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Favorite Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters character? This poll is closed. |
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| Yugi Muto / Yami Yugi |
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6 | 5.94% |
| Seto Kaiba |
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36 | 35.64% |
| Joey Wheeler |
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14 | 13.86% |
| Mai Valentine |
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8 | 7.92% |
| Bakura Ryou / Yami Bakura |
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3 | 2.97% |
| Maximillian Pegasus |
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19 | 18.81% |
| Marik Ishtar / Yami Marik |
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4 | 3.96% |
| Someone else |
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11 | 10.89% |
| Total: | 101 votes | ||
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 Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links is a free-to-play mobile gacha game, and while it is far from the first free-to-play Yu-Gi-Oh game, it is the first one to actually incorporate the actual rules of the game. (At least most of them.) It is, in its soul, a very polished version of any of the 'real' Yu-Gi-Oh video games, with a steady feed of new content, weekly events, and online PVP! Just, you know, as a gacha game. I'll be doing a full, comprehensive playthrough of the single-player content, as well as some casual PVP, using as many different characters, decks, and strategies as I can keep remotely interesting. I will be playing the Steam version, as it is both the most convenient to LP, and the one that won't require me to delete my existing profile. (Yes, I already play this game regularly, so sue me.) There are so many Yu-Gi-Oh games. What makes Duel Links different?  Everything that sets Duel Links apart from other Yu-Gi-Oh games is in direct service of it being a gacha game that wants to wring a constant, steady dripfeed of money from you, and- Hey, wait, come back! It's not all bad! First, the presentation. Duel Links has an almost absurd level of polish compared to its contemporaries. How polished?     Pretty drat. While the content between the duels is primarily flat images, plain text, and excuse plots, within the duels, every character, from Yugi and Kaiba to Generic NPC Duelist #3, is fully voiced, usually by the same VA as the original anime. Admittedly, the vast majority of a character's lines are generic, but each character also has a small pool of their signature cards with unique voice lines and, in some cases, like the above Kaiba and his Blue-Eyes White Dragon, cutscenes. So the presentation has tons of style, which is more than can be said for.... certain modern console Yu-Gi-Oh games I could name. coughcoughLEGACYOFTHEDUELISTcough So it looks good. How does it play? Very nicely... with an asterisk. This is not quite the Yu-Gi-Oh you played twenty years ago, but it might just be the Yu-Gi-Oh you remember. Rather than using the full rules (now called 'Master Rules'), Duel Links uses a modified, slightly simplified ruleset called Speed Dueling, designed to make the game easier to pick up and learn, and quicker to play, while still feeling like Yu-Gi-Oh is supposed to feel. If you've watched Vrains, it may in fact feel suspiciously familiar. Snark aside, it actually does preserve the spirit of the game, in no small part thanks to a much smaller, and (at least initially) much more carefully contained card pool. On top of that, characters are more than just flavor. Each has a selection of unique Skills, which can do anything from starting each duel with certain cards already in play, to letting you actually 'heart of the cards' a motherfucker. Not only do they make each character feel mechanically unique, they also encourage you to build decks that suit those characters' skills. You can play a Blue-Eyes deck with anyone, but you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who does it better than Seto Kaiba. Do they ever add new F2P content? Regularly! Once or twice a week, Duel Links will open a new event, incorporating some kind of minigame into the mix, as well as unique card drops to encourage you to engage with this new content. These are not just open to all players, but actively promoted to them. I won't be digging into it for a while, as most of these events are balanced to keep the interest of high level players, but they're there, and I'm going to dive in once I can. How many hundreds of dollars are you going to spend on this game? Zeroes of hundreds. Duel Links is one of a rapidly-shrinking list of free-to-play games where nearly everything is accessible without spending a cent, and I want to demonstrate that. While it's true that I will never be able to keep up with the prowess of the legendary 'middle class' with their 'disposable income' who dominate the upper echelons of PVP, I can, and will, have a fulfilling experience, both in single-player, and in mid-level PVP. Why make this LP now? In short? Because this game has a shelf life. It will not wait forever as I burn through my backlog of LPs I 'need to get back to.' As of September 28th, 2021, Duel Links now includes the worlds, mechanics, and main characters of every anime series that can be added without a dramatic overhaul of the rules. It is already five years old, which is absolutely ancient in gacha terms, and while the game won't be disappearing any time soon, it's still getting new content extremely regularly and making money hand-over-fist, it will be disappearing eventually. If it takes me until 2030 to burn through my backlog, Shining Force will still be there waiting for me. This game will not. All things are finite, but some are more finite than others, and must be appreciated while they're still around. ...sorry, got a little philosophical there. Now, it's time to d-d-d-d- display the table of contents. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Table of Contents Main Updates Duel Monsters, Stages 1 through 30 DM-01: Tutorials Galorials DM-02: Joey's Bringin' Da Boom! DM-03: Oh, Right, This is a Gacha - Coming soon Mechanical Discussion ME-01: Starting Duels, Turn Structure, and Normal Monster Cards ME-02: Glossary of Common Jargon - Coming soon Character Evaluations Duel Monsters, Pt. 1 Deck Profiles None, yet. Fanart(?!)  Thanks to S.D., Kaiba has a new way of trashing third-rate duelists with fourth-rate decks. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Nov 12, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 07:40
