A Caveman And A Psychic Walk Into A Bar: Let's Play Live A Live!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > A Caveman And A Psychic Walk Into A Bar: Let's Play Live A Live!

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EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Loved this game, did not love the previous LP of it. Hope to see it done justice!
_{it is in good hands}

I am a fan of doing everything chronologically, as such:

:byodood:

first.

Or Caveman for those who cannot speak pre-historic.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2016 09:06

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 01:40

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Xander77 posted:

http://lparchive.org/Live-a-Live/

I still think it was fairly good for its time. And having different people LP different chapters was actually a fairly solid idea, as far as that goes, hit and miss as some chapters were, and a complete miss though the "reprise" was.

Cool idea, poor execution. Live-A-Live is not a game that has a consistent workload.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2016 01:51

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Unoriginal One posted:

I probably shouldn't say strategies, as that implies that they have more than one or two steps. It's more that I recall that a couple of otherwise tough optional fights that people always used to complain about are vulnerable to hilariously stupid things that pretty much trivialize them.

I remember a fair bit of fights like that in this game. It's kind of the whole point for the combat system. Everything is weak to something and if they aren't they're weak to being punched in the face.

Also I always went Ninja -> Kung Fu in my chronological playthroughs, because Kung-Fu is broader in terms of the times while Ninja is clearly a certain time period.
It helps that Kung-Fu is probably my second favorite chapter so I wanted to spread out the stuff I didn't like as much as the stuff I do.

Blaze Dragon posted:

My vote was for Wrestler. C'mon, I even mentioned his name in my post.

I'll try to make my references more clear next time.

There's a problem with that specific reference because it crosses over two scenarios in this case. One on hand you have wrestling and punchamania. On the other, you have Mecha :v:

EponymousMrYar fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Jan 17, 2016

# ¿ Jan 17, 2016 06:09

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

idonotlikepeas posted:

Fair enough!

Kungfu: DejaFu, just because I want the deadly martial arts style to be called that. It's too bad neither origami nor hokuto shinken will fit.
Ninja: Mifune. There's no samurai scenario, but this is the right era.
Cowboy: Curtis. That one's a little bit more obscure, I guess.
Wrestler: Hogan, because I refuse to learn the names of modern wrestlers.
Mecha: No way I'm coming up with something better than Akira.
Sci-fi: Sphere. That one's obvious.

Come on, people, you can think of better names than these.

I am of the opinion that the Default Names are mostly better than those, to get a counter vote going :v:

~~Also AFAIK you cannot actually change the name of the Kung Fu chapter's protagonists~~
Edit: I was wrong! You can certainly do so.
However you only get 6 letters compared to the default's massive amount.

EponymousMrYar fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Jan 18, 2016

# ¿ Jan 18, 2016 03:17

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

AlphaKretin posted:

So do these votes count for the caveman as well or will we go through this with one out-there custom name and the rest default?

It's fine either way. It's not like Pogo/Ayla is very talkative about his name :v:

# ¿ Jan 18, 2016 04:05

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

I thought they were fine as well, they weren't as bad as Leave's first couple of updates for Chrono Trigger where everything was noticably blurry.

However, enough about technical details! Lets get into some Mechanics Details! :science:

Yapping Eevee mentioned the stat panel and the main stats. Those of you who are really into the romhacking scene might notice that it seems relatively familiar... In that it closely resembles Romancing SaGa stat panes.
That's right, this is a SaGa game at heart!
Don't worry, unlike most SaGa games this one actually tells you enough to figure out the underlying mechanics, except they're rather muddled by the caveman stuff. Plus with levels it's more like 'SaGa-lite' in terms of crazy unpredictable stuff that happens.
The important thing to know is that all of your stats are important, not just a few of them and that you have no 'basic' attack, everything is a technique/skill/whatever you want to call it.

