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booksnake posted:This whole bit just sets the tone for VP so well. Everybody dies. It's like Shakespeare!  Going back a bit in the thread, RSCNyx posted:Frey was a guy, but he was a God of Fertility. One of his friends managed to woo a giant's daughter into becoming his wife by threatening to turn her into a withered old maid. Honestly the VP series in general is very "Norse Mythology seen through an anime lens". The fact that Ragnarok is apparently between the Aesir and Vanir should be your first clue that this is not your average Viking saga. Rabbi Raccoon posted:And hot drat I love this game. I remember reading somewhere that Easy Mode is actually harder than the others because you don't have access to anything particularly powerful though. And the intro is just such a slog to sit through once you've played through once. If I recall correctly (It's been a few years since I last played), it basically boils down to you not being able to stack characters' levelup customization bonuses quite so heavily, since on Easy/Normal, they join at set levels, while on Hard mode, every character joins at level 1 and is easily powerleveled up to party average. There's a few more tweaks you can do to snap the game's difficulty over your knee but they'd be getting into spoiler territory so I won't discuss them yet. As for the LP, looking good! It's nice to see GIFs of all the once-off animations the game made. I know Final Fantasy Tactics gets a lot of love for having special animations for all kinds of things, but Valkyrie Profile does so much more with its art.
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Mar 18, 2014 02:16
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Ehh, I mixed up my party a fair amount (though yeah, there's basically no reason to not have a mage as your rear character) and generally didn't have too much trouble. Archers aren't as good as melee fighters damage-wise, sure, but they can be good for helping to rack up combos. Plus, with enough optimizing of your party members' abilities it hardly matters what they use to attack things with. Then again, I was playing on "Hard" and with a guide so I could get the best ending.
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Mar 19, 2014 01:37
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Considering that we're in the first chapter and will need to send heroes up to Valhalla anyway, it's not surprising the game gives us some chaff characters to just look at, go "Yeah, you suck", and toss more or less immediately. Characters' Hero Values don't necessarily have much to do with how good they are in actual combat, after all.
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Mar 22, 2014 18:57
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Wally P posted:Aw Llewellyn. What I like about VP1 einherjar is that they at least all have distinct attacks and personalities...enough that if you like a bugger, they can be folded into a decent team. VP2 may not give wholly-unique attacks to every character, but each character still has a different set of attacks and easier/harder access to different skills. They aren't as individualized as in VP1, granted, but they aren't completely interchangeable within a class either. I remember in VP2, there's one archer who can easily get (or starts with, I forget) the skill "critical hits always knock off body parts"...and there's a bow that always critically hits. You put those two together and you'll be cheesing your way through every fight from then on, as she simply chops every enemy to pieces with her arrows  I actually ended up switching her out just to give the enemy a chance to fight properly.
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Mar 24, 2014 02:55
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Send up Llewellyn, IMO. Give him his brief, glimmering moment in the sun The Emerald Necklace is one reason why Hard Mode is easier. +100 CP per level makes a huge difference when every character is starting from level 1. You can max out lots of extremely powerful skills (like POW Up) just by handing new characters some event experience, of which you should have plenty. Finally, I did that dungeon without knowing how the "item crafting" worked. I grabbed that shortbow, slapped it on Llewellyn, and it broke basically immediately, so when I got to the boss I had no idea how to effectively fight it since he was doing only like 5 damage per hit without a weapon. But hey, Element Sceptres exist, so I just rocked out a big PWS chain -> Great Magic finisher. I think I even managed to kill everything with the Great Magic, which as others have alluded to means that the sceptre won't break.
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Mar 25, 2014 23:51
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:In all the years I've played this game, I've never found anything worthwhile in the Cave of Oblivion. As ApplesAndOranges alluded to, you can get a poo poo-ton of experience early on by cheesing the encounters there.
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Mar 27, 2014 14:57
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:Freya is the ultimate diva. She also has one hell of a dislocated hip there.
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Mar 28, 2014 02:11
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Edge Milesworth posted:I can min-max in the first game any time of the day but the thought of the equipment system from the second one scares me for some reason and I can't remember why. It's dumb and tedious? There's approximately a billion little items that would be "accessories" in most RPGs, and each one has a different rune and color, and you have to arrange certain rune/color chains in your equipment grid to get to be able to train different abilities. Which means you can never throw anything away even if it's statistically rubbish because you might need it to unlock an awesome skill that you don't know about yet. So your item list becomes this gigantic thing and it's impossible to find what you want. And meanwhile, most of these items are dropped by knocking bits off of monsters, but sometimes they're obscenely rare and/or extremely different to separate from the monster without killing it first. And then there's the item crafting interface... VP2 had some interesting ideas, but its character customization was a gigantic clusterfuck.
