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obaby-me · 4 years

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Please Stay

Author’s Note: This is raffle prize fic for @socially-awkward-lvl-over9000! Romance and angst, just as requested. Hope your heart breaks, but in the best way. (This is a continuation of the Anxiety headcanon found here: https://obaby-me.tumblr.com/post/617140937244786688/an-mc-that-has-really-bad-anxiety-but-likes, and https://obaby-me.tumblr.com/post/617232394679894016/anxiety-anon-here-i-love-your-headcanons-they)

When you first came to the Devildom, Levi wasn’t exactly thrilled to have you, to be quite honest. Another normie in his house! Just what he needed, more people to judge him.

And then, Lucifer assigned you to his room! His room! Lucifer didn’t give him any choice in the matter. Not unless he wanted to be hung upside down from the chandeliers for the entirety of your stay. And you’d still be in his room.

In the beginning, you spent your time curled up in his room by the tank, just watching him. Sometimes you’d open your mouth like you wanted to say something, and then immediately you’d clam it shut. It was unnerving to have you stare, but the silence was worse. Especially when he realized it was because you were too frightened to talk.

In his own awkward way, he tried to make conversation with you. And in your own awkward way, you reciprocated. It was a slow going pace, but that was okay. He needed that as much as you, as you two slowly adjusted and became more comfortable together. There was no pressure to impress, no judgement on your part for how nervous he could be—you were in the same boat!

Slowly your conversations began to pick to pick up speed, as commonalities between you emerged. You had a love of the deep blue, that was why you were in his room after all. You took a liking to Henry, and for your respect for his fish, he in turn respected your narwhal, Sparkle. You weren’t quite an otaku, but you certainly weren’t a normie either. You loved anime and you loved karaoke, and you loved singing anime openings and endings in karaoke!

You were a good listener, and never minded when he’d go on and on about his passions. And in the rare instances that you’d get enthused to share yours, he didn’t mind giving you his utmost attention. He rather liked it. You were as in love with things you cared about as he was about his—you understood him in a way his brothers never could.

As you grew closer as friends, the closer you seemed to sit. As days passed, you inched your way closer from across the room to cuddled up beside him as he raided. And he was surprised to find that he was quite comfortable with that. He preferred it.

And then, you started sleeping in his room! It started with naps, and then it became accidental sleepovers where you’d pass out during late night marathons, and then, you just sort stayed and he never asked you to leave. Soon, it just became the new normal. And Levi liked that. He liked you—really liked you, more and more each day.

But he found that it wasn’t just him you were becoming more comfortable with. You were slowly opening up to all his brothers as well, and soon his room because a lounge. Even Lucifer was showing up. Coming by to constantly check in to ask if you’re doing well, and if you’ve eaten, and if you need help with school work. Menial chatter. All the time.

Mammon was an absolute nightmare, barging in at all times without a knock, without a text for warning. Obnoxiously loud, constantly startling him, but worst of all you.

Each and every time he’d have to hold you while you shook and came down from the shock, as he hissed at Mammon to shut the hell up. Bickering in hushed voices until Mammon would huff and get in beside you to chat with you about the scummy scams he pulled. Levi would never understand why you put up with him. He wasn’t worth your time.

But he’d bring you little things, with narwhals or little sea creatures on it and you’d smile and laugh. Levi hated when he did.

Asmo was a frequent visitor, but he never stayed long. He’d come in practically singing to show you catalogues of items to decorate your room. He was so eager to get out of here. And every time you gave him just a little more to add, the more Levi’s heart seemed to drop. Did you really want to get out of here that bad?

Beel and Belphie were definitely a pair he was becoming to despise. The way they draped over you when they’d come to visit! While they were the quietest of the brothers, Levi thought they were worst. To have them come in here and put their hands on you! It made Levi’s blood boil. Belphie curled up into your side as if he were a cat, and Beel sitting on your other side as he munched on treats. And you never fought them on it. You just quietly accepted it, carrying on as if this was becoming your new normal.

But even Beel and Belphie didn’t compare to Satan. Levi was beginning to hate him most of all.

He stops by pretty rarely unlike the rest of his brothers, and when he did, it was always for just an hour or so drink a little tea and eat some biscuits and some light studying—sometimes just to lend a book with you with eared pages and sections he wanted you to read.

Of his brothers, the fact that he was hardly tracking into his room should have been something Levi would be thankful to him for.

But the problem wasn’t him coming into his room. It was taking you out.

Out of Levi’s room, out into the Devildom to libraries, restaurants, shopping centers. Levi offers to take you instead, and he was able to take you out bustling otaku dream strip of anime themed cafes and stores specializing in manga, and figurines, and the arcades—it was the absolute best of the best of the Devildom for any otaku!

But the crowds, and the chatter of so many seemed to overwhelm you. He hadn’t quite planned well enough for this, and so he took a teary you home, feeling rather guilty.

Instead, you now took trips with Satan, strolling through Devildom on perfect itineraries with few crowds, sharing parfaits and cakes. Levi seethed every time the two of you went out.

As the weeks passed, he began to notice more and more that you visited less and less. You still came by, but he found himself feeling somehow lonelier than he’d ever been before meeting you.

He asked you once, when your phone rang off, and you stood to leave, “where are you going?”

“To see Satan! He’s teaching me magic.”

You smiled so brightly, the nervous smiles he knew when you’d first come, just blooming. And not for him, not with him. You were off and out the door.

What broke his heart, the final straw, was the morning he saw you coming out of Satan’s room. Rubbing your eyes tiredly as you traversed the hall to your own to get ready for class. “W-what was she doing in your room!” He wailed.

Satan only smirked. “Nothing at all. She just happened to fall asleep while studying is all.”

He wished he could say he was angry. Angry enough to punch that smug grin of his little brother’s face.

But instead all he felt was an overwhelming weight on his chest—crushing his lungs.

Satan must have been expecting a fight out of him, and he could see his brother’s brows furrow when the brawl never came. “Hey, Levi—” Satan began, reaching out a hand.

Levi was quick to smack it away, and trudge back to his only haven, and lock himself away. He skipped school, much to Lucifer’s disappointment. He ignored texts, and then calls, and his door remained locked, even to you.

But it hurt being in his room. It hurt to think of you. And to think of how much he’d liked you. Of all things he wanted to say and then didn’t. And then of how you abandoned him for his brother—and he couldn’t really blame you. When weighed against Satan, who in their right mind would choose the gross otaku?

Somehow he was more alone in the one occupant room than he had ever been before.

At dinner, when he did not appear, Lucifer came to speak with him. Levi ignored his knocking and requests to open the door, until the prideful avatar was threatening to break it down. Complying, Levi opened the door but a crack, but it was enough for Lucifer to see red, puffy eyes and cheeks stained with trails. Any anger Lucifer had died in his throat.

“Just leave me alone,” Levi whispered. “Please.”

“Levi, why did you skip school today?” Lucifer looked as stern as ever, but his voice was laced with concern.

“I—I don’t want to talk about it.”

There was a pause as Lucifer considered his answer. “How long do you intend to be absent?”

“Until it stops hurting.”

Worry flashed in his eldest brother’s eyes. “Are you injured?”

“No.” Levi said with a finality that Lucifer did not question.

“I will check with you again tomorrow.”

It was three days before anyone other than Lucifer saw or heard from Levi again. He’d been in his room living on the snacks he had stashed in his room.

“Oh! L-Levi!” You called to his as he was raiding the fridge.

He froze, blood running cold.

“You’ve finally emerged,” you tentatively teased as you approached.

“Yeah.” He muttered, avoiding your gaze as he filled his arms with anything not tagged with Beelzebub.

“So, are you uhm, playing a newly released game? Maybe, watching a marathon?” You asked, your voice coming closer.

Quickly he moved away, go the long way around the island counter and towards the door. “Y-yeah, something like that.” He mumbled as he strode past.

“Oh,” you whispered sounding disappointed. “D-do you think maybe I could join you?” Your voice wavered, and he knew, he just knew you were staring into his back with those large doe eyes, and if Sparkle was with you, probably fidgeting with its little horn.

He couldn’t say no to you. It was easier with a door closed, or through a phone. But not like this, out in the open.

Not when you latched on to his arm, and forced him to look down at you.

Damnit.

You watched him play newly download DLC, commenting every so often, cracking jokes, like you used to.

And he let you.

You fed him chips so he didn’t have to let go of his controllers, just like you used to.

And he let you.

You pulled a blanket around you both, and you cuddled into his side, just like you used to.

And he let you.

But it didn’t feel the same. His heart still maintained that flustered flutter that you pulled from him with your every action, but every beat stung.

As the night wound down and he watched the credits roll, you gently ran your hand up and down his arm, a gesture meant to soothe him as you asked a painful question.

“Levi, can you tell me what happened? I mean, it’s okay i-if you don’t want to.”

He couldn’t find a way to answer and fully express himself.

He thought he was special to you. Just like he thought you were special to him.

He thought that you liked him and his room, and his bed.

He left you in silence, during which you fidgeted. “I—I’m sorry,” you whispered, and he felt you detach from him, shifting as if to stand.

His hand was quick to catch yours, faster than his brain had thought it through. You stared at him rather wide-eyed.

“Don’t go.” He pleaded. “Stay here.”

“O-okay,” you promised with a nod and a small smile. “I’ll stay a little longer.”

“H-how long is a little?” Levi shyly asked.

“Well, I have a magic lesson with Satan—”

His arms were suddenly around you and he yanked you into him, his face buried into your shoulder. “Stay here.” He asked again, his voice wavering. “Don’t go to him. Stay with me.”

“L-Levi?” You questioned, nervously, your hand gently rubbing his back. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t want you to go.” He choked. “I don’t want to have you leave me and go to Satan’s and stay in his room. I don’t want you to choose him over me. I don’t want you to love him. I want you to love me.”

He could feel you warm beneath him. “L-love?” Your voice shook, and your hands stilled.

His heart was sinking slowly into his gut with dread, but his arms refused to loosen, as he tucked his head further into your neck. “Please,” was all he could think to say. “Please stay. Stay with me.”

#obey me #obey me leviathan #leviathan x reader #fic #i'm so sorry it took so long #i re-wrote this like three times #i couldn't decide how i wanted levi to act #finally decided sulky #was the way to go

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princepestilence · 3 years

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2020′s “worth it” things.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that 2020 was a uniquely bad year for everyone. There��s a lot of things that made this year even harder, though, not least of all the fact it was coming off the back of 2019, which was a deeply difficult year for me in many ways. I went into 2020 with high hopes for getting back on track with my life after being sick for so long, and things... did not go as anticipated.

All this said, as I started compiling this list, I realised that despite everything else this year had going on, an incredible amount of really good, life-changing things happened for me too, and I want to celebrate that, so here it is: 2020 was Surprisingly Good, and Here’s Why.

In no particular order:

health! I had surgery earlier this year and it fixed basically everything: the pain and nausea I was living with every day is gone now, and I feel so, so much better. I’ve been able to start getting back into a more normal kind of life throughout this year and hopefully, this won’t ever be a problem again. I’ll be able to live pretty normally going forward (apart from check-up tests now and then). I can’t ever take up kickboxing again, which is kind of disappointing, but in the scheme of things, that’s okay. This is a load-bearing change and because of it, so much else has been/will be possible for me, and I am so glad.

holiday in Melbourne! Clair and I went on our first proper holiday together, before the plague. It was so much fun and it’s hard to believe that happened this year: the past is really feeling like a different country right now. But hopefully we’ll be able to do something like this again before too long, because I absolutely loved it. We saw a gallery, the aquarium, went to the theatre and night markets, swam in a pool by ourselves some fourteen stories above the city with a thunderstorm swirling outside the glass walls, and I’d love to do it all again.

editing work. The project I’ve been working on has been finished and sent off for publishing, and I’ve been given a new contract and a new project, which is very nice. It feels great to be building up my resume--and it’s a huge compliment to be rehired so many times over. I’ve also been doing some editing work on the side, for various ttrpgs, etc. and I’m keen to do more of that too.

summer session teaching. I taught a summer session at the beginning of this year (back when the fires were happening), and now I’m teaching a different summer session again now. I really didn’t think I would ever teach again, after the collapse of academia this year, so it’s been delightful to have this chance. I’m hoping next year I’ll be able to do more, somehow.

written over 70k+ words. I didn’t expect to be able to write nearly as much as I have this year, but I’m thrilled. It’s so nice to do and I’m looking forward to doing more of the same next year as well.

got an apartment!! Finally! It only took about two deeply exhausting, stressful months where neither of us could support hobbies or mental health or general well-being because we were too busy trying to keep afloat while trying to find somewhere to live. But the important thing is that it’s done now. We get the keys in four days. I can’t wait.

reconnected with a great friend. Last year I really struggled to maintain a lot of friendships. Being sick took most of my energy and attention, and sapped a lot of the cheerfulness and enthusiasm I wanted to have in relationships. This year, I’ve done a lot better, and I’ve been able to reconnect with a friend I’ve missed in a really positive, excellent way that brings me joy daily.

joined a writing group! Connected to above, I’m now part of a regular weekly writing group of cool, talented people, and I’m hyped. It’s so fun and it feels so healthy to have this regular contact and conversation. It’s very much what I was missing and looking for, and I hope post-plague I’ll be able to find something similar in person too, so that I can have a local and international writing circle to bounce ideas and workshop with.

ran a Dread game! It went so well and I had a ton of fun. I overprepared by a lot, but it was a terrific learning experience, and I’m itching to do it again soon. I’ve also got my hands on Monster of the Week (and am apparently getting Blades in the Dark as a late Christmas present from my little brother), and I’m very keen to get more into GMing, because I think this is where my passion lies.

played D&D! And I’m loving it. I got hugely pulled into Dimension 20 this year and also finally played at the table properly for a campaign. I’m still very baby but it’s something I can definitely see myself getting into, and I hope we’re able to resume weekly games in the new year. I was very nervous before starting, but I’m getting my confidence more and more as we play.

didn’t reconnect with some people from the past. At the beginning of 2019, I ended things with some friends I used to have, and it was hard to get to that year anniversary. Throughout the year there were some major temptations to reach out again, but I didn’t and I’m proud of that. They weren’t good relationships to be in, and I’m in a healthier, happier place without them.

saw Six the Musical! And it was so great. I really wish I could have seen it again before the plague struck. I’m hoping it’ll come around again in the next few years, because once really wasn’t enough.

