In battles with them, if you leave only a single Mechanic alive, they will heal you for ~300HP a pop. You can use this to heal/charge fuel up before squashing them
Discussion Guidelines
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Discussion
Hey look more than two party members!
Participation
Will you be playing with is this week?
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Oops, I played before you posted the thread and I overshot a bit. Finished Chapter 26 and saved at the next saving point. Won’t matter too much I guess!
Yeah it’s fine. I use the walkthroughs to get a rough idea of the chapter end, then YT play through to find a save point around that event, since I’m not playing in advance to work out the kinks. I haven’t been using the scripts much, so I’m not always exactly on point.
I think you’re doing a great job with the planning, now that I tried playing without the thread of the week, I really missed it
I played with the walkthrough to not miss out on stuff, but it made me miss out on having fun xD
Blessedly short week this time. Sometimes I get a bit exhausted by talking to all the NPCs in the towns and whatnot, but there wasn’t too much of that this time
Week 16 Play Report
Finally, we get Elly back in the party and now she addresses one of the biggest complaints I had about combat until now - a lack of options for dealing with crowds in combat. Finally getting those area elemental spells has been a big improvement with combat for me. I spent some time outside of ノアトゥン training up her deathblows too
The goliath factory was an interesting dungeon - I think the little over-the-shoulder rooms where you’d be ambushed by enemies at certain points were kind of cool visually (if not much to write home about in terms of dungeon design). And we got a sort of puzzle with needing to switch the conveyor directions. Not much of a puzzle, but still a little bit of interactivity between point A and point B does help. In terms of visuals though, I like the giant metallic factory aesthetic
The boss against the big mech was a bit of a slog, it kept buffing its attack/defence and then it brought mechanics out that managed to heal it like 2000 HP. I just scraped through by the skin of my teeth. Then the fight with グラーフ afterwards on the roof of the goliath was cool. This game loves setting up cinematic scenarios. Rico did die in the fight, but Elly and Fei got through
Hadn’t posted anything cause my feelings on this are sort of the flipside – it really feels like this game has various ideas and then we get imo the most underdeveloped beta version of them imaginable. We’re raiding this important factory which involves unceremoniously walking in, Hammer existing in a robot and going “hey don’t worry about it,” then it’s just blank little gray hallways without a character, event, or even really branching paths the whole way barring a twice repeated combat arena room. I like conveyor belt puzzles but they didn’t get past the idea phase; you just jump on a few and every time you press the button at the end to go the other way. The encounter rate was getting to me this time but I don’t think it’s any higher than it is in the sewers; the dungeon design just didn’t have anything to keep me awake.
But anyway I wanted to comment on the mech boss cause I felt similarly with its defense buffing, however – at this point I’m honestly just using the guide pretty much the whole way because any time combat does put up a fight it’s because there’s some invisible trigger that punishes you. Bosses hit way harder on deathblows, or if you kill an enemy first, etc. I don’t feel like trial and erroring it. But yeah the guide made a big deal out of the boss summoning and getting healed a lot and it just… didn’t. No clue if that’s a random trigger I just got lucky on or what, but went through the whole slugfest and beat it without ever seeing it do that stuff.
グラーフ was nice enough to spread his damage around so no one went down.
Yeah I can’t disagree with you on that. I like the idea of it and the visuals more than the actual design. To be honest I could probably count on one hand the number of JRPGs I’ve played that have what I would consider to be good dungeons. Persona 5 comes to mind, and some SMT stuff for instance. I really would’ve loved a bit more to the conveyor puzzles that went beyond simply “flick the right switch”
I do think the dungeon mainly being centred around gear combat without an easy access to a healing/refuelling station did make the resource management aspect a bit more prominent - I was on incredibly low fuel by the end of the boss
For the グラーフ fight, he only targeted Fei and Rico, didn’t even go for Elly
Atlus really is good at that stuff. Etrian Odyssey is great too, Atlus again. Nocturne’s labyrinth of amala might still be the best dungeon to me, I dunno. I do really like the ones with actual puzzles, complex designs, etc.
I hear people love the puzzle design in Lufia 2, reminds me I need to get around to that one day. I feel like dungeon designs are trending towards less interesting too; the gimmicks and puzzles are overall unpopular right now and minimaps tend to spoil things already. I like the Octopath series for its combat but it’s so bad about having a dungeon be a couple screens with brief dead end chest paths only and a minimap always telling you exactly where to go and what’s coming up.
