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deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

who the fuck is scraeming
"LOG OFF" at my house.
show yourself, coward.
i will never log off

Final Fantasy Explorers is a new(ish) Action RPG from Square Enix for the Nintendo 3DS. Originally released in Japan in December of 2014, the US and EU regions got it at the end of January 2016.

Explorers gets compared to Monster Hunter a lot, because it revolves around doing repeatable quests to grind up loot material to make new equipment, but this is a mistake. This game is much more similar to a Phantasy Star Online title in how it plays. A party of up to four players, or one player and a band of captured monsters, ventures out into the world to fight various monsters, or a specific world boss, using MMO-like mechanics involving selecting skills from a menu that operate on cooldown timers. The game lacks experience point progression, but your progression is still a little more compex than just buying new tiers of equipment.

Forms of Progression, or "What Am I Doing Here?"

Gameplay Loop
Pick a mission in town, go to a location, fight a bunch of things, maybe fight a field boss or Eidolon, get a pile of loot, go back to town. It's a very cyclical game that's ultimately tied to progressing your character into an endgame build that you, ideally, enjoy playing and that also looks cool.

Jobs
Final Fantasy Explorers uses a variant of the staple "Job System", and has a total of 21 jobs, including the starting "job", Freelancer. These jobs mostly fall into different areas of the MMORPG "Holy Trinity" of Tank, Healer/Support, and Damage, but there is some crossover between categories. Early in the game, you have access to Freelancer, Knight, Monk, Ranger, White Mage, and Black Mage. Over time, the other jobs become available after completing certain quests or fulfilling certain game conditions. Dark Knight, for example, becomes available after slaying a total of 500 enemies.

Your Job determines the following things: your base stats, what weapon types you can equip, and both your Passive and Unique Ablities. The rest of your Abilities come from either the weapon type you have equipped, or a variety of Magic. Once you have access to 5-Star quests several hours in, you will also begin to get "Mastery" quests for any Job you've done at least 10 quests with. Completing this quest gives you access to additional weapons for your Job, and typically dual wielding, and adds a special set of equipment schematics for that class to the Workshop.

Abilities
You learn Abilities, which are your spells and special weapon skills, from the Central Crystal back in town. The Abilities have some crossover, but every Job has one category of Ability that is their "main" category. Abilities from outside that category require a double investment of "Load", which is a simple number indicating how "expensive" and typically powerful a skill is. So, a White Mage and a Black Mage could both learn Cure, but it would cost the Black Mage twice as many Load Points. A Dark Knight can use both swords and Axes, but Sword Abilities cost double. That system sounds like it's simplistic, but that's where the Mutation System comes into play. Mutations are one of the forms of ongoing progression in Final Fantasy Explorers.

You can have very different builds based on how you choose to mutate your Abilities. When you use a Crystal Surge, which provides you with a limited list of randomly-chosen Surges to choose from (such as various elemental affinities, or different buff effects), some of your equipped Abilities may turn yellow. When you use them under the Crystal Surge's influence, they acquire a "mutation". Your Barrier spell may gain the ability to also cast Haste on you, for example, or your Wind spell may also now deal Light-type damage. Each time this happens, the mutated Ability will get saved to a list of "Custom Ablities" at the Central Crystal. By purchasing and equipping these Custom Abilities, you can then gain the opportunity to mutate them even more in future Crystal Surges. So, after a few missions, you may have gone from a simple Blizzard to a Blizzard3 that does extra Ice damage, builds up more Resonance, and has a small chance to inflict Blind. There are only a few of caveats that I know of: multiple types of elemental damage mutations do not stack- the game will just pick one of them to use at random; there are some diminishing returns on stacking multiple levels of the same mutation, but you are still encouraged to stack them; any given ability can only have up to 8 distinct types of mutations, with 16 levels amongst them; some mutations, such as Multi-Hit, have a hard stack limit (2, in Multi-Hit's case).