I got a triple helix piercing! I’ve wanted this for years but this year I actually went and got it. I really love it. I’ve still got the plain titanium posts in while it heals 100% but I’m going to get hoops and fun ones soon and start switching them in and out for the thrill of it.

backed some super exciting stuff on kickstarter! Kind of a weird entry but I’m so excited for it. There’s a gorgeous tarot deck coming from an artist whose work I’ve been following since I started on tumblr, and then Wanderhome is coming out about midway next year and I am very hyped to try it. We’re going to live that Beatrix Potter fantasy.

saw my family. Earlier in the year I caught up with some cousins I haven’t seen since we were like twelve, and then for Christmas I saw the other side of my family, who I haven’t seen since Christmas 2018. It was really nice and I’m hoping we can keep in contact more, especially because my nieces and nephews are growing up so fast now.

great year for games. Not really anything to do with me, but something I’m very grateful for. I’ve had such a good time with the titles that have come out this year: Hades, Monster Camp, Spiritfarer, Animal Crossing, Pokemon Sword, Megaquarium DLC, etc. Truly kept me sane (enough) at certain points. My switch also got fixed and returned to me recently, which is also very cool and good.

started the program. Probably the single biggest, most impactful change this year, apart from surgery. It takes up a lot of my time and brainspace and energy, but it’s a lot better than the alternative, which did the same but in an evil way. I’ll be returning to it officially in exactly two weeks, and mostly how I feel about that is optimistic and happy. I’m excited to be well, which is an interesting feeling and mindset. I want to be doing better and I’m proud of myself for everything I’ve done this year to work towards that, because at no point so far has any of it been easy or fun.

roller skating! I went roller skating (with Clair) for the first time in about ten years, and I didn’t stack it even once. There were a few close calls but it was a great time and I’m keen to go back and get good at it again. I’ve missed it all these years, and I think it’s going to be a super fun date night going forward.

#2020 resolutions

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nokikissa · 5 years

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Whooooooooo did it, beat the story of borderlands 3 now. It took me 42 hours but I think I got still like some of those fight wave of enemies arena things I could do but I’ll look into that later, I did all the crew challenges and side mission outside of those type of things.

Story and character wise it was a bit of a mixed bag, there were a lot of things I like and couple things I really didn’t like, but all in all I had fun, the gameplay was excellent, and most likely I will play it again, to co-op with buddies or to try out different vault hunters.

Putting more in-depth thoughts about some story and character things under the cut, extreme major spoiler warning as I’ll be talking about like big plot moments and such.

I quite like most of the new characters they introduced in this, I’ve only played Fl4k and loved them, but from everything I’ve seen I feel like I’ll love the other new vault hunters as well. The Calypso twins were delightful villains, very entertaining but also like I couldn’t wait to get to kill them lmao. And then there’s like Ava, I loved her and her relationship with Maya that was good stuff. And Wainwright I quite liked as well, and I was very happy that Hammerlock finally has a boyfriend and is in a good relationship. And also Lorelei and Clay were both good too, tho I probably like Lorelei more of those haha.

How it handled some old characters tho.... That’s a bit mixed. Like I liked a lot of them: Lilith, Eliie, Tannis, Maya, Zer0, Sir Hammerlock.... Even Rhys! They got Rhys down surprisingly well in my opinion! Obviously he was bit more comedic and doofy but like it was still reminiscent of how Rhys acted in like comedic moments of tales, I could recognize where they got his personality from and so on, it was fine!

...Which makes it even more baffling that they fucked up Vaughn so completely that with Vaughn it feels like the writer maybe got a super vague description of the character at best which had been passed down through multiple people twisting it around like a game of broken telephone. I just don’t understand where they pulled some character traits for him at all.... During the game I tried my best to ignore his existence, which worked well for a long while until the game made you go back to pandora and made him story relevant again, god every time he spoke my reaction was like “please shut up...”

But. I knew that was coming. The Commander Lilith DLC and promotional pics and so on made it clear ahead of time that I would not like Borderlands 3 Vaughn. I had had time to go through the stages of grief and resign to being all well I’m gonna be one of those salty tales fans and keep on drawing content of like tales Vaughn and ignore the rest of the canon for him.

So anyway I was really liking the story during like the Promethea Atlas Vs. Maliwan Arc actually, Rhys and Zer0 and their interactions were fun, Katagawa was an enjoyable villain as well, I just hope the fandom don’t make him annoying to me... So yeah that arc was good and fun.... and then the Promethea Vault happened. I am still a bit on the fence about how I feel about Maya getting killed off. On one hand, I did not see that coming and it did get an emotional “Nooo D:” reaction out of me, which well I’ve seen games with similar character getting killed off scenes that are supposed to be a big deal but my reaction is just like “ok”, like Borderlands 2 with Roland for example. But like yeah I didn’t want her to die, and it feels like kind of a waste cos let’s face it in 2 she didn’t have that much personality since the game didn’t do voice lines for the vault hunters reacting to the story etc. So now she was finally getting to be her own character I feel like aaaand then she dies. :/

And then we moved on to the Eden 6 arc and initially I was excited all Oh get to meet Hammerlock’s Boyfriend! But soon my excitement soured............

So Aurelia’s evil now huh.... And like cartoonishly evil...... Man I hate what they did with Aurelia in this game, it really smashed my good mood coming from the promethea arc to this.... Like in pre-sequel sure she kept claiming herself to be evil and a bitch and so on, but yet when Jack did like actually horrible shit she did not agree with those, she felt bad about Felicity’s fate and didn’t agree with Jack killing the scientist, she even objected when Jack was killing off all claptraps! But nah here’s she’s evil, murdering people left and right and also fucked Troy Calypso cos idk she evil now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Like god............ I really didn’t expect Aurelia of all the characters whose portrayal I’d be having this much issues but here we are... I guess I’m more pissed about it atm cos as I said with Vaughn I knew what was coming, but with Aurelia I kinda feel Bait and switched by the promotional material cos in all of those that I saw they showed like both the Hammerlocks and Wainwright standing next to each other so you know I was expecting her to be an ally, like maybe she and Alistair had started to tolerate each other and so on but NOPE! Go kill this character you like! Thanks a lot gearbox...

That’s the major issues I had with characters I suppose, Tho it is a bit disappointed Maya and Zer0 were only vault hunters from 2 that showed up. Would’ve been fun to get more personality for more of them. I did find some echo logs involving Krieg at one point which were interesting, aaaand according to like the sort of background filler assets Axton does porn now lmao. Also hmm where were Athena and Janey? Fiona and Sasha? So many characters missing... I know they’ve said probably more characters show up in dlcs, but still. Story wise kinda funny tho, like did Lilith contact the vault hunters from 2 for help at all? Were all of them like “sry I’m busy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ “??

Also one weird bit about the Eden 6 arc, it felt kiiinda out of place for borderlands that there were npcs being all “Oh man I sure love the Jakobs family they treat me well”, borderlands has sorta been all “the gun corporation suck” beforehand... I suppose the Promethea arc was bit too pro corporation in some way, but with that at least mostly the npc I saw were like “Rhys says he’s trying to do good with atlas... hm we shall see how that’ll pan out...” suspicion, but with the Jakob there were characters being all oh Jakobs is so great such good corporation :)

At the end side of the game you could get sooo much lore about like sirens which I loved, translating the eridian artifact things like clarified on like how sirens come to be and all which is great! According to that siren in her life can choose who specifically inherits her powers after she dies, or “release her powers into the unknown” which when described kinda gave me the impression that it’ll pass those onto some baby that’s born at some point, which yay clarification on the whole are sirens born as sirens or do they get their powers later: answer is both!

And it appears that Angel decided to pass her powers onto Tannis before she died? Which is interesting. And aw Maya chose Ava to inherit her powers.

That ending tho..... uhhh isn’t Elpis an inhabited place? How did that whole thing affect the people living on elpis lmao....?

And god that ending credits song, it is fitting but I just can’t take it seriously asfsfdggs...

i guess I’ll now move onto talking about the gameplay....

The gameplay was great. Same old Borderlands gameplay except with some improvements making it better, and that is exactly what I wanted from the game.

I especially love the way the guns are now and how much variety there is between the manufacturers, and even within them! Like previously I rarely liked to use shotguns in borderlands games, but in this one I fell in love specifically with the Maliwan Shockwave shotguns, and when one I had started to be too low leveled I desperately tried looking for new one everywhere lol.

And also Atlas gun’s smart bullet gimmick is so good especially now that I played on console, I know I joked about that before the game came out I’m sorry Rhys lol.

I really enjoyed the environments in the game, the planets looked cool and unique, and the maps were interesting. And god some of them are so huge! Which does cause some issue tho... They are weirdly stingy with ammo vending machines. In previous games they usually had ammo vending machines before like boss fight rooms, but in this one nope! Most of the time they only have those in like beginning of the map or like where fast travel points are? That’s annoying... And another issue is that the maps are big and sorta maze-like at times, so even though you have the mission marker in the mini map, I still needed to constantly open the map to see how to get to it, you can’t just go straight in the direction of the mission marker.

Gotta say, I was bit disappointed that we only visited Athenas to get Maya, I was hoping we’d return there cos the planet was very pretty but nope....

Fl4k’s gameplay was really fun, I got the skill that lets fl4ks pet heal you and man that skill is a lifesaver, there were some boss fights I survived purely because of Mr Chew keeping me alive by reviving me lol.

I did encounter few glitched that caused me to have to restart the game cos some mission objective got stuck somewhere and I couldn’t advance, that was a bit annoying. But it was only very few and like well into the game, compared to the hours I played it feels like a pretty good track record for playing a game right on it’s release haha.

So uh yeah. In summary again: Extremely fun gameplay, mixed bag story and characters. Had fun, will play again.

#lol enjoy my +1700 word thoughts on the game #pointless text post is pointless #bl3 spoilers #i really mean the spoilers thing for real yo #borderlands 3

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pink-rathian-official · 4 years

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At the beginning of 2019, I mentioned I would keep track of every game I finished, and sum up my thoughts on all of them at the end of the year. And now I’m half regretting it because I’m gonna have to write out a short summary for each of these games. Oh well. You’ll be able to find all of them under the Read More, if you’re interested. Will be including an arbitrary score next to each game based on how much I enjoyed them.

Just some fun numbers before we jump in to the meat of the post- In 2019, I beat a total of 41 games. That’s an average of 3.41 games per month, which actually isn’t too bad of a rate!

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (5/5) 100% complete! Beaten twice! Without doubt, the best Smash game yet. You didn’t need me to tell you this- if you’ve got a Switch, then you’ve probably got Smash.

Bayonetta (4/5) A classic character action game, and an immense source of nostalgia for me. Play this game or I’ll break your knees.

Bayonetta 2 (4/5) I actually went into this game with low expectations, I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as the first game. Fortunately I was stupid and wrong and ended up loving it just as much as Bayo1.

Splatoon 2 (3/5) The story wasn’t particularly the most enjoyable thing ever, although I did sink a pretty decent amount of time into the multiplayer. Still not my go-to game if I’m looking for a quick match.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (4/5) It was enjoyable, although kinda started dragging on towards the end. The side content started feeling very repetitive, especially the shrines- but it was still a genuinely great time.

DOOM (2016) (3/5) I raged a wee bit, gonna admit. Although it was fun, I had a lot of frustrations with the late game.

Cthon (3/5) Doom, but a Lovecraftian roguelike. I’d recommend picking it up on Steam, it’s only USD$4.99 regularly, and USD$1.69 during the Steam sale currently going on.

Fire Emblem: Awakening (4/5) I suck at strategy games because I’m a smoothbrain, but FE:A is totally one of the best 3DS games ever released. Lucina is my daughter and the story made me cry.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (2/5) I already played the 3DS version, and went into the DE expecting it to be a bit more enjoyable- and while it was, I did find myself getting bored rather quickly.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (5/5) The best TES game ever released according to many fans. While I do still prefer Skyrim more, I can see exactly why so many love it. Planning on returning to do the DLCs soon.

Night in the Woods (4/5) I hate story-centric games, but I liked NITW a lot. The exploration was nice, seeing the town change day-to-day was nice, and the ending was freaky in a good way

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 (4/5) An incredibly fun game, very similar to Left 4 Dead but fantasy themed and with rat monsters. Launched my obsession with the Skaven.

Fallout 3 (2/5) Yeah just play New Vegas instead mate.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (3/5) If you separate it from the rest of the relatively mediocre AC series, Black Flag is pretty gud. I like being a pirate. I don’t like tailing missions. I really don’t like ship tailing missions.

Ib (3/5) I played this game a few times through during my obsession with RPGMaker horror games. Still holds up pretty strong, although it’s a wee bit short.

Amorous (3/5) 100% complete! Yeah it’s just a lewd furry dating sim. Does have a decent character maker that I use as a reference for my fursona now though!

Way of the Samurai 3 (4/5) I don’t know why this game slipped under everyone’s radar back on release. Just overall a very Nice samurai simulator, albeit with some combat that takes some getting used to.

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (5/5) The best MonHun released yet. World is great, but for some reason it just doesn’t hold me like GU does. Maybe I’m just a boomer.

Super Mario Odyssey (3/5) It’s definitely what you’d expect out of Mario. Not a bad game by any means, but I just didn’t really keep attached to it like most others seemed to.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (4/5) I like being a lawyer, and I love the serotonin rush that I get when cornering a criminal on their logic.

Resident Evil 7 biohazard (4/5) The first RE game I’ve played to completion. I don’t regret it at all, because it was super good. Got some great DLC as well.

SoulCalibur VI (Libra of Soul + Soul Chronicle) (4/5) Loved the character creation, loved gitting gud- did not love some of the side missions in LoS because holy Hell a lot of them are bullshit.

Borderlands 2 (4/5) I hated the first Borderlands, and went into 2 expecting more of the same. Ended up leaving surprisingly satisfied. Great loot n’ shoot all around.

Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition (4/5) It took me a few tries to really get into this one, but once I did I was totally hooked. The ending battle could’ve used a little more love, but it was still by all means a great game.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (4/5) Despite being a clearly rushed game with a drop in quality towards the last few hours, VtmB is still one of the most solid action RPGs I’ve ever played. Still not exactly gonna excuse the last couple of boss battles though.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (5/5) This went from “tumblr meme game that I had no interest in” to “one of the best fucking games I have ever played, and it hurt me deeply.” I don’t think I’ve ever been so invested in a story before, and the trial system was very refreshing.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (5/5) How did they make a story with twists even more mindblowing than the first game? While THH invested me into the series, GD solidified my newfound love for it.

Which (3/5) 100% complete! A very short experimental horror game by indie animator and developer Mike Inel. Not bad at all, and completely worth the free download.

Skullgirls: 2nd Encore (3/5) I never really got good at this game, although the story mode was still very enjoyable. Not particularly something I’m probably gonna be coming back to.

Hollow Knight (5/5) Absolutely spectacular Metroidvania that gives quite a unique challenge. Fell in love with this game so bad that I was constantly thinking about it at work. Please stop comparing it to Dark Souls, it’s such an amazing game on its own merit without needing that comparison.

Undertale (5/5) It’s Undertale, do you really need me to tell you how amazing it is?

Devil May Cry 3 (Dante story) (4/5) Extremely fun and challenging. If you haven’t played this game yet then you are wrong. Beating the first Vergil battle without being hit filled me with very unneeded confidence- the spectacular final battle against Vergil stripped that confidence away.

Ion Fury (3/5) Very challenging, but still super enjoyable. The heroine is a genuine badass, loved hearing her quips. The final boss was garbo though.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (5/5) Sekiro absolutely deserved the GOTY award. Loved the combat, loved the challenge, loved everything about this beautiful game.

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition (5/5) DQXI singlehandedly changed my opinion on JRPGs. A story that’s equal parts awesome and tearjerking, combat that feels truly satisfying, and a quirky world that had me hooked for all 98+ hours.

