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Like Clockwork posted:not an insult, nobody in ffxiv has an rear end Untrue. There is one way 2B possessed of a bountiful buttocks.
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Nov 22, 2023 01:04
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A minor announcement: As of this chapter's replies, this LP has achieved the distinction of being among the Top 30 Most Replied Threads in the LP forum's 122 page catalogue. Which is to say, if you sort for the forum by replies, we're now at the bottom of Page 1. I consider this quite an achievement! Thanks for all your comments, they give me life by making me feel like my work is worthwhile AND help make the analysis better as time goes on. If you add together this thread and Heavensward, we're actually over 13,300 replies, which is right around the total achieved by TheDarkId's legendary Drakengard 3 and Nier LPs, which is absolutely stunning to me. Of course, those LPs have more than 2 million views each and my two threads combined are sitting at a paltry 800k-ish, but hey I've got another two expansions to go after this and we're far from done. My point is that all your love and attention for this project has put it in some very rarified air, and I can't thank you all enough. 
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Nov 22, 2023 01:07
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Less talk about how good the LP is, more talk about Blackmage pants with plunging crotchlines and chest "armor" that's just a butt cape with a sweet back tattoo. Just kidding, this thread is fantastic and is a well-earned product of hard work. Keep at it, and I'm looking forward to watching it march in ShadowBringers especially. IthilionTheBrave fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Nov 22, 2023 |
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Nov 22, 2023 01:11
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YggiDee posted:I've never played the Ivalice games however I support a Vagrant Story raid series because the glams might be insane. I want Sydney's drip. Only allowable if the WoL gets the "Reinforcements? I am the reinforcements." line.
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Nov 22, 2023 01:16
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That's the only other thing I know about Vagrant Story
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Nov 22, 2023 01:37
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ProfessorCirno posted:Yeah gently caress those dumb flying mole rats. Ramza was entirely in the right for the first time in his life, there. And then, Ramza got an idea. A wonderful, awful idea. 
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Nov 22, 2023 01:58
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Sanguinia posted:As I said, simple in theory. It has three giant problems. First, it's easy to forget that 1 falls outside the definition of prime on a technicality. So, that's annoying. Second, putting a time crunch on doing a math problem, even simple ones, can be super stressful. I'm sympathetic to any test anxiety types who ran into this boss when he first launched. But my main problem was that HP being part of the equation is far from obvious or intuitive. On my first attempt, the boss called out multiple of five. I got confused because there was no five space, failed, and soon exploded, never knowing what I did wrong. This would have been an ideal candidate for a system message, like we've seen on a few other Stormblood bosses, that tells you HP is the thing to keep your eye on. Making that one aspect so opaque dampened my enthusiasm for an otherwise very novel mechanic. If one is a prime then Ascian Prime would be the default Ascian state, rather than two Ascians merged together 
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Nov 22, 2023 02:07
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i liked fft, even though both times i beat it, i understood like 5% of the story in the endgame i couldn't stand the story in this raid series, between (as has been said) the wol/player just getting to sit there for eight days' worth of cutscenes of people talking past each other, a tower of opaque language, and just how big an rear end in a top hat ramza is/how out to lunch his father is and it made me realize, when, sometime later, someone told me the fft guy actually wrote this, that i just hate the way this guy writes reading over sang breaking things down, did i really miss anything important when i played it myself? no. did i constantly feel like i was missing something important when i played it myself? absolutely. i never played 12 and i skipped out on ffta the moment i game-overed the first mission for denying the judge's demand. no swords? gently caress you. the actual fights are fine, but this whole plot feels crowbarred in and i dislike it. i can't imagine having to play it and waiting months between installments
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Nov 22, 2023 02:11
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It's also maybe worth noting that the people who played through this raid series at release got to do an extra sidequest (no longer in game) which is essentially the writer turning to stare directly at the fourth wall and saying "gently caress you, I will tell the wordiest most pointless story I want and you idiots will eat that poo poo up and thank me for it" It was legitimately hilarious, and I respect the hustle, but it didn't exactly detract from the raid series' reputation as "the only content in FFXIV where you should legitimately just skip the cutscenes"
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Nov 22, 2023 02:41
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Yeah, I played while that extra quest was still in the game, and it along with the overly expository writing and heap of characters made me really check out. It wasn't even Ramza being a little poo poo, though he obviously is, I think the plot just didn't succeed in making me care all that much to begin with. I remember being very bored and my eyes glazing over the dialogue. I am also someone who hasn't played 12 or Tactics, so, a lot of the references were lost on me. That said, the actual raids themselves? Probably the best in the game, and I smile real big whenever I get them. Just a shame the plot totally lost me, I much prefer Void Ark's swashbuckling story line.
