If Sophie was the game that is considered one of the most standard game in the series, then Firis does a 180 and changes as much things up as possible. The time limit is back to the dismay of some but it is relevant to the plot and the amount of time given is pretty generous for what you need to do. The game tries a completely different formula in the game in allowing you a ton of freedom into what you can and cannot do. After the prologue you basically can explore all areas in the game other than 5 or 6 which requires items or quest from post game to access them. Aside from a main quest around the middle that you are forced to do you can basically choose where and how you want to go about your objective at your own pace.
After the first task you set out on a journey with the final goal is to get at least three letter of recommendations before reaching the final town to take the alchemy exam. There are five total which you are able to get two before the middle check point, one in the middle and two after. You are still free to go around back and forth after it but it takes quite a bit of time. The game is basically an open world game and there are tons of quests here and there from various npc where you assist with certain tasks. However you won't be able to do all the quest as soon as you reach them, sometimes you haven't learned the recipe, sometimes the monster is just too strong for you to beat at the moment. This allows for some fun things like being able to sneak into some higher level areas for materials before you normally should have access to them. The progression and pacing of the game and areas are really nice and it becomes really easy to lose yourself in the world.
The alchemy portion of the game was tweaked a bit also. The first big thing is that all recipes have their own experience, so as you fuse more of an item it become easier to fuse that said item or even items that are related the item. Overall this is great at first but later on for items where it's hard to obtain the materials for, the grind becomes somewhat of a pain since you have to level the recipe before you can make your ideal item. Catalysts in the game do help with that, that are items that allow for easier synthesis at the cost of using another ingredient. The other big change is unlocking recipes. Unlocking them are a bit more flexible now for most of the earlier recipes but even if you aren't able to unlock them normally, you can unlock them using idea points immediately instead of doing the required objective to unlock the recipes. Idea points are gathered through out the game from quests, so in the case where you want a recipe now instead of figuring out how to unlock it you can do so.
Not much to say about the battle system other than that it feels much slower, the lack a speed up option like there was in the previous game is pretty much what causes it. The game isn't overly difficult unless you are trying to fight and beat certain things before you have the ample items or gears to do so. A lot of the big fights feels a bit lacking, but a large amount of the fights can be accessed on the maps themselves regardless of if you are ready for them or not, so deciding to fight or avoid is something to think about. The variety of locations in the game is pretty nice, with starting out in mostly grassland and forests, then later on having snow and desert locations which allows for new scenery to be found as you advance through the game.
The main portion of the game takes the course over a year and that's more than ample enough time to do what you need through the world while completing the primary objectives. In my case I finished everything and arrived with nearly 100 days remaining. After reaching the final goal you get to take an alchemy exam. The exam comes in 3 parts, a multiple choice part that is actually pretty hard unless you are good at remember a lot of random stuff while fusing. A synthesis part which is pretty easy and you can prep before hand, just fuse anything of high quality and just this section is enough to pass. Lastly a damage test, in which you try to do as much damage as possible using 1 action, whether it's an item or a skill or even just attacking. Then after wards you get to fight your fellow alchemist which is technically not part of the test but has a trophy involved for winning. Once all this is done it goes into post game.
Post game is somewhat the downfall of this game for me, as good as game was before it the post game mostly felt tedious which in part was caused by the endings which I'll talk about later. The main thing to notice is the time limit is gone now so you are free to do whatever you want. Later on after some quest having access to faster travel such as a flying broom and airship is nice. You get access to new areas such as under water areas and a few that are only accessible by airship, but none of the areas feels really unique or amazing. There are a few fun bosses here and there but some of the bosses will literally still kill you before you can get a turn until you have grinded enough to match them.
Now the main reason why post game got somewhat stale is all the side character stories. There are 8 character (well 9 but Sophie and Plachta count as 1 ending) which all have their own ending and a 9th one once you unlocked all 8. The side stories vary heavily in how interesting they are, some tell you about relationships and unanswered question about their past and having them move on from it. While other feels like they were there just because they were party member and nothing really interesting came out of it. The endings didn't really help as all of them were basically 30 seconds mini epilogues with no real substance to them.
Overall I would still call it a very good game for the meat of it was very enjoyable. The open world style is one that we haven't seen much in the series and the execution of it was enough for it to be a fun experience.
Time played ~55 hours
Rating 9/10
Saturday, August 11, 2018
Thursday, August 9, 2018
Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book Review
Finally bought a PS4 earlier this year after owning nearly 20 games before I got it. This is the 3rd game I finished after Utawarerumono 2 and 3. I started writing this after I played quite a bit of Firis so there might be a little bias because of it.
Overall I would say the game feels like a really safe and standard Atelier game. They didn't do anything really drastically different than their previous games other than removing the time limit in the game. The remove of the time limit basically allows you to go at your own pace without much worries or rush though the game still basically streamlines you using other methods.
Actually there is one other thing that was changed from previous games and it is how recipes are acquired. Now you get new recipes unlocked by doing specific tasks such as fusing an item, sometimes with specific traits, visiting and investigating certain areas, gathering certain items or even just through story events. The game basically uses this to limit what you can and cannot access while pushing you through the story through these recipes. It's a interesting way to do recipes compared to just buying recipe books like in previous games, but the downside is that the recipes, especially some of the later ones are really specific ways to unlock them that would be hard to figure out by yourself.
Synthesizing is not much different then before other than being much more restrictive earlier in the game. It's basically playing Tetris on a square grid and as you get farther and upgrade your cauldrons you get more options and it becomes easier. Stuff like larger grid size and being able to rotate your materials. Nothing really ground breaking but it gets the job done.
