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freshfeelingThis session was played on or around March 14, 2022.
I started out saying I wanted to finish Ashura's World - clearly, I meant Venus' World, which is where we were starting this time. Bart died in the very first battle; these enemies have interesting new ways to occasionally clobber us, like the Obakes having a strong, draining Touch attack and the WereWolfs having the Surprise ability. I honestly have no idea how that interacts with Fari on my own team also having Surprise.
I went through the village of scamps, if that's what it's called, and wandered around seeking another random piece of dialogue I had internalized from this game over the years for no particular reason:
The Hermit enemy in the sewer is a popular grinding spot, since he respawns and is a higher-ranked enemy. I really ought to have stayed here longer. My singular first battle against the Hermit did indeed result in some fairly good stat gains.
The Chafer enemies here were pretty strong on the offense with their Gas attack. I ran through Kril's Cure spells quite fast, to such an extent that a prolonged grind wasn't really viable here right away regardless. I ended up equipped Kril with a Cure spellbook I had found to stay topped up; the book versions of spells are always a little bit more effective than the mutant-learned versions in this game anyway.
Then I ended up reloading a recent save when a battle against 1 Mephisto and 3 Phantoms who were found in a chest resulted in this:
I didn't take the battle seriously enough in the first place, really, just relying on Fari and Lenn for damage and having Bart pick arbitrary things for the sake of stat growth. This battle went badly a second time, too. The third time, a surprise round allowed me to get rid of the Phantoms before they could do anything and the rest was straightforward. However, besides allowing you face some strong enemies I don't think you actually gain anything from this trapped treasure chest, so when I accidentally triggered the battle again I just backed out entirely.
In the other Magi-filled treasure room I got luckier with the trapped chest, with a single Mephisto and a single Phantom. That was no particular issue and resulted in nice HP growth. Slightly further on, we found a Giant Helmet. As with the other Giant equipment, this offered huge short-term bonuses to Bart's defense and strength at the cost of his longer-term growth... but that's future Bart's problem!
Now it's time to go to the second volcano level in the span of just a couple of worlds. In a way, you want to complain about the game's lack of originality, but how many games have you ever played that have at least one volcano area that have two volcano areas? It's really quite amazing.
Unfortunately, this volcano was boring, battle-wise. From about the mid-point I just kept running into big stacks of Champgnos (volcano-dwelling French fungus) where the only really, viable solution as having Lenn cast Thunder twice. The battles were long and same-y and we gained some stats.
The characters were very much embodying their archetypes by this point, I realized. The knight could deal damage and was the most defensive by far, Fari the thief had high-agility enabling favourable encounters and high spike damage on single targets, Kril the white mage is pretty much pure support and Lenn has limitations but is generally the best damage-dealer. Although it wasn't designed this way, it is cool the extent to which this game allows for this sort of class specialization.
I decided to take one run at Venus. I had found a Flame Shield in the volcano which I realized might be an asset. Fari is dealing awfully high damage with her Laser Sword now, so I expected the battle with Venus to go well as long as Fari lived.
In the battle, I ended up literally picking the same actions every turn. Bart used the Flame Shield, which is good defensively in general but in particular I wanted to intercept Venus' Flame spell. Fari used the Laser Sword, which consistently dealt over 400 damage except when it missed, which it did once or twice. Kril used the Star out of lack of anything better, given our lack of healing demand. Lenn used StonGaze. I seemed to recall that Venus was vulnerable to Stone although I wasn't sure if maybe that was more likely with the Stone spellbook or what.
Nobody died until right near the end of the battle, when Venus killed Lenn in a single attack - so when I said there was no demand for healing, there literally never was. About 95% of the damage I dealt came from Fari's Laser Sword, which also ended the fight
With that, we finish Venus' World and get the Aegis magi, among others. I thought Aegis might be a neat option in certain scenarios.
I started out saying I wanted to finish Ashura's World - clearly, I meant Venus' World, which is where we were starting this time. Bart died in the very first battle; these enemies have interesting new ways to occasionally clobber us, like the Obakes having a strong, draining Touch attack and the WereWolfs having the Surprise ability. I honestly have no idea how that interacts with Fari on my own team also having Surprise.
I went through the village of scamps, if that's what it's called, and wandered around seeking another random piece of dialogue I had internalized from this game over the years for no particular reason:
The Hermit enemy in the sewer is a popular grinding spot, since he respawns and is a higher-ranked enemy. I really ought to have stayed here longer. My singular first battle against the Hermit did indeed result in some fairly good stat gains.
The Chafer enemies here were pretty strong on the offense with their Gas attack. I ran through Kril's Cure spells quite fast, to such an extent that a prolonged grind wasn't really viable here right away regardless. I ended up equipped Kril with a Cure spellbook I had found to stay topped up; the book versions of spells are always a little bit more effective than the mutant-learned versions in this game anyway.
Then I ended up reloading a recent save when a battle against 1 Mephisto and 3 Phantoms who were found in a chest resulted in this:
I didn't take the battle seriously enough in the first place, really, just relying on Fari and Lenn for damage and having Bart pick arbitrary things for the sake of stat growth. This battle went badly a second time, too. The third time, a surprise round allowed me to get rid of the Phantoms before they could do anything and the rest was straightforward. However, besides allowing you face some strong enemies I don't think you actually gain anything from this trapped treasure chest, so when I accidentally triggered the battle again I just backed out entirely.
In the other Magi-filled treasure room I got luckier with the trapped chest, with a single Mephisto and a single Phantom. That was no particular issue and resulted in nice HP growth. Slightly further on, we found a Giant Helmet. As with the other Giant equipment, this offered huge short-term bonuses to Bart's defense and strength at the cost of his longer-term growth... but that's future Bart's problem!
Now it's time to go to the second volcano level in the span of just a couple of worlds. In a way, you want to complain about the game's lack of originality, but how many games have you ever played that have at least one volcano area that have two volcano areas? It's really quite amazing.
Unfortunately, this volcano was boring, battle-wise. From about the mid-point I just kept running into big stacks of Champgnos (volcano-dwelling French fungus) where the only really, viable solution as having Lenn cast Thunder twice. The battles were long and same-y and we gained some stats.
The characters were very much embodying their archetypes by this point, I realized. The knight could deal damage and was the most defensive by far, Fari the thief had high-agility enabling favourable encounters and high spike damage on single targets, Kril the white mage is pretty much pure support and Lenn has limitations but is generally the best damage-dealer. Although it wasn't designed this way, it is cool the extent to which this game allows for this sort of class specialization.
I decided to take one run at Venus. I had found a Flame Shield in the volcano which I realized might be an asset. Fari is dealing awfully high damage with her Laser Sword now, so I expected the battle with Venus to go well as long as Fari lived.
In the battle, I ended up literally picking the same actions every turn. Bart used the Flame Shield, which is good defensively in general but in particular I wanted to intercept Venus' Flame spell. Fari used the Laser Sword, which consistently dealt over 400 damage except when it missed, which it did once or twice. Kril used the Star out of lack of anything better, given our lack of healing demand. Lenn used StonGaze. I seemed to recall that Venus was vulnerable to Stone although I wasn't sure if maybe that was more likely with the Stone spellbook or what.
Nobody died until right near the end of the battle, when Venus killed Lenn in a single attack - so when I said there was no demand for healing, there literally never was. About 95% of the damage I dealt came from Fari's Laser Sword, which also ended the fight
With that, we finish Venus' World and get the Aegis magi, among others. I thought Aegis might be a neat option in certain scenarios.
