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Yea I replayed 3H this summer and the storytelling is really dire, some lines/conversations are very good or goofy (in a good way) but a lot of it is just redundant or goofy (in a bad way) poo poo and major important events are just skipped entirely or skimmed over. It was really grating and I ended up just dropping it with a few chapters left because I was so disappointed.
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Jan 22, 2023 15:24
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Harrow posted:Reclassing in this is kind of interesting. I assumed when I saw how it worked that it'd be something that takes extra investment to do, but it really doesn't. Getting the required proficiencies is trivial, it just costs a handful of bond fragments and a few seconds in the arena. That's nice to hear, I like broad customization but the downside is that I spend 95% of the game with characters in "transition" classes so I can assemble their toolkits and I only use them in the roles I WANTED for a small portion of the game.
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Jan 22, 2023 17:08
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Was undecided on whether to get this after my 3H replay last year kinda soured me on it. Watching videos it looks like this game has much stronger production values in terms of the combat animations, cutscenes, backgrounds, etc vs 3H which was mostly characters talking stiffly in a featureless void with pretty bad textures. Is this one better in that regard or did they just front load a lot of fancy stuff in the trailers?
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Jan 23, 2023 04:20
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Endorph posted:the map design's way tighter and combat's way snappier but it lacks the indepth character building stuff from three houses, characters are also mostly just their bases/growths and base class rather than stuff like the unique combat arts/spell lists from 3h. I'm glad about this, I'm not able to turn my brain off from "Optimal" mode at all times so even on my New Game Plus 3 Houses playthrough where I'm cruising through enemies I still had to check and make sure every unit was studying the right skills between every battle so they could maximize their development and hit the endgame classes with learned skills that I planned for them. It was fun to plan but then in execution mentally draining and turned the game into homework
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Jan 23, 2023 19:28
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Terper posted:
I guess they heard that I wanted something a bit meatier
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Jan 24, 2023 23:03
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Ytlaya posted:This is one of the best things Xenoblade 3 did. It's extremely obvious that the writers deliberately wanted to keep all of the party members "active" throughout the story and avoid a situation where someone just kind of disappears after finishing their "arc." I think every possible pair of the 6 party members gets its own cutscene at some point. Like you'll be thinking "I don't really see Lanz and Mio talk much" and then they'll add some cutscene at a camp where they spend a while chatting. It rules, especially because the Heart to Heart system in XB1 was insane, I think I played the entire game without ever encountering one that wasn't locked.
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Jan 25, 2023 00:25
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Kanos posted:Much like a lot of this game's approaches, this feels like a throwback to classic FE where you kind of have to pick and choose who you want to get supports up with instead of having your entire cast be A rank besties by the halfway mark. Tbh I think I'd prefer them being scattered scenes after doing a Three Houses replay where every other chapter is punctuated by binging like six random conversations about food or being scared of the dark with no context or reference to the rest of the game
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Jan 26, 2023 15:35
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So this game looks really nice from a graphics/gameplay perspective, I watched the first 20 minutes or so and the writing and character voices were pretty intolerable. I immediately understand what the comparisons to a Saturday Morning Cartoon were based in. Now that the game's been out for a week, do folks generally feel like the gameplay is good enough to make up for that? The thread seems pretty positive so far. I liked Awakenings well enough, and Three Houses up until the Academy got too repetitive and the plot floundered
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Jan 28, 2023 01:34
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Thank you! Was looking for an excuse to buy this and now I have one. Time to Engage!
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Jan 28, 2023 01:46
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My early impressions of this game (5 chapters in): Emblem rings rule, they feel like a more refined version of battalions that's less cluttered to sort through. Engage Abilities in particular are way more fun and interesting than Gambits which always felt kinda flat for me. The characters largely rule, I still don't like the little kids though. Removing weapon durability is great, I'm never able to get past the mentality of "but what if I'm WASTING CHARGES I NEED LATER" so removing that entirely feels good. This game sure loves big boobs. All the characters (male and female) are super pretty in general, I'm kind of surprised they removed paired endings for the NPC's since the characters seem designed with the shipping crowd in mind. Not that I'm complaining. The plot has been totally bog standard Fire Emblem so far, in a good way. I think starting the game off with the twins really doesn't put the game's best foot forward in terms of the tone and feel of the game.
