Man. How many chapters is this game? I've been kind of lukewarm on it so far and every other game that comes out pulls my attention away from this. I can't even articulate why I'm not feeling it.
For me I think it's that... I feel like there are two major strands of Fire Emblem game, the main strand and the fanservice strand, using "fanservice" in the sense of explicit back-reference. The former being the mainline strategy games, and the latte consisting of the Musou games, Heroes, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and so on. And while Engage has the gameplay format of the main strand, tonally it feels like part of the fanservice strand. The core of the plot centers around how all these mysterious heroes from previous games distant worlds just so happen to also exist as these critical pieces of the current game's backstory, and I just can't take it seriously like I want to. The plot exists to give an excuse to have a big intergenerational Fire Emblem reference party. It's not wrong, but it's not for me.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited February 2023
The Fanservice parts makes sense when you consider development was started around the games 30th anniversary.
Dragkonias on
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
Did the Leif and Micaiah paralogues.
Took a conservative approach to Leif's ballistas, parked Louis just inside their range to use up all their ammo. Meant letting most of the fleeing units escape, but oh well. Leif's advance caught me off guard a bit and I had to intercept him with Anna & Tiki alone, but she got through it well enough for me to get some support over.
With Micaiah I didn't have the patience to lure enemies up and whittle them down with ballistas so I pushed forward somewhat aggressively, which is how the RD map also played out for me, I think. Wound up drawing Micaiah up early with careless unit placement, but I decided to roll with it instead of rewinding and finished her off with the units that had gone down the center lane.
Oh joy, my main save appears to have gotten corrupted or something. It just stays stuck "Loading save data...". Thankfully, the autosave loaded otherwise I'd have lost several chapters worth of progress (I have another save for when I tried out certain missions). Be careful out there.
I did a couple quick tests (loaded working save data, did some stuff, saved again a few times) and I don't think it's the SD card where Engage data is being saved. I repeated a lot of the steps I had done yesterday before my first save got corrupted, so I'm guessing some mixture of those events writes bad data into the save and when the game goes to load it, it fails. I started a skirmish after doing all those things (specifically: support conversations, buying/trading items, polishing all the Emblem Rings I had, and then 3 Arena fights) which updates the autosave, hence it getting nuked as well.
Well, thanks to that old save I'm not too far behind, but I did lose 10 hours (I'm back to chapter 15), but man, it depresses your interest knowing all that time is completed wasted now.
3ds: 4983-4935-4575
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
Chapter 20
When Griss came out of the shadows to attack I rewound to the start and hunted him down first. I think that's actually the intended solution.
Regular enemies are starting to get tougher, lots of them survived a couple rounds of physical offense.
Glad they didn't spend too long on the identity crisis. If they had made Alear leave the party to wander the wilderness and force everyone to spend a chapter to track her down and explain that they trust her because of their experience fighting by her side that would have been very frustrating.
that sucks. i am one of those that saves after like everything. trip to somniel, save, pre-battle, save, post battle, save. i just rotate through all 10 slots over and over.
It sounds excessive until the day you lose hours, even days of progress. A lot of games default to saving in a new slot for a reason. I try to manage the mania by only keeping it at 3-6 saves and rotating each time I save.
25 years ago. Final Fantasy Tactics. Riovannes Castle, part 2. Soft locked myself into an unwinnable battle. Had to restart the entire game.
Never. Again.
I got stuck there too with no backup save. I even went to gamestop to buy the brady? guide for the game, thinking there was some gimmick to the fight I just wasn't aware of.
I eventually figured out an insane plan with whatever JP I had left on Ramza to turn him into a dragoon using leap to get past the first phase, and then needed so many tries to survive the start of phase 2. Took me days of attempts but still brute forced through it.
And then had to repeat part 3 so, so many times because of Rafa walking up to the vampires getting OHKOd.
