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I love the hell out of the Sting games (honestly, does this surprise anyone?), but yeah, Yggdra Union's PROTECT bosses are pretty awful... Especially since most of them don't have any warning before you smack your face into the invisible wall. I'm thinking of one particular instance where you have the Insta-Win Activation card and you're still stuck in place next to a Protected enemy for several turns, waiting for the drat event to trigger. Someone needs to LP Gungnir already. I'd put it on the list, but I'm already in LP-backlog territory and I don't need to fall even deeper into time-debt.
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Jul 24, 2015 23:58
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Class Breakdown 3 New classes: Secutor, Fantastica, Elementalist, Gadgeteer Secutor  Stat modifiers: code:Weapon 1: Sword. 1 Horizontal, 1 Vertical range. Very high attack, worst magic, above average accuracy, heavy weight. Weapon 2: Axe. 1 Horizontal, 2 Vertical range. Best attack, worst magic, worst accuracy, heaviest weight. Basic attacks ignore Hard enemy property (physical attacks cannot do more than 1 damage). Off-Hand: Shields. Low additional defense, resistance, and evasion, but lightest weight. When taking damage from a target two or more hexes away, final damage is multiplied by 90%. Armor: Vest. Average defense, worst resistance, below average evasion, average weight. Originals: Hard Smash (16 MP, Y): 125% strength attack. 1 horizontal, 2 vertical range, requires one-handed melee weapon. Smart Drive (16 MP, Y): 100% strength attack that multiplies final damage by hit percentage but does not miss. (For example, 100 damage with 60% to-hit becomes 60 damage with 100% to-hit.) 1 horizontal, 2 vertical range, requires one-handed melee weapon. MP Burst (0 MP, Y): 85% of the time, triples current MP; otherwise, reduces current MP to 0. Change Equipment (8 MP, Y): Allows user to change weapon, shield and armor (but costs a turn). Passives: Wait & Heal VP (Secutor 3): If user chooses Wait without moving, recovers VP equal to 5% of mVP. Blood Heat (Secutor 4): Counters do 125% damage. Weapon Block (Secutor 5): 25% chance to nullify incoming basic physicals (but not Originals). Secutor EQ (Secutor 6): Can equip Swords, Axes, Shields and Vests regardless of class. ATK +25% (Secutor 7): ATK multiplied by 125%. Retaliate (Mastered): If Weapon Block activates, the attacker takes the damage they would have done. Secutors are the basic physical class. Their natural stats tend towards "glass cannon," but their armor and shields bulk them up to "average frontline fighter." However, their best-in-game attack modifier stacks with their ATK +25% passive to give them some of the game's best base damage, especially if you consider Hard Smash. That said, you don't want to be a Secutor any longer than you have to. Every physical character will do their time in Secutor to master it for ATK +25%, but it's a pretty unimpressive class, especially considering Fantastica is already available. Secutor hits things, and it hits them well, but it does nothing to improve your options. Secutor Originals is one-fourth of the single stupidest combination in the game, thanks to MP Burst. MP Burst is the boring kind of broken, and I don't plan on using it (outside of a demonstration of that trick, anyway). Fantastica  Stat modifiers: code:Weapon: Bell. 2 Horizontal, 2 Vertical range. Low attack, above average magic, average accuracy, very low weight. Ignores enemy Flying property (greatly reduces physical accuracy). Armor: Badge. Low defense, high resistance, average evasion, average weight. Final damage of Formation Arts is increased by 50%. Originals: Slow Down (12 MP, N): Inflicts Slow Down (50% Reflex for 3 turns). Cannot be resisted. Feeble Mind (15 MP, N): Deals MP damage equal to 20% of target's max MP. Invoke (28 MP, Y): Inflicts Invoke (100% accuracy and increased critical rate and increased skill activation rate for 1 turn). Cannot be used on self. Rush (8 MP, Y): Inflicts Rush (All Originals can be used after movement for 2 turns). Cannot be used on self. Passives: Fantastica EQ (Fantastica 3): Can equip Bells and Badges regardless of class. Zone Effect (Fantastica 4): Any ally who begins his or her turn adjacent to the character has AIM and EVA multiplied by 110% until the start of his or her next turn. Any enemy who begins his or her turn adjacent to the character has AIM and EVA multiplied by 90% until the start of his or her next turn. Arts Support (Fantastica 5): 110% before-defense damage for any Formation Art or Combination Art initiated by the user. CSP Up (Fantastica 6): +0.4 CSP multiplier (when user survives the battle). Object Attack (Fantastica 7): Basic attacks used by the character will destroy barrels and push adjacent blocks one hex directly further away if possible. Extra Support (Fantastica mastery): Doubles the effect of Zone Effect and Arts Support, replacing 110% with 120% and 90% with 80% in their effect descriptions. Fantasticas are, well, fantastic.  Rush alone merits the use of Fantastica Originals, because there are a lot of powerful skills restricted by being before-move-only. Slow Down neuters single targets and no target is immune, and Invoke has one particular late-game use that makes it terrifying. Feeble Mind is the only real dud, and even it has its uses. Additionally, between Arts Support and Badges, Fantasticas are surprisingly scary physical combatants, especially early on, when stat growth and weapon improvements make the strength gap between them and other frontliners relatively small.I highly recommend that any physical character start out as a Fantastica until they grab CSP Up. Rush is a great skill for physical characters to use en route to the enemy, Badges are an easy way to greatly boost your damage, and CSP Up makes getting everything else much faster... And when half your team is Rushed Elementalists, everything dies. It's hilarious. The one downside of the class is that Object Attack is Class Level 7, and getting from level 6 to level 7 takes nearly as many CSP as the rest of the levels combined. It's better than CSP Up being level 7, true, but it's still annoying! If you've played Battle Network, Object Attack is basically this game's version of Press. Elementalist  Stat modifiers: code:Weapon: Book. 1 Horizontal, 1 Vertical range. Lowest attack, highest magic, lowest accuracy, very low weight. Armor: Ring. Lowest defense, above average resistance, average evasion, below average weight. If user waits without moving, Evasion increases by 50% until next turn. Originals: Crush/Freeze/Fire/Vortex (16 MP, N): 100% strength magical attack, single target. (Earth/Water/Fire/Wind) elemental. 5 horizontal, 6 vertical range. Passives: Elementalist EQ (Elementalist 3): Can equip Books and Rings regardless of class. Wait & Heal MP (Elementalist 4): If user chooses Wait without moving, recovers MP equal to 2% of max MP. Crisis Conserve MP (Elementalist 5): Originals 25% cheaper while user is in crisis (20% or lower HP). Magic Block (Elementalist 6): 25% chance to nullify any enemy magical attack. MAG +25% (Elementalist 7): MAG multiplied by 125%. Reflect (Mastered): If the Magic Block skill activates, the blocked damage of the incoming attack is dealt instead to the attacker. Elementalists are magical Secutors, more or less: incredible offense in their specialty, average durability in the same, awful at the other defense, everyone who uses magic should be one for a while so you get the offense up skill, once that's done get the character into a better class. Unlike fighters (who should be Fantasticas first), most mages will start their careers as Elementalists, and they'll have Elementalist Originals and Elementalist EQ equipped all the way until the last set of classes. Elementalists may only do one thing, but they do that one thing really well, and most enemies can't deal with the sheer amount of pain an Elementalist can bring, let alone two or three. Unfortunately, Elementalists do have a crippling dependence on Rush. Elementalists have two main problems, durability and speed (both movement and action). Their overwhelming firepower allows Rush to solve both problems, but Rush only lasts two turns. This is fine at the start of a map or when enemies are spread out enough to let you refresh Rush between engagements, but if you need to reposition then an Elementalist has a problem. Thankfully, cast-after-move elemental spells do pop up eventually, at which point Elementalist Originals will take the backstage. Until then, keep them supported and everything will die. Gadgeteer  Stat modifiers: code:Weapon: Wrench. 1 Horizontal, 2 Vertical range. Low attack, average magic, high accuracy, average weight. Against Golem enemies, sets enemy defense to 0 and does 150% damage. Armor: Apron. Below average defense, above average resistance, high evasion, very low weight. After use of an item (including skills Mystic and Item Toss), user's Reflex is set to 200% until their next turn. Originals: Mystic (20 MP, Y): Allows items to be used in a two-radius AOE (19 hexes in a circle), Elemental Gems excluded. 