Heavy neutrino fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Nov 20, 2014

KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Nov 20, 2014

TARDISman fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Nov 21, 2014

The "book" kind of novel, not the "new" kind. You will be very well-acquainted with this tune by the time Wil's had his time on-screen.



The clouds move left to right and the windmills spin. (The latter one is a really weird animation--it starts out fairly fast, slows down and becomes jerky, and then starts to spin faster again. You don't see it very often, but it still isn't really up to their usual obsessive standards.)







Welcome to Westia, Wil's home base. The vast majority of his scenarios will start us here, so it's going to become pretty familiar for us. I want to do a few things before we look at his status.



Say "Yeah" and she'll give you another Pocketstation prompt. Select it again after that time and she'll suggest you get a job (you lazy bum). Say "You've got it all wrong" and she'll give you sass. ("Oh really?")



This lady here is one of the best NPCs. All but three recruitable characters will appear here in this menu, and they can be unequipped at any time. Mind, you can't

them, but this only ever matters twice and for two characters, since everyone shares an inventory. (Those two are thrown into battles before you can reequip them, which can be... problematic.)



I found a Quell, Aunty Nina! Can I go home now?

(of course not)

On her left is a weapon shop. In a great little touch...



...the shopkeeper greets you as you walk through the door.



None of the items he sells are all that great (why is he selling two Swords, no one in this scenario is ever good with swords), but it's good to have a source of spares. If your last weapon of a type breaks in your hands, you're probably SOL.

(Thankfully, they're courteous enough to wait until the end of the battle to do that, even if you only have 1 Durability left at the start.)




You can also repair Tools here.

This probably seems really useful! If you're using Staves on Wil, it is useful (if costly); otherwise, don't bother. It's very rare for you to get a weapon very far above the power curve of your other options, and you'll find new ones often enough. If you have another one somewhere and you don't need both for Anima access, then use the second-best one and just let it break in your hands.



This guy sells a full stock of basic one-Anima Tools, useful for getting a character to a second or third element they need. Each of them has ten uses, but this only really matters for Duels, since you can cast spells in party battles without affecting durability and only Water is useful by itself.

He also sells a Steel Amulet, but I've never found a use for those. 1 Defense in all categories, -20 SP and -1 SPR.

I pick up a Fire Charm, Blue Water, Wind Shell and Beast Amulet; that's all I need this time. Anything else can wait.

(Rock Hearts and Beast Amulets are surprisingly good physical defensive items for this point--they have 5/5 and 7/7 Slash/Hit defense, respectively, but only 1 Piercing. Wind Shells give you 9 Piercing defense, for some reason? Maybe you catch arrows with the conch.)



When you try to talk to the person at the bar...




...Little Red Riding Hood walks in.

pfft screw these guys they're dumb I'm going to the Ruins of Hahn now

I'll be fine, I gave Wil Delta Petra and the Birch Ring

(You're not allowed to leave town until Cordelia walks into the bar. It's very specific about that.)


(A Marvelous Thing)



Up and left lead to the same place. Right is a scenic detour. We're not here for detours, we're here for Quells!




Up and around an enemy and into this building--it's the entrance to the underground.

Narcisse second appends extra lines to after "leave it to me":




Either way, after they're recruited:

A little detail I like: if you blow Narcisse off to go talk to Cordelia, he's a bit more prickly--seeing you wander off to talk to the pretty girl must have hurt his pride. If you talk to him first, he's actually a pretty respectable mentor figure.

There's one more thing to see in town now that we have a clear destination. Remember that house near the entrance to Westia?




This is the informant, no name given. He lives here, and if you talk to him just before heading out, he'll always tell you about where you're going. Another nice touch: He's originally looking off into his corner, but as you approach, he turns toward you.

The little girl also has a different comment after you have a destination.



Anyway, I go get Tyler at this point. Wil's line changes if he's not acknowledging Narcisse or Cordelia:

Let's look at our party, shall we?



There's a nice, visible divide between the veterans and the newbies here, fitting with their ages. Mechanically, they're not TOO far apart, but 100 HP and 20 WP or SP is a pretty respectable difference.