On chapter 25, been playing this for over 60 hours. I have no idea how tf to beat this level, and I kinda just want this to be over. I generally have a hard cutoff with games at around 40 hours where anything over that I just start getting bored and want it to end. Think I'm just gonna turn this down to Normal and finish it. Overall the battles and maps were fantastic, but I hated everything else about the game.
On chapter 25, been playing this for over 60 hours. I have no idea how tf to beat this level, and I kinda just want this to be over. I generally have a hard cutoff with games at around 40 hours where anything over that I just start getting bored and want it to end. Think I'm just gonna turn this down to Normal and finish it. Overall the battles and maps were fantastic, but I hated everything else about the game.
60 hours?! Yeah I'm going to go ahead and move on from it lol. I'm on Chapter 9 and not really feeling it. But I have a problem where I keep going in those skirmishes because they're right there lol.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
60 hours? I'm at 120. Skirmishes are so much fun, but there's so much to do at Somniel between battles.
Sure you've got dragons, and rings, and your four heavenly kings but I've got Yunaka in a forest with a Dawn refined Silver Dagger so I win. The rest of my army is just the ornamental parsley on the full course meal of pain she is bringing to the table.
Chapter 11 my Yunaka was able to kill the entire top half of the map alone, including the Hounds (except for the general, had to bring in the tank busters once everyone else was dead). Taking a strength potion at the start and using a Pure Water + vulneries to tank through and burn down that warp spamming bastard then meant the only threat was dealt with. It's absolutely dumb that they gave the boss a healthbar when you aren't allowed to damage them; figure this would have been a beating the Black Knight early kind of event.
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
Chapter 23
If this game came out in the '90s there'd be a ton of rumors about recruiting Griss and Zephia by destroying the shard without killing them. Even I was tempted to try it.
I am comforted by the knowledge that, some day, the Hounds will all be reunited in Askr.
On chapter 25, been playing this for over 60 hours. I have no idea how tf to beat this level, and I kinda just want this to be over. I generally have a hard cutoff with games at around 40 hours where anything over that I just start getting bored and want it to end. Think I'm just gonna turn this down to Normal and finish it. Overall the battles and maps were fantastic, but I hated everything else about the game.
Bumrush the boss with Goddess Dance. That’s how I beat it on Hard.
“Say the line, Panette!”
I beat Hard with 68 hours, only doing most of the paralogues, two divine logues, and no skirmishes. I was trying to minimize deaths, so most of that was time traveling to avert disaster.
Finished on hard/classic. Last few chapters were pretty easy, perhaps easiest final boss I've seen in a FE game.
I thought there might be some sort of NG+ but there isn't. The inclusion of 4-5000 SP skills makes no sense to me because even Alear didn't earn more than 4000 SP in the entire game. Likewise donation levels are kinda unobtainable and mostly pointless. You either give them half the money you'll ever get in the game for an extra S rank weapon or just leave it at level 2.
Story remains thoroughly terrible throughout.
I think as a whole, I preferred 3H battalions to the engage mechanic. Your units and enemies in this game feel about as strong as they usually are, but engaging often makes me feel like my squad is totally overpowered. It feels like you only really need to engage to counter an engaged boss with multiple health bars that you have to burn down instantly before they OHKO someone.
There's a bunch of not very good/weird shit in this game, like the tower of trials and upgrading emblem weapons. Remember grinding orbs to upgrade emblem weapons? Did anyone actually do that at all?
Engage ultimately feels like it sat on the fence separating 3H and PoR, half-assing each side. I want them to pick a style and whole-ass it in future.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
I actually thought the story wasn’t that bad, maybe it was the lowered expectations from all the chatter about it, but it had potential. The thing holding it back is that a good 90% of the interesting bits happen while a character is literally dying so it feels rushed and shallow.