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Mar 31, 2014 21:47
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Rushputin posted:I'm really confused by the VP2 "hate". I haven't played it in ages and I personally like the first game more because the sequel has such a boring conventional structure. But I also thought the gameplay was really fun and don't remember the equipment and skill stuff being tedious or annoying at all. The Einherjar system seemed like an afterthought, but it's more of an optional power-gaming feature anyway. The gameplay in VP2 was basically fine. I think both VP1 and VP2 have their strengths there, so I'm not going to try to rate one above the other. The characters, though...blegh, Alicia is horrifically whiny and ineffectual in cutscenes, and wossname the archer guy is only marginally better. There's an interesting setting and concept here, but the characters that we spend the entire game following around are total crap! What's worse is that there are interesting and competent plot characters who stop in from time to time. Let me follow them around instead! As for the character customization (the runes and accessories stuff), it's certainly navigable but I wouldn't call it good. It feels like an attempt to build on the skill system from VP1, but they would have been better off just using VP1's system wholesale; it works and doesn't get in the way.
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Apr 1, 2014 17:32
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Is there a reason why you aren't abusing the fact that breakable weapons won't break if all the enemies are dead by the time your turn ends?
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Apr 3, 2014 22:47
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CmdrKing posted:Freya is technically beatable without cheating... Just you basically have to get to the end of the game and trigger ending C without instead triggering ending B. certainly with the tools we have now it's impossible. There are ways to get borderline invincible in this game, but yeah, they rely on stuff that's not available yet.
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Apr 5, 2014 18:12
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Derek Barona posted:I guess Odin's idea of a good soldier doesn't just apply to the Enherjar. As intimated by the following cutscene, the Valkyrie is an odd beast. I'll say no more because that gets firmly into spoiler territory. We'll find out what's going on eventually.
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Apr 5, 2014 18:56
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Odin in most representations is absolutely obsessed with Ragnarok. Winning the battle of doomsday is pretty much his highest priority, so he's willing to use whatever means are necessary to obtain any advantage he can get. He doesn't really give two shits about Midgard except as a breeding ground for cannon fodder.
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Apr 6, 2014 04:21
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For that matter, you don't have to actually send up heroes who meet Freya's requirements. You get dinged on your evaluation and don't get as many bonus artifacts/materialize points, but that's not the end of the world (that comes later ).
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Apr 7, 2014 16:05
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Derek Barona posted:Stuff that's more mission-like such as chasing the spies is much more in general and IIRC, you can fail if the enherjar on the job sucks. Hell, I'm pretty sure the einherjar can actually die up there. How that works metaphysically, I don't know.
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Apr 7, 2014 17:39
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Glazius posted:So he's basically got a hand crossbow, as opposed to Llewelyn's longbow? Something like that. VP1 does a decent job of mixing up the weapons that units use in their artwork, despite them all being variations of sword/big sword/ranged weapon/staff (EDIT: or polearm, forgot about those). TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 04:51
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Given that all of the interactions in the post-chapter reports are to do with fighting the war or chatting with gods, we can just assume that "Yumei meets up with her parents" wasn't notable enough to be mentioned. That's exactly what happened  Yumei's a pretty baller mage, if I recall correctly, though that might have something to do with a new mage weapon that I seem to recall becomes available soon. But whatever, she's a mage that isn't Jelanda so she gets mashed into the party ASAP. Sorry Jelanda, but you're kind of a bitch.
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Apr 11, 2014 17:06
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I never really bothered to compare my party members against each other. Between Valkyrie, a mage, and a reasonably up-leveled second fighter, you can take on pretty much all of the fights you need to, so it doesn't really matter if character X is 10% worse than character Y at the same level. Put another way, while you can micro-optimize all of your characters if you want, you don't need to (or at least I didn't feel the need to). Maybe this is different when playing on Normal vs. on Hard though.
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Apr 16, 2014 20:19
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vibratingsheep posted:Even on Hard (especially on hard, come to think of it - never maxing out at 999 character points is a great feature), you quickly reach a point where everyone is broken, so it's really just about whose attacks you're comfortable comboing with. Sorry, to clarify: I was playing on Hard, and meant to say "maybe things would be different if you were playing on Normal" since Normal is in some ways harder than Hard. And yeah, from what I remember Kashell didn't spend much time in my party, but that had more to do with me thinking his fighting style was stupid than anything about his effectiveness, if I recall correctly.
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Apr 16, 2014 21:09
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I want to send Jelanda and Kashell but that wasn't an option 
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Apr 18, 2014 21:29
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MadHat posted:Ah Guts, part one of the "Immortality Machine" Honestly Guts is all you really need; at max level your characters will almost always survive fatal damage. You can layer extra defense on top of Guts if you want, but I'd rather spend my CP elsewhere (and avoid the extra battle effects associated with what I assume you're talking about).
