Unpopular opinions

So there's been quite a few dissertations on G/S/C/HG/SS in this thread recently, and as someone who has fond memories of HG but really didn't enjoy my recent playthrough, I think a lot of the praise people give the Johto games comes from a feeling of wonder that people tend to have when playing through Pokémon games as children. Johto feels very mysterious as a kid because you don't know anything about anything (and this is true even in the digital age, I'm a zoomer who had Internet access when playing HG as a kid and I still got this feeling) but that feeling of mystery is intrinsic to being a kid and almost impossible to recapture when you're older. The Ruins of Alph seemed really cool when I was a kid, but now they feel kinda lame because I know everything about them.

What's important about this is that it doesn't just apply to the Johto games. I have fond memories of wandering around in that one island in B/W trying to find a legendary that I was convinced could be found there because of an (in retrospect) obviously hacked YouTube video. Pokémon games lend themselves very well to this childlike sense of wonder and mystery, there's nothing all that special about the Johto games in that regard. Strip that magic away, and HG/SS are potentially great games held back by glaring issues (level curve, lack of strong Pokémon) that don't hold up as well as the games around them (Platinum and the Unova games are much better IMO).

That's not to say that there's nothing to like/appreciate about HG/SS. The games have probably my favorite general aesthetic of any Pokémon game, the soundtrack is great, and I think the story with the Kimono Girls is massively underappreciated. The problem is that, for me at least, they're just not very fun to play, and I think that a lot of what I enjoyed about them as a kid is impossible to get back now.
 
Pikachu315111 said:
... I'm sorry, that paragraph gave me whiplash. Where did THAT come from?! :psynervous:
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Well, first a few background details

While the english speaking internet would have you believe otherwise Tencent is not, in fact, a videogame company; yes they do make a lot of money from videogames but so does Apple, and speaking of Apple, Tencent is also not comparable to it as a company they're more related to Google, they have their finger in every pie in China, and beyond if I'm been frank

Now that little red headed girl whose image I posted? that's Tencent Animation and Comics' official mascot, TAC being notable for being China's largest publisher of webcomics and animation, traditional comics never having left a mark in the market

for the last nine years or so, chinese webcomics have become not only incredibly prolific but quite popular as well while at the same time manga has taken a considerable nosedive in quality (and yes there may be a correlation between the two) it's gotten bad enough that japanese animators have started to sound the alarms

also, if you actually been reading them in the last decade you would've noticed a general decline in manga specifically; sure there're still great things out there but the average japanese comic has gotten so bad is making shit like Mouse look actually presentable
now that's not to say that chinese webcomics have reached as high as heights as japanese comics have yet (they tend to be very "shonen" to put it simply, and I hope you like Xianxia cause there're cultivation methods literally in every 4 out of 5 of them), but on average? much better than yet another story about been transported to another world, and they have those too (sadly) if not as poorly scripted


back to the issue at hand, I brought up TAC not just because their mascot is straight out of a moe hellhole but because they're falling for the same trappings that japanese comics have

now leaving aside things like Cupid's Chocolates which at least stars college aged students (and that's the communist party influence at work make no mistake) the sexualization of children still crops up

to give just one example this is Hua Ling from Yin Zhi Shoumuren, one of the most popular and best plotted franchises TAC has

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and do you seriously need to sexualize the 15 year old that much you guys? there's like five other female characters, all of them college aged and you have to pick the 15 year old
clearly she's the sexiest
clearly
:blobglare:


so yeah, there's your context for that paragraph 315111
 
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Pikachu315111 said:
Yeah, but the suggestion of it becoming a Feathered Serpent is too good of an idea to pass up.
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I never really liked that to be honest. The whole appeal of dunsparce is that its chubby and a bit silly, making it elegant just makes it more boring.

I think the ideal dunsparce evolution would keep the fatter proportions of it. Could be based on the more fatty bearded dragons or the tiny limbs of skinks, for example.
 