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Character Evaluations - Duel Monsters, Pt. 1 Stage 1: Yami Yugi OR Seto Kaiba Stage 3: Joey Wheeler Stage ?: ???????? I'll be evaluating every character not just on their unique Skills, but also their Level-Up Rewards you get for playing them, and their Drop Rewards you can get for defeating them.  Yami Yugi When Yugi Muto solved the Millennium Puzzle, he was infused with the ancient spirit of Yami Yugi. Yami Yugi is ready to face any challenge in order to regain his lost memories. An expert Duelist wielding unmatched skills and cards, Yami Yugi's most trusted monster is "Dark Magician." Voiced by: Dan Green (English), Shunsuke Kazama (Japanese) Battle Theme: ♫ It's Time to Duel! ♫ The main flagship character of the entire series, Yami gets a lot of push, and it works. One of his late-game skills, Destiny Draw, which allows him to pick any card from his deck and add it to his hand instead of drawing when he's in a pinch, is more than just powerful, it's kept him consistently viable in PVP through five years of shifting meta and everpresent power creep. Unfortunately for us, that is a late-game skill, and Yami's early game is much more lackluster. His first skill, Power of Dark, provides a decent boost to Spellcasters and Fiends, which are very good types, but many characters have comparable skills for other types. (Including Kaiba!) His unique midgame skill, Sorcery Conduit, allows him some decent draw control, but isn't impactful enough to build a deck on, or to turn a game around. Each character also has other level-up rewards, like unique cards. Yami's lackluster there, too with the only notable, actually unique card not showing up until he reaches Level 35, which is, for perspective, most characters' maximum level. There are other interesting options, like Catapult Turtle for burn damage, and Gaia the Dragon Champion as a 2600 Attack fusion monster with some decent support, but unfortunately, 'interesting' does not mean 'good.' This leaves us with just his ace monster, who only kind of succeeds at picking up the slack. Dark Magician has extremely lackluster stats for a monster that requires two tributes (sacrifices), especially compared to his direct rival, Blue-Eyes White Dragon. This is, ostensibly, balanced out by Dark Magician having excellent unique support from Spell and Trap cards, and at least on that front, he does pull his weight. Thousand Knives and Dark Magic Attack, in particular, are very good cards for how easy they are to get. Unfortunately, they both require Dark Magician to already be on the field, which is not a trivial task. Until we get ways to bring him out more quickly and easily, Dark Magician can feel more like a prerequisite hoop to jump through before you can play your good cards, rather than something you actually want to play. TL;DR: Yami is a late bloomer, both in terms of the character himself, and building a deck with his signature monster. Definitely usable, but in the early and mid game, he has difficulty standing out against the multitude of other characters with more immediate payoff. So, what about the alternative?  Seto Kaiba Yugi's eternal rival and president of KaibaCorp - the world's leading gaming conglomerate. Extremely proud and confident, Kaiba will stop at nothing to become the greatest Duelist in history. Kaiba's signature monster is the legendary "Blue-Eyes White Dragon". Voiced By: Eric Stuart (English), Kenjiro Tsuda (Japanese) Battle Theme: ♫ Defeat Is Your Only Option ♫ While Kaiba may not quite match up to Yami in the universe of Yu-Gi-Oh, in Duel Links, he is head and shoulders above. First, in his skills. His early-game skill, Peak Performance, is directly equivalent to Power of Dark, boosting Dragon, Winged Beast, and Thunder monsters. However, while Yami's best skill is acquired in the late game, Kaiba's Beatdown is available before level 15. It's an extremely simple effect, a once-per-duel, temporary boost to the attack power of your high-star monsters, but that boost is just large enough that it can often give a monster the oomph it needs to win fights it has no business triumphing in. (You actually used to be able to use it every turn, which was absolutely loving bonkers and warped the meta around it. It's not that good any more, but it's still good.) As for his card rewards, Kaiba's got a lot going for him there, too. Lord of D. not only has the best name of any card, it also combos with one of Kaiba's drops, Flute of Summoning Dragon, to allow you to cheat out two high-star dragons in a single turn. Ryu-Kishin Powered and Battle Ox have lost their luster thanks to power creep, but once upon a time, they were premier four-star beatsticks, and they're still very nice in the early game when your selection of good cards is small. Champion's Vigilance and Enemy Controller are effective enough as control tools that, five years after their release, they are still on the Limited list, restricting you from playing too many of them in one deck. Poor Dark Magician has the stiffest possible competition as an ace monster; even after twenty years of card game and five years of Duel Links, Blue-Eyes White Dragon and its 3000 Attack is still the metric by which boss monsters are judged, and anything that can get over that 3000 mark can consider that a deliberate and explicit benefit of the card. (In fact, part of what makes Beatdown so powerful is that it allows monsters that normally couldn't get over that 3000 Attack hump to do so.) TL;DR: With some great early-game benefits, the raw power of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and a dogged resilience against being power crept, Kaiba is a fantastic starting character who refuses to lose his luster as the game goes on. (Funny story, Kaiba did eventually get power crept out of top-tier PVP... by his future self.)  Joey Wheeler The Duelist Joey Wheeler isn't afraid to face danger to help his friends, especially for his best bud Yugi. Always ready to take a chance, his cards often rely on luck. However, his go-to monster is the reliable "Red-Eyes Black Dragon." Voiced By: Wayne Grayson (English), Hiroki Takahashi (Japanese) Battle Theme: ♫ I'm Bringin' Da Boom! ♫ I'll say it up front. Compared to Yami or Kaiba, Joey doesn't have a lot that makes him immediately jump out. He looks, at first blush, like a pretty disappointing character. He doesn't get a Type-boosting skill like they do without the help of a (commonly repeated) weekly event, and almost all of his skills are shared with at least one other character (usually Tristan). Most of his drops and rewards are luck-dependent, finicky, or just not worth the effort, he doesn't have any UR drops, and even if he did, Red-Eyes Black Dragon definitely wouldn't be worth the effort. So, what does he have going for him? Well, getting him to Level 5 is the first and easiest source of Polymerization, a Spell card necessary to engage with an entire mechanic. Against certain decks, Alligator's Sword Dragon has a pretty decent chance of being able to fly over your opponent's monsters to attack them directly for more than a third of their LP. His midgame Skill, Reinforcements, despite not being unique, is significantly better than Yami's Sorcery Conduit (and is a pain in the rear end to get on Tristan anyways). And one of his Super Rare drops, Metalmorph, is very worth how slow and finicky it is. Even Alligator's Sword is pretty good for an early-game monster, a 1500 ATK beatstick that I'll get a copy of before Level 10. That one really sums up all of Joey's positive qualities: Pretty good for when you get them. And that's not nothing. TL;DR: Joey's almost the opposite of Yami, an early-game workhorse who starts to lose his luster as we get more and better options. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Nov 12, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 07:40
