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VFD is a fine enough JRPG on its own, but it's very much an actual outlier in the 7th Dragon series. If you're trying to get a sense of what the entire series is like, this particular entry is extremely not representative of the series. Even DS for all its faults and sheer differences is more in line with the other games. Not sure if I would describe DS as a related fledgling kitten though, because the future games basically abandoned quite a lot of the gameplay aspects of the original. It's a very different game from the 2020s. Omobono posted:It's a fun RPG and a blast to play just for the nonsense you can get away with. But yeah from what I've seen of 2020, VFD is a 7th dragon game in name only. It's pretty much more of a standard JRPG than 7th Dragon, which is saying something considering what the series has done in comparison.
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May 18, 2022 14:29
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Duelist is nuts. The later stuff isn't really implemented (Dunno how it even work. Even Synchros seems like it would be a nightmare to get working in this game), but it gets across the spirit of the class quite well. Been helping out with the technical backend of things by datamining a ton of poo poo, and holy moly some of the stuff in this game is absolutely ridiculous. Power creep doesn't even begin to cover some of the batshit buffs and new mechanics it added in. Kinu Nishimura posted:Duelist is my favorite class in this game, and my second-favorite in the whole series (my favorite is Idol from 2020-2 (i'll get to it)). It's fun, flexible, and goofy and gimmicky without sacrificing skill in using it. You do have to try to set up the combos inherent, and there's a lot of different ways you can build about it, but it's also a class with an obvious downside that you need to work around. It's incredibly powerful if you use it right. Duelist is really bonkers, and true to their real life counterpart, they can end fights pretty quickly. If you know how to use them right, you can end big fights in around 5 turns, 3 to 4 if you get lucky. If you plop this class into the PSP games, they'd shatter it to pieces. Classes in the 2020s can only dream of ending fights that fast. Of course this is VFD. Somehow that's considered slow by VFD's standards. The fact that there are far more straightforward ways to demolish everything in your path even faster than what I've said really did not make people warm up to them.
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May 24, 2022 15:23
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EclecticTastes posted:Man, I loved this goofy-rear end game. I ended up making two samurai, since they're essentially two somewhat similar classes, similar to the two types of Trickster in the 2020 games (though knife Trickster wasn't that good, IIRC, so I don't think I bothered in those). I absolutely made my "main" character a Duelist, because I liked the idea of apocalyptic-scale cosmic horror dragons getting schooled by a Yu-Gi-Oh protagonist. I actually played the previous games before VFD after VFD's demo got me interested, and the original on the DS was just shy of a being a full-on horror game, and the 2020 games aren't much cheerier (though they focus less on the horror and helplessness and more on the fighting back), then you get to VFD and it's like "let's murder True Dragons for funsies and also here's a Monokuma knock-off". As much fun as VFD is, I can't deny that it's a huge shift in tone. Not really sure if I'd call DS almost a full on horror game. It certainly has some dark aspects, especially near the end of the game, but it has varying tones of silly moments.  But also serious ones on how people are trying to get by in the current state of the world all across the game, and how each nation and its people handle it differently, which gets explored with the sub-events. And some loving metal as hell moments as well! Dagger Trickster is pretty strong in 2020, but it got nerf hammered quite a bit in 2020-II. The 2020 games are definitely quite a bit bleaker than DS I'd say. The number of onscreen deaths in DS aren't nearly as much compared to the 2020s. Chapter 2 in both games are also just really gruesome as well and a pretty harsh introduction to the dragon overridden world. VFD though, yeah this game's a huge tonal shift from all the previous games, even DS. For one thing, they're telling you that your main goal for this game is to kill what were the final bosses in all the previous games with regularity. This... has some ramifications on how the story is told. And frankly makes VFD's story a very different experience from the previous games. Jumping from VFD to DS was a pretty big bit of culture shock for me as a result.
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May 31, 2022 17:05
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The series (At least the first 3 games) definitely falls under some Lovecraftian horror elements, as the dragons are definitely a huge unknowable element, though I'd still say calling DS almost full on horror is kind of a stretch. At least Resident Evil style horror and such. The games definitely take after Lovecraftian Horror. Though DS kind of fumbles with that as its gameplay pacing is very rough and kind of filled with tedium between large stretches of the plot and dungeons. Either way the games do make it out that the antagonist can actually be defeated which kinda goes against a bit of that. I'd say the 2020s explore the Lovecraftian horror angle as well, maybe even moreso, as the direction it takes with the High Dragons definitely gives a tone of those vibes to mind, what with them being able to outright warp reality and make completely eldritch environments out of what were once famous Japanese landmarks really giving them even more alien vibes. Like these things should not belong in this world. Chapter 3 of 2020 is also basically a standard horror story on top of the Lovecraftian Horror. Not that DS's High Dragons were entirely lacking in that area though not quite as explored in that department as the 2020s. Hey this mountain? It's actually a dragon. The rainbow is also a dragon. You cannot kill it (Until you get your hands on a fellow dragon's corpse anyways). Eclipse's appearance is also just basically indescribable in specifics. Though I would say you've got things very flipped regarding the state of the apocalypse. In DS, the apocalypse finished. Your group was knocked out for 3 years. You're just dealing with the aftermath, and are trying to reverse the situation. The dragons have completely settled in the world and you're trying to kick them out. In the 2020s you're knocked out for a month in the first game and 3 days in the 2nd, and the apocalypse is very much ongoing, with people still needed to be rescued from active hostile areas and the such. Incidentally I'd also say the bleakness comes down to how visceral the 2020 games are. You see very direct consequences of the dragon's acts in action, where for the most part in DS you're dealing with the aftermath. Though Haze's dungeon in DS definitely has some visceral horror going on there. Seeing a specific enemy sprite there for the first time was sure a heavy impression. Though I'd say the 2020s and especially 2020-II are much more straight examples of that kind of story, especially with how the antagonist of II gets very involved with the story and things just go to complete poo poo when he chooses to take action. Though that being said, this definitely brings to mind another reason why VFD is a tonal shift, as it definitely abandons a lot of that and very much downplays a ton of those elements. Probably why jumping from that game to a previous one ends up feeling so jarring to quite a few people I've talked with. Saying anymore at the moment would be spoilers, though I'll definitely remark upon those as the time comes. But "we gotta kill all these True Dragons which were literal final bosses in the previous games" definitely is a big step towards killing that vibe. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 19:22 on May 31, 2022 |
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May 31, 2022 18:59
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You wanna know the funny part about this hopeless boss fight? It's beatable. DS didn't have a hopeless boss fight in the beginning, your guild just got knocked out during the story while they were evacuating their hometown from the dragons. Use your imagination on how that happened. (There's a hopeless boss fight later in the game, but it's more of the "you can't kill it until the plot lets you" variety as it guards the entrance to the final dungeon.) War Cry in 2020 has 80,000 HP. You aren't depleting that. Much less surviving, as it has 282 attack, 170 defense, 282 magic attack, 136 magic defense, and 111 speed. In fact all unwinnable fights in the game had the enemy's HP set to that number to ensure they were impossible to kill legitimately, as you can't deal that much damage in the game. (The scary part is that the VFD crew can actually possibly deal with that much HP.) Fomalhut's avatar in II has 25,693 which is less, but the issue isn't really surviving, as it just opts to kill you immediately on turn 1, where Warcry waited a few turns so you can see how hopeless your party is. It has 323 attack, 224 defense, 323 magic attack, 150 magic defense, and 126 speed. In Casual mode it has 25,290 HP, 320 attack, 222 defense, 320 magic attack, 148 magic defense, and 122 speed. Yeah you aren't living through that one. Spectus only has 2,835 HP, 60 attack, 39 defense, 60 magic attack, 39 magic defense, and 24 speed. In Casual mode it has 2,415 HP, 54 attack, 33 defense, 54 magic attack, 33 magic defense, and 23 speed. Yeah, you can actually grind up enough in 7th Encount (Probably around level 30 or so if you were dedicated, less if you actually remember to swap to Casual mode to pull this off.) to be able to survive through its attacks and kill it, where in the previous games, that wasn't happening. There's even payout data if you manage that feat oddly enough. You get 90 experience and 54 Az. Killing it doesn't change the cutscene one bit afterwards, though it makes Yuma's comments more believable.  Even the hopeless boss fight was a victim of VFD's power creep in its own way.