1 Horizontal, 4 Vertical range. Passives: Gadgeteer EQ (Gadgeteer 3): Can equip Wrenches and Aprons regardless of class. Decelerate (Gadgeteer 4): If a user's basic attack deals damage, it also removes 25% of the target's "accumulated RFX", i.e. the accumulated clockticks towards their next turn. Item Effect Up (Gadgeteer 5): HP damage and healing effects of items used by this character (through the Item command, Mystic, and Item Toss) are multiplied by 150%. MP and VP healing is not affected. Item Range Up (Gadgeteer 6): Increases the horizontal range of all items, as well as Mystic, by 1. (Not factored into Mystic range above.) Item Carry Up (Gadgeteer 7): Increases the number of equippable items to 7 from the usual 4. High-Class Items (Gadgeteer mastery): Allows use of High-Class items. Ever played FF5? You know how Samurai have the ability to literally throw money at the enemy, doing disgusting damage with no set-up required in exchange for throwing you into horrible poverty? That's the Gadgeteer. Gadgeteers are the starting healers, and they're very good at it; Item Range Up lets them use healing items on others, Item Effect Up makes the items better, and Mystic lets them affect a drat huge area. While you do gain access to healing spells, and they do scale with magic (unlike items), healing magic gets no equivalent of the Apron speed boost and it can only affect a one-radius AOE. Ignoring money for a moment, the main limitation on Gadgeteers early on is that you can only carry seven items; a Gadgeteer needs an Original set from the second set of classes to get more items to use mid-battle. Still, do you really need more than 7 giant AOE heals a map? Well, yes and no, because you can't just stick on seven healing items; Gadgeteers may be strong healers, but their real power lies in destruction. You see, Gadgeteers can use elemental gems, which are essentially Elementalist spells-in-a-can--they have the same damage formula and a little less range in exchange for being usable after movement and doing Special damage instead of Magical (still based on Magic, but can't be stopped by Magic Block). This seems fair, except that Item Effect Up makes them 50% stronger, Aprons let Gadgeteers use them twice as fast, and the Exploder Gem is 50% stronger, non-elemental, and hits a one-hex AOE. The Gadgeteer-exclusive High-Class items also include the +1 elemental Gems, which have twice the power! And that's before magic defense, so the difference is pretty easy to see. (Exploder Gems +1 are only 66% stronger than the base Exploder Gems, though, which still leaves them 2.5x as strong as Elementalist magic.) Sure, Gadgeteers may not have the best magic stats, and it may require more item juggling, but they don't really need any skills learned to kill things. The +25% Magic passive helps, certainly (as does the "+damage on weakness" skill, once it's available), but if you have a mage and you really need something very, very dead, then just make them a Gadgeteer for a stage; even without High-Class items, they'll be doing more damage much faster. (Also, +1 Gems cost nearly times times as much as the base elemental Gems, so there's that.) But like FF5 Samurai, you're literally throwing money at the enemy to kill them, so it's better to use a more budget-efficient Plan A. LBDG Checklist: Secutor Level 7: ATK +25%. Einander fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Jul 25, 2015 |
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Jul 25, 2015 22:21
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And now that Einander got that out of the way, I can start this up! ¡Six Job Siesta! Some of you may be very aware of the Four Job Fiesta challenge run for Final Fantasy V, which limits the classes you have access to only four, forcing you to make or break your way through the game with what little you have, thanks to it's job system. Fortunately for us, Wild ARMs XF has a similar job system, that's even more refined and allows for more customization, so I've always wanted to try this challenge run for XF. I attempted it as pre-Fiesta entertainment for this year, but I hit a stumbling block (late Act 1, for those who have flashbacks), and truth be told I don't know how viable this kind of run is. But dammit I'm going to try and get a proof of concept in, and with goons as my witness it's going to be more embarrassing if I fail. Here are the rules for my challenge run!
So, before we begin, we need my first class, so let's go through all of them. Secutor posted:Hard Smash and Smart Drive give me two decent non-Arts combat options, though some attacking classes have a few of their own. Note the one-handed weapon restriction. The unique classes don't qualify as this, but almost every single generic class uses one-handed weapons, so I can make more mileage out of this than Einander. MP Burst is weird as gently caress but gives me synergy with MP-heavy classes, at a mild risk. Change Equipment is usually forgettable, but with my limited selection, I can hotswap weapons out and let people attack in multiple ways. This could be useful. Secutor EQ Two weapon choices, the Sword and Axe. Axe lets me break Hard, but that's never a big deal in this game. The vest is pretty meh, but the shield is unique. Only secutors use the shield slot, and I can give everyone a shield with this class. Secutor Skills The good ones here (other than ATK +25%) are Blood Heat for super counterattacks (if I get another counterattack skill to compliment it), and Weapon Block to negate physical attacks. I'll need survivability if I'm going to gimmick exploit my way through the game. Overall Opinion Fantastic melee-offense out the gate, shields are a unique help, and rather decent synergy. Even it's boring OC gives me room to work with. Elementalist posted:Most enemies have a weak point. You nuke it. I can always use elemental gems, but this OC doesn't use item slots. Elementalist EQ Spellbooks give super high MAG which is all the Elementalist will need. Rings have good RES and their EVA gimmick...but Wait without moving is a timewaster. Elementalist Skills The main good one here is +25% MAG. Magic Block is nice, but magic attacks aren't nearly as common as melee physical attacks. Crisis Conserve MP is nice but being in Crisis sucks. The main draw is just the elemental OCs. Overall Other than maybe two classes (for their specific skills), Elementalist doesn't synergize with anything. Instead it just gives you a giant nuclear arsenal. And that's never a bad thing. Fantastica posted:Slow Down is super helpful, because RFX is the godstat. I never used Feeble Mind much, but for a Siesta it opens up gimmick strategies. Rush is the reason Fantastica is fantastic, but you need complimentary classes that benefit from rush. Invoke I never liked because it's so expensive and I never noticed how useful it was. But every bit helps I suppose. Fantastica EQ Bell ignores Flying, but flying enemies aren't that common. Still the extra range is appreciable even if you can't use it for Formation Arts because... Badges make your Arts even better. And I'm going to rely on these badly. Fantastica Skills The good one is Object Attack because that makes half of the story maps easier. But Zone Effect will compliment any melee attackers quite well. CSP Up is a dud for me because I'm just going to just use every exploit I know for this challenge run, since this is more of a proof of concept. Overall Fantastica goes well with mages and melee attackers alike. This class is all about synergy. It's low power means the early game is going to be tough but honestly I ran the early game already and (painfully) doable. Gadgeteer posted:Mystic...why only Mystic? C'mon! The AoE healing is super nice though, but it doesn't work with gems. Gadgeteer EQ Wrench will be good for the rare Golem types, but useless otherwise. Aprons on the other hand...I can just equip it on a melee attack and run across the map spamming Heal Berries and gems. Gadgeteer Skills All of the Item skills are useful because I'm going to need items to cover up my utility holes. And Decelerate murders the poo poo out of bosses. Really all of these are good. Overall: The class itself is lackluster other than the high RFX, it's skills are really good. Low synergy here, because it just makes my reliance on items even better. If I get this class, I'll probably exploit myself into tons of gella really quickly. Voting So, to avoid clogging the thread, I'm going to use an outside site to handle class voting. What you vote is what I'm stuck with. Keep in mind this is also a proof of concept run, so please don't screw me over. And don't worry if your favorite class doesn't get through, because all classes get one second chance with the bonus slot. So please, vote away. And if anyone else wants to attempt a Six Job Siesta too, let me know. I would love to see how viable this is with other limitations.
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Jul 25, 2015 23:10
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Well, there's also the matter that in these parts, not dyin' is a capital crime, so the more people we hook up with on this journey the better.
