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Skyward Sword Skyward Sword is the Best Zelda Game of All Time: Agree or Disagree

Joined
Mar 18, 2014
You SAYING you can play without problems is NOT bonafide anything. It's you saying you can play without problems. I (and many others) have said that there are problems with the WM+ and this game. No technology is flawless. Sorry to burst your bubble there.

I didn't fail to master anything. I said I found the game painfully and insultingly easy compared to other games in the series including TP. How does that indicate that I failed to master anything? The only issues I had were resolved by recalibrating the WM+ otherwise, I never had any problems with the difficulty of the game. I found it tedious at times but never difficult.

As for OP items, I play mostly for story. That means I go for 100% completion. If something is in the game, it's part of the overall story and I don't consider it unfair.

Also, I said decent challenge and I meant by comparison. SS was a walk in the park. I mean the last battles of SS were essentially a sequence of my least favorite overused tropes in the game. Ghirahim with his directional blocking and eye/jewel target followed by an insultingly easy battle that didn't involve either.
 

JuicieJ

SHOW ME YA MOVES!
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On the midnight Spirit Train going anywhere
You SAYING you can play without problems is NOT bonafide anything. It's you saying you can play without problems. I (and many others) have said that there are problems with the WM+ and this game. No technology is flawless. Sorry to burst your bubble there.

And I and many others have NOT had problems. If you want to keep denying that this is proof that you suck at playing the game, then go right on ahead, but facts are still facts. Sorry to burst YOUR bubble, but the Wii MotionPlus has no functional issues.

I didn't fail to master anything. I said I found the game painfully and insultingly easy compared to other games in the series including TP. How does that indicate that I failed to master anything? The only issues I had were resolved by recalibrating the WM+ otherwise, I never had any problems with the difficulty of the game. I found it tedious at times but never difficult.

You didn't master the controls is what I said -- which is the blatant truth. I also never said SS was difficult. In fact, I explicitly said it was merely a decently challenging game, as any Zelda game should be.

As for SS being easier than TP... lol.

As for OP items, I play mostly for story. That means I go for 100% completion. If something is in the game, it's part of the overall story and I don't consider it unfair.

If you're playing Zelda for the story, then you have priority issues. Zelda's always been about the gameplay, plain and simple.

Also, I said decent challenge and I meant by comparison. SS was a walk in the park. I mean the last battles of SS were essentially a sequence of my least favorite overused tropes in the game. Ghirahim with his directional blocking and eye/jewel target followed by an insultingly easy battle that didn't involve either.

More oversimplification.
 
Joined
Mar 18, 2014
The truth is that even if the design is 100% flawless (which is doubtful on a good day) when you have millions of units, it's a statistical impossibility that everyone of them will function properly 100% of the time. You're essentially contending that Nintendo created a perfect device AND a perfect game to go along with it completely independent of each other.

And I DID master the controls, they weren't difficult. Nothing about the game was difficult. The controls worked perfectly fine when the WM+ was calibrated. The problem I had was that the WM+ kept coming out of calibration and, moreso, that the game was tedious because of (A) overuse of certain mechanics and (:cool: excessive backtracking (name ONE other Zelda game that requires you to redo a temple/dungeon).

As for me having priority issues, according to the blurb about you below your name, I've been playing Zelda games since before you were born. Don't tell me WHY I should play them. You prefer the gameplay, I prefer the story. I don't dislike the gameplay. I don't discount the gameplay. I usually find the gameplay to be engaging and quite good. I prefer the story part of the games. I found that SS lacked in both areas.

You're right, though. SS was full of oversimplification (swing where they aren't blocking, you win! walk forward, you win!, "I calculate a 99% chance that I'm going to tell you exactly what to do now." you win!)-I guess if you like your games being spoonfed to you, it wasn't terrible.
 
Joined
Apr 1, 2013
He is right Juicie in that the WM+ isn't flawless. I had to recalibrate every once in a while b/c the thing went outta whack. Of course, it isn't as broken as g-whiz makes it out to be, but it wasn't flawless.

