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Fangz posted:I wouldn't put Medina in S tier for new game. You get her pretty early and she doesn't get her best abilities until quite late. Plus money is short on your first playthrough, so using her slows down getting your other characters upgrades. I like her cause she's Tressa from Octopath Traveller, and she was the best girl. So I did that Mock Battle that rewards you with 2000g and just used that to fund her early use.
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Jul 16, 2022 14:18
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Finished the Golden Route. It was good, though I was kind of burnt out from two playthroughs which dulled it a bit. It was fun watching the villains slowly crumble as they got backed into a corner and reveal what petty shitheads they are deep down, as opposed to the other routes that show various party members at their absolute worst instead. Svarog pointing out that Gustadolph doesn't actually do anything besides take credit for the success of his underlings, in front of Gustadolph's army, fuckin ruled. Same with Exharme malding so insanely hard that his army was broken on the roof-shaped anvil of House Wolfort that he drops the noble warrior facade entirely and just whines whenever someone tries to help him. Also I thought it was unusual that there was no weird divine monster at the end of a JRPG and, magic aside, the conflict stayed grounded throughout. And then Idore went Super Saiyan and was like "HAHA DID YOU REALLY THINK YOU WERE GETTING OUT OF HERE WITHOUT FIGHTING SOME SPACE MONSTER. WHO DID YOU THINK PRODUCED THIS GAME DIPSHIT." Anyway that's probably it for me, I'm not really interested in playing the game 2 more times to pick up Cordelia and Trish(and I straight-up refuse to sell out the Roselle) and the only ending I have left to do is Roland's, which I don't want to because why would you do that. Good game, 8/10 still needs a chapter select function in NG++.
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Jul 17, 2022 09:07
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What is some good advice on how best to use Quahuag, I got him and heard all of the hype but I am too dumb to really wrap my brain around him honestly. Also does Medina's "heal everyone" weapon skill work with TP Physick? In general I wish the weapon skills were described better given that they can cost a lot of materials and money to get.
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Jul 17, 2022 12:40
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Item Getter posted:What is some good advice on how best to use Quahuag, I got him and heard all of the hype but I am too dumb to really wrap my brain around him honestly. This is a problem with a few abilities--I didn't know Frederica's fire shield countered all adjacent attacks, physical or no, or that Corentin's will counter any damage (I think) from anywhere on the map until I tried them out. Celestial salve does not restore TP. Quahaug is just an overall good support unit. More speed for more turns is great. Stop Time allows everyone on the map to charge TP for two turns and can give you a huge advantage since you get more out of TP vs your opponents for most battles (using stop time immediately after the battle begins makes it so that your entire team has their weapon skill ready to go, for example, without messing with the turn order that much). The best part is, if he has full TP, he can immediately unstop another unit. Combined with Decimal or Ezana (can't dodge when you're stopped), you can take out multiple units at a time before they even move for the first time. For some maps, stop time 100% trivializes the difficulty (including the map where you have to protect a few NPCs). The only drawback is that it takes forever to cycle through the stop status each turn.
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Jul 17, 2022 13:23
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I've messed around with Quahog a bit more and can see why he's S tier. The majority of his abilities are nice utility effects but his two broken ones are Stop Time and Reverse Space Time. Reverse Space Time reverts everyone's status to how they were at the previous turn but most importantly does not revive dead units. This allows you to dump a ton TP taking out a target or group of targets with powerful but TP expensive moves and then undo it and repeat the process with a new target. I did not realize that units still gained TP while Stop Time is active which makes it strongest battery ability in the game with the caveat that enemies will gain TP as well. The extra actions are nice too especially since Quahog can unfreeze an ally if you use the move when he has enough TP. Pairing this with Ezana to get perfect accuracy Right of Thunderstorms seems to be the most popular strategy. The problem with Quahog is that his broken abilities are incredibly tedious to use. Stop Time takes forever as you have to watch enemies and allies pass their turns and Reverse Space Time will usually make you have to waste time moving units back in position. Medina's heal everyone skill sadly does not activate TP Physick but the healing is a good bit stronger than just using an HP pellet on everyone.
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Jul 17, 2022 13:29
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Is TP short triangle points? I don’t recall it being explained.
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Jul 17, 2022 13:51
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I would have guessed technique points.
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Jul 17, 2022 14:09
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I feel like there’s a tutorial that calls them Tactical Points somewhere. At least that’s what I’ve been calling them.
