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    Tales of Berseria is the latest game in Bandai-Namco's Tales Of RPG franchise. Like its predecessor Tales of Zestiria, it's available on Steam and PS4. It is available for both platforms on January 26th. A demo is now out for both platforms. What's it about? Berseria is set 1000 years before Tales of Zestiria in the Kingdom of Midgand, which covers the continent Zestiria was on as well as several surrounding islands. The kingdom is plagued by a disease called Daemonblight which turns creatures and even people into bloodthirsty daemons. The blight is only held in check by Artorius Collbrande and his army of Exorcists, called the Abbey, who control magical spirits called malakhim to fight the daemons directly as well as keep the kingdom's lands in an iron grip of control and surveillance for the populace's own safety. For enabling and creating the Abbey, Artorius is regarded as a hero, and the people trust him implicitly to protect them from the constant terror of the daemons. You are Velvet Crowe, Artorius' sister-in-law and a daemon with a monstrous arm that eats anything. Velvet blames Artorius for killing her brother, and she'll do anything to make him pay with his life. What's the gameplay like? Berseria's Liberation-LMBS builds on the foundation of Graces and Zestiria's, with these key new mechanics:
Everything is in a combo now? What if I don't want to have to go through the chain to use an arte? It's not in the demo, which seriously sucks, but around 40% of the way through the game you will unlock the first "arena". Beat it to gain the ability to set artes to shortcuts you can use freely any time (L1+one of the four arte buttons, so you can set up to four). This is a prequel to Zestiria? Yes, but you don't need to be at all familiar with Zestiria to enjoy it. Certain names - stories, locations, objects, and some of the malak characters - appear so that Berseria can give them some more information or background. These items are generally contextualized fine on their own, though some people may find it interesting to know where they are in 1000 years and how they got there. With very few exceptions, Tales of Berseria stands up just fine on its own as a game. There's also an anime retelling Zestiria's story, which it's generally recommended you watch instead if you feel the need to. I hated Zestiria! Why would I play this? Because Berseria is an at times seemingly deliberate attempt to address complaints with Zestiria. The complaints with combat (suicidal AI, boneheaded camera, fusion mechanics) are all gone, replaced with a simpler but more dynamic system that also builds on its innovations. The equipment and leveling systems are massively simplified. The PCs are all different and individually fun to play. The story is deeper, the characters are well-drawn (and plentiful! Berseria has a sprawling gallery of great friendly and minor NPCs), and the direction and tone of the plot is completely different. The story even addresses some of Zestiria's issues itself. Almost everyone I've seen who didn't like Zestiria has been satisfied with Berseria. ...but I loved Zestiria! Why would I play this? Cards on the table: if you loved the item crafting, I can't help you. Berseria doesn't depend on Zestiria, but if you're looking for it, it's a great expansion and exploration of Zestiria's lore. The story is an alternate perspective on Zestiria's central themes, all those references show you the hidden history behind many of Zestiria's unanswered questions, and there's a lot of material that shows you how Zestiria's world came about and what was going on in the background between them. Gameplay is still a little like Zestiria, but with some things fixed or updated usually to make things either more varied (Soul capacity) or flexible (arte settings, character switching). It's fast, fluid, and dynamic. You'd probably also be into it if you liked Tales of Graces. It's more Tales, and good Tales, if that's a thing you want.  I'm playing on Steam and my allies are barely attacking! This has been fixed. Update your game. I don't like Velvet's outfit! How soon can I change it? You get a regular set of villager clothes for her after the tutorial dungeon. I heard the game was censored! A single scene involving the graphic murder of a child with a sword was altered to show the graphic murder of a child with magic, for ratings reasons. I heard the game has DRM! The Steam release is protected by Denuvo. Does it have Japanese voices? Yes. Best girl?  Costumes?     Post your own! Caphi fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Feb 4, 2017 |
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Jan 10, 2017 19:33
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Official trailers (I might use this space for more stuff later): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EKKW2g1gP0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KByskbL9bsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9swy2ngIvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taHrD8qb75E
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Jan 10, 2017 19:38
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Anyway I'm also excited for this demo because I've never played a Tales with a mouse and keyboard before. How was Zestiria control-wise?