The combat system hasn't really changed too much, the start of the game actually feels slower though than most other Atelier game but as you progress it's basically the same as past games. One quirk about the system that is in previous games too is that the level limit is only level 20 and after that all you get are skill points which can be used to increased stats, skills and other abilities. If you have played any of the previous games you'll get used to the system quickly. One thing that bugged me though it doesn't come till later in the game is that skill points will sometimes overflow and causes you to have negative skill points later in the game, not actually sure what causes it but it has happened to me a few times.
Unlocking new areas and quests are all railroaded by the story, so you never really reach any really tough areas or enemies you can't really beat. Most of the tougher bosses are only encountered through taking rumors in the tavern. The game is pretty easy because of such as well as 100% crit trait also being able to instant kill most normal enemies. Some of the rare materials later on are also limited by using these rumors. Difficulty wise this is probably one of the easiest game in the series minus maybe 2 of the bosses which are kinda tough.
Music and graphics are both pretty much what you would expect from a game from this series. Nothing too spectacular but they get the job done and by no means bad at all, just that nothing quite stands out too much. Character design are all done pretty nicely and all of the cast in the game and some returning character are all pretty likable.
In my opinion this is one of the better games for someone new to the series because it feel like an introduction for people to it with how lax the game actually is. The issue is if you plan on playing this game you probably want to plan in playing the whole trilogy since the ending is open ended and kind of leave more to be desired (At this point I haven't completely finished Firis yet so I'm not sure how the endings are). I would still recommend the game for anyone that wants to try the series just to see how it is like. It is a good game but nothing super amazing or ground breaking for the series.
Total play time ~40 hours
Rating: 8.5/10
Overall I would say the game feels like a really safe and standard Atelier game. They didn't do anything really drastically different than their previous games other than removing the time limit in the game. The remove of the time limit basically allows you to go at your own pace without much worries or rush though the game still basically streamlines you using other methods.
Actually there is one other thing that was changed from previous games and it is how recipes are acquired. Now you get new recipes unlocked by doing specific tasks such as fusing an item, sometimes with specific traits, visiting and investigating certain areas, gathering certain items or even just through story events. The game basically uses this to limit what you can and cannot access while pushing you through the story through these recipes. It's a interesting way to do recipes compared to just buying recipe books like in previous games, but the downside is that the recipes, especially some of the later ones are really specific ways to unlock them that would be hard to figure out by yourself.
Synthesizing is not much different then before other than being much more restrictive earlier in the game. It's basically playing Tetris on a square grid and as you get farther and upgrade your cauldrons you get more options and it becomes easier. Stuff like larger grid size and being able to rotate your materials. Nothing really ground breaking but it gets the job done.
The combat system hasn't really changed too much, the start of the game actually feels slower though than most other Atelier game but as you progress it's basically the same as past games. One quirk about the system that is in previous games too is that the level limit is only level 20 and after that all you get are skill points which can be used to increased stats, skills and other abilities. If you have played any of the previous games you'll get used to the system quickly. One thing that bugged me though it doesn't come till later in the game is that skill points will sometimes overflow and causes you to have negative skill points later in the game, not actually sure what causes it but it has happened to me a few times.
Unlocking new areas and quests are all railroaded by the story, so you never really reach any really tough areas or enemies you can't really beat. Most of the tougher bosses are only encountered through taking rumors in the tavern. The game is pretty easy because of such as well as 100% crit trait also being able to instant kill most normal enemies. Some of the rare materials later on are also limited by using these rumors. Difficulty wise this is probably one of the easiest game in the series minus maybe 2 of the bosses which are kinda tough.
Music and graphics are both pretty much what you would expect from a game from this series. Nothing too spectacular but they get the job done and by no means bad at all, just that nothing quite stands out too much. Character design are all done pretty nicely and all of the cast in the game and some returning character are all pretty likable.
In my opinion this is one of the better games for someone new to the series because it feel like an introduction for people to it with how lax the game actually is. The issue is if you plan on playing this game you probably want to plan in playing the whole trilogy since the ending is open ended and kind of leave more to be desired (At this point I haven't completely finished Firis yet so I'm not sure how the endings are). I would still recommend the game for anyone that wants to try the series just to see how it is like. It is a good game but nothing super amazing or ground breaking for the series.
Total play time ~40 hours
Rating: 8.5/10
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Fire Emblem Fates Birthright Lunatic/Classic/”No Internet” Analysis/Review
Finally finished with Birthright, would have been done much
faster if a certain game didn’t have half stamina and stupid skill ups
>.>.
Overall my total game time that is recorded is around 2/3 of
Conquest routes, mainly because this route is way easier and levels are
generally much more lenient. If you count all the resets I’ve done in Conquest,
Birthright only took 2/5 – ½ of the total play time in comparison.
“No Internet” was a rule I set for myself this playthough
which disallows the following
- · Any access to DLC
- · Visiting any other person’s My Castle
- · Inheriting any skills using gold
Even with these limits, the game is still much easier than
conquest, from what I have seen if you are able to beat conquest on hard,
Birthright on Lunatic is around the same difficulty.