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Apr 22, 2014 02:46
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Rigged Death Trap posted:So we get another little thread of info on the worlds cosmology. Haven't you been paying attention to the Sacred Phase? When humans die, they (eventually) ascend to Valhalla and become gods.
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Apr 28, 2014 17:51
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Yeah, I got the Dragonsbane in chapter 2, and my mage proceeded to auto-wipe every single non-boss encounter with one casting for the entire chapter.
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Apr 30, 2014 17:47
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TurnipFritter posted:Edit: Aelia is apparently supposed to have a "Heavy Drinker" trait, haha. I guess that was censored for the NA version? Man, give that one to Celia.
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May 3, 2014 15:37
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Kashell's gotta get all prettied up before he can let the gods see him :bigtran:
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May 5, 2014 02:45
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Oh man, gently caress yes Villnore! Also, I wonder what happens if you send Llewellyn up in this phase. "We need a hero who can swim", huh? 
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May 6, 2014 15:54
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Loki needs a gopher to fetch coffee and donuts so the negotiations can proceed smoothly. The only reason he needed the Negotiator trait was so he could get a good price at the coffeeshop.
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May 6, 2014 19:40
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 It has been a long time, Lenneth. What do you have for us? Oh, you're going to like these two. Check 'em out! We have a suicidal mermaid! Hey, at least she can swim, unlike that last guy.  And a murderer and thief! Snazzy bandana, ain't it? Lenneth, I get the impression you aren't taking your duties seriously.
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May 8, 2014 17:57
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dis astranagant posted:Pretty sure we aren't even going to get the best voice this run. That depends on how you define "best" Icicle Disaster!
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May 12, 2014 04:13
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Mehuyael posted:If he's some kind of pickpocket, why does he have plate? Spiked pockets. Also, Lucian's melee combo is amazing and will generate gems/crystals like nobody's business. Have fun spamming PWS!
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May 12, 2014 21:10
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Mors Rattus posted:Really, the oddest thing to me is the one no one commented on - Lucian recognizes Valkyrie somehow, though we're not sure who he thinks she is. Everyone's explicitly avoiding talking about this due to spoilers. Yes, he ties into the plot that's been hinted at in various other places. We'll let ApplesAndOranges decide when to get into that. E:f;b
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May 12, 2014 23:50
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Keldulas posted:.... gently caress this one is just kind of grim. "gently caress, This One Is Kind of Grim: Let's Play Valkyrie Profile"
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May 13, 2014 14:58
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Can't you buy water wings to make up for the lack of Swimmer?
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May 14, 2014 15:06
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Something to consider re: benchwarmers is that we get to see more little interludes during the Sacred Phase if we send up more people. So y'know what? I say send up everyone except, say, Lucian and Nanami. Odin wants an army? An army he shall have!
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May 15, 2014 01:43
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Lord Gorchnik posted:And it may just be me but.......it seems quite a few people in this thread have played this game. I remember picking it up when it first came out (still own 2 copies on PSX as a matter of fact) and it was considered incredibly, incredibly, rare and hard to find. So much so that at one point the PS1 version went for $150+ on ebay, etc. I dunno what the problem is; I got a copy of VP off of Amazon's reseller system for...couldn't have been more than $40. This was about when the slimline PS2s were coming out, since that's what I played it on.
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May 15, 2014 15:46
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DmitriX posted:Oh and I forgot to ask- why do people consider Wait reaction amazing? There is one other skill, which, if paired with holy cross/prismatic missiles allows for Great magic every other turn, and has literally no downside. Dunno what skill you're talking about, but presumably it's not available yet and we're well into the game. Wait Reaction is invaluable for guard-breaking/starting combos on turns when your mages would otherwise be sidelined.
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May 15, 2014 19:27
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vilkacis posted:You thought right. No shame in using sub-par characters just because you like them. Unless that character is Llewellyn, because he can't swim
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May 20, 2014 04:58
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As someone else noted earlier, this section of the game is one of the major tie-ins for Valkyrie Profile 2; you get to see these events from the perspective of a contemporary character. This explains things a little. The other einherjar are not Lawfer and Llewellyn, no.
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May 24, 2014 21:46
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Glazius posted:That was a pretty interesting dungeon. Fuckin' wizards, am I right? No sense of right and wrong. Ohhhh ho ho ho ho ho, you have no idea buddy.
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May 26, 2014 18:16
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KataraniSword posted:On one hand, gently caress Mandragoras so hard. On the gripping hand, I made it through the entire game plus the postgame, on Hard, without ever using Auto-Item (though I did unintentionally do a lot of grinding). High-level Guts alone is enough to render your characters nigh-invulnerable; it almost always triggers.
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May 30, 2014 02:48
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