Here's the nitty gritty on stats as I understand them from playing this game way too much years ago:

ATK and DEF: Purely equipment derived, these are self explanatory, ATK is how much ATK your weapon gives, DEF is how much DEF your gear gives. More on what these actually mean later.
PWR or Power is your 'physical; prowess. The higher this is, the harder you punch stuff.
Sp or Speed is how fast you are. The game uses this to calculate when everyone gets a turn including enemies. High speed means you get more turns to the enemy which makes you win more and reduces the time that some attacks take (because you're getting more turns to resolve them.)
Vt or Vitality is your hardiness. This isn't just 'you take less damage' but it also affects status ailments in some way.
IQ or Intelligence is how smart you are. This mainly affects how much 'mental' attacks deal but can also affect certain ailments.

Now for why all your stats are important, Techniques.
Namely because there is no 'basic' attack. What stats your technique uses depends on the technique itself. Overall they tend to fall into two broad categories:
Weapon based attacks, where the ATK of your weapon is taken into account plus a relevant stat.
Non-Weapon based attacks, where the relevant stat is the main power behind the attack.

Thus, Weapons are often just as important for what non-ATK stats they give as for their ATK.

DEF is a bit more nebulous. On the surface, the more DEF you have the less damage you take however this is a SaGa game at heart. There are way more attack types than you think.
Overall the best way I can sum up DEF is the same as ATK:
Attacks that DEF takes part in when determining how much damage you take (plus or without a relevant stat,)
Attacks that bypass defense and only take into account the relevant stat (most Mind attacks are a prime example.)

To give a practical application to all this, here's an at-a-glance breakdown of our two characters so far based on these screenshots:

Yapping Eevee posted:

~~Pogo~~ Ayla is strong but kind of slow. This however works out for him as most of his attacks are based on his strengths and those attacks that aren't are generally useful for their status effect rather than their damage. Also something you can't really tell from this screenshot but the dude is a caveman and has crazy high HP growth.
Gori looks statistically strong at first, but check out how much equipment has evened the two of them up already. Gori's fast but other than that he's just got more Vt than Ayla, which he sorely needs because he has bad DEF. His lack of equipment options and his poor tech list make Gori more of a supplemental character.
Pretty sure Ayla has eclipsed Gori in all matters but speed (and maybe Vt) after this grinding session.

Overall the mechanics lesson that LiveALive wants you to learn here is that Stats from Equipment are Important.
Also note how Gori's wearing a bunch of shoe-items as accessories. The game does that a lot: tons of head/body/etc. equipment can be worn as an accessory. You won't gain the ATK/DEF from the item but you will gain it's/some of it's supplemental stats.

EponymousMrYar fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Jan 19, 2016

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 04:25

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Now that we've met Bel and seen exactly how zany the rest of the cast is I don't think it's a spoiler to put forth my unofficial title for this chapter (for whenever it comes up in casual conversation):
A Cave Boy and his Man Ape go on an Excellent Adventure to get Laid.

Bel's brief sprite nudity and Zaki's pixel censorship do help sell this as a caveman fantasy without being too out of place. It helps that it's handled pretty much as goofily as the rest of the chapter.
I mean, look at Zaki's downed pose. You may defeat him BUT HIS LIZARD SHALL NEVER DIE! :black101:

Yapping Eevee posted:

This is a good post that adds in a few details I missed. I might actually include it in the Table of Contents if you wouldn't mind.

_{Also why do so many people miss one of the e's.}

No problem, I even did some more grammar checking on it!
_{Also put in the missing e.}

AlphaKretin posted:

Is he flipping the party off when he's lying on the ground there? Zaki is rude. _{To say nothing of the indecent exposure.}

It sort of looks like it (and you can totally make a case for it) but it's just him continuing to hold his forefinger up. Because apparently he learned the smug 'come at me bro' finger waggle somewhere and has incorporated it into his fighting style as such that he MUST keep that finger extended even when getting his lizard handed to him.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 12:48

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Acne Rain posted:

Problem is the battle system is both slow and opaque, and since certain chapters don't have regular encounters to get you adapted to how your character works and how to handle enemies makes things hard to play.
I'm really not sure how you'd figure out how to play the brawler's chapter without foreknowledge or a guide, and if that's the chapter you chose first well then good luck.