An interesting thing to note is that there are quite a bit
of gameplay differences between the two routes. One major thing is that the AI
is dumbed down in Birthright in comparison, units will suicide into your units
even if they do 0 damage or have 0% chance to hit again. Another thing is
constant access to 1-2 range healing staffs which makes positioning healers
much easier when compared to in Conquest. Level design and how, where and what
reinforcements appear are much more “fair” in comparison. There was never a
moment in Birthright where I got completely annihilated because of them. Also
no Infinite staff skill and Infinite debuff skill on enemies at all in
Birthright.
Level design were much less unique overall when compared to
Conquest route, but it still had enough diversity to keep it interesting. It
never got to the point like Awakening where a large chunk of the chapters felt
like doing the same thing over and over.
The plot is quite a bit better than Conquest, but there are
still many moments where the MU turns their brain off for plot reasons. Funny enough
Elise gets used in plot more than Sakura in both Conquest and Birthright. I
wonder will she get any important role in revelations.
Difficulty is around a 4-5 out of 10, generally the levels
are pretty straightforward and easy but if you get careless you can still die pretty
easy from mispositioning units.
And that’s about it, there was nothing to really rant about
in the level design of this route. The hardest chapter was probably 25 or 27,
both of which are easily manageable if you played carefully. Time to finally
start Revelation soonish and this time with full use of everything so chances
are I won’t even get close to finishing before I head to Japan.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Fire Emblem Fates Conquest Lunatic/Classic Rant/Analysis/Review
For anyone thinking of playing Lunatic Classic Conquest, imo it is probably the most unforgiving Fire Emblem difficulty in any of the games ever, worse than Lunatic+ no DLC in Awakening.
The gameplay is probably one of the best for a Fire Emblem solely because of the many unique levels, each level feels vastly different from the previous ones and it doesn't feels like you are doing a random rout the field level every other level.
Plot for Conquest is ... halfway through the game it is like the main character turned their brain off and the last half of the game was doing it just because. The plot is by far the weakest point in this game.
Difficulty is probably one the the hardest in any SRPG and in some levels for the sake of just being hard. Staff Savant which gives infinite use of rods and makes all rods 10 range is probably the most obnoxious skill in this game. That combined with the infinite debuff skill can lower your stats to nearly 0 in a bunch of cases. Most of the level are really unforgiving and it takes a ton of trial and error to figure out how to approach each of the later levels.
Music is pretty nice and enjoyable. I haven't really gotten tired of the soundtrack after almost a hundred hours into the game.
Overall if you want gameplay, conquest has one of the most amazing series of level design in a Fire Emblem game, just be away of the suffering you are probably getting into if you choose to play Lunatic Classic.
Features
One of the most improved gameplay feature is that enemies no longer get a turn the turn they spawn in as reinforcements, so no more completely random deaths when doing the game blind.
Inheriting skills from mycastles and forging weapons can make your units super strong, but both are hard to completely utilize without DLC because of the lack of gold available and the zero grinding in this route.
Offspring Seals - After Chapter 18 if you do Paralogues the children comes with a seal which levels them to the current level of the chapter after promoting. The main help it gives isn't the levels it gives but more so the gold you save from having these.
Difficulty gap - The gap between hard and lunatic is insane in this game, if I were to rate the game in difficulty hard is like a 4-5/10 while lunatic is around 9-9.5/10
Exp Scaling- The exp scaling in this game is completely based off level difference of unit and target, even stuff such has healing staffs. It also scales down super hard when you get a unit decently higher than the enemy units. It makes it much harder to heal grind exp unless the healer has units that are higher level than it. The effect of this is that it is much harder to funnel experience onto only one or two units and even if you do it is not worth it in this game.
Infinite durability- overall the main this this does it it makes it so it is much easier to manage inventory and gold usage since you won't run out of weapons. Staffs are still finite and in lunatic most of the gold goes toward staffs and tonics generally.
Debuffing - Debuffing is heavily rampant in this game, it is really useful for the player while also deadly in certain levels when the enemy have access to infinitely stacking debuffs, it is an interesting feature but in turn made certain levels pretty hellish.
! - This is actually a pretty nice feature, if the enemy has a weapon that is super effective against your unit it will show a ! to warn you, so if you are in range it is completely your own fault.
Level Analysis/Rant
Prologue - Standard Tutorial nothing much to say
Chapter 1 - More Tutorial, talks about a healing seal on the floor which conveniently never shows up again.
Chapter 2 - More healing pad tutorial which you don't see in the rest of the game again.
Chapter 3 - This level is actually kind of difficult if you want to maximize exp since you have to depends on a little bit of RNG, but since it's a short level it isn't too bad.
Chapter 4 - Pretty easy chapter you can die to bad RNG in Lunatic but nothing as bad as what is to come later
Chapter 5 - Ryoma will die before you get to him no matter what in Lunatic, so basically it's a take it slow level overall average difficulty level.
Chapter 6 (Branch Split) - Ignore Ryoma and kill everyone else since you don't need to finish all units to finish the map.
Chapter 7 - This level is a sign of what's to come, I actually had to make a wall on the lower section of the map using Effie and slowly kill the ones swarming from the top 1 by 1.
Chapter 1x - This level is the only non-children paralogue which made me kind of sad, since I would have like more. You get Mozu in this level which is the well known Aptitude character. The level is easy enough to feed her experience so you can get her to level 7-10 in just this level which can make her a powerhouse later in the game.
Chapter 8 - This level is disgustingly hard if you try to go for 3 houses, 2 is doable and what I recommend most people playing Lunatic to do. Introduces Dragon Vein on the lake where you can melt the lake to lower mobility of anyone in it.