Danganronpa Another Story: Ultra Despair Girls (4/5) While it absolutely was a good game, something about it didn’t really hold the charm that the other Danganronpa games had. The story was still superb, and the twist at the end was hooh.

Spyro the Dragon (3/5) 120% complete! The nostalgia factor drew me in, the level design kept me. Except for Tree Tops, fuck you Tree Tops.

WarioWare Gold (3/5) Packed with the best microgames from WarioWare’s history, but not enough content to keep me there past the main story mode.

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D (3/5) MGS3 is one of my favorite games ever, but the 3DS port’s framerate issues really killed the fun for me.

Halo: Reach (4/5) The story mode was good, but the multiplayer was absolutely sublime. I raged, I cheered, I had the fun I missed out on growing up without an Xbox.

#video games

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atsushishelteredinmoonlitjasmine · 5 years

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KH3 Grievances and Blessings

As of this date, April 8th, 2019, today marks the end of my KH3 journey. I'm recording the date because I know there's DLC for KH3 coming out within the coming months and I don't know whether it'll be plot-related or just gameplay patches/changes (Like Critical Mode). Regardless, I wanted to write down my thoughts and feelings towards KH3 because, like many others, I had been awaiting the release of this game for a long time (Though not as long as others) and, as soon as the game was released in Japan, I blacklisted/muted KH3 tags so as to not be spoiled. It took me over two months since the worldwide release on January 29th to see what KH3 had to offer and, while the main story part ended on April 4th, today was the true end to everything else.

Now I want to make two things clear. First off, I never played KH3. I watched an LP of it, due to money and I didn't wanna wait months for this game. That's also why it took this long for me to write this. Secondly, as of the time writing this, I haven't read the Ultimania outside of some unrelated details since, before April 4th, I made doubly sure to avoid spoilers because I still wanted to be surprised at the ending, despite my predictions of it. If there are some things I bring up in this that are answered in the Ultimania, then link me those.

I'll also be going through practically every aspect of KH3 I can think of, such as the graphics, the gameplay, the story, etc. However, to keep things organized, I'll talk about the main story towards the end of this, since that's where I believe I'll have the most to talk about. Think of it as if the first half was the minor stuff and the second half the major. I'll even mark where it splits off so as to make it easier to know where to skip to.

Listed below are KH3 spoilers, so if you don't want to get spoiled, now's your chance to stop reading. Otherwise, here are my thoughts!

Let's start with the graphics. They are simply gorgeous, sometimes even breathtaking. As many people have pointed out, the in-game graphics are on the same quality level as the old-school FMVs from the older KH games. Even when the cutscenes go to pre-rendered, they are super beautiful. The only complaints I have are, in pre-rendered cutscenes, character models tend to look weird in certain shots. It's a minor complaint but I feel like the characters come off as being... shiny, if that makes sense. I know one of the complaints for 0.2 was that Aqua looked plastic and it seems like, in an attempt to stray away from that end of the spectrum, they made everyone look shiny. Again, that's only in the pre-rendered cutscenes, not in-game itself so... Another complaint was that, in the beginning with Sora and co. heading off to and their visit to Olympus Colosseum, it's easy to tell that they were using the 0.2 graphics because Sora looked exactly plastic. Afterwards, they switched to the current graphics but it's still kinda jarring, in a way. I feel like it may have been to save money, considering the big amount of money they spent on everything else.

Secondly, gameplay. The gameplay, overall, seems solid. It's using the KH2 combat, combined with the BBS shotlocks, Links/Summons, Keyblade transformations, DDD's Flowmotion, and Attractions. However, it also feels overwhelming to have that many gameplay styles/mechanics stuffed into one game. I feel like Nomura was trying to do the same thing that Sakurai (Creator of Smash) did with Smash Ultimate by taking the positive aspects of the previous games' combat and stuffing them into this game, almost as if it were a love letter to the KH fandom. I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, I just think it was clumsily handled.

This leads into a mini-point I had about the difficulty. As I said earlier, Critical Mode, which has been a difficulty setting since KH2 (I believe?), wasn't included in this game, which was considered weird. The LPer I watched KH3 from had played the previous KH games on the hardest difficulty and he believed he'd play KH3 on Critical. Because of this exclusion, he played on Proud Mode and this was absolutely the easiest KH game. It is so easy to overlevel, it is hard to die unless you're purposefully playing terrible or turned on "No Experience", and some gameplay mechanics, I feel, break gameplay. Attractions in particular are ridiculously gamebreaking, due to the insane amounts of invincibility frames and power some of them have. Speaking of it being hard to die, overleveling goes hand-in-hand with that but the fact that you can buy Kupo Coins from the Moogle shops makes Proud Mode a joke. To explain what Kupo Coins are, they are one-use items that basically make it to where it instantly revives you if/when your HP drops to 0 and you can buy many of these coins. They're essentially get-out-of-jail-free coins which, if you're playing on Hard Mode, shouldn't be a thing. There's also a minigame where you can cook all sorts of meals that can grant you any kind of boosts with Remy from Ratatouille. The stat boosts from even the simplest of meals are ridiculous and they also make dying hard to do. I understand that the crew wanted to make KH3 welcoming to newcomers but I feel this is going a little too far in not making the players feel frustrated each time they die in Proud Mode.

Thirdly, the non-original worlds. It's hard to decide whether or not I like them. On the one hand, they're the largest they've ever been, they're expansive, and the crew were able to successfully capture the look of each movie they adapted. On the other, the stories can be hit or miss, they throw tons of enemies at you (which absolutely contributes to the overleveling I mentioned), and they don't serve much of a purpose in the main story outside of fanservice. Some of the worlds were an absolute delight, such as the Tangled and Monsters Inc worlds, while others were a slog to get through, such as the Frozen and Big Hero 6 worlds. This is merely my opinion so don't take it too seriously. The way they decided to go about the stories within each world was to either: 1, be a Cliffnotes version of that world, or 2, create an original story set after the events of the movie. The first way was not a good decision because, out of all the new worlds they revealed for this game, I only watched Hercules, Toy Story, Monsters Inc, and Tangled, so when the LPer I watched headed to the other worlds that weren't mentioned, I was thoroughly confused. The second way could be pretty hit or miss, because I remember getting tired of the Toy Story world towards the end but I enjoyed the story of the Monsters Inc, due to how cute it was. Going back to what I mean by these worlds not serving a purpose, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility to say these were meant for the express purpose of padding. The reason given for exploring these worlds is so Sora can learn the Power of Waking and, if he doesn't learn it in that world, he'll go to the next and rinse, repeat. I won't go into detail in this section but I'll explain more about it when I get to the story section.

Fourthly, the music. This is probably the one of the few aspects that stayed consistently good. Although I could tell there were more pieces of music that I had heard in other games, Yoko Shimomura still made it fresh by reorechestrating those. I'll give her some slack with those because I can imagine that, with how far into the series KH is and how many themes to keep track of, it was probably easier to remix existing songs than make an entirely new soundtrack. Still, there were some new pieces of music (Most of which from the aforementioned worlds) that I liked. The Toy Story fight music is an absolute bop and the Monsters Inc world music is so whimsical and fun. There were some really nice mashups as well, such as the Other Promise/Vector to the Heavens mashup and Oscuritia de Xehanort. I haven't had a chance to listen to all of the soundtrack yet so these were just the ones from the top of my head.

Fifthly, the voice acting. This is just a personal thing for me, since I want to become a voice actor someday and I like to observe/take mental notes whenever voice acting is involved. The voice acting in of itself is good. Sora was his absolute best in this game, especially in that one scene we ALL know from the trailer and it broke my heart hearing that in-game. Mostly everyone was good, too, aside from some weird line deliveries and voices not fitting some characters. However, I have to point out how... weird the voice-acting is with Terra, Aqua, and Xehanort. Xehanort was probably the weirdest because I'm so used to Leonard Nimoy's Xehanort that this one was kinda jarring. Rutger Hauer is the new VA and... I know he doesn't have the same raspy, gravelly voice Leonard Nimoy had but I feel his Xehanort just doesn't fit the character as much, especially since I noticed Xehanort sounded like he had a very slight Irish accent in this game. Rutger Hauer is Dutch so I don't know how I heard Irish but I'm gonna chalk that up to never hearing a Dutch person speak before. Terra's definitely the best acting out of these three but compared to the other two, it's not much. While it's not bad, I still prefer his 0.2 performance since it seemed like he put effort into that. Terra seems to share the same problem I have with Aqua in that he never raises his voice up above being low. It's hard to tell if he does because they only got Jason Dohring in for two scenes (the Wayfinder Trio reunion and the stupid Xehanort redemption scene), despite being a main character. Aqua was in more than two scenes but her voice acting was kinda the worst, which kills me because she's my queen. For some reason, her voice never goes up above low talking and I don't know if it's just me but she constantly sounds as if she's being cut off. Like, the sound mixing for Aqua makes it sound as if she's cut out at the end for each of her sentences. This was a problem that was present in 0.2 but I brushed that off since I figured 0.2 was not considered a full game by itself. I don't know whether or not it's Willa Holland herself or the voice director for both games but Aqua can be allowed to be emotional other than angry, raise her voice, and not be cut off.

Oh boy, the sixth point. Let me start off by saying this is merely a personal gripe I have and it's fine if people disagree with me or even don't see what I'm saying. I'm just stating this because I talked about this issue on my Livetweet Thread and I want to bring this up. Now... there are instances in this game where Sora express self-doubt or have other characters express worry for Sora (and Aqua for one time) to Donald, Goofy, and Mickey. Each time this was brought up, we had them saying the answer of "they're strong so they're okay". Normally, I wouldn't really be offended at this if it was for one or two times. KH3, however, has this happen several times and... let's just say I got a little testy. The characters this answer was said to or about were Aqua, Sora, and Elsa (as far as I can remember), all of whom I can safely say have issues with their mental health. Sora's the only one I can't definitively say (outside of headcanon territory) but even then... Sora has problems with his self-worth and his sense of strength, Aqua, for all we know, probably has depression and POSSIBLY PTSD, and Elsa definitely has depression and self-image issues. To the Disney characters, any time these issues are brought up, they somehow correlate physical strength with mental fortitude and think that answer is perfectly okay to say. I'm probably reading way too much into this but the way I take it, each time they say that answer, it comes off as Sora/Aqua/Elsa are being weak and need to get over it. The first example I'll bring up of this is when Riku and Mickey are in the RoD trying to save Aqua the first time and Riku expresses worry for Aqua, who's been in this hellhole for 11 years at this point. Mickey just says she'll be fine because she's strong, which baffles me because how does he not remember how Aqua was the last time they met? She was straight up about to succumb to the darkness when he saved her the first time and when she said to him she wasn't sure how much longer she'd be able to ward off the darkness, he just said she'll be okay. Like, she has been stuck in this hell for over a decade, being tormented and having to fight for her life constantly, all the while losing hope she may get out. The one time she's finally close enough to get out, it's snatched away from her. No wonder she was pissed off at Mickey for leaving her when they met again! The second example is any time Sora was expressing doubt in himself over being strong enough and he had Donald and Goofy say he'd be fine. This, to me, made it seem like they were placing such high expectations on Sora to be strong that he wasn't allowed to have moments of emotional vulnerability which I wouldn't be surprised contributed to the worsening of the self-doubt and the culmination of that despair scene. Again, I know it seems like I'm reading too much into this but this was something that legit made me angry. As someone who relates to Sora's self-worth issues and Aqua's depression, I don't think someone telling me that I'll be fine because I was strong constantly would make me feel better. If anything, I'd probably feel worse because I'd be too afraid to appear being weak around that person lest I betray their expectation of me being strong that I keep my feelings of weakness to myself until I eventually broke down. To give benefit to the Disney characters, I believe they were genuinely saying what they thought was best in those kinds of situations. Hell, maybe they even thought that, by saying that, the character would believe them and think they were silly for thinking they were worthless. But I don't believe the Disney characters are good role models for the importance of mental health, given their track record. Still, this was a personal gripe of mine and everyone is free to disagree with me on this. I don't even know if I made any sense in this but I tried.

Now we move on to the major stuff. This next half will mainly include my opinions on the story, the characters, how they were handled, etc. and everyone is free to disagree with me on any of those. I should also warn that any of the next sections may be lengthy, though it wouldn't be me if they weren't. There may also be some instances where I talk about how I would've rewritten some scenes, since there were some that desperately needed to be rewritten or re-edited or whatever else (which will be marked with *). However, I'll write those up in a separate thing because this entire post is mainly for my thoughts on KH3 as a whole and not just certain scenes. Besides, I don't want to bog this post down even further so...

Where to start? Well, I think it may be good to start with the plot and its loose threads. KH3 seems to have a problem with introducing plot threads and then dropping them off with no resolution, meaning they'll either be answered in the upcoming DLC or in the next game (Release dates unknown on both options). We have Maleficent and Pete looking for a black box (A significant thing in KHX, if you've watched Back Cover), the complete drop-off of Vexen and Demyx, the new seven Princesses of Heart, Subject X, the reveal that some of the New Organization members were Keyblade Wielders from the past, the whole thing of the heroes coming back after dying, and possibly other threads I cannot remember for the life of me. Again, I understand that these threads may be picked up in either the DLC or the next game but we don't know when either of those will be released. In a game that's supposed to bring answers to the many questions that were brought up in previous games, we still end up with many other questions that haven't been answered.

Let's go back to my mention of the non-original worlds serving no purpose other than fanservice. As stated in the beginning, Sora needs to learn the Power of Waking so that he can find and save Aqua in the RoD and, later on, awaken Ventus's heart so it'll return to his body sleeping in Castle Oblivion/Land of Departure. However, every time he reaches the end of a world, he still hasn't learned the Power of Waking and so goes to another world to see if he'll learn it there and rinse, repeat. In the newly-returned Land of Departure, it's stated that Sora had the Power of Waking in him all along, which made the trips to the worlds completely pointless. As someone pointed out in their review of KH3, while the Disney worlds in previous games served little more than fanservice, they at least had a goal in which the protagonists needed to fulfill, such as locking and unlocking the worlds, finding lost friends, and defeating those that pose a threat. In KH3, while the goal has been to learn the Power of Waking, it ultimately becomes meaningless upon revealing that Sora had the power within him all along.

Speaking of which, this leads into another thing that legitimately made me angry. We are never told what the Power of Waking is or what it does, only that it is essential to saving Aqua and Ventus. I had to learn from the comments section on YouTube what the Power of Waking was and it still wasn't fully explained what it was. Whenever Sora would be in Yen Sid's tower, Yen Sid would keep telling him that he needed the Power of Waking to venture into the RoD and everyone chastising Sora for being too impulsive and I'm just sitting there like "If you probably told him what the fucking power was, he'd probably have an easier time trying to learn it". It's one of those things where, if Sora were under my writing control, I'd have him slowly getting more and more frustrated over being told to learn something he doesn't understand and isn't being told on what it is that he'd eventually snap. I have some personal experience with that so maybe it's my bias talking.

