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 Now that we're essentially out of the tutorial, it's time to really understand just what this game is about! This update is basically two mini-updates in one. First, let's learn a bit more about the characters of Gnosia!  Special Item is basically a bit of info about that character. As we play more, events may happen that unlock more info about that character. It's always good to do so when possible, even though when we do so that character ends up being more powerful and gaining more abilities, making playing against that character in the future more difficult. The "Human" and "Gnosia" icons mean that Cassidy must be that role to unlock that info, not the character. Anyway, on to the characters!   Gina is probably the most "generic" of the group, though even then she's not really that generic. She's reserved but confident, and that carries over to her game. She's middle-of-the-road as far as threat level, not as obvious a target as the likes of Raqio, Comet, and Shigemichi, but also doesn't blend in as well as Sha-Ming. She can hold her own as Gnosia, but isn't particularly fond of acting as one.   SQ is arguably Gina's opposite. She's always seeking to form collaborations, whether with Cassidy or the rest of her crew mates, and is all about winning people over, whether with her Charm making people come to her defense, or her high Performance if she happens to be Gnosia. She's also able to fly under the radar despite her odd personality. She's hard to eliminate, but otherwise she's not going to control a game.   As you may have guessed, Raqio embraces Logic at the expense of other social skills. They're a fantastic ally to figure out logical fallacies for you, and they can be a solid Gnosia if they can survive the first day or two, but of course the problem is actually surviving those first couple of days due to standing out so drat much. Raqio also can't spot a lie worth a drat.   Stella's an all-rounder, though with a Logic bias. She basically flies under the radar, though as far as targets go she's middle-of-the-road like Gina. She can be annoying when against you, but otherwise she's kinda just there. She'll rarely win you a game, but also won't lose you a game most of the time (even if our current experiences with Cassidy suggest otherwise...).   Shigemichi is said to have been based on a real person one of the devs knew, and I can believe it. Shigemichi is friendly enough that he can influence people, but doesn't really have the mentality to do this effectively. He is particularly bad at being a Gnosia, but if he can survive the first couple of days (since he is an easy target and all), he can stick around long enough to potentially help and/or hurt your game. Likely the latter if he's your Gnosia companion...   Setsu is understandably the most experienced of the group, so thus is pretty solid all-around. Their main issue is they may stand out compared to most other characters, but even then they'll usually win over enough people to have a fighting chance of sticking around. Also, Setsu being the only other character that can loop means that they may have a special connection with your character, so that may even influence how you handle Setsu...   Chipie is another all-rounder, though his strength is spotting lies. He doesn't stick out too much, besides that cat with the oddly-long neck, and he leans a bit more toward "emotion" than "logic", but he's still a pretty solid player overall, even if he's more of a follower.   Comet excels at spotting lies, and she also excels at being terrible at lies. She mostly relies on emotion if she doesn't have any lies to work with, but if you're a human there's generally less risk in trusting her intuition than not. Of course, her low Stealth means she's usually an easy target for cold sleep or elimination.   Jonas could be one of the best players in the game if his personality weren't so chaotic. In the right circumstances, Jonas can avoid being targeted, but if he opens his mouth enough then he's as easy a victim as Raqio. Jonas ends up being kind of there, an easy sacrifice if you need one, but not always the most useful of allies.   Kukrushka can be one of your best allies or one of your most fearsome enemies. This is because she doesn't rely on Logic at all, but acts almost purely from emotions. If she likes you, she'll defend you unless you end up Definite Enemy (and even then she may stick by you, Kukrushka is loyal like that). If she's against you, though, then good luck, as Kukrushka is incredibly hard to eliminate due to her high Stealth and Charm as well as certain abilities like Regret. She's even a very solid Gnosia! It's best to hope you and Kukrushka are on the same team...   Sha-Ming plays the most like Cassidy, as his priority is to simply make it to the end. He's not interested in finding the Gnosia, just to survive. He won't hesitate to go against a Gnosia ally to last longer, and he even has a few tricks up his sleeve to ensure he stays until the end.   