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SpaceDrake posted:The point is more that they're better than Rorona in multiple respects and going back to it after playing those can feel like a major step backwards. If you enjoyed Rorona, you will probably love the poo poo out of the other Arland games (so long as your tolerance for occasional gratuitous fanservice is high enough). Speaking of which, I'm quite looking forward to Ayesha's North American release. I know virtually nothing about the game, other than it has a soundtrack that is head and shoulders above the Arland games, so it should be quite an experience when it does come out. But yeah, if you liked Rorona, you almost certainly would like the sequels. The mechanics are vastly improved to be both more efficient and more strategic. Not to say I didn't like Rorona, but the sequels are definitely better.
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Aug 5, 2012 20:21
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As ridiculously  as Agarest Zero is (and by extension, the first one), I have to say on the whole I am really enjoying it. The plot isn't much to write home about, but the characters are endearing enough to make it entertaining. The real thing is the combat, and there is a lot of it. Just in the main game alone, you have 15 characters to choose from, and if you go into Digest Mode (which is an abridged version of the first game), that's adding about 10 characters (before DLC), so you can have a wonderfully diverse party that can be tailored just about any way you want.The best parts are definitely the battles where attacking like an idiot on the first turn is going to get you massacred, and you have to plan out if you want to bide your time and strike when the enemy is overextended, fan your characters out to draw enemy fire toward one target instead of many and tackle several weaker foes at once, or if you want to throw everything into a mad dash to take out the big guns before they get too powerful. Of course, you also have to take into consideration the skills of the characters themselves, and many have an ability where when they're critically low on HP (<25% HP), they get significantly powered up, so battles toward the end of the game frequently involve baiting an enemy into attacking one target, reviving them, then striking back hard. There's several boss battles that the game does not at all expect you to win or even do well in, and the funnest part of the game is turning that expectation around and winning, or at least taking out the moneybags who gives you a lot of experience / money before the battle automatically ends after a few turns. It's a game where you really have to pay attention to the boss battles, because even with great equipment, if you make careless decisions you're going to regret it really fast, especially by the end of the first generation and continuing to the second. Of course, all the cool combo attacks between party members and the over the top animations for some of the attacks makes the sprite art in battle quite nice. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has a low tolerance for anime, or even a middling tolerance, but it is a really solid RPG at its core. I got it for about 20 bucks off Amazon, and at that price, and for a game that's going to take quite a while to fully see all its content, you really can't ask for more, I suppose.
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May 30, 2013 20:51
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Infinity Gaia posted:
I'm pretty sure Linca is still voiced by Julie Ann Taylor. She's just talking differently than she did most of the time she talked in Ayesha, but it's the same voice. Harry is totally different though. Nio, Marion, and Wilbell are all the same, too, so only Harry's voice actor got a replacement. Gust, at least from what I've seen of the Atelier games, is pretty good about using the same voice actors for returning characters in sequels. Also, you're definitely correct about the alchemy system being easier to use E&L, but I'm pretty sure that's because the bosses in E&L (outside the story), are much harder than they were Ayesha (with the exception of Ayesha's Grand Dragon). It's more of "scaling everything up" in terms of damage you can do and damage the enemy can do. Trust me, you'll stop feeling like super items and free refills of items are cheap after you see some of the bosses. Another thing: L does mean the weakest effect if it's on an item. I don't think you run into the highest-tier effects on ingredients until some of the later locations, but there are ways you can great materials anywhere in the game. Sylphid fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 17:16
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Presea was always fun to use, but unfortunately the AI isn't bright enough to use her full potential (big surprise), especially when it comes to that Compound EX Skill where she can guard break any enemy after she powers up. I had a lot more fun on my latest Symphonia playthroughs using her as my main than I thought I would. Symphonia I think was the last Tales game (that I've played at least), that had the mages be terribly unfun characters to play as. It's dated, but still fun to play if you ask me.
