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 It’s time for From Software’s early, uh...masterpiece? series that eventually led to that classic franchise we all know and love! That’s right, I’m of course talking about EverGrace. Join me and Professor Duck on our journey into madness as we tackle as much of this series as we can tolerate/manage to emulate. With three titles for the PS1 (FromSoft’s first three games, no less! please ignore my poorly researched banter in the first episode) ,a PS2 sequel, and a couple of related non-series games like Shadow Tower and Eternal Ring, there’s a ton of history to take in here. We begin the adventure with the original Japan-only King’s Field, with a fan translation by John Osborne, who also translated a bunch of other obscure JRPGs. (Apparently? I guess. Never heard of him until I was looking up poo poo for this OP.  )Awkward controls, repetitive music, bizarre geometry? Oh hell yes, it's all here, and I love it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o36msjYnG8 Fun fact: The save glitch in this patch only affects some emulators, but should work on real hardware! Maybe. I don’t think it worked on mine, so plod on at your own risk if you feel like digging up a copy. Fun fact 2: If you’re into retro PC gaming stuff, this game is also available in a Windows 98 flavor, re-made as part of the Sword of Moonlight game making software, also by From. It’s a real pain in the rear end to run though, so good luck!
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Mar 17, 2020 23:51
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 06:14 |
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Crazy Achmed posted:Looks like they took the system limitations and ran with it to create the bleakness - low draw distance makes for dark, foggy environments, few actors on screen at one time also works if you want things to seem lonely and foreboding. [edit]maybe not so similar to ultima underworld, the beginning felt like it but it's quickly turned much more actiony and the level design seems way less vertical. I wonder if that's also an engine limitation or just wasted opportunity that the level design is so flat? So far in playing it (and this is consistent with my memories of the original US game), it reminds me of a LOT of early 8 and 16 bit JRPGs. Stuff like Ys, or even the original Dragon Quest, where the damage math means the start of the game is excruciatingly punishing, and then your attack output starts to increase exponentially from there. There’s a pattern to it where you have to re-tread your steps as part of exploring, but as you do so, you get to see your boosted stats and skills really have a tangible effect. It’s a pattern they’ve been improving on for decades, and it’s neat to see that really starting for them at day one. If in a significantly clunkier form anyway.
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Mar 18, 2020 21:10
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Sure! I should be able to wing that. We just switched back to me playing for King’s Field, so I may have some kinks to work out. (Like my own voice sounding like I’m in a goddamn cave for some reason I haven’t quite figured out yet.)
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Mar 18, 2020 21:44
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Carpator Diei posted:By this point I really have almost no idea what the protagonist even wants to accomplish in that old tomb (I'm guessing it probably has something to do with that Dragon of the Forest, for lack of other options). Does the manual offer more info, or was FromSoft already experimenting with what would become Dark Souls' approach to storytelling? According to this very blurry scan translation, the base plot is that we’re trying to find our father, captain of the guard, who was investigating an invading army and found a whole bunch of monsters. It’s definitely very minimalist like the Souls games, but it’s tough to say how intentional it is for a game this old.
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Mar 19, 2020 02:24
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jagE37iIw8 The journey continues! My hatred for houseplants and arachnids knows no bounds. Also, it just struck me while editing this together just how much that one key looks like the Xbox logo. Did From know something we didn't!? Probably not. Also: Zanzibar Ham, or anyone else who cares, let me know how I did on the audio mixing this time through. 
Dewgy fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Mar 19, 2020 |
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Mar 19, 2020 16:10
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Big Scary Owl posted:very KF inspired   Wow, you uhhhh weren't kidding. 
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Mar 19, 2020 22:36
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Big Scary Owl posted:I found this video showing gameplay of a closed alpha last month: No worries, don’t take my amazement as disapproval. If there’s some kind of upcoming “king’s field”-like revival brewing somehow, I am 100% for it!
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Mar 20, 2020 01:40
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So it turns out we discovered that mirror bit on our own! And thanks to the magic of extremely long rendering times, we can now show you that after this discussion has already taken place. I was just expecting it to tell the bard how much he sucks, but hey, it worked out for us. Also, lessons learned far too late on how inexpensive healing items are, like drat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmLpK8DV8pc And I kind of hope we get another mirror because screw you grumpy wizard guy, you didn't even ask! You just took! 