The base Abilities have a bit of a tier system to them, especially in the Magics. You have to reach 5* missions and/or buy the lower-grade versions of spells in order to unlock the next tier (Cure->Cura->Curaga, etc). Sometimes you just have to buy an Ability to unlock a different one. In Time Magic, you have to buy Slow to unlock Gravity.

Equipment
Your equipment has two different types of progression. Among other things, all modifiers to your character's stats, such as Strength, Magic, Evasion, and so on, come from your equipment. Equipment comprises Weapon(s), Shields, Head, Torso, Legs, and Accessory. The various weapon classes all have their own lines of increasingly powerful schematics; this is also the case for armor types, which come in Light, Medium, and Heavy varieties for your Mage/Rogue/Warrior types respectively. Accessories all have their own miscellaneous effects that typically buff a specific stat.

Besides ordering new tiers of weapons and armor, you may also spend materials to upgrade your existing pieces. For example, you might not have even found the material you need to buy the next tier of weapon for your class, but you're likely sitting on enough other materials to upgrade your current weapon's stats into that range. I skipped the Wind Rod on my Black Mage by just upgrading my Fire Rod to have the same stats, for example.

There are also a bunch of cosplay weapons and armors, like the Sephiroth or Squall costumes, that have okay stats and require you to grind special materials to construct. You have to fight like 10 Shiva Eidolons to make the Sephiroth gear, to name one.

Crystal Surges and Magicite, or I thought you said Lightning would be here
You have a number in the upper-left corner of your screen called "Resonance". This number goes up every time an Ability of yours either damages/debuffs an enemy, or heals/buffs an ally. It constantly goes down at a fairly slow rate. Any time while your Resonance is at 100 or higher, effectively every minute or two in this state, you'll get an alert on your screen telling you that a Crystal Surge is available if you hold L+R. Whenever this message pops up, that means your Crystal Surge list has refreshed. When you are gunning for specific Mutations, as mentioned above, you may opt to not activate a Surge and wait for it to refresh again. Another reason you might not activate a surge is so you can create a Magicite.

Magicite, like in FFVI, is the crystallized essence of an Eidolon. In Final Fantasy Explorers, there is a type of World Boss called an "Eidolon", which are the various Summon monsters from the main franchise. These are typically found in specific places for each of them, at the end of a short dungeon type of area. When you have an Eidolon at about 5% or less HP, your next Crystal Surge refresh will contain a special Surge called "Encase." Use this within melee range of the Eidolon to instantly defeat it and gain its Magicite.

Equipping a Magicite does two things:
First, it boosts your stats in specific ways for each Eidolon. Ramuh and Shiva are good for the various mages, Dryad is good for Rangers, and so on.
Second, it gives you access to a special mode called "Trance". There is another meter right under your resonance, a half-circle that fills with a little more green each time land a hit, much like Resonance, only it doesn't slowly drain on you. When this meter fills, you can tap an icon on your touchscreen to enter Trance. While Trancing, your abilities and stats are all buffed, your HP and AP both get refilled, and your next Crystal Surge refresh will contain a Trance Surge, which is typically your Magicite Eidolon's big, area attack. These are super good and will easily take out like 1/3 of an Eidolon's HP.

Where is Lightning? I love Fabula Nova Crytallis
There is another type of Magicite, Hero Magicite. You get these as special gifts after completing various background objectives. Each Hero Magicite is based on a character from a mainline Final Fantasy game, such as Lightning, Cloud, Aeris, Squall, or Terra. Like the Eidolon Magicite, these give you stat buffs specific to that character. However, using Trance with one of these equipped will temporarily transform you INTO that character, and your Crystal Surge will be one of their Limit Breaks or other signature moves.