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May 9, 2015 20:25
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For another opinion on the Dusk trilogy, I'd say Ayesha is really good, but the games got progressively better. I can't imagine going back to the battle systems pre-E&L, because everything is just so slow compared to how E&L operated, and Shallie is even better about combat moving quickly and generally being interesting / fun, even if there are a few bosses in Shallie who blatantly cheat (especially the DLC boss, who has a group insta-kill move that is unblockable, and he can use it twice in a row if he's feeling spiteful). Just something about the trilogy really clicked with me in particular, so yeah, I'd give it a whirl. Each of the games has its own identity, especially with the two protagonists in E&L and Shallie (I thought Shallie handled that better than E&L did), and I greatly enjoyed all of them. Also, that new Gust RPG certainly looks interesting. I'd be more than willing to give it a whirl. When it comes to the Shallies, I'd say Gust made it a point to write them as especially close to each other, but maybe just one or two steps away from an actual relationship. I just never really got that vibe from them, and I don't think the audience was meant to walk away with that kind of impression, but the True End especially could give that notion (also is my favorite ending, but I'm pretty sure Gust meant that to be the most satisfying ending). When it comes to Totori and Mimi, though, there's really not much room to argue about the nature of their relationship.
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May 16, 2015 08:59
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Since the thread is coming around to Xillia talk again, I was just curious about Volt in 2. Why is he such a big deal for a boss relatively early in the game? Half of his attacks will utterly decimate groups (including that drat one where he goes up high in the air and slams down several times, before you have a chance to block it), he has two helpers at the start and more will come in, Jude can't do anything to him pretty much without an opening (speaking of Jude, Snap Pivot is still the best), and he casts very, very quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if I tried to beat him on Hard at least 40 times. Seems like the kind of boss who should be much later in the game.
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Jun 13, 2015 14:39
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Well, live and learn. I knew about all the enemies in that fight being weak to guns, but a boss that powerful still should be saved until quite a bit later in the game. After I barely managed to win, I thought I must have been doing something wrong, like there was a gimmick that would make the fight easier.
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Jun 13, 2015 23:14
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Finally beat Xillia 2, at least with the normal ending. I'm saving the true ending for my last trophy. Honestly, a lot of fun. There's a lot of grinding for money / trophies, but the first game had a lot of grinding on that front, too. I was kinda surprised how hard it was, actually. Starting with Volt in the first few chapters, the game has some pretty tough bosses. I couldn't imagine beating half of the later game bosses without Power Charge 1, 2, and 3, which just so happens to be the best skills in the game. It's especially great with Gaius because of his Conqueror's Blade, meaning you can get a 7 hit power combo going in just a few seconds (and if you switch to his Darkness sword in the middle of the combo, you can get everything except Gun with just Gaius). Of course, now it only feels right to have Gaius in his Xillia 1 final boss costume. He is also my favorite character to play as, simply because he's a very no-frills fighter. But, now it's time for the bonus dungeon, and just from the short part I played (just one of the dungeon's branches), it's going to be be quite difficult. It's also nice to be able to remove Ludger from the party in the post-game, even if he is still extremely useful, for his Chromatus ability and as long as you have a power combo going, you can just spam Falling Snow and get 150-200,000 damage on a single Chromatus use.
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Jul 7, 2015 15:50
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I did beat Shadow Jiao, but only barely (completely ran out of Life Bottles, and I kept forgetting Ludger needed to be linked with someone to do more than 1 damage with the Chromatus. My stupidity was 50% of the reason for me almost losing that fight). I expect all of the bonus dungeon bosses to at most two-shot any party member, even with 9999 HP (Alvin, my character with the most HP, only has about 7500 max HP, but no one in my party is past level 95 or so). When I lost to a random encounter a little later, I was happy to find out the game just throws you out of the dungeon and tells you to come back later if you lose a fight. Nice to know my 40 minutes of fighting wasn't wasted. Also, I was going to play the game again anyway, so I at least want to get the cool costumes and model changes for New Game+ (I assume those carry over). I know who the final boss of the bonus dungeon is, and I must say I'm quite looking forward to it.