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Jan 10, 2017 20:57
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Momomo posted:Not really sure how I feel about the arte system. Honestly kind of dislike it since it seems like I can't use specific spells whenever I want to, and instead have to use them in order. English PR has been confused about the difference between Souls and SG since the very beginning so I wouldn't be surprised if the tutorials had hosed that up as well. I haven't seen the tutorials myself but it might be worth adding a bit to the OP for it? Caphi fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Jan 10, 2017 |
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Jan 10, 2017 21:33
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Momomo posted:Potentially, yeah. Also I'm pretty sure it said you use the finisher for Velvet's after using an arte, and not at the end of your combo, which makes it sound a lot less useful. It's not wrong about that, it's just clear as mud. If you're (ugh) Therionized and you have four Souls, you can do as many four or less combos as you want as long as you still have HP. But if you ever do four chains and then press the input to do another arte, it goes into the finisher. This didn't seem too unclear in the Japanese but, you know, modern Tales help text, I guess.
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Jan 10, 2017 21:52
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Momomo posted:Edit: the first tutorial calls what you pick up spirits, and the battle system says Souls. While that's my mistake, they probably should have used SG. Jesus. That shouldn't even be a translation thing, they're called ソウル (literally Soul in English). The terminology is (like the distinction between Combo and Chain) not necessarily the best thought out but to my memory perfectly consistent in the way they actually use it (e.g. gain Soul, lose Soul, steal Soul, spend SG, recover SG). You could get confused if you're really not paying attention, but a translator should, uh, be paying attention. I should stop complaining until I see the text for myself though. Tae posted:I miss them actually showing how much SC I have. I can't really eyeball when to use the low SC move over the high one. I don't think Zestiria showed you SC? The meter was just always capped at 100 and scored in quarters (meaning 25 SC), which is essentially what SG is (each Soul is 30 SG).
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Jan 10, 2017 22:04
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There's also that thing from Zestiria where you can start a spell and then uplevel it during the cast to make it easier to set and select spells. Personally, my caster strategy was actually two buttons for artes and two buttons for spells. Eizen, Magilou, and Laphicet all have roughly two separate main spell tracks - wind/earth, fire/water, and void/element. Eizen's not really a caster as such but his martial artes are so heavy and purpose-built that it was easier to act like he was after a point. (And, uh, Flash Step -> Ditch -> Draconic Drive is good enough a lot of the time. I don't think Ditch is in the demo which is sad because Eizen plays very differently with and without it, in my experience.) The shortcut slots I used for utility and such. With Eleanor, I just played full Pascal. It was amazing. I love Eleanor.
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Jan 10, 2017 22:16
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So this part is Rangetsu style, right?
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Jan 11, 2017 00:50
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No, the demo doesn't save anything. It's frankly a serious problem considering you have to set your entire grid back up every time you start a new session to gently caress around. It's not a huge deal in the game itself but it adds up if you have to do it repeatedly.
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Jan 11, 2017 01:13
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https://twitter.com/gtcaphi/status/819008557316083713 Is this happening to anybody else or is my screen just hosed somehow?
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Jan 11, 2017 03:37
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The demo didn't make me feel better about the translation being super rough but it wasn't a total shitshow. VA hot takes: Bienfu is terrible, Phi is terrible, Rokurou is good, Eizen should sound more different from Rokurou, and everyone should be doing more of a shtick, except for Bienfu, but especially Magilou. Dubious contextualization for a lot of incidental voice clips (Divide Pain, Aqua Split) and the end-of-battle quotes are, tragically, a mess. I still hate "therionize."
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Jan 11, 2017 04:50
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 PSA: Guarding doesn't decrease your SG. Most of the time it replenishes it. The Japanese help says that SG is "greatly depleted" when your attack is blocked by the enemy. So yeah, tutorials are still poo poo.
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Jan 11, 2017 05:02
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Endorph posted:just use jp voices if you dislike the dub, the jp cast is great even if you don't know japanese and they've subbed just about everything. There's a whole section in the OP about how Berseria is constantly trying to patch Zestiria up retroactively or apologizing for how much there wasn't in it. I'm trying to keep it somewhat positive so I didn't want to include all the Baba drama, which is a mess anyway. There's been enough whining and conspiracy-theorizing and soothsaying of the New Fukaya Order in the Tales thread, and if anyone wants to do more of it I'm personally fine with it but I think that's a better place for it. Caphi fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jan 11, 2017 |
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Jan 11, 2017 16:20
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Anyway I went back to my clear-and-a-half save yesterday after finishing the demo because I feel like I should replay this game since it's about to come out but I don't feel like buying it again yet. It wasn't totally night and day, but there were definitely some things I really missed in the demo.
Caphi fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jan 11, 2017 |
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Jan 11, 2017 17:02
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How is there a Bienfu plush but no Grimoire.
