|
 Crystal Project is a game that superficially looks like a cheap asset flip. Practically nothing about it except for the game world is original, relying almost purely on open source sprites and music for everything else, but it's a deceptively good game even so. It bills itself as a love letter to old jRPG's, the early Final Fantasies and the like, and once again, that might convince someone that it's just copypasted retro content, but Crystal Project does what I feel so few actual jRPG developers do and updates the formula with more than graphics.  The world is 3D, rather than a flat 2D plane, which is also part of the gameplay. Jumping and platforming is part of the game, both in the sense of completely normal navigation, but also in terms of finding shortcuts and secrets.  Aside from exploring and collecting loot, of course, what is an RPG without some enemies to fight?  And fought they will be. This LP will be mostly concerned with the mechanics of Crystal Project because, well, there isn't an awful lot of story there. There is a story, there are some characters, but its a game that clearly focuses on the gameplay, taking a few cues from FF5 in that a core element is swapping classes, combining class abilities and finding crystals to get access to more things to mix and match. Of course, for any jRPG, we're going to need a party, and we're entirely making our own. Each character will consist simply of a class(a starting class, they can be changed during the game), a gender and a name. Gender has a very minor affect on sprites, and there's a tiny stat difference, too, but nothing to be concerned about unless you're playing a very specific build setup on an extra high difficulty level. The party's made up of four and will not be changing during the course of the game. Classes Updated as new classes are unlocked Warrior   Warriors are your first tank class. They're built to do damage and attract enemy attention through the threat mechanics, while also being hard to kill. They also have some skills that open up enemy vulnerabilities or weaken their offense.   Probably the most core Warrior ability, it what makes them a proper tank, being able to draw and keep threat/aggro.   Objectively Defender Stance would go best with Warriors as tanks, but I tend to find myself using Berserker Stance more, since most RPG's have taught me that playing defense is a mug's game and the superior option is to kill the other guy first.   Pretty obvious, open up more gear options passively for other classes.   One advantage of Warriors' attack abilities is that they work with all weapons, making them very good for mixing with other classes, since there's never any clash preventing them from using their skills or the other class from using theirs.     Their Crush attacks are all hefty attacks that come with some form of drawback or are situational. Paragon Crush is probably the one I use the least, since it makes your next attack worse.   For passives, Grudge is EXTREMELY good for more or less all physical attackers since it puts them a turn ahead in terms of AP generation for the purpose of getting their big attacks out fast and early. Monks   Like in most RPG's(when did the trope even start? was it in a Basic D&D supplement?) Crystal Project monks are good at punching people, which means that their attacks scale with level even if you don't get your hands on gear upgrades. They also gain access to some self-healing abilities and a few quite powerful attack skills that rely on traditional caster stats rather than melee stats, which make them potentially interesting for some hybrid builds.   The basic Monk ability is self-cleansing, which is situationally useful, but I feel like most cases where you really want to cure conditions rather than wait them out, they're full-party.   There are, of course, some attack abilities, including probably the fastest accessible multi-target ability and a rare Earth-elemental attack.  Makes them useful if your other healer is busy or you didn't bring a Cleric.  Brawler is odd, because most other classes will want to be armed so they can get bonuses from their weapons, especially casters.  A nice almost-full-self-heal and a counter to damage-over-time stuff.  Having an always-hits ability is nice, but not as useful as you'd think, since if something guarantees a miss/dodge, then that takes precedence over a guaranteed hit.  First time I played, I liked having this on my physical attackers in the early game. The disadvantage to it is that you have to take hits for it to take effect, and getting hit is generally a bad move.  I rarely used this, but it could combo well with a Rogue.  Or Wind Punch. Some enemy types have relatively common wind elemental weaknesses.  Useful for practically anyone who can spare the passive ability points, which are always ten for everyone.  Also always useful, speaks for itself.  Since it runs off Spirit rather than Strength, and AP rather than MP, it's a great secondary for Clerics and other Spirit-using casters. It's a sometimes food, but I've used it to great benefit since it always hits and is untyped damage. Rogue   Rogues were a starter class I found useful all through the game, they are inverse Warriors. Instead of attracting threat, they want to avoid it, since many of their abilities only work when they're the least-attractive enemy target. They can do immense damage, cause conditions and have a unique ability to interrupt enemy attacks while they're charging.   Steal is only somewhat important since an NPC later in the game will allow you to simply buy steals you missed from bosses, which tend to be the important steals.  One of our first weapon type limited abilities, Backstab works on both Rapiers and Daggers, making them viable for a Rogue/Warlock build or similar, and does great damage otherwise.   Eye Gouge is another carry ability, locking down a physical attack boss for even just one round is great.  