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deserved
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Nov 9, 2021 07:40
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undeserved
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Nov 9, 2021 07:40
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Update DM-01: Tutorials Galorials Welcome, duelists, to a game about spending real money to buy fake cardboard. As I mentioned in the OP, I will be playing the Steam version, because reasons. The mechanics of the game itself are functionally identical, but there are some differences that can significantly impact your experience, depending on your preferences.  First, the language options. While the text options are the same in both versions, the dub languages are actually restricted on PC. Presumably due to some kind of rights issue, you cannot use the Japanese voices in the western release of the game on Steam, but you can on mobile. Your options are English, Korean, or, if you're a buzzkill, none at all. The English dub of this game includes almost the entire original anime cast, though, so I'm not complaining. The other major difference, the quality-of-life uses of the widescreen side gutters, will be either left in or cropped out as the situation warrants, and I'll go over what they are and how they're used later.   Once all the loading and downloading is done (and, be ready, new players, there is a lot of it), I insist to the game that I already know what I'm doing. This will allow me to skip most of the tutorials so I can cover the mechanics myself, but there are a handful I'll still need to do. At least the first one's got framing! ♫ It's Time to Duel! ♫ None of the BGM in this game has an official name, so I've decided to give them names myself, usually taken from one of the character's in-game lines, rather than just label every song "[X's Theme]".   Let's see if you have the cards to challenge me!This is Seto Kaiba. Originally an rear end in a top hat one-shot villain from the manga who hospitalized an old man and tried to murder high schoolers for a rare card, thanks to his popularity, he slowly developed into the primary rival and deuteragonist. The adopted son of a multi-billionaire arms dealer, he took over his father's company, KaibaCorp, and pivoted the business from weapons to hologram technology and children's card games. His defining character trait is his pride, for better and for worse. While he has defeated gods and no-sold reality warping magic through sheer force of will, he has also spent the last several years absolutely obsessed with the only person he considers an equal...   I cannot afford to lose.This pointy-haired teenager! The titular King of Games (yugi-oh), Yami Yugi is the spirit of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh named Atem who part-time possessed a Japanese high school student with a magic necklace in order to punish the wicked and, eventually, defeat the evil demigod he sealed away within his own memories four thousand years ago. He succeeded at this task, passed the torch and his title to the boy he'd shared a mental timeshare with, and finally moved on to the afterlife. In the anime, Kaiba is there for this moment and accepts Yugi Muto (more on him... later) as the new King of Games, moving on with his life to create a boarding school for learning to play card games better and semi-accidentally kicking off the plot of the entire second series. Unfortunately, Duel Links borrows heavily from the manga continuity, in which Kaiba was not present for this passing of the torch. As such, he got no such closure, and has instead spent the last several years single-mindedly pursuing the goal of getting one last duel with a dead man. Personality-wise, Yami has (had?) a strong but ruthless sense of justice, and in fact has gone overboard several times when he was provoked into feeling particularly vengeful. This carries over into his own sense of pride, as he has gotten himself and the people around him into quite a bit of trouble, including an entire season-long filler arc, because of his refusal to ever back down or admit defeat.  We get to choose which one we start with. While it is not a permanent decision, and nothing is ever lost based on your choice, only delayed, it is still a choice that strongly impacts our early-game experience. So, let's look at our options. I'll be evaluating every character not just on their unique Skills, but also their Level-Up Rewards you get for playing them, and their Drop Rewards you can get for defeating them. Yami Yugi When Yugi Muto solved the Millennium Puzzle, he was infused with the ancient spirit of Yami Yugi. Yami Yugi is ready to face any challenge in order to regain his lost memories. An expert Duelist wielding unmatched skills and cards, Yami Yugi's most trusted monster is "Dark Magician." Voiced by: Dan Green (English), Shunsuke Kazama (Japanese) Battle Theme: ♫ It's Time to Duel! ♫ The main flagship character of the entire series, Yami gets a lot of push, and it works. One of his late-game skills, Destiny Draw, which allows him to pick any card from his deck and add it to his hand instead of drawing when he's in a pinch, is more than just powerful, it's kept him consistently viable in PVP through five years of shifting meta and everpresent power creep. Unfortunately for us, that is a late-game skill, and Yami's early game is much more lackluster. His first skill, Power of Dark, provides a decent boost to Spellcasters and Fiends, which are very good types, but many characters have comparable skills for other types. (Including Kaiba!) His unique midgame skill, Sorcery Conduit, allows him some decent draw control, but isn't impactful enough to build a deck on, or to turn a game around. Each character also has other level-up rewards, like unique cards. Yami's lackluster there, too with the only notable, actually unique card not showing up until he reaches Level 35, which is, for perspective, most characters' maximum level. There are other interesting options, like Catapult Turtle for burn