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Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII


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No, your eyes do not deceive you, someones actually doing this.

Greetings, this is something that has been on my mind recently to do as I was having somewhat of a big itch to play this game again.
"Why do you even want to play through it again?"
Hey, man I actually like this game. Even if the things in it are very hit or miss(mostly miss to be quite frank).
But I mostly want to go through this game with those that either like the game, or those on the fence about it to help make their opinion on it

i'm hoping to update this at.least once a week, so try to bear with me here.

Edited by Trisitei
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Looking forward to it, show em how you feel. 

Is this going to be a special run of any sorts or are you just going to be playing vanilla?

Edited by Jedi
Punctuation.
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7 minutes ago, Jedi said:

Looking forward to it, show em how you feel. 

Is this going to be a special run of any sorts or are you just going to be playing vanilla?

Nothing special really, just a regular any% playthrough, trying to get most sidequests done
i say most because last time i played this i didn't do much triple triad or finish the Obel lake quest because it got a tiny bit annoying

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I love Final Fantasy! True, VIII isn't the best in the series, but it isn't really as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. Plus, it's got some of the best music! *Spontaneously starts singing "Eyes on Me"*

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Let's get this quick first part of the update started

 


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No turning back now

This opening scene is probably my favorite in the series with possibly one of the best scores in the series, Liberi Fatali with graphics that blew minds back in the day
..well it blew my mind at least...

i mean it's got everything to know you're gonna be on a grand adventure!
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Like pretty beaches!
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Flying past kind of pretty desserts!
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Flying past pretty flowers!
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Ridiculous weapons!
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One smug bastard with a very punchable face!
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The edge being delivered to our hero.
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Romance....
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This is gonna be grand!
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...or we could wake up in the nurses office. It's cool
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You gotta be some badass to just get cut and be like "I'm ok i guess"
but lets go with the more believable response
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I agree with this lady
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When you're so edgy you portrait is this mean ass scowl
But edgelord or not, this is our hero Squall Leonhart
As the typical main character in an RPG his main stats are pretty rounded, with a bigger lean in strength

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Mysterious ladies? This trope totally isn't run to the bone nowadays.
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Quistis eh? must be our teacher here. Probably some old lady mother figure
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...oh baby.
And here is another of our heroes, Quistis Trepe
like Squall, shes rounded in her own ways, leaning more to a mage type character should you choose to have her as such.

Edited by Trisitei
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Part 2 of the first update

 


In the brief second where we left off, our hero Squall had gotten picked up by his rather youngish looking professor..
hey, man she looks nice either way
um..

..To the story! 
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Prepare to never see an answer to this, considering Squall is Mr. never speaks his mind
after Quistis and Squalls small banter:
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This is probably the edgiest thing i have ever read in a while, but it is based on some truth, considering Squall's reasons, not explored now, but we'll get to it soon enough.
and to be fair, it's not as edgy as Mr.Eizen in Tales of Berseria...
But this is Final Fantasy not Tales! lets stay on topic
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Quistis continues to try to get her....not quite talkative student to open up
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..with the expected results
But I like her messing around with him at least

Squall and Quistis return to class to go over the schools field exam later in the day and other manners
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"Such as the lie that hot dogs are actually in stock. Everyone knows that such a thing will never happen"
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eyyy, my boy Squall getting some time with the teach
nice
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i mean we could...
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but lets sit back down to mess around with our computers in a desk
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1998: the only year i can think where a 17 year old using a computer would be considered a pain
oh yes, our hero is indeed 17 years old
oh JRPGs with your ages that don't match our characters physically...
but after dealing with the pain of turning on the compute (probably among other stuff that would be way too annoying to actually show) we get access to the schools web page
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lets look up some basics of this world, most interestingly these things called GFs, which to keep things simple for now, we can just say they're the equivalent to summons/Eidolons/Espers in other titles.
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memory loss eh?
sounds like an odd tidpit that clearly won't be important to the plot on a later date.
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logging into the schools tutorial page nets us our first GFs, series staple summon Shiva and a newcomer, Quezacotl, taking the place of Ramuh as the lightning summon
odd to see powerful forces of nature be kept in data, but this game was made in the same time were things like that were starting to see mainstream popularity i suppose.
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after dealing with the pain that is 1998 technology, we can finally go talk some important matters with Professor Quistis Trepes

Maybe we should speak to these kids that are surrouding her
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...I immediately regret my choice

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I really don't think it'd be that important to go there
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well then.....

With not much options left, Quistis goes to the front of the school, waiting for Squall to prepare before heading to the fire cave

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though not without running into a fellow classmate on the way to the front
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We could come off extremely edgy but that's dumb 
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With the girl saying shes fine, she reveals shes a transfer student with obviously no idea on were to go in this big school
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And considering our hero is not that bad of a guy we offer to to give her a mini tour of the school
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But not before getting a brief intro to probably the more addicting mini-game in this game
Though more details on that will come


Part 3 of the update coming soon

Edited by Trisitei
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17 minutes ago, Hashuni Mei said:

I wonder, are there any serious consequences for choosing the emotionally distance options?

