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The only thing Roland needs is an ability like Moon Jump where he can move + attack + move up to his maximum total movement. Then he'd be a good unit instead of one that is never used because he get's blown up too quickly.
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Apr 7, 2022 21:03
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PaybackJack posted:I'd also just make it so that infinite Superior mats and class upgrade items are available in the first playthrough because it really sucked getting new characters and not being able to use them to their full capability because I'd unknowingly spent the mats on other units. I get that you want to give some reason to grind stuff on future NG+ but that just says to me that they could have gone with an epic 4th tier that was just another single generic damage/hp option and had everyone use the same hard to grind material available from really high end tavern missions. While it seems unlikely that players in this genre would, I could see some people getting stuck in that same way and just writing the whole game off. I get that they wanted to give these out sparingly to make the choices more impactful but by Chapter 15-16 they should just all be 100% available and if you want to grind them out you can. Hard disagree. They made the right choice here. Yeah it’s not great you can still get characters near the end that are great and can’t upgrade as well until later, but doing this on a first run would absolutely ruin balance as the game is setup to heavily encourage a new game + run and still having to somewhat manage resources plays into it. I do think that once one of your characters hits level cap they should immediately unlock the materials, and I also think that new game + runs should increase the amount of gold you get from story battles to help pay for material costs better. Seeing some of the other things people would mess with really makes me appreciate just how good their design really was. Anna is 100% meant to be a glass cannon because she can do 2 attacks and has some great skills. She has to have a trade-off. If Anna is getting murked all the time, my suggestion would be to stop getting her into that situation? She’s meant to act as support for stronger attackers, she’s not a strong attacker herself. Hughette taking big damage is fine because she’s a archer that can cover huge ground in an instant, she needs a huge downside. Considering she has blind and no-movement abilities, I’ve rarely had her die. Again, if getting killed too often keep her away from archers. The one thing I super agree with is lightning damage. It is pretty OP for the enemy. I always hate seeing it take off half my health bar. I always make sure if I see mages that I get rid of them ASAP and I have healers present when I gun for them.
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Apr 8, 2022 00:03
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:The only thing Roland needs is an ability like Moon Jump where he can move + attack + move up to his maximum total movement. Then he'd be a good unit instead of one that is never used because he get's blown up too quickly. Yeah basically. The three gods of melee damage are two of the characters that have this available and one character who turns into a tank at half HP and just guzzles enemy damage.
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Apr 8, 2022 00:27
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I also found Hughette to be decently durable already. On the Hard endgame chapter that is All Cavalry, she managed to survive I think three enemy attacks when I misplaced her. Mixed on increasing MDEF. Magic does seem overtuned, but on the other hand on some maps the only reason you can’t have Eriador/Benedict/Jens hold the line forever is the threat of enemy mages.
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Apr 8, 2022 14:44
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Smiling Knight posted:I also found Hughette to be decently durable already. On the Hard endgame chapter that is All Cavalry, she managed to survive I think three enemy attacks when I misplaced her. Flanagan has hilariously low magic defense and I kinda like it that way. Best defense and tons of hp, auto-regen, abilities that reduces damage from the front and make him immune to being pushed, but dies in pretty much 1.5 hits to any magic.
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Apr 8, 2022 15:47
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Really enjoying my choice to jump into this blind on the hard mode. Lose most battles the first time, though the experience saving even through defeat usually means I can beat it on the second or third try.
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Apr 9, 2022 13:11
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The Black Stones posted:Hard disagree. They made the right choice here. Yeah it’s not great you can still get characters near the end that are great and can’t upgrade as well until later, but doing this on a first run would absolutely ruin balance as the game is setup to heavily encourage a new game + run and still having to somewhat manage resources plays into it. I do think that once one of your characters hits level cap they should immediately unlock the materials, and I also think that new game + runs should increase the amount of gold you get from story battles to help pay for material costs better. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. While I can appreciate that fans of the genre don't mind a game pushing you to do multiple playthroughs, I always try to look at the casual fan and maximize their experience. NG+ modes are a no-brainer inclusion to me in a lot of games, but I'd let the narrative choices drive the player into multiple playthoughs rather than gating materials and upgrades behind that system. It's another reason why respecs in games are good and essentially you can't 'respec' here and that's to it's detriment. If they made the upgrade path more flexible so you could only have a certain number of units at max level to preserve that balance, but allowed you to swap them in and out of that position that would be fine. It obviously wasn't a huge sticking point for me, but I just kind of assumed that by the end game I'd have access to those upgrade materials and was a bit salty that I didn't as the game had been giving me the previous ones. The World Inferno posted:Really enjoying my choice to jump into this blind on the hard mode. Lose most battles the first time, though the experience saving even through defeat usually means I can beat it on the second or third try. This was a great feature. I didn't lose too many battles, but the ones I did I was glad this was a feature because the ones I lost were ones where I was trying to grind up a weaker team.