Likewise, Sleep Bomb is mostly useful for bosses to deny them a turn and give yourself extra time to buff, heal, revive, etc.  Shadow Cut is a good Rogue attack while you wait for the AP to gather for your other attacks.  Once again, I generally find that anything that "critically damages" you tend to just kill you. I do not trust such abilities.  Likewise, this ability is very situational, I consider it to really only be important for hardcore/ironman runs.  Some bosses rely almost purely on multi-target physical attacks, so this can let your rogue no-sell them hard.  Just a heavier version of Shadow Stab.  And this... I have no idea how you beat some of the game's tougher bosses without this. It's so good.   Probably the strongest single-target physical damage ability in the game, it absolutely rules. It has some combos with other classes and gear that are just incredible. Warlock   If the appearance didn't give it away, Warlocks are Final Fantasy red mages, though they use their own selection of spells rather than just borrowing low-level Wizard and Cleric spells.   Scan is primarily useful against bosses, because some of them have abilities that kick in at certain thresholds or at death, and sometimes you want to know when you can blitz for the finish and when you need to play it slow and safe.   For putting on your tank so they can tank more tankily.  The DoT effect makes me prefer this to the basic Fire spell that Wizards get. Bosses have a DoT resistance that prevents it from being completely OP, sadly.         Generally Warlocks have a lot of abilities that combo nicely with others, even if they're somewhat unimpressive as a primary class.  Refresher is also great, it gives you a lot more staying power between Home Points since you can only carry so many MP recovery items and they're also quite expensive.   The great limitation to this is that it only lets you cast Warlock spells, but something like casting Douse and Frost could be a nice buff/debuff kickoff to the battle, but at a 24MP surcharge, that's half a Wizard's Flare or Cleric's Star Flare! I can genuinely say I never used this in a 100% run of the game. Warlocks' built-in passive makes Doublecast cheaper, but that requires giving up whatever other nice primary passive another class has. Wizard   Black Mages, essentially. They blow poo poo up and they blow it up good.           One of those stances I never use, I always needed my MP more for offense than defense.  Has the downside of A) requiring you to get hit and B) still requiring mana to trigger the counter ability. You should just blast enemies instead before they hit you.   It's worth noting that Flare ignores resistance, but not weakness, so it combos well with the Cleric's Spotlight for a really big nuke. Cleric   And, for comparison, White Mages. Neither they, Wizards or Warlocks are 1:1 copies, but close enough to get the point across.        There isn't a lot to say about most Cleric abilities, but they do have a few unusual ones in there.     Blackout in particular can just negate some encounters and no-sell everything going on.  And having a huge non-typed attack spell also means Clerics can really contribute to fights sometimes.  Shaman   Ahhhh... shamans... shamen... whatever the plural is, I love them. In my playthroughs I almost always have one permanently as a primary or subclass unless dealing with something requiring an unusual setup. They have an excellent selection of skills and their passive ability is a blessing for any spellcaster.    Acid and Bio are what I'd call the bread and butter spells, consistently doing damage while weakening enemy offense is always worth your time. Being non-elemental, like all Shaman spells, also means they'll do consistent damage and be useful in any party.  Drain is occasionally useful if your caster is weakened but needs to deal damage and also heal, or has no direct self-heal options.  Instability suffers from the issue that most conditions inflicted are 1 or 2-turn conditions, so it's not THAT huge of a step up. Though I suppose it depends a lot on whether it rounds "half" turns of conditions up or down, increasing all 1-turns to 2-turns would be a big deal.   These two darlings, though... they're what really make Shamans so invaluable for boss fights. Less AP gain means getting hit by less heavy physical attacks(I believe enemies obey tall the rules of AP generation, but I'm not sure if they also gain AP from being attacked), and increased CT means a greater gap between their "starting" and "completing" a spell, meaning more openings for your Rogue to Trick Slash them or some other condition to interrupt them.  Safeguard is a theoretically good ability suffering from the fact that those 2 PP could be used to open up more offensive power instead.  While Sleep has limited applications per battle, it's always excellent as an emergency interrupt of an enemy's big attack letting you heal up, buff up and then start laying down murder on the other side.  A pretty ordinary multi-target spell, great for big enemy formations since it'll melt them down to about half health by itself and as far as I know, Damage Over Time effects do not produce aggro.   Another thing that makes Shamans interesting is that they actually also make a quite useful secondary for tanks and characters that aren't normally casters. Mist and Stone core are obviously more useful on someone who just drew the entire battle's aggro, but most of their damage is actually done from DoT effects that don't care about the caster's Mind stat, so even if they put on Defender stance, which lowers their physical damage output, they can still do some damage with those spells. Of course, they'd have small MP pools, but that could be patched up with a Book for a weapon... there are possibilities and opportunities. Great class all around, 5 out of 5. Scholar     I love Scholars, and all Blue Mages, but their passives are somewhat unimpressive. Books, as I've mentioned earlier, always struck me as one of the weaker if not weakest caster equipment options, and with a 25-point cost, learning the monster skill passive is going to take about as long as actually just encountering and learning all the monster skills.  