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Jan 11, 2017 23:13
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Momomo posted:Apparently it does have that system, but it was a skill you had to unlock in Zesty. I assume that's the case here too, or the spells you get aren't part of the same line. You get it for shop level 6. In general: don't, for many reasons, play this game with mouse and keyboard. It's not very well thought through.
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Jan 13, 2017 02:43
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:You mean, in order for casters to be able to chain arts into other arts (basically, to be functional), you need to buy a LOT of stuff at stores first? Just stores in general, I guess, because if I remember right, Zestiria tracked each shop's rank separately. No. What? I meant the thing that lets you hold a spell and then uplevel it into the higher level spell in its line in its place. You can chain whatever artes and spells you want if you set them on the grid, it's kind of the base system.
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Jan 13, 2017 03:53
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Endorph posted:i thought this was the tales series thread. I'll allow it. I assume Magilou's outfit is actually meant to look like a circus costume, which works. I bought her Arche, though.
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Jan 13, 2017 21:48
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That's it. I'm adding "there's an arte ball in the full game" to the OP.
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Jan 13, 2017 23:03
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I didn't call it an arte ball, I explained it.
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Jan 13, 2017 23:06
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Endorph posted:honestly it kind of pans out that way in berseria, too. I'm pretty sure I had the arte ball by the time I got to the point the demo is at. You can get it immediately before where the demo is at, but it's not completely portable because the demo isn't a snapshot of the artes you have at that stage/level, it's a sampling of artes from all across the level range. That said, I also want to say I got the thing at an appropriate time, because I remember I was recently starting to figure out how to dedicate first-stage slots to artes like Form 2 and Serpent Burial and once I unlocked those slots I set utility artes to those instead.
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Jan 17, 2017 03:46
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Apparently you can do things in combat to boost your "souls" to 4 or 5, but I'm not quite sure how. Doing enough damage with power hits? You gain Souls by:
quote:I know that language drift is a thing and this game is set long before Zesty, but normally games ignore different languages and language drift. So is there some reason why this game uses "Malakim instead od Seraphim and Therion instead of Hellion? It just seems like an odd thing to change words for two games set in the same universe. Short answer: yes, there's a reason. (For the malak one, at least. Not sure about daemons. Therions are a type of daemon. That part's way less confusing in Japanese!) quote:By the way, is the localization-butchered Rengoku "dick joke" victory quote the one which ends with Magilou saying "and I can make mine as long as I want"? Because if so, good news, I got it. It's not that one. Caphi fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Jan 18, 2017 |
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Jan 18, 2017 05:26
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Endorph posted:It's the Rangetsu style one. The translation is a little... out of sorts? Never mind, you lost me. The joke I remember is just a non-sequitur where they're giving Rokurou poo poo after he says "and that's Rangetsu style!" by saying "is this Rangetsu style? Is this Rangetsu style?" They say ランゲツ流 perfectly regularly.
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Jan 18, 2017 05:32
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Endorph posted:maybe i just misremembered the lines? did you get that win quote in the us demo? I haven't, but I remember it in Japanese. Eleanor's line is "so from here to here, that's Rangetsu style, right?" Rokurou's is "what exactly do you people think Rangetsu style is?" e: found a Japanese wiki quote:ロクロウ：これが嵐月流だ！
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Jan 18, 2017 05:34
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Tae posted:The dick joke is the one where he's holding his hands in a formation that universally means a dick metaphor. An arte's stun power decays if you keep using it in quick succession. Tales has been using actual damage decay for about as long as it's let you spam artes, so it seems straightforward to me.
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Jan 18, 2017 05:38
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Dunno, I never bought the perfect guide which I think has detailed mechanical explanations for stuff. All I know is I don't remember ever having problems stunning in the long run.
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Jan 18, 2017 05:43
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I found a video of the English win quotes to go with my wiki and jeez, a bunch of them are just totally messed up. Sorry, that includes the, uh, dick joke.
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Jan 18, 2017 05:49
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa24QR7eoNc Half an hour of early game footage around Loegres. Shows a bunch of system stuff like items, sailing, accessories, and minigames. Caphi fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Jan 20, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 17:57
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Posting in a Tales game thread for a Tales game that's good. It feels good.
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Jan 24, 2017 05:55
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Super No Vacancy posted:first dlc is up and its a set of "Japanese, Fairy, and Menagerie Costumes" Huh, that's out of order. Sucks to be y'all, the first Japanese catalog had the pirate outfits which all own to a one.
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Jan 25, 2017 01:25
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There should be a setting for it if it bothers you.