Rapti said:
Ah, yes
C89D7BBB012B653B598EF2A092E746AFCC71DC48

this may be as old a Go Nagai but I personally blame Ken Akamatsu for plunging japanese cartoons into the frankly horrible depths in which the industry finds itself in (they're making anime about how great it would be to have sex slaves sex slaves!)

and you'd think that when chinese cartoons inevitably replace their now clearly in decline japanese counterparts the chinese communist party would at least prevent this from happening again but that's not what's gonna happen will it Tencent?

images


:blobglare:








anyway POKEMON

you'd think that when Masamitsu Hidaka said that "they like to switch up the girls because it gives the boys some new eye candy every once in a while" he must be clearly joking
because a writer of a literal children's cartoon couldn't possibly be serious about sexualizing literal children right?

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WHY? just...

look

I like animation and comics, I've seen animation and comics from, if not all over the world, a few different countries; the medium in and of itself has huge potential in stories that can't be told otherwise either feasibly or at all
but this shit right here? that's not normal! you don't see this in Tintin or in Mortadelo & Filemon or in the Yellow Woodpecker Farm or in the Moomins or in Hijitus or in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
you don't see this in el Chavo or in Chip & Charlie or in Miraculous or in Steven Universe

and don't bring stuff like Barbarella or Cybersix up, those are explicitly for adults and we are talking about Pokemon here
and yes japanese cartoons like the Knight Ramune series are much worse about sexualizing underage girls while still being intended for children but that's not exactly an excuse now is it?


so in conclusion, yes, your first statement was probably right but that doesn't mean we shouldn't condemn it
(oh and just to be clear this isn't an indictment on Imperial Magala or anything like that
is a statement on how we shouldn't tolerate people sexualizing children, fictional depictions or not, we don't tolerate Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat now do we?)
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It ticks me that people act like this can't be conditioned or influence/encourage bad behaviors just because "it's fiction"
Tell me, how come WW2 propaganda on the depiction of the Germans then the Japanese were so successful, leading to concentration camps for the latter that barely anyone questioned?
Tell me how moe culture BECAME a culture instead of remaining isolated?
Tell me how an entire industry didn't have this issue until the mid 80s, with it skyrocketing after the 2000s?
And if it's "freedom of expression", why is it so unoriginal/generic at this point? Artists rarely even think of the implications
 
It feels irresponsible to attribute Japanese internment solely to wartime propaganda and not, say, decades of institutional racism against Asian-Americans dating to the Chinese Exclusion Act if not further, and believe me I am able and willing to go there (see signature), but ANYWAY since I would rather the thread not be locked...

The topic was the sexualization of girls in the franchise, which I hope we can agree is a shitty thing, and in any event has been a problem in official media well before the fandom decided to make a waifu out of Marnie. Witness Leaf's original design for example:

leaf.jpg

That is a dangerously short skirt for anyone, but Leaf is, canonically, a preteen.
 
Aight this shit's gettin goofy time for a change of pace

While the overworld NPC models are a liiittle wonky, I gotta say the more I look into it the more unironically, genuinely impressed I am by ILCA's attention to small details from what little we've seen of BDSP. For example, I love how in open areas during battles you can see Mt. Coronet literally looming over the horizon.

I especially would like to highlight this thread I discovered recently. There's so many cool little tweaks I never noticed that are mentioned here (like the thing about the shadows and their direction depending on time of day, damn that's saucy), I know this all sounds small and meaningless but that's what makes it so impressive to me. ILCA ain't half-assing this, they're genuinely working hard and putting lots of love into this game I can just feel it.
 
jordanthejq12 said:
I'm pretty sure "Gen 5 is good, actually" hasn't been a minority opinion in the fandom since, what, 2012? The critical re-evaluation of the Unova games began the moment the XY trailer dropped.
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Minor thing, but I don't remember it being this way. From what I can remember, the criticism for Gen 5 continued for quite long after the first trailer for X/Y dropped. And long after X/Y were released, for that matter. If anything, X/Y got a rather positive reception when they were first announced, it seemed like everyone was looking forward to them. They also got a quite positive reception from the fandom when they got released. In retrospect, it is sad to see how that has changed as they seem to be among the most disliked games in the series right now (personally, I loved them, so I'm not happy about their current status in the fandom). At the same time, I remember that Gen 5 was still very heavily disliked and criticized by the fandom all the way to 2014 or so, which was when it started being less disliked. That's how I remember it at least, chances are your experiences with how the fandom has viewed Gen 5 and X/Y are different from mine.