As for me having priority issues, according to the blurb about you below your name, I've been playing Zelda games since before you were born. Don't tell me WHY I should play them. You prefer the gameplay, I prefer the story. I don't dislike the gameplay. I don't discount the gameplay. I usually find the gameplay to be engaging and quite good. I prefer the story part of the games. I found that SS lacked in both areas.

Are you joking with this statement? First off, Zelda games tend to have as good a story as the Mario games. Secondly, SS had arguably the best story in the entire franchise. It actually made me care for Zelda, as I honestly found her to be a MacGuffin in OoT and very depressing in TP.

You're right, though. SS was full of oversimplification (swing where they aren't blocking, you win! walk forward, you win!, "I calculate a 99% chance that I'm going to tell you exactly what to do now." you win!)-I guess if you like your games being spoonfed to you, it wasn't terrible.

Yes, Fi was annoying, but honestly not anymore than Na'vi. And have you NEVER played a game outside of Zelda? Every good game out in the market spoonfeeds you: the Arkham series, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Mario, Donkey Kong Country, Halo, Crysis, etc....You must have a very narrow range of games you play if you don't like stuff being spoonfed to you.
 
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JuicieJ

SHOW ME YA MOVES!
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On the midnight Spirit Train going anywhere
You're essentially contending that Nintendo created a perfect device AND a perfect game to go along with it completely independent of each other.

Lolwut?

And I DID master the controls, they weren't difficult.

I don't believe you. The fact that they kept getting out of calibration indicates that you were doing something wrong.

Nothing about the game was difficult.

Take note that I never said the game was difficult. All I ever said was that it's a game with a decent challenge level, one that's not too hard, but not too easy. The problem here lies in that you're not taking into account how much more experienced as a gamer you are now as opposed to when you were younger -- hell, even comparable to just 5 years ago. Games are naturally going to seem more or less difficult than they actually are depending on one's skill level. As a child, the difficulty of a game is going to seem magnified, as your mind isn't very developed yet and your skill level is low. As an adult, it's the complete opposite.

Do you think I struggled in any way playing SS with this in mind? Because I didn't. However, I could tell that it was a massive step up in challenge level from the GameCube games, and I could just as easily tell that there was a very high degree of creativity and originality in just about every challenge the game had to offer. I hadn't seen that level of quality in the series since Majora's Mask, actually, and was that ever a breath of fresh air after waiting over a decade. MM is the superior game overall, no doubt, but still.

the game was tedious because of (A) overuse of certain mechanics and (:cool: excessive backtracking

(name ONE other Zelda game that requires you to redo a temple/dungeon).

The Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks. (Oh, I'm sorry, did you only want one other game mentioned? My bad.) Let's also not forget that the vast majority of Zelda games have backtracking, the 3D ones. Remember Ocarina of Time? How you had to go back to a lot of the places Link went to as a kid after he became an adult? Remember having to reset everything in Majora's Mask and go back through Clock Town every time? The Wind Waker, having to revisit multiple key islands? Twilight Princess, having to trek through Lake Hylia four times? Oh, but it doesn't matter in those games, of course, because they're not Skyward Sword. How silly of me.

You also never attempted to explain why a game having an overarching mechanic is a bad thing. That doesn't exactly bode well for your standpoint, as it indicates that you don't have a proper reason for thinking such.

As for me having priority issues, according to the blurb about you below your name, I've been playing Zelda games since before you were born. Don't tell me WHY I should play them. You prefer the gameplay, I prefer the story. I don't dislike the gameplay. I don't discount the gameplay. I usually find the gameplay to be engaging and quite good. I prefer the story part of the games. I found that SS lacked in both areas.

Because age totally matters in this situation. /sarcasm

You're using a cop-out argument. It's pretty much undeniable that Zelda's never had strong storytelling (outside of Majora's Mask), and as such, has put a ridiculously heavy emphasis on its gameplay. Many recent entries have attempted to bring the story to the forefront more so than usual, with SS being the most extreme example, but the gameplay is still more important to the Zelda series in spite of this. This isn't a situation of who prefers different things, it's a situation of you playing a series for something that's very basic and predictable, which, of course, is its story. Judging the Zelda series by its story to begin with is really petty as a result, especially with how absolutely absurd its timeline is.