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Mar 23, 2020 20:01
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Big Scary Owl posted:Everytime I see any of the KF games I wonder what it would be like if they attempted a new one, but perhaps the only way it would be relevant would be to make a new one a VR game. King's Field and Echo Night would be a nice fit for VR imo, although I'm not sure how combat would be like in a KF VR game. Although the slowness of the movement and combat could still be maintained and kept as a nostalgic design choice and also as a way to avoid motion sickness I’m a big From fan, and I really liked Deracine, and what I’m trying to say here is stick it into my veeeeeeeins!!! There’s a janky VR dungeon crawler called Crystal Rift that almost gets the feeling right, but it’s more of a grid based RPG than a King’s Field clone. Scalding Coffee posted:It would be a harp that summons bridges over pits. Of course. Why what could possibly be more logical?
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Mar 24, 2020 03:39
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We're back with more! The power curve kind of... breaks in this one. That's not a complaint, but it really backs up what I mentioned before about this having old school JRPG math. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKIXb5ZSwEQ And for anyone who watched our FF4:FE videos, this episode features the return of FURIOUS TAPPING!!! Dewgy fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Mar 26, 2020 |
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Mar 26, 2020 20:54
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Professor Duck posted:Man, what is all that garbage? There is nothing about this that seems straightforward except smacking things in the face The straightforward plan seems to be working at least!
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Mar 27, 2020 19:33
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Funny enough, this time around the speed is a lot less of a problem! Well... maybe less of a problem isn't the right way to put it. It becomes a whole different can of worms to deal with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awY5TI7F28Y And that, amazingly, is King's Field completed! Definitely missed some secrets along the way, I'm sure, but it's kind of awesome seeing that the whole "unexplained sidequests, hidden walls, treasure that completely breaks the game" mold that Dark Souls used is at least 25 years old. Soon, we begin King's Field 2, but the US version, so it'll also be called King's Field. Not at all confusing! I'm hype for it myself, in no small part because it's one of my favorite PSX games I haven't finished yet. I even got a long box copy of it and everything. 
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Mar 30, 2020 02:57
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Scalding Coffee posted:Can you defeat those faces on the wall? That boss was intense. As far as I can tell, the wall faces are indestructible. I've seen a fight against this boss before and it went basically the exact same way, so I think slamming your face into it and healing a lot is the normal way to go about it. Carpator Diei posted:Well, that was certainly interesting to see. But I kind of get the feeling that you missed not only some secrets, but also a part of the story somehow... Why are you fighting a tree at the end who is apparently also the king's child? Why does the tree try to open some sort of dark portal? What about that Black Knight the soldier mentioned, or is the tree the Black Knight? And I think according to the rude man who took your first Truth Mirror, a dark magician was also supposed to be involved at some point. Good questions that I have no answers for! I think that the wizard who turned into a skeleton may have been the dark magician though.
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Mar 30, 2020 15:17
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Professor Duck posted:They're the same ones we encountered earlier, that came with handy wall graffiti that told us they were indestructible. I wasn't 100% sure on that at the time! I feel like the ones at the end looked a little different, but it was probably just because I had a side view instead of them being at the ends of hallways.
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Mar 30, 2020 17:19
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malkav11 posted:I'm pretty sure the idea was to use the Moonlight Sword's sword magic on it, they just didn't figure out how to do that during the course of the LP. Yeah I ended up noticing that eventually. I think we did figure out how to use the magic but never ended up beefing the stats high enough so that it actually...well, worked.
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Apr 2, 2020 05:21
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And we continue! Finally. With the sequel, first US release, and extremely painful experience of King's Field 2! Or, uh, King's Field. At least the math is easier than Final Fantasy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij1zOvaY-j8 Personal note, I love this friggin' game. I still have a big box copy, and lovingly kept every single typo intact from the included manual.
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Apr 4, 2020 00:30
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Sum Gai posted:Like KF2's intro. KF1 is Doom by comparison. I feel like all these games are doom, technically speaking. Speaking of doom, here's more doom! Death, dismemberment, and so on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsiszdpeKxI I feel like I'm getting the hang of this, by which I mean saving frequently.