Next thing I wanted to bring up was my thoughts and feelings towards the third act and the ending. I'll start from the Anti-Aqua stuff to the scenes right before the ending first. Anti-Aqua, while one of the best fights in KH3 (if you're not overleveled and using Attractions), is very quick. I mean, you do battle her a bit as Riku then switch over to Sora to full-on fight her and then she's saved but that sequence doesn't last long. It goes from Aqua calling out Mickey for abandoning her to fighting her to saving her then going off to save Ventus. Even the way she succumbed to darkness wasn't very... climatic. Earlier in the game, Ansem SoD surprises Ansem the Wise and Aqua as they're sitting on the Dark Beach from Blank Points and, after a pretty pitiful fight between Aqua and Ansem SoD (Totally understandable, though), she gets hit with a Dark Ball and falls into the dark ocean as the darkness consumes her. When I first watched the trailer revealing Anti-Aqua, I had a different idea in mind for how Aqua succumbed to the darkness* and the canon kinda disappointed me with how quick it came and went. Moving on, Sora, Aqua, and Disney (Dolan and Gooby) arrive at Castle Oblivion/Land of Departure to save Ventus and then Vanitas shows up. Aqua's only playable during the fight with Vanitas and she's taken out of the action as soon as he threatens Ven. Cue Sora learning the Power of Waking, saving Ven, Ven about ready to kick Vani's ass, and Sora and Ven meet for the first time. Then we move to Yen Sid's tower where everyone has a little chat and prepare for the fight tomorrow. Nice little scenes ensue (Riku meeting with Repliku, Sora and Kairi FINALLY becoming a couple, Aqua and Ven talking about how they'll save Terra, Lea and Saix eating atop the clocktower) then it's off to the Keyblade Graveyard! After an awesome fight with 10000 Heartless and shit, everyone fucking dies. You think it's a joke, no, everyone straight up dies! Terranort manages to take out Ven, Lea, and almost Kairi as well before Dolan pulls out the Zettaflare and vanquishes his ass. A Demon Tide comes into the mix and after becoming a cyclone, kills everyone except Sora and Riku because they were hit with the Stick of Incompetence. Sora and Riku join soon after and we meet with Chirithy in Purgatory! Sora abuses the Power of Waking to bring everyone back from the dead with Kairi's help (BTW, that's the only useful thing she does in this game) and somehow they forget that they died then proceed to almost die again immediately afterwards! Lingering Will shows up with next to no reason why, keeps Terranort busy while everyone fights the Demon Tide again until the power of Union Cross defeats it once and for all. Many New Organization fights later and Kairi getting the Damsel in Distress treatment YET AGAIN to only die later and Sora finally fights Xehanort. Even then, Xehanort manages to corrupt Kingdom Hearts but he's then used as a time portal for Sora and Disney to go to Scala ad Caelum to fight him there. Xehanort manages to forge the X-blade and actually kills Sora before he revives again with the power of friendship to defeat his wrinkly, veiny old ass. Xehanort then gets hit with a dose of Creator's Pet syndrome, which causes him to somehow be fucking redeemed as he goes to the KH equivalent of Heaven with good ol' brother Eraqus. Sora then decides to abuse the Power of Waking once more to save Kairi and, after he successfully brings her back, gets hit with the Thanos snap and disappears. In Secret Endings, the Foretellers come back, Xigbar is revealed to be Luxu, and Sora and Riku are in Shibuya and Shinjuku respectively, probably about ready to play the Reapers Game! If I missed anything, feel free to disagree!

I may have gone jokey after the Anti-Aqua fight but let me break the last paragraph and a half down. The Land of Departure sequence is nice, except for the part Vani one-shots Aqua in order to get to Ven. She doesn't throw up a barrier or try to deflect the magic with her Keyblade, she just tanks the hit which, if anyone's ever played Aqua in BBS, she ain't like Terra or Ven. It's only because Sora was able to awaken Ven that Aqua didn't get skewered on Vani's Keyblade. Aqua's a Keyblade Master who's fought and won against Vani twice, why the hell did she lose to him here? That, however, is NOTHING compared to her treatment in the Keyblade Graveyard. After Ven and Lea are taken out and Dolan annihilates Terranort, a Demon Tide becomes a Demon Cyclone and, after she, Sora, and Riku decide to fight it, she suddenly gives up and lets the Demon Cyclone kill her*. WHAT THE FUCK?! You mean to tell me that Aqua, a Keyblade Master who's spent 11 years in the RoD fighting for her life and was FINALLY brought back to the RoL, took one look at the Demon Cyclone, which is just a bigger version of the Demon Tides she's fought before, and decided to do suicide by cop? People from the comments section on YouTube try to justify this by saying she had PTSD and/or she was mourning the loss of Ven but I can't see her basically committing suicide over either of these reasons. I'm normally all for Aqua having PTSD because I can imagine that being in a stressful environment with everything trying to kill you on a daily basis isn't good for your mental health but she doesn't show any of the signs for PTSD and she doesn't give up on living the second time the Demon Cyclone shows up. As for her mourning the loss of Ven, I can MAYBE see that but I feel like Ven's death would give her more motivation to defeat the Demon Cyclone because one of the reasons why she fought so hard to get out of the RoD just died in front of her and she'd probably be pissed the fuck off. It may be my love for my oceanic queen coming through but she got hit with the Stick of Incompetence in KH3, along with many other characters.

The one character that was practically killed with it was Kairi. She easily became one of the most disappointing things from KH3 in that she was given the Damsel in Distress treatment yet again and was only killed to give Sora more angst/development. People were expecting her to do something and make herself useful and were instead given shit on a dirty platter. Yes, I know it's stupid to expect Kairi to fight on the level of a Keyblade Master. I don't think anyone was expecting that of her, considering how she literally started training with Lea days, or even weeks, before the final battle. However, we don't see her fighting at all, outside of the battle with Saix and Xion before she gets kidnapped again by Xemnas. She doesn't try to fight back against him and just lets herself be taken, not to mention how she just stares at Terranort after he takes out Lea, not even trying to defend herself*. This girl seems to have no survival instincts, whatsoever. The only useful thing she does in this game is bring Sora back from the brink of death so that he can save everyone else and that's it. While it's a good thing she did that, it's not really explained how she did that, other than 'Princess of Heart' BS.

I'm starting to believe that Nomura genuinely has no idea on what to do with Kairi. To me, he doesn't know what to do on making her stand out from the rest of the cast and has to keep turning her into a faux fighter. In terms of fighting, he doesn't know what to make her as. In my mind, Aqua and Xion (the only female fighters, since Namine is a non-combatant) have two different fighting styles. Aqua's more focused on magic and staying a distance away from her enemy while Xion's more focused on brute strength and getting up in her enemy's face. Kairi then should be the balance between the two, using both magic and strength to her advantage to keep her enemies on their toes. I should stress that I myself am not good at defining fights in general so I may be completely wrong on this but this is merely my interpretation/suggestion. There's a lot more I want to talk about with Kairi but these last two paragraphs pretty much summarize my point. I want to stress that I'm not blaming Kairi for her shitty writing. I'm blaming Nomura because he doesn't know how the fuck to write her as.

Which leads me to my next point of how I feel Sora got hit with a dose of Creator's Pet syndrome in this game. This is probably a point that people will think "Of course it's like that, Airi. He's the main character", which I agree with to an extent but... I'm probably the only one who thinks this but I feel like Sora was made out to be too... important, if that makes sense. In terms of reconnecting lost friends and defeating Xehanort, that's fine. However, also being the one to solve everything by either defeating the enemy or saying stuff from a typical stock shounen series kinda rubbed me the wrong way. It's hard for me to explain in a way that doesn't make it seem as if I don't understand a main character's importance but I'm trying. Here's how I see it: while it's been stated time and again that Sora is the one to connect everyone (Memory's fuzzy on that part) and I know he has to fulfill that purpose in some way, KH3 puts so much emphasis on that, it downplays the other characters' importance or even ruins any chance of development they could've gotten. Sora has to have the spotlight no matter what, even at the cost of characters who need it more. The biggest example of this is Xehanort killing Kairi so it gives Sora more motivation to beat him. Sora was given more development at the cost of Kairi's own. As I said before with Kairi, I'm not blaming Sora for this, I'm blaming Nomura because he decided to give Sora more development than he needed/should've had and sacrificing the other characters in order to boost the already massive value his role has. Hopefully, the DLC will give the others the much-needed development they need.

Speaking of which, it's not only the heroes who got mishandled in this game. Three specific villains (Young Xehanort, Vanitas, and Luxord) come to mind and it somehow got worse down the line. In the Toy Story world, Young Xehanort gets verbally beat down by Woody. In the Monsters Inc. world, Vanitas get yeeted through several doors by Mike and Sulley. In the Caribbean world, Luxord faints because Jack Sparrow had bad breath. These are villains we're supposed to be intimidated by/motivated to defeat and they're made into a complete joke in the world they're antagonizing. Young Xehanort got off easy compared to Vanitas and Luxord, since all he had to deal with was Woody giving him a scolding and brushing it off like nothing. As much as I like the Yeetus Vanitas joke, you mean to tell me that Vanitas, the darkness gremlin himself, didn't sense Sulley sneaking up on him or even try stopping himself from being yeeted through more doors after the first few? What about the Gambler of Fate? He faints because Jack had a little rum in his breath after he got to play pirate again? If that scene was meant to be funny, it accomplished its purpose, just not in the way it was intended to, because how the fuck am I supposed to be intimidated by Luxord when he gets taken out due to someone's bad fucking breath? The way the New Organization's written as is anywhere between being inexplicably strong and able to kill everyone (with the exception of Sora after a despair-induced death and revival) to being laughable and weak enough to be yeeted through doors and taken down by bad breath. That's totally good writing!

Getting back to the story, let's move on to the abso-fucking-lutely stupid Xehanort redemption scene. In the game proper, after he's been defeated once and for all by Sora with the power of friendship, it's revealed that the reason why Xehanort went on this crusade to control Kingdom Hearts was to restore balance and essentially reset the world. He's basically portrayed as this person who, in his pursuit of restoring balance to the world, resorted to extreme methods that almost achieved the opposite of what he wanted. To be fair, that in of itself isn't bad and probably would've made Xehanort an interesting antagonist. However, this completely contradicts what we know about Xehanort before this point! If he really wanted balance, he shouldn't have been spreading darkness to every world he and his incarnations have been to! Even disregarding that point, he's manipulated, controlled, and ruined so many lives. He took control of Terra's body after spending the entirety of his story manipulating him, almost killed Ventus with creating Vanitas if not for Sora's timely intervention, manipulated and controlled Riku, manipulated all of Organization XIII while using them for empty heart tanks, and killed both Eraqus and Kairi! If we're supposed to feel sympathetic for him, why not show him regretting doing all that, hesitating, anything to make us think he didn't WANT to do that but had to in order to accomplish his goal? Then there's the fact Eraqus decides to just forgive him for all he's done, as if he forgot that Xehanort's the reason why he's dead in the first place and almost ruined his pupils' lives, who he saw as his own kids. I get that they once saw each other as brothers but you'd think that relationship would've soured once Xehanort scarred him and dumped a nearly comatose Ven on him. I know Eraqus got a lot of shit from the fandom because of how he acted in BBS but he was at least sympathetic. While he was ultimately wrong in how he treated Terra and Ven, he only decided to kill Ven because he didn't want the X-blade to be forged and cause another Keyblade War and he admitted to Terra he regretted his actions towards him and Ven, all the while crying. THAT’S how you write a character who's majorly fucked up but regrets it and is sympathetic. Not whatever the fuck we were supposed to get from Xehanort. For the third time in this post, I'm not blaming Xehanort for the BS way he was written, I'm blaming Nomura, which is funny since he stated that Xehanort was his favorite character, leading me to think he'd actually try writing him decently.

With that out of the way, we can FINALLY get to the ending. As I said before, Sora decides to abuse the Power of Waking once more to bring Kairi back to life and, after successfully doing that, fades away as if he got hit with the Thanos snap. I'm surprisingly okay with this ending, if only because I know there's going to be more KH games coming out with the confirmation that Sora will still be the protagonist in those games. Normally, I'm against endings where the protagonist dies (unless under special circumstances and even those have to be pretty special) because I like to see stories where the protag, who's gone through a journey full of pain and emotions and any other number of issues, finally gets their happy ending. To me, who writes to escape from the dark and sometimes painful aspects of life, happy endings give characters who've fought so hard for them or characters who were previously unable to achieve them the rest and happiness they deserve (Like the Wayfinder and Clocktower Trios staying together after being reunited). It's hard for me to explain but this isn't the place to talk about that. As I was saying, I'm okay with Sora 'dying' because it showed the consequences of him abusing the Power of Waking too much. From my interpretation of it, the Power of Waking could be used to resurrect the dead, rewrite reality as we know it, etc., but its main purpose is to 'awaken sleeping hearts'. Riku used it properly in DDD to wake Sora up and Sora used it properly in this game to wake Ventus up. The PoW, to me, is the equivalent to playing God, which REALLY goes against my beliefs. I don't know whether it's due to my (loose) Christian faith, my beliefs towards death that I've formed over the years, or because I watched FMA, that mortals messing with things they shouldn't (I.E. Sora bringing the dead back to life) scares me. While the reasoning behind Sora abusing the PoW is understandable (and I'm giving him a pass on what I'm about to say next due to this), he's still a mortal playing God, which HAS to have consequences, no matter what. Just because I say this, however, doesn't mean people aren't allowed to say the ending sucked. Hell, even I think the ending kinda sucks, despite me being okay with it. The only way this ending couldn't have come about is if Sora didn't abuse the PoW and the only way Sora wouldn't have abused the PoW is if no one died and the only way no one could've died is if Nomura could've written something better. The best we can hope for with Sora is that he's given a happy ending down the line and NO ONE DIES OR TAKES HIS PLACE! NO MORE OF THIS BITTERSWEET NONSENSE, ALL RIGHT?!

So what do I think of the story overall? Well, it's... something. It's not the worst thing I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing but it's also not that good. The pacing seems to only have two settings; it's either too slow to the point of it being padded for extra time or too fast to really know what's going on in favor of getting to the next goalpost. I wouldn't be surprised if it's because of the pacing that I don't know where the halfway point of KH3 is. I thought it'd be like the first half being the Disney fanservice and the second half the actual plot but it's not like that here. The first half got WAY more time dedicated to it than the second half did and it REALLY shows with how sloppily written the plot towards the end was. The way I see it, Nomura had the major plotpoints planned and figured out but the details surrounding those plotpoints were left as an afterthought. He had goalposts set up but he got stuck figuring out how to get Sora and co. from point A to point B. I think if he had just finetuned those details or rewritten scenes to make more sense or even asked for help, the story could've been a lot better. Granted, there were probably a lot of factors at work during KH3's production so I won't place all of the blame on solely Nomura, especially with all the news articles lately about game studios overworking their employees to the point of exhaustion/illness/death/eventual breakdown of the company. While I mainly talked about the negatives concerning the story, there were also some positives about it. Sora was at his absolute adorableness in this game. Like, there were so many moments where I just died from how cute he was (which I noted many times in my Livetweet thread) that helped to highlight how Sora's still just a kid who unfortunately carries the fate of the world on his shoulders. The reunions of both the Wayfinder and Clocktower trios just killed me because they had suffered so much up to this point and to see them crying from happiness at being reunited with their friends again and staying together this time had me tearing up. Although she didn't appear much in KH3, Namine being able to exist outside of Kairi was also a sweet moment, especially with her being treated like a princess when she first wakes up and Riku taking her by the hand to the Destiny Islands like a prince. I don't care if it's considered ship tease, that shit was goddamn cute, all right? The scene of Aqua crying after she finally realizes she's in the RoL again hit me in the feels so much, especially after Sora told her she was home. Now thinking about it, I wonder if that's sort of a parallel to KH2's ending with Sora taking on the role of Kairi from that scene. The relationship between Kairi and Lea (What little we saw of it), the ending of everyone on the Destiny Islands, and the occasional Disney stuff I did enjoy were all good. It just sucks that there's so little of the stuff I mentioned featured that I wish more time was spent developing those.