The battle system is actually quite fast. Considering that you have a button to skip turns and that a turn can consist of either moving a single square or turning a single direction it can get really fast when you know what you're doing. Fast enough that the only thing you should be spending more than 20 seconds fighting are bosses and certain tough enemies. Mainly because things should die in your opening salvos.

The Brawler's chapter gimmick is made through it's intro and I understood what was going on even though it was my first chapter :v:

Granted it still kicked my butt all over the place because I hadn't figured out a bunch of stuff and it's one of the harder chapters if you follow it's gimmick to completion.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2016 06:47

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

I love Gori's 'I ain't jumpin' I'ma walk around this hole' animation. I find it the funniest thing in this chapter :allears:

There's a few more things about the battle system I'm saving for when they're a bit more relevant.

Bel's Laa Laa technique is your reward for taking the time to level her up before continuing the story.
It's kind of necessary/makes a certain thing a LOT easier.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2016 21:03

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

You got the Cola Bottle :stare:

That's probably the biggest secret in the game thanks to being on a bonus boss you nominally have to grind to beat.
Bel's Laa Laa is usually my key to beating him aside from getting Ayla to 16 and using his ultimate technique. The strategy is even the same.

Level 16 is going to become something of a theme throughout the game. Hacking aside, it's your level cap. While the XP formula denotes that you should be getting xp at increasingly glacial rates (against the rank 12 encounters you'd be gaining 7 xp at 16) when you actually go to fight them you'll find that you're not gaining anything. It's an enforced limit, 16 is more than enough to beat the chapter bosses.

Zaki being a party member is somewhat telegraphed when you realize all of the other enemies in the setting, including the Kuu tribe dudes, are static images while he has multiple frames and idle animations. As a party member he's there if you rush through this chapter normally without leveling up much. That is to say he makes the fight possible, you're still fighting a dang T-Rex and he's mostly just got his attacks from when you fought him (yes, you can use Barideen to pixel flash the T-Rex.) Ayla still has to do the bulk of the work while Gori's biggest contribution is making poison fields under it and then being dead weight/item tosser. Bel nominally gets up to level 3 so she can at least heal everyone when she's not dying from a single attack.

I usually do Kung-Fu third in my 'chronological runs' but it's got some good stuff to teach. It's the most helpful chapter for figuring out the combat of the game.

Edit: Oh right, the boss theme is awesome and pretty much always fits despite the disparity of the chapters. It's good to get you pumped for taking on whatever comes your way! :black101:

EponymousMrYar fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Jan 21, 2016

# ¿ Jan 21, 2016 14:28

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

EclecticTastes posted:

No, for multiple reasons, none of which I can really discuss in-depth right now, but keep an eye on the LP, it'll be all the explanation you'll need. Well, I can at least say that low-level play isn't as unfun as some other games (SaGa Frontier definitely had an issue with slow start-up for each character's story...).

There's one: length. The Caveman chapter is probably tied for second longest in the game if you craft up a storm and level to 16 to beat the King Mammoth. They don't overstay their welcome at all and their stories are all done pretty well.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2016 19:29

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Ultimately one of this game's big strengths is that you can pick up any chapter and generally go. Any particular order that wins out is going to make someone unhappy because a particular scenario comes in a particular way. Personally I'm not that big of a fan of the Sci-Fi chapter (even though it's pretty good at what it does, I just don't do thing of what it does) but I like seeing the chronological movement of the game even though it doesn't actually have one.

AlphaKretin posted:

My 2 cents is that the latter option will show up after the entire LP in the archive, making the context for it a distant memory, and while you don't have to plan your LP around the archive that's the only reason to preserve other posts like this.