The self-heal side effect on Infusion means that it's a quick and MP-efficient way to heal both your Scholar and another target at once, good spell.  Cheap and effective multi-target heal, one of the few in the game, also very good, great especially for enemies that use multi-target low-damage attacks where the big Cleric multi-target heals would be wasted MP.  Situationally useful, if not for the very slow Charge Time and high cost it would be a hard counter against any big enemy focusing on single-target attacks.  If you've got a tank, and you should have a tank, this makes them more tankish. Once again a good spell.  Situationally useful on physical attackers and a few other classes. Relying on Mind, which largely only offensive casters will have a lot of makes it a bit niche, but still useful as a way to turn MP into AP.  I've yet to really find a use for this, as most magic-using bosses have huge MP pools, but it always makes me wonder if there's a strat for four Scholars to just spam Magic Sickle on a boss to neuter them utterly.  One of the few untyped damage attacks available to players as well as I think probably the only player skill that runs off of Luck rather than another stat for determining its damage. It has some potential funny uses, though you kind of have to spec into it as your primary offense to really leverage it. Fencer     Fencers have very few skills I don't ever use, for instance, they start off with two out of the three damage-over-time options you have, all you now need is a caster to drop Burn on an enemy and they're melting off 45% of their max health(barring resistances) per turn.  Having a multi-attack ability is also very handy for encounters with mooks out in the field. Worth noting is that the base damage and AP cost for all Fencer abilities is the same, so you can sling them all out from the get go and there are no fundamentally superior options, they're all situationally advantageous.   Hawk Stance I find is mostly a good combo if you want to spam the Fencer attack that always hits, while Eagle Stance is the one I tend to use since it tends to permit for some freakish alpha strikes.   Piercethrough I use rarely, but Feathercut goes well with Hawk Stance, as mentioned.   The passives are unexciting but Eagle Eye has its use against some enemies that, despite being appropriately levelled, are very good at dodging.  Snowfang gives Fencers some inherent healing, of a sorts, which is also practical, making them more able to keep fighting without a healer's help.  Later we'll unlock a class that has a "first attack is a guaranteed crit"-passive, combined with Eagle Stance, Nighthawk and Rapiers having an inherent crit damage boost, it can lead to one-shotting a lot of things. You can also combo it with Swallowtail to wipe out entire field formations in one swing.  Checkmate tends to be kind of a desperation move for me, there's no real way to exploit any odd combos to nail the 5x damage hit consistently, so it's just something to sling out if you need a sudden burst of damage to have any chance of winning. Aegis    Cover is theoretically useful, but very situationally. Generally I'd say you could just have your Aegis pop Taunt or a similar Threat-generating ability so single-target attacks will go for them anyway. The primary use would be if you want your secondary to be something poor at generating Threat, or if you have a caster that can do way more damage than you can do threat in a single turn(like a Wizard's Flare or a Cleric's Star Flare) and they'll draw fire otherwise.  Theoretically good! But the problem is it takes a turn, and you almost always have something better to do with your turn.   Once you have the Threat or a good Cover target, popping one of these means you've got about one of the best tanking options up. For a Threat-based tanking setup, you'd need to spend turns generating Threat, but if you're doing Cover-based tanking, you can focus your turns on self-buffing, pop these, pop Entrench, etc. but a second weakness there is if you're not generating any threat, then you're a risk to a Rogue trying to stay minimum Threat so they can do your things... and Rogues are very, very good! So I still posit that Threat-based tanking is better.   Some people like this, but in my experience it's genuinely a small amount, to the point where anyone else launching some attacks on turn 1 will soon be top threat instead. I feel like the main use is if you want to use the first turn to buff rather than attack, so no one else is generating any Threat..  If combined with a Reraise status(which brings you back once after being killed) that would let you soak two killing blows in a fight, so that's a chunky amount of extra tanking.  Normally you don't really change stances a lot in fights, you pick the one that goes well with your setup and stick to that(at most, as a Fencer I might start in Eagle for a Nighthawk alpha strike, then swap to Hawk for Feathercut swings for the rest of it), so it's less that this is for getting boosts out of the stance changes you'd otherwise be using, more that you can now change your stances as a self-heal.   Magic Break is handy for getting everyone killed less, Resist Break is for boosting your casters. Not much to say about them, but they're really the only enemy-targeted abilities that an Aegis has.   Combined with the defense boosters earlier, this can make an Aegis genuinely hard to hurt. Since conditions tick down at the end of your turn, I think the idea is that you pop one of these, then on your next turn you whack Entrench to make them last longer.  