And yeah the final boss was incredibly easy. It feels like they ran out of time
The Dark Emblems being generic models with no voice acting, and I imagine the intent was to have the barrier go back up once you burned through each health bar. Or they wildly underestimated how much damage an end-game army could do in one turn. Another theory of mine is that there was supposed to be a third map featured Sombron engaged with Zero Emblem, and be it time constraints or the idea blowing up to be moved to DLC they scrapped it and added the Dark Emblems as a last-minute way to make sure the final boss had something going on with Emblems,
I'm pretty much in love with the gameplay in Engage. It's probably the most I've enjoyed playing an FE game since the Radiance games, although there might be an argument for Conquest being as strong in that regard. I couldn't get through that particular game for other reasons.
There are some issues that have been discussed here, like money (especially with regards to donations) and SP. I definitely think those things should have been tweaked. But they weren't bad enough issues to hamper my enjoyment of the game at all. There's also some balance issues with the classes (look at Berserker vs Warrior, for example), but it's not that bad overall. Everything is usable if you want to, if not optimal.
Most of the other aspects I like, too; I think that everything about the Somniel could probably be condensed and handled in the maps that you run around in after each mission, but it's fine. Characters and supports are good, music is great. I'm a sucker for nostalgia for the past games. But, christ, the story. What were they thinking.
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
Beat Engage.
Final team was Alear & Marth, Seadall & Byleth, Saphir & Lucina, Mauvier & Sigurd, Veyle & Celica, Diamant & Roy, Etie & Lyn, Anna & Tiki, Yunaka & Corrin, Hortensia & Micaiah, Timerra & Ike, Fogado & Leif, Chloe and Eirikia, and Ivy & Camilla.
Sombron took some setup but I was able to one-turn him. Starting off with a Draconic Hex helped. Not confident my team would have managed it on higher difficulties.
I actually thought the story wasn’t that bad, maybe it was the lowered expectations from all the chatter about it, but it had potential. The thing holding it back is that a good 90% of the interesting bits happen while a character is literally dying so it feels rushed and shallow.
And yeah the final boss was incredibly easy. It feels like they ran out of time
The Dark Emblems being generic models with no voice acting, and I imagine the intent was to have the barrier go back up once you burned through each health bar. Or they wildly underestimated how much damage an end-game army could do in one turn. Another theory of mine is that there was supposed to be a third map featured Sombron engaged with Zero Emblem, and be it time constraints or the idea blowing up to be moved to DLC they scrapped it and added the Dark Emblems as a last-minute way to make sure the final boss had something going on with Emblems,
Rushed, shallow, and unfocused is how I'd describe it, yeah.
Really, the biggest structural problem is that they blow almost all of their storytelling budget in very inefficient ways. The paralogues are almost entirely Emblem retreads, so a full half of your character/world building side content is wasted. Within the main missions, they spend what feels like every other cutscene doing nothing but foreshadowing OBVIOUS STORY REVEAL (and still making the reveal feel sloppy and rushed), which leaves them to basically setup + payoff every other story beat within the span of the end of one mission and the start of the next. In between missions and in the Somniel, there's so much chatter but all of it is completely meaningless, with even the "unique" dialogue being an individual character having a one line take on the situation. Add a few other structural requirements (introduction, pre-plot-reveal missions, the fact you're picking up the nobles from every country so you have 8+ completely split focus secondary main characters, etc.) and there's just literally no time or writing actually allotted to do anything with what they've built.
Going to the 4 countries and scoping up a trio of people meant I had about 9 people I wasn't gonna use. This story and all the character designs are clearly nonsense and almost feel like a joke.
And ugh, Can we talk about the recycled conversational animations for fucking everything? The clasped hands swaying back and forth, the prayer hands bowing deeply, etc. Just stand still while you talk. I'd rather you be wooden and unmoving then look like a sprung Jack-In-the-Box. Wait...that doesn't sound right...but you know what I mean.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
Chloe/Eirika bond conversations
Does Chloe want to have a threesome with the Renais twins?
all I'll say is somehow the story isn't as bad as fates, but its pretty whatever
and there's no hyperbolic time children so there's that
so here's a side question, which FEs actually have a good story? I'd say Awakening and Three Houses for sure do, and at least Shadows of Valentia remake (did not play the original). I haven't played anything prior to Awakening so I can't speak to any of those; are any of them actually on the virtual console?