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Jul 26, 2015 20:49
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The heck is up with the female fantastica? In addition to being half as clothed as every other design, she has a trumpet strapped to her leg. And yes, I see the mandolin or whatever the male fantastica has, but the trumpet is strapped directly to the leg from the looks of it. That can't be convenient. Compared to that, the twin bleach tipped mega ponytails seem downright normal.
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Jul 28, 2015 04:49
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Ryushikaze posted:
 I never noticed they had instruments on them.
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Jul 28, 2015 06:11
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Yeah, a lot of the class designs in this game are goofy as gently caress. To be fair, though, you only see them from the shoulders up in the character screen. The one plus I will say is that they're not just restricted to cheesecakey female designs; the male ones are equally silly as anything. 
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Jul 28, 2015 14:27
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theshim posted:Yeah, a lot of the class designs in this game are goofy as gently caress. To be fair, though, you only see them from the shoulders up in the character screen. This seems to be common to the genre of job-based (S)RPGs; look at the designs from FF5 or FFTA2
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Jul 28, 2015 21:27
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I'm looking more closely at the designs of the classes for more silliness, and the male Secutor class has ridiculous socks.
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Jul 28, 2015 21:45
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RabidWeasel posted:This seems to be common to the genre of job-based (S)RPGs; look at the designs from FF5 or FFTA2 I will not dignify FFTA2 with a defense. Also, Bravely Default had amazing job outfits (Red Mage  )
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Jul 28, 2015 22:00
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Act 1: Path of the Founding Knights Act 1-4   No music. There's the sound of flapping wings.     Is something wrong? Nah, with that pigeon's wings, it'll reach the mansion in no time. ... Is that not what you meant? Not really, no... And knowing my Levin, there's no way he'll take an injustice like this sitting down. He's a good kid. And you think we can trust him? Of course we can! We was one of my pupils, just like Her Highness the princess.  Well...I guess if you're that confident about someone other than yourself, he should be fine, but still... I don't want to risk anyone's lives saving the villagers. But in order to peaceably resolve a conflict with a lawless band of thugs like the Martial Guard, we'll need an even greater power. So I consider it safest for all concerned to have the Royal Knights take action. I see... I guess that's the only chance we have...   Free Battles are available now. You can visit battlefields that don't have the red ! bubble (which indicates a story fight) and choose "Yes" to fight enemies for experience, money and CSP. Aside from grinding, there's a gathering mechanic for synthesis that hasn't been unlocked yet, which requires passing time. So long as you're building a relatively effective party, you generally don't need to grind, and I don't make much use of synthesis either, so I won't be doing many Free Battles. They're generally not that interesting. After events in Poliasha, there's some changed dialogue. None of it's important, though. Town dialogue start     The old geezer who ran this place got carted off to jail. I may not have much experience with this, but I can sell just as well as he can! I'll show you! [Talk] Wow, I wonder if I'll get to run this place if old man Brown doesn't come back...  The Martial Guard people came in here, too. I wound up hiding inside the machine in the back. They didn't find me, thank heavens, but it was so hot in there, I thought for sure I was done for...  ...They all got taken away... Creedmore Prison is inside an old fortress they built on the promontory to the west, but now it's a base for the Guard...  How...how could they get away with something so horrible?! They try to force higher taxes on us, and when we complain, this happens! We're citizens of the kingdom of Elesius, for heaven's sake! I just came into town this morning, but man, what a scene this is... Your Martial Guard at work, huh? Incidents like this have been goin' on all over the kingdom for the past six months. With the king too ill to rule, they're trying to keep the peace with an iron fist and a rabble of Drifters. The Martial Guard was established ostensibly to keep needless strife from tearing apart the land... But they're the ones causing most of the strife. What could the kingdom possibly be thinking, stoking the flames of conflict on purpose like this?   I did indeed. Let's take a look...Every single set of three elipses that follows is its own textbox. ... ... ... ......The music stops.  Looks like bad news.   The people of Poliasha are to be publicly executed for inciting civil unrest... So they're planning to make an example out of them after all. What about Levin? Isn't there anything he can do?! Apparently Levin wasn't able to mobilize the Royal Knights. But at the end of the letter, he wrote "I promise I'll do something!" And he enclosed a key for the rear entrance of the prison. ... ... He couldn't mobilize the Royal Knights, but at least he hasn't given up... ......Yeah, Levin is like that... No music. There's the sound of keys and a rusty door hinges swinging open.   (New)  So that key was real after all... This prison was originally a fort built to defend Elesius against foreign invasion. Most of the military installations in the kingdom are managed by Levin's family, House Brenton. They are the family that leads the Royal Knights, after all. Hmm... We're right on time, and this is where Levin had arranged to meet us...A short pause. Someone's coming.  There's a quick screen transition wipe.  She walks off, and there's another wipe to the party.  That must be Levin... He's probably trying to create a diversion, but it's much too dangerous... ...Let's rescue the people of Poliasha as fast as we can. Accomplishing our objective and withdrawing quickly is the best way to get Levin out of danger. Right!    I'd imagine they've divided the villagers among each of the buildings. We'll need to save them all... It looks like the doors have just been barred shut, so all we have to do is remove the bars to free them. If the guards discover us, the villagers' lives would be in danger. I'd prefer to carry this out undetected... Once we get them out, we can have them regroup in the storeroom we passed on the way here. (New) This is the standard "pre-battle tactics report" song. (I'll have to check to make sure it didn't play last time, since that was the first time that DERs showed up.)  The map rotates once quickly. Let's take a look at the Tactical Map we'll be working on.    To break them out, we'll need to go up to each door and execute the "Wait" command to open it. If any of us are caught in the guard's line of sight, that'll be the end of the game right there. We'll have to be very careful. To sum up: open all the doors, and keep yourselves hidden from the guards. If you end your turn within a line of sight, you'll be discovered. Make sure you're always in a blind spot before finishing things up.   For the first time, the deployment isn't locked. You can only pick three characters, so I pick Clarissa, Felius and Labyrinthia. The thing about this map is, you don't kill anything, because you can't kill anything, and you get CSP by killing things. If you can't get CSP, then you should just pick the fastest classes you can... So Tony sits this one out. He may have the highest movement, but he can't speed up others like Clarissa or enable Labyrinthia to move+teleport like Fantasticas can.  So Felius and Labyrinthia change to Gadgeteer, the fastest class and also tied for furthest-moving; Felius equips Fantastica Originals and Labyrinthia equips Arcanist Originals. If things get really desperate and I need an extra turn, they can always cram a Heal Berry into their face to double their RFX. Clarissa sticks to Fantastica, because she doesn't have the slots to equip both Dandelion Shot and Fantastica Originals (because Originals take up two slots, remember).   It's best to think about this level as a 4 horizontal 3 vertical grid. The enemies start at (2,1) and (3,4), respectively, and move one square counterclockwise every action, circling around the outer rim. Each of the nine houses breaking up the grid has a door on one of the sides, and depending on where that falls on the hex grid, there's either one or two hexes that will count as opening the door.  Thankfully, they're slow, but their 6 Movement lets them fully span the space between grid intersections with every movement, so their line of sight always spans the whole of a row and column. (Excavators are a highly-mobile archer class that specializes in finding items. They're unlocked in the second set of classes, at which point I will never ever use them unless I am forced to.)  Felius goes in slot 1, Clarissa goes in Slot 2, and Labyrinthia goes in slot 3. Felius will move to the middle row door, Labyrinthia will teleport to the top door (despite them saying "choose Wait in front of the door," it isn't that specific; you just need to end your turn in front of it), Clarissa will move up top and Rush Labyrinthia so she can start teleporting all over the map. Any time Clarissa catches up, she uses Encourage. The rest? I wing it.  