Random fact I didn't mention last time: the various types of non-body armor protect your stats from debuffs. Hats resist Psyche Down (Magic damage), Gloves resist Morale Down (Physical damage), Boots resist Quick Down (Action speed). This is (say it with me!) never mentioned and never matters.



Wil is one of the game's better mages, having good affinities with very nearly all elements, and the Sapling Staff is a transparent attempt to nudge you that way. The first Staff has 3 attack, about half as much as the other weapons, and it'll be a while before stores have any actual upgrades. Staves pick up pretty substantially by the middle of his scenario set, and there's a way around the Sapling Staff, but it's still painful.

His role is Scout. Normally, running (with the run button) into enemies affects your starting formation. With Scout, it doesn't. This affects Timely Action and optimum distances, but you are unlikely to notice or care.

He gets the Birch Ring and replaces his Hat with the Wind Shell. This gives him Water-Tree-Tone Anima.



Relative to the power levels of your parties, Cordelia can grow into the strongest character in the game. Spears are the game's best weapon type by a large margin, and she's great with them. Other characters can be better in an absolute but not a relative sense. Her only real disadvantage is her low LP--13 is pretty bad.

Her role is Ace, making attacks after hers more likely to connect as a Combo. It's fairly useful for learning a Combo, but like Arts in duels, a Combo you have learned is much more likely to connect smoothly, so it's not all that necessary. (They're stored on a menu I haven't shown yet. I'll get to that.)

She replaces the Stone Axe with a Light Spear and equips a Blue Water in her last slot. Tree-Fire-Water.



Narcisse will probably seem bad for most players. He's not especially good at Bows, lacking the affinity the rest have for their weapon types, so he'll Spark and level slower--this offsets his higher level with the weapon in both the short and long term. The thing is, he's a Flame mage, and he's very good at that, but the good Flame spells are high-level and the best AOE is easily available only after he leaves.

His role is Heavy Spell, increasing the power of Spell Arts by 125%. This is a lot better than the physical equivalent, and there's an even better version later on.

He gets the Hunter Bow (Fire tool) in addition to his Ranger Bow (Tree tool) in his first slot, then replaces the Fire Charm with a Beast Amulet and the Wood Shoes with Kelvin's Fur Boots, and then equips the Mushroom Tear. Flame-Tree-Beast.



Tyler is a great character, and a large part of this is because he uses Axes. This may seem strange, because Axes are awful in the long-term, but they're good early on and Tyler is very good with them. The fact they're awful later on also means that he gets to use the good ones with utter impunity! He's also a complete and utter wall--by his final scenario, he'll usually pass 500 HP, and this is without the benefit of age bonuses, because he starts off at age 25.

His role is Intimidate, making the "Let Go" and "Drive Away" run commands more effective. You are unlikely to notice or care. He gets Wil's old Hat. Stone-Fire.

Everyone equips Solo Action for Sparking. I probably should have rearranged the party order--last time, with Timely Action, I explained that characters at the optimum distance for their weapons act faster. This is most evident with spear and axe users: axe users are always slow and spear users are always fast, because enemies tend to hover in a bad range for axes and a good range for spears. Characters near the front of the party tend to be closer, so being last in the party order isn't helping Tyler.

Before exploring the surface, I give Wil the Birch Ring and Wind Shell and dip down into the ruins. I've got a cunning plan.


(Depths)



These ghosts are the main enemy of this part of the Ruins. They're aggressive and will actively seek you out if you're close. Most field enemies do.



Despite the female map sprite, this is a male Ghoul. All of these ghosts are Duelable.






(You can sort of see a female Ghoul here. I didn't like my original shot.)

Call Thunder is a very easy spell to learn here for Wil, despite its 20 Duel Difficulty. It has 60 power and does about 400-500 damage, even at the very start. Picking it up like this lets us get around Wil's crappy weapon and removes virtually all pretense of actual difficulty.



Beautiful, isn't it? Trust me, the high SP cost isn't a concern.

Ghouls drop about 11-19 Crowns each time they're defeated; generally only humanoids do.

Narcisse also picks up his own spell.





It's not much, even with Heavy Spell equipped, but it's better than the 28 power Brushfire AOE he starts with and it'll level the right skills.