Chapter 9 - Finally there is Azura... who is behind enemy lines, this is the 1st level where you meet the enfeeble staffs which lower all the units stats by 4 temporally, on the bright side it's limited uses here and can stall it out. Overall a pretty simple level.
Chapter 10 - This is the 1st HARD level on Lunatic, since what units you use is basically set so you have to use them optimally. The goal is to prevent the enemy units from reaching their destination for 11 turns, and you will get swarmed later on since you aren't able to kill enough units with the stats the units have at this point. This level takes a bit of planing, optimization and a bit of luck to get through.
Chapter 11 - The stairs gimmick level, generally strategy is slowly bait units to stairs to swarm or hit and run to reset. Fun design in concept but only the player being able to use stairs make stairs a pretty awkward gimmick.
Chapter 12 - Chapter with Gimmick pots that are either buff/heal or debuff/poison. The pots tell you what they are before you break them so it's not that bad, decently easy level if you go in with a plan.
Chapter 13 - Super easy level, can visit all the houses no problem and funnel exp to your characters that need it.
Chapter 14 - Rods rods rods is basically the name of this level, there is the 1st appearance of the hexing rod which is devastating if it hits a character since it halves their hp for the rest of the map. You can bait it out with unit you use for just pairing then pair those halved hp units to units you are mainly using. Freeze can be baited out just by eating them since the effect only last 1 turn. The last section with the boss is a troll since the priest has entrap which is like rescue except on enemies and it puts you next to 3 enemies with certain blow, +40 hit when they initiate attack. Most reliable strategy is to fly a unit in to kill the priest that can tank 2 archer hits while staying out of range of the boss since he doesn't move.
Chapter 15 - Nothing much to say, Jaegen returns and you only have 3 units for this map. Good exp grind for MU.
Chapter 16 - Fun concept level, a find the boss level who is hidden as a green NPC, the catch is you start with 10k gold as the reward and it goes down 300 every turn. Even on Lunatic you can get 6-7k gold while finishing the level pretty safely.
Chapter 17 - This level is Ninja hell in a cave basically. Generally a character that can wall off their units in chokes is highly recommended (Xander) and makes the level much easier since otherwise you will get swarmed by units that are much faster than yours.
Chapter 18 - This level is on a timer but the timer is lenient, you have 20 turns to finish both bosses. The start might be a bit of RNG since on the left side you have to tank a few units while eating a freeze.
Children Paralogue levels
Chapter 2x - Kana, the main danger is if the Falcon Knights double your character, otherwise one of the easier children chapters.
Chapter 3x - Shigure, fun gimmick level where each ship is accessible every other turn and it rotates back and forth. Easy level good for exp farming.
Chapter 4x - Dwyer, the NPC knights are actually decently strong in this chapter so you have no problem getting to him way before he gets into trouble. You can also bait the ninja into attacking you by hugging that wall. Also easy level.
Chapter 5x - Sophie, easy level, rush level a bit quickly to block off the villagers so that they don't suicide
Chapter 6x - Midori, also super easy level. As far as I know the boss doesn't attack at all and just runs, you can use the dragon veins and catch up to her and surround her so she can't do anything. After that you can slowly farm the rest of the exp on the map at your leisure.
Chapter 15x - Seigbert, this level has infinite reinforcement until you seal them off by activating the dragon veins. The hardest part of this level is getting Seigbert to not die turn 1-2. Thankfully the infinitely spawning units are decently weak even on Lunatic.
Chapter 16x - Forrest, the trap of the game and he gets kidnapped cause they think hes a girl. This level has a time limit from when you first encounter the enemy or the enemy encounters you. Once encounters a merc slowly walks toward forest to kill him. If you plan your series of moves you should get through fine, I went through clockwise form the bottom left and cycled around.
Chapter 17x - Ignatius... If you do this level right after chapter 18 like I did, you have 3 turns to stop at least one of the ninjas from reaching him or he just flat out dies. The other down side is that the level is huge, the enemy had freeze staffs and there is forest impeding your movement everywhere. This level is pretty hellish I actually had to have Elise tank round 1 and Xander tank most of the stuff from the left to make it in time. Freeze staff is the MVP in this level.
Chapter 18x - Velouria. This level had me stumped for a while because there is a priest with entrap in the middle who can basically kill one of your units by making them swarmed if they are in range. There are also fire tower all over and mountains paths impeding movement. I got through by slowly inching through the top side with my strategists, triggering Velouria to appear and having the rest of the party killing the reinforcement. Thankfully most of the units don't aggro at all unless you are in their range which made this level much more sane.
Chapter 19x - Percy. I fucked up pairings since I did it blind so I never got this level :/. I guess I'll wait on Revelations to do this one.
Chapter 20x - Ophelia. This is the 1st level where I learned that if a unit does 0 damage or 0% chance to hit it will ignore that unit and rush toward your other units. The top right house is the only once you have to rush to visit, otherwise the rest of the level is pretty simple. The reinforcements and ninjas can be dangerous though.
Chapter 21x - Soleil - this level required a bit of planning, you get access to obstacles where you can grab and put down to block the enemy movement. The main thing is you can completely seal off the bottom left by turn 2 with a 9 movement after paired unit combined with Azura's sing. This makes it so you only have to deal with 3/4 the map which make it much more manageable. Forrest with tomebreaker was MVP here since he basically took care of most of the top left by himself.
Chapter 22x - Nina. This is the funny level with a knight who can only use spears but his only item is an axe, so he sits there on the side doing nothing. She is also the only child that starts as an enemy cause daddy issues. Like 6x Nina can be trapped after she grabs the top chest if you can clear the middle room fast enough. This level is pretty manageable if you don't mind giving up the left chest, however if you want it though it becomes considerably harder.