As we've already experienced, Yuriko is the most powerful character in the game, able to completely railroad the entire direction of a game with her presence. If she wants someone gone, chances are good that person is gone. Her only weakness is how obvious a threat she is, so if you can somehow get people against her, then you should be able to eliminate her. But good luck if she's a Gnosia and you're a human...   Otome is a bit unique in her gameplay. While she's more logical-leaning, she can also be hard to eliminate due to her Charm and skills. She's kinda mediocre otherwise, and she still can rely on emotion at times, but overall she's smarter than most would give her credit for, even as a sentient dolphin.   If there's one character that's going to be utterly ignored by everyone, it's Remnan. This means his Charisma is utter garbage, but it also helps with his Stealth, and it means he's pretty solid as an outside observer. Don't underestimate him just because he seems to be some random nobody.  Anyway, that's our cast! It's time now to figure out how to actually play Gnosia, because my 2-11 record certainly isn't doing the job! And in case you're curious, I started a new game to get to this, because Gnosia auto-saves and I didn't want to start a new loop on our current run just to show this off.  I'm going to show everything. This will spoil one bit we haven't seen yet, but I think I'd rather spoil it here than save this for later, since we're about to get into the real meat of this game... If you want to remain unspoiled, feel free to skip this.  As you may have surmised by now, Gnosia is a sci-fi single-player Werewolf variant.  And this is the main spoiler I was talking about. We haven't encountered it yet, but there's one last role we haven't encountered yet called the Bug. I'll go into it more once it comes up. If I could ask of you all still reading for a favor, please use spoiler tags when talking about the Bug. You know, in case people actually skipped this part to keep unspoiled. I mean, it's better not to really talk about it until it comes up anyway, but in case you want to talk about it beforehand.  Amicability and Trust are hidden values that affect how likely a character may be targeted for Cold Sleep. This is basically the behind-the-scenes stats that determine who votes for whom for cold sleep and what causes people to be suspicious/protective of other people. These stats won't pop up during actual gameplay, but it's something to keep in mind as you're navigating what actions to take during debates and/or the night phases...  This is also why it's important to strike a balance between talking too much and being too quiet, as both can garner Hate. There are abilities to decrease this, but since we don't have any, it's best to be as middle-of-the-road as possible. Do some agreeing/disagreeing when other people bring up arguments against/for characters, and occasionally bring up your own. Don't be afraid to go on the offensive against a target you want eliminated, but also understand you risk garnering more Hate doing so and that it could be turned against you. This is important until you get to the point where your stats are so high that it won't matter.    Here's our thorough explanation for the six main stats. Charisma is for trying to guide the course of gameplay as far as who's targeted, which can be important if you're a take-charge type who wants to eliminate particular threats (whether because you know they're an enemy, they're a general threat, or you just don't like them). Logic is for attacking characters that others trust emotionally, so it's handy to have to get through to more emotional characters like Kukrushka. Performance meanwhile affects how generally dis/likable a character is, while also covering up lies for Gnosia. If you want to play a lot of games as Gnosia, Performance is probably your most important stat. Charm keeps people liking you, even as others target you. Stealth helps prevent you from being targeted, so you can blabber more than usual against your preferred target. Stealth in particular is very nice for our particular style of play, i.e. staying alive as long as possible. Finally, Inituition lets you spot lies, which is critical as far as finding Gnosia (or AC Followers/Bugs if you're Gnosia), though since that's all it does it works best as an all-or-nothing stat. Either focus mostly on Intuition to spot most lies, or ignore it to focus on the other stats. And of course, from what we've learned above, make sure to keep track of the other characters and their stats. Like the example above, if Comet suspects someone and goes after them hard, it may be because she caught them in a lie due to her high Intuition.  As for skills, you'll learn them from night events, even if you don't have the required stats. Actually getting these events may be a crapshoot, though. Once you learn them, you still need to meet the skill requirements to unlock and use them, like we did in the previous update for the skill to ask people to reveal their roles. Some skills are really handy to have, and I'll go into them as I unlock them.  In my experience, it's always good to prioritize events over anything else (besides leveling up, which you can do independent of who you visit). You can also choose to go to sleep in your room instead of visiting anyone, but there's no reason to do so. If nothing else, visiting someone will make them like you a tiny bit more and give you a general indication of how they feel about you.    