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Jul 7, 2015 16:38
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Also, the fact that the last song that plays over the final boss is a remix of the opening theme is really good. Definitely the kind of music that gets me pumped for a big fight.
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Jul 7, 2015 17:35
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Some of those bosses in Xillia 2's bonus dungeon are just insane. I've beaten Xillia 1 Jude, Xillia 2 Jude, Xillia 2 Milla, Alvin, Elize, Jiao, Presa, Agria, and Julius, and some of them have been pretty simple (Julius, Jude 1, and Milla were all pretty easy), but the really hard ones (Alvin and Elize), have been absurd. When I went into it, I didn't think Elize would be that big a deal, but for a little girl she sure hits like a tank and takes forever to die, not mention the Pow Hammer that'll come flying out 90% of the time when you start a combo of any real length (at least Gaius' Demon Fang is really good to avoid wasting a Power Charge 3). That fight drained pretty much all of my Life Bottles and my couple Omega Elixirs. Alvin, though, I think is the hardest Shadow fight I've fought so far. He just has a wall of HP at his disposal (about 1.2 million on Hard), hits like a mach truck, can cause numerous status effects, is surprisingly very fast when he starts attacking, and can recover about 85,000 on a whim with Guardian Field / Grove. I had a party of Ludger, Milla, Alvin, and Elize for my success, and I pretty much had to spend 90% of the fight as Milla, link with Ludger and have him follow me around, getting Power Charge 3 in short bursts while Shadow Alvin chased after me, and waiting for him to get distracted by either Alvin or Elize and get a combo in. 22 minutes of fighting later, I finally brought him down. I still haven't run into a Tales boss as fun / challenging as the final boss of Xillia 1 on Hard with Double Damage active, but I can see this dungeon getting close to that.
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Jul 12, 2015 18:20
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Endorph posted:i dont like xenosaga, but kosmos and telos make me make this face: I'm pretty sure XS' entire marketing campaign was based on getting that reaction to draw people in.
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Jul 15, 2015 06:33
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In Tales games I usually play as the main character for the first 6 hours or so, then switch to someone else, just for a change of pace. I played Lloyd way too much back when I started playing Symphonia, now I barely ever play as him (Kratos / Zelos / Presea / Regal are my preferred ones). Eternia I liked Farah more than Reid simply because she punches stuff, and in Xillia 1 / 2, I take turns with characters I like to play as (Jude, Milla, Alvin, and Gaius, with a side helping of Ludger). The problem with Ludger to me is I know he has a lot of cool-looking combos, it's just with three different move sets I get overwhelmed what I want to do, and figure the AI can just do it better than I can and make him more interesting. The two exceptions would be Phantasia and Abyss. In Abyss I genuinely like the feel of Luke compared to Guy, and in Phantasia you have Cless as your primary meat shield / attacker for 70% of the game until you get Chester (kind of), and Suzu (also kind of). He's invaluable throughout the entire game since no one in that game can dish out and take damage as well as Cless can. I've never had any fun with mage characters, with the possible exception of Muzet.
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Jul 30, 2015 09:28
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Renoistic posted:Thanks. I suppose that's an improvement to the meaningless time management in E&L. I haven't used the time skip since I'm still kind of paranoid about missing content or sabotaging my progress. How are the battles in Shallie? Battles in Shallie are pretty much like E&L, but the major addition is the Burst Mode. By attacking enemies with area or strong attacks (it goes down if you get attacked, though), you build up the Burst Gauge, you launch a special phase of battle where you do more damage than normal, and later in the game launch special attacks (it's also the only way to launch Super Moves once you get them). It's also pretty neat since every characters get their own special bonus to add to Burst Mode once you get past a certain point in the game. Also, they took a much different route from E&L and made the non-alchemist characters genuinely useful for doing damage, unlike in E&L where the damage output of everyone who isn't Escha or Logy is more than a little lower than those two. I like it, because it always kinda felt cheesy nuking powerful enemies in E&L with powerful bombs and getting it over. Kinda reminds of Ayesha's system where there really wasn't any super-powerful bombs, whereas in E&L you can make items that do like 100,000 with a single Knowledge Book use by the end-game with the right traits. Shallie does have powerful attack items, but they definitely aren't as powerful. Also, the thing with events in E&L is that they're largely based on a character's (hidden) affection levels if they're not at the start of an assignment. Shallie has much the same system, but at least you can see the character's affection level.