Back to Main Chapters
Chapter 19 - They got one thing right about the lore of Kitsunes, they made them as annoying as hell. The level isn't too hard if not for their ability, which for one turn they become untargetable but they still take up a space and remain there. The biggest annoyance is they and immediately move and attack the very next turn so if you have a squishy in range they are getting hit and possibly dying. Other than that this is the Fox genocide level.
Chapter 20 - This level brings the wind gimmick level where you can get pushed up or down 5 spaces (or the next available safe space). When you activate a Dragon Vein ALL units gets pushed immediately. While if you don't all your units get pushed at the end of your ENEMY's turn. This level has the dreaded hex rod priest and lots of fliers and space and positioning management. I failed many times just because I forgot to notice one or 2 things.
Chapter 21 - At first I thought this level was going to be bad because of all the breaker skills, but there is a huge counter to that, beaststones aren't affected at all and Velouria is pretty tanky and strong. Watch ranges of enemies and clear steadily and the level becomes pretty simple.
Chapter 22 - Oh hey it's Sakura. The gimmick of this level is that your party is split into 2 and the Dragon Veins on one side opens the walls of the other side so the idea is you needs to alternate advancing kinda. After a certain point Sakura will activate her own and restore all the walls, this coincides with some dangerous reinforcements coming out. I had to block the spawns of especially the machinist spawn on the left side to get through the level. I highly recommend a bow user or beastkillers on the right side. This level is basically trial and error learning about where and what reinforcement spawns.
Chapter 23 - Welcome to the start of hell. Rally bots and getting swarmed by reinforcements this level is all kinds of unfair. I had to make use of entrap to beat this level mainly to get the guy off the right most stairs. one thing to note is after triggering the 1st wave of units on the left and their reinforcements you can actually bait the units in the top right into attacking and aggroing you which triggers the reinforcement spawns on the 4 forts in which you can block if you sit on them. That makes the 1st half of the level much more sane. Once you get to the top right you get to play the stair bait game and hit and reset over and over. A warning though a few of those units have lunge which could be a death of a character unless the character is innately really tanky so a general is highly recommended to do this with.
Chapter 24 - The gimmick of this chapter is wind, when you activate a dragon vein all ground units get movement increased and air units get movement reduced, however when Hinoka activates it the opposite happens. This makes it tough to position when your units are reduced to just 3 movement. I made a defensive formation on the right forest area and camped it out till the 1st waves of reinforcement were all gone which made the level overall more manageable. Everyone's favorite Hexing staff is back.
Chapter 25 - I didn't want to deal with infinitely stacking debuff ninjas so I just had MU dual Ryouma till he won.
Chapter 26 - This is by far the WORST level in the game by design and everything, ton of priest and the boss with infinite use staff with every negative effect staff between them all. One fun thing to note though for the AI is that when there is a door blocking and they do 0 damage to the only unit they have access to the units with literally stand there and do nothing. I completely ignored the left side and focused on the right avoiding the boss's staves range as much as possible. My strategy is basically try to block and tank out the final room and hope that RNG doesn't kill you. The other scary thing I learned is that after a while the monsters on the left will destroy the doors by them selves near the end which almost gave me a heart attack. I was still able to get all 3 middle chest and finish the level soundly.
Chapter 27 - If you got through 26 this level is super easy, just watch out for the double counter units which you just use range physical against. Boss is a joke.
Endgame - I do not know what they expect you to do in this level normally... infinite staff with infinite debuff skills, map wide boss attack you needs to pop a Vein every other turn to prevent damage and to top it all off you can't even save or leave the map for this so you have 1 try after 27. I went with the cheese method for the 2 turn kill since I didn't really want to deal with playing 27 over and over. This would be the worst level in the game if it wasn't cheeseable.
Top 5 worst levels
26>Endgame>23>17x>10
Overall Enjoyable game just don't play on Lunatic unless you want to suffer.
The gameplay is probably one of the best for a Fire Emblem solely because of the many unique levels, each level feels vastly different from the previous ones and it doesn't feels like you are doing a random rout the field level every other level.
Plot for Conquest is ... halfway through the game it is like the main character turned their brain off and the last half of the game was doing it just because. The plot is by far the weakest point in this game.
Difficulty is probably one the the hardest in any SRPG and in some levels for the sake of just being hard. Staff Savant which gives infinite use of rods and makes all rods 10 range is probably the most obnoxious skill in this game. That combined with the infinite debuff skill can lower your stats to nearly 0 in a bunch of cases. Most of the level are really unforgiving and it takes a ton of trial and error to figure out how to approach each of the later levels.
Music is pretty nice and enjoyable. I haven't really gotten tired of the soundtrack after almost a hundred hours into the game.
Overall if you want gameplay, conquest has one of the most amazing series of level design in a Fire Emblem game, just be away of the suffering you are probably getting into if you choose to play Lunatic Classic.
Features
One of the most improved gameplay feature is that enemies no longer get a turn the turn they spawn in as reinforcements, so no more completely random deaths when doing the game blind.
Inheriting skills from mycastles and forging weapons can make your units super strong, but both are hard to completely utilize without DLC because of the lack of gold available and the zero grinding in this route.
Offspring Seals - After Chapter 18 if you do Paralogues the children comes with a seal which levels them to the current level of the chapter after promoting. The main help it gives isn't the levels it gives but more so the gold you save from having these.
