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Just wrapped cleric chapter one. If the quality stays steady, this is everything I'd hoped the first game could have been. Also, cleric gives me serious Akechi from p5 vibes. The smugness, the vocal cadence, right down to him being a detective Combat has some real teeth, too. Am I miss remembering or was the first game significantly easier in the early going?
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Feb 25, 2023 05:12
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Hell the game knows its encouraging you to be an rear end in a top hat. I love the incidental fluff when you way lay someone at night as the cleric. This gentleman does not have any valuable information. By the way he is unemployed, miserable, and his wife left him just yesterday. Nice job gamer. Lol
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Feb 27, 2023 20:40
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Harlock posted:My first encounter outside of the Chapter 1 stuff as a cute cat that played a unique battle theme as I struggled to hit it and it ran away. Those are the metal slime equivalents.
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Feb 28, 2023 17:08
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Just to follow on from that, since I've not had as much time to play as I'd like, but are there any bigger dungeons in this? The first game had these sad little micro dungeons that were really underwhelming.
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Mar 2, 2023 04:50
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Weirdly enough, as dull as the first game was—I burnt out before even collecting all eight characters—the second makes me want to go back and play it. More to pick it apart mechanically and find all the goodies and secrets than anything else. The first game succeeded in that respect anyway, other than those dire thief-only chests. Though I think I’d probably end up getting bored again if I tried.
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Mar 2, 2023 15:54
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Really wanna play team pooh because I'm a child.
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Mar 5, 2023 18:09
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Levantine posted:So I pretty much explored every corner of the world before really engaging with anyone's stories. My main is Hikari who is well into the 60's for levels. I've finished Castii and I'm about to polish of Temenos. There's something a lot more engaging about this story and its characters for me, but I can't entirely put my finger on it. It's just good. Yeah I’m not nearly as far in as you and I’m kinda prepared to call this a classic. Though, if it has the same probs the first one did with the difficulty curve, maybe the last hurdle they could clear is something to address that. But giving us an open, flexible, somewhat non-linear game in this style with the benefit of nearly 30 years of hindsight and design improvements is kind of perfect, really. Everyone likes to say that some games appealing to nostalgia aren’t so much mimicing their predecessors as evoking their feel and I think this game nails that, but also does crib just enough from the past that it feels a little more authentic. not always to the good—bullshit encounter rate—and that’s what’s so cool about it. I share your feeling about the writing and i’ve been struggling to figure out what it is that makes it so good. I’m way earlier in than you, but my partner and I had an exchange about the end of Throne’s chapter one. In spoilers though I’m sure most of you have gone way past this. So when she meets up with her adopted brother and they’re about to throw down, we find out that Mother and Father have just been playing the kids off one another. That in and of itself is a pretty cool change to the common trope of a rat in the ranks. We called that there was no way it was the burly rear end in a top hat guy, because he was way too mean. We called that it was probably the sensible brother, because he was way too nice. What we did not call was his willingness to try killing Throne. They were doing that whole overwrought anime speech stuff, as you do, and my girlfriend goes, “Why don’t they just run away?” I had forgotten about the collars, and we don’t really know at this point how they work. But my immediate, logical response was that they were in an abusive dynamic for probably all of their lives. You don’t think straight in those kinds of environments. It makes perfect sense, collars or no, for them to come to the conclusions they do, insisting that murdering one another is the only out. That works both on a mechanical level because you have to have a boss fight, and a narrative one because itt’s consistent behavior from characters in the situation they’re in. There are so many ways they could have messed up in delivery of common themes and tropes. But they integrated story, gameplay, and genre savvy extremely well. It’s not necessarily the plot itself. It’s the confident understanding of narrative convention, reappropriation of stock character types with slight twists, and the thing that makes all stories work, consistent and believable characters acting like people. It might not be concise but that is the thing I think this game is doing well.
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Mar 8, 2023 17:49
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It's also so slick the way the music transitions between day and night themes.