None at all really
they're just their considering our heroes..
not quite sunshine and rainbows personality and look

On to the end of the update

 


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We head down the elevator to the first floor, taking our guest to the directory to explain the area
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because the girl is totally gonna know what it means to move the cursor and press X
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Must be pretty good hot dogs
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our hero once again proves how little he likes talking about whats on his mind
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With helping the girl done, we could go explore our school, Balamb Garden, for a bit before heading to the front gate. but there's one place i want to stop by for real quick
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Gotta get those hot dogs
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Look at the definition of goon squad here
Seifer Almasy, Squalls rival responsible for giving him his scar, going too far in their sparring practice shown in the intro of the game
which Squall gave right back.
And his goons Fujin and Raijin with their very notable speaking quirks
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Nice Squall impression
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Haha

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"Disciplinary committee"
Sure
and Bulk and Skull made grade A hall monitors

But enough of the goon squad here we gotta get those hot dogs
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Damn it

welp
with not much other stuff of importance to mind, its time to save and report to the front gate to head to the Fire Cave
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Edited by Trisitei
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22 minutes ago, Mage Knight 404 said:

You will never have hot dogs to your name.

Ever.

 

(Cerberus doesn't count in this one)

Damn it

there goes a nickname for Cerberus 

9 minutes ago, Jedi said:

You planning on naming the Guardian Forces anything in particular? 

 I wasn't planning on it, but now that you mentioned it, I got an idea or two

 

Also, because there's some leeway in my schedule, I'm hoping to update a bit tomorrow 

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Actually i think i'll make this quick update now, since i'm so close to talking about the mechanics of the game and it's something i really wanted to talk about.

 


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We're on our way to meet up with Quistis, but there is one thing that even the best of military students have no chance against: security.
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On our way we see this pink thing of energy, wonder what it is..
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We'll go into drawing soon enough.
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But we finally meet up with Quistis at the front gate.
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oh?
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I mean if you're one of the romantic types, then sure.
Kidding
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And here is one of the key things that make this game so divisive, the junctioning system.

Instead of your traditional armor and other equipment in other RPGs, FFVIII's deal is this system here.
But what's the junction system?
Im gonna try to explain this in the best of my abilities, so bear with me.
We're gonna show this with Squall here.
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In the main menu, there's the option for Junctioning. and in it there's our only option here, which is Junction
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When you hit that, you get the option to select your GF for the character
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By giving Shiva to Squall, Shiva gives Squall her abilities we can see to the right by pressing square.
Shiva's abilities are pretty limited for now, but the most important ability to talk for now is the Spr-J ability, which allows us to junction magic into Squalls spirit stat, which makes him more resistant to magic. GFs will learn different J abilities to junction in different stats through out the game.
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After equipping a GF we can now pick the magic menu to junction our magic into a stat, but we don't have any magic now to show.
Well were do we get magic? I'll get to that soon enough, but let's just finish talking about junctioning.
By backing out of the magic menu, we get automatically taken to the ability menu.
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Here we can equip different abilities to use on the battlefield.
Magic, which allows the character to cast magic
GF, which allows us to summon the characters equipped GF
Draw, which we'll get into later
and Item, which we can use items
there's other abilities that different GFs can teach, but we'll come to them when we come to them.
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And the lower menu is were we can equip passive abilities such as a magic or strength boosts, but I can't show much since Shiva and Quetzalcoatl don't have such abilities.
And that should be it on how to junction. Spent time to talk about it now to save the multiple readings of this tutorial on how to get it if you didn't get it the first time. it took me like, three and a proper explanation online to really get it.


With Quistis and our GFs on our side, now we can proceed to the main world. We are introduced to a nice overworld track in Blue Fields, a nice relaxing song which fits well for an overworld song.
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As the Fire Cave is to the east of Balamb garden, we head east to the cave.
But on the way there, we come across out first encounter of many considering my luck...
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The games not done throwing new mechanics on our faces it seems.
To help integrate the player as Squall, FFVIII has the R1 button act as Squalls trigger to his gunblade.
Hitting R1 at the right time of attacking an enemy gives Squall a free critical hit.

But enough on that lets get to talking about drawing. Another point that makes this game so odd among those who played it.
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Instead of a traditional mana system, FFVIII introduces drawing.
FFVIII kind of goes back to FFI's way of magic and gives our heroes a limited amount of magic to cast. And the only way to get more magic is to draw it from the enemy. as in steal the magic from them to make it your own.
Which basically makes all of your battles being one part actual fighting and another part drawing magic from your opponent to both have more magic to cast and to junction to your stats. You can cast the magic you're junctioning to your stats, but your stats would suffer so it's not much advised unless you have a large amount of enough magic for it to not be a real problem.
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Get used to seeing this, this is how most fights go unless you don't need to draw.

But with that out of the way i can talk about the main battle theme for a bit, Don't Be Afraid. I used to not like this much mostly for the whole militaristic sound it had, being kind of dull for me when i was a kid, but now i can say it's a nice battle track and helps FFVIII's militaristic tone in it's music.
With explaining mechanics out of the way and getting our first couple of magic spells, we can finally continue to the Fire Cave.
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[/spoiler]

Edited by Trisitei
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Always had a soft spot for 8.