So what is my overall opinion on KH3? It's not my favorite of the series, that honor still goes to both KH2 and BBS. Without running the risk of repeating myself, I won't go into detail about the gameplay or the story because you can just read all the points I've mentioned above. I still enjoyed KH3 but some of my expectations fell through and I felt a bit underwhelmed by everything. In some ways, the wait was worth it but I think I would've been fine with waiting more if it meant some aspects were developed more. In regards to this game being a good entryway for newcomers, I think it is, if only because you're provided with recaps of the previous games right at the main menu so that anyone who hasn't played at least one KH game won't be completely lost playing KH3. I feel like everything I've mentioned in this post may be discredited or even disregarded as an actual review of KH3 because I didn't play the game, I watched an LP of it, but keep in mind these are merely my observations and the conclusions I've reached using those observations. The experience may be completely different to those who actually played it but I won't know until this is posted so...

Where do we go from here? Well, we still have the DLC to look forward to but, as I stated earlier, we have no idea when those are coming out and it's the same with any upcoming games. I'm hoping the DLC will answer some questions while also giving some much-needed development to the characters who aren't Sora. The only thing left to say is, may the DLC guide our wandering hearts.

#kingdom hearts 3 #kingdom hearts 3 spoilers #kh3 #kh3 spoilers

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refractstudios · 6 years

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Your First Look at Distance v1.0

Hey, everyone! As it's been said many times over the years, when we go dark something big is usually brewing under the surface. You probably can tell from the title, but after many grueling months we're finally ready to unveil what we've been creating.

Thanks for everyone's patience as we bring this insane 6+ year project to its conclusion. This year we've been fully focused on wrapping up the large bundle of content to all be released in Distance v1.0. It's essentially a huge DLC pack with several surprises inside. Since the start of early access, expanding upon our shipped level content has always been the plan, right alongside implementing the long list of promised features from our Kickstarter campaign (e.g. Trackmogrify, ghosts/replays, stunt mode, announcer, etc).

We're still working with our business partners to determine the release date, so we’re not yet able announce that in this devlog. In the meantime I’d like to cover some of what you can look forward to in Distance v1.0, as well as a few personal notes about the development process.

ADVENTURE

First up, Distance v1.0 includes a full featured Adventure campaign. This final campaign is a reworked and extended version of the campaign currently available on Steam Early Access. To achieve our original vision for Adventure the entire experience is receiving visual, audio, story, and gameplay upgrades.

(example of an upgraded Adventure level; new version above, old below)

In fleshing out the final narrative my goal was to create a unique experience by utilizing emotions not usually found within the racing genre. To achieve that we pursued a minimalist narrative that focuses heavily on atmosphere, mystery, and flow. Some loose story threads remain from the early access version, but in the end it’s a whole new beast.

The campaign in total is about 1 to 1.5 hours long depending on your skill level, so don't go in expecting an epic. It's a minimalist narrative experience, with gameplay focusing on the core abilities of your vehicle. The story is simple on the surface, but the deeper you look into it the more you may uncover.

Alongside the visual and gameplay upgrades, I've also worked hard to improve the overall soundscape with lots of new sounds, several new music tracks, and dynamic transitions. For a taste of some new stuff, here's a fresh new track from about halfway through the campaign.

As you’re probably aware I tend to prefer silence over accidentally spoiling something. It's probably overkill most of the time, but in talking about such a short campaign I'm not excited to give too much away. Hopefully these screenshots will hold you over until we can finally release a proper teaser trailer.

ARCADE

I'm also excited to say that the Arcade portion of Distance is also getting a large overhaul. Not only will we be releasing several brand new Arcade levels with v1.0, but we've redesigned the Arcade experience from the ground up. My aim with this redesign was to improve the sense of progression, give more value to earning medals, and make it more interesting to traverse the wide variety of included content.

With that goal in mind, the team came together to create new menus, improve existing ones, and logically group Arcade content as best as we can. After trying a few different progression systems, we settled on something simple and straightforward. Within Arcade there are level sets which can be unlocked by earning medals. We've also meticulously gone through each track and updated the bronze, silver, and gold times to be as accurate and consistent as possible.

As I mentioned above, several new arcade levels are being released with v1.0. These levels push our editor technology to its limit and explore completely different visual themes and gameplay than what’s found in the Adventure campaign.

(“Chroma” created by Kristian)

(“Virtual Rift” created by Galen)

Along those lines, I'm also pleased to announce that several of our favorite community-made levels will be directly included in v1.0! Not only does this allow us to highlight some amazing community levels directly from within the game, it's also our way to share these levels with PS4 players as we won’t have a Steam Workshop replacement at launch. Kristian, Brent, and Galen have also taken time to revamp several of their own levels from Steam Workshop to be directly included in v1.0.

(one example of an included Workshop level, “Inferno” by Backgrounds’)

(Brent upgraded his Workshop level “Neo Seoul” exclusively for v1.0)

By the way if you liked the old menus, don't worry because they're still included as the "Advanced" level select menu. It's even been improved further to include a search feature.

(the Advanced level select menu)

Much like the “Old Levels” in Nitronic Rush, a Legacy level set has been included. It features all of the classic levels from early access, as well as a few levels cut from the final version of the Adventure campaign. Since the changes between the old iterations and the final ones were substantial enough we figured they would be worth including as a fun bonus.

(the Legacy level set in Sprint mode)

In addition to the new unlockable levels in Arcade, we also spent time creating a few cheats that affect appearances or gameplay when enabled. Unlock them by earning various achievements/trophies. We thought this would be a fun way to give achievements more value instead of just being arbitrary tasks to complete. And yes, a few more achievements will be added to v1.0 on top of what already exists in the early access build.

(a few cheats to unlock in v1.0)

Finally, a quick comment on the unlockable cars. Yes, there will be a few bonus cars to unlock by earning achievements. You can change the colors if you like, but no, they do not affect gameplay at all. Here’s a look at the Archive.

(the unlockable “Archive” car)

Hundreds of other smaller improvements have been made across the board, including improvements to the car's damage system, the cockpit view, etc. Instead of dissecting each one it'll be more fun to just find those yourself.

LEVEL EDITOR

For all of our lovely level creators, just a quick note on the v1.0 editor. Don't expect a big v1.0 level editor overhaul but there will be several new features added. This includes access to the features and many new assets used to create new level content, plus a few new addable components.

For example, you can add an Animator Audio or Animator Camera Shake component to your animations. Regarding the new v1.0 assets mentioned above, you’ll have to wait a bit longer since showing them here would give too much away from the campaign.

(some example addable components coming to v1.0)

PS4 DEVELOPMENT

As it’s been for a while now, the PS4 side of development has eaten up a substantial amount of our time. Fortunately we’ve pushed past most of the scariest hurdles, and at a quick glance the PS4 build looks nearly identical to the PC build.

(one of the new Adventure campaign levels running on PS4)

One the biggest challenges we had to overcome was simply hitting our goal of 1080p at 60fps. After some impressive technical wizardry led by Jason, we’ve made substantial improvements to performance across the board for both the PS4 and PC builds.

More than anything we’ve smoothed out most of the rough spots in levels that were pushing the hardware to its limit, so the experience is quite a bit more consistent in each level. This was really important to us from the gameplay perspective because our fairly “twitchy” gameplay really feels subpar at even 30fps, so one way or another we think everyone will benefit from the work poured in here.

(performance graph showing frame rate over time in a new Arcade level running on PS4)

Beyond that, it’s just been a lot of work to support features like leaderboards with replay uploading/downloading, and the various technical certification requirements to allow us onto the PS4 in the first place. There’s still quite a bit of work to do there, so we’re currently evaluating how we can improve our process to wrap those up sooner.

NOTES ON THE DEVELOPMENT

Simultaneously managing public and private builds over the past few years has been a growing challenge for us, so to reach release as soon as possible we’re simplifying things by putting all of our energy into v1.0. Unfortunately that means that there will be no more updates to the Steam build until v1.0 is released.

We ended up taking a long and unorthodox approach to early access, and I understand if there’s been any confusion as to how v1.0 fits into the overall picture. We did our best for a long time to balance the development of both public and private builds, but it eventually became unsustainable to keep that up. Over the past year we’ve gradually transitioned to just focusing on v1.0 content (and tools to create that content), as well as solving the various technical challenges required to release on PS4.

As a result I haven’t had much to say publicly since everything we’re creating is secret, spoiler-filled content. Regardless, I fully acknowledge that I could have done better in terms of communication. The deeper I fell into creating “secret” content like the Adventure campaign, the harder and harder it became to break out of that world and maintain an external perspective of the project.

The reality of Distance as a project is that it’s been fairly overscoped from the start (at least for our team size and skill set). On top of that we do feel a duty to provide something innovative with artistic merit. For us it’s been a continual battle to not only live up to external expectations, but also live up to the standards we have ourselves. Instead of conceding defeat and scaling things back, we’ve continued to face each artistic and technical challenge until we’re satisfied with the final product. I’m not saying this was necessarily the wisest approach, but I hope you can understand how we ended up investing so much time into Distance.

It's been a long and bumpy process for all of us, but the v1.0 release is in sight and I think you’ll really like what we’ve cooked up. Distance has always been an extremely personal project for us, and as a result I think that you can see our personal passions shine through the final product. I’m extremely proud of my hard-working and dedicated teammates for pushing through endless barriers to reach this milestone. I’m also endlessly thankful to our faithful and extremely patient players who’ve been cheering from the sidelines from the start.

My next blog post will likely be the release date announcement. There also may or may not be a few secrets I neglected to mention here… so stay tuned. Thanks as always for the support!

- Jordan (with everyone at Refract)

#distance #refract #v1.0

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crawl-out-through-the-callout · 6 years

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Fallout 4 Mods on PS4

So I made a list of all the mods I have active on my current file. In doing so I found some I need to, uh, change or that are redundant, but I can still fully endorse any of these mods. For context, I have the Season Pass, I'm on the PS4 and usually play on Very Hard. The balance feels okay in that it's never outright impossible but situations vary wildly from easy and hilarious to drain-the-blood-from-your-face levels of oh shit. I can also safely say this is the prettiest mixture of mods that I've ever had. Anyway, the mods:

Armor and Weapon Keywords Community Resource (AWKCR) (PS4: All DLC) Creator: Valdacil Notes: Important. For everything. Seriously.

USO Base Game (core component of Unlocked Settlement Objects) USO Season Pass USO Mashups Creator: ANDREWCX Notes: Good for people like myself who spend entirely too much time decorating settlements.

Integrated Commonwealth Creator: ANDREWCX Notes: Actually makes the DLC kind of mixed with the main region instead of this weird, walled-off land you can only really tell your other companions about.

[PS4] SimpleGreen - SimpleSeasons 'Spring' [PS4] SimpleGreen / SimpleYellow / SimpleRed (Nuka-World Plugin) Creator: ANDREWCX Notes: I know it's fall and all, but it's been 200 years and plants are vicious little buggers. If nothing else, Boston should be drowning in kudzu.

[PS4] Cages Overhauled & More Creator: 3lric Notes: Kidnap and adopt local faction members, synths, and creatures, and get robot settlers that work.

[PS4] Overgrowth, Immersive Living Forests And Grasslands [PS4] Overgrowth, Far Harbor Creator: MisterOverseer Notes: -and sure, the bombs in Fallout are supposed to be crazy strong, and it's not like people have stopped using nukes there since the Great War, but if people can live there, plants certainly should be. And Nagasaki and Hiroshima look just fine today. It's been way longer in Fallout.

Reverb And Ambiance Overhaul - ALL DLC [PS4] Creator: Mm137 Notes: The reverb sometimes sets back to max at odd intervals - I usually keep it at around half - but it makes the audio blend into the various settings so much better. You'll be less eager to throw an explosive in that pipe you're standing in, but it's more immersive and just sounds nice. The radio echoing off of old walls in abandoned rooms is especially nice.

[PS4] Eli's Tweaks and Fixes All-In-One Creator: TheRealElianora Notes: So, so many of these bugs needed this. Water, power, and defense go up more per their sources, weights have been altered, you can get a new molerat disease cure by befriending Curie and gathering a bunch of stuff, and more unique game items don't get dropped into the 'junk' category - like MacCready's toy soldier.

[PS4] Water Redux Creator: lamanise Notes: Looks good. Like, so good. The water is changed based on what kind of body of water it is and whether or not it's stagnant.

Limited Minutemen Quests [PS4] Creator: Chucksteel Notes: Poor, sweet Preston. He didn't ask for that overwhelming sense of duty, and this mod helps the both of you out. You won't be constantly getting asked to help settlements (or failing the quests when you don't immediately jump on them) and he gets to relax a little.

[PS4] OCDecorator Creator: Ethreon Notes: For placing all those little objects in your settlements without worrying about a settler making them explode into an interior decorating disaster.

Time Scale changed from 20 to 6 [PS4] Creator: StormLord Notes: Longer days, longer nights. Makes keeping track of in-game time easier and more immersive without outright breaking any quests.

Peaceful Radstags Creator: Ash1597 Notes: No more bloodthirsty companions running off to murder the local wildlife for, uh, existing.

Loaded Loading Screens Creator: PoppaMcNikap Notes: Funniest mod by far, is even better if you're familiar with the original ones. Had actually made me laugh out loud sometimes.

Be smol (p small) NO DLC! [PS4] Creator: Drhamm Notes: I'm short. I like my character being short, too. Only makes some animations (like putting a fusion core in Power Armor) look silly at its worst, is otherwise very immersive.

Sanctuary No More Hammering Creator: Djpudz Notes: Sweet, sweet relief for your ears and for the settlers' arms. It's not like they were doing anything except aggressively hitting buildings anyway.

[PS4] Restore Barney Rook mission Creator: Abates Notes: Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy is this such a paaaaaaaaain. C'mon, Barney, you've been here for how long and you're gonna die as soon as you since I'm within three miles? Dude.

Plenty 'O' Exploration - PS4 - New Interiors And Exteriors To Explore! BETA Creator: DangoSan Notes: Lots more story and many more locations to check out. Blends in well with the vanilla setting - to the point that looking at the list now, I'm surprised by how many of these locations I thought were just a part of the game to begin with!

Power Conduits Radius Increase And No Build Limit - All DLC [PS4] Creator: StormLord Notes: Settlements no longer end up 60% wiring, 40% building.