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Nov 22, 2023 02:52
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I do wish they kept that sidequest in the game because it was extremely funny. Like part of it was mandatory and I get why they removed it from this particular storyline, but they should've moved it all into something even more optional than just axing it entirely. Anyway I asked my friends who actually really like this storyline if the thing that I kept dancing around with regard to Why Ramza Like That came up in the actual text of the story itself and like... it doesn't? You do, indeed, just have to look closely at his model or read it in Encyclopedia Eorzea II. Chalk it up to another of those things where it's baffling that it was not contained in the Sea of Words. I'll put it under spoilers in case Sang wants to figure it out or if we're all really wrong? Ramza and Alma are both half-Garlean; you can tell that he doesn't have a third eye if you look behind his bangs. Alma's bangs are, uh, harder to look through, but I'm sure if you did things to look at her model you could figure that out. This is confirmed as intentional in EEII rather than the devs just taking a shortcut to avoid putting it on his model. This is another thing that makes Ramza's shittiness actually interesting to me, because I'm sure he got poo poo for it from his full Garlean peers and rather than letting it radicalize him into being a revolutionary like his dad, it caused him to double down to try and act like He Is a Good and True Son of Garlemald, Please Accept Him As Such, He's Being Extra Racist. I'm sure it's a lot of self-loathing that he's taking out on everyone else, too. Again, the fact that this isn't pointed out in the text at all or that the Warrior of Light isn't really allowed to have any actual agency to call him out for his poo poo in this storyline does make it go down a lot less smooth than it could have.
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Nov 22, 2023 02:54
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jalapeno_dude posted:It's also maybe worth noting that the people who played through this raid series at release got to do an extra sidequest (no longer in game) which is essentially the writer turning to stare directly at the fourth wall and saying "gently caress you, I will tell the wordiest most pointless story I want and you idiots will eat that poo poo up and thank me for it" I am only aware of the sidequests to fetch the dramaturge fancy food, this sounds hilarious. It also reminds me that for a while I was legitimately considering that the thematic point of this loveletter to FFT and FF12 would end up being "Stop obsessing over these old Ivalice games and focus on living your current lives you loving simps."
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Nov 22, 2023 02:55
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Ran Rannerson posted:I do wish they kept that sidequest in the game because it was extremely funny. Like part of it was mandatory and I get why they removed it from this particular storyline, but they should've moved it all into something even more optional than just axing it entirely. Edit: Yep, checked it, it's available after the third raid now.
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Nov 22, 2023 03:03
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GilliamYaeger posted:I'm pretty sure they didn't axe it, it was moved to after you finish the raids instead of being smack-dab in the middle of them. Oh! THAT quest! For the record, you also have to finish 4.4 MSQ before it appears, or at least I did. We're about 3 chapters away from 4.4 btw Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Nov 22, 2023 |
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Nov 22, 2023 03:18
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Sanguinia posted:I am only aware of the sidequests to fetch the dramaturge fancy food, this sounds hilarious. This would’ve been better than what the raid actually is. Which is “let’s retell FFT and FFXII, but everything’s been moved out of alignment slightly”. Which in practice feels like the setting of Ivalice just got transplanted directly into Eorzea with minimal adaptation. Then, if you’re familiar with the Ivalice games you get grumbly about the changes, and if you aren’t you feel like there’s a huge piece you’re missing in order to understand when you really aren’t. The worst of both worlds. That said as everyone else in the thread has said, playing the raids themselves slaps. Which means I’m ultimately found of the raid series, because you play the story once and then roll the raids in roulette as your actual repeating content you interact with regularly.
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Nov 22, 2023 03:22
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jalapeno_dude posted:It's also maybe worth noting that the people who played through this raid series at release got to do an extra sidequest (no longer in game) which is essentially the writer turning to stare directly at the fourth wall and saying "gently caress you, I will tell the wordiest most pointless story I want and you idiots will eat that poo poo up and thank me for it" I was wondering if Sang pushed that back until later.
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Nov 22, 2023 03:53
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Sanguinia posted:I am only aware of the sidequests to fetch the dramaturge fancy food, this sounds hilarious. Funny enough, I spent weeks trying to mail such food over to Kheris. Sadly being on a different world made that impossible. I did enjoyed this raid, because it let me fight the bosses from 12 without having to deal with the gambit system. The bosses are fun.
