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Oh good, I hope you get to use Lucia's Tarot every. single. fight.
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Jun 23, 2021 07:54
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I don't remember half of this endgame bullshit.
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Jun 23, 2021 08:03
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AweStriker posted:If you see a small bird in the Black Forest, don’t attack it. What's the reference?
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Jun 23, 2021 18:16
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Iceblocks posted:What's the reference? lobotomy
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Jun 23, 2021 20:00
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I'm honestly impressed that Lucia hosed everyone else over the moment she was given a second chance. I can't tell if this is stupidity, spite, or some mixture of both.
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Jun 23, 2021 23:00
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Supersonic Shine posted:I'm honestly impressed that Lucia hosed everyone else over the moment she was given a second chance. I can't tell if this is stupidity, spite, or some mixture of both. Since she hits herself too it's a mix of both.
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Jun 24, 2021 00:27
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Iceblocks posted:What's the reference? Lobotomy Corporation, Punishing Bird.
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Jun 24, 2021 02:49
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Honestly, I just loaded Lucia with attack crests and never touched her character mechanics at all when I used her. But then again as a fan of Blue magic and skill collecting, I stopped using her the second I went to russia for the princess. cdyoung fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 25, 2021 06:30
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I think Anastasia is the only mage with an actually good gimmick in any sense. Lucia is a mess of RNG or trial and error memorization, and Gepetto's element switching is both weaker than Yuri doing it and less versatile. Whereas if you're going blind and actually using Anastasia, just taking a picture of every enemy isn't particularly difficult, and you only have to try it once to know if you get something or not. Plus it's actually kind of creepy-cute in it's own way, which is very fitting for her and Shadow Hearts in general. I'm just kind of struck thinking about this considering all the people who keep coming out and saying 'I just loaded Lucia with crests and ignored her mechanics'. Which is also more people than have ever said 'I used Gepetto', which is its own hilarious aspect.
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Jun 25, 2021 10:55
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Like, Lucia's tarot cards are annoying, people have said as much, but her Aromatherapy is actually quite good for buffs and cool effects, it's just a little annoying if you don't use a guide. Without getting into From The New World, the character who shares Alice's basic gimmick doesn't have a Tarot equivalent and is a very good party member.
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Jun 25, 2021 11:01
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I still consider Aromatherapy bad because it's a massive trial-and-error undertaking that doesn't record the combinations for you. Hence trial-and-error memorization. I find that sort of poo poo annoying, and so do a lot of people judging by the number of people that come out and said that they use Lucia with crests while completely ignoring her mechanics.
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Jun 25, 2021 11:04
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if it recorded the effects and had less oils, Aromatherapy would less of a PITA because boy there's a fair amount of combinational explosion with it as not only every oil reacts with another, the order of using them matters.
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Jun 25, 2021 16:38
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If you're playing SH:C without a guide, you're going to have a bad time.
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Jun 25, 2021 16:41
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Aromatherapy records the effects of an oil combo after you use it once.
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Jun 25, 2021 21:54
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Honestly the character breakdown is: Yuri - Best character in the game by far. Good at everything since he can swap over to being good at anything. Will always be in your party. Karin - Very good with physical attacks and magic attacks. One of the speedier characters in the game. No reason to not use her. Blanca - All arounder. Pretty decent at everything and the fastest character in the game turn wise. Almost every fight starts out with Blanca heading things off. This is great for random battles because just make that dog do an AOE at the start of every round and save time deleting fuckers right off the bat. Gepetto - loving garbage! Can't hit for poo poo physically. Slowest character in the game. Yuri's elemental swapping but a quarter of the utility. His gimmick is loving creepy. Just trash. Joachim - Not great at magic. A little slow but not demonstrably so, he'll still make it in the first turn even if he goes last. Hits like a loving horse physically on par with high end Yuri fusions. Almost all his special attacks are position setting resets so he's great for burning MP with those to set up Combos mid-string. Lucia - Great at magic. Somewhat slow. All of her abilities are do you have a loving guide in front of you, do you want to waste time experimenting for ages or can you tolerate RNG bullshit? No? gently caress you. Trash tier with Gepetto. Anastasia - Sucks physically and is mid-range speed. Her gimmick attacks have a lot of utility and she's really loving good at magic stuff. I used her the first time through but Blanca worked better with more knowledge this time. Perfectly fine gremlin child. I just like using Blanca more and unlike Blanca and Gepetto she doesn't have longform quests tied to her being good in battles. Kurando - Man, you just come in too loving late. Extremely good physically and very good speed. But he can hit stuff well and do healing and that's IT! Also no Crest Magic so assuming Yuri is always in the party you've got to have the remaining characters pull double duty on buffing/protective magic and not worth it. I'm still hitting more with Joachim or Karin if we can pop off a Arc Gale ahead of the enemy. Nicolai and Oka: loving Dead.