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Apr 7, 2020 02:08
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Sum Gai posted:Possibly relevant: there's no jump in this game, but if you go off a ledge at a run you travel farther, in what might be described as a jump-like action. Quite relevant, in fact! Our latest episode title covers this very subject.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNjP8NQs2ig Fun fact: I totally did not need to jump off that bridge, but I'd gladly do it again. DONK!
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Apr 9, 2020 16:53
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Slight delay on the latest upload, turns out that the ghost of George Michael doesn’t appreciate my terrible sense of humor and we got a copyright notice, meaning 45% of YouTube is blocked from seeing it. Dispute filed for parody but I’m also getting a copyright friendly version rendered and uploaded shortly.
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Apr 13, 2020 19:00
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Oh hey, they changed their mind, awesome! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck8Q--Dy-Ww Get it while it’s still valid, folks.
Dewgy fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Apr 13, 2020 |
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Apr 13, 2020 20:16
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lets hang out posted:you can push to the left or the right to batch buy/sell. took me forever to figure out I feel like I tried that, but on the other hand that might just be learned helplessness from the last game.
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Apr 14, 2020 01:13
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Dugite posted:Catching ip on the LP and wow I didn't expect to see the big kraken and the termite queen killed in the same video. We definitely kept this in mind this time around. Still gotta find my way back to the termite lair eventually, but at least we met some pissed off fish and floating uh... well. You'll see. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwtU5kBs8rM
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Apr 19, 2020 17:51
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Carpator Diei posted:Considering that you can apparently get Verdites as random drops from some enemies, and that one of the vendors was selling them for like 17.000 a piece, you might just want to sell them and buy all the good equipment. Their magic-raising effect in the first game seemed pretty negligible, after all. They're easily the "armor destroying mud puddle" of this game so far. Just totally unnecessary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ata67SLoq8A Speaking of unnecessary, howsabout those fire guys, huh?
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Apr 22, 2020 00:46
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After a series of technical and personal delays (ever seen Discord take two hours to update? I have. twice.) we're back into it! And this time, there's minecarts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1E_RHhKvYY And random death along with that I guess?  If anyone knows what exactly I'm supposed to do about getting sniped off a minecart, I'm all ears.
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Apr 29, 2020 20:00
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lets hang out posted:no i think you've found all the minecarts actually. might give the map a look, it could show the lines. not sure how much mapping the pirates got done in the big mine though. I think it "minecart levels suck" should be as universal of a rule as "sewer levels suck". Like, the only decent minecart segment I can think of was from RE4, and that only worked because there were three of them stuck together.
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May 1, 2020 22:53
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And now we make up for old mistakes and find some crap that we should have found waaaaaaay earlier in the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idUed9Xdt70 Being able to die without restarting is a feat I wish we had a little sooner, if I'm being totally honest.
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May 3, 2020 02:25
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp34ilD_XTA As the title implies, I decided to take drastic action on the Rhombus Key problem, and I do not regret it. I also think it’s really neat how you can sell stuff that is obviously important. Curious if there’s any way of recovering from that or if it’s a run killer, but it’s a little late now to start experimenting.
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May 8, 2020 02:13
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After ten thousand years, I'm free from cat jail! OK maybe it was a week, but it's 2020, so it may as well have been 10,000 years. And in that same spirit of time having no meaning, I bring to you... the last one! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKaYweqIhGY Ending talk: I feel extremely cheated out of using the Moonlight Sword. Kind of wish I'd managed to get it for reals in the game proper, though I'm sure there's a way to do it. Good times otherwise though, and I'm glad I had that bow for once!
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May 20, 2020 00:22
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lets hang out posted:and you're right, there is a way to get the moonlight sword. it works as it should, with it's usual sword magic and everything. it's a little weaker than the dark slayer.  I don’t even know what they just did to pull that off.
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May 20, 2020 05:10
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FirstAidKite posted:These boots are made for walkin and that's just what they'll do. I might go back in on my own and get some bits and pieces for a highlight reel kind of thing, but at this point our current plan is to keep soldiering on through the series. We’re gonna get started on KF2 next, which I’ve never played until now and am kind of excited about. Depending on time and budget (I definitely need a new computer if we’re gonna start doing PS2 stuff lol) we might make a detour into Shadow Tower after this too.