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Mar 14, 2023 18:58
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precision posted:The only thing I don't like about the gameplay loop is having to switch characters out to try all their path actions, which I've only gotten around by deciding to not care about completionism and instead just rob/ interrogate/ beat up at my leisure since you end up visiting areas so often Aw you can only use the path actions for active party members? That’s lame. Seems tedious to no actual purpose. I only just picked up the apothecary (fifth char) and I’m still in love with this game. Absolutely every little corner has insane amounts of love and craftsmanship put into it. Was Octopath 1 as clever with the social webs in towns? There’s so many little stories there, and they always get some kind of reaction out of me.
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Mar 15, 2023 00:07
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KonvexKonkav posted:Level doesn't really seem to matter all that much in this game, gear or access to powerful classes and skills seems to be far more important. I have done most of the penultimate chapters and never had to restart a boss fight so far even when half my party was severely underleveled. The biggest roadblock so far was that I couldn't progress Agnea's chapter 4 because the level requirement for a path action was too high. I’m by no means using sub par gear and I’ve noticed if I try to dip into areas underleveled, the damage seems artificially inflated. Haven’t tested thoroughly, but it feels like there’s some damage scaling going on when there’s significant difference enough between PCs and enemies. Am I nuts? It goes the other way too. One star NPCs do pretty much no damage to characters in their mid teens or twenties, for instance. That reminds me. How many levels is a star worth? I’m guessing about five, since the stories seem to end around fifty, yes?
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Mar 15, 2023 15:28
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I stumbled into Inventor when I only had Temenos. If you’re a loot vacuum and get a bunch of differing weapon types, he’s a good pick early game for it because even though you’ll have to grind it out a bit, you can definitely coerce people you otherwise couldn’t using the catapult.
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Mar 16, 2023 15:34
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KonvexKonkav posted:You're probably right, I mainly used the lower level characters to feed BP/buffs to the higher level characters. I dunno. I agree with you in theory since the game is fairly clear about its mechanics, but it does add a little friction to the experience not quite knowing how things will shake out. If the game does damage scale as I believe, knowing the level would probably let you get away with some really heinous poo poo exploiting that info. But it is a weird decision and I think most people would just puzzle it out the way I did so what purpose does it really serve other than adding a little bit of tension? That’s something else I think could be neat for a sequel. If reputation loss had more bite, you could make an initial playthrough pretty tense. The percentile failure rates do some good work adding in that uncertainty. But since you’re practically encouraged to break the game in as many ways as you can manage, I dunno what you’d do to create the necessary friction. Too punitive and it could be a real time suck. I’ve not tanked my reputation at all yet. What happens if it bottoms out? Will it stop you from completing chapters? I’d hope not.
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Mar 16, 2023 15:51
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SKULL.GIF posted:The villagers stop letting you do any Path Actions. You'll have to go to the tavern and pay a nominal fee ($1500 to $9000) to reset your reputation. Hm. Not sure how you’d change that to be more impactful without making it meaningfully more tedious/annoying. But I really do like the tension it provides. What scales up the cost? I’d guess towns further in cost more?