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Jun 3, 2022 06:36
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BisbyWorl posted:I swear they boosted the encounter rate since 2020. Turns out yes, VFD's encounter rate is higher, though 2020-II nerfed encounter rates from 2020. This is how random encounters work in VFD: quote:A random number from 60 to 74 is generated each time you enter a new area. This is the same across every screen in the game. In non-hostile areas, such as Nodens, this will do nothing. In hostile areas, this determines how long it takes to get into an encounter. This number represents the amount of steps your party takes. Every 4 frames of walking (This game runs at 30 hz) causes the step counter to increase by 1. This means it takes 8 to 9.867 seconds of straight walking to get into a random encounter. It works like this in 2020-II instead: quote:A random number from 28900-33600 is generated each time you enter a hostile area. A number is subtracted for each frame you walk. (30 hz). When the counter reaches or gets below 0, you get into a battle. The number subtracted tends to average around 100 or so, but it's different per dungeon, so you could get shorter rates or higher rates depending on the screen. It results in around 9 to 11 seconds to get into a battle on average instead of VFD's shorter and more static length. Not only that, there's a grace period upon entering an area where for 2/3s of a second (20 frames), the encounter rate won't budge in 2020-II. This isn't in VFD. In 2020 the generated number is 28900-30600 instead, and the subtracted number tended to average around 70 depending on the screen. Resulting in about 13 to 20 seconds to get into an encounter in that game depending on the screen. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Jun 4, 2022 |
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Jun 4, 2022 05:53
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They actually state the reason in the next update why Nyala's sample isn't on hand around this time, so that isn't a gaffe even though it seems like one at first. But yeah he was the final boss in 2020. His fight was canon. VFD recognizes it as such. Granted with how VFD has some extremely spotty memories of how the events of the past games happened, that wouldn't be out of place for the game. But not in this particular case.
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Jun 7, 2022 04:16
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EclecticTastes posted:I'll admit that it's been a few years, but my recollection is that the final boss of 2020 was the boss lady of Murakumo as Human Dragon Mizuchi. If I'm mistaken, then, my other guess would be that Nyala survived being fought in 2020, whereas Fomalhaut, I believe, totally bites it. No, she was the midboss for said chapter. The chapter even opens up with the title card that says it's Nyala's turn to be fought. Granted there was extremely little buildup to it so it just comes very awkwardly shoehorned in unless you played the first game and knew how the dragon hierarchy works. He gets vaporized in 2020 at the end of his fight, but there's a couple of things that VFD explains on that front.
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Jun 7, 2022 04:29
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EclecticTastes posted:I mean, the DS game existing is proof that Nyala survives, given that he's the final boss of that game, which we've known takes place in the future since 2020. Yes, which VFD gives an explanation for (Well not directly but it gives enough to put 2 and 2 together on how that was possible). It also explains in a bit why they don't have the sample from the 2020 fight, and it wasn't a matter of "Nyala survived". EclecticTastes posted:Nyala doesn't have a sample on-file from 2020 because the extra dungeons in the 2020 games are seemingly non-canon. The extra dungeons can technically be canon (Though it gets very messy in that regard considering how 2020 and 2020-II's post-games end) but regardless, promotional materials and the artbooks say they were just illusions. Essentially your party was tripping really hard while exploring new locales (DS) or getting exposited at (2020 and 2020-II.) It's why the post-game bosses have the naming schemes they do, "Illusory X".
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Jun 7, 2022 05:01
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It is very funny witnessing this game go completely the opposite direction of most other time travel stories, and have the protagonist not give a gently caress about "preserving the timelines." They just straight up pick a fight with the locals as one of the first things they do.
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Jun 10, 2022 04:21
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ARIGATOU GOZAIMASU! ARIGATOU GOZAIMASU! ARIGATOU GOZAIMASU! God I have no idea why they made the volume on that voice clip so loud. Not to mention there's no cooldown on it playing so it quickly becomes a cacophony. I basically just turn off the volume when going shopping because of that. Items having priority was a VFD addition and absolutely not in any of the earlier games. Using items in VFD is ridiculously safe outside of a few circumstances now. This Wyvern is oddly enough, somewhat weaker than the White Dragon you fight in the prologue. It has a fire breath attack like the White Dragon, but for some reason, the Wyvern's version can't inflict Burn, but the White Dragon's can.
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Jun 14, 2022 03:49
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Solitair posted:Wow, this game coddles the hell out of the player, huh? Coddle is nowhere near as strong enough of a word to describe what this game does to the player. Magnus Ragnar posted:Also seeing the disparity in random dragon encounters in VFD just compared to when they started popping up in 2020 is... jarring. I never thought much of it since VFD was the first 7th Dragon game I played, but got drat that is abrupt. "Hey get away from our shiny rock!" "Aight-" *turns around* "-wHEN DID MORE DRAGONS GET HERE!?" To be fair, VFD is a pretty fine game on its own. I doubt most people who only played this game noticed anything wrong or off throughout it barring some odd pacing issues here and there. It's when you take the knowledge from any of the previous games and how things work there that things start getting very wonky.
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Jun 15, 2022 07:48
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I should note that unlike Etrian Odyssey, the effects of ailments are not unified, and depend on the skill used to inflict them. Where in EO, the action nullification rate is 50%, it's not actually the case in the 7th Dragon series. Even DS nerfed it a bit, it's lowered down to a 30% action nullification rate in that game, with 2020 nerfing Paralysis further and making it scale with the skill. Enemy Paralysis tends to hover around 33% to 50%, but players never get better than 18% in 2020. This is because for one, unlike in EO, you can stack multiple ailments on the same target, so the lowered rates were to compensate for that. Incidentally, Frostburn is actually stupidly broken and is the most overpowered skill in that game. The paralysis rate of it is an anomaly, and the null action rate is around 18% in II when discounting Frostburn. VFD on the other hand goes full monkey brain when it comes to balance and makes Frostburn look balanced in comparison.
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Jun 15, 2022 19:04
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I highly suspect Spectus was meant to be the chapter 1 boss given that it has actual stats appropriate for a level 11 party, which they would be around at this point. That and Big Red Dragon is the archetype that's always the first boss in this series. But given that chapter 1 is in Atlantis, and Spectus is encountered in the present day, that likely couldn't have worked for several reasons. So we're left with this awkward bit of pacing that just ends with a dragon extermination. That being said, for first timers to the series (aka almost everyone outside of Japan who played this), they likely wouldn't have noticed that anything is off since it's not known how the series works with regards to pacing for them. It'd be only the veterans that would notice the weird pacing. Solitair posted:I didn't realize this was a sad occasion. The world is quiet here.
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Jun 17, 2022 05:33
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mastersord posted:when did you pick up the first sample? Last update you were deciding whether or not to fight the True Dragon and save them, and all of a sudden, you have the sample and now ISDF wants it? Did we miss an update or something? They already had it beforehand. The first scene in the game is Nodens picking up the sample of Iod... someplace. The Fomalhut sample was picked up when he was killed at the end of 2020-II. Nyala was fought in 2020, but his sample just wasn't picked up there. (And they gave his wing being damaged as an excuse to go fight him in Atlantis instead of time traveling back to 2020.)