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May 20, 2020 15:16
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Never did get the elf key or gold key, I spent all my money on rhombi.
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May 21, 2020 03:17
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Kanfy posted:For what it's worth it's probably not worth doing a full LP for even if you know Japanese, it's a fairly straightforward dungeon crawler and very much a spin-off that takes place in a different time and place than the rest of the series. Heck, I could only find one video playthrough of it anywhere even in Japanese and that one's 37 parts long. I don't think there's a single one for the sequel. I understand only very, very basic Japanese, so I think we're safe on that. I saw your screenshots in Games and it looked real neato, so post away! Speaking of post away, the journey begins for King's Field 2, and also continues! We usually have a bit of a buffer of when we record and upload, but I'm saying screw it to that so we can be a bit more responsive to the thread going forward. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB9f090RWvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5SDGBrVMRk I've also decided that I'm gonna grind up a bit on KF1 and, uh, KF1 to go back into them a bit on my own so we can get some more highlights. I forget sometimes that, as old JRPGs, there's always room for a bit of grind to help the journey along.  If anyone has any callouts for what to dig in to for that, I'm all ears.
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May 25, 2020 20:24
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Kanfy posted:Sure, it was mostly the fact that the final boss of Additional I is also, in fact, Gyura (or rather a dark elf transformed by Gyura's will so it wasn't actually his real body, or something like that, it was a bit unclear) and even with the fact that the PSP has the screen resolution the size of a match box, it probably still made for the most detailed rendition of the vague dragon-shaped blob you fought at the end of the PS1 game.  drat, that's some fine artwork.
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May 25, 2020 21:24
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FirstAidKite posted:I think you'll find that the most detailed rendition of Guyra is this So, fun fact: This is the only boss in Dark Souls that I’ve never killed. Not like, intentionally, but when I first played the Artorias of the Abyss DLC I was on NG+7 or something absurd like that, and Artorias and cheesing Manus with a bow from a distance were more than enough for me at that point. Haven’t gotten that far in Remastered enough to go for it either. Basically, I am...not sure how to handle this knowledge at this point.
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May 26, 2020 07:30
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NPR Voice: And now join us for a close look at Trump Fountains, the latest in a lavish line of  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73pjC3ckfiU I am so unbelievably pleased to have a working automap now you guys. omagaw
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Jun 1, 2020 22:21
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An episode so nice, we recorded it twice! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W86m2u7VgrM Alright, we did it twice because I'm an idiot, but whatever. Enjoy the unexpected side benefit of me knowing where the hell I'm going for once.
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Jun 9, 2020 17:24
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Scalding Coffee posted:Do you know how to raise wisdom? It’s a bit of a catch-22, innit?  But also I just bothered to read the manual, and yup. Says it right here, just gotta chomp some wisdom fruit, and it only goes up to 5.
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Jun 9, 2020 23:34
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Kangra posted:As F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "the foolish ask questions the wise cannot answer". Sum Gai posted:This game's a little weird compared to King's Field 1(2), in that its map is both bigger than the last one, but also less ambitious- areas are a lot flatter and less vertical, there's never an instance where you open a shortcut like with the fountain. It definitely makes the map way, way more useful, though. It really does seem a lot more straightforward. It's funny, I'm getting just as many EverGrace vibes from KF3/2 as I am Dark Souls ones. The really basic but recognizable environments carry a lot of weight for that I think. And we've got another two-fer, because editing these things together on my old computer is a living nightmare! It's slower than the combat in the original game, I swear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDAmaHSJgk0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMyO9m37ITA
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Jun 16, 2020 02:09
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Well hey, the forums seem to be exploding, but we have a new episode to post up! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlUyB68N7rk Enjoy for now, and while I'm not usually one for this kind of business, now is probably a good time to like and subscribe to the channel. Maybe we'll make a Discord or something in case this whole place goes rear end up. 
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Jun 25, 2020 00:08
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 06:14 |
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Well it looks like the day is saved thanks to Jeffrey of YOSPOS, huzzah! Until it all goes up in flames again anyway, but hey, whatever. We're still here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn_At8lTqlk Gotta love how this game expects me to take leaps of faith now and again, but severely punishes me other times for even thinking about it. 
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Jul 1, 2020 02:16
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