And while I'm here, I might as well make a semi-late reply to another subject:
Dire Dire Docks said:
So there's been quite a few dissertations on G/S/C/HG/SS in this thread recently, and as someone who has fond memories of HG but really didn't enjoy my recent playthrough, I think a lot of the praise people give the Johto games comes from a feeling of wonder that people tend to have when playing through Pokémon games as children. Johto feels very mysterious as a kid because you don't know anything about anything (and this is true even in the digital age, I'm a zoomer who had Internet access when playing HG as a kid and I still got this feeling) but that feeling of mystery is intrinsic to being a kid and almost impossible to recapture when you're older. The Ruins of Alph seemed really cool when I was a kid, but now they feel kinda lame because I know everything about them.

What's important about this is that it doesn't just apply to the Johto games. I have fond memories of wandering around in that one island in B/W trying to find a legendary that I was convinced could be found there because of an (in retrospect) obviously hacked YouTube video. Pokémon games lend themselves very well to this childlike sense of wonder and mystery, there's nothing all that special about the Johto games in that regard. Strip that magic away, and HG/SS are potentially great games held back by glaring issues (level curve, lack of strong Pokémon) that don't hold up as well as the games around them (Platinum and the Unova games are much better IMO).

That's not to say that there's nothing to like/appreciate about HG/SS. The games have probably my favorite general aesthetic of any Pokémon game, the soundtrack is great, and I think the story with the Kimono Girls is massively underappreciated. The problem is that, for me at least, they're just not very fun to play, and I think that a lot of what I enjoyed about them as a kid is impossible to get back now.
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I agree with most of this. The difference is that for me, I have fond memories of G/S/C rather than HG/SS. G/S/C definitely had that special atmosphere, they gave me a feeling of mystery and wonder when I played them as a kid (and I am convinced that the kids of today who play modern Pokémon games will get the same or a similar feeling from these games, no matter what anyone says). But for me, HG/SS did not manage to recreate the feeling from G/S/C, nor did they improve upon the games in any significant way, which is why I don't appreciate them all that much.

And I agree that all Pokémon games gave their own feeling of mystery, at least when I played them for the first time. I was able to experience a feeling like this the first times I played Black, X, Moon and Sword, just like for when I played Blue, Silver, Ruby and Pearl when I was younger. It was different from how it was when I was younger, but it was still there.
 
People's rankings of the games are always meaningless anyway since so many moving parts are involved and it seems silly to think you can reduce all of them to an accurate hierarchy - design, gameplay, story, multiplayer experience, and post-game would be my personal criteria, and I would rank the games so differently under each header that there's just no way a simple overall ranking would reflect my actual opinion.

For example, I think gen 5 offers the best single-player campaign in the series, and as a bug-type lover I am a big fan of its pokedex, but it was also a horrible gen for multiplayer with many poorly designed systems, the dream world especially being one of the top 5 worst decisions gamefreak have ever made. On the other hand I think Kalos is a very poorly designed region with the worst new mons and the worst story, but I have by far the highest amount of hours recorded across gen 6 games because they made competitive breeding and shiny hunting so much more accessible, AND they had by far the best multiplayer experience to date. Anyone who was around for early gen 6 GTS and wondertrading can tell you the multiplayer boom was real with so many people who had essentially played the games as exclusively single-player up til this point being brought into the fold. I still think the Vivillion craze is the most successful "community project" gamefreak has ever designed. Bankball trading was also just a perfect storm of obsessive detailing for collectors.

TBH the fact that multiplayer is rarely addressed when fans discuss the games in general is kind of annoying, in fact my biggest issue with SWSH is that its multiplayer experience is so shit and short-sighted, not the dumb graphics debate or even dexit.
 