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Jun 17, 2022 21:02
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Oh Blaster Raven.  quote:Does no one remember Hikasa? Or Takehaya? How the hell did the Dragon Chronicle get turned into some kind of urban legend? I was gonna say it's possible the info was scrubbed out and covered up for the good of the public. Except that line of thinking immediately falls apart when ISDF should be the one to know everything about that stuff. Maybe people in the 7th Dragon universe are just poo poo at teaching history or something. quote:The Mind Booster was a late game accessory in the 2020s that heavily boosts Exhaust gain! We don't even have Exhaust yet and they're already throwing it at us! What the poo poo is this game balance!? For reference, the Mind Booster was handed out in 2020 upon upgrading the lounge to level 2, which only happened in the final chapter of the game. In 2020-II, it was handed out after 45 rescues, which could be achieved in chapter 4 at the earliest. Here they just hand you the drat thing right during chapter 2. And no, its effects are not nerfed from the previous games! DS didn't have an equivalent of the Mind Booster because EX functioned entirely differently in that game, but that can be elaborated on at a different time. Incidentally those text boxes from speaking with your party members is also a concession the localizations made for international audiences, as in the Japanese version of the game, you just heard the voice line, no text box or subtitles. The voices still play here for the record. You just know what they said. The lines are different per voice type, though I'm not sure if it also changes with the class. OneWingedDevil posted:So, I got caught up on the 2020 LP. Then I saw a 7th Dragon OG LP and thought "huh, nice coincidence, wonder if that just started" and took a dip into that. Read a few chapters, then saw this thread and thought "huh, nicer coincidence, I guess this means I can LP the the full series". Then I finally realized just how long the 7th Dragon LP had been running. Life... got in the way. Quite a bit. Also not helping matters was me actively dreading recording certain parts of the game which ended up delaying a few updates solely because I wasn't in the mood to put myself through said segments for several days or even months. 
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Jun 21, 2022 04:12
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The DLC portraits are uh. Yeah, it's not like in Etrian Odyssey where they just hand you the things and you can use em. Just head to the guild hall and off you go. (Barring that time in EO5 where they just released the isekai portraits too drat late relative to the game's release). For some reason they made it so you had to "earn" them. And came up with a rather flimsy framing for it. All the DLC were free on launch week at least? The grinding DLC and the Nagamimi doll DLC (which is always free) were released at the same time as the game. The F-Samurai and F-Hacker portraits (no you don't get the male portraits) were released a week after the game launched, and the F-Lucier portrait, as well as the post-game DLC were released 2 weeks after the game.
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Jun 24, 2022 04:24
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Multi-hits are pretty much the best way to kill Dragonsbane Seeds. In all games they have 999 defense. They only had 1 HP in DS, so the challenge was hitting them before they escaped. (Which they had an 85% chance of doing.) In the 2020s, smacking one would either deal 1 or 2 damage to it, so multi-hits, such as the Samurai's Whirlwind, which can hit 7 times, were the best way of dealing with them. VFD? Cyclone Dance is pretty much the dedicated seed killer skill since it goes up to a whopping 14 hits. Shame scratch damage was nerfed to 1 damage though. Dragonsbane Seeds in the 2020s and VFD have a 50% chance of running on turns 1, 3, and 5+. But on turns 2 and 4, they only have a 10% chance of running. Spiral Meat has a 50% drop rate thankfully, though unfortunately that still means you got an average of 20 of the Spiral Cannons to kill.
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Jun 28, 2022 08:00
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 Goddamn these new classes are loving monkey brain balanced, I'll just say that much right now. Thought the power creep before was a bit much? You've seen nothing yet! I'll say it's a loving wonder Nyala managed to trounce these folks. Exhaust is such a powerful core mechanic that's... just so poorly explained by the game. Because good usage of this can really enhance your party, and is extremely vital for Hackers in the 2020s to function more consistently, and the Agents in VFD. Gaining Exhaust isn't really explained well too, but knowing how it functions and how to get the most out of it makes such a huge difference in these games.
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Jul 1, 2022 04:43
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If people are wondering about the bizarre numbers of priority, the priority of actions is more of an internal order thing. The thing is, the 7th Dragon games don't really specify how far up the priority brackets a skill is. It just says if a skill has "Instant Action" or not. That being said, some priority skills don't even get labeled as such for some reason. It was pretty organized in DS. Worked like this: 1: Priority 2: EX Active 3: Default Speed 4: Goes Last Guards always took place at the start of the turn if you're wondering how that factored into things. 2020 and II was where it got shuffled up. The priority brackets got reshuffled in VFD, but it's not really a buff or a nerf, more internal reordering. 2020's priority brackets: quote:6 II shuffled them around a bit and actually uses all the brackets now. quote:6 Guarding technically got buffed since it's at a higher priority bracket in VFD. In practice this is irrelevant, as only 5 enemy skills have priority in VFD, and only 1 of them deals damage. (It's a priority 7 skill, so guarding wouldn't work against it anyways. VFD basically returned to 2020's priority brackets, and just added 1 to every value. Hoo boy, stat buffs. I have no idea what they were thinking with these, because this is definitely one of the biggest cases of the subtle kind of power creep that just has so many knock on effects. All the 7th Dragon games work off Paper Mario styled math when it comes to damage. So attack - defense = damage. Simple as that, just on a bigger scale. So affecting stats directly instead of the final damage makes the data look deceptively small. A 30% boost to your final damage will always be a 30% boost, that can't change. But a 30% boost to the attack stat will only be a 30% final damage boost at worst (As in your target has literally 0 defense. Which no enemy has so uh.) This is why equipment upgrades are utterly vital in the 7th Dragon series since it tips the internal math so much in your favor, and should be the 2nd thing you prioritize Dz for when upgrading the central facility in each game. (The first is obviously new skill tiers). VFD making it so that stats are directly affected makes attack buffs such fantastic wallbreakers too. Funnily enough, that is how buffs worked in DS. But the main difference is that the numbers were much smaller back then. Most skills only dealt 2x damage at max level, with the one dealing 5x damage being considered super strong by that game's standards. 2020 onwards just hands out 5x+ damage skills like candy, but the game changed buffs to only affect the final damage. And now this allows for sheer ridiculous damage outputs you couldn't really see in the previous games due to their more restrained internal math. Oh and defense buffs can actually reduce damage to basically nothing. Goddamn. Of course this is far from the only instance of power creep, as VFD makes a bunch of other decisions that would make the previous games blush, but this is definitely one of the bigger ones. Items have priority. Yeah this makes them completely safe to use, because again, most enemy skills don't have priority, so you can't get outsped ever again. Only 1 damaging enemy skill can out-prioritize items, and that's because of the mechanics of said skill. Skills can crit. Skills can crit. Yeah sure randomly give players a 50% damage boost, thanks. Especially on big nuking attacks. I mean enemies critting kinda sucks, but it doesn't happen too often, and some enemy skills are actually banned from critting. Namely big attacks from bosses. Guarding is a funny one. It actually had the effect of reducing ailment chances in DS, but it was way weaker there. (10% reduction instead of 50%). And the effects against magic attacks was 30% instead of a universal 50% reduction. Hack Weakness used to be 1.5x, but it triggered only when striking a weakness or dealing a critical hit. Which kind of demanded specific team compositions back in 2020. 2020-II gave Hackers the TROY skills to let Hackers inflict Hack Weakness without having to need specific party members. And then VFD buffed the drat things up to 2.2x for some reason. Exhaust is pretty strong and does so much for you. That being said, the Agent's exhaust gain on regular attacks has a 25% penalty. (Which is better than the 45% penalty that Gun Tricksters had back in the 2020s.) Building it up is slow unless you know how to speed it up, which is another thing the games don't tell you. If you're trying to farm for EX, knowing which skills grant a lot of it is pretty vital. EX actually works on a X out of 10,000 system, where getting 10,000 points grants you a full meter. But I simplified it to a percent that goes to 2 decimal places to make it easier to visualize (250 points -> 2.5% EX gain). Also holy gently caress why does the game give you a 2nd Mind Booster?  It's ridiculous how VFD slams the game balance in the player's favor. This is pretty much one of the easiest 7th Dragon games just because it's so easy to dominate the enemies. And we haven't even seen the skills yet.