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Jun 28, 2021 07:11
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I have yet to find an RPG that has enough characters to allow swapping where all of them are about equally usable. Game designers just cannot balance their characters for poo poo. Which drives me insane because I'm the type that religiously uses every single character I can (assuming I'm not playing a game with some Chrono Cross or Suikoden level cast bullshit, even I ain't using 108 different fighters, no loving sir.) Yes, if I had ever played this game or could be arsed to emulate it (fat chance given the emulator issues several people have brought up, plus I have a perfectly good LP of it to read, well, right here), I would be the type of stubborn rear end in a top hat that uses even Geppeto and Lucia and insisting they DO have their uses and strong suits and that they're totally viable guys come on! But thankfully for everyone involved that isn't the case, so no one has to listen to some opinionated rear end in a top hat on the internet. This time. Bufuman fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 16:49
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Episode CXXXII: The Black Forest Flowers.jpg) I'm going to be real. A drunk in a bar in Le Havre getting shitfaced at noon saying he saw talking flowers in the wilderness of Germany is probably the very weakest justification we've had for going to a new dungeon. Tiffauges Castle just being "castle's haunted, dawg" is a close second. But at least that one had the fact it looked like the Mirror Palace where Albert Simon was chilling out earlier and merited further investigation. .jpg)  We can't tell much from here. Let's go in a little further.In this case, Lucia just wanted to dick around in the woods so here we are... But perhaps the drunkard had some merit in his tale, since... .jpg)   Hey! This flower... talked?!  Oh, goody! Then it really is the right forest! Let's get looking, everybody! Yeah! We'll make bucket loads of money! And we'll be able to drink as much as we want! Oh, so no change for you? Shuddup.  No! We can't sell the flowers! ...Then what the hell are we doing here? Looking for a special flower! <motions to talking flower> I think we did it. Special...er... *ahem* Excuse me. If I could just have your attention for a moment... Pipe down, you guys! I can't hear what the flower is saying! ...Do I have your attention? It seems you intend to enter this forest, but please reconsider. This is an enchanted forest. Travelers get lost inside it. Once you enter, there's no guarantee you'll get out. What?! ...But we're not worried about that. Even the drunk made it back out! True. If he managed it, we ought to be able to do it too. <nods> If that sloshed guy could do it then it should be no problem for us. We're all sober. Mostly. <hic> What? I'm just mildly buzzed. This is the third forest in Germany we've wandered around in for hours. Very well. If that is your decision... But please first heed my words very carefully. This forest is guarded by a mysterious power. You must listen to the flowers if you want to proceed. <nods> However, as flowers are all rather fickle, they often don't tell the truth. <shrugs> If a red flower speaks after you talk to a yellow flower, the red flower will speak truthfully.  A blue flower will speak truthfully after you talk to a red flower, and a yellow flower after a blue flower. .jpg) <shakes head>Lucia, Gepetto, and Yuri grow bored of this long-winded explanation and all wander off.   Karin hesitates for a moment and then quickly runs away from the dungeon tutorial flower as well as it continues to yammer on. .jpg) Do not forget my words! I'll be praying for your safe journey....jpg) .jpg) We now must form The Dancer Party for the Black Forest with Lucia as the mandatory party leader. We'll be using the usual suspects. Joachim still hasn't done his optional quest and we're going to want him to continue to bulk up in preparation for... the festival...  Music: In Darkness of a Labyrinth ~ Dungeon .jpg) Despite our intrepid party of adventurers who cannot be arsed to give the first poo poo about any of this end game content, we do need to heed the White Flower's long-winded explanation because guess what?! This is another puzzle dungeon repeating two different map assets twenty times and calling it a day! Fantastic... We'll be encountering assorted talking flowers at forks in the road and must speak with them in a certain order to gain directions to dive deeper into the Black Forest. To boil down the explanation, the order of talking to flowers is:
.jpg) .jpg) It's not a matter of one of the flowers will give correct directions. In this instance, we're supposed to talk to the Red Flower then the Blue Flower. .jpg) If we follow the Red Flower's advice OR talk to them out of order, the flag to progress will not trigger and it will result in... .jpg) Looks like we get warped back here if we make a mistake.Getting booted all the way to the start of the dungeon. We want to avoid resetting progress in this dungeon. .