How important is the MMO stuff?
The game is set up to allow for the MMO trinity in your party. If you're playing with 3 other humans, your mileage may vary depending on the difficulty of the content you're tackling. For a lot of the early to middle stuff, you could probably do just fine with like 4 Black Mages as long as nobody stands in the fire. There's a benefit to having a tank, though, because then your damage dealers won't have to pay as much attention to not standing in the fire. The later-game Eidolons hit a lot harder, too, so it's good to have somebody around to buff and/or heal the party. Party composition isn't as rigid as a true traditional MMO, it can make your life a little easier if everybody at least knows what the heck they are doing.

deadly_pudding fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Feb 16, 2016

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deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

who the fuck is scraeming
"LOG OFF" at my house.
show yourself, coward.
i will never log off
Reserved for Job System :spergin:

8-Bit Scholar
Jan 23, 2016

by FactsAreUseless
From the sounds of it, this, like Theathrythm, is a good $20 game. I anticipate a summer sale will get it cheap enough for me.

YoshiOfYellow
Aug 21, 2015

Voted #1 Babysitter in Mushroom Kingdom

I was worried after the bad press the game got in Japan and how we literally heard nothing about it here until it released but I'd call it a pleasant surprise of a game. It's nothing revolutionary or new but it's fun to burn away some hours on relatively mindless hack and slashing.

Plus countering Zantetsuken never stops being satisfying. :smuggo:

Vitamean
May 31, 2012

I bought this game at launch and promptly got slammed with a bunch of coursework, so I haven't gotten far at all. I got to the quest where you have to capture an Eidolon in a crystal.

Hoping to get back into it after I get comfortably ahead in my classes.

deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

who the fuck is scraeming
"LOG OFF" at my house.
show yourself, coward.
i will never log off

Moldy Taxes posted:

I bought this game at launch and promptly got slammed with a bunch of coursework, so I haven't gotten far at all. I got to the quest where you have to capture an Eidolon in a crystal.

Hoping to get back into it after I get comfortably ahead in my classes.

That Encase surge is super finnicky, too. Like, you have to be right on top of the Eidolon for it to work. I was fighting Phoenix last night, and I had my Encase whiff because, I'm pretty sure, Phoenix was airborne at the time. It was still close enough for me to hit with Blizzara.

McDragon
Sep 11, 2007

I just got the Airship license but I'm liking it so far. Only tried Monk so far because I like Counter far too much to go without it. Also punching the gently caress out of everything. I was thinking of putting a couple of Counters in my ability slots so it would always be available even if I hosed the timing, but then I read the tutorial that said you can't do that.

Anyway, it feels a lot like a streamlined Monster Hunter up to now. Takes a lot less time to send you off to beat up a dragon, you can skip back to town as soon as you finish a quest, all sorts of things that always put me off starting a new Monster Hunter game. The slow start was fine my first one, but I just get impatient starting again with the trash monsters and pointy stick.

While I remember, I haven't unlocked any new classes yet, but without spoiling anything else, is Dragoon an option later? Thanks

widespread
Aug 5, 2013

I believe I am now no longer in the presence of nice people.


deadly_pudding posted:

That Encase surge is super finnicky, too. Like, you have to be right on top of the Eidolon for it to work. I was fighting Phoenix last night, and I had my Encase whiff because, I'm pretty sure, Phoenix was airborne at the time. It was still close enough for me to hit with Blizzara.

But once it hits, at least you don't gotta do it again.

Unrelated, how do I Machinist. I can Monk real well- in fact, Monk feels OP for me in full Demon Armor (+6 Strength, fuckers. :black101:)

YoshiOfYellow
Aug 21, 2015

Voted #1 Babysitter in Mushroom Kingdom

McDragon posted:

While I remember, I haven't unlocked any new classes yet, but without spoiling anything else, is Dragoon an option later? Thanks

It is indeed, though it comes a bit later than other classes do.

Internet Friend
Jan 1, 2001

The first thing you should do with any new class is roll the Endless Link surge until you get a good cancel chain built. It makes the combat feel much better.

widespread
Aug 5, 2013

I believe I am now no longer in the presence of nice people.


Internet Friend posted:

The first thing you should do with any new class is roll the Endless Link surge until you get a good cancel chain built. It makes the combat feel much better.

But I dunno when I get one of them, though! I just go for what I think might work most of the time.