This is a good guide at logical inconsistencies, which will be more relevant once Cassidy learns how to define people as Definite Humans/Enemies. Once you learn the appropriate skill and the logic works out to prove someone as Definite Human/Enemy, then the option will pop up, but you still have to figure out who the Definite Human/Enemy is, so it's important to know these scenarios. It's also important to keep these scenarios in mind as Gnosia so you don't accidentally set yourself up as a Definite Enemy.  You've seen most of this already, but here it is explained for reference.   As mentioned, we also have reference to who has been revealed as what, as well as the starting criteria. You'd be surprised how useful the latter is, as you may not remember the criteria you started with. It certainly happened to me a lot before I remembered I could use R to remind myself of it!  Data Reference will tell you your role, your partners if you're Gnosia, as well as the people who trust you the most and least. The last two are particularly convenient, as you know to keep the person who trusts you around while you target your detractors for cold sleep (or you can eliminate them as Gnosia, but that runs the risk of people thinking you did it as a retalitory tactic).  The Discussion Log is invaluable for keeping track of what's going on. It won't track where every character went for/against a character, but it'll track the highlights, and that'll help you decide who to target. After the game concludes, it will also tell you when people spotted others lying as well as night actions, like if the Gnosia targeted someone protected by the Guardian Angel. Not particularly helpful in the future, but still not bad to know!  Yeah, ultimately our main goal is to unlock all information about all characters. Luckily for you, that's something that I have to work towards, not you. All you have to do is tell me to do stuff as I struggle to actually do it while also reveal stuff. Don't worry, I've done it once before, so I know how to do it again!   The reports. These are handy, especially the Engineer reports, but the Doctor reports can also be useful if you've sussed out the real Doctor. For instance, if two Engineers reveal Day 1, and both say a chaaracter is human, then that character must be human since one of the positives includes the true Engineer.  The menu screen. The game auto-saves, so there's no manual saving whatsoever. This makes LPing this without modding potential a fun affair since if I gently caress something up, I won't be able to show it, but then I like living on the edge...  Again, it's always best to prioritize events over all else. Even if they're just collaboration requests or Gnosia advice or whatever, it'll be useful information to have. That said, it could be more character info or more skills, and both of those are our top priority!  You should be familiar with this by now. Well, except for the fact that the main character here actually won a game, that's probably confusing and nonsensical to those following this particular Let's Play. But yes, it is possible to actually win at this game...!  Event Search is a thing I will explain later, as it's not relevant to us yet. Otherwise, we've just reached the point where we can customize everything we want (except Bug, which will be relevant later...).  While we could just do Werewolf-style games for awhile, this LP of course is going to try to show off as much of the game as we can. Thus our plan is to reveal as many Notes/Special Items for characters as we can. As to how we do that, well, it'll depend on the character and many other factors. Luckily only I have to worry about this, so you can just sit back, make suggestions, and tell me how bad I am as I keep losing over and over.  I said I'll explain this later. This explains this now, but I will still explain this later when it becomes relevant, so feel free to unread the things you just read.  A lot of getting information on particular characters involves keeping them alive, unsurprisingly. Thus it's good to Defend them and Collaborate with them at times. If you're Guardian Angel, it may also be handy to protect them so they stick around longer. Have fun if you're having to take someone like Raqio to the end... From here, we move on to the FAQ part of the game.  Basically, "Don't talk too much." and "Raise your Stealth." I've never had a problem with this in my first game, but there was also like one specific day out of hundreds of loops where I dominated the conversation of the day, and that was so I could make sure my Gnosia ally, who would've otherwise been revealed as a Confirmed Enemy, wouldn't be revealed. Luckily the remaining humans were not logic-oriented, so the crazy tactic actually worked. Otherwise, don't dominate the conversation unless you have the stats to pull it off (or the desperation!).  If you get froze, focus on boosting Charm and Stealth (and Performance if you're playing Gnosia). Honestly, surviving is the number one priority for your character, moreso than even their side winning. At least if you survive and still lose, you get to watch special bad endings...  