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Jul 17, 2022 15:03
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sponges posted:I must be doing something wrong because I haven’t found much use for Medina and Julio Prior to TP physic Medina starts with a 2 TP version of Benedict's Now, which is one of the best abilities in the game. On top of that HP pellets are plentiful and offer cheaper healing than Geela's from a TP economy perspective. After she gets TP physic she immediately breaks the game because of how much extra TP she generates for your sides using ranged HP pellets. Julio prior to any upgrades allows you to activate your mages every turn which is honestly pretty incredible, Ezana just dumping a lightning strike every turn is often enough to cripple an opposed army. Once he upgrades he's part of the core for stuff like perma Ezana lightning which just snaps the game in half. In A and B tier can shift around a lot based on your playstyle I think.
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Jul 17, 2022 15:17
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Harrow posted:I think it makes sense the way the game presents it. The choice presented is to help Roland with an investigation, save the Roselle village from an apparently overwhelming bandit attack, or go say hi to Dad. If the game made it clear his health was even worse and he was still not long for this world, it might feel more pressing to go see him. As it is, the game really presents the Roselle as needing help urgently. And it turns out if you let Frederica handle it on her own it turns out fine. TBH, I was leaning pretty hard on helping out the Roselle village but at some point Frederica convinced me that she has this handled, and given how competent she was so far in the game, I kinda wanted to see if this would pan out as she said she did. With the Roland Investigation, I was more of the thought of "this is important true but do you really need me there for this?" My main motive for going to see Serenoa's dad is because I was suspicious that he was poisoned all along and if he did have some kind of miraculous recovery, his assassins are definitely going to collect now that he's up and about. Plus, he might have better luck in drumming up allies than we had.
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Jul 17, 2022 15:19
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tp is triangle points, this is now canon
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Jul 17, 2022 16:07
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If you want to just be super denegerate, Quahaug's Reverse Space Time and Julio's Inheritor can cause an infinite loop where you can basically do anything you want. Reverse doesn't bring units back to life so you can just burst-damage down one unit at a time with your strongest abilities. It also doesn't get rid of some "special" buffs like invincibility and Geela's auto-res, so with enough patience you can exit the loop with everyone both invincible and with a free 1up. Also don't sleep on Time Compression, with the effectiveness increase it has double the power of Geela's boosted Haste(+6 vs +3). Warping units is always handy, and Turn Back Time is a useful heal that also removes status in some cases.
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Jul 17, 2022 18:54
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It doesn't just remove status, it can also extend status effects, like Erador's invincibility and the Act Twice Benedict grants..
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Jul 17, 2022 19:00
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Fangz posted:It doesn't just remove status, it can also extend status effects, like Erador's invincibility and the Act Twice Benedict grants.. Never thought of that but it sounds great. Quahaug in general just really rewards creativity and being a complete degenerate goblin. Natural 20 posted:Julio prior to any upgrades allows you to activate your mages every turn which is honestly pretty incredible, Ezana just dumping a lightning strike every turn is often enough to cripple an opposed army. Once he upgrades he's part of the core for stuff like perma Ezana lightning which just snaps the game in half. Moment of Truth costs 2tp unupgraded, which limits his mage-helping quite a bit. Once his weapon hits rank 2 and he gets that upgrade though he just takes off. Though tbf he's also a very good fighter early-game so his kill tp+ helps with that.