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Jul 5, 2022 10:22
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G-Depth works little differently on a mechanical level in VFD. Destroyers had D-Depth, which was basically the same thing. Just a different name. The Destroyers had an innate passive that gave them the ability to inflict D-Depth on all attacks, not just their regular ones. This has a base chance of 100%, but most enemies resisted it, so this wasn't guaranteed. Skills that were flagged as being able to inflict D-Depth were guaranteed to do so though, even on immune enemies. In VFD, this is different. They decoupled the passive from the class itself, and stuck it on their fist weapons instead. And set the infliction rates to 0%. I guess at some point they thought being able to inflict G-Depth randomly was too much? G-Depth functions differently in that it can't pierce immunities anymore. Not that it matters, as nothing in VFD is immune to it. So the way they handled G-Depth was that RNG instances of it were set to a 100% infliction rate, and guaranteed instances were set to 200%, as no enemy goes below a G-Depth multiplier of 0.5x. God Hands are pretty strong units and are pretty similar to Destroyers. The nutso part is, Destroyers were considered the most broken class in 2020. In VFD? God Hands are good but not really top of the pack. They out power crept what used to be considered the most broken class in the game. Which is saying something when God Hands are still really loving strong. Depending on how you view things, Jab could be considered a bit of a nerf. Destroyers actually had a skill known as Mach Drop, which was guaranteed to inflict 2 D-Depth and also dealt 3.5x damage at max level. VFD essentially combined the two skills, but left it with Jab's weaker damage. Front Punch no longer having a Depth requirement? Yeah that's just a straight buff. Quartetto was much weaker in 2020-II. (The fan translation calls it Earth Breaker, but the name is really Land Crusher. So it's not a regular skill turning into an EX skill.) The multipliers were 1/1.1/1.4/2 for the D-Depth levels... but the damage started off at 1.5x at level 1 and 3.75x at level 10. Yeah they made this thing a lot stronger, it's nuts. I'm not sure why Anti-Ailment got such a huge nerf. It certainly wasn't that widely used in the 2020s. Drill Crawler is. Oh god where do I even begin with this one? Drill Crawler was a tier 4 skill in the 2020s, so you got it at the very end of the game. It did 6x to 7x damage in 2020. Which got nerfed down to 5x to 6x damage in 2020-II. VFD not only undid that nerf, it made it stronger than it was in 2020! Oh and you have access to it way earlier since it's tier 2 now! VFD decided to add more support aspects to the God Hand, likely cause you don't have a healing class otherwise and they were the only candidate left. Destroyer was pretty much a straight up damage dealer, so they didn't have access to healing, nor the ally targetable buffs. Honestly they're not great healers. Alright for earlygame I suppose. Their buffs on the other hand are more useful. The debuff punches are also great as well. Coup De Grace was frankly, kind of awful in 2020-II. Damage was a lot lower, and D-Depth didn't count as a legal ailment for it. Now pretty much every ailment does. (2020-II had a few cases where certain ailments didn't count due to them forgetting to flag them properly.) By the way, G-Depth always counts as 1 ailment, no matter how much of it is on the target. Hoo boy EX skills. In DS they were either good or kind of bad or outright terrible. 2020s buffed up to kind of ridiculous degrees. Powerful, and possibly turning the tides of the fight in your favor. VFD just made them outright "I win" buttons. They're just so loving broken and make every single fight a joke. 33x damage, and extremely high chances of just loving locking a boss out of 3 turns. What the gently caress? And very few enemies are outright immmune to it. 72% chance of working is as low as it goes! This is somehow not even the most broken thing in the game. That alone should speak volumes about VFD's balance, because this would utterly shatter any of the previous games. Incidentally, Earth Breaker is likely a callback to the DS game, where the same EX skill existed. A maid, like the God Hand portraits, taught you this skill for the Healer, giving a support class a powerful attack. Though it's far less... game breaking than this incarnation. (Doesn't inflict anything, and damage is just 1.6x. But it adds +50 to the Healer's ATK stat.)
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Jul 8, 2022 06:35
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Ah Samurai. Pretty much the standard fighting class that can fit into most parties safely. While they were in DS, the Fighter was the one that really took that role. Samurai basically functioned like Ronin do in Etrian Odyssey. The dual swords is a new thing to this game, and pretty much makes Samurai like 2 separate classes in 1. In fact they're the only class to have 2 EX skills, each of which are limited to a specific weapon type, which pretty much supports this. They're pretty much the goto class to double up on when the time comes as a result. Unsheathed Stance is the default for the single sword. It's pretty much worse than the Sheathed Stance skills, though you can't go into Sheathed Stance during the earlygame. Stances are permanent and last until you change stances, so no need to worry about "refreshing them" or anything. Sheathed Stance skills are generally better, but you have to sacrifice a turn to go into it, where Unsheathed skills have the benefit of being able to use them from the get-go. Up to you on which you prefer. Dual Blade is a unique beast and pretty much its own thing. This one is more of a jack of all trades that can cover lots of different situations. And also yoinked a bunch of the great skills from Sheathed Stance in the previous games. Bleeds deal more damage the longer it's on the victim, but the effects are a bit diminishing. The first hit deals the bleed damage, the 2nd hit deals 1.2x of the bleed damage, the 3rd hit deals 1.24x damage, the 4th hit deals 1.248x damage, and the 5th hit deals 1.2496x damage. No bleed goes past 5 turns in this game. I'm not sure why VFD made DOT ailments more powerful, but it's a lot of outgoing damage, especially that early, that's for sure. Cyclone Dance is pretty much the Seed killer, but it unfortunately halves its own EX gain as well, not just Mind Boosters. Whirlwind is better at building up EX though since it doesn't have the penalty. The buff over time skills are. Hoo boy. In all the previous games, they were frankly crap. The effects were minimal until the skill was close to expiring. They worked differently in previous games too. The power actually gradually increased over the course of several turns (10 in the 2020s, 30 in DS.) And once the buffs wore off, so did any of the attack or defense boosts.   And those were the attack and defense buffs in the 2020s. They only affected final damage and their effects were slow to build up. They weren't worth using. VFD had them buff stats directly, and actually just waits until specific turns to increase the stats further instead of being a gradual increase like in the previous games. Debuffs don't have resistances to deal with, so Destructive Sweep will always have a 75% chance to land at max level. Windy Canopy is basically a chaser skill from EO, but it only worked with Psychics and Idols (the latter of which were only in 2020-II.) It can be very hefty with the right party. I'll agree with the changes to the stance swapping skills and say that I really love the buffs they gave them. While swapping from Unsheathed to Sheathed had a valid use case, there was frankly no reason to swap from Sheathed to Unsheathed, because Unsheathed had the worse skills. Now the debuffs give an actual reason to swap stances around if you need to, giving an actual use case for these skills which weren't in the 2020s. It's easily my favorite change in VFD, as it gives life to a playstyle and those mechanics without going outright into UNGA BUNGA territory like so many other changes are. It's actually a pretty thoughtful change that genuinely adds more. Focus Breathing does give your party more defense if you need it, so I wouldn't entirely count it out. Especially since some things later on in the game can just hit hard. That being said, LIFE is capped at 500 no matter what. So if your party is close to that, this skill won't do much. Oh boy. Solid Stance. If you thought charge skills in Etrian Odyssey 3 were overpowered, this thing makes them loving blush! The fact they affect ATK directly this time actually means the damage is only 2.5x at worst! In the 2020s, yeah that's 2.5x the final damage, which equates to a 25% damage boost. Which is still great! But 2.5x the ATK stat? That makes Samurai fantastic wallbreakers as using this can quadruple or even quintuple their damage output! If you are the kind of player that is looking to win at all costs or even shatter the game into teeny tiny atoms, the only reasons not to use this skill are because of the mana costs (which there are plenty of ways to deal with) or that this strategy would be too slow for your team. Yes, I know exactly what I said. The EX skills funnily enough, barely got touched. Aside from Earth Splitter having its Bleed damage jacked up. The actual damage isn't too much higher than before. Though that's likely because Solid Stance already loving shatters the game into pieces and yes it stacks with these! If you want to hit for around 60x to 70x damage, go right ahead! Araxxor fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Jul 12, 2022 |
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Jul 12, 2022 08:21
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That animation and model combination is perfect. The Dragonsbane Seed Boss can't run. It's AI just forces it to attack.