Agreeing with this unless it's contextual-less stuff. My mechanics post would work fine on it's own for example. That's my preference based on lurking the archive for eons and remembering a trend in some of my fav lps on there.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2016 02:44

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

EclecticTastes posted:

Oh, just saw this is a "tag spoilers" thread rather than no-mention, so, anyone who hasn't played Live A Live, don't look: spoiler

There's a key problem with this: The Watanabe subplot only becomes a subplot in the Mecha Chapter. In every other chapter it's an oblique reference, enough that it took until my 4th playthrough for me to cotton on to them. Thus it doesn't matter if you do Mecha 'too early' because then you can see the Watanabe's for what they are.

There's another benefit to convergence that I feel outweighs that stipulation. Except it doesn't quite work out then either :shepicide:

LiveALive: stop trying to bring order to a system that does not care for it!

# ¿ Jan 23, 2016 01:14

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

The Original Alien and Isaac Asimov's I Robot are among the veritable plethora of film/sci-fi references in this chapter.

Time for more video-gamey stuff though.

Eevee mentioned this chapters gimmick in that Cube is a simple robot and thus is prone to instant game overs. Really, every chapter in LiveALive has at least one gameplay gimmick though most often they have two with the other being more character specific.

Caveman chapter's gameplay gimmick was actually crafting, what with the whole 'we make and use tools and therefor are more awesome than T-rex's' bit about prehistoric fantasy.
Ayla's personal gimmick is the scent thing.

I'll go ahead and spoil it right now, Cube doesn't have his own gimmick. You might count his hat, it's a pretty nice hat. But really he doesn't need one because his chapter is all about the atmosphere and experience of, well what Pittsburg Lambic said. That and he's just a little personal project helper bot, what do you expect!?

# ¿ Jan 25, 2016 12:41

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Captain Square provides the meat of the combat in this chapter. It is a diversion first and foremost and while it is technically possible to beat it in one go there's some luck involved.

The combat lesson that LiveALive wants you to learn here is that Encounters can be Puzzles. Sometimes you have to take advantage of all your moves for what they can do rather than the damage/effects they do. And sometimes you have to take advantage of what enemies do that can harm other enemies.

Neptune sucks because two hits kills you but it's a weird sort of damage race, usually I try to get one of the Captain's quicker AoE's off (Pi Meson I think, it's been awhile and I'll have to try it again.) to clear the field a bit and then space phage/plasma ball the La Li to death.

Space Phage is also decent on Pluto because it's quick and the status' are great for messing with all the Tope Suicide's that'll come your way. Bunkering down to heal is still somewhat necessary.

Also the Behemoth is loose. Alien intensifies.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 14:57

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

In a weird way, the game practically expects you to take a crack at Captain Square and get up to Earth/Saturn at least.

It helps for later on.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 19:25

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

EclecticTastes posted:

That's one of the more subtly brilliant parts of Live A Live, is the clever way the music is often handled. They'll frequently use just part of the melody or mess with the pitch to economize the soundtrack, making it feel like there are more different pieces of music in the game.

Lesse, LiveALive is 1994, 1995 was Chrono Trigger, FF VI was also in 1994 so it's safe to say that at this point of time Square knew the ins and outs of the SNES well enough to have achieved technical mastery of it.

Overall every chapter has it's own main theme and a normal battle theme plus the excellent Megalomania boss theme. There's a surprising amount of use they get out of that small number of tracks however.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 23:09

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Yapping Eevee posted:

Huh. That's pretty nifty. But man, trying to get to Pluto without the memory card sounds like the most thing.

Neptune's the :suicide:

part. When I was picking through this game I remember being able to reliably get to Neptune with my main RNG-like deaths being from Fire attacking BS-ingly fast and the main Decoy getting multiple hits on me. I never had solid luck with Neptune, it always boiled down to whatever stars took their moves before me and if they were close enough to get their attack off.

Of course then you die on Venus while trying a no-memory card run of it and welp :v:

# ¿ Jan 28, 2016 00:09

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Xander77 posted:

Are you playing this on the SNES? Save states are a thing.