This one I don't really get, you're trying to make everyone hit you, why would you make the entire party benefit from being hit? Also all your own Aegis abilities are MP-powered, so extra AP won't benefit you much unless you want to also be doing some attacking, but Aegises seem like they'd need you to just focus on their abilities almost purely to get the most out of them. Cover, Wall, Entrench, etc. and keep one big damage-doer from eating any counter hits.  Crystal Form is one of those abilities I can think of a bunch of cool uses for and then... I never really do. I think its really big weakness is that a lot of the very dangerous endgame enemies it'd be tempting to use it against tend to have at least a couple of big multi-target attacks where one character not getting killed isn't a big deal. Reaper   Reapers are one of my favourite physical combat classes, scythe users whose innate ability means any damage they do increases their max HP for the duration of the battle.  Rather than running off of AP or MP, all Reaper skills either take off a percentage of their health as payment for working or have a turn-based cooldown.   Their cooldown-using skills tend to have very high lifesteal percentages, giving them the potential to be very difficult for enemies to actually kill.  They also get a few conditions to inflict.   And a couple of buffs I rarely used because I generally found it more important to start hitting the enemy first for the purpose of winning whatever damage race was ongoing at the time, but both of them are useful when aimed at the right targets. Frenzy, in particular, is handy for Rogues who have trouble building AP without sacrificing their low Threat.    A number of their skills require scythes, generally the ones with Cooldown, while the ones that take health to "cast" have no weapon requirement, helping them be a decent secondary. Bloodspiller is also a really good secondary for any physical attacker, since it saves you having to waste time using skills that actually cause bleeding.    Initial Oomph is potentially useful, but largely only when mashing overworld mobs, since it's only one turn of extra murderousness. I consider it to be wildly overpriced considering what else 4PP can buy a character.  MP absorbing is... I don't think I'd give a Reaper a secondary caster class in most situations, so generally you'd use it to run an enemy out of MP rather than to gain yourself more MP. There are a few situations where this is a useful solution rather than just mashing the enemy down quick. Hunter   As mentioned, I want to like Hunters, but can't rate them very highly. Their inherent ability is generating less Threat.  Quickshot is a great skill, getting another chunk of free damage every couple of turns is excellent and also leaves the Hunter free to finish off badly wounded enemies rather than wasting a major attack or action on them.    Hide could have a synergy with a Rogue/Hunter, but you'd end up unable to use most of the Hunter's skills that way.  Hunter's Mark negates a lot of the Hunter's poor Accuracy, but I'm inherently opposed to the idea of wasting turns on things that aren't doing damage or debuffing enemies.       If there's one issue I do have with Crystal Project's mechanics it's that the PP costs for passives feel a bit overtuned in some cases. For instance, Covert would be excellent on a Rogue, but there are so many more important things I could use those 5PP for.   But, yeah, the Hunter just does damage. I feel like I'd rate them a lot higher if they also had access to some conditions of various kinds. Chemist   Chemists, a class I've never once used a skill from. Their inherent is that all ability Cooldowns are set to 1, which for a Chemist/Hunter would, I guess, mean you could Quickshot and Barrage every turn or something similar.   MP recovery during fights is usually limited to one weapon and one class' inherent ability, so for very long fights with very important casters, Chemists could be useful, I guess.         But outside of that they kind of suffer from just being a Cleric who only has half of their utility, none of their offensive options, and also you're spending money to use their abilities. You could just stock up on Ethers and refill your Cleric between fights.     There are so many buffs that would be useless in a given situation that I can't really see the point of this.  The same issue with debuffs.  Now this ability... will have a very great use once we get the Samurai class. But I'd still call it incredibly niche.   And this one would let a Rogue kick a bit more rear end without ruining their cover. But by and large... you can do better and cooler things without any of these abilities. Let the chemist throw a few pipe bombs and you might have my attention. Ninja   I feel like Crystal Project is the first game to get me a ninja class I didn't love or at least like, mostly down to the Scrolls mechanic and their... somewhat sub-par abilities, even if they do have a potentially very powerful passive: they can dual-wield weapons at a cost of removing 35% of the attack power from both of them. Great if you have two two-handers where you don't care about the attack power(like wands) or if the secondary is powerful enough for it to still be an upgrade.  An okay combo with any tank, but the problem is that you never really know what an enemy's hit percentage is. The max any percentage on your side will display as is 100%, but since when Kuromanto uses this, Vanessa still had 40~% hit chance, it's clearly possible for it to be greater. So if an enemy has a 200% hit chance, this won't do jack poo poo.  Also an interesting threat skill, since it doesn't rely on threat numbers but just says "top threat" full stop, it'll give you a lot of leeway to have other party members outputting pain.   Smokescreen has some potential, but Perfect Dodge suffers from enemies generally being pretty accurate. Anything with a less than 30% chance to hit is something you wildly outlevel anyway.       