I remember wishing there was a proper single player, non-gacha FEH game and I think this might actually just be that, excluding the bond rings nonsense. I am loving all these gameplay systems and interactions they have going, and the story doesn't even matter because it's just an excuse to play around with old favorite characters (despite what the v-tuber art style did to them). The level music (only) is great too, hell I could listen to Preparations all day.
Looking forward to a new game where they take all they've learned from the gameplay of Engage and apply it towards a setting and character set that takes itself seriously.
I think Path of Radiance is pretty uniformly considered to be the best story, and I'd agree with that.
Yeah, the Radiance games are great. Things go a bit off the rails in the final chapter of Radiant Dawn, in my opinion, but the leadup to that is so extremely good that I forgive it.
The GBA games and Awakening all have... fine stories, in my opinion. Maybe even slightly good in the case of Sacred Stones? They're not great, but, they're serviceable. Those are games that I can just say "you don't really play them for the story" and leave it at that. Fates and now Engage are the only ones I've played where I've thought that the story was active significant detriment to the game.
I actually thought the story wasn’t that bad, maybe it was the lowered expectations from all the chatter about it, but it had potential. The thing holding it back is that a good 90% of the interesting bits happen while a character is literally dying so it feels rushed and shallow.
And yeah the final boss was incredibly easy. It feels like they ran out of time
The Dark Emblems being generic models with no voice acting, and I imagine the intent was to have the barrier go back up once you burned through each health bar. Or they wildly underestimated how much damage an end-game army could do in one turn. Another theory of mine is that there was supposed to be a third map featured Sombron engaged with Zero Emblem, and be it time constraints or the idea blowing up to be moved to DLC they scrapped it and added the Dark Emblems as a last-minute way to make sure the final boss had something going on with Emblems,
I don't think the story itself is that bad. It's the writing that's the problem. The line-to-line dialogue is just awful.
I felt the first GBA game did a good job with the story. A bit shallow in some places, but then deeper and tragic in others. Like in Hector's route when
his brother Uther had died of disease and Oswin knew but didn't tell him.
In definitely goes hard into the "Super mega villain/god/dragon boss" at the end, but a lot up to that point was solid. I still want a updated remake of FE6 & FE7 as a single game telling the whole arcing story in two parts, where some of the decisions/characters you used in the first half influence the characters in the second half. Kind of like Awakening, without all the time travel and super kids. Like, the canon children would get a better starting stats, minor stat growths, better starting weapons, or something similar. Nothing game breaking.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
I actually thought the story wasn’t that bad, maybe it was the lowered expectations from all the chatter about it, but it had potential. The thing holding it back is that a good 90% of the interesting bits happen while a character is literally dying so it feels rushed and shallow.
And yeah the final boss was incredibly easy. It feels like they ran out of time
The Dark Emblems being generic models with no voice acting, and I imagine the intent was to have the barrier go back up once you burned through each health bar. Or they wildly underestimated how much damage an end-game army could do in one turn. Another theory of mine is that there was supposed to be a third map featured Sombron engaged with Zero Emblem, and be it time constraints or the idea blowing up to be moved to DLC they scrapped it and added the Dark Emblems as a last-minute way to make sure the final boss had something going on with Emblems,
I don't think the story itself is that bad. It's the writing that's the problem. The line-to-line dialogue is just awful.
I want to be a good dragon
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Yeah. The game actually has a lot of stuff to say about the nature of family and how where you come from doesn't dictate who you become.
Problem is the writing itself is sophomoric to the point of being insulting.