damage, and Gaia the Dragon Champion as a 2600 Attack fusion monster with some decent support, but unfortunately, 'interesting' does not mean 'good.' This leaves us with just his ace monster, who only kind of succeeds at picking up the slack. Dark Magician has extremely lackluster stats for a monster that requires two tributes (sacrifices), especially compared to his direct rival, Blue-Eyes White Dragon. This is, ostensibly, balanced out by Dark Magician having excellent unique support from Spell and Trap cards, and at least on that front, he does pull his weight. Thousand Knives and Dark Magic Attack, in particular, are very good cards for how easy they are to get. Unfortunately, they both require Dark Magician to already be on the field, which is not a trivial task. Until we get ways to bring him out more quickly and easily, Dark Magician can feel more like a prerequisite hoop to jump through before you can play your good cards, rather than something you actually want to play. TL;DR: Yami is a late bloomer, both in terms of the character himself, and building a deck with his signature monster. Definitely usable, but in the early and mid game, he has difficulty standing out against the multitude of other characters with more immediate payoff. So, what about the alternative? Seto Kaiba Yugi's eternal rival and president of KaibaCorp - the world's leading gaming conglomerate. Extremely proud and confident, Kaiba will stop at nothing to become the greatest Duelist in history. Kaiba's signature monster is the legendary "Blue-Eyes White Dragon". Voiced By: Eric Stuart (English), Kenjiro Tsuda (Japanese) Battle Theme: ♫ Defeat Is Your Only Option ♫ While Kaiba may not quite match up to Yami in the universe of Yu-Gi-Oh, in Duel Links, he is head and shoulders above. First, in his skills. His early-game skill, Peak Performance, is directly equivalent to Power of Dark, boosting Dragon, Winged Beast, and Thunder monsters. However, while Yami's best skill is acquired in the late game, Kaiba's Beatdown is available before level 15. It's an extremely simple effect, a once-per-duel, temporary boost to the attack power of your high-star monsters, but that boost is just large enough that it can often give a monster the oomph it needs to win fights it has no business triumphing in. (You actually used to be able to use it every turn, which was absolutely loving bonkers and warped the meta around it. It's not that good any more, but it's still good.) As for his card rewards, Kaiba's got a lot going for him there, too. Lord of D. not only has the best name of any card, it also combos with one of Kaiba's drops, Flute of Summoning Dragon, to allow you to cheat out two high-star dragons in a single turn. Ryu-Kishin Powered and Battle Ox have lost their luster thanks to power creep, but once upon a time, they were premier four-star beatsticks, and they're still very nice in the early game when your selection of good cards is small. Champion's Vigilance and Enemy Controller are effective enough as control tools that, five years after their release, they are still on the Limited list, restricting you from playing too many of them in one deck. Poor Dark Magician has the stiffest possible competition as an ace monster; even after twenty years of card game and five years of Duel Links, Blue-Eyes White Dragon and its 3000 Attack is still the metric by which boss monsters are judged, and anything that can get over that 3000 mark can consider that a deliberate and explicit benefit of the card. (In fact, part of what makes Beatdown so powerful is that it allows monsters that normally couldn't get over that 3000 Attack hump to do so.) TL;DR: With some great early-game benefits, the raw power of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and a dogged resilience against being power crept, Kaiba is a fantastic starting character who refuses to lose his luster as the game goes on. (Funny story, Kaiba did eventually get power crept out of top-tier PVP... by his future self.)   If fellating his mechanics for four-hundred words didn't give it away, I will be choosing Kaiba as my starting character. This choice kicks in immediately, with me taking control of Kaiba for the first tutorial duel. Having told the game I already know what I'm doing, this is mostly a tutorial about how the touch screen controls work. Instead, I'll be covering how to play the game myself in the next update. ♫ It's Time to Duel! ♫     Right now, the thing to know is that the object of the game of Yu-Gi-Oh, referred to in universe as Duel Monsters, is to reduce your opponent's Life Points from their starting value of 4000, to 0. (Not 3000, ignore the tutorial being weird.) This can be done with card effects, but for the vast majority of duels, you will be doing most of your damage by summonong Monster Cards, using them to attack and destroy your opponent's monsters, as well as, hopefully, hitting them in the face directly.     Having won this definitely real and not at all staged duel against a dead man, we're guided through entering a display name, and then into the literal and metaphorical world of Duel Links. There are also more tutorials about Spell/Trap Cards, the world, the UI, and so on, but again, I'll be handling that myself for the sake of better flow. ♫ Defeat Is Your Only Option ♫   You must have realized by now that you've arrived in the world of Duel Links. Duelists have come to test their skills in the next evolution of Dueling! This is the perfect place to determine who's the REAL champion! Who will be the one? Who will rule over all? Who will wear the crown as the Duel World King?! Duel World is divided into different Stages. Reach the final Stage and claim the throne! Defeat all who stand in the way of your dreams!  Duelists, come to Duel World for your greatest challenge! Test yourself to your breaking point! Dare to become the Duel World King! Ha ha ha!As anyone who has watched even a single episode of the anime can tell you, Seto Kaiba has exactly zero chill, and it's great.  ♫ Legendary Duelist Unlocked ♫  These Duelists will serve me well. Every battle, every Duel they fight brings me one step closer to completing this world! As for you, Yugi, we will have our final Duel in this world. You will fall against my trusted ally! Blue-Eyes White Dragon! Hahaha!!  And with that, we have completed or skipped But in order to do that, I'm going to have to teach you how to Duel, aren't I? Next Episode: Doing Speed... Dueling! girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Nov 12, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 07:42
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Kaiba rules because he dismantled the military-industrial complex to Make Fortnite Real I've sworn off of gacha and don't know much Yu-Gi-Oh except for vague memories of the twitch stream but the ground floor looks cool so far!