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Jan 31, 2023 20:31
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I really really appreciate the polish in this game. I think the interface and visuals feel very slick, I love how the characters pop up when you hover over them (especially since it doesn't lag). It took me a bit to learn how to read the stats layout but once I got familiar with it, it felt like most of the info I need is right there and easy to access. Even though a lot of the conversations are still just "characters standing against a backdrop", the backdrops themselves and the camera angles help disguise that pretty well. In one of the openers I was super confused when they cut to a static image of Lumera hugging Alear until I realized I had been watching one of those static conversations and not a dynamic cutscene. I also think walking around the battlefields after is really neat. It sounds silly but after Chapter 4 when I was walking around that town with the windmills in the background, it made that kingdom feel like a place to me, in a way Fire Emblem never really has before. It's obviously not as immersive as an open world rpg or even a typical jrpg but it was a nice touch.
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Feb 1, 2023 14:39
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blizzardvizard posted:Yeah I really don't like that SP gain is halved if you're using a bond ring and not an emblem. It also makes the gap between early joiners and late prepromotes even bigger as later units join with 1-2k SP with no effort, while the units you've been using since the start would barely break 1k. It seems kind of poorly thought through - like at a minimum the 50% SP gain should be baseline instead of needing a bond ring, because the only reason you wouldn't throw cheap bond rings on everyone as soon as you get access to the ring room is if you genuinely don't understand the mechanic. It just penalizes people who don't realize that.
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Feb 1, 2023 17:23
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Both of my 3 Houses playthroughs, in 2019 and 2022, started with me thinking "Wow this game's story is great", with the deliberately paced mystery and world building in the first half, and the imagined potential for all kinds of complicated plot threads when war broke out. Both times that turned to boredom and dissatisfaction in the second half, with the game rushing through or ignoring so many potential plot developments, jettisoning parts of the game depending on which path you chose, and overall just failing to deliver on the setup that I'd invested dozens of hours into. I didn't bother finishing my Crimson Flower playthrough because if the developers couldn't be bothered to finish it then why should I?
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Feb 1, 2023 21:36
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GateOfD posted:I think it would have been neat for unit variety if the sub-types wasn't tied to class but character. that way you have a bunch of really crazy options you can explore, like berserker/mysticals or swordmaster/coverts ect. I actually thought this was the case because Alfred is a Noble (cavalry) and Celine is a Noble (mystical). I guess those are just different classes? I'm still early (Ch 6)
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Feb 1, 2023 21:52
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Endorph posted:theyre basically different classes. all the royals have unique classes, and alfred and celine promote into different classes with different names. its just their pre-promote classes share names, they arent really like, actually related ot each other in any way mechanically. hopeandjoy posted:They’re different classes under the hood. All the royals have a class named “Noble” with completely different growths and abilities that then promote to unique classes. Ah gotcha, thanks!
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Feb 1, 2023 21:59
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Whenever people complain about Fire Emblem Storytelling, I think about Awakening. There's a scene where you meet the ruler of a nearby nation... (Awakening Spoilers but this is like halfway through the game and honestly raises more questions than it answers) Who looks exactly like the evil wizard you "killed" earlier in the game. Then his advisor comes out, who looks exactly like Robin (the player character). You leave and the characters say "Hey isn't it weird that those guys look exactly like the evil wizard and Robin?" but don't spend any more time pondering that. Then, at night the evil wizard guy appears and tells Robin that he's their father. In the morning Robin tells this to Chrom, who basically replies "Huh, that's weird" and they move on from there. That, to me, is Fire Emblem.
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Feb 2, 2023 06:29
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ungulateman posted:Hey, be nice: the characters respond to that by saying 'even if the cryptic statement from the suspicious guy is true, what does it matter?' Fair, and overall I found the batshit story extremely endearing.
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Feb 2, 2023 16:15
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Since the "avatar" is basically a fully fleshed out character, they really should stop letting you rename them if they're going to do full voice acting. In addition to having everyone repeat your title ad infinitum, it's just weird to have a sentence structured around the character's name and then the last word is just dropped off. A text block will say "Nice to meet you, I'm the Divine Dragon Alear" and you hear "Nice to meet you, I'm the Divine Dragon ____” and it's jarring. The only time I thought it worked well was Claude calling you Teach in 3 Houses, but that was outweighed by everyone else calling you Professor. Even years after the academy it doesn't feel right when someone's like "I'm so in love with you, I can't wait to spend our lives together, Professor!"