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Aug 5, 2015 23:55
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Renoistic posted:Thanks a bunch! I'll probably give Shallie a chance. Which of the two Shallies do you recommend to play as? They're pretty similar in battle, unlike E&L, but if I were forced to answer, I'd say Shallistera. I like her character design a bit more than Shallote, and she gets a bit more useful end-game items, but there's really no substantial difference between them. The biggest difference between the two is which party members you get sooner and what end-game synthesis items you get. Shallie is really not a game meant to be played only once, though, since the early game between the two is actually fairly different.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:49
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True End in Xillia 2 is really satisfying. I'm glad I saved that trophy for the last one before Platinum. Just felt right. Xillia 2's kind of a weird game because while it only has a handful of locations that are totally unique to it and doesn't do a whole lot to differentiate the gameplay , it makes the whole Xillia universe a million times more complicated than the first game presented. It's kind of intimidating the first time through because there's so much exposition and things are that hinted at but never really stated outright, such as Bisley being Ludger and Julius' father, you have multiple dimensions and a million different plot elements that all get crammed together in a relatively short space. Overall, though, definitely worth the price of admittance. Xillia 1 and 2 really got me back into the Tales series after kind of dropping out after I had finished Eternia and never played Vesperia, Hearts, or Innocence. I've already got Zestiria on pre-order, so I'll try to keep up. Oh, and Nova and Muzet are the best characters.
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Aug 15, 2015 06:31
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alcharagia posted:i love ff13 and ff13-2 but i still haven't played lightning returns, that's what i'm ashamed of. I'm in this boat, and while I wouldn't say I "love" either XIII or XIII-2, I don't regret the time I spent with them, even if XIII in particular has no replay value at all. I must get around to Lightning Returns at some point.
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Nov 24, 2015 02:16
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Rascyc posted:I remember the LP of Agarest 2 said it was the most competent but still quite a lot of weird scenes here and there. Yo. I stand by that assessment, but I'm the weird person who actually likes the series, in spite of its obvious stupidity. For Cake Attack, I think: Agarest 1: the longest and most involved of the three. It's actually surprisingly non-linear, with a wide variety of ways things can happen (especially the fifth generation, where there's like a half dozen ways things can go down). It's also probably the hardest of the three games. If I had a gun to my head, I'd actually recommend this one as the one you play. Zero: pretty much the same thing as #1 (in fact, you can play an abridged version of the first one in this game). Aside from being completely linear, virtually the same game with some touched up mechanics, at least from what I remember. Agarest 2: if you didn't particularly like either of the first two games, this is a good choice. Has many of the same problems, but the gameplay is a lot more interactive and less "choose a bunch of attacks, and watch things happen". Personally, I would say the first game is the best, but for virtually anyone else, I'd say this is the best. I mean, all the games are very much made from the same stuff, but I don't think the games are half as bad as they're usually made out to be. They do have some serious problems (such as heavily relying on crafting, when the game doesn't have a beastiary to say where the monsters you need to hunt are), but contrary to popular belief, I don't think they're particularly grindy at all.
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Jan 31, 2016 17:38
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Man, why do I always miss Atelier chat in this thread?  Maybe next time.Also, what kind of game is God Eater? I'll probably get God Eater 2 at some after release, but is it more of an RPG or action game?
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Feb 3, 2016 07:41
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Endorph posted:
Cute line-up, especially two and three. Gonna be keeping an eye on this one.
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Feb 4, 2016 10:03
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Erg posted:Missing the cowboy hat is very easy and it's a very important dress up item I assume I'm pretty late in the game the most recent plot thing was I faced off against Heldalf, the purple-haired girl showed up, and I was told to go to Lohgrin afterwards. Have I missed the Cowboy Hat?