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Nov 9, 2021 08:24
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Welp, this'll be good. Is Exodia in the game?
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Nov 9, 2021 08:37
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Quackles posted:Is Exodia in the game? girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 08:44
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First of all, the best duel monsters character is CLEARLY Bandit Keith, American Hero. Duel links is about as good as you can expect for a children's card game gacha game.
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Nov 9, 2021 11:22
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I've never played the card game or even gotten past the second season of the first series, but Yu-Gi-Oh is just so fascinating to watch even when you don't know what's going on. ESPECIALLY if you don't know what's going on. I'm looking forward to Kaiba trashing third-rate duelists with fourth-rate decks, and then him trashing them through Kaiba Corp's new music studio.
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Nov 9, 2021 12:59
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Seto Kaiba once sent a probe into deep space to search for intelligent life. The probe held Duel Monster cards, so it could teach aliens how to duel.
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Nov 9, 2021 13:02
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You keep calling the duel format here Turbo Duels. That's not correct, that's the dub name for Riding Duels. These are Speed Duels. Anyways I can't even imagine what you could have to show in Duel Links but I'll follow the LP for that. I got bored pretty quickly but gacha irritates me on a deep level so that's unsurprising.
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Nov 9, 2021 13:27
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Seems a little odd calling this game a gacha, considering how many gems it throws your way and what the progression is like. Its certainly leaps and bounds ahead of any competitors, like Pokemon. Also Odion is one of the best duelers.
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Nov 9, 2021 14:05
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Ah, Yu-gi-oh, forever part of my childhood. I played too much of the card game growing up, to the point where I'm sure I remember the rules and cards better than anything I ever learned in school, only eventually falling out once Xyz became a thing. Still, the 3 old PC games of Yugi, Kaiba, and Joey will never not bring back memories, This has caught my eye for sure! Looking forward to seeing where this goes!
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Nov 9, 2021 16:10
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Blaze Dragon posted:You keep calling the duel format here Turbo Duels. That's not correct, that's the dub name for Riding Duels. These are Speed Duels. Edit: In my defense, I was much more focused on not accidentally calling the rules Rush Duels. Because that is an entirely separate YGO format. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 18:36
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This is one of my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh games, I'm excited to relive the early game vicariously through this LP. As a longtime Yu-Gi-Oh fan and almost as longtime Konami resenter I'm still shocked that they created one of the most F2P friendly gacha games available.
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Nov 10, 2021 00:02
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The last time I paid attention to YuGiOh, I think ... Blackwings? were the new hotness. Ready for the trip down memory lane, maybe Kaiba needs to get laid
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Nov 10, 2021 01:25
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BisbyWorl posted:Seto Kaiba once sent a probe into deep space to search for intelligent life. Kaiba is the best rival character in basically anything. This man has accomplished so much off of nothing but a love of children's card games and sheer spite and it rules
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Nov 10, 2021 01:29
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Also billions of dollars!
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Nov 10, 2021 02:12
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ItohRespectArmy posted:First of all, the best duel monsters character is CLEARLY Bandit Keith, American Hero. In America! I'm not sorry.
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Nov 10, 2021 04:22
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:In America! In Canada! You would be.
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Nov 10, 2021 04:33
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I didn't think much of this game until recently when a streamer I like showed some of the super silly skills. The Clock Tower Prison skill is the funniest thing in the universe.
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Nov 10, 2021 06:08
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There's a Youtube channel I follow called TheDuelLogs, which does Top 10 videos about all things Yu-Gi-Oh. They've had a few Duel Links specific topics ('common rarity staples' being the most recent), but my exposure to the gacha basically consists of moments when they point out how a specific card is treated/performs differently in this game, usually regarding what is and isn't on the ban list. And sometimes whether a burn effect is actually good in DL because of the lower Life Point pool. Keen to actually have a look at how Duel Links goes, and maybe get drawn in to playing as well.
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Nov 10, 2021 06:34
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Update momentarily delayed while I run down the street hooting and hollering about new Sylvan support in the year of our dark lord 2021.