The main consideration on turn 1 is that the Excavators are going to move to the corners (1,1) and (4,4) on their first action. This means that by the time they move, I need the first door visited and everyone out of line-of-sight. Their second action will move them to (1,2) and (4,3), so on the second round I need to be between the houses (so I'm out of line-of-sight on both the previous turn and the next one). Compare the HEX effect on the previous screenshot to the lack thereof here. There's RFX +20% and RFX +10% tiles sprinkled throughout; you may have noticed the same on the paved areas on the previous maps. It's something to keep in mind, because most of the grassy patches without RFX boosts are between houses (which may be a problem, if you're scrambling for cover). Unfortunately, this also means that the enemies nearly always have boosted speed.   (New)  Tutorial: "You can look around the map and look at enemy stats."   With classes as they are, both Felius and Labyrinthia are faster than Clarissa! It's deeply weird.     Looking at the turn order shows that Labyrinthia doesn't QUITE move again before the bottom Excavator moves (she's the second one in the turn order), so Clarissa Encourages Labyrinthia instead of Rushing as planned.         You get the idea. Felius gets the bottom-right four houses, while Clarissa and Labyrinthia get the rest (because Encourage and Warp are really good for this sort of map). One notable thing:  The guards only do their spot check at the end of your turn. Labyrinthia can walk into guard sight range and then Warp out of it with impunity. Making her a Gadgeteer and sending Clarissa along to Encourage and Rush makes her easily the most valuable unit here.    One screenshot I missed:  I'm sorry we caused all this trouble for you.Once you rescue the ninth villager, the stage ends.     Felius hits level 7.         The Martial Guard is still out there... Don't worry. We'll see you safely back to Poliasha. Remaining here is far more dangerous. ... ... What's wrong with y'all?! Show some backbone! Poliasha is our home. How can you be afraid to return to your own home?! Yeah, she's right... Let's do it! Let's go back to Poliasha! Yeah!    Levin!! ...Sorry, Ms. Wordsworth! I had a plan, but it got kind of screwed up. I knew it I could count on you to pull through, though!  You can yell at me later! Just hurry up and--     Don't worry, I anticipated this. Ready to admit defeat? I don't recall ever losing to you! And furthermore, we would never surrender! Enough of this folly! People of Poliasha, run for the gates now! We'll cover you, so ignore the guards and make haste! ...Us? Quick transition cut to Levin, and a cut back once he's done speaking:   My legs are shaking too hard. I can't run!  ... Not everyone can pull it together at times like these. Most people whine and complain about the world from the comfort of their own homes, but when it comes time to do something about it, they can't even run with their own two feet. ... Hah hah hah! Take a good look at the cowards you came here to protect! Still think they're worth saving? ......... ...... ...The music stops.   (New)   Proud people of Elesius! Do not flinch away from your dreams! --?! --!! You must defy the opposing winds and race headlong for the gate! Is that...the princess...? Rise to your feet! Gather your dreams and run! The very future of our nation awaits on the other side of that gate! That's...that's absurd! I thought Princess Alexia died in that accident last year! P...Princess Alexia...? ...? ...! Look everyone, it's the princess! She's returned to us, alive and well! We can't let her down like this! Y...yeah! We've endured a lot these past six months, but it's time to stand up and start moving forward! Run, everyone! RUN!  Quick map rotation, and... Let's take a look at the Tactical Map we'll be fighting on.    We'll need to concentrate less on defeating the enemy and more on keeping the villagers alive. Don't forget to heal them as necessary. As for the enemy by the prison gate... Well, let's rely on Levin to deal with her. He'll have to secure our escape route for us. PRINCESS ARMY (all-caps strictly required!) keeps playing through the prep screen and map. There's two ways to do this: the simple way, and the way that is a giant pain in the rear end. I'll be doing the simple way this time around. Felius and Labyrinthia return to Fantastica and Elementalist for now.  Levin is a Martial Mage, a sort of hybrid class between physicals and magic, with skills equally well-suited to go in either direction... In a game where "good hybrid class" is an oxymoron, especially considering ATK +25% and MAG +25% are each awarded when you reach the final levels of a class (and there's no ATK/MAG +15% or anything like that). He's also the second-worst mage of the story characters--it's a big boost relative to Felius, more in the tiers of "below-average generic" than "about as bad as you can possibly be," but he's still second-worst. But he has Blast, a 150% strength magical post-movement non-elemental spell, and Clarissa and Labyrinthia are the only other potential mages of the story characters. I'm sending Clarissa down the physical road, so Levin's a mage now. Honestly, he's so drat fast that you rarely notice his lower magic power, especially if you're sticking with the story characters. Unfortunately, I didn't buy any extra gear for him before the map, but thankfully he's got Martial Mage Level 3, granting him Martial Mage EQ; his Tonfa are middling for magic, but it's better than nothing (and Elementalist is WAY the hell better for magic than Martial Mage). I'd make Labyrinthia an Arcanist and give Levin the Spellbook, but unfortunately she didn't quite earn her way to Elementalist Originals last time and Lightning is a fairly weak spell.    So either we can baby the villagers ALL THE WAY across the map while a hostile boss Secutor tries to kill them and Fantasticas cast Slow Down on every single one and high-movement ranged attackers pick off the stragglers, or we can kill Nanasato. I think you know what I'm voting for. Honestly, ignoring the obvious assassination option is hard mode on this map.  She's tough but not too tough; the main annoyance is her 80 RFX (Really drat Fast, slower than Elementalist Levin but faster than Fantastica Clarissa) and her Move & Heal HP (5% max HP restoration every time she moves at least 1 square). The enemies in the back are Fantasticas and Excavators, which will do small amounts of ranged damage and annoy you. They're problematic only insofar as they might finish off a weakened villager. Levin spends every single turn he has killing the Fantastica near him. Sure, there's no tactical reason to do so here, but you get 1 CSP for every kill and I'm totally ignoring the non-Nansoto enemies.  Labyrinthia and Clarissa are the only units that really matter in this battle. Clarissa waits turn 1 so that Nanasato moves up towards her, Labyrinthia warps next to her.  Basically no matter what you do, Clarissa has to use Rob Turn on her first turn here. If it works...   ...then when Nanasato tries to take her turn, Clarissa will act instead. Rob Turn has a 75% chance of working, so it's not bad odds, but if it fails then Nanasato hits a villager and you lose.   Then Clarissa casts Slow Down, Labyrinthia casts Crush (she's weakest to Earth) for a third of Nanasato's HP, Clarissa uses Encourage so Labyrinthia can do it again before Nanasato acts...  ...and Clarissa Sacrifices for the last 103 damage. (If you're wondering what's in the chest...)  (...it's not worth it. This isn't WA3, you can just buy healing items.)   Item Scopes increase the options available for Synthesis. Potential Eggs give a character the CSP Up status, which increases the CSP Modifier by 1.0 after battle. They're best hoarded for one particular special fight.  No levels, but that 2 CSP does let Labyrinthia get to Elementalist Level 2, giving her Elementalist Originals.  (New) This song has whistling, which is enough for me to recommend a Wild ARMs song.  Back in the prison storeroom, Tony found a bunch of powder kegs. I made some...slight modifications. I expect the Martial Guard is rather occupied with trying to maintan the fire right about now. Tony loves fireworks. Especially big ones. I wouldn't want to get on your "stalwart companion's" bad side... All that matters is that the rescue was a success! Mostly due to Clarissa's quick thinking.  It's such an unbelievable honor to be rescued by you personally, Your Highness! Uh, yes, of course...  Oh, uh, certainly... Um, ah... Levin, could you be a dear and go tend to the wounded over there? ... Hmph... If you say so, teach. We'll talk later, all right, Your Highness? Heh heh! Wow, to hear Princess Alexia thank me like that... I feel like I have the strength to do anything!Levin and Labyrinthia walk off.  The music stops.  Levin doesn't join up here, so no breakdown yet. Instead... I've shown off the hard ways so far, and doing this mission this way is a straightforward assassination. How much more difficult would it be to do this "properly"?
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Jul 29, 2015 02:38
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Even if you don't ignore the rest of the enemies, you'll still probably kill the boss before all the villagers escape. It's not like you have anything better to do at that point.
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Jul 29, 2015 02:57
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Einander posted:
It's a good track with a good name. (Does anyone by any chance have a link to the previous thread? Because I'm wondering if I didn't say exactly the same back then. ...I tried searching, but nothing came up. It's possible it got eaten in the whole archive hassle.) quote:(all-caps strictly required!) Well, yeah, I thought that went without saying.