(If you're wondering how he's casting it with Flame-Tree-Beast Anima equipped, the entire Ruins of Hahn has the environmental Stone Tile Anima, so everyone has Stone access regardless of equipment. It also gives +3 to all physical defenses, because standing on stone makes your skin tougher...? I guess they're supposed to be drawing strength from the Anima around them, but it's still a weird system.)

When I do this over again (don't ask), he also learns Flame Naga.





Stone levels are more useful than Beast levels for Narcisse, so I use Magmaxplosion. Also, it's named Magmaxplosion, come on.

Back up to the surface.




(okay I do take it but only so I can see if I can chip it)

Then I exit at the upper-right.



It's a 12 attack Flame Sword, but it's a sword so it won't see much use as one. On top of that, it spawns with low durability and has a low maximum, starting off at 5 this time and capping at 30. 10 Heat Resistance when equipped, at least, so I give it to Tyler to replace his Hunter Bow.



Running in a rhino map enemy will put you up against a Sand Rhino and an assortment of scrubby adds, most of them the same as the Caverns of Jade. (They did trade the mushrooms for Mandrakes, which are even less threatening.) Not even Rhinos are very worrying.



They can do that (Press--it's a jumping attack), but ehh, just burn an LP and keep on going.

Oh, and by the way... That Sidhe Bunny? Stored in a distinct memory location from the Sidhe Bunny at the Caverns of Jade. Enemies are stored by Scene, and this is a different Scene, so it has a different Bunny. There are multiple Scenes per area, so I'm fairly sure there's at least two different Sidhe Bunnies here. It's kind of dumb.



Cordelia, being Cordelia, immediately sparks one of the best starting Spear techs. Atta girl. It's more likely to spark the next Spear tech than Thrust, so there's no point in using Thrust now. Tyler doesn't learn anything yet, and the fight ends on round 2.

A Stone Knife drops, and it's actually pretty useful. If you're casting a spell, then you can't use Reactions or Shields, so there's no reason not to just cram random weapons into an extra slot for their Anima or equipment defenses. (If you know what those defenses are, this being Saga Frontier 2...)



This would be the armor I used in last update's example of defensive types. It has good defenses for everything but Pierce, so I throw it on Cordelia. It does lack any +SP, so she takes a 10 SP penalty compared to her starting Caster Cloth, but she's not using her SP yet anyway.

Exiting south takes you back to the starting screen but it's the only way onward, so I do so and check out the area to the right.



It's a nice big setpiece. Most of the path is blocked with stones, but there is one working path if you go up to the top and circle left, then go down.




This path leads to the other half of the above-ground area.



There's an enemy there, and Tyler sparks the most basic Axe art, Tomahawk. Apparently enemies are capable of applying equal-and-opposite forces sufficient to repel a thrown axe to the face... Or it could just be magic. Except Gustave can do it too if you hand him an Axe, so I guess it's physics.

(Gustave really simplifies "is it magic?" debates in this game.)

Tomahawk has few sparks and they're all very high-level, so there's not much point in using it. He switches to Heel Crush instead.



Magmaxplosion's AOE in action. Flame Naga has the same exact AOE.






It's a shame this area is entirely optional, because it's pretty.



I accidentally create my first combo along the way. Combos prevent Sparking, so you I don't really want them at this point.



This one is totally fine, though. Anima learning doesn't care what you do during the battle so long as you use the Anima.




The Silver Staff is ridiculous for this point in the game--it will be the strongest weapon you have available for quite some time, and it will always spawn with nearly all of its 70 max durability. This is the one legitimate use of repairing weapons, because if you're using Staves, you'll be going through about six scenarios before you get Wil a second Staff that doesn't suck.

A Mage Wil just wants it for the Tone anima and extra 5 max SP, though--it takes him from 70 to 75.

By the way: Wil currently has 26 SP if he equips the Sapling Staff and 31 if he equips the Silver Staff. If you take off all his equipment...



...he goes to zero.

Out of battle, the floor value on your SP is the sum of your equipment, and if it's lower than that at the end of a battle, it'll refill to that point. Remember when I said that Call Thunder's SP cost wasn't a concern? That's why.

If you're using SP for random battles, then you have an effectively infinite amount. In fact, you want your mages to drop their SP by as much as you can in random battles. Why? Because there's another mechanic for spells. Let's look at what Call Thunder and Magmasplosion do right now, with both Wil and Narcisse depleted by all of the randoms they've fought. Wil's at 31/75, Narcisse is at 37/86.