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Mar 16, 2023 16:09
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Prowler posted:I made it to the ending chapter as well and have different thoughts (haven't beat the game fully yet). What exactly would you want them to do for the next game? This is such a quality jump that it’s hard for me to not give this post a little side eye. The intraparty conversations and cross path chapters were a decent compromise. The only other thing based on your post, that they could do is have a bunch of triggers for possible included characters, which would be profoundly time inefficient for the end result. What you’d get in practice would be a lot of “Yeah! Let’s do that!” and “No milord, I have doubts,” and on and on. It would both be transparent as a mechanic and obnoxious once you’ve got all eight characters. The only way to appease people who want intraparty dialogue, as I see it, is to add a lot more cross path quests. But that’s probably even more work than the wedging dialogue into every possible permutation of a chapter. More satisfying, too, obviously. I think as long as we get an Octopath III we’ll be in good shape. Something I’d considered also is what if you went down to four characters with eight or even sixteen jobs, as well as path actions attached to those jobs. They’d have to do something with the name of the game, but at least you’d get a manageable party size to work with and could do a more traditional story. But at this point, the anthology style of Octopath helps distinguish it from its peers, imho. As it stands, this is a game that succeeds because it knows what it is, knows what it can reasonably get away with, and knows how its ancestors succeeded and failed. In other words, straight craft top to bottom. Folt The Bolt posted:Something like that. Well bummer. It’s a fair compromise considering the structure of the game, but I admit to being a wee bit bummed this is the case. I figure smart play can get you through it, but it’s such a blunt method. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 16:19
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:I think there's a bit of a disconnect where, for story purposes, the party simply does not exist for most chapters. Like, for example, in Agnea's second chapter, she spends a couple nights livening up the New Delstra slums, and then goes to confront a dude who, for gameplay purposes, is an RPG boss at the end of a dungeon and an appropriate challenge for a party of four, but in the following dialogue everyone gets mad at Agnea for running off alone and putting herself in danger. Oh no fault is intended. Just it’s a knotty problem with few readily apparent solutions that don’t involve a shitload more work. At the budget these games are getting—well spent and prioritized imho—I’m just wondering what cost efficient means there really is to address the legit concern. i land in the camp that it’s best to accept the constraints of the game as it is. But obviously I’d like more interactions too. The writing is really excellent. More of it would be welcome.
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Mar 20, 2023 16:53
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Prowler posted:Strange to side eye my thoughts, given I recognize a lot of the limitations of the structure of the game and applaud the improvements throughout my post Yeah I’m with you in spirit if not in practice. Not trying to be aggro def wanted to hear your thoughts. I’m sure there’s an elegant solution in there somewhere that doesn’t break the bank. If any team could do it it’s these guys. As I said, it’s the pinnacle of well-utilized small budget.
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Mar 20, 2023 17:58
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I know Triangle Strategy isn't the same studio despite being under the same graphical umbrella, but how is it now that its half price? Is it grindy? Tons of missables? Unbalanced like DOS2? Too long to start? If anything, Triangle Strategy is anti-grindy. You can’t level past a certain threshold for missions, characters earn XP on a per action basis, behind characters gain that XP extremely quickly, and there are so many different bespoke characters that you’ll find a team you like no matter what. It does something that very few games in its style do, which is respect your loving time and as a boring rear end adult with boring rear end life poo poo, I appreciate this a whole lot. It’s real good.
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Mar 20, 2023 22:15
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Dodeca-Dungeon-Delve
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Mar 20, 2023 22:55
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Man you know what? This game, besides being my favorite RPG from Japan since DQXI is that it’s so fun to explore. Nothing is so involved that you’ll ever feel lost, stuff above your weight class is clearly indicated so you know if you’re risking something, loot is never hard to find but there’s always something to grab, and the path actions do a good job of hiding more secret things, the visuals really pop no matter where you go, and the world feels like it’s just the right size. Big enough to feel expansive, not so huge it’s overwhelming, and I kinda imagine the discrete zones as places of note on a longer journey. Takes the sting out of the compactness, which I know bugs some people. Not really me, but eh. I just love it to bits, and I can’t stop going on about why. I never expected this much of an improvement on the first. I expected refinements with a bunch of my complaints still valid. But very few are now. And much like DQXI, it’s pretty drat cozy, grim plot elements aside.
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Mar 21, 2023 22:59
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Farg posted:here's what you do: make a chapter series like the final chapter in this game, that unlocks as you finish chapter 1/2/3/4/etc in the characters stories. so like there'd be "full party story chapter 1", and so on, and once everything is done that turns into the endgame chapter Yeah this is neat. Budget willing maybe it'll happen. Also I guess I do have to interrupt my vigorous OT2 Love fest to say yes, random encounters are rear end and should be nuked from orbit. If they gotta have em, then they need more mitigation than the scholar passive. It’s a god drat good thing the combat in this game is engaging enough that I’m able to put up with it, or that would be a pretty big black mark.
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Mar 22, 2023 23:21
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Barreft posted:You can start every story and move on whenever you want. So if you stockpile the stories up just go to the pub and play back any chapter you want. You can also stop any chapter whenever you want. Holy poo poo I didn't know this. Of course thanks to adhd I put the game down so there's that. Thank you.