The Seals are all similar: single-target, use scrolls, elemental damage. It means you can more or less always exploit an elemental weakness, since these cover all the available elements, but it also means you don't get any multi-target attacks or condition-causing attacks. Crystal Project also tends to have more meaningful elemental immunities than weaknesses, some of them are good, but most of them are something like +15% damage, which generally means you can just go whole hog on non-typed or normally resisted attacks and still do fine. The Seal status could theoretically do some numbers if you've got someone ready to follow up by hitting, say, a Fire Seal with a Flare, but since it only lasts one turn, your timing would have to be relatively ideal. I'm just not very sold on them.  This interests me a lot more, since it's a guaranteed dodge.  This, on the other hand, feels like a leftover from a version of the game with harsher penalties for death. Dervish   The Dervish passive is that they recover 1MP for every AP they gain or recover, making them a very useful primary class in drawn-out boss battles or long dungeons/overworld exploration journeys.       Earth and Wind damage are the Dervish's stock in trade. All their attack spells are solid, and having a pair of debuff options is great as well. I still hate Wind spells for having a chance to miss, though, and a lot of enemies are immune to Earth spells.    I think I can recall all of one enemy that can Silence you, so Magic Prayer has limited utility, but at least the 10% less magic damage will stack with other sources of damage reduction. If you had limited ability slots, Soul Prayer wouldn't make it in, but as it is, having an emergency self heal/condition purge is good. Vigor Drain, meanwhile, is sneakily superior to what it looks like. By default it just looks like a way to defuse enemy AP users, but all AP drained also gains the Dervish MP back and there's no MP cost for using it. So it's essentially a way to ensure that a Dervish in battle can never be permanently tapped out of MP.  Focus Shield is potentially useful but good threat management from your tank should make it largely irrelevant.  As usual my opinion is that a better solution is just to avoid being critically damaged.  For when you don't want to Explode just one party member, but all of them! There are ways to make this a viable spell to cast, but I can think of very few situations where it would offer an improvement on what's going on. It does exactly enough damage to ensure all party members WILL die while not enough damage to ensure all ENEMIES will die. Beatsmith   Beatsmiths get +20% effect on any action they do more than once, stacking up to three times. Since everything they do repeats three times... that's handy.      You bonk someone or everyone three times. Rhythm Break is notable for the fact that I've never noticed an enemy using the same skill twice in a row unless it was a reaction/counter, so it's pretty bad.   These two combined with Beat Roll SHOULD be good, but repeated actions charge their cost with every action, and by default you'd only be getting 3 AP a turn with the stance on... so it would only give you one or two hits if used early, which is where you'd probably first want to use it.  It is, however, worth levelling Beatsmith a bit just for this passive, THIS can really give you an edge on fights.  Potentially really powerful for longer boss fights, but if you brought a class that could do more damage faster, the fight would be less long...  Simply do not get critically damaged. The end.   Long story short: Almost anything the Beatsmith can do, another class can do better and more flexibly. Valkyrie   Valkyries have inherent Reraise, the first time they die in any fight, they respawn with 25% of max health. Pretty good for a tank, even if dying does wipe their Threat clean.  Warcry, my beloved. Threat management made easy. This ability is just plain loving GOOD.   Multi-target healing and buffing? Absolutely! Give me more of that!     The attack skills are nothing exceptional, just trading AP for more damage, but the double threat effects helps play to the Valkyrie's main trait, since otherwise mages would usually outstrip them in threat generation(ignoring Taunt and Warcry).       The Valkyrie also plays nice with other AP-using and cooldown-reliant classes, making sure they can do their murdering as often as possible. I generally find I have something better to do with a Valk's turn, but occasionally a drop more AP for an Assassin/Rogue or a Cooldown reset for a Hunter/Reaper is what you need to save the day. A Valkyrie/Scholar could theoretically use Adrenaline to keep generating AP and then firing it off to someone else for the spike damage, though I could probably think of more useful things to do, it would be an interesting gimmick. Anyway, Valkyries rule. I love them. Always have a spot in my parties. Samurai   Samurai have two inherent passives, one gives them an attack boost if they hold a one-handed weapon and have an empty off-hand, the other ups their max AP from the default 30 to 60. Their skills are simple.      All of their Fierce and Swift attacks build up Combo Tokens on targets without ending the turn.    And their other attack skills end their turn but burn any existing Combo Tokens for extra damage. Combo Tokens do not persist beyond the turn they're applied.    Even if you don't plan on using them, though, it's worth levelling them some to get Unreactable on your physical attackers since some areas have almost purely Counter-capable enemies. Updates The LP will primarily be screenshots with some .webp's and youtube links for the music. The shortage of plot means that it's hard to really spoil stuff, but I would prefer conversations about not-yet-encountered classes and areas to be kept limited. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Feb 15, 2024 |
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 02:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 16:30 |
|
|