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Jul 29, 2015 03:00
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PRINCESS ARMY and Labyrinthia's theme (I love the track names in this game  ), good stuff.vilkacis posted:(Does anyone by any chance have a link to the previous thread? Because I'm wondering if I didn't say exactly the same back then. ...I tried searching, but nothing came up. It's possible it got eaten in the whole archive hassle.) Archives required, obviously.
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Jul 29, 2015 03:06
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^ Cool, thanks.
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Jul 29, 2015 03:36
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PRINCESS ARMY is by far the girliest battle theme I have ever heard and I love every moment of it.
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Jul 29, 2015 05:11
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It also uses parts from WA4's boss fight music as well as its CONDITION GREEN (victory music). Behold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S06YPJY84Cc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHpPs_3FqAM Racquel's "Show's over!" *SLASH* also became a permanent part of CONDITION GREEN for me
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Jul 29, 2015 05:37
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SSNeoman posted:Racquel's "Show's over!" *SLASH* also became a permanent part of CONDITION GREEN for me That's just because she had the final 8ish actions of most battles by the final third or so of the game.
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Jul 29, 2015 14:35
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Raitzeno posted:That's just because she had the final 8ish actions of most battles by the final third or so of the game. Really that was true for most of the game. Not necessarily 8 turns, but the game is just designed such that Raquel getting a turn ends the battle. That whole "does more damage than the rest of the cast put together" thing. Turns out I was in error before! I remembered another song debuting in this stage rather than PRINCESS ARMY. Not to take away from PRINCESS ARMY, it's still loving great.
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Jul 29, 2015 16:24
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Is telling the truth really worth a dozen lives? Because that's the situation she was in right there. ...of course, now all these people are probably willing to fight and die for her.
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Aug 3, 2015 19:24
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Right, sorry about the one-week break there. Let's pretend it was due to Summer Games Done Quick, that sounds like a good excuse. (I've officially gotten old enough that a week of bad sleep and increased work can knock me on my rear end. By many measures I'm sure this is the actual definition of adulthood.) Short gameplay update tomorrow, normal updates start again after that. Probably two-a-week until I get my three-day weekends back in mid-September. Also, this is an SRPG thread, so a related plug: Lost Dimension for PS3/PS Vita has very good gameplay. It's sort of like Valkyria Chronicles with skill trees, spells, and much more character variety; the story's a bit weak, but it's one of the better SRPGs I've played recently, and the dwindling party mechanic makes for some interesting strategical adjustments. Strongly consider picking it up.
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Aug 5, 2015 00:39
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Glazius posted:Is telling the truth really worth a dozen lives? Because that's the situation she was in right there. Well, apparently even Miss "I Hate Lies" agrees with you, because she actually did lie to save their lives? Einander posted:Right, sorry about the one-week break there. Let's pretend it was due to Summer Games Done Quick, that sounds like a good excuse. (I've officially gotten old enough that a week of bad sleep and increased work can knock me on my rear end. By many measures I'm sure this is the actual definition of adulthood.) I feel like Lost Dimension could have been great with a good story, since the whole premise creates one that they wasted. Although I guess that would require far too much writing for all the permutations.
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Aug 5, 2015 02:30
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lost dimension would be better if it wasn't terrible frightened of map design
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Aug 5, 2015 02:47
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Act 1: Path of the Founding Knights Act 1-4 (Bonus) Welcome back. Last time, I completed the second battle of Act 1-4 by assassinating the boss, because shepherding every single villager to the other side is much more difficult. Simply killing the boss eliminates her as a threat, allows you to ignore the health of the villagers (so long as you do it sufficiently quickly), and takes a lot less time. But I've committed to ignoring the way you're supposed to do things, and it'd be a shame to break the streak this early. Let's do this the pig-headed way.  The most important step: Felius changes to Gadgeteer and stocks up on Berries. There's no other form of healing, and Clarissa will be busy stealing turns from the boss to keep her occupied (and using Slow Down when she can). He sticks Fantastica OC on his other slot; having access to Upper Hand's 100% accuracy and offensive range isn't worth losing Slow Down and Rush. With that out of the way, let's talk strategy. The boss will be handled roughly the same way as before: Clarissa steals her turn, then uses Slow Down. At that point, I'll take as many of her turns as I can. Once Levin gets over, he can help, because he has his own turn-stealing option, at which point Clarissa will start using Encourage instead.  The main limitation on the "don't let villagers die" lose condition is this old man. If you look in the bottom-left corner, you can see a red hat--that's an Excavator. Excavators have five movement range and five-range slingshots, and she can kill this old man in four attacks. Doing just that is her first priority, so my first priority is to kill her first. Labyrinthia will handle it.  Tony is going to go back there and distract them for a while. The Fantasticas will be very happy to cast Slow Down on him, and that's pre-move only. Similarly, the other Excavator isn't quite so interested in blood; if Tony's there for her to shoot, she won't bother chasing after the others. Unfortunately, he can't use items, so any damage he takes is effectively permanent unless Felius heals him.  Levin will kill the Fantastica next to him, then hustle for the other end. Unfortunately, the Fantastica in the middle will do everything in her power to Slow Down every single character anywhere near her. It wears off in three of the character's turns, which is usually great, because you're usually the one using it. Not so here! The desert tiles are insult to injury; ignoring the boss is just not an option here. Battle start! Levin chips away at the Fantastica (he needs three turns to kill her, with her elemental weaknesses), while Clarissa waits.  You may remember that Gadgeteer physicals increase the time until the target's next turn. Hitting here would slow the Excavator enough to let Labyrinthia kill her before she shoots the old man... But unfortunately, Felius missed on a 74%.  Dammit, Felius!  At least Labyrinthia didn't need the extra damage to kill this one.    Okay, new plan: don't send Felius into the Slow Down Hell Zone. (It's really just best to leave the Fantasticas alone, except for Tony, who can't avoid Slow Down anyway--they LOVE the spell and you can't afford the lost turns.)  He uses Rush on Labyrinthia instead. This lets her move up while she blasts the Excavator, getting her much closer to the mid-area Fantastica (who needs to die post-haste before she can Slow Down EVERY SINGLE CIVILIAN, because she'll be happy to do that).  The point of moving here is to minimize the chance that anyone will move into placement to use Formation Arts. Fantastica Formation Arts really hurt, and this isn't any different for enemy Fantasticas... But they're programmed to avoid counters, so if Tony's not in a place where they can immediately move up to complete one, they usually won't bother.  You don't want your strategy too reliant on Rob Turn. 75% is fairly reliable... if it needs to land once. More than that? Don't push your luck.   Complaining about enemy Slow Down spam is unrealistic, I know, because I recognize that it's amazing. It's just really, really annoying.  Clarissa is either going to move and Sacrifice the Fantastica or move and Slow Down the Fantastica or move and Rob Turn Nanasato, depending on who moves when in the next few turns.   fffffffffffffffffffffffff  Two 75% shots have hit so far!  One downside of Encourage is that it does affect enemies too; if it didn't, Labyrinthia would have been able to get two spells off before the Fantastica acted again.  Do you see why I just killed the drat boss last time? Levin kills his Fantastica and starts heading over, Labyrinthia kills hers.  I haven't been skipping Tony's turns--this is literally the second turn he's gotten. He is slow as hell even BEFORE Slow Down. After, he's molasses moving uphill.   Felius heads back so he can Mystic Tony a heal before he dies, because Dog isn't going to get to turn 4 without help.  As-is, Nanasato's going to get a turn before this old man moves out of her range. Let's see if this Replica can distract her.  Holy poo poo, that actually worked! I mean, uh poo poo, shouldn't have said that out loud Felius Mystics a second Heal Berry for Tony, because he's at 126/210 and I want him to survive this.  3/3 on Rob Turn, to my honest surprise.  Nanasato's next turn is sufficiently far enough away that I feel confident sending Felius and Labyrinthia off to kill the three at the back. May as well get some extra CSP out of this.  Tony's accuracy isn't great; Invoke will help. I'm also gambling on the increased critical rate, because Tony isn't quite strong enough to kill the Excavator he weakened earlier with a second normal hit.  It pays off!    I'm sensing a theme.  I've got an extra turn, so hey, why not.  One of the villagers finally reaches the exit point. Between the warp circles and the black smoke, it looks more like they're being sacrificed to a dark god than escaping. Hey, you know how Rob Turn has that miss chance? Plus, it inflicts a status, so things can be immune to it. That's really annoying, right?  So here, have a version that removes an enemy turn any time it hits. It's also on the fastest character, so have fun with that! The balancing factor is that it requires you to hit with the weapon, so it's not completely broken. ...except that Levin's exclusive weapon type (Tonfa) gets to roll to-hit six times. Sure, you do 17% less damage every time you miss one of those checks, but do you even really care how much damage the "remove enemy's next turn" attack does? Cancel Strike is really, really dumb. Part of the reason I run Levin as a mage is to remove some of the temptation to abuse it horribly, because mage weapons have awful physical accuracy.  (Levin changed to an Elementalist. It shows.)  Nanasato's next turn isn't even on the initative list, because she's still affected by Slow Down and the turn she was scheduled to have next is gone. And then when she DOES move Clarissa will move instead. This level kind of left me feeling vindictive, what can I say.  With Nanasato's next movement happening sometime in the next never, Levin and Clarissa are free to wander over and help kill the Fantasticas. Between Encourage and Levin not being affected by Slow Down, he actually ends up killing both of them before Labyrinthia, Felius or Tony get an actual turn.   Finally. This old man takes about three turns longer than anyone else to actually get there; one way or another, you'll win or lose long before he actually crosses the line. There's no extra dialogue for doing it this way, in-stage or out. (There's a line back in the stage where Labyrinthia joined if you actually hit the switch instead of killing everyone, but it's nothing interesting.)  This is the save I'll actually be using from here on out, because hey, extra CSP and EXP! (Let's watch Felius end up short of Fantastica level 6 by just 3 CSP later on.) Labyrinthia learns Elementalist Originals once again, but this time, she, Levin and Tony also all gain a level. I believe I mentioned it earlier, but VP affects the CSP Bonus at the end: Levin is so drat fast (and his VP so low) that he'll often run out by the end of the stage, which slows down his growth a bit. It's one of his few downsides. Next time, Act 1-5.