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Apr 9, 2022 15:01
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They honestly need to apply the whole experience system to all JRPGs -- experience on hit, keep it on death, scale real fast if you're behind. Then you could grind or avoid combat as much as you wanted and bosses would still take no more than a couple of tries -- maybe one to learn the gimmick, at most one more to git gud, and there's no way you're losing the third one which is good 'cause you've already seen what it has to offer by then.
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Apr 9, 2022 16:19
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Natural 20 posted:On NG+ the merchant restocks at the same rate he does in the normal game. So midway through you should have enough to upgrade everyone to tier 3 weapons. Additional superior crafting materials show up later on in the run. Typically you'll be able to upgrade everyone with at least one rank of their level 3 abilities through NG+ and deep enough in get some to 2 ranks of level 3. (There are also tavern missions that let you access them) Also in NG+ each of the wandering merchants in Exploration segments will have Superior materials stocked, which are separate from Lionel's stock, so it's easy to have plenty if you have the coin!
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Apr 9, 2022 17:00
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I got the Liberty ending and I have lots of thoughts/questions… It seemed really obvious that the hierophant wasn’t an actual person. I guess the thing I am struggling understanding is if the aelfric magic animating the automaton is regular magic or some kind of supernatural/divine kind. The game doesn’t really delve into the supernatural, at least I thought it didn’t. Now I don’t know what’s real any more! Also lol at Norzelia basically becoming America at the end. Complete with racial disparity being masked as “impartial justice.” Funniest criticism of libertarians since Bioshock!
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Apr 9, 2022 20:36
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Figured I'd make another character video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61yDdMc-eLk Attempted to make it a lot shorter this time, I'm not really sure which style works better.
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Apr 9, 2022 20:51
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Beating the army on hard mode w/o burning down any buildings felt like an accomplishment. Good game. Avoiding most spoilers on it, but I've caught a few folks saying they wish they knew some materials were limited. Are there any materials (medals? silver?) I should be cautious about immediately dumping into my A-team? The bird archer is entirely broken. Love her for it.
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Apr 9, 2022 23:07
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The World Inferno posted:Beating the army on hard mode w/o burning down any buildings felt like an accomplishment. Good game. There isn't enough medals of valor to promote everyone to Elite, even after two playthroughs.
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Apr 9, 2022 23:20
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Fangz posted:There isn't enough medals of valor to promote everyone to Elite, even after two playthroughs. I only had like one dude left at the beginning of my third playthrough. But yeah, prioritize your favorites when using medals of valor. You can get enough materials for weapon upgrades and can basically grind infinite money, too.
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Apr 9, 2022 23:50
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Odd, I managed to have everyone promoted well before the end of my NG+ run!
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Apr 9, 2022 23:55
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Blackbelt Bobman posted:I got the Liberty ending and I have lots of thoughts/questions… Well Aesfrost always reeks of being bloodthirsty Swedes which is a rarity in fiction to see the Swedes as the bad guys. I mean, they invent dynamite, a giant cannon and their leader is named after the guy who was the granddaddy of musket warfare It's a surprise Hyzante don't believe in zealous martyrdom though given their hat is being a theocratic state and for all the talk of the Teachings of the Goddess, none of the ministry ever consider dying for the cause. They will fight hard for it but not with the intention of dying
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Apr 10, 2022 02:58
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Aesfrost read as Germany to me?
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Apr 10, 2022 03:01
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Natural 20 posted:Odd, I managed to have everyone promoted well before the end of my NG+ run! Did you miss somebody? I had one or two by the end of my New Game + run that weren’t upgraded yet but they were people I pretty never used.
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Apr 10, 2022 03:16
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Junpei posted:Aesfrost read as Germany to me? They felt more like Sweden since Gustadolph sounded like a combination of Gustav Adolph, who planned to revolutionalize war in Norzelia with the Deathsknell as well as the explosives as well as the whole 30 years war thing. Plus the Archive takes a nod to how Sweden would become of the biggest patrons of scientific innovation. Ironically Wolffort would be Germany since their whole culture was being seen as the House known for fighting wars.