(The variance on Call Thunder is distorting the results a bit, so it should be doing about 540 instead, but you get the idea. For comparison, Rush does about 100.)

I quicksaved before that fight, so let's restart and try it again. This time...



...we'll use an Ark Stone first. Let's look at the numbers now.




(Variance again on the second--around 300 is more typical, but you get the idea.)

At full SP, magic is about half as strong as it is at 0 SP--this is fairly easy to check. (Just start a battle with full SP, waste SP with a support spell until you hit 0, then burn an LP to keep casting.) This SP scaling on spells makes Ark Stones essentially useless: if you use offensive mages, then refilling their SP to full will probably shave off about a third of their damage.

This is never, ever so much as hinted at, and the levelling mechanic means that you're unlikely to realize why it is your mages are increasing in damage so much over the course of a dungeon. Not cluing the player into how this works is probably one of the biggest sins of the game's no-tutorials-ever style.

Martial Arts have the same damage modifier with WP, but it's much more of a pain in the rear end to benefit from, since there's no +WP gear to give you a floor value on it and no WPR regen gear to make it sustainable. If you're not willing to burn LP every turn, then this becomes one of the many reasons Martial Arts are kind of bad.

On the same screen, this Sand Rhino guards two treasures. That enemy's not any more impressive than the others, though. (Less, actually, since this one didn't spawn any adds this time.)




Caster Armor is good, giving +10 SP along with even defenses to all three physicals and half as much to the magicals. It's nothing special, but it'll do until we get the more unique armors. Cordelia gets it.




Bone Gloves are tied for the second-best hand-slot item, largely because Beast is an excellent Anima and everyone wants it. There's no other type of armor that gives Beast, so you either use the Bone Gloves or find a Beast weapon for your second slot.

Tyler gets the Bone Gloves and Bone Breastplate, Wil gets Tyler's old Padded Mail.

That's it for the top part of the Ruins of Hahn, so I walk back to the underground. In tomorrow's update, we explore the undercity, and the ominously-creaking balance of the game breaks completely.

Einander fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Nov 21, 2014

dis astranagant fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Nov 21, 2014

KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Nov 21, 2014

To give you some perspective, the Ghouls and Ghoulas here have 7 Slash/Hit/Piercing defense. Ghosts have 74 in those same physical stats. They also have 1227 HP. And reliable (>50%?) instant death in their Soul Crunch ability. Your basic attacks will do 0. So will low-power physicals, up to and including the strongest techniques Tyler and Cordelia have Sparked so far.

Playing typically, your grand list of spells is probably "Brushfire" and "Pray," and you probably didn't think to buy Water Anima items so you can actually revive, so you'd best hope they don't decide to eat whoever you gave the Birch Ring to while you spend the three or more turns you'll need to kill it. And that they don't decide to eat whoever's reviving before they get the spell off, because Life Water is slow as hell.

Ghosts are assholes. I hope you've learned that triangle is quicksave by now!




Aiming is a 55 power move which costs 5 WP and which cannot be avoided. It combos well and combines high power and good affordability, making it the mid-level workhorse of the Spear tree. Defense seems to be subtraction-based, judging by the way Cordelia's Skewer does 0 damage to a Ghost when it has 20 less power... And 36 Power is pretty respectable at this point, so Cordelia's damage here is pretty atypical against Ghosts.

Aiming has 27 Spark difficulty, compared to the 13 of Rush and the 19 of Wood Cutter. Part of this is because Ghosts have 1.5x the Flash probability of the Ghouls here, and the other part is because Cordelia is amazing. Best character.

And you know what the fun thing about combos in this game is?



The first two characters involved always have the swirling lock-on effect appear right after each other, but the third and fourth, if participating, lock on after those two attacks start to execute.




It's a good feeling to be surprised by a two-person combo suddenly opening up to something a lot larger and a lot cooler. It's a shame Tyler couldn't Spark off of it, but that's preferable to the Ghost getting to do its thing.

Going by series mechanics, Combos probably lower enemy defenses; however it's handled mechanically, they do raise your damage rather significantly. This only matters at the very end, so it's a good idea to spend the game trying to figure out good links.