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Jul 17, 2022 19:14
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Ambush! This looked bad for a minute, until I was able to get everyone up the cliff on the left. Ultimately this was one was more of a team effort, with Jens' ladder getting everyone to safety, and Eridor and Piccoletta covering the retreat. Hughette again put in work, while Frederica trapped a group of enemies in some burning grass. Honestly my two biggest weak links are Roland and Serenoa. They do less damage than I was expecting and seem to be made out of papier-mache
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Jul 17, 2022 23:57
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Ace Transmuter posted:Ambush! This looked bad for a minute, until I was able to get everyone up the cliff on the left. Ultimately this was one was more of a team effort, with Jens' ladder getting everyone to safety, and Eridor and Piccoletta covering the retreat. Hughette again put in work, while Frederica trapped a group of enemies in some burning grass. Serenoa can put in a lot of work with Hawk Dive +1(and it has a surprising height range, so he can sometimes make a mage or archer regret getting too close to a cliff), he's generally meant to just patch up the battle situation, whether that's just hitting a dude in the back or setting up a follow-up or delaying a boss. He's very much not a strict frontliner but he can generally be trusted in range of an enemy or two for a turn. His damage isn't outstanding but it remains good from start to finish. He really needs that dive range though. I keep the Resurrection Earring on him which lets me be a bit more reckless with his beefy attacks and delays. Sometimes all it takes to turn a situation around is just making a boss shut the hell up for a few more actions. Roland on the other hand...yeah. His weapon is puny as hell and he's very squishy on top of that. His beefy movement range makes it tempting to go off on his own but he'll explode if you do that. He's mostly meant to dart out and pick off stragglers(especially lone mages and archers who love dancing around juuuust outside of your range), finish off enemies with easy back attacks, or blast a line with Flash of Steel. He also can push things off of cliffs which can be massively helpful in some maps since Erador's TP is usually at a premium. He can definitely contribute but you should generally keep him away from climby maps with a ton of bumpy terrain. e: Also on damage: according to Math Nerds weapon strength upgrades impact damage more than stat ones, so try bumping that up if you feel someone's lagging. Roland's damage is never gonna be stellar though. Yinlock fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Jul 18, 2022 |
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Jul 18, 2022 00:25
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Roland has fantastic damage but he's reliant on crits. The best way to use him in my experience is to go behind an enemy that is near your lines, trigger his free attack passive, and then use rush to go through the opponent back into the safety of your other units. Eventually his ultimate is the most damaging single target attack in the game. He remains squishy though. Fangz fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Jul 18, 2022 |
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Jul 18, 2022 01:38
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Next battle was short and punchy. Half my party ended up in the Mortal Kombat pit at one point of another but everyone was able to crawl out of it okay. Frederica destroyed most of the enemies, and following advice I picked up Serenoa's Hawk Dive bonus range and he was doing really great damage. Managed to keep everyone alive though, except for Roland, but what else is new?
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Jul 18, 2022 17:34
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Fangz posted:Roland has fantastic damage but he's reliant on crits. The best way to use him in my experience is to go behind an enemy that is near your lines, trigger his free attack passive, and then use rush to go through the opponent back into the safety of your other units. He's TP hungry so it's kinda rough to build up the TP for his ultimate though, and while powerful it's melee range leaves him super exposed. I think horse units would've really benefitted from FE's canto, where leftover movement points can be used after an action. Both he and Hossabara's kits make a lot more sense with that being the case so I wonder if it was in an early build but was too busted. Good point on Rush, I never thought to use it like that. Ace Transmuter posted:Next battle was short and punchy. Half my party ended up in the Mortal Kombat pit at one point of another but everyone was able to crawl out of it okay. Frederica destroyed most of the enemies, and following advice I picked up Serenoa's Hawk Dive bonus range and he was doing really great damage. Managed to keep everyone alive though, except for Roland, but what else is new? Yeah unfortunately Roland doesn't really have a quick-fix like Serenoa's range increase, he just needs levels and upgrades. He'll come into his own eventually! ...Eventually.
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Jul 18, 2022 22:30
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Yinlock posted:He's TP hungry so it's kinda rough to build up the TP for his ultimate though, and while powerful it's melee range leaves him super exposed. I think horse units would've really benefitted from FE's canto, where leftover movement points can be used after an action. Both he and Hossabara's kits make a lot more sense with that being the case so I wonder if it was in an early build but was too busted. Good point on Rush, I never thought to use it like that. Darn; I was hoping one or both of them would pick up a Canto-like ability from their later progression. Of the two I'm definitely finding Hossabara the more useful.
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Jul 18, 2022 23:02
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If Roland gets hit you're using him wrong. Julio is the best character.
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Jul 19, 2022 03:28
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Ace Transmuter posted:Darn; I was hoping one or both of them would pick up a Canto-like ability from their later progression. Of the two I'm definitely finding Hossabara the more useful. Hossa's inability to really function as a main healer costs her later on when deployment slots are at a premium, but when you just need another body to whack stuff and throw out a heal or two yeah she's fun. Flash of Steel is generally where Roland starts getting decent, and he emerges into a beautiful butterfly endgame where his move is absurd and his luck gets big enough to start critting frequently. Either way though he's a frequent forced-deploy for obvious reasons so it's worth keeping him properly leveled/promoted.
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Jul 20, 2022 03:18
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Yinlock posted:Hossa's inability to really function as a main healer costs her later on when deployment slots are at a premium, but when you just need another body to whack stuff and throw out a heal or two yeah she's fun. I think hossabara becomes much better when you use her as DPS instead of a healer. With her TP->damage and desperate defense skills, she hits hard, moves far, and is at acceptable durability. And she can do some backup healing. Takes a while to get there, but it is a niche.