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Nov 10, 2021 18:07
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Episode ME-01: Starting Duels, Turn Structure, and Normal Monster Cards I'm going to be doing a lot of dueling over the course of this LP, and if I want my readers to have any idea of what I'm talking about, it might help if I actually explain how the game works, huh? We're going to start very simply and go through things a little at a time, because trying to learn modern Yu-Gi-Oh all at once is like trying to drink from a fire hose while someone throws cards at you and shouts something about exceeding summons. ♫ Welcome to Duel World ♫   In most locations on the main screen, you'll see light blue bubbles. These are Standard Duelists, generic NPC who share the same pool of possible decks and victory rewards, varying only in their voice lines. They are also the game's gating mechanic for only allowing you to play so much at a time, as one respawns every 30 minutes. How many you can have available at once, and how strong they are, is determined by your Stage, basically how far you are into the single-player story. (More on that later.)   For now, we can have a maximum of five Standard Duelists available at once, and each of them is Level 1. Higher level Duelists have stronger decks and drop better rewards. I'm not expecting anything useful from these guys for quite a while, but they're a renewable source of free experience, easy to wallop on for quest goals, and, as of right now, literally our only option. Fun bit of trivia: In the original Japanese, David here is just 'Polite Young Man'. The Standard Duelists having actual names is a product of the English translation, and one of the few dub changes I think is an unambiguous improvement. Even if they're all functionally identical, we'll still be seeing the same cast of characters consistently throughout the game, and they've not only got their own (uncredited) voice lines and personalities, they even have a few cards they specifically call out, when the stars align and they have them in their decks. I'll probably do a quick who's-who of them all at some point. Anyways! We've got some bullying to do. It's time to duel! ♫ My Turn! ♫ The 'Vs. Standard Duelist' battle theme is honestly one of my favorites, which is good, because I'm going to be hearing a L O T of it.   Let's see if you have the cards to challenge me. Here we go! Excuse me, but it would be wonderful if we can Duel.At the start of each duel, both players have 4000 Life Points (LP) and a deck of between 20 to 30 cards, drawing four of them into their starting hand. Duels are won either by reducing your opponent's LP to 0, or when they try to draw a card from an empty deck, and can't. (Both LP and deck size are exactly half that of the real paper Yu-Gi-Oh. The starting LP total is, however, perfectly accurate to the anime. Given how much this game borrows from the anime and manga, and leans on it to draw in casual players, I think it's safe to assume that's not a coincidence.) Not shown: David's first turn in which he summoned one weak monster and then passed, accidentally setting me up perfectly to demonstrate several game concepts at once.   There are five Phases in each turn, Draw, Standby, Main, Battle, and End. During your Draw Phase, you draw one card from your deck and add it to your hand. (The exception to this is that in the first turn of the game, the player who goes first does not get to draw.) You then automatically advance to the Standby Phase. This phase has no inherent effects, but certain card effects can be activated during the Standby Phase. If neither player has any cards they want or need to activate, it moves onto the Main Phase.   Here I come! I Summon a monster in Attack Position!During the Main Phase, the turn player will play cards from their hand, like summoning monsters, activating spells, and setting traps, and activating most card effects. The single most critical of these actions is also the only one limited to once per turn: The Normal Summon. Weaker monsters, those with 1 to 4 Stars, can be summoned directly from the hand with no prerequisite. When you do so, you can either Summon the monster face-up, revealed and ready to attack, or Set it face-down, concealed and ready to defend. Our starting hand has a couple of unremarkable monsters, but I open my first turn by drawing and then immediately playing Hitotsu-Me Giant, a decent early-game beatstick. It's also a Beast-Warrior type, which one of the other characters we'll soon unlock will very much appreciate, extending its viability for a bit longer. Before we move on, let's look at what all this stuff on the card actually means.  1) Name: Every card has a name. You can't have more than three cards of the same name in your deck, and many cards look for cards with certain words or phrases in their names. For example, some cards ask for "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" specifically, while others only ask for "a 'Blue-Eyes' card". This has actually bitten the dubbing team in the rear end a couple times, especially when names get censored inconsistently. Summoned Skull, Beast of Talwar, and Axe of Despair all needed added rules text saying that they always count as 'Archfiend' cards, because their original names were Summoned Daemon, Talwar Daemon, and Daemon's Axe, respectively, and there's an entire archetype of 'Daemon' cards now. 2) Stars: A very loose estimation of a card's power, at least among its contemporaries. But while the flavor has become almost meaningless thanks to power creep, the mechanical meaning stays the same: The more stars a monster has, the harder it is to summon. Monsters with 1-4 Stars can be Summoned or Set straight from the hand, while monsters with 5 or more require Tributes first. (We'll talk about how Tribute Summoning works a bit later.) Officially, and within the text of cards, this is actually referred to as a monster's Level. However, this game uses the word 'level' for like four different concepts. 'Star' is already player jargon for the concept, (i.e. calling a Level 4 monster 'four star'), so I'm just going to use that term exclusively. You may just want to make a mental note that 1-4 Stars is 'low level', 5-6 is 'mid level', and 7+ is 'high level'. 3) Attribute: There are six Attributes: Light, Dark, Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth. (Technically, there's also Divine, but literally only the Egyptian God Cards have that one.) They have no inherent impact on the game, but some card effects care about Attributes, and/or.... 4) Type: Similar to Attributes, Monster Types are also qualities that only matter when card effects care about them. There are more than twenty of them, so I won't list them all. Kaiba likes Dragons, though, and Yami likes Spellcasters. All the monsters we'll be seeing for a while are also Normal, meaning they don't have any special abilities, but Effect monsters do. (There are also other types, though for now the only relevant type is Fusion Monsters, who we'll cover in another update.) 