That said, I don't understand what your problem is with SS's story, really. It wasn't at, like, Metal Gear Solid level (what a shock for a Zelda game), but every single one of the characters was highly expressive to such a degree that their personalities were identifiable & fleshed-out just by their body language. Nearly every character left no question as to what their traits were upon merely being introduced to the fray for the first time, and all the major characters had well-executed development across the events of the game, especially Groose and Ghirahim. SS was also the first Zelda game where I actually cared whether or not I saved Zelda, and in addition, it was the first Zelda game to make me cry -- and it wasn't just once, but twice. I know everyone's different, but I'm having a hard time seeing how you could say that SS was lacking in the story department. Was its plot a masterpiece? No. Was it heartfelt? Absolutely. Honestly, on multiple occasions, it felt like a good Disney movie, even more so than TWW did.

You're right, though. SS was full of oversimplification (swing where they aren't blocking, you win! walk forward, you win!, "I calculate a 99% chance that I'm going to tell you exactly what to do now." you win!)-I guess if you like your games being spoonfed to you, it wasn't terrible.

No, no, see, YOU'RE the one oversimplifying things -- and you just did it again. Oh, wow, having to actually read and react to an opponent's defenses and swing your arm precisely as opposed to mindlessly mashing buttons, HOW SIMPLE OF A CONCEPT IN COMPARISON!

What are you even talking about with "walk forward, you win!"? SS is chock-full of obstacles to overcome nearly the entire journey. "Walk forward, you win!" is how the GameCube games operate.

Fi literally never tells you how to solve anything. She's annoying as ****, absolutely, but all she ever does is offer her intake on a situation at hand... you know, like someone given the role of being an aid should do. Nothing's ever spoonfed to you in SS, especially when you compare it to all the so-called "AAA" shooters and sandbox games most 3rd party companies crap out in this day and age (and, yes, the GameCube Zeldas).

Again, SS is not a hard game, but considering that it's a Zelda game, it doesn't need to be. Zelda's a franchise that's aimed at all audiences, and as such, it's designed to be a series that both casual and hardcore gamers alike can sink their teeth into, and I can't stress enough that SS does this extremely well. It has a very in-depth combat system that inherently takes a certain level of skill due to the controls, creative level design with concepts and ideas that had never been seen in any prior Zelda game before (and in the case of the Lanayru province, in no other video game period),
 

Random Person

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And have you NEVER played a game outside of Zelda? Every good game out in the market spoonfeeds you: the Arkham series, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Mario, Donkey Kong Country, Halo, Crysis, etc....You must have a very narrow range of games you play if you don't like stuff being spoonfed to you.

...what? This is the first I've ever seen a comment like this. (And I don't just mean on the forums, I mean in gaming in general) Almost every gamer/reviewer has said the opposite about what makes a good game. You never want to be spoonfed, you want a challenge. I think this lies in, once again, the understanding of each other's definition of what is "spoon feeding". The challenge in certain games comes from different places. In a game like Assassin's Creed, figuring out what to do isn't part of the challenge, so the game will tell you exactly what to do. Actually doing it is the challenge. A game like AC telling you what to do isn't spoonfeeding, (the first one anyway) it's avoiding unnecessary complications. Zelda games incorporate figuring out what to do as part of their challenge, so in this particular series, someone telling you what to do is indeed spoon feeding which you don't want in a game.
 
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JuicieJ

SHOW ME YA MOVES!
Joined
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On the midnight Spirit Train going anywhere
Almost every gamer/reviewer has said the opposite about what makes a good game.

I dunno, man, the mainstream market these days finds games like Tropical Freeze to be too hard, and reviewers absolutely rave over games that basically refuse to challenge you -- two of the best examples come from last year in the form of GTA V and The Last of Us. AAA gaming is a far cry from what it used to be outside of a select few companies.
 