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Feb 2, 2023 17:50
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Endorph posted:tbf that professor thing is another thing that works better in japanese, where calling your romantic partner or even your spouse by a title isnt that uncommon It's more the fact that it's referencing you're THEIR professor, that makes it weird to me. It's just uncomfortable framing (which is kinda helped by the fact that you seem like more of a peer mentor who stumbles in one day and just starts doing lectures on how to swordfight and ride horses) Veryslightlymad posted:It was about as good as we could hope for with it, too. Everyone calling them professor feels fairly normal, almost like an endearing nickname. "Divine dragon" or "the Divine Dragon" just doesn't have any flow. And also, the voice line is read in a way that's different than the script reads, since they'll end their sentence on dragon, but it reads like the sentence continues, so the performance gives every sentence it comes up the incorrect tone, and that irritates me. Yeah I'm glad you said this because I keep hearing it but I'm never sure if it's my brain filling in the gap because the text tells me to anticipate the next word "Alear".
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Feb 2, 2023 20:37
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Should I be upgrading the early weapons like iron and steel? On Hard Classic, Chapter 7 I think (just got to Brodia) and I've been super conservative with my blacksmithing because I don't have a sense for what I'll need later. I threw a few +1's on the special weapons like Ridersbane that don't seem to have better versions, and on Alear's Liberation, but that's about it.
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Feb 3, 2023 20:34
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Thanks for the advice! Will get to upgrading.
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Feb 3, 2023 20:40
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Mainstream reviewers play the game on Normal Casual so the gameplay is functionally irrelevant, and the writing isn't as good as the parts of 3H that they played before burning out (White Clouds + a few chapters post timeskip)
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Feb 4, 2023 15:58
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Harrow posted:Listen I'm the guy who, push comes to shove, marginally prefers Persona to SMT (don't tell nobody) so I can understand people preferring Three Houses. I don't think they're being in any way disingenuous or lazy to have that opinion, it's a valid opinion that I happen to disagree with. The game doesn't put its best foot forward in terms of characters, but the rest of the presentation is so far beyond 3 Houses. Everything looks so good, animations are great, the UI is slick and flashy, it's polished far beyond 3 Houses. Even the "standing around talking" cutscenes are better staged and not just posted against PS2 textures. As someone who nearly didn't buy the game after watching through the "Clanne and Framme wake you up" scene, it immediately grabbed me upon playing it.
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Feb 4, 2023 16:12
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After so much 3H chat I went back to my Black Eagles playthrough I abandoned last year. Played a story mission and it's really hard to go back, at least for me, after Engage. Everything that isn't a player character looks so drab, animations and backgrounds are meh. Battalions in particular, while they're strong they feel really lame to use with little wet fart effects. Emblems with their cool Engage powers are a far better evolution of them. Then I went back to the base and just got so tired. There's so much stuff to sort through that I think my ADHD brain can't handle it anymore. So many little bars filling up on every character, proficiencies, skills, class xp, regular xp, motivation. A couple dozen battalions that also have their own xp. I wrote down a little list of who needs what skills to reach their final tier class, vs who already has those skills and I can just leave them on auto tutoring or whatever. The way the story is presented is really lame too. We're fighting a war against the Alliance! By that I mean we teleported to a bridge, killed their troops there, then teleported back to the academy and talked about how in one month we're going to teleport to their capital city and kill them. Idk I like Three Houses enough and got a solid one and a half playthroughs out of it but I really can't go back at this point.
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Feb 4, 2023 19:11
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Natural 20 posted:So how does the game encourage or discourage things? It's discouraging it by presenting you with situations in which that is a boring and unfun solution
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Feb 4, 2023 20:17
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Seeing a lot of suggestions to second seal Jean since his default class growths aren't great... If I'm just playing on Hard am I okay leaving him as-is? It looks like I won't get second seals for a few chapters, and I like the idea of him as a punch monk anyway since he wants to be a doctor
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Feb 5, 2023 18:13
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Thank you for the advice, going to keep Jean in the martial path! Question about Chain Guard: is the intention that you Chain Guard once and then pop a vulnerary so you can do it again, or is there another self-heal method? Or do you generally only use CG once a map or so?
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Feb 5, 2023 21:16
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Promoting Louis into a great knight.... Should I go Lance/Axe? It seems pretty fitting and I have a general lack of axe users so far through chapter 9.
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Feb 9, 2023 17:05
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Thanks for the advice, going Lance/axe! I was thinking Great Knight over General just from my past experiences with FE, I usually end up slowing down my whole team to make sure the General can be in front where they're needed, that or I'm just not able to get them there, and it makes me play in a more turtley, less fun, manner. The map design so far is pretty good and makes me move out of my comfort zone more than the 3H or Awakening ones too, so I anticipate really missing the Move if I go General. But yea I can always seal him over.
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Feb 9, 2023 17:44
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Tae posted:But if I'm on the ground, I would rather be a back-up or Covert type because the move difference isn't that big, and one is contributing anywhere from 4 to 20 damage a player phase with the right setup per character. I mean something like Move is difficult to quantify and will depend on how you use it, but if it results in even a few extra times when that unit is able to make an attack or take a hit when you want it to, that's a lot of damage.