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Took until me playing BW2 to really get into Gen 5, but when I did play B2, I regret that I skipped over them when they came out. I was still bummed out from BW1 being so "meh" and disappointing to me, so I didn't get them. Turns out, they were the last good main series Pokemon games and a major improvement over BW1 (story not withstanding.... But that's never been Pokemon's strong suit. As long you don't get XY tier bad in the story, we're good. Leave the storytelling to PMD.). I have grown a bit less harsh on BW1 over time and didn't hate them, but they still just don't hold a candle to BW2 (or HGSS. Or Platinum. Or Emerald. Etc.) on a replay. Certainly not as bad as the garbage from Gen 6 onwards, though.

And about the sexualization of minors in Pokemon (and in Japan and media in general).... yeah... Why? Are your consumers so insecure that they need to see minors like this? Why is it generally females? Why are they generally wearing school clothes? Why do they generally lack personality (barring hitting on the main character(s))? Why do I need to wait a while in Pokemon games with character customization to get respectable clothes if I'm playing a female character? I get that minors, even preteens, can find others (including their age group) attractive, develop crushes, and fall in love.... but it's done so tactlessly here. Do we really need to have this, especially when it's poorly done and handled. And it's not really "romantic" (Do we even need this in a Pokemon game? Especially between the 17 and below characters?), just "Look, I dress questionably!". None of this really needs to be done.

And I get that fanservice has and always will exist. Humans, along with being lazy, selfish, and horrible, are generally horny creatures at heart. They can and will find things to sexualize and get horny to.... but does it really need to be minors? Can't you restrict it to people of legal age (18+.... always. Don't care if it's lower elsewhere. This is a moral issue.)? And can't you be more egalitarian? Can't you make both women and men fanservice, instead mostly the former? I'm pretty sure straight women, gay men, and bi people would like the nod (and in bi peoples' case... the diversity). If you're going to have fanservicey characters in a Pokemon game, keep it (tastefully) to adults like Kukui and Burnet (who I know have followings and a following for the pairing), not short skirted protagonists :blobnauseated:.
 
About this whole matter about... certain... kind of fanservicing... I honestly don't care as long as it remains in fiction.

You can think the most disgusting things that could ever pop into the mind of a person, as long as it does not affect real beings, and I won't mind.
 
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on the topic of semi-unpopular(it's pretty mixed) takes, gen 8 is good and here's why I'm right and why you're wrong
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Ok now that we have the clickbait title, I actually do think that gen 8 is on the better half of the series, if not on the top half in spite of its flaws(at least shield, I have a bit more gripes with sword but they're mostly the same game). No multiplayer commentary though sry, I really don't give a shit about in-game multiplayer outside of trading for the shiny charm which works easily enough, codes are a very easy way to connect to specific people vs how clunky SM's friend list was(and how names just refused to show up sometimes cause fuck you lol). This is more of an opinion piece about why I enjoyed Shield in spite of downsides, certainly not a defense of it because it has notable flaws that I don't put it past people disliking.

The Good
* Since I played Shield completely blind, I had no idea what the dex was going to be and my biggest fear getting the games would be that I ended up finding most mons mediocre like I did in gen 7(that I knew the entire dex before even buying Sun) but thankfully I found probably the second best dex in the entire series. Finding every new mon was one of the most enjoyable parts of the first playthrough I did, between the regional forms completely blowing alolan forms out of the water, and the creative and fun new mons, it was just a great experience. The "oh my god I need that" moment when I saw Nessa send out an Arrokuda, the cutest derpiest fish I've ever seen, is one of those moments that defines the dex for me and is largely the reason why I've since played gen 8 more times than I've played gen 3/4/7. Overall I feel that Galar has one of the best regional dexes in the series and the new mons have so much charm to them that have been generally missing in Kalos and Alola.