The Memory Card is pretty much the next step down from savestates. If you're doing a no-memory card run for the challenge why would you use save states? :v:

# ¿ Jan 28, 2016 03:19

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Glazius posted:

I'm glad we actually managed to stop Rachel from getting out in to the harsh vacuum of space. ...kind of odd that nobody said anything about something in the system trying to get her to do it, though.

Maybe it was a tight-beam transmission to her that we happened to pick up on?

Text scrawl on the wall computer. Due to the way everyone's positions are it's reasonable that she's the only one able to read it.

Cube might but as we've seen he is the observer bot. He watches everyone do their thing.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2016 06:22

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Glazius posted:

Unlike humans, Cube doesn't know what it is to be afraid.

That might just see him through this.

IF(Anything other than Behemoth)
PRINT("what is fear?")
ELSE
PRINT("oh kato oh kato oh kato aaaaaahhhhhhhhhx10^6th)

# ¿ Jan 30, 2016 04:56

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

The last and most obvious reference becomes unavoidably obvious this update: it's Space Odyssey 2001. It's also the biggest 'spoiler' of this chapter.

Regarding the Computer's name/designation it's either a typo or an indication of how the Computer has gone haywire/bugged out enough to get it's designation 'wrong.' I mean once you scan it it turns into a crazy demon-head thing rather than code so...

Fitting with Captain Square's fights being based on puzzles, this boss fight is a puzzle as well (hence why I said the game assumes you played Captain Square up to Earth/Mars at least.) Really the only strategy is to blow up Stabilizers with Maser Cannon before blowing up the main computer with it/whatever you want. If you're using Maser Cannon you can even skip the last couple of Stabilizers because it does bonkers damage on top of Anti-Field. There only way to die is to not heal enough and if you spam Upgrade a bunch of times at the start of the fight you'll go start to out-turn the computer to make it even more trivial to pound it/heal up in time.

Overall Cube is surprisingly powerful for a friendly little robot.

MightyPretenders posted:

The last LP pointed out that Cube's predessesor should not have been able to move without a power supply. They figured it was a plot hole, but I'm not so sure...

If anything it's a hint.

Such power supplies should be relatively common on board so it's no stretch to imagine that the main computer either got something to stick a power pack into Cube-02 or powering it by transmission somehow.

EponymousMrYar fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Jan 31, 2016

# ¿ Jan 31, 2016 00:28

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

EclecticTastes posted:

Pretty sure Wu Tang Secret can fit inside the name entry boxes, if you want to go that route. In order to fit the default name, you're given three boxes in the AG translation.

I haven't been able to find any button combination that extends it past 6 characters so the default seems to be using a special work around.

EponymousMrYar fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Jan 31, 2016

# ¿ Jan 31, 2016 01:46

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Bellmaker posted:

Wait, is it possible to jack in somewhere else? I've only done it there.

You can only jack in the Captain Square cabinet and it's the only possible in-game explanation for where Cube gets all of these abilities. Eevee hasn't shown off Cube's Equip or Status screen because you cannot access them in this chapter (to add to the whole 'Cube is for being robot, not for fighting!' angle of the chapter.)

If the Behemoth didn't have insta-kill powers Cube could have completely destroyed it.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2016 06:27

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

In this case it doesn't. There's cases for both ways being right and while I feel one is stronger than the other the game doesn't really care as long as you recognize the general theme of the name.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2016 23:13

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

This is my favorite chapter. In the theme of LiveALive it does a lot with surprisingly little.

Anyway, Combat stuff.
This Chapter's Lesson is that Techniques can be based off of any Stat, not just ATK. All of the Master's techniques work off of a different stat shown in their tooltip.
Long Hu Liang PoWan is based off of Power,
Bai Li Dao Yi Bu Jiao is based off of Health/Vit,
Lion Hand is based off of 'luck' (it's either a hidden stat or mistranslated, the former wouldn't surprise me in this game especially since it's been consistent through both versions,)
The Tech we haven't seen is based on Speed,
Squirrel Kick also goes off Speed,
and LaoHuZhiWu is IQ.
FushaNoSha requires 'all' stats, but it's pretty much just a counter tech.