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Apr 10, 2022 04:19
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Aesfrost is just the Cato Institute Just a libertarian "meritocracy" trash hell country
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Apr 10, 2022 04:21
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gyrobot posted:Well Aesfrost always reeks of being bloodthirsty Swedes which is a rarity in fiction to see the Swedes as the bad guys. I mean, they invent dynamite, a giant cannon and their leader is named after the guy who was the granddaddy of musket warfare I think the game's writers were especially careful not to make Hyzante a clear analog to any one particular culture. The Arabic vibes and American slavery vibes are really clear, but I also get a bit of nazi or North Korean juche ideology from them too. The elites know how the koolaid was made so they have a lot of cognitive dissonance. Probably the most awful thing is the reveal that Aelfric is made using Roselle remains, and that their original plan was to find a way to use Roselle dead bodies to power necromantic slaves. That's straight out of the Haitian voodoo zombie narratives. I get the idea that the Saintly Seven all have some kind of huge cognitive dissonance over the horror of their situation, and none of them really wanted to be in charge of a holocaust but they have no freedom to rebel against it. I kind of get the vibe that the aelfric experimentations and things are a nascent magical form of eugenics. Being part of the Saintly Seven doesn't just mean serving the Goddess, it means working to legitimize her. If they can use science/magic to dehumanize the Roselle utterly, then they can get closer to a world in which the Goddess gave Hyzante a perfect and unproblematic power dynamic. Serenoa's lines at the end of the Liberty route were good. the game tried so hard to avoid anime tropes right until the very end, when the swordsman protagonist clashes with an evil pope while they're both engulfed in glowing auras. Love that Serenoa's last words are basically "you can't defeat us, we're a JRPG found family." 
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Apr 10, 2022 05:48
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oh also, Really good game! I think it was probably my favorite tactical RPG experience since FFT. The writing was consistently intelligent and the characters acted rationally but still had human emotions. The writing felt very mature for a political fantasy war story--the strategies and turns that happen in the plot generally felt uncontrived. There are a couple times when the game takes control of things away from the player to say "this gambit is going to happen and it will succeed" like when Benedict fakes Roland's death, but for the most part they feel pretty plausible. It never feels like the writer has lost the reins on the story, which I think is a significant accomplishment for a political fantasy. folks were totally right about the english VA getting significantly better at the end of the game. The performances are quite good for the last few chapters. I ultimately ended up switching to Normal difficulty for the last few fights. Nothing was overwhelmingly difficult, but I started feeling like enemies were just a little overtuned in terms of damage, especially the elite swordsmen's counterattacks. I didn't really enjoy grinding in this game. I think my few critiques for the game are: 1. I don't think anyone even acknowledges Quietus powers as a thing in the story; they seem to exist solely as a meta-game mechanic. The mechanics themselves are all fine (although I found that on Hard mode, the movement abilities were central to my strategies). But I would rather have had them integrated into the story even on a rudimentary level. 2. Imaginary Battles are lame. I don't like that they don't scale with level, because some of the higher level ones aren't especially fun, or are just too long and repetitive. Nothing about them makes sense in a ~ludonarrative~ sense. Why does Hossabara say she has new work for you? Why does Serenoa sitting at a bar thinking really hard about imaginary battles make his allies more powerful and give him money and plundered loot? These absolutely could have just been reflavored as world encounters or, better yet, as side-scenarios. 3. Character stories are clumsy. I like the stories themselves, but it sucks suddenly getting 10+ side story cutscenes in a row in a game that already has a lot of cutscenes. It's hard to space them out as you're playing, too, because watching them gives you Conviction points, which means you'd be doing yourself a disservice by not watching them. I think they could have combined these with imaginary battles and made it so that you could get Fire Emblem style character-specific paralogue battles. Then you'd still have the character growth, you'd still get the repeatable battles, but you'd pair them together so you'd get some gameplay in between your ten cutscenes. 4. Not a fan of the character unlocking. I really would have liked to see kung fu grandma, smug jewel girl, and timelord boy. I don't think it's fun to have no real control over who joins my party in a game that took me about 50 hours to beat. 5. Menu interface could have been more interconnected. Not a fan of having to memorize how many upgrade mats I need and juggling two NPC shop menus to get a +1 DEF score. Also never found a convenient way to switch between toggleable upgrades in the combat-prep phase. Seemed like you have to go into the encampment to do that. But those are all pretty minor things considering how lovely I thought the game was. I hope the dev team gets to work on similar projects, because with just a single foray they made what I think is one of the best entries in the genre.
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Apr 10, 2022 06:24
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The Black Stones posted:Did you miss somebody? I had one or two by the end of my New Game + run that weren’t upgraded yet but they were people I pretty never used.
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Apr 10, 2022 11:22
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cardinale posted:Chiming in that I got all my dudes to elite before the end of ng+ without missing anyone available. I did golden ending first, so maybe there are more battles where you get medals of valour on that route? The Golden Route has more chapters than the other routes, so potentially there are more medals. Regardless, it’s impossible to get every character in fewer than four playthroughs. I know you said every character available to you, but you will get at least one new character every run if you pick different options.