Garo

Boy Wonder
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
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Behind you
Either way, the Wii MotionPlus doesn't have any functional issues. If it did, it would be literally impossible to play through Skyward Sword without experiencing issues... but it isn't. I and many others have played through without experiencing any issues whatsoever, so the only logical explanation for issues occurring is human error. This is something that really can't be debated.

JJ, I don't like having to revisit this, but this logic is faulty. It would be perfectly sound if you were to play on a given Wii with a given Wii Remote in a given environment at a given time of day without issues, and then another player were to play on the same Wii with the same Wii Remote in the same environment at the same time of day, and experience issues. But because there are an incredible number of variables involved, your experience cannot be extrapolated to all experiences. Somebody might live in an apartment building with a lot of IR radiation from other technology that causes problems with their Wii MotionPlus. Somebody's Wii might be exceptionally old and have issues of its own. Somebody might plain encounter a bug that you didn't encounter (which is always possible; it is very possible to play through a bug-ridden game and never experience a bug, unlikely though it may be, because the situations that trigger bugs are based on thousands of lines of code rather than a singular problem that is universal). The ultimate flaw in your logic is that you presume that the issue with the Wii MotionPlus system must be within the system itself, rather than an external force interacting with the system, causing the error. Wii MotionPlus, as a self-contained feature, might be totally flawless, technically. But if it interacts with latent IR radiation, or other electronic interference, or another bug somewhere in Skyward Sword's coding, or a host of other variables... then problems that you didn't experience because your circumstances didn't create those variables can appear.

Your experience demonstrates that issues with the Wii MotionPlus system are not endemic, yes - it is very possible to not encounter issues, in the right circumstances. But that doesn't mean that the issues do not exist anywhere.
 
Joined
Mar 18, 2014
In all honesty, this back and forth is getting stupid. Whether this is the best Zelda game of all time is a matter of opinion and you and I clearly have diverging opinions on the matter. That said, this will be my last post in this thread.
I thought I oversimplified things, now you don’t understand me? Ok, I’’ try again. You claim that the WM+ is flawless (perfect) and that the only reason I had problems playing SS is that I suck and didn’t master the controls (the game/interface is perfect too). That means that Nintendo created a perfect device (WM+) AND a perfect game (SS) in two independent projects. Good for them! Too bad it isn’t possible.



I don't believe you. The fact that they kept getting out of calibration indicates that you were doing something wrong.
I actually don’t care what you believe and you’re wrong. I’d explain but I refer you to the first statement in that sentence.



Take note that I never said the game was difficult. All I ever said was that it's a game with a decent challenge level, one that's not too hard, but not too easy. The problem here lies in that you're not taking into account how much more experienced as a gamer you are now as opposed to when you were younger -- hell, even comparable to just 5 years ago. Games are naturally going to seem more or less difficult than they actually are depending on one's skill level. As a child, the difficulty of a game is going to seem magnified, as your mind isn't very developed yet and your skill level is low. As an adult, it's the complete opposite.

Do you think I struggled in any way playing SS with this in mind? Because I didn't. However, I could tell that it was a massive step up in challenge level from the GameCube games, and I could just as easily tell that there was a very high degree of creativity and originality in just about every challenge the game had to offer. I hadn't seen that level of quality in the series since Majora's Mask, actually, and was that ever a breath of fresh air after waiting over a decade. MM is the superior game overall, no doubt, but still.
SS was not a decent challenge. It would have been but every time something wasn’t obvious, Fi would pop up and “calculate a 95% chance of…” then an 8 year old could figure it out.



The Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks. (Oh, I'm sorry, did you only want one other game mentioned? My bad.) Let's also not forget that the vast majority of Zelda games have backtracking, the 3D ones. Remember Ocarina of Time? How you had to go back to a lot of the places Link went to as a kid after he became an adult? Remember having to reset everything in Majora's Mask and go back through Clock Town every time? The Wind Waker, having to revisit multiple key islands? Twilight Princess, having to trek through Lake Hylia four times? Oh, but it doesn't matter in those games, of course, because they're not Skyward Sword. How silly of me.
There is a difference between revisiting an area and redoing a dungeon. In OoT you had to go back to every area in the game but your destination was different. As a kid, you started in the forest and went into the Deku Tree. As an adult, you returned to the forest and went into the Forest Temple. In MM, you reset the clock over and over but you did almost everything different when you did that. It may as well have been a different set of days after the first few minutes.
In SS, you had to go back into Skyview Temple to get a bottle of water. You easily could have done that the first time through but, no. It was “more fun” to make you go back through a dungeon you’d beaten already for one little thing. The flooding of the woods for a fetch quest was a slap in the face.