Difficulty gap - The gap between hard and lunatic is insane in this game, if I were to rate the game in difficulty hard is like a 4-5/10 while lunatic is around 9-9.5/10
Exp Scaling- The exp scaling in this game is completely based off level difference of unit and target, even stuff such has healing staffs. It also scales down super hard when you get a unit decently higher than the enemy units. It makes it much harder to heal grind exp unless the healer has units that are higher level than it. The effect of this is that it is much harder to funnel experience onto only one or two units and even if you do it is not worth it in this game.
Infinite durability- overall the main this this does it it makes it so it is much easier to manage inventory and gold usage since you won't run out of weapons. Staffs are still finite and in lunatic most of the gold goes toward staffs and tonics generally.
Debuffing - Debuffing is heavily rampant in this game, it is really useful for the player while also deadly in certain levels when the enemy have access to infinitely stacking debuffs, it is an interesting feature but in turn made certain levels pretty hellish.
! - This is actually a pretty nice feature, if the enemy has a weapon that is super effective against your unit it will show a ! to warn you, so if you are in range it is completely your own fault.
Level Analysis/Rant
Prologue - Standard Tutorial nothing much to say
Chapter 1 - More Tutorial, talks about a healing seal on the floor which conveniently never shows up again.
Chapter 2 - More healing pad tutorial which you don't see in the rest of the game again.
Chapter 3 - This level is actually kind of difficult if you want to maximize exp since you have to depends on a little bit of RNG, but since it's a short level it isn't too bad.
Chapter 4 - Pretty easy chapter you can die to bad RNG in Lunatic but nothing as bad as what is to come later
Chapter 5 - Ryoma will die before you get to him no matter what in Lunatic, so basically it's a take it slow level overall average difficulty level.
Chapter 6 (Branch Split) - Ignore Ryoma and kill everyone else since you don't need to finish all units to finish the map.
Chapter 7 - This level is a sign of what's to come, I actually had to make a wall on the lower section of the map using Effie and slowly kill the ones swarming from the top 1 by 1.
Chapter 1x - This level is the only non-children paralogue which made me kind of sad, since I would have like more. You get Mozu in this level which is the well known Aptitude character. The level is easy enough to feed her experience so you can get her to level 7-10 in just this level which can make her a powerhouse later in the game.
Chapter 8 - This level is disgustingly hard if you try to go for 3 houses, 2 is doable and what I recommend most people playing Lunatic to do. Introduces Dragon Vein on the lake where you can melt the lake to lower mobility of anyone in it.
Chapter 9 - Finally there is Azura... who is behind enemy lines, this is the 1st level where you meet the enfeeble staffs which lower all the units stats by 4 temporally, on the bright side it's limited uses here and can stall it out. Overall a pretty simple level.
Chapter 10 - This is the 1st HARD level on Lunatic, since what units you use is basically set so you have to use them optimally. The goal is to prevent the enemy units from reaching their destination for 11 turns, and you will get swarmed later on since you aren't able to kill enough units with the stats the units have at this point. This level takes a bit of planing, optimization and a bit of luck to get through.
Chapter 11 - The stairs gimmick level, generally strategy is slowly bait units to stairs to swarm or hit and run to reset. Fun design in concept but only the player being able to use stairs make stairs a pretty awkward gimmick.
Chapter 12 - Chapter with Gimmick pots that are either buff/heal or debuff/poison. The pots tell you what they are before you break them so it's not that bad, decently easy level if you go in with a plan.
Chapter 13 - Super easy level, can visit all the houses no problem and funnel exp to your characters that need it.
Chapter 14 - Rods rods rods is basically the name of this level, there is the 1st appearance of the hexing rod which is devastating if it hits a character since it halves their hp for the rest of the map. You can bait it out with unit you use for just pairing then pair those halved hp units to units you are mainly using. Freeze can be baited out just by eating them since the effect only last 1 turn. The last section with the boss is a troll since the priest has entrap which is like rescue except on enemies and it puts you next to 3 enemies with certain blow, +40 hit when they initiate attack. Most reliable strategy is to fly a unit in to kill the priest that can tank 2 archer hits while staying out of range of the boss since he doesn't move.
Chapter 15 - Nothing much to say, Jaegen returns and you only have 3 units for this map. Good exp grind for MU.
Chapter 16 - Fun concept level, a find the boss level who is hidden as a green NPC, the catch is you start with 10k gold as the reward and it goes down 300 every turn. Even on Lunatic you can get 6-7k gold while finishing the level pretty safely.
Chapter 17 - This level is Ninja hell in a cave basically. Generally a character that can wall off their units in chokes is highly recommended (Xander) and makes the level much easier since otherwise you will get swarmed by units that are much faster than yours.
Chapter 18 - This level is on a timer but the timer is lenient, you have 20 turns to finish both bosses. The start might be a bit of RNG since on the left side you have to tank a few units while eating a freeze.
Children Paralogue levels
Chapter 2x - Kana, the main danger is if the Falcon Knights double your character, otherwise one of the easier children chapters.
Chapter 3x - Shigure, fun gimmick level where each ship is accessible every other turn and it rotates back and forth. Easy level good for exp farming.
Chapter 4x - Dwyer, the NPC knights are actually decently strong in this chapter so you have no problem getting to him way before he gets into trouble. You can also bait the ninja into attacking you by hugging that wall. Also easy level.