The Player Notes section of the menu records your combos, Custom Arts (why?) and all of the Arts that you've learned. Your Arts, Combos, and Custom Arts all have this dividing line, and if you hold X in one of these sections, you can press up or down or adjust it. New entries are placed in any empty space below the line, and once it's full it'll begin to overwrite entries. It's a good idea to move any good Sparks or Combos above the line to ensure that they stay available.

Combos seem to work more often if they're recorded in Player Notes, so I tend to move Triple Onslaughts and All Out Attacks above the line. Another little superstition, I suppose.

Sending to COMBO Pocket is a Pocketstation thing, by the way, so it's not very useful to us. Onward and upward! Or downward. Whatever.



Man, if I was a first-time player, this would be scary. Now my thoughts are more along the lines of, "ooh, Sparking!"



Tyler gets Hyper Hammer (3 WP, 24 power), Cordelia gets Skewer (4 WP, 36 power), Wil learns Heart Beat (3 WP, 14 power, Cripples), and Narcisse learns nothing...




...because Heart Beat did LP damage. Some enemies in this game only have 1 LP, so random LP damage on your skills is effectively an instant kill. Only certain skills can do it, though, and most enemies have at least 2 LP. Bosses have so many that killing a boss that way would be a challenge run.



pfffffffffffffft hahahahahaha

aaaaaaaaand just like that, I got the most useful rare drop in the game that's full of them. At least one veteran of the game is shaking their fist at me right now.

Dead Stones are a rare drop from some undead--the Ghost, in this case--and give 2 to all physical defenses along with a downright painful -18 to all magical ones. (Still never indicated anywhere!) In exchange, they grant complete immunity to instant death and LP damage. If you get at least one Dead Stone during the game, then you get a little more leeway near the very end.

(let's not talk about why yet, okay?)

I save, just to make sure.

Sonic Burner is mostly useless. It has Delta Petra's AOE, but 21 power is way too little and Fire and Tone don't have much to do with each other when it comes to other offensive spells.



Welcome to the second half of the underground Ruins. The enemies change here, trading out the Ghouls for various animals and plants.

Also, SF2 does really evil-looking frogs for some reason. Have you seen their eyes!? They have no souls!

You can try to go up, but Wil won't let you--he'll enter, then go running out.

No matter how badass you become, that monster is just too scary.

The main point adventuring of the second half of the underground, at least right now, is three special rooms. They each contain a monster that is especially badass for this point in the game, and behind each monster is a Quell.

Quells are enormously valuable, and all three are good. You only need one to complete this scenario, and you'll get one chance to come back, but you want to get all three on your first visit.




The room just below the scary monster contains probably the most important monster in the game. The skeleton may only have around 800 HP, but for this point in the game, he is a shitkicker.



This is with Defend up. To a character who is NOT defending, Reverse Cross takes two actions to do about 250 damage. Hard Slash, another two-action technique, only does a little less. And if you try to heal with spells instead of LP, the skeleton can use Stun Slash to stop your actions.

In exchange? The Skeleton is one of the best places in the game to learn everything from basic techniques to the lower-level advanced ones, including just about every Duel-learnable spell. If you want to learn everything, this is a good place to start.



Stone Armor is the big thing here--with the best armor I have available, it'll reduce his damage by about 25%. That tends to pull Wil and Cordelia from "die on most no-defend rounds" to "can survive about two-thirds of no-defend rounds." And all the really good arts require no-defend rounds. What to do?




That's what Reviva is for.

Reviva is complete and utter bullshit. For 6 SP in duels and 9 SP in party battles, and if you have access to the Beast-Fire Anima combination, you get an infinite-duration auto-life buff. The moment you go down, you'll instantly be revived with your full HP. And then you can just recast Reviva.

LP healing breaks the game against anything you can survive a round against. Reviva breaks the game against anything that can't kill your whole party every round, or who doesn't have dangerous statuses.

The really silly thing? The game says the command for Reviva is Beast-Beast-Flame-Flame. This is a valid combination, and if you follow it, Reviva is the hardest spell in the game to learn through Duels... But Reviva has two other duel commands. Most alternative commands in this game are the same difficulty or a little lower, but Reviva's Beast-Flame-Flame-Beast difficulty drops it from 38 to 30, going from "hardest Spell to Duel for" to "low end of high-end."