5) Effect Text: If a card has an effect, the rules of that effect are listed here. This can be something as simple as getting stronger when you have a certain kind of monster on the field, or an absolute shitstorm. I'll simplify them as much as I can, though. And if a monster doesn't have an effect, this is where the flavor text goes.  6) Attack and Defense Points: ATK and DEF, respectively. Comparing them determines who wins in a battle between two monsters, and how much damage the loser's controller will take. Easily raised and lowered by card effects, higher is better. We're two paragraphs away from talking about how it works, hold your horses. So, that's the anatomy of a monster card. I also have a Spell card in my hand I could play, but it would have no benefit right now and I don't want to talk about Spells yet anyways. So, I end my Main Phase and move onto the Battle Phase.   I attack with a monster!Monsters have two 'battle positions', vertical, called attack position, and horizontal, called defense position. An attack position monster must be face-up (even card effects can't violate this rule), while a defense position monster can be face-up or face-down, depending on circumstances. Most monsters you play will start in face-up attack position (if you Summon them) or face-down defense position (if you Set them). First, we'll talk about attack position. During the Battle Phase, your attack position monsters get up to one attack each, against one of your opponent's monsters. When one of your monsters attacks an opponent's attack position monster, you compare the ATK (Attack Point) values of the monsters. The monster with the lower ATK is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard (discard pile), and that player loses LP equal to the difference If they're equal, both monsters are destroyed, but no one takes damage.   Our Hitotsu-Me Giant has 1200 ATK, while David's monster only has 800 ATK. So David's monster is destroyed, and he takes 400 damage, reducing his LP from 4000, to 3600. If we had any other monsters who could attack, because David doesn't have any left, the rest could 'direct attack' and smack him in the face directly. There are also a ton of card effects that can activate during the Battle Phase, but I don't have any of those yet, and Hitotsu-Me Giant's all by his lonesome for now, so we're done with our Battle Phase. (There wasn't really a good place to state it, but the reason David's monster didn't hurt us already is that there's no Battle Phase in the first turn of the game.)  The End Phase is much like the Standby Phase, in that it mostly exists for triggering card effects. If you have too many cards in your hand, this is also when you have to discard them, down to the maximum of 6. There isn't much else to say about the turn structure, but this is also a good time to show how those widescreen gutters are used. On the left is an easier to read summary of whatever card you've most recently poked at, and on the right is a summary of events for the duel. Both of these are available in the mobile version as well, but they take up the screen there. Here, they're just always present. It's not game-changing, but even though I'll usually be cropping it out in screenshots, it's a good use of screen real estate that I'm glad to have. So, the turn structure in short: Draw: Draw 1 card. Lose if you can't. Standby: Card effects. Main: Summon or Set 1 monster, play cards. Battle: Attack with monsters, up to once each. End: Card effects, discard down to 6 cards. My skills are being tested today! My turn!  Level 1 enemies are suicidally overconfident, and have absolute garbage decks, so David just summons another copy of the same weak monster and ends his turn.   Our next draw, we get One-Eyed Shield Dragon, a monster with less ATK than David's Fire Eye, but a high DEF. This is a perfect opportunity to explain Setting, and defense position. Well, actually, no, it's an excellent opportunity to play another strong attacker we already have in our hand and start wailing on the poor man, but we're playing a teaching game here.   Instead of Summoning our dragon, I instead Set it, placing it in face-down defense position. Now our opponent knows I have another monster in play, but not what it is. Then, because I want to provoke the AI into attacking and it might not do that if it's got a cyclops bearing down on it, I also switch Hitotsu-Me Giant to defense. Each monster can change their battle position once per turn (except the turn they're summoned), from attack to defense or vice-versa. However, once face-up, monsters can't flip back down under their own power, so HMG is staying face-up. If I were to switch OESD into attack position next turn, it would also be flipped face-up in the process, with no simple ways of flipping it face-down again. Now that I've explained the flow of a turn, we're going to speed along through the process a little bit.   David takes the bait, summoning another weak monster and attacking our face-down dragon. It's flipped face-up, and we compare the stats again. However, because it's in defense position, instead of comparing their ATK, we compare the attacker's ATK to the defender's DEF. Once those numbers are compared, though, things are resolved a little bit differently than if our dragon was in attack position.   His attacker is weaker than our defender, so he still takes damage equal to the difference. However, an attacker can't be destroyed by battling a defense position monster, so the attacker survives. If David's attacking monster had been stronger, our dragon would have been destroyed, but we wouldn't have taken any damage. THIS is the benefit of defense position; not only is it much easier to get out a monster with high DEF than high ATK, even if that monster does get walloped, we don't take any damage along with it. (If they'd tied, nothing would get destroyed and no one would take damage.) So, to summarize: ATK > ATK: Destroys and deals damage ATK = ATK: Destroys both, no damage ATK > DEF: Destroys, doesn't deal damage ATK = DEF: Doesn't destroy, no damage DEF > ATK: Deals damage, doesn't destroy This update's already getting long, but there's one more concept I want to cover: Tribute Summoning.   Before, I said that monsters with 1-4 Stars can be Summoned, but didn't explain how stronger ones get played. This is how. Monsters with 5 or more Stars require you to use a special kind of Normal Summon called a Tribute Summon. In order to Tribute Summon (or Tribute Set), you need to sacrifice monsters you already have in play. For monsters with 5-6 Stars like the Crawling Dragon in our hand, this costs 1 Tribute, and for 7-8 Stars, like our Blue-Eyes White Dragon, it costs 2. (There are also monsters with even higher Star counts, like the Egyptian God Cards, but they're special and don't follow any predetermined rules.) Here's the kicker: This counts as your Summon for the turn, which means that any monster you Summon must survive for at least one full turn if you want to use it as fodder for a Tribute Summon. This is the real niche of high-DEF monsters, stalling to keep them around so you can use them in future turns as fuel to make your real big plays.   