* Gamefreak is getting shockingly close at giving us actual characters for once, it's surprising but true. It certainly isn't perfect and most gym leaders suffer from "only appear once" syndrome that prevents them from having much character at all, but on the other hand you have some of the most memorable characters in the series. Hop gets a lot of hate for some reason(never got the Hau comparisons, they're not similar characters) but I think he's a pretty great example of there's room for good character growth that's possible in the rival formula GF uses, I will call him out for being almost too similar to Bianca minus the over protective father. Then you have the gym leaders and wew we got some gym leaders. Opal and Raihan are up there as some of the best gym leaders of all time(Getting to see Opal radiate theatre energy made me fall in love with her character as soon as I saw her). Trainer cards also help a lot giving characters some added depth so we got to know more about the earlier gym leaders with Nessa and Kabu, and while I didn't particularly like Bede I will say he's a well written character who's arc feels satisfying. I think it's obvious without going into detail that I like Leon and Raihan.

* Galar as a region is beautiful(besides 2 main gripes that'll be later). I think Galar has some of the nicest looking cities/towns we've seen. Going into the Slumbering Weald for the first time was such a mysterious almost ominous feeling, it was oddly atmospheric for a Pokemon game lol. Postwick and Wedgehurst are great starting towns that give you the feel for the aesthetic of Galar, the old rustic look of Motostoke, the regal looking Hammerlocke perfectly capturing the rich central area that most regions have, Circhester being gorgeous, and Wyndon being massive but not annoying to get through *cough* Lumiose. You can't talk about Galar's amazing scenery without talking about the Glimwood Tangle and especially Ballonlea are stunning to see, the glowing mushrooms are brought out so much by how dark the forest is, and getting to Ballonlea is like the exact type of place I'd expect a town in a fairy forest to look like, it's enchanting. The dlc islands are also very visually nice to look at.

* The music. Really don't have much to say here, every track hits way harder than it needs to and SnS has my 3rd favorite OST in the series. Though I hate how gen 7 and 8 both recycle old pokemon themes instead of having actual champion themes, I prefer remixes for post-game battles and callbacks, it's just lame to have the big climactic moment just be a theme we've heard a thousand times already. Leon's theme is decent though so I don't miiiiind it, just a gripe. Toby Fox's one is also pretty good so that's smth. Ballonlea's theme is the best town theme in the series.

* SnS is generally more difficult or easier depending on if you use dmax or not, some matches like Nessa, Allister, potentially Opal(depending on your team, I've had sweeps and I had times I got swept lol), and potentially Raihan are all challenging battles. Allister being the main challenge because a SpA buffing Gengar is surprisingly brutal at that stage of the game. Leon as a champion is also probably the hardest champion albeit he doesn't have much competition, he doesn't have mons that let you easily set up against him so he can't be cheesed like Cynthia can be.

* Team Yell isn't the same copy/paste evil team we've had for 7 gens now. Hell Galar doesn't even have an evil team, Macro Cosmos is a functioning company in Galar and only fights you when you literally -break into- Rose's Tower because Leon promised dinner and hasn't shown up. I do like how Oleana is totally batshit insane but otherwise not a villain even though she sooorta takes that role(which again you're literally breaking into a building lol).

* The QoL, this is more apparent in IoA because there's just *so much* QoL additions in that dlc but gen 8 just made everything much more convenient to get which I like a lot. the CT dlc as a whole is a great experience too.

The Bad
* Dmax is the worst mechanic Gamefreak ever added in a Pokemon game to date. Gmax is a cute idea and I actually like a fair bit of the gmax forms but it's overshadowed by just how broken dmax is, and hilariously most gmax mons are unviable because the dmax alternative is just better. Only way I could approve of gmax existing is if they just entirely deleted dmax moves and just let gmax mons have their 1 signature move and the HP buff.

* While I find Galar a really nice to look at region, there are 2 big flaws. The shape of each town/city/route is just a line pretty much, this really ends once you get to the route going to Circhester though, bar Spikemuth which is yk ----- shaped lol, I get the arcade beat'em up reference but man...
It does suck though, Ballonlea is 3 buildings and a gym, Hammerlocke is just ┴ shaped, Stow-on-side is a Y, Motostoke is an uppercase i(gdi fonts that make I look like lower case L). Makes actually exploring Galar pretty much not an option which is probably the biggest gripe I have about the game as a whole. The other big flaw is the base Wild Area, which is a cool idea but I feel like Galar as a whole region suffered because of it. I don't really have anything to add that hasn't already been said a thousand times but I will say the wild area was fully realized in the dlcs at least.