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Aug 6, 2015 00:02
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quote:but VP affects the CSP Bonus at the end Why? That sounds really dumb and awful.
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Aug 6, 2015 01:19
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SSNeoman posted:Why? It's probably to incentivize completing levels quickly. You get a +0.3 bonus for 76-100% of max VP, +0.2 for 51-75%, and +0.1 for 26-50%. There's VP restore items, and they're fairly cheap, so later on it can sometimes be worth it to eat one just before stage end if you're close to an important level. Generally it just means Levin and Clarissa grow a little slower than the others (because they're so fast) and Labyrinthia grows faster (because drat is she slow).
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Aug 6, 2015 01:23
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Einander posted:Someone needs to LP Gungnir already. I'd put it on the list, but I'm already in LP-backlog territory and I don't need to fall even deeper into time-debt.
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Aug 6, 2015 01:37
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Elric posted:The ending for that was so loving rage inducing. it was great sorry, your plucky rebellion failed, racism isn't over, nothing ever changes it was hilarious
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Aug 6, 2015 01:47
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Einander posted:It's probably to incentivize completing levels quickly. You get a +0.3 bonus for 76-100% of max VP, +0.2 for 51-75%, and +0.1 for 26-50%. Thankfully there's a really good CSP exploit in the next chapter. I love using Replicas because they make incredible distractions, especially for that enemy.
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Aug 6, 2015 01:47
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Einander posted:Levin's exclusive weapon type (Tonfa) gets to roll to-hit six times What. I mean, it is a really cool weapon and all, but... What. quote:Nanasato's next turn isn't even on the initative list, because she's still affected by Slow Down and the turn she was scheduled to have next is gone. And then when she DOES move Clarissa will move instead. This, however, is just plain hilarious.
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Aug 6, 2015 02:02
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So all that's needed is a different KIND of bullshit and you can get everyone to escape. Good to know!
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Aug 6, 2015 04:20
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Cancel Strike is flat-out the most busted thing in this game. There's a shitton of fun combos and crazy stuff, but Cancel Strike is just absurd. Levin would be really, really good without it. With? He's a loving monster.Elric posted:The ending for that was so loving rage inducing. You just got completely outmaneuvered. You get nothing! You lose! Good day, sir!
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Aug 6, 2015 15:12
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Einander posted:It's probably to incentivize completing levels quickly. You get a +0.3 bonus for 76-100% of max VP, +0.2 for 51-75%, and +0.1 for 26-50%. Honestly that does balance the 'speed is king' thing that plagues SRPGs a little. If the game's speed system allows for people to take multiple turns compared to someone else, the faster characters are always better off. This at least throws slow characters a bone to some degree. Granted I don't think it fixes the problem, but it mitigates a little at least. On a side note. WHY IS TONY SLOW? HE IS A DOG! Telling me that a dog is slower than people? He's the most pointless party member due to being slow and not being able to work with classes or equipment in a class-based game.
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Aug 8, 2015 01:14
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Yes. Nothing is faster than a dog.
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Aug 8, 2015 19:37
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Act 1: Path of the Founding Knights Act 1-5  No music.         As always, you're preceded by the vulgar stench of tobacco. Does it please you to summon me as if I were a common servant? I suppose such boorishness is to be expected from those of lesser birth. ... Hmph. This is because you stalled the executions for so long, Charlton. It is the council's duty to employ proper methods of governance. But your habit of needlessly tormenting the populace... Perhaps you fancy yourself a monster from a children's storybook? The people need sound leadership and proper guidance. If bloodshed is required in order to achieve that, it is imperative that we keep it to an absolute minimum. Perhaps you should consider refining your methods a bit, Reverend Mother Edna? This whole Creedmore business was your idea in the first place, Charlton. Now if that'll be all, I've got other business to attend to. Then perhaps you would be interested to hear that the liberator of the prison camp was the late Princess Royal Alexia?  ...That...that little chit of a princess? That's impossible! I saw to it that...um, I mean... Um... We should have anticipated the possibility after they failed to recover her body. No, no, it can only be an imposter! An imposter using Alexia's name to incite a rebellion!  Using a fake princess as a figurehead to foment political unrest... You certainly make it sound plausible. What, you're just going to leave it at that?!  I hadn't pegged you as the type to take up work like that on your own... In the month since I got here, the work's been nothing but dull. I'm ready for some action. And I mean, a lass parading around as a ghost princess? Sounds too good to pass up. So how about I go expose her for ya? It's not a matter for you to concern yourself with. You don't even know what Princess Alexia looks like. Heh. You have a point. Focus on your own job--getting the Martial Guard in order! All right, all right. Just sayin', I'm up for whatever, so long as the money's good. Such impudence... Despicable! I'll send my subordinates to handle it. As you say, this situation must be addressed promptly.   Thank you, Levin. You saved us all back there. Not just me, but the people of Poliasha, too. Heh heh! You really mean that! Man, to be praised by Princess Alexia herself...! (Hmmm... Tony seems to have taken quite an interest in Clarissa lately...) ... Huh? Your Highness...? Are you not feeling well or something? My, look at the time. You'd best be on your way, Levin. Geez, Ms. Wordsworth, talk about a buzzkill... Please give my regards to your father, the Captain of the Royal Guard.  Well, I bet it'll finally sink through that thick skull of his. And now the princess is back, too! Elesius really can return to the way things used to be, when all anyone wanted was to live in peace... ...All anyone wanted was to live in peace... Next time you see me, the Royal Knights'll be right behind me! Together, we can reclaim that peace! Until then...!    It's all thanks to you, Your Highness. Working to reclaim the peace that we've lost is a duty that all citizens of Elesius share. I'll be counting on you to continue the struggle. Truly, we can't thank you enough, Your Highness. I will never forget the debt that we owe you!  May I...speak with you? Who are you? I, um... Until a fewmonths ago, I was a servant working for His Majesty... I...I made a foolish mistake, and was sent to the prison... But, um...what I wanted to say is... Please, calm down and try to speak slowly. I'm sorry... I was hoping to speak to Her Highness about her honored father, His Majesty King Hrathnir. While His Majesty had been bedridden for quite some time, his condition has taken a turn for the worse recently, and continues to decline... His Majesty the King?! ...? Now that Your Highness has returned, I would respectfully suggest that you visit His Majesty as soon as possible, before...um... I understand. Thank you, you've been most helpful. Of course, Your Highness.She leaves. A moment later, Clarissa sighs (with no accompanying textbox).   Yeah, thanks... I'm fine. I'm just a little tired... ...Lying to people like this... It just feels so horrible. Even if the lie was intended to save them... ... Felius... How long am I going to have to continue this? ...Clarissa... I'm sorry... If you hadn't encountered me, you wouldn't have become involved in all this... It was inevitable that we'd collide head-on with these issues during our pursuit of Rupert. Your lie didn't cause this situation. The blame for this rests on someone else's shoulders. Even so... I'm still going to have to deal with the consequences of it...Apparently Felius's arch "this is all because of Clarissa's hero complex" comment went right over her head. ...  