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Feb 9, 2023 20:39
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Not being able to just scroll between previews of class outfits is a significant step back from 3H.
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Feb 9, 2023 21:39
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I just got Jade and I think I'm going to pivot to her as my main General/Great Knight, she seems cool. I liked Louis at first but some of his recent supports have made him seem kind of like a serial killer
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Feb 10, 2023 21:32
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Working through this game slowly and some ongoing Chapter 10 observations: - Some of the social stuff is really weird. Mainly the thing where characters talk to you through sleepy vision and praise you when you wake up, and the polishing mechanic where Emblem Rings watch you polish them and say things like "Clean me up good, then!" They're pretty quick so not a huge deal but I just have some moments of "what am I doing here" - I understand limiting Master Seals early on for balance purposes, but Internal Level affecting XP makes that feel kinda bad because I'm getting suboptimal level ups past 10 if I can't promote people.
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Feb 13, 2023 16:07
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Just picked this back up (Metroid Prime Remastered dropped and took priority) and finished Chapter 10 last night. I knew the ring theft was coming because I've been reading the thread, but it was still cool and impactful. It taps into what made, say, Aeris' death work in FFVII, which is that it messes with your actual gameplay mechanics that you just assume are safe. If something happens to a character that "only" affects the story, yeah it's a big deal, but it's not entirely unexpected. When your party is tangibly impacted it really hits you because you keep thinking "Ah no way, they're gonna reset this by the end of the cutscene because the game wouldn't take away my stuff like that", and then the cutscene keeps going and you start the next chapter with your poo poo all gone... that feels so meaningful.
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Feb 27, 2023 16:36
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Yeah lol, I just started Chapter 11 but I saw the dragon things and Veyle are level 25 while my dudes are all 12-15 so I just thought I'm supposed to flee.
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Feb 27, 2023 17:00
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Yeah there are multiple very similar menus that don't share information, like there's some where you can flip between seeing a weapon's raw stats and its performance stats and other screens where you can't for no discernable reason.
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Feb 28, 2023 04:38
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Tender Bender posted:Just picked this back up (Metroid Prime Remastered dropped and took priority) and finished Chapter 10 last night. I knew the ring theft was coming because I've been reading the thread, but it was still cool and impactful. It taps into what made, say, Aeris' death work in FFVII, which is that it messes with your actual gameplay mechanics that you just assume are safe. If something happens to a character that "only" affects the story, yeah it's a big deal, but it's not entirely unexpected. When your party is tangibly impacted it really hits you because you keep thinking "Ah no way, they're gonna reset this by the end of the cutscene because the game wouldn't take away my stuff like that", and then the cutscene keeps going and you start the next chapter with your poo poo all gone... that feels so meaningful. So I only got around to actually playing Chapter 11 this morning, and drat it continues the storytelling-through-gameplay so well. Realizing I didn't have the divine pulse was an "oh poo poo" moment. Then having a bunch of enemy reinforcements show up on both sides, followed immediately by gaining some allies AND rings/divine pulse, was a quick roller coaster of tension. Great job, FE Engage team!
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Mar 1, 2023 17:21
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I really need to get out of the habit of rewinding just before a bad turn and spending half an hour delicately getting out of the bad situation, instead of just rewinding 2-3 turns and avoiding the whole situation entirely. I always think "Ugh redoing all of that is so much work" but I end up spending probably way more time and mental energy anyway.
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Mar 5, 2023 17:52
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On Chapter 14 and I think the game's story is totally fine. I can't overstate how much the writing is handicapped by "The Divine Dragon" or "Divine One" though; it totally works when characters are fawning over you or discussing the meta plot, but as a Ctrl+F for the character's name or even just "Him/Her", every time it's in a line it just feels so clunky and lame. They'd be so much better off not letting you rename Alear.
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Mar 6, 2023 17:31
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RevolverDivider posted:Weapon durability was good but it’s fine that Engage doesn’t have it. It's okay if people like it. I don't like Fire Emblem weapon durability because it feels like I'm rationing for a journey I don't have enough information about. Like without knowing what's coming up, what items I'll be getting along the way or even how long I have to go it always feels bad to use the good stuff because what if I need it later. Unless you're just overflowing with resources so you don't need to worry about it, but then what's the point. I much prefer map-specific limits for a game like this. It'd be interesting if weapons had low durability but they refreshed after every map.
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Mar 8, 2023 05:38
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