The Beantown Interiors Project [PS4] Creator: Chucksteel Notes: Love me some new places to explore. There were too many boarded-up buildings, anyway. This one even adds some to Far Harbor and Nuka-World!

Colzie's Place Doors Anywhere Mod Creator: Colzie Notes: Doors are nice. The Wikipedia page for walls says, "Doors are mobile walls on hinges which open to form a gateway." Which, I mean, I guess is true. I can't say it's wrong.

NSA No Settlement Attacks (Base Game + DLC) PS4 Creator: Djulisa Notes: The only part of the vanilla game I actually dread. Settlement attacks never seemed to really care what your defense was at or where you were, but now you can escape that responsibility.

The Castle Revamp [PS4] Creator: FelloutIsLife Notes: Has that annoying problem where the debris sometimes respawns, but the fixes to the wall (and the free materials from scrapping that debris) are worth it.

[PS4] Luminus Workshop Lights Creator: ShanicTheOatMeme Notes: No more streetlamps that give off the light equivalent to that of a candle! Works and looks great with mods to change the brightness of nights.

Vault 88 - Restored Lighting - Rad Scanners - Turrets [PS4] Creator: StormLord Notes: The first area in the Vault looks crummy and is a pain to fix/work around...Until now. This mod fixes all that.

Immortal Cats - PS4 Creator: GenaTrius Notes: I really like cats. That's all I have to say about this one.

D.C. Glory Expansion Pack 1 Light [PS4] Creator: SlacksNawfside Notes: The Great Green Jewel sure as hell doesn't look like one...Until now. My poor system doesn't like the full version of this mod, but the Light one still looks lovely and makes it feel like a settlement worthy of the name.

TenPines Bluff Settlement Overhaul Ps4 Creator: Undernier Notes: Went here at too low a level. Gonna have to come back. The settlement itself still functions regardless but the nearby quest can be pretty dangerous. Look out for the minefield.

Power Line Physics [PS4] Creator: Cdante Notes: Because that's what a Bethesda game needs. More physics. (No, but really, it looks nice.)

Stumble Upon Interiors [PS4] Creator: Chiaro22 Notes: More things to explore? Yes, please. Some of these are actually really cool, and all of it blends in well with the vanilla game.

Consumables Overhaul - PS4 Creator: Aaronc53 Notes: Because food should matter, and cooking it should matter more. Works well with mods that decrease stimpak quantities.

No Build Limit - No DLC [PS4] Creator: StormLord Notes: Oh, no. This is here twice, sort of. Aw, shi-

Fizztop Grille Workshop - PS4 Creator: Mk221 Notes: Gage did say Colter had some peculiar taste, and I agree. I'm just gonna push everything off the top of the Fizztop and put in my own stuff.

Workshop Decorations Pack Creator: Astlem Notes: Probably one of my favorite mods ever. The bookshelves can have books, tables can come with clutter, desks look like they're in use...It's all so, so good.

Insignificant Object Remover Creator: AKcelsior Notes: Helps with frames, is generally comforting. Tucks you in at night and reads you a story.

[PS4] STS - Scrap that Settlement (Base Game) (+dlc addons) Creator: 3lric Notes: Doesn't let you scrap everything, but it sure lets you scrap a lot. There's this one makeshift structure on Spectacle Island that gets on my nerves, but I can't think of anything else I've had issues with since getting this mod.

UCO Base Game (core component of Unified Clothing Overhaul) (+season pass) Creator: ANDREWCX Notes: Very important. Very nice. Lets you upgrade, recolor, and wear armor in all kinds of ways.

DLC Ammo Leveled Lists Creator: Worlds Notes: Adds DLC ammo and weapons to other level lists, rearranges what drops when.

NPC Pipboys for PS4! Creator: Batta0909 Notes: Looks cool. That's about it.

(DLC) Companion Combat Overhaul Creator: Haighter Notes: A different mod that changes up perks for companions and actually makes them, you know, hit their targets. Their base clothing is also a little better. Also makes every other Courser a little harder thanks to the boost to the Courser Uniform X6 wears.

Superb Settlers [PS4] Creator: LilleMats90 Notes: Settlers actually show up with some gear, which makes sense since they're been getting by on their own 'til now.

NPCs are not Cartoons AIO -vBy Drhamm [PS4] Creator: Drhamm Notes: Companions look a little less unsettling. Plus, why do these twenty-year-olds look forty? Radioactive problems or not, it's creeping me out.

PS4 Shut. Your. FACE. Creator: Random.Encounter Notes: Why does every NPC feel the need to yell at me?! I'm JUST TRYING TO LIVE MY LIFE.

[PS4] Dogs not Brahmin Creator: ANDREWCX Notes: No more Brahmin cornering you in settlements or spawning on your roof. Besides, the Commonwealth could use more dogs, right?

Equilibrium: Weapons (Balance Fixes) Creator: Alexananiev Notes: Pros: Your pipe pistols are no longer useless. Cons: Enemy pipe pistols are no longer useless.

M.C.O.R. - Main Character Outfit Redux Creator: Sargeschultz Notes: One time I accidentally scrapped Kellogg's Outfit and broke my own heart. Never again.

Buffed Minutemen Militia 2 [PS4 Version] Creator: Dragonovith Notes: If I'm gonna be the general, you can bet your ass I'm training and equipping you...Or this mod can do it for me. Squads summoned by the flare gun (I'm not sure I've ever done that?) also have a squad leader, which is a nice touch.

Companions In The Institute Creator: Ash1597 Notes: I get lonely, okay?

Companion Perks (PS4)-DrNewcenstein Creator: DrNewcenstein Notes: Gives companions lore/backstory-based perks, which is pretty cool.

Ranged Robotics Hack Creator: Djulisa Notes: Re-breaks this perk into the funniest thing to bring into the Mechanist questline ever. Make robots explode at a distance by aiming your gun at them, then hacking from however far you are. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

More Map Markers - PS4 Creator: Mogomra Notes: Because it's nice to know where you're going - and where you've been.

Slower Respawn Rate Creator: Sway4829 Notes: I like feeling like I'm actually having an effect on the Commonwealth, like clearing out a location matters. This lets me pretend.

[PS4] Deliverer Mark2 Creator: Areis3020 Notes: I love Deliverer. I usually grab the Mark2 at ~level 60 or so and use the regular one until then.

1st Person Animation Tweaks [PS4] Creator: Thedust01 Notes: Mostly lets your character chill out when moving around instead of constantly pointing their gun at everything all of the time. Don't be so paranoid, Sole, it's not like everyone you've ever known is de-oh.

Vender Diversity Overhaul [PS4] Creator: Hroun Notes: Vendors should matter, right? Right.

NPC Loot Drop Rebalance [PS4] Creator: Hroun Notes: Fewer enemies carrying stimpaks, adds more variety and character to the various factions. Maybe this file won't end up with 200+ stimpaks (but it probably will)

No Legendary Items from Creatures [PS4] Creator: Hroun Notes: Why did that Mirelurk have a gun, anyway? It'd be cool if it was jutting out from one of its claws from someone it had killed before, or something, but no. It just has a gun. This fixes that.

Sanctuary Hills SP Rebuild [PS4] Creator: SpiritPixie Notes: C'mon, Codsworth, you've been cleaning for 200 years and this is what it looks like? No way.

Silent Stealth Field [PS4] Creator: AlpineYJ Notes: Bweeep. Bwooo. Bweep. Bwooo. Bweep. Bwooo. Every. Single. Time. You move. NO MORE.

Loyal Gage [PS4] Creator: Sway4829 Notes: I just wanna keep my trash friend, okay? I love Porter, but I also really love shooting the Nuka-World Raiders in the face. Or in the back, in this case.

Pipboy Light To Spotlight Creator: Ska00l Notes: Provides a bigger light than similar mods while still remaining more immersive than the vanilla light, which apparently turns you into a beacon or something.

#fallout 4 #ps4 #ps4 mods #fallout 4 mods #long post #text

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vohskyfire · 6 years

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Top Ten 2017 Games

That time of the year again, the end of the year is upon us. And as such, this will be my last post for this year on this website.

2017 has been a year of a LOT of good games. In fact, it’s argubly been the year of some of the best games ever made being released. Nintendo dominated this year with the Switch, several games have been said to be the best games of all time, and Microsoft shot themselves in the foot, again, with the Xbox One X. So odds are there’s a lot of great games out there that people love.

Keep in mind, these are just my personal picks for the top ten. If your favorites aren’t here, don’t worry, they’re still great too! Just one rule though.

No ports. Aka no Skyrim, no Doom, no Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Pokken Tournament, etc. Let’s get this started!

10: CupHead (Xbox One)

I’ll be honest, the first time I saw CupHead I wasn’t exactly sure what to think of it. It looked like it was a tribute to the old cartoons from the 50s and that gave it a bit of a nice feel to it. But I didn’t expect the game to be anything fantastic. Especially given Microsoft’s recent track records with exclusives (Looking at YOU, Halo Wars 2). However, come to my surprise, CupHead is a great game! In fact, it’s so good it’s the only Microsoft title to be on this list. So what exactly keeps it from being in the top 5? Well....

It’s hard. Like, brutally hard. Make no mistake people, this game will kick you in the teeth if you try to go into it acting like you aren’t going to die. In CupHead, expect to die. A LOT. And yes, just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean the game sucks. No one ever says that unless it’s someone who absolutely hates challenges. But sometimes, you gotta give the player a chance to BREATHE. And while boss fights are doable once you learn the patterns, people who AREN’T patient are going to break their controllers. A lot.

Overall, Cuphead is a good game. But goddamn does it make you fight to survive.

9: Crash Bandicoot: Insane Trilogy (PS4)

Crash is back baby. Crash is back. Okay, he’s SORTA back, but hey, it’s nice to see that Sony wanted to have their mascot back! Last year when they showed this off at E3, I went “Welp. There goes Microsoft’s chances to getting back into first place.” (At the time of this post, there is no Xbone Port yet) Seriously I was hyped, if Crash was coming back, then there was a huge chance that Spyro could come back as well. Now Insane Trilogy is an HD remake of the original 3 games, updated to modern times. And damn. Just DAMN. These games looks absolutely stunning. Gameplay wise they are just like they should have been from the past as well. That’s a good thing....aaaaaaaaaaaaaand a bad thing.

Crash 1 is still the hardest of the trilogy, mostly because the game was not MEANT for speed run purposes, and some of the hitboxes in Crash 1 are still as bad as they were back in the day. And while having Coco being playable is a nice touch, she doesn’t really change that much in the games. She’s basically just an alt skin for Crash, and most of the death animations that Crash goes through she’s spared. It’s still a wonderful remake of the original three games, and I am very happy to see that it sold incredibly well. Maybe Activision and Sony might work together from now on to do MORE Crash games? Or at least, you know...give us a Spyro trilogy remake too? That’d be nice. Anyone? Please? ...No? Skylanders still? O-Okay.

8: ARMS (Nintendo)

Oh yes. Now we’re getting into some Nintendo titles. (Be prepared, there’s a LOT of them here.) ARMS is basically what I would like to call the ‘Splatoon of fighting games.’ When they did the full presentation of ARMS back in January this year, I was one of the view that didn’t seem to out right hate the concept of ARMS. I thought it looked like a blast to play, plus fighting games are awesome. ARMS thankfully to me, did not disappoint. In the months of waiting for Splatoon 2 and other Switch titles to come out, ARMS was there. And for what it’s worth? The game is a blast to play. Simple controls that one can get use to, wonderfully designed characters, beautiful music, intense hype as hell battles, and being able to combine different arms with one another based on your fighting style is a great thing. Many hours were put into ARMS trying to get more unique ARMS to use in battle.

That’s...kinda where some of the good stops. The game’s great, don’t get me wrong, but there were some things I feel ARMS needed to be more active on launch. For one, a better story mode. Arcade mode is basically what you get. Info on your fighter, what they’re fighting style is like, and that’s pretty much it. There’s no story building, no interactions between characters, and that can KINDA hurt a fighting game this year when you have Injustice 2 showing how to do a story in a fighting game. Mind you, this is just a MINOR flaw to me.

Overall, ARMS is a lovable experience. And I’m glad to see that it got all the support they said they were going to give it. Maybe the comics will be just as good, or at least have more stuff for ARMS 2. (If they make it.)

7: Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle (Nintendo)

If you would have told me that this game, this game, would be on this list this year or that I would find it to be one of my favorite games this year at the start of January? I would have smacked you in the mouth. I should make this clear to everyone.

I. Hate. The Rabbids.

When I first heard about this game from that huge leak from Ubisoft, I first thought “What? Are you shitting me? Mario and Rabbids crossover? And they have GUNS? What the hell is this? Is this gonna be MARIO OF WAR 4 where it’s a third person shooter? Come on Nintendo.”

Then E3 happened. Oh boy, did I get proved wrong by Ubisoft.

Kingdom Battle isn’t ANYWHERE close to the over done third person shooter area. It’s bright, colorful, charming, actually kinda funny in moments (that’s saying something given the Rabbids’ history) and believe it or not...

Actually...a LOT of fun.

No, seriously. This is one of the most fun games I’ve played this year. Bar none. It’s hard to believe I’m saying that about a Rabbids game that’s crossed over with Mario of all franchises, but it’s true. The game is the first huge strategic game on the Switch and I’m happy to report that the game plays damn well. Think of it like Xcom. Where you actually have to think out your strategies and make certain you know the map well enough.

The only kind of flaws I could give the game is that well...it’s kinda short. Four worlds, each with large maps to do battle, and the story is just kinda...there. Like they explain how the two series meet and everything, but it’s just...there. Not like I expected a huge story from a Mario + Rabbids game, but it would have been interesting to see them go a BIT more into it. Ah well, the DLC will probably cover that.

6: Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (Nintendo)

And here we have the first Fire Emblem game on this list (Someone’s gonna get upset somewhere). Shadows of Valentia is the first game that uses the classic gameplay the series has been known for that I’ve played since Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Which we’ll get into why THAT game sucks another time...) and to be honest? This game really really contends with Awakening as my favorite FE title.

I love a lot of things about Shadows of Valentia. The storyline is enjoyable, the art style is absolutely beautiful, the music is GODLY, the battles are intense and force you to be on your toes, the character models look absolutely gorgeous for a 3DS game, and the characters are wonderfully written. No joke, Alm and Celica, as ‘bland’ as they can be, are some of my favorite FE characters now.

The only thing I can really say that is sort of a draw back to this game is that...well, how it will test your patience. No joke, the maps are fantastic and the gameplay is a joy to go through, but GOD in heaven above, do some maps want to test your will to continue. Especially maps that have the annoying spell known as UPHEAVAL which damages everyone in your army on sight AND...ahem, let’s save that rant for another time.

Over all, Shadows of Valentia is a great remake of the second game in the series. If you have a 3DS, which is going to be put to rest soon, I would recommend getting this game. It’s fantastic.

5: Fire Emblem Warriors (Nintendo)

Annnnnnnnnnd there goes some of the older FE fans booing at me liking this game. Yes, the game is only Shadow Dragon, Awakening, and Fates. Yes, some of the other characters (Celica and Lyn) are the only representatives of their games, yes some characters have the same moves as others. But you know what? I don’t care.