You also never attempted to explain why a game having an overarching mechanic is a bad thing. That doesn't exactly bode well for your standpoint, as it indicates that you don't have a proper reason for thinking such.
That’s because I never said an overarching mechanic was a bad thing. Most of the games since OoT have had an overarching mechanic (playing music in OoT and MM, Masks in MM, the Wolf/Human switch in TP etc). My problem is with the overuse of a mechanic. Because of the WM+, players are able to attack with precision and Nintendo glomped onto that like a crack addicted chimp. 90+ percent of the enemies in the game require some form of precision attack including Deku Babas. Yup, unarmed plants require precision. The simplest and most easily defeated enemies from OoT require precise attacks. It’s obnoxious. Nintendo is screaming “Look what we can do!”



Because age totally matters in this situation. /sarcasm

You're using a cop-out argument. It's pretty much undeniable that Zelda's never had strong storytelling (outside of Majora's Mask), and as such, has put a ridiculously heavy emphasis on its gameplay. Many recent entries have attempted to bring the story to the forefront more so than usual, with SS being the most extreme example, but the gameplay is still more important to the Zelda series in spite of this. This isn't a situation of who prefers different things, it's a situation of you playing a series for something that's very basic and predictable, which, of course, is its story. Judging the Zelda series by its story to begin with is really petty as a result, especially with how absolutely absurd its timeline is.
It’s not a cop out argument. I’ve been playing Zelda games for 25 years. You’re telling me that I’m doing it for the wrong reasons and that’s ridiculous. You may as well tell me what I should drive, where I should work, who I should vote for and which woman I should marry. Is my house big enough for me or should I sell it?
You play because of the gameplay, I play because of the story. I don’t discount the gameplay at all. I enjoy it. I prefer the story. Don’t tell me what to think.

That said, I don't understand what your problem is with SS's story, really. It wasn't at, like, Metal Gear Solid level (what a shock for a Zelda game), but every single one of the characters was highly expressive to such a degree that their personalities were identifiable & fleshed-out just by their body language. Nearly every character left no question as to what their traits were upon merely being introduced to the fray for the first time, and all the major characters had well-executed development across the events of the game, especially Groose and Ghirahim. SS was also the first Zelda game where I actually cared whether or not I saved Zelda, and in addition, it was the first Zelda game to make me cry -- and it wasn't just once, but twice. I know everyone's different, but I'm having a hard time seeing how you could say that SS was lacking in the story department. Was its plot a masterpiece? No. Was it heartfelt? Absolutely. Honestly, on multiple occasions, it felt like a good Disney movie, even more so than TWW did.
I’m going to have to defer to your clearly superior wisdom when it comes to crying over a video game:


No, no, see, YOU'RE the one oversimplifying things -- and you just did it again. Oh, wow, having to actually read and react to an opponent's defenses and swing your arm precisely as opposed to mindlessly mashing buttons, HOW SIMPLE OF A CONCEPT IN COMPARISON!

What are you even talking about with "walk forward, you win!"? SS is chock-full of obstacles to overcome nearly the entire journey. "Walk forward, you win!" is how the GameCube games operate.

Fi literally never tells you how to solve anything. She's annoying as ****, absolutely, but all she ever does is offer her intake on a situation at hand... you know, like someone given the role of being an aid should do. Nothing's ever spoonfed to you in SS, especially when you compare it to all the so-called "AAA" shooters and sandbox games most 3rd party companies crap out in this day and age (and, yes, the GameCube Zeldas).