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Jul 16, 2022 22:34
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Duelist is a really interesting class and probably one of my favorite classes in the entire game. A unique take on the mage archetype, that's for sure. And my god they're fun to play around with if you know how to use them right. The card RNG can be annoying to deal with (all cards have an equal 1 in 3 chance of being drawn) but if you put this class in any of the previous 7th Dragon games, they would utterly shatter the game over their knees. Unfortunately it pains me to say this, but Duelist is the worst class in the game despite all that for a few simple reasons. They require effort to use. VFD lets you poo poo out so much damage so effortlessly with any other class that actually having to put thought in how you play is a massive setback for this class when any other class is just so much easier to play. The RNG aspects doesn't help either, and while Duelists can potentially end a fight in 4 to 5 turns, which would be loving broken in any other 7th Dragon game, in VFD... you can end fights even faster than that with other classes. Another more understandable reason for people disliking them is that their backup team recharge time sucks. It's not a massive deal right now, other than delaying support skills to every 3 turns instead of 1 or 2, but this disadvantage becomes a massive setback later on for reasons I can't specify at the moment. But enough negativity. Despite the disadvantages they have, there's still quite a bit you can do to get some real mileage out of your card gamer, and if you aren't speed running, there's a lot of fun to be had with them. First important thing to note, is that while the tier 3 summons are very powerful, they're also not as reliable to use compared to a tier 1 summon since you need more elemental cards to help tribute summon them. So don't neglect the lower tier skills and beef them up to help a Duelist be generally covered for all sorts of situations. A Duelist can only hold 6 cards in their hand, and they'll just automatically discard the leftmost ones when drawing more cards. There are a couple of different playstyles they can follow. Going with Ice cards pretty much puts them in a more supportive role with the mana restoration, but this build isn't super popular. Lightning cards have the benefit of being really simple but effective, as you only have to worry about the summons. And the Paralysis chances are handy. An 82% lockdown chance is just absurd, since no other game had Paralysis be that strong before! (Even in DS Paralysis causing turn loss was locked to a 30% chance.) Fire is one of the more popular builds as X-Burn just shits out damage. Nothing much to say here other than stuff as many Fire Cards as possible into your hand, and let em rip! Now we've got the Judgement build and hoo boy, those numbers do not lie! In Etrian Odyssey numbers, that would be a 5000% damage skill! Yeah, power creep does not even begin to describe VFD, more like power leap! Do you see why we throw that term around? Nothing in the previous games lets you do this kind of bullshit to the games! Nothing! loving ridiculous how this lets you set up actual OTKs in a 7th Dragon game. At any rate, you have 4 turns to set up 3 traps, so you only have a 1 turn of leeway here. There's a way to optimize for Judgement spam, and that's to leave the deck searching skills at level 2. It's one of the few times where maxing out a skill is not something you want to do. 1 card draws aren't enough, and 3 card draws just overflow the hand along with giving you excess cards you don't need, since you only need 2 cards of each element to trigger Judgement. And once you've set it up, everything should die horribly. I've done a run with this build and it's hilariously powerful. The traps by themselves... unfortunately, much like their real life counterpart, the traps suck here. Mostly. Don't knock Pitfall though, that Null Action rate is absurd! The reason it doesn't work on flying weak enemies is that's how the game decided to track if an enemy was "flying or not." As how would pitfalls trap a flying enemy? But yeah the damage on it is terrible, but the Null Action can trivialize so many dragon and boss battles. It's generally the first trap I try to set up immediately when going for a Judgement if possible. Destiny React is a bit situational, but there are some builds it can really help out. As was mentioned, it can help set up traps more quickly due to letting you lay down another trap card, or deck searching to let you set them up more easily. But it's also great in X-Burn builds, as you can follow up an attack with more Fire card consumption, or by deck searching for more Fire cards. In fact with the right RNG and if you play your cards right, this can potentially let you spend up to 10 cards to power up X-Burn. Which means the Duelist's MAT is multiplied by 45x! X-Burn is really loving stupid! Wanna know of a funny hypothetical scenario? Reacts are limited to giving you 3 extra turns to not give infinite feedback loops. But if the extra turn chance was guaranteed and reacts didn't cap at 3 turns, you would actually be able to perform the equivalent of a Yata lock in the game. 1 damage counts as odd damage, so you would just need to equip the shittiest weapon possible, set up the react, and then just have your Duelist attack dealing only 1 damage. Nothing would be able to counter this, but this isn't actually feasible to abuse since reacts are limited to 3 turns. Just a fun little what if. Lucky Roll is a skill I actively avoided taking on a recent playthrough because the animation on that skill is so loving obnoxiously long and I wasn't willing to sit through that every single time for a mild benefit! You can't skip battle animations in any of the 7th Dragon games, which isn't a problem in DS, as that game's animations were really brisk. But 2020 onwards had much longer unskippable animations. Which brings me to a more general complaint about this game. Playing it is so slow due to all the hangs and load times in the game compared to 2020-II which is just lightning fast on that end. And these longass animations do not help one bit! Araxxor fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Jul 17, 2022 |
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Jul 17, 2022 08:33
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It should also be noted that being able to break buffs was completely impossible in the 2020s. While DS operated on EO rules where a debuff could cancel out a buff of the same type, that's not how it worked in the 2020s onward. All buffs and debuffs just stack. There's no way to manually clear out buffs. Then VFD went ahead and reintroduced that mechanic. And only gave it to the players. Enemies cannot get rid of your buffs because they do not have the power of friendship. quote:This notice will pop up at the start of every turn provided everyone has one bar. You only get the one notice for this, if you back out and change your mind later you'll have to wait until next turn to use it. Not true. You can go and use a support skill if you change your mind. Just press B on the first party member's turn. Epicmissingno posted:I dunno, Atlantean Torterra seems like it could be Grass/Rock. That would line up because it's actually weak to ice.
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Jul 19, 2022 05:02
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LiefKatano posted:I can see why you'd wanna include the ability to dispel buffs, but man, making it free in both MN cost and turn cost... There actually is a weakness aside from eating up team meter. The break is RNG and not guaranteed to break the buff. This isn't stated anywhere in the game and something players find out the hard way. That being said, the chance is tied to each buff and most buffs have the break chance set to 100%, like the Megamouth's Power Charge. So it's guaranteed in a lot of cases, but in a few cases (namely boss battles) it's not guaranteed.