I. LOVE. THIS. GAME.

It’s fun, it’s stupid mindless fun, and enjoyable. I know most fans may not like the fact that it’s three games over the many others, but to me? I am happy with the choices they’ve made.

Combat is smooth and stylish, like Warriors games tend to be, the animations are wonderful, the controls respond perfectly, and just seeing the way that characters interact with one another is fantastic. I love hearing them call each other’s names when they do a dual strike together. I love how over the top some attacks can get, and I love the ability to switch between units on the fly.

Yes the story’s a lil stupid, and yes they should have included other games in the franchise too, but I like it. If you want to turn your brain off, this is the game for you. It got into my list because I’m a fan who doesn’t hold favoritism over others. Just don’t be rude to people who don’t like the game, and vice versa and you might find a gem.

4: Metroid: Samus Returns (Nintendo)

Yeaaaaah, there’s a lot of Nintendo games.

If you would have told me that Nintendo was going to show off not only Metroid Prime 4 and a new classic Metriod game this year at E3, I would have called you a liar. And to my surprise, they did it. They actually did it. Prime 4 during the new stuff for Nintendo Switch, AND during the after presentation, a new Metroid title to be released this year.

Samus Returns is what I would like to call one of the best looking, and best playable, games on the 3DS. This game I could even consider it to be a swan song. Everything from classic Metroid is here. Charge shots, wall jumps, bombs, beam upgrades, etc. It’s all there. As an official remake of Metroid 2, people were happy to see that Nintendo not only DID care for Metroid, but it shed some light as to why AM2R was taken down. There’s really not much to complain about when it comes to this game. It plays well, responds well, and really teases at more future Metroid games down the line. To which I say...please give us more.

I wanna see Metroid Dread. Do it Nintendo.

TOP THREE.

Oh boy...these three were hard to decide their order. I’ll give short paragraphs for them as I feel I’ve dragged this list out long enough. That and really, I don’t have complaints for these three. These three are the best of the best. Hands down. The best games this year easily.

3: Persona 5 (PS4)

This. Game. Holy shit this game. RPGs live. And Persona 5 has shown the world, and more importantly Square Enix, that turn based RPGS still live. And goddamn, is this game amazing. Fantastic story, fantastic characters, fantastic music, spot on battle system, wonderful dialogue, wonderful artstyle, wonderful EVERYTHING. GET THIS GAME.

2: Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo)

Easily the best 3D Mario game ever made. No seriously, it’s fantastic. If you own a Switch, you need to get this game. It’s beautiful and is just a charm to play through. Also god DAMN does it play so smooth.

1: Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo)

I know. Predictable. But you know what? I don’t care. This game, this game is my favorite game this year. From exploring Hyrule, fighting enemies, discovering what meals to cook, the wonderful story, and just how much of a riveting experience it has been, I can NOT put this game at number 1. It was the first huge game this year, and I feel it deserves the praise that it’s been getting. I spent many hours playing this game, and I am glad to say that it’s my number one game this year.

And that’s how we send off 2017. Let’s hope 2018 is a good year for games as well!

PS: Also Splatoon 2 is a huge honorary mention.

#Games of the Year #Top Ten List #So long 2017 #So long

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zaggitz · 4 years

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My Games of the Year 2019

2019! Pretty dang good year personally, pretty dang garbage globally. Semi decent in terms of games? I feel like there were some hot bangers but they were all pretty spread out and far between. It probably doesn’t help that I worked a LOT this year, which means I ended up playing I think the least amount of new games in this year since I started making these lists. 2020 looks to have an even slower start but I know there’s new consoles on the way, E3 is gonna be a wild ride y’all.

As previously stated, I did not play a lot of games this year, but the ones I did I think were pretty good.

First off, I figured I’d list my games of the year for the past decade(links to the respective lists provided onnce I started doing them.): 2010: Super Mario Galaxy 2 2011: Dark Souls 2012: La-Mulana 2013: Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds 2014: Bayonetta 2 2015: Trails in the Sky SC 2016: Trails of Cold Steel 2 2017: Trails in the Sky The 3rd 2018: Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age And now 2019:

10. Pokemon Sword It's that classic Pokemon formula only streamlined to take merely half the time(and half the Pokemon oops!!) In all honesty I really enjoyed my time with this game and the fact that it tried to be as tight as possible and didn’t waste your time felt really refreshing. I just wish it had a meatier postgame. I don’t mind the reduced dex but the lack of legendaries to hunt really sucked any wanting to play more out of me after seeing the credits.

9. Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening It's that classic weird Zelda game, only prettier and with even better music. The touched and fixes to the gameplay alongside the amazing atmosphere provided by the new graphics and revamped sound track make this the definitive version of a true classic.

8. Resident Evil 2

Mr X is literally the scariest thing I've had to deal with in a game in years and I twitch uncontrollably whenever i hear loud footsteps heading my way in real life now. I still need to sneak back in and do a second playthrough before RE3make hits next year(????fuck yes????)

7. Devil May Cry 5

It only took like 15 years but we finally got a new genuine Devil May Cry game and its the best one yet??? It capped off a lot of the plot threads from 4 and felt like a complete game with tons of love put into it and I'm so glad Capcom is having this renaissance the past couple of years if this kind of stuff is what we have to look forward to.

6. Judgement Fantastic spinoff to the Yakuza games, same great setting, amazing new cast of characters. Probably would have been higher on the list if it didn't give me cat noise ptsd from having to find all the hidden cats during investigations.

5. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Score another win for people getting to revive genres/series they used to be huge players in. Playing this game feels like being pulled right back into the mid 00s and I mean that in the best way possible.

It oozes so much mechanical personality out of every poor, the soundtrack rules and it scratches that 100% completionist itch the way only a true IGAvania can.

4. Fire Emblem: Three Houses I only played Blue Lions but this is already my favorite fire emblem I've ever played. There's basically not a single character I didn't like and I found the Blue Lions plot to be extremely emotionally gripping and satisfying overall.

The exploration of its themes of ptsd, growing up in war times, racism, classism and all the social struggles that come with these things is second to none when it comes to this series, and I can’t wait to dive back in for another playthrough soon.

3. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice This game fucking rules as hard as it is hard. I love From Soft's version of feudal Japan and I really hope they get some dlc or a sequel to flesh some of their ideas out because they are super fascinating.

I try to be very thoughtful about why I like the games I like but man this game is just plain old rad and fun and hard and some guy cuts a portal to hell out of his neck and you fight his super powered grandpa after he climbs out of the portal. It’s a good video game.

2. Trails of Cold Steel 3 Basically any other year this would have been my go to number one contender. I love this game and this series to bits but i think it spends a little too much time backpedaling on its payoffs in order to keep all the reveals for the final act which, while incredible, is pretty exhausting by the time you get there.

New Class VII are some of my fave characters in the series, Ash and Altina especially. I really loved them pulling back plot threads like Hamel that have been simmering in the background for almost two decades now. The music as always is fucking incredible. By the end of the game it truly feels like the beginning of a culmination for so many years of built up plotlines and then oops it cuts to black.

Well, I guess I’m really looking forward to CS4 then!!

1. Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers I always enjoyed this game in the past mostly as a side game to kill time but the beauty of having a game run this long means that it has just as much time to get you invested in its world and its characters. The fact that this expansion starts by taking all of that away and throwing you and your band of misfit allies into completely uncharted territory, devoid of all resources and external allies, is just the faintest tease at how spectacularly bold this expansion is.

Despite the fact that this game takes place in a whole new world mostly divorced from the main political arcs established so far, it goes maybe the furthest in terms of huge metaplot shattering and affecting reveals. By the end of this game I sympathized and understood the villains of this game in a way I never imagine I would be able to.

The character writing is superb, the menagerie of side characters you’ve come to know over the past three games finally get a chance to shine as they are stranded in the strange alternate universe mirror of the main game. Before this game I liked one or two of the Scions quite a bit but found the rest of the team to be pretty forgettable. By the end of Shadowbringers each and everyone one of them stand as some of my favorites in any jrpg I’ve ever played.

The villain of this expansion is just straight up the best most well written, sympathetic and relate-able foe from any FF game so far. Hell, even outside of Final Fantasy I have trouble thinking of another villain who I shed legit tears for when they finally passed on.

The game’s music is incredible and otherwordly, the changes they made to the classes (that I play) were all rad and Ardbert is my Husband of the Year all Years.

I’ve always played this game pretty casually without massive investment but I'm here for the long haul after this expansion.

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mordogeira · 7 years

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I'm curious!! What was your build? Did you link the fire or let it die? How was the fight against the final boss? If you've only done the main game, will you play through the dlc soon? How was your experience through the game up to this point? Sorry for all the questions, I just love this game!

!!! This ask actually got me super excited, so please don’t apologize!!

My build was pretty makeshift. At first I tried to go herald, but the last time I played Dark Souls (2) was over a year ago, so I was really outta the game and Gundyr beat me ass 10 too many times lol, so I decided to use the advice a friend gave me when I wanted to get into 1 and chose Pyro instead. I evenly levelled Dex, Faith and Int, but.... I gotta say, that was kind of dumb, because I used my Pyro abilities only very rarely. Those were some ability points wasted, but I don’t regret it! In terms of armor I went full fashion souls. Black Set helmet (Yuria wanted to leave and I REALLY wanted her armor set), Dancer armor and Deacon Skirt. Looked REAL good. Irithyll Broadsword was my go to weapon at all times paired with the Sharp Notched Whip. As the game progressed and armored enemies got more and more, the Whip sadly got shafted though :/ I wanted to change the Broadsword for several other swords, but things just didn’t satisfy me. At first I tried Wolnirs Sword, and it was cool, but sadly too slow for my taste. Then I tried the Dancers Swords, and they were cool too, but the reach I felt was very short? Then I wanted to try Lothrics sword, but somehow I missed doing that. So Irithyll broadsword stayed my best friend.

I let the fire die! That’s what I wanted to do since the first game. I flunked it in 1 though. In the second I walked away after defeating Aldia and now I let it die. Though seeing the game slowly go black, the Firekeeper asking if I can still hear her stung A LOT, I feel like it’s the right thing to do? I feel like Gwyn fucked up a lot, and I sympathized a lot with Lothric. Keeping the flame alive is desperate and really isn’t necessary. As we see in 3, everything has gone to shit so badly, even worse than in 1. I had to pull the trigger, piglet.

The fight was SOMETHING. At first I thought “oh neat that’s Gwyn all over again, pretty cool”. But then he pulls a Bloodborne and makes his sword a staff and I just SHIT. HATE those homing soul masses. Hate them!! I was really glad when the healthbar finally went down and thought “well that was tough, but not a real boss fight” until dude goes Cinder mode. JEEZ. I thought the Twin Princes didn’t like the flame, why did he know their strategy then!! But man. That Gwyn track. It was hard to fight him with tears in my eyes. I’m gonna be honest, I summoned peopel for the fight. Only one per try though, that’s my rule. I wan’t assistance, not a cake walk! Still took me so many tries I didn’t count lol. It was really tough, but I was relieved when he finally went down.

I’ve watched so many videos and read lore theories on the DLC, it makes me REALLY want to play them, especially the Ringed City. But I don’t think I’ll be playing them for a while, because money wise that’s outta my reach :(

The game was really fun and great to play through!!! I gotta say, I’m really disappointed that it’s so linear and not as interconnected as one, and it bothered me that the color palette was so grey and washed out. BUT I loved the bosses A LOT. They were so much fun to fight! The OST is probably the best in the whole series. Hands down. My favourite area was probably the Cathedral of the Deep. Really gave me that “WHERES the bonfire I need it NOW” feeling and it always delivered right on time! Also I’m glad we saw some characters reappear. I was super delighted to “meet” Heysel and Creighton (I loved how Creighton ambushes you once you’re alone and he spawns behind a tree where you can’t see him, that coward), I’m on the “Rosaria is Gwynevere” boat so returning to her every once in a while was something. Especially once Leonard does the thing. I also loved the subtle hints that Kaathe got some bullshit going on with his face all over the grand archives and and Yuria talking about him in her dying moments. Also!! What I really loved was the Angel thing. It was kept very short but it was super intriguing, and is also what makes me wanna play the Ringed City. I like that Angels seem to be parasites, but Gertrude was probably visited by something way different.

I do wish they had expanded on some characters, though. Like Oceiros. He’s a king, but the only thing we get to know about him is during his boss fights. Or Yhorm and the profaned Capital. It felt a little tacked on.

I KNOW THIS POST IS LONg I’m so sorry omg BUT I still want to mention that I love Irithyll. Not only the way it looks, but also the story. The religion has shifted from Sun to Moon and we seen Gwyndolin statues. Sirris takes her job very seriously despite the Darkmoon Blades being practically nonexistent. I love how Sulyvahn tried to take everything over while still being a religious figure. and so on I don’t wanna make it too long!!

I HOPE THIS ISN’T TOO LONG OR TOO MUCH if you wanna keep on talking about this game i’d love to talk more!!! i love dark souls games and this game left me empty i need to vent this BAD

#long post #Anonymous

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hyruviandoctor · 7 years

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Belobed mutual please tell me about your fave zelda vid games and why you lobe them

Hello fellow belobed mutual I shall fulfill your requebst

I’m just gonna list them in bold and then type next to them if that’s okay

Ocarina of Time - This was my first Zelda, so obviously it holds a really special place in my heart. I’ve played through it all a bunch of times on the gamecube, and it was actually the first game I got for my 3DS, too. I love the music and atmosphere a lot, and I love the characters so much. I spent so much time with this game, it’s insane. I used to go around making up my own plotlines and basically writing mental fanfiction and having new journeys, so my totaly playtime on my original save file is probably up in the hundreds of hours. It got me into the fandom and was the first thing I ever looked up fanfiction for (which my mom banned me from looking at because I spent too much time reading it apparently, but I kept reading anyway). Playing Ocarina feels like coming home to me, and it probably always will.

Minish Cap - This was my first handheld Zelda, and I love everything about it. It’s been an insanely long time since I last played it, but I remember really enjoying it. I absolutely adore the art of the game, I love the music, the characters and the world are absolutely amazing, and the gameplay is fantastic (even the kinstones were fun and I didn’t know people hated them until really recently).

Spirit Tracks - I absolutely adore Spirit Tracks, which is ironic because I remember hating it when I first saw the trailer. Back when it was first announced I got on the website to watch the announcement trailer and sat there holding my breath and feeling my heart race, but then I heard a train whistle and my heart fell because even though I love trains, that’s not Zelda. Boy was I so wrong. That game is amazing, the train is amazing, I love it, I’m so sorry for ever doubting you Spirit Tracks. I fell in love with the game almost immediately once I got my hands on it (my grandma got it and the collector’s strategy guide for me for Christmas that year) and I dropped so many hours into it. The music is amazing, the plot is super good, all of the characters are stellar, the world is super cool - it’s basically just an amazing game and everyone should play it.