But seriously, there is something here, and I can see a better paced and solid story about the nature of family. It’s just that half of the major themes don’t come into play in the back half of the story, so you have these shallow characters that suddenly gain depth at the 11th hour, and it simply does not work even if I can respect what was attempted at what was otherwise a basic fight the evil overlord story.
I thought 7 had a good story. 6 has a decent one as well but the support conversations are atrocious. I guess that's what happens when you have 60 characters and half of them are throwaway ones that no one ever uses
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For me I think it's that... I feel like there are two major strands of Fire Emblem game, the main strand and the fanservice strand, using "fanservice" in the sense of explicit back-reference. The former being the mainline strategy games, and the latte consisting of the Musou games, Heroes, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and so on. And while Engage has the gameplay format of the main strand, tonally it feels like part of the fanservice strand. The core of the plot centers around how all these mysterious heroes from previous games distant worlds just so happen to also exist as these critical pieces of the current game's backstory, and I just can't take it seriously like I want to. The plot exists to give an excuse to have a big intergenerational Fire Emblem reference party. It's not wrong, but it's not for me.
Took a conservative approach to Leif's ballistas, parked Louis just inside their range to use up all their ammo. Meant letting most of the fleeing units escape, but oh well. Leif's advance caught me off guard a bit and I had to intercept him with Anna & Tiki alone, but she got through it well enough for me to get some support over.
With Micaiah I didn't have the patience to lure enemies up and whittle them down with ballistas so I pushed forward somewhat aggressively, which is how the RD map also played out for me, I think. Wound up drawing Micaiah up early with careless unit placement, but I decided to roll with it instead of rewinding and finished her off with the units that had gone down the center lane.
That's excessive, for me. I've almost never had corrupted save data.
Another bug. I did "Retry" on a skirmish and the game appears to have crashed, being stuck on a black screen.
...and my save is corrupted again. What the heck?
This is right before Chapter 18, FYI. I have no idea what's causing it, but I guess be extra cautious there.
Well, thanks to that old save I'm not too far behind, but I did lose 10 hours (I'm back to chapter 15), but man, it depresses your interest knowing all that time is completed wasted now.
When Griss came out of the shadows to attack I rewound to the start and hunted him down first. I think that's actually the intended solution.
Regular enemies are starting to get tougher, lots of them survived a couple rounds of physical offense.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
Never. Again.
I got stuck there too with no backup save. I even went to gamestop to buy the brady? guide for the game, thinking there was some gimmick to the fight I just wasn't aware of.
I eventually figured out an insane plan with whatever JP I had left on Ramza to turn him into a dragoon using leap to get past the first phase, and then needed so many tries to survive the start of phase 2. Took me days of attempts but still brute forced through it.
And then had to repeat part 3 so, so many times because of Rafa walking up to the vampires getting OHKOd.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Everyone gets stuck against wiegraf there the first time . I still don’t rotate my saves though I just don’t like to.
60 hours?! Yeah I'm going to go ahead and move on from it lol. I'm on Chapter 9 and not really feeling it. But I have a problem where I keep going in those skirmishes because they're right there lol.
I am comforted by the knowledge that, some day, the Hounds will all be reunited in Askr.
At some point I need to stop running skirmishes and actually finish the game.
I'm mostly grinding support at this point? The pool/orchard/stable events helped a lot.
“Say the line, Panette!”
I beat Hard with 68 hours, only doing most of the paralogues, two divine logues, and no skirmishes. I was trying to minimize deaths, so most of that was time traveling to avert disaster.
I thought there might be some sort of NG+ but there isn't. The inclusion of 4-5000 SP skills makes no sense to me because even Alear didn't earn more than 4000 SP in the entire game. Likewise donation levels are kinda unobtainable and mostly pointless. You either give them half the money you'll ever get in the game for an extra S rank weapon or just leave it at level 2.
Story remains thoroughly terrible throughout.