Updates Update 01: Crystals? Crystals! Update 02: Dog Project Update 03: I Hate Sand Update 04: The Mountain Blues Update 05: Secret Strategy Update 06: Skumparadise Update 07: Capital Sequoia Update 08: The Sewer Level Update 09: Rolling Quintar Fields Update 10: Greenshire Reprise Update 11: Ninjas & Sand Update 12: Sand 2 Update 13: The Beach Episode Update 14: Beauroir Volcano Update 15: Shoudu Province Update 16: The Undercity Update 17: Tall, Tall Heights Update 18: Leftovers Update 19: Owl's Well That Ends Well Update 20: The Worst Platforming Until the Next Worst Platforming Update 21: Ocean-Adjacent Adventuring Update 22: Summoner Roundup PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Apr 26, 2024 |
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 02:41
|
|
|
I remember playing the demo of this and finding it interesting! Didn't actually play the full game, so I'm curious what all this gets up to.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 02:58
|
|
|
I've heard the name bandied about some but don't really know anything about it. Sounds neat just from this little intro, though.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 03:20
|
|
|
I've heard good things about this game. I gather from the description that the audience won't really be able to manipulate your loadout (since you'll need to be able to change it to deal with fights?), but that's OK. Looking forward to seeing where it goes!
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 04:11
|
|
|
I have heard much ado about Crystal Project but I didn't really check it out myself because... *checks notes* ... Right, buried up to my knees in Atelier and Blue Reflection at the time. Anyways, will be keeping an eye on this LP! 
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 04:28
|
|
|
You can always change things around if you like, but there is some effort involved so you are still encouraged to make some initial choices and stick to them for a time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 04:34
|
|
|
I've seen Crystal Project around the block a few times but I've never looked too deeply into it. I'll be watching this eagerly to see how it is.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 05:31
|
|
|
Will there be like an end goal of some kind given to us? Or will this be a "gently caress around till we get bored" kind of game?
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 06:02
|
|
|
I've had the demo of this sitting in my steam list for ages. I'm curious to see more.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 07:02
|
|
|
Monks first appeared in D&D in the Blackmoor Supplement for ODD back in 1975.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 07:54
|
|
|
Supposedly the Shaolin Temple (which I'm pretty sure is what the sprite is supposed to reference) started out with martial arts as part of its whole deal back in 495CE. When this became a trope in the west, not sure, could have been the wave of kung fu movies like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, could have been with the Boxer Rebellion in 1899, could have started coming to the west during trade contact, not really sure. Though of course in JRPG lingo it may be DnD inspired but it may also be inspired by Japan's much longer and more thorough contact with Chinese martial arts. What I do find interesting is how rare it is for even western RPGs to have "monk" be a type of cleric class.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 08:33
|
|
|
I remain unconvinced that this is a good game, because, well, you're the one LPing it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 09:51
|
|
|
Black Robe posted:I remain unconvinced that this is a good game, because, well, you're the one LPing it. This is a game that gets most of the way to being a fantastically amazing game, with a ton of inspiration and love from classic great RPGs and modernized with really great design choices including a variety of accessibility options, but also clearly is limited by being an indie solo project labor of love. The end result is still a great game, but with plenty of flaws and rough edges, but I encourage people to overlook that and check it out if it seems even remotely up your alley. There's a demo!
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 10:50
|
|
|
LJN92 posted:Will there be like an end goal of some kind given to us? Or will this be a "gently caress around till we get bored" kind of game? There is absolutely a final encounter that we're aiming towards beating AND optional extra-hard encounters to unlock a super-final, ultrahard encounter if we like. Black Robe posted:I remain unconvinced that this is a good game, because, well, you're the one LPing it. I'm choosing not to make myself suffer this time. There is only one, one part of Crystal Project that is bad, a part which is both optional and skippable(sort of). TooMuchAbstraction posted:I've heard good things about this game. I gather from the description that the audience won't really be able to manipulate your loadout (since you'll need to be able to change it to deal with fights?), but that's OK. Looking forward to seeing where it goes! The game does have some amount of flexibility with how to handle fights, though I obviously have some favourites. If someone wants me to try a specific loadout or a specific strategy/party composition for a boss, my thinking was that the primary sort of reader interaction(aside from the occasional "what direction now, folks?") would be that. The game generally has very low consequences for "losing" so it encourages experimentation. Tulip posted:What I do find interesting is how rare it is for even western RPGs to have "monk" be a type of cleric class. Closest I can recall is Wizardry 8 having Monks which also have psionic abilities, which had some overlap with cleric powers in that game.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2023 11:08
|
|
|
Is this game procedurally generated, or is it the same every run?