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Jan 25, 2017 14:37
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CharlestheHammer posted:This is my first tales game and the game itself is much better at telling you what's going on. I think the demo was more interested in being a sample than an introduction, if that makes sense. It worked fine for me, a person who had been following the game for the entirety of 2016, but not really for someone who is just thrown into the mechanics. I would have put in fewer artes in total and an arte set that was more in line with the early-mid game instead of a spread from beginning to end, especially since the early-ish artes they skipped drastically underrepresent Rokurou and Eizen IME. Possibly thrown in second Break Souls to better show how the system's headline feature plays on the whole.
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Jan 25, 2017 21:40
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Endorph posted:Magilou is the best character in the game. But seriously, I have a reflex action against tone-killing wacky dark horse "lol saving the game" characters and I like Magilou as a comedy bit and as a character. She owns. She's not my favorite because she's up against a lot of stiff competition, is all.
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Jan 26, 2017 07:02
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Yeah, that's the thing. Her wackiness doesn't feel manufactured. It's an affect on the part of the character that is a bit, but also makes sense and gets taken seriously. Like, this is a problem I have with Zestiria. Lailah's affect is at total odds with her actions and Edna's with her passivity, so I can't take them seriously as character humor because it feels like the characters are going out of their way to do bits. But Magilou's messed up comedy routines and her cryptic riddles are parts of a whole character made with self-awareness. Same with Pascal, really. Pascal's affect is obnoxious at times but she's a tremendous goon and doesn't understand people outside the context of her enthusiasm and Graces actually understands that at times, and so I appreciate her shtick in concert with appreciating her arc.
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Jan 26, 2017 07:27
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Because the gag reflex against wacky sociopaths is assuming they are going to be doing irrelevant, destructive things constantly purely for wackiness reasons and getting comedy passes from the writers, and I don't believe any of that is true about Magilou. Not to indulge my other reflex of blaming translations all the time, but I'd like more data to figure out if genericizing/losing some of Magilou's overt weirdness is having an effect here. We JP players didn't mind her dub but both of us already liked her.
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Jan 26, 2017 07:59
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Ciaphas posted:Steam decided to delete my demo since I bought the game, even though the game's not out yet. Stupid steam. Guess I could download the demo again outside of Steam or something but I guess that's just how Steam handles demos. I still have both my demo and game on my PS4.
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Jan 26, 2017 08:03
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at this point
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Tae posted:Is there a zesitira-like system for sidequests to tell you what's available? Active sidequests show up as the green ! icons on the map screen. Possible sidequests show up as the green ! icons on the map; I haven't found any better way than flipping through all the maps I can travel to looking for them. slev posted:I keep getting some skit with Eizen and Rokurou talking about Rokurou being unarmed which makes no sense at all wdarkk posted:It's a goof-up, it's supposed to be talking about Eizen being unarmed. The post-combat skits are just not well done. A couple of them like that one are obviously off but the ones that bug me more are the ones that have been aggressively edited to sound fine and even be independently amusing but are way off base. Rokurou's "sorry if I cut you" and the Rokurou/Eleanor range bit are big examples.
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Jan 26, 2017 17:53
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The Colonel posted:sorey isn't the problem with zestiria so much as the plot being so unfinished that nobody really gets any kind of development and nothing really happens and also the combat is super finicky The frustrating thing is that the game keeps gesturing at interesting questions, mainly through Symonne but also Alisha and a few sidequests, and Sorey and pals just go "I'm doing what I want to do!  "
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Jan 26, 2017 21:50
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Failboattootoot posted:Quoting myself hoping for an answer! Cooking skill is incredibly important to me! Your skills upgrade again through level 20 the same way your level 1 skill upgraded at level 8. Also I think there are skits at 25. TheKingofSprings posted:Endorph Caphi teach me how to be good with Eleanor Uh idk I'm not actually good at her, I just think she's fun. I can't really explain what I do beyond "spell combo a lot" so here's me being bad at video games for a while. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTHLr-I-mo0 NG+, Chaos, and I gently caress up several times.
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Jan 27, 2017 04:59
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Endorph posted:i think eizen is actually better than velvet once you get a bit into the game. velvet is a paper shredder when it comes to bosses but eizen completely demolishes random encounters with just ditch > draconic drive It's called "Eleventh Hour" now. I'm infinitely grumpy it's not "Last Ditch." e: Eizen demolishes random encounters not just with DDrive spam but also because he can choose to be a fully powered normal spellcaster instead (as opposed to Eleanor who is a Pascal spellcaster).
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Jan 27, 2017 05:13
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