As ridiculous as it is, Reviva does very little to assist with the game's actual challenges. This is just about the only point where it's really practical. This says a lot. Even this time, Reviva just saves some time--I'm picking up some Arts for each character, and it's nice to have a margin of safety when it decides to use Reverse Cross on a turn I didn't Defend.




Do you remember how I talked about equipment SP? Specifically, how it gives you effectively infinite SP for random battles? There's a special, hidden category of Arts, obtainable only through duel commands (with one exception). Hybrid Arts are weapon-based Arts that use Anima, and in party battles, their cost is entirely SP-based.

So not only do Hybrid Arts let you conserve your WP and use your effectively-infinite SP, they also level up both your weapon type and the Anima involved, along with both WP and SP. (HP can level no matter what you do.) If you're a hybrid warrior-mage, they even let you power up your spells for when you do use them. And there's no real penalty for levelling up more types of things in a fight.

Hybrid Arts are absurd, and there's really no reason to use anything else in random (party) battles. Hybrid Arts are powerful high-end techniques for every weapon (Axes excluded), and while their generally poor combo ability and high SP cost make them ill-suited for boss fights, they'll wipe the floor with random encounters.

Axes and Staves have one Hybrid each, Spears and Swords have three, Bows have seven, and Martial Arts don't have any at all. (This is one of the many reasons Martial Arts are bad.) I take the time to pick up most of the basic to mid-level Arts for Axes, Staves, and Spears and Magic; Bows, Swords and Martial can wait.

The game isn't going to be a challenge even if you don't do this, but Wil is going to be killing at least two of the game's three superbosses (four, depending on how you count it), so I may as well get ready to do it in style.

I'm going to talk about the weapons for a bit. If you want the tl;dr, rough weapon rankings are:
Spears > Staves = Swords > Bows > Axes >> Martial Arts. Magic starts at the very top and slowly slides down to the level of Axes as the game goes on.

Speed-wise, due to optimum distances and the way the battle engine usually places you, Spears, Staves, and Swords are all generally pretty fast, while Bows are average-ish and Martial Arts and Axes are slow. This is nearly universal.



Flame Wheel is a bad example of what Hybrid Arts can do, and Flame Wheel is one of many reasons Axes are bad. Their real and lasting problem is that Axes have no endgame. Sure, there's two good axe-users at endgame, but they have no good Axes to use--there are no Axe Quells, the one type of Steel Axe is bad and hard to get, and the one worthwhile high-level Axe is a pain in the rear end and is a big victim of unexplained requirements. To add insult to injury, it's only mid-range by ultimate weapon standards.



On the plus side, Axes get access to quite a few good weapons early on. The Dew Axe you can get from Scene Drops in the three Quell rooms is notable, having high power and a good Anima. It's also the third-best Axe you're likely to find, which kind of illustrates the problem. 31 Attack does not cut it when everything else is in the 40-50 range.

Art-wise, there's no real stand-outs. No big stat debuffs, no multi-target, nothing with very good properties. Tornado Divide is the easiest ultimate to learn (it has an alternate duel combination, Backslash-Backslash-Charge-Throw, that greatly lowers the Duel difficulty), and at 91 Power and with an Effective (versus Plants), it's pretty impressive... Though the 12 WP cost means you won't be doing much with it, especially since Flame Wheel sucks. That said, he's surprisingly good at Martial Arts, so that could theoretically make a good set-up--tear through Tyler's WP with high-level Axe arts, and then when he's low, switch over to Martial Arts to take advantage of the inverse-WP damage scaling...

...except you need to level weapon skills to get use much use out of them, especially Martial Arts, so that's sunk. I'll stick to the Axes, thanks.





Staff Arts are a mixed bag. Gale Strike is a good Hybrid, especially since it does both Bash and Piercing damage, letting you be more effective against resistant enemies like Slimes. There's no real practical high-end--Time & Tide, the ultimate, costs an absurd 14 WP for 77 attack, the penultimate is 10 WP for 61, and the third-best is 7 for 50; your workhorse only has 45 power, even if it does combo well.