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2023 03:10
|
|
|
JustJeff88 posted:Is this game procedurally generated, or is it the same every run? It's not a roguelike or anything. The map and enemies are all preset. That said, there IS a randomizer built in.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2023 03:46
|
|
|
Zurai posted:It's not a roguelike or anything. The map and enemies are all preset. That said, there IS a randomizer built in.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2023 04:05
|
|
|
This is an incredible game and really needs more fame.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2023 05:37
|
|
|
I hope when the Switch port hits it gets some love.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2023 08:21
|
|
|
I remember seeing a lot of chatter about this in the rpg thread but I'm useless at platforming so I never really got the urge to try it out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2023 20:23
|
|
|
I will say that the platforming is ny far my least favorite aspect of this game. Beyond that it's a really RPG and I'm looking forward to this LP!
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2023 20:44
|
|
|
Yeah, I will say that you absolutely do NOT want to try to play this on keyboard and mouse. There's support for it, but the platforming is frustrating as hell without a good controller. My cheapass X-box controller has a busted joystick, so I ended up shelving this personally, but I'm interested to see it played through to the end.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2023 20:50
|
|
|
Oh snap, I loved this game and am glad someone is giving this a good LP. The rare game I 100%ed. It really does feel like FF5 stapled upon an open-world platformer, and fortunately I love both of those things. Also, despite the soundtrack being sourced from various free music sources, it sounds great and surprisingly cohesive overall. e: Since nobody's recommended a party yet, I'll recommend Warrior/Rogue/Warlock/Cleric to start with. Think it'll be the best introduction to the various mechanics, with maybe Monk over Warlock depending on what you think works better for LP purposes.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2023 21:13
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2023 20:58
|
|
|
Also one of them (dealer's choice) should be female and named Leraika because why not
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2023 21:15
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Monks I'm trying to parse the head on this sprite. Near as I can tell, they've hollowed out another bald human head and are wearing it as a hat. Said hat has a gem in the eye sockets for some reason.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2023 21:24
|
|
|
JustJeff88 posted:Is this game procedurally generated, or is it the same every run? It's the same pregenerated world every time, you can randomize a lot of things, but not the world shape. Leraika posted:Also one of them (dealer's choice) should be female and named Leraika because why not Mega64 posted:Oh snap, I loved this game and am glad someone is giving this a good LP. The rare game I 100%ed. It really does feel like FF5 stapled upon an open-world platformer, and fortunately I love both of those things. I already made a party for the first section of the game, but we'll hit a renamer eventually and swapping one of them over to Warlock for the second update is supremely simple.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2023 21:34
|
|
|
Update 01: Crystals? Crystals!  Welcome to Crystal Project, absolutely one of my favourite RPG's and definitely my favourite jRPG.  The game comes with a collection of pre-made names to randomize through, so please welcome Hamza, Vanessa, Tau and Charity to the action. They might occasionally have commentary, but since they don't have consistent sprites, I can't really give them little faces. They don't get italics for their dialogue, though. Hamza: Can you believe Ramza was already picked? Vanessa: Wait, we could pick our names? I just used my own.  Once we have a party, we can also choose to add in some CHALLENGE OPTIONS to make the game harder. In my opinion, it doesn't really need them unless you're on a second playthrough of some sort, the basic difficulty is really well-adjusted and does a good ramping up over the course of the game. There are also the Randomizer options, that let us mix up the classes, the encounters, the items, etc. it might take a few tries to make a fun seed, but some of them are very fun. Randomizing the crystals and starting classes is absolutely choice for a different take on the game.  And as said, I think Normal is a very nice difficulty, but it does also face you with some challenges you'll need to take some time before you can handle or will need to try out different approaches for. If you want to just do everything first try, Easy might be more your speed. With that over, let's get into it.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyyEOohiIcY The music track for the Spawning Meadows   Hamza: Oh, great, dialogue. Tau: A bit of scene setting won't hurt you. I like dialogue.     The Nans provide what little bit of early-game tutorial we get. Crystal Project is pretty big on giving you a few early pointers and then largely letting you figure out the details and interactions for yourself.  For instance, the nearest Nan walks off, but doesn't drag us along. We're free to explore this lovely meadow on our own.    Hamza: ...huh, we can jump. Tau: C'mon, we should follow the tutorial. Hamza: Later, I want to do more jumping.     Quietly, the first little meadow teaches you to do your exploring by hiding a couple of treasures in non-obvious places that you'll find if you poke around even in the most cursory way.    