Chapter 5x - Sophie, easy level, rush level a bit quickly to block off the villagers so that they don't suicide
Chapter 6x - Midori, also super easy level. As far as I know the boss doesn't attack at all and just runs, you can use the dragon veins and catch up to her and surround her so she can't do anything. After that you can slowly farm the rest of the exp on the map at your leisure.
Chapter 15x - Seigbert, this level has infinite reinforcement until you seal them off by activating the dragon veins. The hardest part of this level is getting Seigbert to not die turn 1-2. Thankfully the infinitely spawning units are decently weak even on Lunatic.
Chapter 16x - Forrest, the trap of the game and he gets kidnapped cause they think hes a girl. This level has a time limit from when you first encounter the enemy or the enemy encounters you. Once encounters a merc slowly walks toward forest to kill him. If you plan your series of moves you should get through fine, I went through clockwise form the bottom left and cycled around.
Chapter 17x - Ignatius... If you do this level right after chapter 18 like I did, you have 3 turns to stop at least one of the ninjas from reaching him or he just flat out dies. The other down side is that the level is huge, the enemy had freeze staffs and there is forest impeding your movement everywhere. This level is pretty hellish I actually had to have Elise tank round 1 and Xander tank most of the stuff from the left to make it in time. Freeze staff is the MVP in this level.
Chapter 18x - Velouria. This level had me stumped for a while because there is a priest with entrap in the middle who can basically kill one of your units by making them swarmed if they are in range. There are also fire tower all over and mountains paths impeding movement. I got through by slowly inching through the top side with my strategists, triggering Velouria to appear and having the rest of the party killing the reinforcement. Thankfully most of the units don't aggro at all unless you are in their range which made this level much more sane.
Chapter 19x - Percy. I fucked up pairings since I did it blind so I never got this level :/. I guess I'll wait on Revelations to do this one.
Chapter 20x - Ophelia. This is the 1st level where I learned that if a unit does 0 damage or 0% chance to hit it will ignore that unit and rush toward your other units. The top right house is the only once you have to rush to visit, otherwise the rest of the level is pretty simple. The reinforcements and ninjas can be dangerous though.
Chapter 21x - Soleil - this level required a bit of planning, you get access to obstacles where you can grab and put down to block the enemy movement. The main thing is you can completely seal off the bottom left by turn 2 with a 9 movement after paired unit combined with Azura's sing. This makes it so you only have to deal with 3/4 the map which make it much more manageable. Forrest with tomebreaker was MVP here since he basically took care of most of the top left by himself.
Chapter 22x - Nina. This is the funny level with a knight who can only use spears but his only item is an axe, so he sits there on the side doing nothing. She is also the only child that starts as an enemy cause daddy issues. Like 6x Nina can be trapped after she grabs the top chest if you can clear the middle room fast enough. This level is pretty manageable if you don't mind giving up the left chest, however if you want it though it becomes considerably harder.
Back to Main Chapters
Chapter 19 - They got one thing right about the lore of Kitsunes, they made them as annoying as hell. The level isn't too hard if not for their ability, which for one turn they become untargetable but they still take up a space and remain there. The biggest annoyance is they and immediately move and attack the very next turn so if you have a squishy in range they are getting hit and possibly dying. Other than that this is the Fox genocide level.
Chapter 20 - This level brings the wind gimmick level where you can get pushed up or down 5 spaces (or the next available safe space). When you activate a Dragon Vein ALL units gets pushed immediately. While if you don't all your units get pushed at the end of your ENEMY's turn. This level has the dreaded hex rod priest and lots of fliers and space and positioning management. I failed many times just because I forgot to notice one or 2 things.
Chapter 21 - At first I thought this level was going to be bad because of all the breaker skills, but there is a huge counter to that, beaststones aren't affected at all and Velouria is pretty tanky and strong. Watch ranges of enemies and clear steadily and the level becomes pretty simple.
Chapter 22 - Oh hey it's Sakura. The gimmick of this level is that your party is split into 2 and the Dragon Veins on one side opens the walls of the other side so the idea is you needs to alternate advancing kinda. After a certain point Sakura will activate her own and restore all the walls, this coincides with some dangerous reinforcements coming out. I had to block the spawns of especially the machinist spawn on the left side to get through the level. I highly recommend a bow user or beastkillers on the right side. This level is basically trial and error learning about where and what reinforcement spawns.
Chapter 23 - Welcome to the start of hell. Rally bots and getting swarmed by reinforcements this level is all kinds of unfair. I had to make use of entrap to beat this level mainly to get the guy off the right most stairs. one thing to note is after triggering the 1st wave of units on the left and their reinforcements you can actually bait the units in the top right into attacking and aggroing you which triggers the reinforcement spawns on the 4 forts in which you can block if you sit on them. That makes the 1st half of the level much more sane. Once you get to the top right you get to play the stair bait game and hit and reset over and over. A warning though a few of those units have lunge which could be a death of a character unless the character is innately really tanky so a general is highly recommended to do this with.
Chapter 24 - The gimmick of this chapter is wind, when you activate a dragon vein all ground units get movement increased and air units get movement reduced, however when Hinoka activates it the opposite happens. This makes it tough to position when your units are reduced to just 3 movement. I made a defensive formation on the right forest area and camped it out till the 1st waves of reinforcement were all gone which made the level overall more manageable. Everyone's favorite Hexing staff is back.
Chapter 25 - I didn't want to deal with infinitely stacking debuff ninjas so I just had MU dual Ryouma till he won.