On the other hand, that penultimate, Turtle Killer, lowers defense. By a lot--it's a pretty notable difference. Making everyone else do more damage is pretty useful, and while you can do that and then switch to another weapon, the quality of the users tends to make up for their weaker Arts and the average weapons.



(Screenshot courtesy of a NG+ file. No one in this party is good enough with swords or bows to pick the next two up. Gale Blade is pretty much visually identical to Gale Strike in battle.)

Swords have the inverse problem to Staves: it's a great weapon type that's really, really held back by circumstances. There aren't enough users, and that combines with circumstances to ensure that no one gets to really use the stronger ones.

Art-wise, Swords have the most Arts, which means they have a fair amount of tools. The two best AOEs (the best circular AOE and the best arc AOE, even, and one's a Hybrid) and the best attack-all skill, a great ST Hybrid (like Gale Strike, it adds Piercing to its usual Slash), instant death, stun, an unavoidable attack... Swords can do pretty much everything except lower stats.

I just wish there was someone to USE the drat things. The fact no one who visits the Ruins of Hahn (while in your party; Gustave! ) can learn the Arts means that you may have a passable user in the second generation, but he's probably not going to have any Arts to use, so why bother?



Bows are so okay that they're average. Average weapons, pretty good skills once you get past the basic stuff (they have a good balance of power and cost, but they're lacking in extra effects), and there's a pretty good user in every generation. Their main distinction is their Hybrid Arts... Except that none of the Hybrid Arts are really that good, the strongest being weaker than Gale Strike. Fire Bird is a cool party trick, especially since the healing is good and you'll want Flame-Beast access anyway, but they could use some actual power. 66 is not impressive by Hybrid standards.

Bows do get a boost at endgame, when they can get two of the best weapons (even if one is a pain in the rear end to acquire), but it's hard to get that excited. Bows are okay.

(I don't have the ultimate MA Arts on the quick NG+ file I did for this, so pretend there's a screenshot here of Eradication. 99 Attack, 10 WP cost.)

Martial Arts have serious, serious problems.

First off, there's no good users. The first generation has Gustave (who is way, way better at Swords) and Tyler (who doesn't get the + to tell you that he's good at it), along with one later user who's much better at Bows. Second generation doesn't really have anyone. Third generation has two characters who are okay.

There's a lot of Arts, but there's not much in the way of effects. They do have good power for their cost, but the lack of weapons and the WP scaling means that you're not getting as much as you want, and the lack of Hybrids means that unless you like burning LP, you'll run out of gas quickly, especially once you've already fought through an entire area without the benefit of some kind of WP floor. What's more valuable, maybe a little more damage than the others can do, or the ability to full-heal without spending a turn?

It's hard to justify bothering, really.





Spears get great weapons and great users. They're a little slower to pick up on equips, but when they do they instantly jump to having the best weapons. It's a pretty big jump.

Their Arts are great. They get a great AOE damage and stun for an affordable cost, they get two different unavoidable techniques, they get the magic defense version of Turtle Killer (less useful but still cool!) and a good magic attack debuff, and the two best Hybrids for Spears are dual-Anima. This means that Twin Dragon and Jewel Strike (15 SP, 99 power) scale much better than the other Hybrids, to the point where a Spear user is probably better off using Twin Dragon against Bosses than most of their other Arts. (Especially if Wil is using Water magic in the first gen, since it combos both ways with Heaven's Thunder.) It's pretty easy to Duel for off of anything strong, too.





Flame magic is the big, impressive damage dealer of the two main Anima options. Incineration is powerful and combos well, and the instant death is gravy. Firestorm is normally the best magical AOE, but it's not available at the moment. (Wil can learn it here from after-battle learning--I've done it before--but it didn't happen this time around. Did get another Dead Stone after two attempts, though!) There's a good user in every generation, Fire-Tree-Stone is an easy combination to get access to, and it's very easy to add Beast for Reviva.

Getting enough utility spells as a mage does require you to pick up nearly every Anima, but they can spare the weapon slots, so it's generally not an issue.







(That screenshot was of a Heaven's Thunder cast with exactly 1 SP left over, to give you some perspective.)

Water magic has two good users in the first generation and another in the third. Heaven's Thunder is good damage (and its two-way combo with Twin Dragon helps a lot), and while Hymnal is partially off-type (you probably won't have many Beast levels), Effective vs Undead is a great property. The Tree and Water levels also mean that Water mages make great healers! ...which would help a lot more in a harder game.