Also this chapter combines it's Character and Chapter gimmicks into one with the whole Inheritance thing. Eevee will show that off next update but it's important to have this choice now, it makes things a lot easier.

I always choose Li Kuugo because as you see above, Speed has the most techs based off of it and Li has the highest speed. She's actually the second fastest character in the game. Most of her personal techs are also based off of it. Also the game knows she's the only female main character candidate in the entire game. It will come up again if she gets voted successor. :ssh:

Yuan is sort of the 'default' inheritor although it's interesting how they accomplished that. He's got the Highest IQ and his personal techniques are the most interesting being that they're based around elemental damage. He's got a Fire and Blizzard punch at the moment IIRC.
Sammo is big and slow. He has a lot of HP and Vit but most of his techniques have a charge time on top of him being quite slow, so I've never gone with him. He does hit pretty hard.

Also all three are equally viable thanks to a very special thing later. It's also part of why this is my favorite chapter. :allears:

AlphaKretin posted:

Throwing in another vote for Li. Does the game really make you pick between them with only a vignette each to go off? I only know who I want because anime kids and anime gluttons are tiring.

Eevee's kind of spoiling it but my first time through I didn't know I was making a choice before that choice happened. Having seen a lot of this sort of genre though since then I really should have known the choice was happening when it does.
Assuming limited foreknowledge yes this is all you have to go off of, since the only other way to know what they can do/how they work is to go and kill a tiger or two with them. Even if you try to wait out the fights to see what they can do all of the Martial Arts technique's this chapter serve as counters, so they'll only get one hit in before you obliterate them.

EponymousMrYar fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Feb 3, 2016

# ¿ Feb 3, 2016 03:32

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Yapping Eevee posted:

If it's pointed out in the chapter intro, I don't think we can really call it spoilers.

It's more of the fact that you're doing the vote now than anything, but I did admit I was kind of dumb for it during my first playthrough.
I went through this chapter like, 20+ times when figuring out the battle system and how the inheritor is actually chosen.

Unoriginal One posted:

Yuan: His HP will always be abysmal, but the rest of his stats end up so high he's actually not too bad off on that front in spite of it. (spoiler)

99 isn't the stat cap. Yuan does get good stats but the only reason I've found for him getting those stats is that he levels up like woah. Also his personal techs are kind of lackluster, which is why I generally prefer Li.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2016 07:42

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Looper posted:

the chapter description does say you have to choose one disciple but i still think the selection itself is a little obtuse. those training sections are framed such that you may try to keep everyone pretty even or address their weaknesses, when you really do want to put all your eggs in one basket

Yeah, this threw me for a loop until I figured it out. It's pretty much based on levels, whoever is the highest is your surviving disciple. Because you have to train four times per area you cannot even everyone up, someone HAS to come out on top.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2016 21:33

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Carbon dioxide posted:

Wouldn't it be possible to train two people equally? Or does their level difference at the start make this impossible somehow?

Their initial level differences make that impossible. Everyone gains one level per training session at 4-7 ish, there's some overlap with Yuan (he'll double level twice) and Li to some extent. Sammo will level up slower than everyone and IIRC you need one or two more training sessions in order to match levels with two characters.

Pretty sure the pasty guy was honest in his 'help us!' plea and someone saw the Master head into town to take care of it so that's when they attacked the place.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 03:19

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

The final move will always be SENGAZANKEN! to me.
Because that's how it was transliterated in the previous translation :v:

But that's why all three disciples are viable, the Final Move is instant, has no drawbacks, and for the most part is statless. I want to say it's damage is based strictly on level. It's pretty much the best single target tech in the game. Everything stronger has a particular drawback.