Again, SS is not a hard game, but considering that it's a Zelda game, it doesn't need to be. Zelda's a franchise that's aimed at all audiences, and as such, it's designed to be a series that both casual and hardcore gamers alike can sink their teeth into, and I can't stress enough that SS does this extremely well. It has a very in-depth combat system that inherently takes a certain level of skill due to the controls, creative level design with concepts and ideas that had never been seen in any prior Zelda game before (and in the case of the Lanayru province, in no other video game period),
I knew what you meant, I just found that SS was very simple compared to other Zelda titles I’ve played. You might disagree with that and good for you. You clearly love this game more than life itself. I don’t. I said in my very first post in this thread that I didn’t think it was a bad game, I just found it to be a bad addition to the Zelda series. If it had been a standalone game (with some obvious changes) I would probably have a higher opinion of it but unfortunately, I expect more from Zelda and this game did not deliver in my opinion. I know, you disagree and you will most likely post a novel explaining why. Hell, I might even read it, but, I said before I’m done in this particular thread and I meant it. It’s getting really, really stupid.
 
Joined
Apr 1, 2013
...what? This is the first I've ever seen a comment like this. (And I don't just mean on the forums, I mean in gaming in general) Almost every gamer/reviewer has said the opposite about what makes a good game. You never want to be spoonfed, you want a challenge. I think this lies in, once again, the understanding of each other's definition of what is "spoon feeding". The challenge in certain games comes from different places. In a game like Assassin's Creed, figuring out what to do isn't part of the challenge, so the game will tell you exactly what to do. Actually doing it is the challenge. A game like AC telling you what to do isn't spoonfeeding, (the first one anyway) it's avoiding unnecessary complications. Zelda games incorporate figuring out what to do as part of their challenge, so in this particular series, someone telling you what to do is indeed spoon feeding which you don't want in a game.

I assume by spoonfed he meant linearity.
 
Joined
Apr 1, 2013
In most cases, spoonfed means someone is doing something for you. (Coming from someone feeding a baby with a spoon because they can't do it for themselves).

In that case, I don't see how SS spoonfed anyone aside from the dowsing ability, which was either way optional and had the drawback of making you vulnerable to enemies.
 

JuicieJ

SHOW ME YA MOVES!
Joined
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In that case, I don't see how SS spoonfed anyone aside from the dowsing ability, which was either way optional and had the drawback of making you vulnerable to enemies.

People are often of the mentality that a game giving you ANY kind of hint or advice outside of a tutorial is spoon-feeding/hand-holding. In Skyward Sword's case, Fi is usually referred to, even though she never tells you how to solve anything. No, she opts to give you world-building info and stating obvious things that have no effect on the game whatsoever, i.e. don't help you out at all -- which is just an annoyance, not spoon-feeding. Why people insist that she basically plays the game for you, I have no idea.
 

Random Person

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In that case, I don't see how SS spoonfed anyone aside from the dowsing ability, which was either way optional and had the drawback of making you vulnerable to enemies.

Spoonfeeding for puzzle solving games is a lot different from most other games, particularly in the Zelda series because it is known for making the player figure out things they wouldn't have to in most other games. Was there anything that happened in SS that the game did for you, but you felt you could've done yourself? Perhaps, when you saw something and then Fi points out the thing you saw. Maybe you could've figured out what to do for a puzzle, but a sign points the way? If this never occurred to you, well I can't force others' experiences on you, but many felt that SS did things most Zelda games would expect the player to do themselves.
 
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Absolutely not. This is not even close, bad controls which required constant recalibration, though not as bad as the controls on Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz, those were atrocious, ridiculously short stamina meter which resulted in Link acting like he was gonna keel over any second in the worst places possible and a mostly annoying soundtrack, (that last part's just personal preference though) take away the bad controls and the stamina meter and it'd be a better game. Fi is ignorable most of the time, so she doesn't annoy me too much, the game has some humorous moments, and its absolutely gorgeous. I like flying on the bird too and its got some cool dungeons. Not keen on the enemy AI, the way they hold their weapon is awkward, especially since the controls are bad. the bosses are kinda blah so far, I haven't found any that have wowed me, its pretty far down on my like list, but there's still some fun to be had, which is the only reason I'm still slogging through this mess of a game
 
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