Her like for all of its weirder bits xillia. gives milla interactions and dynamics with other characters. she's not just. locked in a ball. for hours.
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Dec 23, 2019 21:26
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Vesperia really suffers from Estelle not being the POV character, since the story is really her journey of self-discovery, both in terms of her power and what she wants out of life.
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Dec 23, 2019 21:26
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like idk no matter what kind of precedent there is for it estelle is just. one of the especially worst examples of it in the series and it literally soured everything about the game for me. i can think of so many tales games that are not as bad about it as vesperia is, if bad about it at all, that i'm not going to suddenly be less hard on it because a few other games suck about it a lot too
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Dec 23, 2019 21:29
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The Colonel posted:yes but at the same time milla was allowed to actually exist and not be trapped in a Plot Ball for Sad Scenes where Yuri Reaches Out To Save Her Milla got trapped in a plot dimension while Jude singlehandedly gathered the team and punched out God for her. I don't know if it really makes it that much better that she was offscreen instead of being physically dragged before the camera. The surrounding plot in Vesperia was much shittier but that's more about Raven also getting done incredibly poorly by Vesperia's writing. e: I'm not saying Estelle being part of a pattern makes it any more okay, to be clear. It's a lovely pattern and she's absolutely one of the worse examples of it, no question, but making it a contest against Colette doesn't make anyone feel better about it. Caphi fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2019 21:29
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The Colonel posted:yes but at the same time milla was allowed to actually exist and not be trapped in a Plot Ball for Sad Scenes where Yuri Reaches Out To Save Her I mean, Milla kinda is locked away for an hour she just gets to do things in the spirit world. Caphi posted:Milla got trapped in a plot dimension while Jude singlehandedly gathered the team and punched out God for her. I don't know if it really makes it that much better that she was offscreen instead of being physically dragged before the camera. The surrounding plot in Vesperia was much shittier but that's more about Raven also getting done incredibly poorly by Vesperia's writing. Milla cutting the barrier was the only reason Jude got to punch Maxwell's face in. McTimmy fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2019 21:33
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Caphi posted:Milla got trapped in a plot dimension while Jude singlehandedly gathered the team and punched out God for her. I don't know if it really makes it that much better that she was offscreen instead of being physically dragged before the camera. The surrounding plot in Vesperia was much shittier but that's more about Raven also getting done incredibly poorly by Vesperia's writing.
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Dec 23, 2019 21:39
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like yeah xillia gives milla a short stick sometimes but there's a world of difference between that and the estelle thing. milla gets a 1 hour segment where despite it being meant to be even she clearly has the less important developed stuff, and most of her writing in xillia 2 defines her by jude and not herself. estelle doesn't get any writing for like a 5th of the game and there's literally no exploration of how she feels about anything and the cast responds to her kidnapping and torture largely the same way mario responds to krump stealing the orange crystal star in chapter 5 of paper mario the thousand year door.
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Dec 23, 2019 21:44
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I never said Milla was as bad as Estelle. She's clearly not. I'm not trying to besmirch her character here. I just view them as stemming from the same basic attitudes and roles. And the only reason I said any of that was to express that personally, of all the elements of lovely writing in that arc, my frustrations were more directed to Rita and Raven while my feelings about Estelle's were more like disappointment. I don't blame anyone else for being frustrated with Estelle, either. It's a bad writing decision no matter how you slice it and I don't mean to spin my slicing as truer or anything.
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Dec 23, 2019 21:53
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You can make an argument that Berseria in particular is an overt rejection of that kind of story wrt Velvet and her family
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Dec 23, 2019 21:57
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Caphi posted:I never said Milla was as bad as Estelle. She's clearly not. I'm not trying to besmirch her character here. I just view them as stemming from the same basic attitudes and roles. And the only reason I said any of that was to express that personally, of all the elements of lovely writing in that arc, my frustrations were more directed to Rita and Raven while my feelings about Estelle's were more like disappointment. I mean yeah, the whole Estelle kidnapping arc reflects poorly on every character in the game (except Karol I guess) but I still think Estelle comes off the worst from it. Mostly because while everyone else is used poorly she's gone entirely for hours and even when she's back nothing's really done with her. She gets personally kidnapped and betrayed by a member of the party and the game doesn't give a poo poo at all, it's so bad.
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Dec 23, 2019 22:07
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Why is Ludger so awful but so nessecery because he can hit every weakness.
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Dec 23, 2019 22:09
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TheKingofSprings posted:You can make an argument that Berseria in particular is an overt rejection of that kind of story wrt Velvet and her family
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Dec 23, 2019 22:09
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The Shame Boy posted:Why is Ludger so awful but so nessecery because he can hit every weakness. writing wise uhhh he has some funny lines and his bit with elle is kinda cute
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Dec 23, 2019 22:10
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I mean that h e is great gameplay wise, so good why would ever play anybody else though.
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Dec 23, 2019 22:12
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You know, here's hoping that Shionne in Arise gets agency and some good moments and solid writing and good Skits and character interactions. She seems like she has a lot of potential.