I probably sound picky here but I just have strong feelings about what I like and dislike haha. With most games I don’t think I end up that negative on the dungeons; I’m just looking for them to make an interesting impression. Simple ones can still win me over with unique events in them and striking visuals and etc.
I didn’t have fuel issues but I admittedly spent a little time with a mechanic left alive refreshing our fuel so
Etrian Odyssey has been on my list to check out for a while. I probably need to get into more pure dungeon crawlers in general because I do love a good dungeon. Also reminds me that I ought to go back to King’s Field at some point and finish it properly. Outside of Japanese games, Legend of Grimrock is one that I need to play
Edit to add: Thinking about it, when I think of what I want out of dungeons, some of the best I’ve played aren’t even in RPGs. Survival Horror games like Silent Hill and Signalis are what come to mind. For instance the school in Silent Hill 1 is, in essence, a dungeon with the player having to manage their resources, solve puzzles to progress (with looping shortcuts), and so on
I was using the guide there, and yes he specifically doesn’t do anything to Elly. The other two can die and it doesn’t change the outcome so I didn’t even try to win that fight. (she also has some dialog where she wonders why he never hit her)
I thought this machine was going to be used for something. Maybe later?
Pretty much exactly on the same page as @Daisoujou on the dungeon design. Interesting ideas but very barebones execution.
Still this strange dream-like progression I can’t quite get used to. We exit the metropolis by… bumrushing the guards. Then we walk into the wilderness to reach some secret base that seems functionally derelict. Then we steal a plane and we get immediately ambushed by Graf who clearly has played the game before and knows what we’re going to do.
At first I was going to complain about the lack of music in the dungeon but I quite like the eerie machine sounds playing in the background.
When I saw how hard Graf hit I assumed that we were meant to lose the battle, so I just did normal attacks until he got Rico and Fei down and the story moved forward. Is there another outcome possible?
At any rate I had no idea where this scene was going and was very amused when Citan activated StarFox mode and just sent him rolling off the wing. Given how much Graf likes to make badass entrances it must have wounded his ego to ragdoll like an idiot.
Big disappointment when I realized that it was a cutscene and not a minigame.
Pretty excited to find out where we’re going with this plane. Are we finally going to visit places outside of Ignis? or are we returning to Ave immediately?
They still send him off the wing so the result must be similar on the whole. You actually can’t do deathblows on him it seems, since he’s so tiny I suppose, but the strong attacks were getting me a lot of damage on him. So it’s normal attacks only anyway.
Ah yeah I noticed the lack of deathblows. Is it true for all small enemies? I don’t think I ever tried since we usually one-hit foot soldiers…
By the way one thing I appreciate in the game design is how generous the devs were with save points. I guess it does make dungeons less tense, but then again with this combat system having to deal with excessive attrition would just be incredibly unfun IMO.
I completely gave up on the combat in this game by the way. I just do the same sequence of moves all the time and it keeps carrying me through. I don’t use magic at all. Sometimes I activate the boost if I’m feeling spicy. It’s pretty bad but at least it doesn’t get in the way so I can ignore it and focus on the rest. Makes me appreciate Trails more honestly, the encounter design is crazy sometimes but at least I have to strategize a bit to make it through the bosses.
I’m in agreement with you here. I’ve talked about liking that sort of tension but at the same time, if a part of your game is just kinda bad, sure, if nothing else work to streamline that. I kind of expect to think disc 2 is way better, heh.
Hmm, I thought the dungeon had a pretty good atmosphere. Taking control of the camera in certain rooms added to the atmosphere. Bit of a resource conservation game for me; I was running dangerously low on both fuel and HP by the first boss.
This dude ripped -1200 HP from フェイ like nothing. Four attack chain.
エリィ died at the first boss so I had to reload; no way I’m letting her miss out on the XP when she’s the one who needs it the most. The game doesn’t let the “missed” XP go to waste; instead it distributes it among surviving party members, widening the gaps between levels even further… 90s JRPGs for you.
I’m pretty sure グラーフ’s attacks pop out with 漢字, but I didn’t manage to get even a single good screenshot… The relentlessness was impressive. I guess only エリィ is meant to actually survive…
… but I did very barely survive with everyone, thanks to the heal between the bosses. Maybe this dialogue is different? Loved seeing グラーフ whipped out, must hurt his 中二病 soul.