If you're a Gnosia target, having Stealth and some skills will help. "Small Talk" is supposedly great at reducing Hate, but we'd have to obtain it first. Otherwise, if you can figure out who the Gnosia is, maybe use it to your advantage. If they're logical, play dumb. If they're emotional, pretend you trust them.  To be fair, you can probably get by with low Charm if you go heavy on Charisma and Stealth, so that you can dominate who gets targeted while being less of a target yourself. But even that will only get you so far, so don't neglect Charm!  If you want to command the room, Charisma's your most reliable bet. Logic will help when focusing on a character, and Performance is handy as well, moreso if you're a filthy Gnosia. Otherwise, see what's going on and accept that sometimes the idiots you're playing with won't see the obvious truth because they're morons. Trust me, I've already accepted this...  The way this game is designed, it is always assumed that if you are the true Engineer/Doctor, you will always reveal yourself. That said, the game will allow you not to reveal yourself, but things may get wonky if things don't go as planned...  Accusing someone as Definite Human/Enemy is a skill we can get from someone at some point, and something that logical characters like Raqio can point out. If someone is flagged as Definite Human, well, they're human. If they're Definite Enemy, they will 99% get sent to cold sleep that very day, as they're obviously an enemy. No one will go against a Definite Human or for a Definite Enemy unless they have a death wish or are very stupid. Like, I can see Kukrushka being stupidly loyal to a Definite Enemy, but otherwise everyone's smart enough to accept when they're wrong about someone. This knowledge is incredibly useful if you're human-sided, and if you're with the Gnosia you want to make extra drat sure you don't accidentally trigger Definite Human or especially Definite Enemy. The latter will basically end your game right there.  Don't worry about this, as this scenario only happens once our last role is unlocked. Spoilers.  The harder it is to win, the more EXP you gain. One of the ways I've seen suggested is 5 players, one Gnosia, and you as the AC Follower. There's a couple other things I've seen suggested, but really you're not going to reliably win until you have high stats, so playing 15 players with you as the sole Gnosia will probably not work out unless your stats are already high enough that you probably don't need the extra EXP. That said, it never hurts to be overleveled...  I'll describe this later. There is a way to redistribute our stats later, just not yet.  The big thing about Gnosia is the characters are consistent, for the most part. Use that to your advantage, and you will be able to overcome a lot of obstacles in your way. Though you may still get screwed over with bad luck because that's really part of the thing with Werewolf-type games, sometimes things just suck and gently caress you.  So the concept of "lies" came up earlier, and here's where this gets elaborated on. Gnosia lie when they defend fellow Gnosia or accuse non-Gnosia. Meanwhile, AC Followers and Bugs are basically lying every time they pretend to be Engineers or Doctors. I don't think this explains our previous situation of an AC Follower getting caught in a lie using only information that AC Follower would know, so this isn't foolproof.     Don't worry about this. I'm the LPer, I have to worry about all this. Event Search (once we unlock it, eventually) helps find criteria to trigger events, but even that may not always work. It's kinda dumb luck from there, which is why finding the last few things you need from characters is the worst part of the game. But again, I'm the idiot playing this, so don't worry about it.  I did this so I could play this LP on my default profile. I have one alternate profile that I only ever used for an abandoned Breath of the Wild LP, so this is appreciated at least.  Fun fact, you can kinda save-scum once you finish the story, as you'll be able to load from the beginnining of a loop and thus change your options from there. Otherwise, the game dictates when you save and thus you can't save-scum unless you're softmodding your Switch or whatever. Since I'm not doing that, we're stuck watching failures over and over and over. Sorry.  This can be useful, but generally the Discussion Log in the menu ends up moreso.   More games should have one-handed options. This is nice if you want to use the other hand to eat some pizza! And, uh, there may be a few scenes where you want to keep one hand free. Nothing too racy, but still... Anyway, that's our cast, and that's how to play! I'm glad the game itself does a good job telling you how to play, because I certainly haven't! Anyway, next time we'll try some scenarios and I can see if I can finally redeem myself. Probably not, but we'll see!
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May 15, 2021 22:08
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 20:32 |
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