I think as a whole, I preferred 3H battalions to the engage mechanic. Your units and enemies in this game feel about as strong as they usually are, but engaging often makes me feel like my squad is totally overpowered. It feels like you only really need to engage to counter an engaged boss with multiple health bars that you have to burn down instantly before they OHKO someone.
There's a bunch of not very good/weird shit in this game, like the tower of trials and upgrading emblem weapons. Remember grinding orbs to upgrade emblem weapons? Did anyone actually do that at all?
Engage ultimately feels like it sat on the fence separating 3H and PoR, half-assing each side. I want them to pick a style and whole-ass it in future.
And yeah the final boss was incredibly easy. It feels like they ran out of time
There are some issues that have been discussed here, like money (especially with regards to donations) and SP. I definitely think those things should have been tweaked. But they weren't bad enough issues to hamper my enjoyment of the game at all. There's also some balance issues with the classes (look at Berserker vs Warrior, for example), but it's not that bad overall. Everything is usable if you want to, if not optimal.
Most of the other aspects I like, too; I think that everything about the Somniel could probably be condensed and handled in the maps that you run around in after each mission, but it's fine. Characters and supports are good, music is great. I'm a sucker for nostalgia for the past games. But, christ, the story. What were they thinking.
Sombron took some setup but I was able to one-turn him. Starting off with a Draconic Hex helped. Not confident my team would have managed it on higher difficulties.
Rushed, shallow, and unfocused is how I'd describe it, yeah.
Really, the biggest structural problem is that they blow almost all of their storytelling budget in very inefficient ways. The paralogues are almost entirely Emblem retreads, so a full half of your character/world building side content is wasted. Within the main missions, they spend what feels like every other cutscene doing nothing but foreshadowing OBVIOUS STORY REVEAL (and still making the reveal feel sloppy and rushed), which leaves them to basically setup + payoff every other story beat within the span of the end of one mission and the start of the next. In between missions and in the Somniel, there's so much chatter but all of it is completely meaningless, with even the "unique" dialogue being an individual character having a one line take on the situation. Add a few other structural requirements (introduction, pre-plot-reveal missions, the fact you're picking up the nobles from every country so you have 8+ completely split focus secondary main characters, etc.) and there's just literally no time or writing actually allotted to do anything with what they've built.
And ugh, Can we talk about the recycled conversational animations for fucking everything? The clasped hands swaying back and forth, the prayer hands bowing deeply, etc. Just stand still while you talk. I'd rather you be wooden and unmoving then look like a sprung Jack-In-the-Box. Wait...that doesn't sound right...but you know what I mean.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Honestly, who could blame her.
There were always:
and there's no hyperbolic time children so there's that
so here's a side question, which FEs actually have a good story? I'd say Awakening and Three Houses for sure do, and at least Shadows of Valentia remake (did not play the original). I haven't played anything prior to Awakening so I can't speak to any of those; are any of them actually on the virtual console?
Looking forward to a new game where they take all they've learned from the gameplay of Engage and apply it towards a setting and character set that takes itself seriously.
The GBA games and Awakening all have... fine stories, in my opinion. Maybe even slightly good in the case of Sacred Stones? They're not great, but, they're serviceable. Those are games that I can just say "you don't really play them for the story" and leave it at that. Fates and now Engage are the only ones I've played where I've thought that the story was active significant detriment to the game.
I don't think the story itself is that bad. It's the writing that's the problem. The line-to-line dialogue is just awful.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
In definitely goes hard into the "Super mega villain/god/dragon boss" at the end, but a lot up to that point was solid. I still want a updated remake of FE6 & FE7 as a single game telling the whole arcing story in two parts, where some of the decisions/characters you used in the first half influence the characters in the second half. Kind of like Awakening, without all the time travel and super kids. Like, the canon children would get a better starting stats, minor stat growths, better starting weapons, or something similar. Nothing game breaking.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Problem is the writing itself is sophomoric to the point of being insulting.