ShuiNiaoJiao is also Li's main 'better than inherited Martial Arts' move, since even with it's charge time she's fast enough to get it off almost immediately.

Mecha next, sticking with my Default Names vote too.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 04:49

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Oh man I forgot how much Sammo's ~~Sengazanken~~ final move reminds me of TRUFFLE SHUFFLE.

It truly is the strongest big boned art there is.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 21:45

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

You can do a full genocide run, you just have to wait after a certain point to get the items and backtrack.

It's generally not worth it though.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 03:28

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

This is a pretty decent chapter. Sonic-maru is funny since both references are valid.

Lessons Time:

This Chapter's Character Gimmick is straight up explained: press Y button to disappear. It's essential for doing stealth runs although it has the issue that you cannot move at all while using it. Then again, it also gives intangibility so...

The Chapter Gimmick is the whole 'Stealth vs. Genocide' run bit. There are straight up 100 NPC's in the castle that you can kill. You can kill all of them, or none of them. Both are valid runs. The reward for killing no-one is a particularly powerful item that you can get the equivalent of in other ways. Also it's impossible to do some of this chapter's content in a stealth run (that fish :argh:

)
Getting 100 kills on the other hand is also not a walk in the park, since if you kill everyone you come across you're going to miss out on some people (as well as some very, VERY important items for ~~Oboro~~ Sonic-maru.)

Overall, the Stealth Run is more of a novelty run in that it's completely possible and cleverly designed for you to do so. But the true path to power is through XP! :black101:

Oh right, about our character. Sonic-maru, as befitting his crazy running speed is straight up the fastest character in the game, bar none. However most of his techs are based on PWR/INT due to being attacks or ninjutsu although some of the ninjutsu follow weird rules. IIRC he does have an attack that runs off of his bonkers speed, but quite often you'll want to use his ninjutsu for their effects rather than their damage.

That's pretty much this Chapter's Combat lesson too, status effects are pretty powerful and enemies generally only have four resistance stages to it: vulnerable (nigh 99% application) neutral (50-50) resistant (~10-20% application) and immune (like, 1% chance of application.) Nothing in the game is outright immune to all status effects, there is always a chance to apply them.

EponymousMrYar fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Feb 10, 2016

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 01:07

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

idonotlikepeas posted:

There is a way of levelling even as a stealth player. (I stealthed this section and ended it with a reasonable level.)

Oh right, I forgot about that because it's a right pain. Should have said 'nigh impossible.'

It doesn't help that Ninja is my least favorite chapter so I tended to get tired with it by the time I was ready for the optional stuff :v:

# ¿ Feb 13, 2016 01:30

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

EclecticTastes posted:

I think it might be that projectile attacks, in particular, are blocked. It's interesting how there are so many different types of attacks, but their properties only ever come up in fairly isolated situations.

Yeah, it's projectile attacks, Ryoma's gun attacks are also blocked by the wooden logs. Most attacks are pretty logical at least, Sonic's butterflies and other jutsus get around the wooden logs no problem (Cube's Maser also pierced through his boss and would likely do the same here.)

Speaking of Ryoma everyone else has pretty much done his historical relevance and the basics of how he does in combat, so here's some nitty gritty game stuff about him:

40 ATK power on a weapon is really strong (you get another 40/48 power weapon as a reward for stealth play for instance.) You certainly won't see anything as or stronger in any of the chapters so far. However a previous lesson comes back here: Ryoma's attacks kind of suck in terms of damage. Sonic will regularly out damage him with his attacks and Ryoma is most useful as another target to be attacked/tossing items/stunlocking enemies with.

So you might have the entirely reasonable thought of nicking that sword from him. You can certainly change Ryoma's equipment and he can apparently use the way-crappier swords you've picked up as well. Except it won't take. You'll exit the screen and go about your business until you get into a fight/get another piece of equipment and notice something off. So you'll go into the equip screen and Ryoma will still have his sword. The game does not let you nick his Yoshiyuki.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2016 22:43

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

DOOP posted:

the Super-League LP (and Last Remanent and etc, etc) is image heavy and firefox loads that just fine

It's large GIFs that freeze Firefox. Has to do with the new smooth scrolling and hardware acceleration settings in it.
Static images are fine because they're static.