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Nov 22, 2023 03:54
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Sanguinia posted:I am only aware of the sidequests to fetch the dramaturge fancy food, this sounds hilarious. This raid series obsesses too much about FFT and FF12 for me to listen to it if that was the intention.
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Nov 22, 2023 07:06
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The Red Chocobos in this quest are a fun part of FFXIV history, I was happy to be around for it when it was current. Watching everyone try to do it all at once was quite a blast!
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Nov 22, 2023 09:16
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Sang's note on just how good FFT's music was evoked a deep nostalgia within my heart. Final Fantasy Tactics was actually a complete surprise to me at the time, I'd picked it up on a whim at a Walmart, because they didn't have any copies of the game I was actually there to get (Breath of Fire 3, because I'd rented it before and wanted to go ahead and beat it with the save file I had). I had seen no ads for it in any of the magazines I followed and had not heard any chatter about it at school. Pretty much just picked it up because it had the Final Fantasy brand name. Within an hour of putting the disc into the playstation I was completely transfixed and remained that way for weeks. A lot of that was the story, even filtered as it was through a notoriously rushed translation, being incredibly raw for a piece of media being experienced by a middle schooler. But the other part was how incredibly complex, layered, and beautiful the music was, years before fully orchestrated compositions would become the norm. I used to leave the game on the save/load menu for hours at a time while doing homework.
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Nov 22, 2023 09:56
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I didn't get the same experience as everyone else RE: red chocobos, because at the time I was a MCH main and could just kite my birds as much as I wanted.
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Nov 22, 2023 10:10
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I got a brief flashback to poking around the Gallione region the second I hit play on that world map track, like a vision granted by some dastardly auracite. I haven't played FFT in 20 years. And yet.
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Nov 22, 2023 10:52
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My take on the alliance series is that 14 is best when it takes old references to previous games and makes them their own, while this is basically just Ivalice dropped right into 14 without any real effort to integrate it in.
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Nov 22, 2023 13:46
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Feldegast42 posted:My take on the alliance series is that 14 is best when it takes old references to previous games and makes them their own, while this is basically just Ivalice dropped right into 14 without any real effort to integrate it in. That is my impression as well.
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Nov 22, 2023 14:07
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Hellioning posted:This raid series obsesses too much about FFT and FF12 for me to listen to it if that was the intention. I think this is a silly take given how much greater ff14 shot is worked in and how the game expands on its remixes of those concepts from 12 and Tactics. It's like saying the HW raids were obsessed with Mhach because it leaned on that more than the sky pirate stuff.
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Nov 22, 2023 15:00
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Eh, I have to agree with Hellioning. The Crystal Tower raids are another big old "hey remember FF3?" for the marks (me, I'm the mark) but they do it in a much better way for folding the source of the references into the broader world. It was definitely trying to work itself in as an organic part of the broader setting but I don't think they really worked it out in the final product. Some of this is the nature of the crossover, they couldn't really add threads elsewhere earlier that you can draw on to go "oh I know that from BLM/a dungeon!" (to use the Mhach raids as an example) or whatever, so you're already working uphill, but some of it is just... the attempts are stymied by things like characters who serve no purpose but to say "hey remember Ivalice?", which is totally fine if they're just a boss (it's not like Scylla or Amon really matter to the Crystal Tower plot, nor does the Xande-in-a-box gag—they're 100% just "remember that cool poo poo from FF3?", especially Amon since his design is iconic) but makes things fall flat when they're taking up cutscene space.
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Nov 22, 2023 15:49
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Ultimately, the writing team can decide to "yes and" these cross-overs and bring them to a point where they do feel well-integrated with the larger setting. But I don't think it's unfair to point out that more legwork is required in this case.
SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Nov 22, 2023 |
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Nov 22, 2023 16:07
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This particular raid was... interesting to run the first few times. People didn't know mechanics, they died by the droves, but the bosses were really bad at actually WIPING the raid, so progress kept going, at a snails pace. The first boss and Math Robot definitively took the cake on how many times we died. Still, while we died a ton, we never really wiped. And, yes, God, I forgot how bad Ramza was at this stage.
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Nov 22, 2023 16:11
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It's still kinda funny how Belias' time tethers are super easy to resolve, but once in a while you get a new person who panics and tags a bunch of people with one.