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Jul 20, 2022 16:12
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Roland really likes Benedict giving him double actions because walk in, hit enemy, hit enemy, canto out is as powerful here as it is in Fire Emblem.
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Jul 20, 2022 16:14
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I'm slowly rolling through this game and really enjoying it after the first few opening chapters. It definitely feels like the best pacing for me is doing a mental mock battle in between each storyline battle, both in terms of balancing out the cutscene-to-gameplay ratio as well as getting my units some levels. It's funny because it definitely feels like at some point the mental battles were real battles due to how Hossbara calls them "tasks to do" and the whole, uh, getting items, gold, and permanently using up consumables in them, but I get why they want to be more flexible with it. Because I can't turn down a 'true ending' my first playthrough is the Golden Route and I'm now doing the split party battles with 21 party members. I don't think I have any of the higher tier conviction characters which is definitely making things more difficult, but I'm really enjoying it. I thought that the relatively strict character roles would bug me more but I'm really appreciating how interesting it makes combat strategy.
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Jul 20, 2022 18:56
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You've got at least one of the higher tier conviction characters!
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Jul 20, 2022 19:03
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Finding the Scale of Conviction mechanics weirdly inconsistent. My record so far: 1st Choice: Convince everyone, unanimous vote 2nd Choice: Convince only one person, I win 4-3 3rd Choice: Fail to convince anyone, I lose 3-4 4th Choice: Convince everyone, unanimous vote Maybe I just screwed up on those middle two? Are there particular thresholds I need to hit to convince people or is it just a matter of picking the wrong arguments?
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Jul 20, 2022 19:52
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Ace Transmuter posted:Finding the Scale of Conviction mechanics weirdly inconsistent. My record so far: Your own personal convictions/choices thusfar give more weight to your arguments. So you can still fail on a morality choice (for example) if you pick the correct arguments but have done nothing but liberty/utility all game.
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Jul 20, 2022 19:54
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There's two factors: the choices you pick, and also your conviction score. You earn the latter with conversation options, and other stuff (that give "Serenoa's convictions have been strengthened")
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Jul 20, 2022 19:55
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Yeah the choices you pick make a huge difference, but it's still possible to just plain not have enough conviction to sway people in certain cases. That happened to me once on my first playthrough, for example. I made a second save just to see if I could convince people and even picking every perfect choice, I still couldn't because my Utility wasn't high enough. One thing I really like about the persuasion system is that the special choices you get that are unlocked by gaining information aren't always the right choices. It might seem like they should be, because you had to do something to unlock them, but they're still contextual. You have to learn what motivates each character to learn what would convince them. Usually the unlocked dialogue options are the best choice for someone, but they're never the right choice for everyone.
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Jul 20, 2022 19:57
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Harrow posted:Yeah the choices you pick make a huge difference, but it's still possible to just plain not have enough conviction to sway people in certain cases. That happened to me once on my first playthrough, for example. Yeah, this game does a lot of good work in making you actually think about the choices that you're making. I wish more games would take this approach instead of doing the "extra effort = better than" approach.