* They removed Me First :( but yea besides that I didn't really notice that they removed moves from the game, the mons missing from the dex is only really relevant if you transfer mons across games so it didn't personally effect me at all and my favorites were all added in IoA. It is the notable downside to SnS though so I have it listed here, it's honestly a bit overblown though imo.

*While the characters are generally good I feel like some miss the mark, Bea is significantly more boring than Allister(doesn't help that Allister is significantly harder cause Gengar) due to her being nearly indistinct from other fighting specialists in the series outside of her design. Gordie and Melony generally received the least screen time of any gym leader but they are both memorable(even though Gordie's team is completely trivial). Marnie is saved by having the best battle theme in the game but as a character, Gamefreak just...dropped her for no reason. She completely disappears for half the game from the first time you battle her, you don't see her again until you get to Opal's gym where you don't even fight her. Then you FINALLY see her a 3rd time before you fight Piers. She definitely needed 2 or 3 more appearances in that large gap where she just disappears, especially since you have a few encounters with Team Yell during that time. It's not an uncommon or surprising complaint to say that Rose's character is handled really badly, they really should've just made Eternatus wake up due to excessive use of dmax during the Champion Cup. Would've had the same outcome without Rose being a last minute "oh fuck we don't have an antagonist we need to pull smth out of our ass."

* The game is easily broken, when I said "SnS is easier depending" that is a bad thing imo. If you have to restrict yourself from using a broken mechanic to sweep the game, it's not a hard game. This is really what pokemon has been struggling with since gen 6(lol free mega lucario and mega lati before the 4th and 6th gym respectively) and it really hasn't gotten better especially with things like EXP candy letting you easily over level as it's easy to get them in bulk once you have a few gym badges even if you just casually do raids during the 3 required visits to the wild area. This is more noticeable in Sword than Shield as Bea and Gordie are trivial compared to Allister and Melony. Not to mention Zamazenta Hop is a joke compared to Zacian Hop. I won't judge the dlc characters much since I've never seen Klara but I do like Avery a fair bit.

* Free move relearners is great and a huge QoL improvement over SM locking it till the E4, but you have an issue when gen 8 also gives you every single evolution stone in the wild area at the start of the game...meaning you can get an Arcanine with flare blitz, Musharna with psychic and moonblast, Vikavolt with bug buzz and tbolt, and Ninetales with nasty plot heatwave before you have 1 gym badge.

* The starters are still bad imo. Cinderace is possibly my 2nd least favorite mon and that's saying something cause I thought I disliked Braixen a lot, at least Braixen evolves into an ok mon though. Rillaboom is okay and I like Inteleon more than a lot of people but it's still just average, the NFEs are god awful though. You got whatever tf Thwackey is, emo frog, and naruto rabbit, skip them.

(jesus christ I didn't intend on this being a whole ass book lmao)
 
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About the sexualization of minors, keep in mind that the legal age of consent in Japan was 13 for ages (though they did bump it up to 18 recently IIRC). That's the kind of culture we're dealing with here. I'm not saying that the cultural difference excuses the sexualization of young girls in shows like the Pokémon anime, there are plenty of good reasons to oppose an age of consent that low and I personally think the sexualization is pretty creepy, but it does explain why Japan tends to find that sort of thing more acceptable.
 
Dire Dire Docks said:
About the sexualization of minors, keep in mind that the legal age of consent in Japan was 13 for ages
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This isn't exactly correct, as prefectures set their own ages of consent which often default to 16-18, and the age of consent being 13 only relates to other minors. I don't remember the specific age gap or if it only allows for same-age sexual relationships with minors.

Just wanted to mention this because it's a common argument I see which doesn't paint the whole picture imo. Hope this isn't too off topic
 
All these Americans complaining about the sexualisation of fictional teenage girls in Japanese media when they themselves hold beauty pageants for real toddlers...

But to derail this thread not any further let's move on to another topic. Unpopular opnion: I think the sword/shield plot involving the darkest day was actually quite well executed and interesting. The Eternatus battle was quite climactic.
 
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