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Nov 22, 2023 19:00
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It's even funnier when all six healers panic and get hit by his line attacks and die
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Nov 22, 2023 19:06
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jalapeno_dude posted:but it didn't exactly detract from the raid series' reputation as "the only content in FFXIV where you should legitimately just skip the cutscenes" Heavensward Paladin? I've got a friend who's levelling PLD as a precursor to eventually doing DRK (PLD as the "this is how you play tank" and then DRK because I've gone on about how utterly amazing DRK's story is), and she's gone on to me about how HW PLD was so bad that she was actively skipping the scenes... and my response to that was "And you know what? I don't blame you!"
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Nov 22, 2023 23:46
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I read every line of HW PLD dialogue and I still had to watch a lore video to explain what Solkzagyl was actually trying to do
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Nov 22, 2023 23:54
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HW PLD is like Fight Club in that you don't talk about HW PLD.
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Nov 23, 2023 00:00
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I think in many respects this stuff isn't just retreading the story of FFXII and FFT, though I understand the complaint and am sympathetic to it. They're very close to the originals, but subtly tweaked in ways that make them thematically more simpatico with FFXIV. Will hold thoughts on FFT for a second, but we've already got one big example: substituting Basch with Ba'Gamnan, making the FFXII rabanastre more racially integrated and implicating many of the questions about who we choose to laud as heroes that both the raid series and FFT itself raise. e: also hw pld isn't that bad (it's pretty bad), the writers just should've been clearer that the whole point is you're the one true knight and the sultansworn are clowns. they're so broken down that they're just fuckin recruiting off the street and they don't even really care who's a good guy. solkzagyl is so obsessed with making a sword glow he was absent when an actual conspiracy threatened the sultana's life, and jenlyns is so hopelessly trapped in his mentor's shadow that he's no better, and both the job stones and the sword make it repeatedly clear that only you (and maybe constaint) are a real knight in this group of failures. HW is already a story in which one noble knight lays down his life for your cause, and another renounces his own father and the church that raised him in the name of what is right, and another loses himself to bloodlust and grief but is saved by his comrades-in-arms. the sultansworn are just some up-jumped bodyguards from a city that has forgotten what honor is. you leave them behind in 60-70 because you do not need (have never needed) them. Valentin fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Nov 23, 2023 |
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Nov 23, 2023 00:02
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SMaster777 posted:Heavensward Paladin? I've got a friend who's levelling PLD as a precursor to eventually doing DRK (PLD as the "this is how you play tank" and then DRK because I've gone on about how utterly amazing DRK's story is), and she's gone on to me about how HW PLD was so bad that she was actively skipping the scenes... and my response to that was "And you know what? I don't blame you!" It still makes me so sad that PLD's my favorite job to play, but it's story is just ... nothing. The "best" parts of it are just GLD stuff, and it's so disappointing.
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Nov 23, 2023 00:08
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As the saying goes, you save more people in the Dark Knight storyline then in the Paladin one. Ultimately the HW Paladin questline isn't the worst (that goes to Lancer / Archer / StB Samurai / one more we haven't done yet). It's sin is being convoluted yet also boring, instead of being actual downright offensive. But it's such a missed easy hit.
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Nov 23, 2023 00:10
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Onean posted:It still makes me so sad that PLD's my favorite job to play, but it's story is just ... nothing. The "best" parts of it are just GLD stuff, and it's so disappointing. I still hold that I like the ARR PLD story on paper, the problem with it is that the best parts of the grand political conspiracy happen off-screen while you're lighting torches or whatever the gently caress it was.
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Nov 23, 2023 00:41
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ProfessorCirno posted:As the saying goes, you save more people in the Dark Knight storyline then in the Paladin one. I guess the laughably corrupt Keystone Cops of Kugane hit some people worse than others, but Makoto was nice enough as a touchstone NPC
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Nov 23, 2023 01:03
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Sanguinia posted:I still hold that I like the ARR PLD story on paper, the problem with it is that the best parts of the grand political conspiracy happen off-screen while you're lighting torches or whatever the gently caress it was. This. ARR is bad because there's a cool story that could be told, but instead they lock you out of it and make you do a bunch of busy work that has no actual relevance to what's going on in the background. HW is bad because the guy who should be acting as a mentor figure to both you and the HW kid fakes his own death and gaslights you instead because he wants to make a sword glow.
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Nov 23, 2023 01:09
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dyslexicfaser posted:... StB Samurai is one of the worst quest lines? Worse than HW Paladin? The "revolution is bad and we should let the corrupt people running the country remain in charge with no consequences" storyline sticks out like a sore thumb dead in the middle of the "revolution on two sides of the planet" expansion.
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Nov 23, 2023 01:14
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