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Jul 20, 2022 07:57
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This game's story does not like it whenever you swap teams, which creates a ton of weird moments. While the game lets you do it freely, story wise it's basically intended to never use the team swap mechanic at all. Which is a very weird bit of dissonance if you want to put some variety in your playthrough. The time traveling in this game gets... weird, and this is an example I already forgot about til now. Kind of an odd example, though not outright nonsensical I suppose. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Jul 22, 2022 |
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Jul 22, 2022 12:05
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Agent's innate ability got buffed from Gun Trickster from the 2020s as the EX multiplier for those attacks was 0.55x instead of 0.75x. Agents are kind of looked down upon and are considered to be one of the worst classes along with Duelist, though that's because people don't know how to use them. Which you can't really blame them for, as the game doesn't really give out enough info on how they work. Like how often enemies resist hack, or that EX doubles infliction rates. When you know how to boost Hack's chances, they can turn into real monsters. Hide is unfortunately not quite as good with the react, but in terms of actual DPS, it can be pretty absurd. Of course Hide had great synergy with Bush Trap in the previous games, which isn't there anymore as Bush Trap can trigger no matter what instead of having the user avoid being targeted. Bush Trap actually got mega buffed in VFD imo. In 2020 it was just a counter skill, couldn't inflict Null Action. 2020-II added in the Null Action proc rate, but it was capped at 20%. Also a lot of things heavily resisted it, down to a 0.2x rate, so the rate son dragons and bosses was just a measly 4%. And that's only if the Trickster didn't get smacked. Here, it goes off no matter what. A 16% chance at worst to stop dragons and bosses in their tracks for 2 turns is huge! And if they attack twice, that's a 29.44% chance per turn for them to get inflicted with Null Action. Those rates may sound low, but considering how strong free turns are in any RPG, those are actually genuinely absurd infliction rates! Especially when you can just spam Bush Trap for some free damage no matter what. Not one of the best gun skills, but certainly not a weak one for more gun focused builds. Jump Shot got super buffed as well. It was a late-game skill in the 2020s but they just give it to you from the beginning here. In the 2020s "damage over time" skills had their damage decay for each passing turn by a fairly significant amount. VFD just removed this mechanic entirely, so some huge buffs all around here. While Freeze is a better ailment than Stun, Stun is considerably easier to inflict in more cases, so it's not entirely outclassed. Some speed control can be nice for a few cases, so learning it can't hurt too much. Hell in an SP system with the post-DS games, investing in skills isn't as consequential as it is in EO. In EO, SP is a finite precious resource, but that's not the case in the post-DS 7th Dragon games, so grabbing some skills to cover some odd situations really doesn't hurt that much as mis-skilling in EO does. And for the most part, skills in the 2020+ games tend to be pretty good starting from level 1, where in EO they can be utter trash without levels, so even grabbing just 1 level is more beneficial more often than not. Hack is loving stupid. In the 2020s, Hacker had the weakness where Hacking was incredibly strong and let them control the flow of battle if you knew how, but if Hacking didn't land due to bad RNG, they'd be set back. VFD's overall changes let Agents Hack guaranteed if you know how. Unless an enemy is outright immune to Hacking (there are very few of these), you are guaranteed to get a 100%+ Hack rate with the right setup. It's so ridiculous. By the way, you don't need to set up on random battles, as mooks are super weak to ailments compared to dragon. Like early on, enemies have a 2.5x multiplier to hacking, so a level 1 verison is guaranteed to hack them. It's very important to know that madstrife.exe works like an AI overwrite. Agents literally basically hack into the enemy's AI and changes up their queued action to "use a regular attack" and "target my own team". This means that using this on preemptives or on turns where the enemy cannot act is entirely wasted. But on the other hand it means that dragons and bosses will smack their own side around 2 times since they can act more than once per turn. Do be warned it combos very poorly with lostpower.exe if you're intending on using madstrife.exe for damage, as the damage is affected by stat boosts and debuffs. madstrife is also AOE now instead of single target, which pretty much synergizes greatly with Hack being AOE. You can pretty much unleash chaos if there's a troublesome group you're dealing with. The TROYs are absurd. They didn't exist in 2020, and were added in 2020-II to make the Hacker more consistent, as the only way for Hack Weakness to be inflicted in 2020 was if someone struck a weakness (which basically meant requiring a Psychic in the party), or if someone happened to land a crit or inflict specific ailments. The TROYs let the Hacker set up Hack Weakness without having to rely on a specific party setup, but Hack Weakness's bonuses were 1.5x in the 2020s. Here it's 2.2x which lets Agent set up Hack super easily, or guaranteed if they're using EX. Oh and if you're using a Samurai/Agent/Duelist team, TROY: Fire can help deal so much damage since that party has a lot of fire damage on their side, which is pretty strong in the earlygame. Withdraw is not actually guaranteed to cause an escape, it can actually fail, but that requires sending a very low level Agent into a high leveled area. Aside from that it's pretty much a get out of jail free card. Unfortunately I have no idea how escaping works in the post-DS games. Quick Hack's mana restoration gets more absurd as the hacking attempt doesn't need to succeed for it to restore mana. This also means if it procs in a fight against 3 enemies, you get 45% of your mana back. Not sure why they got buffed like this honestly. Another important thing to note is that Hack only gives you 1 turn to follow up on it, but if Quick Hack succeeds, you get 2 turns to do whatever you want to the enemy due to how turn counts work in this series. Air Assault was very lackluster in the 2020s. Here it's basically a "delete encounters' button. More absurdity of course. HOO BOY, lostpower.exe! Yeah this is basically "enemies can't touch you" the skill. The effect is classified as a unique effect so it stacks with other debuffs. However not only that, it's AOE in this game. Which matters for one big thing. Look at the EX gain. +15% EX per hit. In a random battle with lots of enemies, you can use Hack and then lostpower.exe to basically refill the Agent's EX meter very very fast. And considering how important EX is for them, this lets them be far more effective more often! Rush Shot having the lower crit damage is a holdover from the 2020s where only skills could crit, but yeah it's weird. It is a way to generate lots of EX with Mind Boosters at least. sleepmode.exe was already strong as hell in the 2020s when you could stunlock enemies by alternating between Hacking and putting them to sleep. Now you're basically able to stunlock them even more with this! Why did this need to be 4 turns!? Oh and it bypasses immunities again, so nothing other than the stuff immune to Hack is safe from this. And it can be used to set up for a big strategy safely. God. Aaaaaand we're back to the "I win" EX skills after the Duelist's somewhat disappointing showing here. Yeah. 80% chance over 3 turns to deny the victim their turns. The extra turn is pretty significant since this is essentially a super stun and basically doesn't need the TROYs to have a good chance of landing (though they do make it guaranteed.) Now there is one bug with this class that kind of sets them back a bit. In 2020, Hackers sucked at gaining EX. Which was a very big setback considering how important EX was for them. 2020-II tried to buff this by granting more EX gain to their support skills. Unfortunately, the implementation was bad, as EX isn't gained if the skill doesn't deal damage. So there were a bunch of hacking related skills that were intended to grant +15% EX, but couldn't. Apparently they had no idea this bug existed in VFD, because they buffed a few of the Agent's skills to have higher EX gain, like sleepmode.exe having +15% EX gain, but like in the previous games, skills can't grant EX if they don't deal damage, so functionally the +15% buff they gave it did absolutely nothing. Sadly this includes madstrife.exe, which is classified as a support skill even though it makes enemies punch themselves in the face.