What...?! Stop that, Labyrinthia! That's too weird! No. It is my responsibility. Having lived twice as long as you, I have a duty to act as a responsible adult. Please allow me to protect you from whatever perils might befall you in this land! ...Labyrinthia... ... I'm sorry... It's really my fault for letting myself get down like this. I can't just sit around--  Not at all. I can't mope around like this forever, after all! ...? I haven't got a clue what you're talkin' about, hon, but whatever. Could you meet me back at the lodge? Sure. We'll be there in a moment. I'll be waitin'. Town dialogue start   I never thought I'd get to sit behind this counter again... Thank you so much, Princess... [Talk] There was some drunkard tending to the store when I returned. Quite a surprise, let me tell you...Levin's equipment appears in the shop now, but the rest is the same as before.  Never in my dreams did I imagine seeing Lady Alexia with my own eyes...! I've never been so happy in all my life! You're...you're the princess of this kingdom?! W...wow! This is amazing! I've never spoken with someone so...well, so royal! Oh, uh, can I shake your hand? And lemme get your autograph, too! Hee hee... I can't wait to tell Muehlen that Lady Alexia visited his store while he was out! He'll probably break down in tears! The Jelly Blob is a gelatin-like creature that lives near bodies of water. Their rubbery bodies are hard to damage with weapons. If you need to fight one, magic is the way to go, no doubt about it. Of course, if the Blob's in the water, then not even magic will have much effect. You'll need a way to get them on terra firma first... Thank heavens. Oh, thank heavens...Elesius may be enveloped in dark clouds, but Lady Alexia's return is sure to bring hope to our kingdom's entire population. *Sob* I always knew you were alive... Oh, Prinnnnncesssss!!Town dialogue end The next scene starts automatically when you enter the Inn.   ...? First off, I need to thank you for saving us all. And about you not really bein' the princess... I'll keep that to myself. It'll be our little secret. ... In dark times like these, we need a little sunlight. So... Well, not just for that, but...I'm gonna wipe your tab clean. Your food and lodging the other night... That's on me. Really?! Hey, now, don't get all excited on me. You're supposed to be a princess, remember? Oh... Sorry... Now, I know it's pretty rude for me to do this to a princess, but... Could I ask you a favor? Sure! I couldn't possibly refuse you. A whole bunch o' mush bugs popped up while we were out of the village, and I'd like you to go wipe 'em out for us. ...Mush bugs? Usually around this season, the whole village goes out with torches in hand to burn 'em off, but this year we need everyone to help with the rebuildin'. I understand. So how about in addiction to clearing our tab, you throw in dinner tonight, and we'll call it a deal? You sure know how to work those angles, Your Highness. Hah! Now who's working the angles!  There's a short tutorial here, but let's do the rest of the town dialogue first; the Inn is the only area left.  I see my fair share of freelance Drifters come through here. If you want to hire any, just ask. You oughta be able to find a good, reliable one! [Talk] If you hire a Drifter, you can send him on search. He'll revisit places you've already been to and fetch all kinds of useful items. Of course, you'll have to pay the Drifter an appropriate fee for the trouble, but they say that some items can only be found on search. Also, about that Item Scope you found in the prison... That thing should be useful in searching, if I recall correctly. I think Jim was talking about it earlier. Why don't you ask him about it? He's drinking over there in the corner. Oh, hey, you found an Item Scope? If you send a hired Drifter on search with one of those, it'll be easier for him to find better items. In fact, the more Item Scopes you can gather, the nicer the items he'll bring back for you. ...And there was something else Item Scopes could do, too... Someone told me about this... What the heck was it...? Ah, well. I'm sure I'll remember it sooner or later! I am gravely concerned for King Hrathnir's condition. Princess Alexia, please return to the palace and visit His Majesty as soon as possible. He must know about your safe return. Now that Hire is available, let's talk Drifters. Drifter stats are randomly generated. Like normal enemies and unlike story characters, their elemental affinities, positive and negative, all sum up to 0. When you hire them, their stats lie within large stat ranges. There's no trade-offs here: being good at one stat doesn't make you worse at others. Levels basically increase all base stats by 2%, so all characters stay relatively the same as they grow. Here's the stat ranges, courtesy of the mechanics guide on GameFAQs: code:Now, numbers mean nothing without context, so let's compare against the story characters we've seen so far (except Tony, since he's special). code:You'll note that Drifters can be better than every single story character in every single other stat. Notably, Drifters can be so much faster than anyone but Levin or Clarissa that all their stats could be lower and they'd still be better, because the speed stat is that important. Felius is average-ish in story character speed, but he's barely above the slowest possible Drifter. In practice, going for perfect Drifters will drive you insane. Don't do it. As a result, they end up roughly as good as the story characters (generally trading better speed for slightly worse off-stats and much worse elemental affinities), only without special classes; there's also no maps where they're required or where they're unavailable, which is a mixed blessing. I'm going to dump them for story characters as they become available. So let's look at our Drifters. I'm going with a three-fighter three-mage squad for a time; Clarissa and Felius are two of the fighters and Labyrinthia is one of the mages, so I'm hiring one fighter and two mages. I could hold a vote, but eh, no reason to get too attached.   Kelvin will get to fight about three times or so before his ignomious benching by the march of history. (He's even immune to Water! Someone mug him for the Birch Ring before he goes.)   ...while Sasha will be with us a little longer before her own inevitable Act 2 benching.   Randolf is here for the long haul, though; Character 6 joins fairly late. Thankfully, you're allowed to select a class when a Drifter joins up, and they'll come with a full set of basic gear for that class. No shopping needed for the new guys (unless you want more healing or Gem items). I strongly suspect you could abuse this to make money, since Drifters cost 100xLevel to hire and basic gear should sell for more than that, but abusing that would take too much time for the   Searching is unlocked. Searching lets you get free healing items, but more importantly, it's the primary way to get synthesis materials. When you send a Drifter out to search (story characters can't), they'll return after a certain number of battles; alternatively, you can pay to pass time. Unfortunately...  So there's no way to just search as you go along your story-related business. You search, and unless you're grinding for a while, you'll need to pay for them to return before you move on. So I usually just blow it off. This isn't a very difficult game and synthesis isn't very necessary.   When you enter, you're immediately thrown into the DER scene for the map.   In quests when you have your choice of party size and makeup, your starting point will be displayed by colored HEXes like these. Use the "View Map" command to see where your units will begin the battle. It's a good idea to check this every time you set off for the battlefield. Our mission here is to defeat the Jelly Blobs... those "mush bugs" Ellen told us about. Jelly Blobs are known for their high resistance to all forms of physical attack. The Blobs are weak against magic, however, so an Elementalist-centric party would be the wisest plan of action... However, magic attacks will have little effect in the water, so the first order of business is to get the monsters on solid land.  That's when the real battle will begin. Use a fire-based skill on the lanterns to light them up. You can also use a water-based skill on them if you want to put them out. Gremalkins work the opposite way from Jelly Blobs. Magic attacks are mostly ineffective against them. It'll be important to strike a balance in your party between anti-Blob units and anti-Gremalkin units. Use the class-changing abilities of ARMs to create the most effective party possible.This is a battle of several different fronts; thankfully, they can be handled more-or-less one at a time.  The first front is to the right of start. One Elementalist needs to head over and light the bottom-most torch, then kill the Jelly Blob closest to it once it heads over. Kelvin, as the officially disposable member of the team, gets that job. It'll take essentially the whole map, for reasons I'll get to in a moment.   