Glazius posted:

Yeah, it's interesting how the castle is... evolving, I guess you could say? Some fights you want to avoid but can't (can you run from them?) and the traps are ramping up.

IIRC there are a subset of fights you cannot run from. This is actually more of problem than usual because said fights are a right pain.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2016 05:29

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

While the Grappling Hook is kind of meh when you've disabled all the traps, it's pretty necessary if you haven't.

Yapping Eevee posted:

This room would be absolutely packed with Trap Masters if we had come here earlier, but defeating Gennai disables all of his traps throughout the castle. They’re a hazard that dumps you in that pit if touched, which of course goes straight to the jail cell.

There’s a nice armour upgrade up here, as well as an item we can use on those poles to make a tiny shortcut through this room.

Eevee isn't kidding, that small hallway below where he got the grappling hook has a solid two lines of Trap Masters and their lethal Fire/Other element traps. They're positioned in such a way that you would have to fight all of them in order to get down there without using a grappling hook.

That's somewhere around 30-40 battles with encounters that can kill you almost effortlessly if they use the wrong move.

The grappling hook lets you skip that. Thank goodness.

Edit: also the This's Awesum item is endemic to the game being SaGa-like.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2016 06:35

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

The main danger with the end boss here is the poison tile damage on top of the poison damage.
If you've taken care of/deal with that he's a pushover.

While I've beaten Ryunosuke before I've never managed to beat the fish. O-Robo would die quickly (because he'd have bad levels from only getting some kills) and without him I wouldn't have the damage output to outpace Iwama.

Could also be because I use a lot of items on Ryunosuke. :v:

Choco1980 posted:

So...there really is no reward for a 100 kill streak?

The XP from them is the only reward.

Even then unless you abuse the ghosts/cheat code you're probably not getting 16 without the bonus bosses.

As for chapter, I vote Wrestling, name of Domon.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 06:51

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

I don't think wrestler is weak because it's so short.

It says what it needs to say and gets on with things.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2016 09:22

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 01:40

EponymousMrYar: Jan 4, 2015; The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Huh, never knew about the Watanabe moment in there. Then again I usually had a hard enough time getting Great Asia to use his Frankensteiner move.
Wrestling is a great chapter for learning a bunch of combat things since you get a variety of moves and an obligation to try them out.

Eevee kind of did this chapter's fights in order of difficulty. Tula Han and Jackie are the easiest since they're incredibly vulnerable to their own moves and they don't do a lot of damage. Namkat is middling (spiral kick does a lot but the rest of his moves don't), Moribe is medium-hard depending on how much he uses his learnable moves because they are the best moves ~~Masaru~~ Andre has, bar none. That means they're also great at killing you.
The wrestlers are the hardest, Max because he does tons of damage, and Great Asia because he prefers biting you to using his learnable moves (which also do a bunch of damage.)
Odie can be pretty tough but uh, Tsuda 3-4 times plus a steady diet of Abise-geri kills him with no problems. That's Andre's winning combo and why learning Moribe's moves is so crucial.

So here's the combat lesson for this chapter: Facing is important.

For enemies it's as Eevee said, their facing determines their range for moves. Unlike the characters who can use their moves in a 360 area, enemies are generally restricted to their forward 180 degree ranges. This is to balance them a bit since they can have tons of HP and powerful moves.
However there's also an aspect of balance for the characters: you take more damage from back attacks.
How much more is somewhat variable but I want to say it's in the ballpark of 50% more damage.

What determines the back of your character?
This is actually pretty simple and logical, everything in the game faces on a diagonal and can turn four directions so you have two 'front' spaces where they should be and two 'back' spaces the same.

Still keeping to my default names vote from way back when.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2016 21:51

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