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Apr 10, 2022 19:46
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What do you retain between New Game +'s? Sounds like you might keep the party members throughout, tho curious how that works out.
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Apr 10, 2022 21:39
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The World Inferno posted:What do you retain between New Game +'s? Sounds like you might keep the party members throughout, tho curious how that works out. You keep most things. Party members, exp, conviction, items, cash. You aren't allowed to use certain party members on certain missions though. No mirror matches.
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Apr 10, 2022 22:09
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All of the notes and items you've collected during exploration phases do not reappear, which I guess technically is something that "carries over." If you take different paths, though....
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Apr 10, 2022 22:19
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The World Inferno posted:What do you retain between New Game +'s? Sounds like you might keep the party members throughout, tho curious how that works out. Pretty much everything. The first battle is a fixed party, but after that you can go hog wild. You can field Julio and Flanagan for the tournament even though they're on the other teams, they don't mind.
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Apr 11, 2022 00:13
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Huh, that kicks rear end. I do miss fighting monsters. Surprised with all the elemental magic added in they didn't add a few non-human enemies to tactically work around.
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Apr 11, 2022 01:03
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We don't get enough games in this genre anymore. Game is great my second favorite SRPG behind knight of Lodis.
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Apr 11, 2022 01:22
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Tickled that the hardest missions remain "ally npc who needs to survive keeps kamakazing self, can you stop them"
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Apr 11, 2022 02:25
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I have the strongest convictions. https://twitter.com/kotexfitts/status/1513673486027280384?s=21&t=nX8ya1nDRQDn_nymFbDyUQ
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Apr 12, 2022 01:21
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Anybody else's actual cat respond to the Triangle Strategy cat like mine does?
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Apr 12, 2022 01:41
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Convincing everyone to give up the Roselle is the most hosed up thing in the whole game. I’m literally sick to my stomach while I convince Frederica that it’s the only way. Ridiculous that I have to go through this just to recruit Travis but I guess it’s thematically appropriate since I’m planning to side with Hyzante for the finale  Edit: hahaha they make you fight two battles if you choose to give up the Roselle to punish you for being a huge dick. Nice! Blackbelt Bobman fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Apr 12, 2022 |
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Apr 12, 2022 02:31
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Chapter 13, hard mode, choosing to blow up the bridge is the first battle I had to cheese to beat. Made a mad dash towards the towers with the swordsman, an archer, and a healer, and then slowly picked off the enemy crew. No clue how you could brute force survive it otherwise given the 140+ damage area spells the enemies have. Archer is now a good 3 levels ahead of everyone else, and I'm ok with that.
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Apr 12, 2022 04:43
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It is in my opinion the single hardest fight in the game and it rules. I got owned by it so many times. What I eventually figured out was the inverse, Thalas' side has all the mages while Erika's group is her and the healers. I just burned all my quietuses to bum rush Thalas and killed him and the mages and scrambled to set up a defensive line on the south side, with just few enough casualties that I was able to survive the rest of the map. Jens is an absolute godsend on that map because a spring trap can send an enemy over the edge and deal a good chunk of damage and take them out of the running for a turn or two. I ended up getting to ignore Erika entirely because she was gracious enough to step on one and then I'd just keep dropping them on the ladder and she'd keep getting knocked back off before she could do anything.
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Apr 12, 2022 11:01
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Blackbelt Bobman posted:Convincing everyone to give up the Roselle is the most hosed up thing in the whole game. I’m literally sick to my stomach while I convince Frederica that it’s the only way. Ridiculous that I have to go through this just to recruit Travis but I guess it’s thematically appropriate since I’m planning to side with Hyzante for the finale Okay but if you do then you get a cool bonus in the Morality ending. You're just sending your spies in ahead of time! Also I beat the tavern mission where you kill 100 enemies without a single loss on hard, so I feel pretty okay saying I've mastered this game.
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Apr 12, 2022 11:14
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Blackbelt Bobman posted:I have the strongest convictions.
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Apr 12, 2022 14:10
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Finally escaping Elden Ring's gravitational pull so I just bought this. Been looking forward to it, especially after hearing positive impressions. Anything to know before going in? I get the feeling this is probably best experienced fairly blind story-wise for a first playthrough but I'm curious to know if there are any spoiler-light tips or pitfalls to avoid or anything like that.
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Apr 12, 2022 19:35
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The "perfect ending" requires you to make a very specific sequence of decisions and win some fights in specific and difficult ways. Try not to look up how to do it until you've finished your first run. Just go with your gut and live with your decisions the first time through.
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Apr 12, 2022 19:38
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