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Apr 12, 2023 05:40
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Harrow posted:Castti's story is fantastic, maybe the best one in the game. I was showing the game to an irony poisoned buddy of mind during his first chapter, and imagine my pleasant surprise when, after a whole series of melodramatic events with my buddy making gags about whole sale slaughter, the game tipped it's hand. Very satisfying. It's just brilliant.
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Apr 12, 2023 16:48
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Finally back to playing this. gently caress ADHD. Casti somehow has an incredibly generic start that I love nonetheless. Also I love that another character says to the selfless healer, “Yo, I think you should concern yourself with yourself here, cause you got problems.” Lol it’s such good poo poo. For those of you that beat it, what was your general path through the game? I have all four from one side, Temenos, Throne etc. So I could start doing chapter 2 stuff with them. I know no matter what I do people are gonna get overleveled but trip reports would be welcome. Getting decision paralysis rn. Main four are all around 15-ish atm.
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Apr 15, 2023 15:48
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Ok I’m just winging it at this point. Got five out of the eight, but gf and I are playing together and she’s anxious for some story so we’re gonna start knocking out some chapter 2s. Any good beasties to grab with Ochette early on? Everyone’s mid teens just now. Ochette, Ozzy, Temenos, and Throne. Also for the base job shrines, I take it you gotta take the person who is the holder of that job to unlock it to add to other characters?
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Apr 16, 2023 00:31
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Harrow posted:The base job shrines are actually for unlocking skills for the character. For example, bringing Osvald to the Scholarking shrine gets Osvald a new skill. Ah cool thanks.
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Apr 16, 2023 02:33
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Holy poo poo Partitio is simultaneously incredibly corny and awesome. And that tune at the end of his chapter one omg I think I like the gloomy crew better than the upbeat one, overall. Too early to make any definitive conclusions but I'm hoping they get rounded off a bit. There's some serious tonal whiplash in this game. Not a complaint as such I like the variance. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Apr 17, 2023 |
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Apr 17, 2023 17:23
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MechaX posted:And now I have finally got Hikari doing 17k-22k damage per sword hit on one of his better multi sword skills when boosted. Decided to give him Conjurer since no one else needs the class and Hikari currently benefits the most from the half SP skill and being able to use clubs and bows (giant club and actually having his bow learned skill do decent damage) I’m glad to hear he’s that good. Warrior supremacy. rPGs have suffered under mage tyrany for far too long.
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Apr 19, 2023 21:51
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Yeah the high oncoming damage is one of my favorite things about this game. Sure of you have a good strategy it'll be fine and you'll snooze through it but at least you have to pay attention. I wish they'd add a whole rear end end game dungeon full of unfair bullshit to put your team through its paces.
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Apr 19, 2023 23:55
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SKULL.GIF posted:You'll probably want to at least pick up 3 more people for a full team before doing any chapters 2. Once you have a full team you can just play the game in whatever order you like. Agree with this but otherwise the world is your oyster. Be mindful of zones above your level caus the damage will scale way up very quickly but that doesn’t mean you can’t dip in and snatch goodies if you’re so inclined. It’s just pretty rough for a single character or even two. I think three would let you get away with some stuff though, if for some reason you don’t want to get four.
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Apr 21, 2023 17:37
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PsychoInternetHawk posted:Ochette's voice direction and acting are MVP for for me because characters like that can easily become obnoxious if they're not done right, but they threaded the needle perfectly I love this game irrationally and without reserve, but I do not think they threaded the needle lol.
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Apr 25, 2023 16:34
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Natural 20 posted:It reflects in the flat structure of her chapters. Ochette's story is about her just being Ochette at a problem and handling it and I think serves as an intentional contrast to the other characters. I really like her narrative because it’s the most JRPG-rear end JRPG thing in the game. I’m messing around about them not threading the needle, btw. I just don’t like cutesy characters in these type of games they always grate on my nerves.
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Apr 25, 2023 19:31
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I need to finish this game.