OgretailFood
Oct 9, 2012

Recommended by 10 out of 10 Aragami

Going to buy this tomorrow so I have a few questions. How long does it take to unlock the Blue Mage, and how annoying it is to learn Blue Magic?

deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

who the fuck is scraeming
"LOG OFF" at my house.
show yourself, coward.
i will never log off

Txn posted:

Going to buy this tomorrow so I have a few questions. How long does it take to unlock the Blue Mage, and how annoying it is to learn Blue Magic?

A few hours if you're diligent. It unlocks after you defeat 750 total enemies. You unlock monster spells by seeing a monster perform the move, and then killing it. You have to buy and equip the spell at the Central Crystal like any other Ability afterwards, if I'm not mistaken. Once you learn it, you can mutate it with Crystal Surges like any other Ability.

OgretailFood
Oct 9, 2012

Recommended by 10 out of 10 Aragami

Wow, that's definitely better than "confusing and hoping they use Mighty Guard" from past games. Thanks!

McDragon
Sep 11, 2007

YoshiOfYellow posted:

It is indeed, though it comes a bit later than other classes do.

Oh good. Thanks for the answer

YoshiOfYellow
Aug 21, 2015

Voted #1 Babysitter in Mushroom Kingdom

Worth noting is that the base version of Blue Magic are all free once you've "learned" them in the field.

Here's a nifty list of all the Blue Magic and where to learn them.

Sakurazuka
Jan 24, 2004

NANI?

Gonna stick my friend code here in case anyone wants to online sometime: 0662-3227-5955

Saint Freak
Apr 16, 2007

Regretting is an insult to oneself
Buglord
I mastered Blue Mage and got dual wield and I am beyond disappointed you can't dual wield two different types of weapons :/

Diephoon
Aug 24, 2003

LOL

Nap Ghost

Internet Friend posted:

The first thing you should do with any new class is roll the Endless Link surge until you get a good cancel chain built. It makes the combat feel much better.

Can you explain what this means :confused:

YoshiOfYellow
Aug 21, 2015

Voted #1 Babysitter in Mushroom Kingdom

Whenever you are fighting things and using your skills you build up Resonance. Think of it as a limit break gauge essentially. When you build it up enough you can do a Crystal Surge. There's a whole lot of different ones and what you get available on your list is randomized (and keeps refreshing if you keep fighting stuff and building resonance). Crystal Surges give your abilities a chance to mutate with bonus effects such as a chance to proc Poison, extra Fire damage, or so on. You learn this "custom abilities" later back at town.

Endless Link as a Crystal Surge will make your skills mutate with Link: <Other Skill> which means you can animation cancel into that skill. In example for ranger you could have Silencing Venom gain the Link: Nachtjager mutation which means you can fire off Silencing Venom and then immediately go into Nachtjager with 0 delay. It completely streamlines the combat experience and makes skill chaining for every class faster and easier to do.

elf help book
Aug 5, 2004

Though the battle might be endless, I will never give up
OP please post a pic of Lightning.

Cirina
Feb 15, 2013

Operation complete.

Nechronic posted:

Can you explain what this means :confused:

The ability mutations that Endless Link gives allows you to end the animation of one ability early and move into the next while also giving a damage boost. I've got a chain with firearm abilities that lets me shoot off arm shot > leg shot > head shot > cruciform blast > breaksight that lets me use all of them in less than half the time it'd take without the link mutations, and I got this out of literally a single Endless Link surge. I've been trying to get more of them so I have more options on what to chain, but unfortunately it appears rather rare.

Speaking of firearms, are there better classes for breaking Eidolon parts to get more drops in a single battle than Machinist, or is this the best it's going to get?

Cirina fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Feb 19, 2016

Rangpur
Dec 31, 2008

Against my better judgment, I kind of want this. Sounds like I'd have an easier time controlling it than Monster Hunter. How bad does the grind get, and what is this 'bad press' it got in Japan?

Internet Friend
Jan 1, 2001

Cancelling into a skill also gives it a damage boost. If you stack 5 Link mutations the linked skill will do an extra 35% damage.

deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

who the fuck is scraeming
"LOG OFF" at my house.
show yourself, coward.
i will never log off

elf help book posted:

OP please post a pic of Lightning.