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Jul 24, 2022 05:51
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Oh my god. Mayhem is. Yeah. First time playing through the game I didn't think much of it. But after playing the rest of the games in the series, seeing a High Dragon (which are supposed to be major bosses in the other games) being relegated to a tutorial boss caused a good bit of whiplash to me. Especially considering that the first High Dragons in the 2020 games can be real fuckers, Tiamat especially. quote:-Dragon Fog: Non-elemental Ranged attack to all party members. MAT-based. 1x damage. Has an 80% chance to inflict Poison for 3 turns. The poison ticks for 30 damage. Has a crit rate of -100% (This skill cannot crit.) Mayhem's skillset isn't particularly impressive either. It's most threatening attack is Dragon Fog, and that's because of the poison proc really. But you can make it so your entire party is immune to Poison at that point, which pretty much defangs that skill, and this boss. The song is a nice remix of Seven Threats from DS at least. Imperial Wrath is only broken out whenever Mayhem has an ailment, and can only be used on the first action of a turn, or if Dragon Action doesn't get in the way (it's the very first thing the AI checks for, so there's basically no way to stop it from coming out short of disabling Mayhem). So if Paralysis locks that turn away, it can't use it for its 2nd action. Likely to hammer in the buddy skill tutorial further. It does waste one of its turns at least. Funnily enough Mayhem's AI doesn't give a poo poo about Hack, Hack Weakness, or G-Depth. But Imperial Wrath will clear them out if you trigger it anyways. It also uses it on its own right before it loops its attack pattern. A free turn at least?  Interestingly enough, there's an unused version of Mayhem in the code. The first one in the picture is what you actually fight. The 2nd version was apparently meant to be fought earlier, but not sure what it was supposed to be for. Judging from the fact it doesn't pay out DZ, it might have been a hopeless boss fight before the story details got finalized? What with Mayhem having the "you do 1 damage to me" skill. Would probably explain the bizarre out of nowhere tutorial for a mechanic players have already figured out due to the sheer length between getting the backup team and reaching Mayhem. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Jul 26, 2022 |
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Jul 26, 2022 06:43
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The sheer amount of blatant unethical and haphazard procedures in that scene is kind of hilarious.
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Jul 29, 2022 05:04
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Fortuners are basically a support class, and by support class I mean they basically chokeslam their enemies with raw magical power all while making them weaker through ailments. The Atlantis classes are where balance really went out the window and Fortuner is the less busted of the two, believe it or not. You can pretty much make them snowball by just setting up ailment skills to make it easier to inflict other ailments and then going to town with the Oracles. As long as your Fortuner can't die (which there are a lot of ways to ensure that!) they can pretty much just go nuts. Those stats and numbers do not lie, they hit really hard. Yeah you can stack the damage reduction buffs with defense increasing buffs, as if it wasn't easy enough to make your party ubertanks. Mana Float does carry over into the extra turn phase, so that's something at least? But yeah Mana overall isn't a problem in this game. Probably worse than Dark Ether from EO3, because that skill at least had uses, where this, Mana is just even more accessible that lowering the costs to 0 isn't a huge deal. Ichor is a bit situational, but if you know a big kill move is coming out and you don't have any other tools to do anything about it, this can end up saving you. Can't prevent game overs though, those get checked for if your party goes down, even if Ichor would have saved them. Though that would make it outright impossible to lose the game if that was the case since all your Fortuner would have to do is spam it to ensure you can't game over. Curse and Poison are situational ailments, but hey, damage over time is damage over time. It doesn't have the EO or 7DS problem of only being able to use 1 ailment, so you can at least stack up multiple ailments to really debilitate enemies. Though that is a really slow strategy by VFD standards, up to you all if you wanna engage in that. Grace of the Stars is another rare case of a nerf, as the equivalent skill in 2020-II, Colorful Stage, just lasted forever, though Duelist does have Lucky Roll, so they probably didn't want too much overlap. In most games, infinite duration down to 2 turns would be a sledgehammer nerf. The bizarre part is by VFD's standards? This is somehow a small nerf. Because of VFD's increased power levels and power leaps, killing anything in 2 turns is absolutely trivial if you know how! Very few bosses wouldn't live past that limit if you decided to go all out. I don't know how this game managed to turn a sledgehammer nerf into a small nerf, but good job I guess??? Yggdrasil's Wind is a handy panic button. Nothing much to say about it. GiantRockFromSpace posted:If there's not a skill that's like, "Instakill enemy if easy X condition is met"... I won't do anything cause I ain't risking it but it sounds like the easiest way to top the powercreep so far. Does VFD's version of Sacrifice count? Because instant death in this game is actually kind of just outright doodoo. Dragons and bosses are all outright immune to it, no getting around it. Only mooks can be tagged with it. And mooks in 7th Dragon games are ultra pathetic, they're not like Etrian Odyssey mooks which can ruin your day. Which make Revelation: Death rather poo poo to be honest.Funny thing is only DS and VFD let you have access to instant death. It's better in the former, and can be used on dragons, but they have an innate attribute that prevents any instant death calculations from succeeding until they're below 10% life. In the 2020s, only enemies had access to it. In fact, if you hacked it in on player skills, it was completely non-functional and wouldn't work on enemies as there's no code for instant death on enemies. Now Sacrifice on the other hand... Oh god. This skill was utter poo poo in all the previous games for various reasons. DS and 2020? lol permadeath in a long JRPG. Yeah sure, binning 1 character forever to win 1 battle out of hundreds is totally a worthwhile trade! In 2020-II it's just poo poo because it's so underpowered. VFD hit a very happy middle ground that uh, ended up making it rather useful. I've used it a few times unironically to end some boss fights fast. Lopping off the final 22.5% of their HP is nuts when that's the time bosses are the most dangerous. But it's not even "kill under X threshold" as you can use this at any time, so it's a flexible skill in that regard. Of course there's generally little reason to use this at the beginning of the battle when Fortuners are pretty heavy hitting units, though there is 1 boss battle I know of where using it ASAP can really help in certain strategies. If anything is an exhibit for this game's power creep, it's probably the fact that they made the shittiest skill in the entire series actually unironically good! The punishment is so minimal, just revive and heal outside of battle and that Fortuner is ready to go again.
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Jul 31, 2022 05:23
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This scene is funny. All the eggs were in 1 basket, and Unit 13 is also just going "I mean save everyone."
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Aug 2, 2022 04:05
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Do you see why the people that played this game and know about the rest of the series go on about this game's power leapfrog?! Look at this class, holy poo poo! Just look at it! None of this nonsense is in any of the previous games! The most broken stuff in each of the previous games is absolutely loving nothing compared to this! Starting off they're a bit of an odd duck jack of all trades. They have some healing capabilities but they're not too great at it. Just use items, they're better. Their status attacks are pretty strong to start off with, and they hand you super strong paralysis this early, which is pretty nuts. Enemies don't really have lightning weaknesses, so that is a slight downside, as only machine type enemies and a few others have those, and there aren't too many of those in the game. They do live up to their Knight name a bit and come with some defensives to help support your party, which is pretty nice. Provoke and Substitute are similar skills with very different purposes. Provoke is better for letting the Rune Knight do things while the aggro buff is up (and if you want to get them killed, which is a very valid tactic due to certain skills) while Substitute is the actual tanking skill since it provides a very hefty defense increase. Their tier 2 skills are where they start getting more absurd, and you get those pretty soon after unlocking the Atlantis classes. They're extremely self-sufficient with Drain and Aspir Sword, and you can cycle through them to keep the Rune Knight in tip top condition. Clench and Toughness React is pretty much meant to combo with their tanking side of things, but it can be pretty awkward to pull off. Clench is nice with Vengeful Sword, as that's just really hard hitting, and far easier to use compared to the Destroyer's version back in the 2020s. Vengeful Sword is their big ticket skill and Clench is a nice safety net to ensure big hits with that. Then you unlock the tier 3 skills and any remaining bits of balance in the game goes completely out the window due to the monkey brain balancing decisions that goes on here. I don't even know what the gently caress to say about Brave Sword. It's an on-demand mega nuke that's so trivial to spam. By the way EX works with this! Though that's not really a common thing to see, as even that's considered unnecessary amounts of overkill by players! Spamming it and saving EX for emergency uses or for their EX skill is usually preferred, though if you want to flex on a boss and kill it from turn 1 (Yes, really) go right ahead! Berserk is also nuts even if you lose control of the Rune Knight, as 15x damage that's boosted by a MAT buff is pretty loving strong! It can hit weaknesses which Brave Sword can't, though Brave Sword can outdamage it anyways. And then there's loving Knight's Pride if Brave Sword wasn't enough. It's not 100% reliable, but it's reliable enough that quite a few players outright made suicide Rune Knight builds where they would try to get the Rune Knight killed on the same turn they used Brave Sword to basically 2 shot anything in the game with that combo! Goddamn this loving class. Valerie is the true main character indeed! Odin's Rage is nice but yeah it's basically a glorified "reload" button for Brave Sword if you can't get any other party member to heal up the Rune Knight for whatever reason. Fun fact, Rune Knight is also the only class in the entire series that can legitimately hit the damage cap of 99,999. Nothing in the games has that much HP, so this probably speaks volumes about how much this class loving bench presses the game.