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Feb 7, 2016 08:08
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Eopia posted:The cowboy hat is found and missable near the very beginning of the game so unfortunately you did. drat. Well, I'll find it on my own, but at least it's near the start of the game.
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Feb 7, 2016 08:18
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voltcatfish posted:micaiah is my wife and i'm gonna cosplay as her She is really cute.
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Feb 7, 2016 08:22
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Endorph posted:that's the gag with every single atelier protagonist ever Not Ayesha or Escha!
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Apr 2, 2016 11:38
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Endorph posted:her last name is neuenmeller, which makes up for her normal first name At least it's a German-sounding name.
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Apr 2, 2016 17:39
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And honestly, I *kinda* liked the sheer number / missability of sidequests in Abyss. I mean, not from a completionist standpoint, but for people who don't use guides their first time through the game, they can look at a guide online or ask on a forum and find out "Wow! I really missed a big chunk of the game's content!" and have something to look forward to on the second playthrough.
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Apr 2, 2016 18:58
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Terper posted:Or go "Wow! That's some bullshit!". Either or. An entirely fair response, yes.
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Apr 2, 2016 18:59
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Just curious, what content from Xillia 1 that was cut ended up in Xillia 2?
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Apr 2, 2016 19:35
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Endorph posted:gaius and muzet as party members, elympios in its entirety, some of the backstory stuff for the xillia 1 cast that you see in the alt. dimensions. Huh. Muzet was really the only character I felt should have been in the party but wasn't, and Gaius always gave me "Final boss" vibes right from the OP. And the first game was long enough that maybe that extra stuff added on would have made the game feel bloated, but I can certainly understand wanting to make a second game with a new plot if they had to cut so much out of their vision for the first game
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Apr 2, 2016 19:44
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corn in the bible posted:still pales before the cuts made to zest Clearly I should start following Tales games earlier in production because I have no idea at all what was cut from Zesty.
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Apr 2, 2016 19:50
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I'll always be there for Gust 
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Apr 3, 2016 02:46
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Renoistic posted:Just beat Atalier Shallie with Lotte and saw the two endings. That was cute True Ending is best ending.
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Apr 5, 2016 07:50
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voltcatfish posted:I already am although I can't say i'm a huge fan of mimi (who I am assume is totori's gay pairing) She is. It's more or less confirmed in Meruru. And yeah, Mimi had a rough landing in Totori, but I thought she improved a lot in Meruru. voltcatfish posted:are the two shallies as gay for each other as I assume? True Ending is the gayest ending, if you want to read it that way.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:03
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voltcatfish posted:tbh I've been told the dusk trilogy is significantly better, but you wouldn't want to abandon arland, would you? In my opinion, it certainly is. I just like the aesthetic and gameplay of the Dusk games much more.
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Apr 6, 2016 03:16
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voltcatfish posted:wow meruru's outfit is cute as f and I need it Just get the rainbow cape.
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Apr 18, 2016 19:14
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Mysticblade posted:Compile Heart did the Agarest War games which were multigenerational RPGs. From what I've seen of them, they're pretty bad and generally a disappointment. I don't think it's an SRPG but it is anime fanservicey as hell, I think the LP of one of the games that happened here had to cut some bathhouse minigame? Yo. The scenes or other content I cut from covering in the LP were me exercising my "good taste" discretion. There's only a handful of scenes in 2 I would consider as brushing up against the line, but if I personally were concerned about a scene's appropriateness on the forums, I didn't cover it.
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Jun 1, 2021 10:02
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Endorph posted:agarest war is actually pretty short but there's an early game tutorial map where you have to kill a rock and it takes like 20 minutes for some reason Well, it's short in the "~20 hours if you skip cutscenes" department but the original game at least is intended to be played multiple times not only for the decent number of alternate routes it has but also for the fact it's very unlikely you'll stumble into the game's actual ending by accident on your first playthrough, because a lot of things need to happen pretty specifically to get to the post-game.
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Jan 12, 2023 02:47
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