Cool & Interesting Protagonist, Eclair "Lightning" Farron

elf help book
Aug 5, 2004

Though the battle might be endless, I will never give up
Thanks!

Saint Freak
Apr 16, 2007

Regretting is an insult to oneself
Buglord
I appreciate that the crazy limit breaks in this game are a giant summon of Ifrit's hellfire or an entire screen of Shiva's diamond dust, or just 'turn into Lightning for a little bit'.

YoshiOfYellow
Aug 21, 2015

Voted #1 Babysitter in Mushroom Kingdom

Well, Lightning gets to use Gestalt Drive where you do a fancy 10 hit combo or such. All the character trances get some sort of big limit break just as the eidolon trances do. :V

widespread
Aug 5, 2013

I believe I am now no longer in the presence of nice people.


Saint Freak posted:

I appreciate that the crazy limit breaks in this game are a giant summon of Ifrit's hellfire or an entire screen of Shiva's diamond dust, or just 'turn into Lightning for a little bit'.

Fun fact: If you unlocked Machinist, you can be my newest favorite class ever, "Cloud With Gun".

DaveKap
Feb 5, 2006

Pickle: Inspected.



Rangpur posted:

Against my better judgment, I kind of want this. Sounds like I'd have an easier time controlling it than Monster Hunter. How bad does the grind get, and what is this 'bad press' it got in Japan?
I have to assume it's due to the rather simplistic nature of the game. I'm still playing through and haven't unlocked all the classes yet but it becomes very obvious very quickly that there isn't much diversity to the play unless you make it yourself. Basically, similar problems that keep MoHon from being popular are making this game unpopular but for different reasons. You could list all the pros and cons that this game has relative to MoHon and you'd still break even at the end.

pnumoman
Sep 26, 2008

I never get the last word, and it makes me very sad.
How's the online community? I don't have gaming friends that play 3ds games, and it seems like this is a game where multiplayer is where most of the fun is, so if there isn't a robust community to play with, I'm not sure if want to get it.

Sprite141
Feb 7, 2009

I should really just
learn to stop talking.
I'm actually enjoying the single player quite a bit. Being a mage makes you kinda squishy, and you can't really abuse skill canceling mechanics as you're doing a magic, not punching poo poo.

Also anyone turned away from the game due to the run uses mana mechanic doesn't need to worry about it. Just think it like stamina from monster hunter, can't just run around and then charge up your hammer on an empty stamina bar.

Besides, auto attacking regenerates mana, which I only learned about by accident when I ran out of it in an ediolon fight. Instantly made the game go from ugh gently caress this regen takes forever what am I gonna do wand it, to oh hey look for openings, regen mana with ranged rod attacks and then blast the bozo. I mean it still is essentially a crystal chronicles game, but it has gotten much better once I realized those two things.

deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

who the fuck is scraeming
"LOG OFF" at my house.
show yourself, coward.
i will never log off

Sprite141 posted:

I'm actually enjoying the single player quite a bit. Being a mage makes you kinda squishy, and you can't really abuse skill canceling mechanics as you're doing a magic, not punching poo poo.

Also anyone turned away from the game due to the run uses mana mechanic doesn't need to worry about it. Just think it like stamina from monster hunter, can't just run around and then charge up your hammer on an empty stamina bar.

Besides, auto attacking regenerates mana, which I only learned about by accident when I ran out of it in an ediolon fight. Instantly made the game go from ugh gently caress this regen takes forever what am I gonna do wand it, to oh hey look for openings, regen mana with ranged rod attacks and then blast the bozo. I mean it still is essentially a crystal chronicles game, but it has gotten much better once I realized those two things.

The skill cancelling mechanic is still there for mages, but the mechanical combos aren't as interesting. Mostly you just get a damage boost out of the Link mutation when you trigger it.

Sprite141
Feb 7, 2009

I should really just
learn to stop talking.

deadly_pudding posted:

The skill cancelling mechanic is still there for mages, but the mechanical combos aren't as interesting. Mostly you just get a damage boost out of the Link mutation when you trigger it.