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Aug 7, 2022 04:58
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Yeah the budget was starting to run thin here. Reusing a dungeon you cleared pretty recently is certainly a way to pad out the game. Incidentally, Dash Stance is not a buff. It's a telegraph skill. Starting from 2020, dragons and bosses would use up a turn "charging for a big attack" essentially. However, mechanically, such skills do absolutely nothing. They don't boost damage nor are the enemies required to cast them in order to use their big attack. They're just there to warn you that a big attack is coming and to prepare accordingly. So interrupting them or causing the dragon or boss to skip over them does absolutely nothing. They'll still cast their big attack, and said attack will deal full damage. Those skills are just naturally that strong in the game data. However, 2020-II changed a good portion of them to actually boost damage, though it's just a 25% damage boost (not 25% more attacking stats thankfully.) However there's no way to break buffs in that game, so you're gonna have to deal with being smacked harder. VFD lets you break those buffs, but also kept some skills as telegraph skills where they do absolutely nothing like Dash Stance. Using a buddy skill on them will do absolutely nothing, as the AI is set on using the big attack anyways, and telegraph skills don't place such buffs on the user, so there's nothing to break.
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Aug 16, 2022 15:27
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First time I saw the living dragonfly pun I just stared at the screen for a minute in befuddlement and realized yes, the game really went there. It's funny too because the dragonfly insects aren't called that all in Japanese and go by an entirely different name unrelated to dragons. Fly Dragonicas don't do too much. They just inflict Sleep or Blind. Pretty unchanged from their 2020 incarnations. Though 2020-II gave them 30% evasion that they no longer have in VFD. They are very fragile though. Fly Dragonicas 1088 HP with 55 DEF and 42 MDF. Hammerstrike Dragons have 1830 HP with 55 DEF and 49 MDF. And Sumo Dragons have 1586 HP, but they have 86 DEF and 61 MDF. As a a result they're very easy to nuke down, especially if you get a pre-emptive.
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Aug 19, 2022 03:07
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So who'd be the whistleblower? Then again their lawyers are probably too good.
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Aug 31, 2022 23:23
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Morph Dragons have a buff that increases their evasion by a whopping 45% for 4 turns. And their blind lasts for 3 turns and cuts accuracy by 25%. So with base 100% accuracy moves, you'd only have a 30% chance to hit. Ouch. Unfortunately their buff has a 100% break chance. That skillset seems pretty harsh for this point in the game (for any other JRPG party that isn't loving hepped up on steroids). That's because they were late-game dragons from II, and aside from their stats being scaled down, they're pretty unchanged. The power creep is certainly on display here since they were pretty annoying to deal with in that game, but are barely a blip here. I will say VFD wasn't really grabbing me by this point on my first playthrough, as one of the reasons for that were the dungeon aesthetics seemed pretty bland to me. Didn't help that you have to go through the cave dungeon twice. Jumping back to 2020 and II later was sure a shock.
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Sep 2, 2022 03:42
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I swear to god this game keeps finding ways to outpowercreep my previous findings. By the way EX buffs the effect to 0.5x.
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Sep 8, 2022 16:05
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Nyala's skillset got slightly buffed surprisingly, but yeah the fight is nerfed from the 2020 version, so you didn't quite beat a final boss this early. Though I'm sure with VFD's power creep it could have been managed. He was the final boss in 2020, but they weren't exactly comfortable having you fight a literal final boss this early in chapter 3, so he got nerfed. To elaborate on how Nyala was nerfed (though chronologically I guess he learned not to underestimate his enemies?) I'll lay out his AI. Here's his AI from 2020, as that's the version this one pulled from. (The DS version is an entirely different fight and runs on a different engine, so I won't talk about it here.) Nyala's 2020 AI posted:Phase 1, lasts until dropped below 65% HP, go to phase 2. Compared to Etrian Odyssey enemy AI (For those that have read those LPs), 7th Dragon enemy AI is a lot more rigid and predictable with not that much RNG involved, so if you're having trouble, making note of the enemy behaviors can help a ton. I've been digging through enemy AI and enemy skills, and they're uh, kind of disorganized in the files which is why some of the info only just started showing up now in the actual LP, and there's some interesting stuff here as well. As for what "coinflip" means, in the 2020s, bosses actually had 2 different regular attack animations. This added some flair, but it was also to screw with the Destroyer class, who had skills that countered enemies based on how their attack was animated. Nyala had a fang attack and a ranged attack he could use here. This system was scrapped in VFD, as God Hands don't give a drat about that, so everything only has 1 attacking animation in VFD. All of them are classified as melee. So Nyala kept his biting animation in VFD while his ranged attack animation flew off into the nether. Anyways that's the brain of a final boss, but what about a version scaled down for chapter 3? Nyala's VFD AI posted:Phase 1, lasts until dropped below 80% HP, go to phase 2. Phase 2 replaced a ton of vicious skills with regular attacks. Also Nyala will try to attack the healthiest party member whenever he can, lessening the chances of him actually killing someone to further make the fight safer. Phase 3 got a big overhaul, in that it makes use of VFD's buddy mechanics. In 2020, you couldn't stop True Dragon Meteor 2020 from coming out. You had to heal up, guard, and hope for the best. In VFD, if you see True Dragon Meteor activate, you've basically lost, as it was reworked into a failure condition. Oh and you have to break the buff before the turn he casts True Dragon Meteor, as breaking the buff then doesn't stop it from being cast. A bizarre aesthetic thing I want to note about this fight is that in the 2020s, bosses sometimes took 2 turns to telegraph their strongest attack. So in 2020, when Nyala used Ruinous Omen, the first turn had the game go: "Nyala is gathering power from space!" and then the second turn displayed the message: "Nyala's power is fully charged!" before he launched True Dragon Meteor 2020 at you. However VFD can't do this since it reworked that skill into an actual buff instead of just wasting Nyala's turn to warn you about his special attack. So instead he charges up the attack on the first turn so you can break the buff and then... he just. Stares at you for his 2nd turn before he then launches the attack on the 3rd turn. Kind of a weird workaround. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Sep 9, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 06:43
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:54 |
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Yeah turns out Nyala perma-died. This seems to be just standard time travel rules except thinking about that for a while reveals a lot of backlash effects that causes things to fall apart. So killing Nyala essentially deleted him from 2020 and 7th Dragon DS. The former would be fine... if it wasn't for the fact that 2 dragon invasions happened anyways. So uh. Who led invasion 1 then? Fomalhaut couldn't have done it since he led invasion 2.BisbyWorl posted:
     Unfortunately I understand this joke all too well. GiantRockFromSpace posted:If there's not a skill that's like, "Instakill enemy if easy X condition is met"... I won't do anything cause I ain't risking it but it sounds like the easiest way to top the powercreep so far. GiantRockFromSpace posted:At this rate we'll find out VFD characters can actually kill enemies in the other games somehow. Any other prophecies you wish to share with the class?
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Sep 16, 2022 05:25
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...Do you want Unit 13 to die? I will not allow that.