Skyward Sword - I loved Skyward Sword so much. It’s one of the only Zelda games I don’t own, however, and I had to borrow it and a WiiMotionPlus from a friend of mine in order to play it, but it became my favorite Zelda almost immediately and stayed there for a while. The music is so dang moving because oh my goodness a full live orchestra. The motion controls never gave me any issues, but I realize I’m in the minority there (they gave me trouble the first time I flew a Loftwing, but I realized that I was actually just doing it wrong). Also oh my goodness there’s so much Zelink in this game that I absolutely died every time they so much as looked at each other.

Breath of the Wild - This game killed me. I love all of it. All of it. Part of that is probably the fact that I’m still playing it, but I’ve dropped over a hundred hours (or very close) into it and see no chance of me stopping any time soon. I was very curious as to how the music would sound with Koji Kondo not taking the lead, but it turned out so amazing that I was stunned. I absolutely love the art style of this game, and I think Nintendo should stick with it for a while because it fits Zelda so well. I’m really impressed by how well Nintendo handled making a huge open world game with such a complex physics engine, and I’m glad they took so long to develop it (because hopefully they’ll reuse it a couple times and we’ll get games faster). Also the amount of Zelink in this game is incredible and come on they literally made Zelink canon with Kass’ Final Song like come on Nintendo please give us something more in the dlc I beg you

#I'm so sorry this is so long #but these are my absolute favorites #it was hard to narrow it down even this far #asks #anon #Tyler Talks #ask me stuff #Zelda

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christhehoff · 7 years

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E3 2017: A Nintendo Fan's Perspective

As a Nintendo enthusiast, it was hard for me to not walk out of E3 2017 with a huge smile on my face. Which of the big three first-party publishers came out of the show the winner is largely a matter of preference, but there's no question that Nintendo stood out from the crowd and delivered its own brand of unique, colorful fun at a show where many triple-A games were cut from the same cloth. And I think a lot of players would agree, judging by the number of people I heard singing, humming, or whistling the ridiculous yet infectious "1-up Girl" song from Super Mario Odyssey as they left the hall on the final day of the show.

Unlike last year's E3, where Nintendo put all its virtual eggs in one basket with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, this time Nintendo was firing on all cylinders with big franchises, expected sequels, and shocking surprises. Most third parties aren't yet embracing the Switch despite its success, but there should still be enough first-party games to keep players satisfied for the foreseeable future. For both Switch and 3DS, this is a clear case of quality over quantity. Still, between what was on the show floor, shown on video, or announced in conjunction with E3, there was a lot to get excited about, but to narrow the focus a bit, I present to you my personal top 10 favorite Nintendo-related things I encountered at this year's show.

10. Splatoon 2 (Switch)

Splatoon 2 doesn't stray too far from the formula established by the original, but that's not a bad thing. I'm not the biggest fan of competitive shooters, but the cooperative Salmon Run mode looks like just what I've asked for, and the single-player mode grabbed me as soon as soon as I saw the ability to zip around using ride rails.

9. Shantae: Half-Genie Hero - Pirate Queen's Quest (Switch)

I absolutely loved WayForward's Shantae: Half-Genie Hero on both Wii U and Switch, and it looks like I'm going to fall in love all over again with the upcoming Pirate Queen's Quest DLC that lets you play as the villainess, Risky Boots. It features the same type of gorgeous, fluid action, but with modified levels, new attacks and abilities (like a grappling hook), new enemies, and a new upgrade system. Though this mode is paid DLC, Kickstarter backers will get it for free, plus it will apparently be included in the upcoming physical Switch release from XSEED Games.

8. Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology (3DS)

The original Radiant Historia on DS is a hidden gem of an RPG, and I'm thrilled to see that this enhanced version is making its way to North America. The time-defying story and gameplay - which sees you jumping between alternate timelines - separates this from other JRPGs, and new art and scenario elements make this edition even more enticing.

7. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions (3DS)

The original Mario & Luigi game is arguably still the best in the series, and now it's back with a fresh coat of paint. The fantastic writing and excellent timing-based gameplay have made their way from the GBA version virtually unchanged, but the graphics are far more detailed this time (although whether that's a good or bad is a matter of opinion). Also included is a brand-new mode where you play as the bad guys - led by Captain Goomba - and try to track down your boss, Bowser.

6. Fire Emblem Warriors (Switch)

I've long thought that Fire Emblem was a perfect fit for a Warriors title, and after going hands-on with Fire Emblem Warriors, I'm further convinced it was a good idea. The gameplay is exactly what you'd expect - you slice through hundreds of enemy soldiers while controlling a variety of heroes from past Fire Emblem games - and like in the 3DS version of Hyrule Warriors, you can quickly jump from hero to hero for advantageous positioning on the battlefield.

5. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Switch)

Though not playable on the show floor, the videos and presentation shown on Xenoblade Chronicles 2 make it one of my most-anticipated Switch titles. The world is vast, the combat system is suitably deep, and the anime inspiration runs high. I'm very intrigued by protagonists Rex and Pyra and they're quest to reach the land of Elysium, as well as the strange, beautiful world set atop continent-sized loving creatures called Titans.

4. New Amiibo

Between Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Fire Emblem, 13 of Nintendo's biggest characters are being beautifully rendered in new plastic figurine form. All of them look great in my opinion, but I'm probably most excited about the Metroid, the four champions from Breath of the Wild (Mipha, Revali, Daruk, and Urbosa) and Bowser in a tuxedo, because it's BOWSER IN A TUXEDO.

3. Metroid Prime 4 (Switch) & Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)

There's not much I wanted more out of this year's E3 than a new Metroid announcement, and we got not one but two of 'em. Metroid Prime 4 was little more than a logo and a promise for sometime in the future, but Metroid: Samus Returns is an extensive stereoscopic 3D remake of Metroid II: Return of Samus, and it's only a few months away. As excited as I am, I remain cautious about both titles: Prime 4 is being handled by a new dev team rather than Retro Studios, and Samus Returns is being developed by Mercury Steam, the team known for disappointing many fans with its take on Castlevania. Still, things are looking quite promising so far.

2. Sonic Mania (Switch)

The more I play of Sonic Mania on Switch, the more I like it. The developer's love of the franchise is clearly evident, as the game highlights both platforming and all-out speed like the series was known for in its glory days. Visually, the game is neon-drenched sensory overload in the best way possible, and the ability to play as Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles lets you discover alternate routes with the characters' individual abilities. This doesn't simply play like classic Sonic; this is the realization of old-school Sonic that only exists in our rose-tinted memories.

1. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)

This was the game I most wanted to experience at this year's E3, and it did not disappoint. Odyssey seems to have it all: dinosaurs with mustaches, the ability to wear a sombrero, evil bunny rabbits, seamless shifts between 2D and 3D action, and, yes, Bowser in a tux. And that's on top of the traditional Mario platforming and collecting, and his newfound ability to possess NPCs, enemies, and objects. There's so much to see and do in each level, the 10-minute demos at the show flew by like they were nothing, and I can't wait to play more. I only hope there's a non-motion-controlled option for Mario's spin attack!

#e3 #nintendo #switch #mario

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eggoreviews · 5 years

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13 Nintendo Direct Predictions! - 13.2.19

In case you haven't heard the exciting news, Nintendo is giving us a lovely 35ish minute direct tonight, which is all regarding viddy games for the Switch (I'm not crying over the 3DS you're crying) So below you will find my best attempt at picking out 11 predictions for this direct, all of which I've probably gotten wrong. Enjoy! Note: These are in no particular order, but I'm more confident about some over others. Also, Fire Emblem Amiibo Festival Three Houses news is absent here because we already have confirmation that's happening.

Luigi's Mansion 3 news

I think this one is almost a given, considering it's a title that we know is dropping in 2019 we know basically nothing about. Everyone wants to know what kind of direction the game will take this time around. Will the third in the series take the route of the first and have one big ol spooky mansion for Luigi to navigate? Or will it be a much more fast paced, moment-by-moment experience with multiple mansions to explore akin to Luigi's Mansion 2? Or hell, maybe they'll go down a whole new road with it, it really is all up in the air. All I'm sure of is that they'll be plenty of ghosts and also probably amiibo support. Weird request, but I'd love a King Boo amiibo. Animal Crossing news

Another (almost) given, Animal Crossing is a title we haven't even seen gameplay for yet. This means we've got arguably less of an idea of what kind of mechanics will return. But now the series is finally making its return to a powerful home console, it makes sense to take how the game itself plays into the next gen too. A popular request I've seen thrown about a bit is the ability to customise your town however you want, with the option to build literally anywhere you like. As a newcomer to the series, this would definitely draw me in, as I'm waiting for this title to experience AC for the first time. In any case, I'm sure Nintendo have cooked up a game with plenty of fishing, digging and also amiibo. Trailer for Bayonetta 3

One of my more risky picks, I think we're pretty likely to get our first proper glimpse of the Bayo threequel that isn't just a vague teaser. Whether this will kick off the direct or will be something they'll sneak in the middle, a tentative release date and a cheeky look at gameplay I feel are more likely than some may think. I think the basic rule is that if it's anything like 2, it's gonna be pretty darn brilliant. So watch this space, and if it isn't this direct, I'd expect it soon after. SNES for Switch Online

Another slightly risky pick considering Nintendo haven't confirmed any classic console support on Switch beyond NES, alongside the fact that they're still releasing NES games on the system, it could be that SNES is just that bit further away. But with the recent datamine leak listing 20+ games for SNES online that I feel to be credible enough to keep in mind, this could yet be something Nintendo surprises us with. And if it's true that'd be a little bit too exciting. As for the N64 Classic, I'm gonna go ahead and say we aren't getting that here. Or maybe not at all. Who knows at this point. NO Pokemon

Yep, you read right, this prediction is more of an anti-prediction, but I firmly believe that Pokemon will be entirely absent from this direct for a number of reasons. With this direct focused around Fire Emblem and seemingly other announced but yet to be detailed games, I feel that any games we don't know about yet will either get a small trailer or they'll be saved for something bigger, like E3. It's that and to be honest, I've just got a gut feeling that they're not quite ready to show off the new Pokemon just yet, Let's Go is still relatively new so I think Nintendo will let it simmer for a while longer and focus for the most part on games we already know about. But you know, we'll see. Super Mario Maker

Considering how well Mario Maker did as a whole on the Wii U and 3DS, and seeing how the business of Wii U ports is looking pretty spicy at the minute, I think either a Mario Maker enhanced port or even a sequel could be imminent. The versatility of the Switch would be perfect for a game like Mario Maker and I believe it makes a lot of sense for them to wait this long, as a game like Mario Maker would've very much undermined their recent port of New Super Mario Bros. U. It's either this or they'll have to think about Mario Golf Aces so I reckon they'll take this route. Pikmin

As the list of fairly current Nintendo IPs yet to be represented on the Switch grows ever shorter, fans seem to be turning their attention to the likes of Pikmin. Knowing that Pikmin 4 was finished a while back, but was unannounced as to what system it would appear on, makes a Pikmin 4 trailer pretty darn likely. However, if ResetEra leaker King Zell (who correctly leaked the date for this direct by the way) is to be believed, we could even be seeing a port of Pikmin 3 instead, although personally I find this a bit less likely, especially if 4 is already apparently finished. Zelda HD Port(s)

Continuing the theme of Wii U ports, Nintendo seemed to have wholly recognised that not many people actually owned a Wii U in the grand scheme of things and there's a heckton of people who are eager to play some of the games they may have missed on the last console. I certainly think this extends to the relatively recent HD remasters of Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, both of which I would basically swallow up if they were announced. While this isn't a certain pick, I'd say it's a fairly safe bet with the surprising amount of demand I've seen for this titles. In a really ideal world, this would be bundled alongside a brand new shiny HD remaster of Skyward Sword, but I guess we'll see. Oh, and going back to King Zell for a sec, he's said a new 2D Zelda is happening. As much as I'd love this to death, I'm also going to be saying that won't happen either. Smash Bros. Ultimate Joker Gameplay

Seeing how there's probably been a couple of dedicated months of development for Persona 5's Joker since he was announced at the 2018 Game Awards as the first DLC fighter, it's not outlandish to think that he might be at a stage that a gameplay showcase could be possible. Hell, maybe they'll even give us a rough release date for him, which would get me heckin excited bc I am V E R Y hyped to play as my best boi. Alongside this, a possible stage reveal or a music track list is gratefully very plausible. And although I could see yet another Smash reveal as unlikely but plausible, I think they'll get Joker done and dusted before they drop another one on us, but again, it's certainly not out of the question. Metroid Prime Trilogy

Here it is, the prediction I'm arguably most confident about. Since Prime 4 was halted this month, and the growing rumours around an imminent Prime Trilogy release refusing to go away, I reckon this direct is finally the time for a whole new generation to experience what brought Metroid into glorious 3D. As always, nothing's certain, but part of me would be unusually surprised if this gets skipped out on, especially since this direct is so close to the recent Prime 4 announcement and Nintendo will likely be looking for something to give to the Metroid fans to make them a little more patient. And, you know, to get everyone else excited too. DLC for Mario Odyssey/Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

As I've mentioned in previous posts, these two are basically DLC goldmines waiting to happen. And to e perfectly honest with you, I wouldn't be mad at all. New worlds to explore in Odyssey, perhaps even based on previous 3D Mario games, would definitely elicit some excitement, while the addition of even more tracks and characters to the already great MK8 would help to draw a bit more attention back to the launch titles that got the Switch its initial sale spike. And, you know, in a lovely dream world where BotW wasn't already announced as finished, there would be a DLC pack 3 for Zelda but I'll keep that locked in the hopeless dream box. Dragon Quest XI & Persona 5 for Switch

The latest installment in the long running, critically acclaimed Dragon Quest series has already been confirmed to be coming to the Switch at some point, with Switch exclusive content to boot, but we don't really have any indication when. This direct I believe is incredibly likely to finally deliver a release date. As well as this, Atlus' weird cryptic Persona trailer they released a little while back could very well point to a Switch port on the horizon and, even if it didn't, I still think it'll happen anyway. Especially now Joker's been Smash'd. And these are both must plays if you haven't had a chance to get hold of them yet!

Final Fantasy VII drops immediately after the direct

With the recent announcements of release dates for FFXII and X/X-2 for April this year, we’re still in the dark on when Square Enix plan to release VII and IX. Considering that FFVII has started appearing in Switch adverts, it feels like it’s getting close and I can definitely see them taking us by surprise and dropping this imminently.

Something Kingdom Hearts related?

For those who haven’t seen, Square Enix producer Shinji Hashimoto, co-creator of the Kingdom Hearts series and producer for several of the Final Fantasy games, retweeted the Nintendo Direct announcement TWICE. While this could just be a prelude to more Final Fantasy news, there’s a chance it could be something relating to Kingdom Hearts too. Reeling off the list of slight possibilities here, we could be seeing a 1.5. 2.5 and 2.8 port for the Switch, the announcement of a future Switch port for KHIII or, if we really want to dream big here, the reveal of Sora for Smash. But that won’t happen. So I’m trying to push down my hype as far as I can.

And that's all my predictions for tonight's direct! Want to see my personal wants for this direct? Check it out here and let me know what you think! Whatever happens, keep your expectations tempered to avoid disappointment, because I think we've all been guilty of getting a little too hyped at one point or another. But above all, I hope the game you want gets announced! Unless it's a new F-Zero, because that really isn't gonna happen. Sorry friend.

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