Really? I got the skill cancel sync yeaterday and it didn't show any possible mutations to my magic. Maybe I got a different one and thought it was the r8ght one.

Also, was not expecting my chocobo to get access to choco meteor so soon (or at all). How deep do the monster buddy mechanics go? Like, do I need to fuse for new monsters or further levels?

YoshiOfYellow
Aug 21, 2015

Voted #1 Babysitter in Mushroom Kingdom

Unfortunately monster fusion isn't the awesome fun SMT kind of fusion, all it does is let you shove one monster into another for an EXP boost. Far as I know, monsters likely just learn some new stuff as they level.

On the subject of links for magic, it does have a minor benefit in that you can bypass cast animations to move on to another spell but it doesn't feel as impactful as animation canceling weapon skills does. It's incredibly helpful for Sage though since their schtick is to cast nothing but ultimate level magic which has huge cast delays.

Sprite141
Feb 7, 2009

I should really just
learn to stop talking.
How do you cancel magic then? I'm planning on going solo mage until I can hang with my brother later on like I do with monster hunter, and this sounds like useful knowledge.

YoshiOfYellow
Aug 21, 2015

Voted #1 Babysitter in Mushroom Kingdom

You can't do anything about the actual castbar but most spells have some sort of animation afterwards of you waving your arms and doing magicky things that puts a bit of a delay on when you are free to move again or use another ability. That animation is what you can cancel into another spell with a Link mutation.

Lower tier magic doesn't have animations that are too crippling so you don't need to worry about it overly much but it can be nifty to have around if you happen to get an Endless Link surge to pop up. It's especially entertaining on Red Mage because if you have a set of spells with links and then pop Chainspell you can literally spam magic as fast as you can press the buttons and poo poo out like 10 spells in 3 seconds.

Kabuki Shipoopi
Jun 22, 2007

If I fall, you don't get the head, right? If you lose the head, you're fucked!

This game is pretty fun. I liked the idea of Monster Hunter, but couldn't get past the combat system. It felt like I was late to the party.

FFEX is like babby's first Monster Hunter. :3 Familiarity with the series helps me feel like I know what I'm doing, more so than MH ever did. :shobon:

I haven't been able to play online very much, can anyone shed light on how communication works in practice? Is communicating very important for harder bosses, or is it just a matter of not being dumb and reading boss tells?

Also, there is a bug that can get you 99,999,999 CP:

I know, :v: gamefaqs

http://www.gamefaqs.com/3ds/805901-final-fantasy-explorers/cheats

quote:

Go to the blacksmith and select Upgrade. Choose an upgrade that costs exactly as much CP as you currently have, so that if you bought it you'd have 0 CP left. Then press up on the control pad, and the game will let you buy one more copy than you can afford. Make sure you have enough materials. After you make the purchase, your CP value will go into the negative, and the game corrects this by giving you exactly 99,999,999 CP. Note that an easy way to get your CP to the right number is to do Roam the World repeatedly until you come back with a CP value that ends with a 0. Then fuse atmaliths (which normally cost high even numbers) to get your CP down, or buy some non-custom abilities. Make sure you calculate how much CP you'll need to do the glitch before you start reducing your CP.

I haven't done this myself so I have no idea if it's been patched out by now or not but there it is if anyone wants to give it a shot.

Orcs and Ostriches
Aug 26, 2010


The Great Twist
I've been sitting on the fence about picking this game up for a while, but got it on the weekend. It's pretty fun, and the multiplayer works pretty decently, which was my biggest hang-up. Only issues I ever really run into are when I'm doing 3* quests at level 20 or so, and someone comes in at level 100 and tries to start up 5* quests before getting bored and leaving.

Resources for the game online are pretty scarce though, surprisingly. Mostly I've been interested in learning the mechanics for mutating spells, like adding elemental damage or buff effects.

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Saxophone
Sep 19, 2006


Is this a game that would heavily benefit from having the New 3ds? I've read that some of the monster Hunter games are pretty hard to control with just the one stick so I thought I'd ask.

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