And yeah, one thing I've grown to appreciate is how well 8 does its music. I don't think any other FF has done music quite like it, where each of the major overarching plot elements has its own musical archetypes, and the themes are built off of those. Usually FF games don't quite have such a consistent musical tone. Some of them are downright all over the place.

Edited by Slumber
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14 hours ago, Slumber said:

Always had a soft spot for 8.

And yeah, one thing I've grown to appreciate is how well 8 does its music. I don't think any other FF has done music quite like it, where each of the major overarching plot elements has its own musical archetypes, and the themes are built off of those. Usually FF games don't quite have such a consistent musical tone. Some of them are downright all over the place.

It's main theme for all the tracks really is one of the highlights
Especially with several plot related tracks that i'll cover when i get to it.

2 hours ago, Princess Lore said:

ff8's story is wild imo i really like it and the girls are all so pretty. I'm happy someone is playing it on the forum tbh

Thank you very much. That actually means a good amount to me.

On to the update!
 

Spoiler

We were on our way to the Fire Cave to pass the preliminaries for our entrance to our big field exam.

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And we're here

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These guys look suspicious.
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You're damn right we're ready.
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I don't think i'll do ten minutes because of  rawing-day and the potential of too much encounters, let's leave it at twenty minutes.
And with giving the time, we're in the Fire Cave at last.

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I wonder why...
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This is basically his catch phrase due to how distant he is. Though fun fact: this was more the translators way on trying to bring Squalls distant nature oversees.
What he actually says here is something along the lines of "...But you're a teacher". Because i guess hot teachers aren't on the top of Squalls list.
I mean...

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I's joke, Squall. Calm down that edge.

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With the proper draw ability given to our characters, we can now draw from these pink marks over the world.
And considering this is the Fire Cave, of course we'll get some fire magic.

After coming across some monsters, drawing magic from them, we make it to the end of cave.
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I'm surprised Squall hasn't died of the heat considering his leather get-up.

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Hell yeah, bring out the boss.
 

And here is out first boss, the fire Guardian Force, Ifrit.
He's not that tough really. Of course for being a fire elemental, ice is of course his weakness by trade.
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He also has Fire, Cure, and Scan available to draw should you take time to draw from him.
Though just because he's easy doesn't mean he won't go down without a fight, giving some tough physical attacks and with an occasional fire spell here and there
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and he fights hard enough for Squall to be brought to critical damage.
FFVIII takes another page from a classic on how it handles it's version of limit breaks.-
Like in FFVI the lower your characters health is, the higher chance they have to activate their limit breaks.
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And a limit would just be enough to put this beast down.
Squalls limit break is Renzokuken, were he attacks multiple times and each time you have to hit the R1 button when he lands a hit with his sword. There's also a special bar at the bottom to help get the timing down.
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And sometimes (IE in some equation i won't be bothered to really learn right now), Squall activates a follow up move, with his first being Rough Divide, which is just like Clouds Climhazzard that does big damage
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Beautiful.
and with that, Ifrit has been defeated and since he is a GF, he has also joined us as a new GF to use.
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I was gonna name him something relating to music, but my controller was having issues.

With Ifrit on our side, the Fire Cave is complete. Now we can leave and report back to Balamb Garden.
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Edited by Trisitei
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2 hours ago, Princess Lore said:

ff8's story is wild imo i really like it and the girls are all so pretty. I'm happy someone is playing it on the forum tbh

So you've played it too? Who's your favorite character?

Echoing the sentiment about seeing a playthrough of it here as well.

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Part two of the update.

Spoiler

We defeated Ifrit, but Quistis still had some mechanics left to explain
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In the main menu, there's the GF menu
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Here we can check our GFs skills, with the most important to learn now is the different stat junction abilities so we can increase our stats.
And since Ifrit has the ability to junction strength, let's give him to Squall
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By junctioning our hefty amount of fire to his strength, Squalls strength gets a nice boost
Ifrit gives the Elemental attack junction ability
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By pressing the left on the bottom menu, we get taken to another window were we can junction magic to our characters attack, giving them elemental damage to their attacks.
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After taking some time to draw some magic, we proceed to leave the cave and make our way back to garden.
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after explaining GF skills, Quistis tells us to change into our school uniform to prepare for the field exam.

Now lets check that pink thing back in the entrance
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It had a cure. Which would have been helpful now that i think about it....
OH WELL.

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The dorms are in the back as Squall said to the girl and that i didn't have to check the directory myself to remember, so let's get here to change.
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By coming into Squalls dorm, now we can look less edgy and not scare small children,  and change into our school uniform. 
All to prepare for our big SeeD exam.

 

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*supports*

Really though looks like you got an interesting thing here. I shall read it at some other point in time

 

OKAY SO Now that i read it it's pretty fun and nice and stuff. Yeah. Uh. Yeah. I dunno what to say. Words. words i was totally gonna use when i was going to play it

Edited by Komeiji Koishi
Words
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