The main problem of magic in both branches is that while it's great early on (if you know how to get it), the lack of weapons means it doesn't keep up with the five weapon types. It's great through generation 1 and pretty good during generation 2, but you should probably move on by generation 3.

Midway through picking up Arts, I head back to Westia by an alternative route.



First, though, I change Tyler's Role. Cannonball will push him to the top of the action order, and Flame Wheel's relative weakness means that he's in no real risk of taking out any enemies by himself. Doing this should let him level nicely, which he won't do otherwise with the party's massively-increased offense.

(To give you an idea of what I mean, Cordelia ran out of WP on the way down the Ruins, but Tyler still had most of his. That's part of the reason she levels so well.)




If you head down from the first room with the frogs, you end up here. The exit is up the stairs, in the bottom-left corner.

The Rock Axe is a 15 attack Stone Axe, and this one spawns with low durability--5, in this case. Obtaining a Dew Axe makes it basically useless, but Tyler can always break it for a few more Chips.



The rooms to the left and right are the second and third Quell rooms. I'll check those out in a moment.



This exit takes you out of the Ruins of Hahn. Most importantly...



...taking the South exit allows you to enter that way in future, allowing you to skip to the end. You'll come back later, so while this isn't necessary (you'll be a lot stronger the second time around), it's a nice bonus. More immediately, it's good to have this time if you get low on LP or WP.



When you return to the bar without picking up a Quell, your three party members exit. They each have one short line.

Talking to the bartender restores you to full, which is what makes Art-learning against the Skeleton really practical.

I head back and pick up the last few things I wanted, then I go to finish the scenario.




All three Quells share the same line here.



The Amber Maleate is the best, likely because it's behind the strongest enemy. It has no defenses worth noting, but Tree and Beast are both good affinities. It has the Woodstock spell, a 32 power Tree-Beast spell that I didn't bother to learn.





The Xenotype guards the Kris Knife.



The Kris Knife looks pretty awful, doesn't it? "??? Anima" means it has a unique spell, in this case Comet Fall, a ???-Anima spell that costs 8 SP and has 51 power. The problem is that it doesn't seem to scale to your Anima levels (or perhaps it scales to all of them!), so it starts off fairly unimpressive and gets worse. It's obviously a no-go as an actual sword, it only gives +1 SPR, and it's not contributing to your spell list. It seems awful, right?

Equipping the Kris Knife gives you +10 to your magical defenses and a big +30 to Status. It's a great defensive item for those that can spare the weapon slot, especially spellcasters.




The Land Urchin is pretty unimpressive. It essentially just does damage.



The Pocket Dragon is in a strange place. Stone isn't that great an Anima; it's useful for Fire mages, but no one else really wants it. (Spear hybrids are good for bosses, which makes Jewel Strike's 15 SP prohibitive.) On the other hand, it's also basically the only Stone Quell, so at least it's unique... Either way, a free Quell is a free Quell.

With that, we've cleared out the Ruins and we are unnecessarily badass. I head back.



+27 HP, +1 WP, and between equipment and growth he's +35 SP. 3 Tree levels, 6 Water levels, 7 Tone levels, 2 Beast levels. (Wil thumbs his nose at his lack of a + for Tone.)



+19 HP, +7 WP, equipment changes mean she's -5 SP. 8 Spear levels, 2 Flame and 2 Water levels. (By her final scenario, her Water and Fire will probably have caught up.)



+32 HP, +11 SP. (Narcisse made out like a bandit, gear-wise. No one else wants the Quells right now.) 2 Tree levels, 4 Stone levels, 4 Flame levels.



(The Fur was a random drop. The Padded Mail he comes with is actually better, so I'll swap him back as soon as I remember. ...also, despite the crappy special defenses, the Fur has 3 SP Enhance. Stop destroying all the data points, SF2!)

+35 HP, +4 WP, +2 SP with equipment. 5 Axe levels. He also has a weapon twice as good as any of the others and a 91 Power Art, so Tyler is breaking the curve nearly as much as the mages.

Einander fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Nov 25, 2014

Heavy neutrino fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Nov 21, 2014