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Dec 24, 2019 08:04
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Junpei posted:You know, here's hoping that Shionne in Arise gets agency and some good moments and solid writing and good Skits and character interactions. She seems like she has a lot of potential. I dunno. I look forward to her getting kidnapped 2-5 times, losing her voice/emotions/entire personality, or just deciding she has to leave the party to build a bridge for most of the game.  I hope we get some new teaser information soon. A deeper look into the battle system, a few of the other characters, y'know, something. I'm probably just forgetting how much of the year from Berseria's announcement to release was waiting, but it does feel like we've been getting less hype than usual. Maybe it's because they're going for a simultaneous world-wide release this time. Is that a thing they've said, or is that just something I made up? I can't find source for that.
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Dec 24, 2019 13:07
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Not trying to distract from Estelle chat but the other poster talking about Bersty makes me wanna ask: How are you supposed to play it? I have the same problem too where i just button mash and spam DEVOUR! to get through stuff and I teally feel like the game expects me to be better somehow.
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Dec 24, 2019 14:13
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BrightWing posted:Not trying to distract from Estelle chat but the other poster talking about Bersty makes me wanna ask: How are you supposed to play it? I have the same problem too where i just button mash and spam DEVOUR! to get through stuff and I teally feel like the game expects me to be better somehow. Velvet's break soul makes her unable to die as long as it's ticking down, so it's an incredible crutch, but it also creates some bad habits. Velvet being able to attack beyond normal chains and without any sp is kind of unique to her and her special post-devour combo enders. The quick and dirty way to git gud* is to keep two things in mind: how many soul ... gems(?) you have, and how full they are. The number of gems determines how many times you can attack without stopping or using a soul break, and how full they are limits which moves you can actually use. The game is pretty momentum based, so what you're ultimately looking to do is use all your allotment of moves (like, say you have 4 gems you can use 4 moves in a row), break soul, use 3 more (because breaking soul removes 1), break soul a second time, hit two more times (since you now have 2) and finish it off with a mystic which will then restore you to 3 gems again. To be a little more complicated, one of the best things you can do is stun the enemy or cause some other kind of status ailment. Doing that will restore your sp and usually gain you an extra gem and let you basically chain poo poo forever, even when you aren't playing as Velvet. Vel's easy mode (because of invulnerability and her mechanic being usable whenever you want, her enormous self heal etc., etc.) -- Roku plays similarly in that his soul break can be used whenever; even if it doesn't trigger his counter attack it will still reset your ability to continue chaining. Phi's and Eleanor's are similarly pretty easy to pull off. Mags and Eizen require certain conditions to be met (a spell and a downed/stunned enemy, respectively) but the concept behind them is the same. Being good at Mags is just a matter of spell up-charging and being ready with her soul break and watch as she effortlessly wins any battle with magic users. Being good at Eizen usually boils down to having high accuracy, chaining up a decent chunk of soul gems, stunning something, and then using all 3 of his breaks in a row to obliterate the entire battlefield. He's the most momentum-y of the characters, but when he gets rolling it's completely ridiculous and I love it. If you really want to get into the weeds, every enemy has a "type" (or 3) and so does every attack. You match the attacks to the type, you break the enemy's defenses easier, and if you hit all of their types in one combo you do a hell of a lot more damage. You can set specific attack types to certain button chains to make it easier. And you can use the auto-chain feature from most attacks to give yourself access to pretty much every character's entire moveset while also maintaining the ability to use specific arte combos at the same time. But that's ... a much longer discussion. tl;dr -- button mashing is actually pretty effective, and you shouldn't feel bad about doing that and spamming devour, since that ultimately ends up pretty close to what a carefully planned strategy looks like.
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Dec 24, 2019 15:08
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BrightWing posted:Not trying to distract from Estelle chat but the other poster talking about Bersty makes me wanna ask: How are you supposed to play it? I have the same problem too where i just button mash and spam DEVOUR! to get through stuff and I teally feel like the game expects me to be better somehow. the game doesnt expect you to do better they literally said they made the combat system such that you can just mash your way through it after people complained about zesty's combat being overwrought, thats why the game's mechanics all just reward going insanely hard on offense and why healing is mostly useless. you're meant to just mash
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Dec 24, 2019 15:16
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Ershalim posted:I dunno. I look forward to her getting kidnapped 2-5 times, losing her voice/emotions/entire personality, or just deciding she has to leave the party to build a bridge for most of the game. How is she gonna get kidnapped if anyone grabbing her gets a bolt of lightning and massive pain??
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Dec 24, 2019 17:28
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Junpei posted:How is she gonna get kidnapped if anyone grabbing her gets a bolt of lightning and massive pain?? With great difficulty.
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Dec 24, 2019 17:33
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Luffy will kidnap her
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Dec 24, 2019 17:35
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It's called a net.
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Dec 24, 2019 17:39
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Make her volunteer to go for the good of like someone
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Dec 24, 2019 18:41
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The Shame Boy posted:I mean that h e is great gameplay wise, so good why would ever play anybody else though. I like to play everyone in Xillia 2 but Gaius especially Demon Fangs splitting the earth n poo poo
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Dec 24, 2019 19:04
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