Chapter 26 - This is by far the WORST level in the game by design and everything, ton of priest and the boss with infinite use staff with every negative effect staff between them all. One fun thing to note though for the AI is that when there is a door blocking and they do 0 damage to the only unit they have access to the units with literally stand there and do nothing. I completely ignored the left side and focused on the right avoiding the boss's staves range as much as possible. My strategy is basically try to block and tank out the final room and hope that RNG doesn't kill you. The other scary thing I learned is that after a while the monsters on the left will destroy the doors by them selves near the end which almost gave me a heart attack. I was still able to get all 3 middle chest and finish the level soundly.
Chapter 27 - If you got through 26 this level is super easy, just watch out for the double counter units which you just use range physical against. Boss is a joke.
Endgame - I do not know what they expect you to do in this level normally... infinite staff with infinite debuff skills, map wide boss attack you needs to pop a Vein every other turn to prevent damage and to top it all off you can't even save or leave the map for this so you have 1 try after 27. I went with the cheese method for the 2 turn kill since I didn't really want to deal with playing 27 over and over. This would be the worst level in the game if it wasn't cheeseable.
Top 5 worst levels
26>Endgame>23>17x>10
Overall Enjoyable game just don't play on Lunatic unless you want to suffer.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Ar Tonelico
A VNRPG where songs of a Reyvateil are the source of magic.
Pro
+ Great Ost
+ Well developed plot
+ As Grindy as you want it to be
+ Good Pacing (No dungeon felt too long or dragged)
Neu
= Really easy game (Didn't get close to a game over for the whole game)
= Graphics
Con
- Lots of lag and slowdown while doing certain things
- Some game-breaking glitches
Don't know why it took me so long to pick up this game, it basically combined most of the things I like into one game. Item creation was lacking from what I wanted so it's not worth playing the game for only that. The variance of the different endings are a bit lacking but it's the differences of what happened in the two different branches you can go through is nice. Overall if you wind up liking one of the two main heroine you'll probably like this game.
Extra Note: if you don't have a Reyvateil in your party, you can't run from battle... which bugged me in certain sections of the game.
Total Playtime 40:00~ (All 7 endings)
Overall Rating 8.6/10
Pro
+ Great Ost
+ Well developed plot
+ As Grindy as you want it to be
+ Good Pacing (No dungeon felt too long or dragged)
Neu
= Really easy game (Didn't get close to a game over for the whole game)
= Graphics
Con
- Lots of lag and slowdown while doing certain things
- Some game-breaking glitches
Don't know why it took me so long to pick up this game, it basically combined most of the things I like into one game. Item creation was lacking from what I wanted so it's not worth playing the game for only that. The variance of the different endings are a bit lacking but it's the differences of what happened in the two different branches you can go through is nice. Overall if you wind up liking one of the two main heroine you'll probably like this game.
Extra Note: if you don't have a Reyvateil in your party, you can't run from battle... which bugged me in certain sections of the game.
Total Playtime 40:00~ (All 7 endings)
Overall Rating 8.6/10
Radiant Historia
Jrpg with time travel, conspiracies, backstabbing and a world that is about to end.
Pro
+ Great story and pacing
+ Fun and Unique battle system
+ Good length (20-30 Hours for regular ending, 30-40 hours for true)
+ Good closure (For true end)
+ Not a grind heavy game
+ Overall likable characters
Neu
= Soundtrack
= Graphics
Con
- Elusive and tedious side quests that are required for true end
- Certain boss fights are painful when under leveled/geared and may require some grinding
Extra note: There is a really high amount of bad ends in this game, 20+ but they won't lead you to game overs and will just bring you back to before the choice that you made that caused the bad end, so you are free to watch them without worries. Most of the bad endings are interesting and worth a read.
Overall one of the best games I've played of this type. If certain sidequests and chest weren't near impossible to find without a guide, this would be a near perfect game for me.
Total Playtime 32:25 (True Ending)
Score 9/10
999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors
A VN where 9
people get kidnapped and shoved into a sinking ship in which they have 9
hours to figure out the mystery of the 9 doors.
Pro
+ Amazing story
+ Great Character development
+ good BGM
Con
- Text speed is so SLOOOOOOOOOOOW
- Tedious puzzles
The main attraction of this game is the story, so if you are looking into playing it for the puzzles, look else where. Most of the puzzles are basically and really easy, just it's tedious to find all the parts of the puzzle before you can actually start working on it. If you have read other works by Kotaro Uchikoshi (infinity series), then you can probably see the true end coming from a mile away, otherwise it's a nice surprise. Lastly this game is kinda open ended so that there are some details you need to figure out on your own. Not as open ended as Remember 11, but nowhere near as conclusive as Ever 17 either.
Playing Time: 20~ Hours (Safe + True End)
Overall Rating: 8.8/10
Pro
+ Amazing story
+ Great Character development
+ good BGM
Con
- Text speed is so SLOOOOOOOOOOOW
- Tedious puzzles
The main attraction of this game is the story, so if you are looking into playing it for the puzzles, look else where. Most of the puzzles are basically and really easy, just it's tedious to find all the parts of the puzzle before you can actually start working on it. If you have read other works by Kotaro Uchikoshi (infinity series), then you can probably see the true end coming from a mile away, otherwise it's a nice surprise. Lastly this game is kinda open ended so that there are some details you need to figure out on your own. Not as open ended as Remember 11, but nowhere near as conclusive as Ever 17 either.
Playing Time: 20~ Hours (Safe + True End)
Overall Rating: 8.8/10
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