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Jul 9, 2023 16:58
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exquisite tea posted:All right, I've played the intro chapters and a little more of my first four characters. Here are some impressions so far as a Tetrapath Traveler.
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Jul 13, 2023 23:06
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Ok. I’m just realizing Crick being the Watson analog creates a Crick and Watson pairing. I wonder if that was intentional, or a localizer gag or something.
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Jul 15, 2023 16:48
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Just did Father chapter II for her. Coming back after a long while away. Gotta say, I hope her story provides a good twist. Revenge stuff is fine, but I feel like there's little room for crazy poo poo with it until the eleventh hour. Couple to four levels above the recommended, but perhaps with lower level armor. Didn't lose anyone to the boss but the damage output was no joke. I discovered far too late that Ochette could have cleared all the buffs it put on itself with a fully boosted orb thingie. I loving love the combat in this game. So many levers to pull. So many angles of approach because of that. I keep thinking about what can be boosted and how good it might be for any given fight. Makes me almost wish it wouldn't inevitably end up with my being overpowered at the end. Does the challenge hold up evenly through the game? Also I just adore the map, especially if you have been away for a while. Cut scene summaries and the ability to view them all in a nicely organized place is also incredible for that.
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Jul 16, 2023 19:23
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GloomMouse posted:Last boss still has some decent challenge if you don't break out the consumables imo, and there's always the optional super boss if you're still hungry. I feel like beelining you're "main" character to the finish so you can swap them out, then cycle everyone so no one gets super OP works out okay, but you're still going to feel overleveled at some point. I think it's more fun story-wise to follow each tale through rather than bouncing around though. Really interested in your take on Throne story once you finish it up Cool i’ll let you know when I get there. FWIW I think it’ll be satisfying plotwise, since my favorite thing about this game is how it is pretty drat clever with its plots and very economical. It also reminds me of a play, since there’s a lot of soliloquis. Hell, Temonos starts his story by putting on a play. And it fits the sparse, sketched way the stories are told, too. Glad to hear the game keeps its teeth for the most part. I am also an idiot and coming into Winterbloom with 30k didn’t let me buy hardly anything I’d have wanted. I seem to recall some good ways to trivialize money, so I’ll have to look at what I’ve got and what’s salable and everything. But I was fine with going into that chapter undergeared. People were taking 150-ish at minimum, and upwards of 3-400 for the big hits. With everyone in the low thousands HP wise, it felt suitably hard-hitting without being too punitive. I don’t mind if Im suboptimal rn because it keeps things feeling spicy. We will see how it goes. My plan for story clearing was originally to get all eight, do them in the halves as the game presents them, and then go for whatever the endgame is. Broke that rule since I got a couple starts—warrior and dancer—to get before I’ve got all eight, but I wanted to do some plot after some time away so eh.
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Jul 16, 2023 20:48
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GloomMouse posted:A nice thing is that enemies hit hard in relation to your hp pools pretty much throughout the game and it's more you having increasing options for healing or being able to sweep trash quickly. Also a lot of your strength comes from gear so you can definitely reign in the power creep by only using equips from the chapter/nearby town. Like yeah an Ochette at level cap is still going to hit harder and be tougher but giving her a rusty shiv and rags will put her pretty close to a character working through their chapter at-level Awesome. About to gut Winterbloom. gonna be very upstanding and heroic.
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Jul 17, 2023 02:39
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I always prefer the direct combat approach to getting stuff cause its not binary. This all goes out the window with a high enough percentage obviously but when it's ambiguous that's how I like to do it.
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Jul 17, 2023 20:34
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Boogaloo Shrimp posted:It’s cool that the relative difficulty of different methods of item/information acquisition isn’t linearly proportional for an individual NPC. That 8* grizzled veteran soldier will put up a fight if you try to mug him, but he’s a sucker for a cute girl with a country accent. And even better all those little components of the npc are used to extremely clever effect to make observations exactly like this one.
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Jul 17, 2023 20:49
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 09:22 |
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Boogaloo Shrimp posted:Clockbank Omfg. I feel like an idiot for not noticing that and I love this game.
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Jul 17, 2023 23:03
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