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Jul 20, 2022 19:59
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I also like the conviction system because it sort of enforces roleplaying, at least for your first playthrough before NG+ cycles let your conviction scores soar into the thousands. If you've been playing Serenoa as really idealistic and rejecting utilitarianism for half the game, you can't suddenly convince people to make a hard utilitarian choice--the Serenoa you've been playing doesn't have it in him.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:01
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Ace Transmuter posted:Finding the Scale of Conviction mechanics weirdly inconsistent. My record so far: Each person has a different score for each of the 3 scale philosophies: Liberty (red), Morality (green), and Utility (Yellow). They cast their vote based on their own internal score for the philosophies available in the decision. When you talk to someone, your choices alter their score depending on the answers you pick. How much the target's score is changed depends on Serenoa's scores for those attributes, and how you play the game determines what Serenoa's scores are. The "Serenoa's convictions have been strengthened" message indicates when one of his philosophy scores goes up. You won't be able to know exactly which philosophy score has gone up, or which ones the answers align with until playing in New Game+. The game wants you to infer things on your own and roleplay the first time through. Sometimes a person's score is high/low enough that you won't be able to sway them even if you pick the "right" answers, and there are a few times where someone is 100% set on their decision and you can't change their mind no matter what. Boogaloo Shrimp fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jul 20, 2022 |
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Jul 20, 2022 20:09
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I feel like the game does a pretty good job of communicating why a vote failed. There's a bunch of variations on the line characters give when they cast a vote, and most of them boil down to "I disagree with you" or "you make a good case but I'm not convinced." All the latter I've been assuming have been due to picking reasonable dialogue options while lacking the conviction, while the former only came up when I picked a real bad argument.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:17
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I never failed a single vote in all my playthroughs. As long as you are careful with the choices you pick, you should be able to persuade enough people to your side.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:24
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Regy Rusty posted:I never failed a single vote in all my playthroughs. As long as you are careful with the choices you pick, you should be able to persuade enough people to your side. I had exactly one vote that I just plain couldn't succeed at in my first playthrough. I even created a second save so I could save scum and see if it was possible (since I decided I'd play out whatever happened on my first playthrough). It was the vote to smuggle the salt. No matter what choices I picked--even looking up the optimal ones--I couldn't convince a single person, not even the undecided one. Turns out I had really, really, really low Utility. So I can confirm that it's possible for a choice to just be completely impossible because of a low conviction score. Not sure how low a score has to be, but it's possible.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:28
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Harrow posted:I also like the conviction system because it sort of enforces roleplaying, at least for your first playthrough before NG+ cycles let your conviction scores soar into the thousands. If you've been playing Serenoa as really idealistic and rejecting utilitarianism for half the game, you can't suddenly convince people to make a hard utilitarian choice--the Serenoa you've been playing doesn't have it in him. Yeah, I failed one on my first playthrough and just leaned into it for the sake of roleplaying. I thought it made things pretty interesting but I also understand people who have Things To Do and don't want to deviate from them. Harrow posted:I had exactly one vote that I just plain couldn't succeed at in my first playthrough. I even created a second save so I could save scum and see if it was possible (since I decided I'd play out whatever happened on my first playthrough). It was the vote to smuggle the salt. It was this vote for me too lol
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Jul 20, 2022 20:29
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I'm not a fan of the conviction system just because it ends up feeling kind of arbitrary. Like your actual decisions don't matter nearly as much as how you answer some random NPCs, so rather than roleplay you're incentivized to just spread out your answers so you have more options. The point recruits also incentivize this since most of them have dual requirements. I think i'd prefer if all recruits were like Corentin/Rudolph, but then again you'd run the risk of having a seriously unbalanced team. It's a tough dilemma. Harrow posted:I had exactly one vote that I just plain couldn't succeed at in my first playthrough. I even created a second save so I could save scum and see if it was possible (since I decided I'd play out whatever happened on my first playthrough). It was the vote to smuggle the salt. Yeah that one is kind of a brick wall out of nowhere. You need at least 444 Utlility to get Anna to move on it. There's also votes that people won't budge on even in a NG+. Convincing Roland to flood the capital takes like 3000 utility or something ridiculous like that. Frederica and Benedict are also fairly stubborn when it comes to each-other's options. Yinlock fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jul 20, 2022 |
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Jul 20, 2022 20:46
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iirc votes have the largest singular effect on serenoa's conviction scores, but i like that it gets heavily affected by conversations with strangers too, he's considering his words and the impact they'll have on people. it all makes sense to me
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Jul 20, 2022 21:03
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Yinlock posted:I'm not a fan of the conviction system just because it ends up feeling kind of arbitrary. Like your actual decisions don't matter nearly as much as how you answer some random NPCs, so rather than roleplay you're incentivized to just spread out your answers so you have more options. The point recruits also incentivize this since most of them have dual requirements. I liked it specifically because it wasn't just a system where the player gets to make any decision they want. That you have to convince people to go along with it means your choices up to then (represented by your conviction scores) matter in getting the outcomes you want, otherwise no dialogue choice outside of "which path do we take?" would ever matter. I like that it's possible for Serenoa just to not be the kind of person who can convincingly make an argument to smuggle illicit salt or flood the capital city depending on how you've played him up to then. Similarly, the requirements for conviction recruits only encourage you to game the system if you look up what the requirements are. If you're playing blind, there's no real way to know that, oh, if you get 750 Liberty and 1050 Utility you get an old lady who punches real good, not until NG+ anyway, at which point the game reveals all the numbers to you and encourages you to game them to get the other outcomes you didn't see the first time.
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Jul 20, 2022 21:05
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