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) So we're meant to go down the left and middle paths. The entire dungeon up until the end is just repeats of these two maps and following the proper directions until we get to another fork and set of flowers with further directions to follow. It is... less than compelling. .jpg) Black Flower is just universally a grumpy jerk and I like his moxie. .jpg) Unlike Kurando's Dog Shrine that was a very breezy trek since the map transitions were so small, the Black Forest's maps are just long enough that we're likely to get at least one random battle per screen. .jpg) Music: Vicious 1915 ~ Battle in Europe .jpg) A trio of enemies composes the mobs of the Black Forest. The first one is Beatrice a Light elemental haunted doll with 352 HP. It fires off the Bright Banish spell and... that's kind of it. The creature has some kind of moth under its skirt and the scientific term for the common palmfly moth of southeast Asia is Elymnias Hypermnestra Beatrice. So I'm guessing that is where it derives its name from. .jpg) Accompanying the doll we have the Golden Beetle which is... well, a beetle that is gold pushing around some manner of fruit wrapped in vines sprouting flowers. It is an Earth elemental monster with 360 HP that enjoys rolling over people with its ball of vegetation and occasionally lobbing magical rocks. The Japanese name of the Golden Beetle is "Polisun" which is the Ukrainian name for the Slavic mythological creature better known as a Leshy. Wikipedia on Leshy posted:
Personally, the only time I've encountered a Leshy in a video game was wandering into the wrong goddamn neighborhood in The Witcher 3 and Geralt getting sent to the shadow realm by a giant deer skulled 12 feet tall pissed dude. So... a shiny beetle with a ball of compost is someone of a downgrade and doesn't have dick to do with the name inspiration creature other than it's in the woods. So I guess it's fine they localized its name to it to be... just exactly what it is. .jpg) The final of the Black Forest three is the Penangglan a creature that looks like it stepped out of a canceled Metroid game. It is of the Water class and has 368 HP to its name. It just bites people. It likes to bite people. That's all it does. Just taking a big ol' bite if given the chance. Penangglan is a Malaysian folklore vampire ghost that is a floating woman's head with a trail of its internal organs decidedly not internal. Wikipedia on Penanggalan posted:
We're a touch off base with giant mouthed Super Metroid Brinstar creature reject. Music: In Darkness of a Labyrinth ~ Dungeon .jpg) .jpg) Back on the trail, the only noteworthy loot until the end of the dungeon is one of the final cards in Lucia's Tarot Card set -- The Chariot. This either damages all enemies or the entire party by 50% depending on the direction it lands. The Special Effect is killing all enemies on the field instantly (I don't think this works on bosses) or doing a full party wipe resulting in a Game Over. Terrific! .jpg) .jpg) The next set of flowers we hit up we need to talk to and ignore the Blue Flower first and follow the seemingly hung-over Yellow Flower. .jpg) .jpg) Following that the directions get longer and more complicated coming from the truthful White Flower. I hope you can remember all that doing at least three or four random battles along the way.l .jpg) .jpg) After that, we've got Yellow then Red to speak with and it is left-hand turns all the way down. .jpg) .jpg) Same, Black Flower. But we're going to have to listen to the Blue one to make any progress. .jpg) We finally reach the end of the dungeon denoted by a save point and a last pair of flowers. .jpg) In preparatory work, it may be in our best interest to equip everyone with Crucifixes or at least something that guards against Paralysis status. It may make our time ahead easier. Oh and we should most definitely save before going further... Once that's done we can walk ahead to trigger a flower conversation. .jpg) You mustn't be so rude! Don't you have any idea how difficult it is to make it this far? Shut yet yap, paleface! All they had to do was follow directions and walk down paths. Difficult my rear end. I could do that. You don't have legs, good sir. That's not gonna stop me! Nothin' gonna stop me! ...Well, they've here now, I guess, so I suppose I've gotta deal with 'em. Hey, stinkweeds! Turn left here and get the hell out of this forest. And don't show your ugly mugs again! My goodness! What uncouth things this one says! Please don't pay any attention to him. To proceed into the forest, turn right here. You still have a long way to go, but good luck! But the last flower said we were nearly at our destination. Oh you are, friends. Just down the path to the right. One must gallantly carry on the road ahead. Why the hell did ya have to tell 'em? I've had just about enough out of you! Kindly stop talking to me altogether! Well, the White Flower is always truthful and I sure as hell don't want to restart this dungeon from scratch before getting to any tangible goal or at least beating up some manner of eldritch abomination for money and prizes. And the Black Flower is nothing but a dick. So to the right we go!  .jpg)  I was kind of getting that feeling too. It has been the same map repeating the whole time before but now it's feeling... Extra samey...? ...Yeah. And it's been hours since we saw the last flower with directions. I'm not really missing those chattering things. Am I crazy or did I hear that White Flower mutter something sinister as we were walking away? You're just imagining things. Now let's show some spirit and get going! I've got a bad feeling about this... .jpg) Music: Death and Defeat ~ Game Over .jpg) God DAMMIT, Lucia!! You're now responsible for both of the only two Game Overs in the entire LP! What is your DEAL, lady?!    Lucia Concept Art - The herald of Shadow Hearts 2 failure states. The Dark Id fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 20:49
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Ah, that last bit is both hilarious and awful. 