The second front is the landbound Gremalkins--there's two of them directly up from the start, plus one on the dock to the upper-right. They're not too tough, but elemental magic is pretty heavily reliant on weaknesses and Levin left, so no non-elemental Blast spell. Clarissa, Felius and Sasha will handle them one at a time, if possible, with Labyrinthia and Randolf contributing potshots when they can.  The third front is the other three lanterns and their accompanying Jelly Blobs. You need to go up, up and right, and then out to the end of the docks to hit the three lanterns that Sasha and Kelvin aren't covering, and all four need to be lit to draw any of the Jelly Blobs out. They'll take just one point of damage every time you hit them while they're in the water, and they won't move out until all four torches are lit.  You want Elementalists here both because the Jelly Blobs are weak to fire and because they have a hidden Soft property. Soft reduces physical damage by 90% after all other calculations, and is effectively non-negotiable; there's a way for physicals to ignore it, but it's in the last set of classes. Most warning on Soft or Hard lies in the pre-battle DER reports--if Labyrinthia says "don't use physical attacks on this enemy," listen. Additionally, there's one other wrinkle when it comes to Jelly Blobs, but I'll cover that when it comes up.  So this is the team formation. Randolf and Labyrinthia go up front along with Felius; he's the slowest Fantastica and Elementalists have lower move speed. Kelvin is positioned to head off right.  (New)    One downside to Drifter Elementalists is that Elementalists are faster than Fantasticas (98% RFX mod versus 88%), so with all else being equal, Drifter Elementalists have to move once before they can be Rushed and turned into mobile artillery.   Labyrinthia doesn't have this problem. Depending on the map, she can either move up and blow away one nearby enemy, or she can move and Warp--either way, her slower speed means she's actually useful earlier than the faster Drifters. This is a lot less meaningful later on, when you have after-movement attack spells or non-Fantasticas with Fantastica Originals, but for now, it's good having a mage who's on and ready from their first turn.   The Gremalkins are fairly far away, so Labyrinthia also lights the first of the main group's three torches while she's still Rushed. It's worth noting that you can go in the water, but you really don't want to--the Jelly Blobs won't leave if they can just attack someone in the water instead. No reason to let the AI make you miserable.  The "one damage on in-water Jelly Blobs" thing. Kelvin lights his torch.  Labyrinthia catches up. In normal circumstances, Labyrinthia would use a Replica here to draw the Gremalkin closer without anyone taking damage, but that's not really an issue here. There's one thing to keep in mind with the Gremalkins: they don't tend to move and attack unless they have to, especially the one up above. The Gremalkin here is positioned for some clever enemy design.   See, in the position the Gremalkin is at here, only one character can attack physically at a time--bells and Strahl Gewehr don't have the vertical range to attack. Magic isn't good against it, either. That lets the Gremalkin stay in place and cast Kirlian Buster on anyone that approaches to attack, halving that character's max HP for the map--it doesn't wear off! And the Gremalkin has a decent counter rate, too, so with an unlucky crit or two the Gremalkin might actually kill someone. But Vertical Tolerances go both ways, and Kirlian Buster only has 4 vertical tolerance--if you're not in the three squares in front of it, it can't hit you with it.  Felius's Upper Hand has 3 HR and 10 VR, and it's 5% stronger before defense for every panel of height the enemy has on him. When that aspect of it is relevant, it's really good.    Don't blunder into the trap and the Gremalkin's fairly harmless.   Unfortunately, Kirlian Buster can be cast after moving, so you really can't avoid it with the second Gremalkin...  ...and the third Gremalkin's positioned to make another narrow chokepoint. They're not too hard to bell to death, though, and the last one misses Felius with its one Buster attempt.   Then I get to stage 3 of the fight. Priority one is to get everyone away from the water, because the Jelly Blobs are well aware of the "only take 1 damage in water" thing.  This particular Jelly Blob heads for the starting location, hence Kelvin's extended idling in place there. He starts heading back towards the others once his Jelly Blob is dead. I mentioned one additional wrinkle involving Jelly Blobs and physical attacks. You see, if you crit...    ...they counterattack with Floop, which makes them divide. This is massively exploitable later on, when you have easy MP restoration and healing spells. Right now, it's more a curiosity than anything; you may as well do it a few times, because this map is big enough that you'll be low on VP by the end anyway (so there's no reason to worry about the VP-based CSP bonus).   Then just Fire or Sacrifice down any survivors and move on.   I killed about three or four extra Jelly Blobs, so the rewards are a bit better than the base offering. Clarissa gets to level 10, Tony to level 8, the rest get to level 9. All three Fantasticas get to level 3 (Fantastica EQ for Clarissa and Felius, Fantastica Originals+EQ for Sasha), Labyrinthia learns Elementalist EQ, and both Elementalists learn Elementalist Originals.  There's another scene in Poliasha afterward, finishing out the chapter (but no more fights).  --! Huh?! May I ask why? I don't intend to continue playing the part of the princess forever. If anything, it's the opposite. I have to break free of this lie as soon as possible. The only way to do so is to return this country to the true royal family. You mean His Majesty, King Hrathnir? Yeah. I just need to free the king from the influence of the Council and then explain the situation to him. Then we can return the country to its rightful rule. ...If we're going to clash with the Council, then we'll probably run into Rupert along the way. But, Clarissa... I know. This means I'll have to bear an even heavier burden... But I want to do this. I want to lead the people of Elesius back to the peaceful lives they once knew. ...Thank you, Felius. In that case, I've got an idea that might help. We need to report back in any case, so why don't we discuss it further at Ellen's place? Sure, that's fine, but...what sort of idea? That makes me a little nervous... Fade to black. There's the sound of rustling cloth, and...   These clothes are so frilly it feels so weird...(sic; sentence could have used a "that")  You sure you're not really a princess or somethin' from somewhere else? It's not just the clothes, y'know. I can sense a vague air of nobility about you, too. Well, please don't! I don't have any of that! It really does need to be repeated: Labyrinthia has the best smug sprites.  Now no one could possibly doubt that you truly are Alexia Lynn Elesius, Princess Royal of the Kingdom of Elesius. You don't think we're overdoing it a bit? Not at all. This is perfect. Just the sort of plan you'd expect from a capable woman like me! ...Ahem.   Tony's hellmaw isn't quite that horrifying, random villager. He's just yawning.  (New)  What's going on out there?  ...The Council... Yes... This certainly confirms our suspicion that Rupert is involved with the Council. ...I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes... I am so please to see that you truly are alived, Your Highness. ... However, I hope Your Highness understands that this nation has undergone many changes during your absence. And you think that's an excuse for the horrors the Council has put my people through?! Respectfully, Your Highness, I was not send here to fight with you at this time. The honorable Chairman seeks only what is best for the national interests of Elesius. He hopes to resolve this matter in as peaceful a manner as possible. --?!Fade to black, and this chapter ends. Next time, Act 1-6.
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Aug 9, 2015 21:31
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And so the best characters enter the stage. Or at least I really like Charlton and Edna.
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Aug 9, 2015 22:43
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Yeah but knowing how WA treat their Sinister Council, they're not long for this world.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:56
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The WA series is pretty good at keeping the sinister council relevant until the third act. Charlton is the best though.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:14
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For some reason I love the reaction of "-Buh?!" from Reverend Mother Wrestlemania.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:50
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 15:15 |
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CmdrKing posted:And so the best characters enter the stage.
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Aug 10, 2015 16:58
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