By sacrificing our One-Eyed Shield Dragon we played last turn as tribute, we're able to summon Crawling Dragon. 1600 ATK isn't a lot, and is in fact outclassed by even midgame 4 Star monsters, but it's the second-strongest card in our deck right now, and more than strong enough that it's not even remotely threatened by anything a Level 1 deck can throw at us. We have effectively just won the duel. There are all sorts of other concepts to cover, like monsters with effects, spell and trap cards, special summons, the rules for actually building a deck, the list goes on. But, this is technically enough to play and win duels, and our starter deck isn't exactly well-equipped to demonstrate any of those concepts yet. (It doesn't even HAVE any effect monsters or trap cards!) So, let's put poor David out of his misery, and come back to the rest another time.   Your skills are quite remarkable! Amateur... Get out of my sight!What did I tell you? Zero loving chill. I guess there's an argument against playing Kaiba. He acts like this towards everyone, so if you find his antics exhausting instead of amusing, you're probably better off picking Yami Yugi, who values things like 'respect' and 'sportsmanship' and 'not calling literal children third-rate duelists with fourth-rate decks'. As for me, I'm going to keep reveling in getting to play as Vegeta McGaryoak.  Now, let's see what we got for winning. Next Episode: Experience, loot, quests, and at least three different kinds of Levels. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Nov 12, 2021 |
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Nov 10, 2021 19:05
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You say McGaryoak, which is correct by demeanor, but let’s not forget that by voice he’s actually Brock. Maybe James, too, I forget.
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Nov 10, 2021 19:33
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Eric Stuart is a treasure.
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Nov 10, 2021 19:36
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girl dick energy posted:
 Kaiba's immense aggro will never not be entertaining to me.
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Nov 10, 2021 19:53
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The man basically got the entire world to abandon armed conflict in favor of settling things with card games. The dude has earned the right to be aggro.
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Nov 10, 2021 19:58
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It's honestly really funny to see Kaiba's and David's portraits together. Kaiba's is significantly more detailed and also has way more explosive of a pose, while David is just chilling. It absolutely makes Kaiba look like the biggest dork ever, just a gigantic tryhard against a guy that's taking his sass as if it was nothing because he's here to have fun playing a card game.
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Nov 10, 2021 20:17
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Blaze Dragon posted:It's honestly really funny to see Kaiba's and David's portraits together. Kaiba's is significantly more detailed and also has way more explosive of a pose, while David is just chilling. It absolutely makes Kaiba look like the biggest dork ever, just a gigantic tryhard against a guy that's taking his sass as if it was nothing because he's here to have fun playing a card game. I'm not ashamed to admit that I absolutely lost my poo poo when I saw this screenshot in my folder and knew I had to use it, because it's just so Kaiba.
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Nov 10, 2021 20:23
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to be fair, I think a part of that is also due to how mellow David is: that is not the face of a man eager to win a children's card game. That is the face of a bachelor from a dating sim.
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Nov 10, 2021 20:33
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Given how big of a deal Kaiba is, this is probably just like, normal. It's gotta be expected that at least once in your life you'll meet Seto Kaiba, then he'll beat you in a duel and call you a loser.
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Nov 10, 2021 21:00
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How was the rules explanation, by the way? I'm trying to break it down into simple chunks, while also avoiding too many jarring "we'll talk about that later" moments.
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Nov 10, 2021 22:08
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girl dick energy posted:How was the rules explanation, by the way? I'm trying to break it down into simple chunks, while also avoiding too many jarring "we'll talk about that later" moments. I think it was pretty good. It reminded me of the good old days when YGO was barely any more complicated than that.
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Nov 10, 2021 22:10
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girl dick energy posted:How was the rules explanation, by the way? I'm trying to break it down into simple chunks, while also avoiding too many jarring "we'll talk about that later" moments. I'd say it was pretty good, a lot cleaner than my attempts to explain it in the past. Breaking it down is absolutely the best way to go here. Blaze Dragon posted:It reminded me of the good old days when YGO was barely any more complicated than that. Yeah, "trying to drink from a fire hose while someone throws cards at you and shouts something about exceeding summons" is a rather perfect description of how it is these days.
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Nov 10, 2021 22:35
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 ...well, I guess I'll work on a short update while I'm waiting, then!
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Nov 10, 2021 23:04
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AweStriker posted:You say McGaryoak, which is correct by demeanor, but let’s not forget that by voice he’s actually Brock. Will he use his platinum frying pan as a platinum drying pan?
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Nov 10, 2021 23:10
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I apologize for the inconsistent image quality in the previous and coming updates, I've been trying out a couple of different methods to make the screenshots look a little less like choppy rear end. (I do not succeed.)
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Nov 10, 2021 23:54
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