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Jun 28, 2021 20:56
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Lucia and Geppetto really in a dead heat on who’s the worst, here.
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Jun 28, 2021 20:57
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At least they put it right after a save point.
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Jun 28, 2021 21:32
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I love this joke for both being a dick move while still giving you the boss point save point as to not be obnoxious.
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Jun 28, 2021 22:01
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Yeah of the times SH2 decides to just troll the player this is probably the best one just for not also being obnoxious gameplay.
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Jun 28, 2021 22:04
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I was expecting white flowers to always lie and for you to have to go back through the whole dungeon using the inverted logic.
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Jun 28, 2021 22:09
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So that's how the game ends. Pity we couldn't get Kato lost in this forest too, huh? The only RPG games where I've found all the characters both useful and entertaining are those games where I could create every character myself. And Chrono Trigger.
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Jun 28, 2021 22:21
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Lucia is a deep cover Sapientes Gladio assassin, to dumb to realize the organization is finished.
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Jun 28, 2021 22:28
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I have to admit, that was a solid punking. Though at least they were nice enough to put a save point there for you so you don't have to do the whole forest again. I bet Cavia wouldn't have put the save point there. Hell, they probably would've randomized the maze for good measure.
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Jun 28, 2021 22:37
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Tylana posted:I was expecting white flowers to always lie and for you to have to go back through the whole dungeon using the inverted logic. Same, I was expecting everything to be opposite to what it said at the start.
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Jun 28, 2021 23:41
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I mean, technically the white flower never lied at all. It's just that you don't actually want to go too deep in.
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Jun 28, 2021 23:50
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The black flower also tells the truth. The left path leads to the boss fight, after which you leave the forest.
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Jun 28, 2021 23:56
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Maybe someone here can help me. Either another game does this exact joke at some point, also with flowers. Or I've actually played this game and forgot long ago. Because I remember this dungeon vividly, including that ending. I will also say I believe it's a little unfair to put the blame entirely on Lucia for this game over. Not that she isn't to blame, but not solely to blame is all.
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Jun 29, 2021 05:43
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Burger Flipper posted:Maybe someone here can help me. Either another game does this exact joke at some point, also with flowers. Or I've actually played this game and forgot long ago. Because I remember this dungeon vividly, including that ending. I will say that if I can only remember 2 things from this game, it's this dungeon and something upcoming.
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Jun 29, 2021 05:47
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Eeepies posted:I will say that if I can only remember 2 things from this game, it's this dungeon and something upcoming. For me it's a matter of time in between. If I did play this, I don't really remember. Because if I did it was around the release, and I barely remember what I did last year.
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Jun 29, 2021 07:18
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It is extremely surprising that the two animals shown are horses, because they have paws and not hooves. And are sitting in a way that horses definitely can't. I guess it makes sense that on top of murdering the whole party and getting them lost in the woods forever, Lucia is also very bad at basic animal identification.
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Jun 29, 2021 09:00
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given they're Sphinxes in the Rider-Waite iconography - Lucia is not a clever girl.
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Jun 29, 2021 17:16
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Burger Flipper posted:Maybe someone here can help me. Either another game does this exact joke at some point, also with flowers. Or I've actually played this game and forgot long ago. Because I remember this dungeon vividly, including that ending. Both the Persona 2 games have a dungeon where after you spread a rumor the flowers talk.
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Jun 30, 2021 01:53
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say whatever else, I do love the rumor system in P2
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Jun 30, 2021 01:58
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Robindaybird posted:say whatever else, I do love the rumor system in P2 I honestly wished that atlus would make a modern persona game with some of the classic elements. like everyone being able to use multiple personas, the rumors and the return of the old velvet room crew, and tarot/demon cards.
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Jun 30, 2021 02:12
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cdyoung posted:I honestly wished that atlus would make a modern persona game with some of the classic elements. like everyone being able to use multiple personas, the rumors and the return of the old velvet room crew, and tarot/demon cards.
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Jun 30, 2021 02:18
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NGL, the Sub-Persona system, especially the part where you recover X HP and SP based on the sub-persona, was busted as gently caress and of course I abused the hell out of it. So tbh yeah bring it back. I have fond memories of slamming Impure Reach (increase change of status effects landing) and Silence Circle (stop all enemies from using magic) onto Naoto, the character with the biggest stat - I wanna say luck? - for landing them, and nerfing every enemy encounter I met.
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Jun 30, 2021 09:32
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| # ? May 23, 2024 17:11 |
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Lunar Suite posted:NGL, the Sub-Persona system, especially the part where you recover X HP and SP based on the sub-persona, was busted as gently caress and of course I abused the hell out of it. Why stop there? Give her Alice/Daisoujou and instantly delete any encounter that isn't outright immune. With the Sub-Persona SP boost, she could last for a full excursion without running dry.
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Jun 30, 2021 09:53
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