Tonics are just the game's most basic healing items, but still, they can be handy.  The game also likes to make sure you catch glimpses of hidden treasures to get your brain creaking on how to get to them. It'll be a little before we can get to this chest.     On foot we can jump three spaces horizontally and two vertically, which means that we can actually reach this ledge up here...     Tau: Why are we going this way? Hamza: Jumping's fun. Vanessa: They wouldn't just put this stuff here for no reason.     With a bit of height you can get farther than you think. Hamza: So what's the reason for this place, genius?  Vanessa: Free squirrel?    There are a few more chests with tonics and spare change, but they're not very important so they're also not on screen.        Tau: I trust her, a Nan wouldn't lie to us. Crystal Project doesn't have random encounters, instead it has wandering enemy Flames, with bigger Boss Flames as well. Blue flames are appropriately levelled, Green flames are notably weaker, Grey flames are very much weaker than you and won't chase you, Orange flames are somewhat stronger than you and Red flames are usually a guaranteed party wipe. Most of them have pre-set patrol patterns(or stand still) and beeline the party when they spot it, but with momentum so they can overshoot you if you dodge out of the way. Flames respawn when you leave an area for a bit and come back, but each area has multiple different enemy groups and a flame's enemy group setup may be different each time it spawns.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD8XHAps5vk Spawning Meadows combat theme, not every area has its own, but there are a good couple of different ones and five or six different boss battle themes Tau: My world is shattered, you can't even trust a Nan. Hamza: Hell yeah, jumping AND fighting! This rules. The combat UI is pretty simple. In addition to the standard jRPG options, we also have, at the bottom, a graphical representation of the turn order. The AP that Tau just gained is a resource for non-magic abilities(and a few magic abilities) that accumulate each turn, when the user is hurt and when the user uses a physical attack.    Enemy info reveals, well, enemy info. All enemies have unknown HP until you've killed one or you hit them with the Scan spell. At the start of combat, all characters have zero threat to all enemies but...    After a bonk from Vanessa, she's now Top Threat, indicated graphically by a dotted white line pointing from the enemy to her, showing that the Slime will attack her next if it's able to. Except for a few rare enemies or situations, Threat is 100% deterministic and an enemy will always attack its Top Threat target.    Hamza's starting Warrior ability is Taunt, which does a ton of Threat Damage. In general terms, you can assume each point of actual damage to generate one point of Threat, so this means someone else would have to do 400 damage while Hamza just sits there to become Top Threat for this slime, but Taunt only affects one enemy at once, so you have to pick who you want your tank to piss off. But we don't want to spend the rest of this update on one slime, so let's finish it off.  Vanessa: I completely forgot Charity was here. Say something, why don't you? Charity: ...   Enemies, as per genre conventions, produce XP, LP(class XP, essentially, for learning skills and abilities) and drop stuff, in this case a bit of money.   Each class has its own skill tree but, it's worth noting that Hamza didn't just get LP for Warrior. Each character generates a lot of LP for themselves for their main class, and a little for the same class for everyone else, which makes it easy for others to dip into classes and means you aren't constantly levelling everyone from 0 just to experiment. I updated the OP to list the class skill trees, what the skills do and a bit of commentary on them for the classes we know so far.          Fenix Juice is our legally distinct Phoenix Down.      Something the game doesn't tell you, by the way, is that non-blocks are also something you can stand on. Except for "decorations" like the tall grass in the Spawning Meadows, all 3D objects are tangible and can be stood on, including this lamp post!         This leads to my most hated kind of jump in this game or any other platformer.     Characters are just under one block tall, which means that standing in here, it's possible to jump and, if perfectly positioned and moving quickly, jump out, cling to the outside of the block above while moving upwards, and slip on to the block above. It's something I really suck at, but I manage to do it after like ten tries.    Tau: Why are we collecting squirrels? Vanessa: Because they're there, duh.     There's no falling damage, though any liquid deeper than "half" a sprite's height is instant death, albeit only the kind that resets you to the last solid block you were on.   Twinkling stars like this indicate pick-ups you get just by walking over them, usually quest items rather than equipment or use items. In this case, a crafting material.     ...and something we won't get to interact with for quite a while.  Tau: Are you done? Hamza: My lust for jumping is sated, for now.        See? We can see slimes' max and current HP now. The Spawning Meadows don't really have any threatening encounters unless you're really loving around or running challenge/randomizer options, but they're a nice, slowly increasing scale of tutorial for new players.          Another new enemy is the Wisp. The blue globe icon indicates that it's readying a heal/buff/support spell of some sort.    We can flip up the details and also the more detailed turn order. Note that the spell has a small delay between the Wisp's turn and it activating, most spells have this, allowing for some abilities to interrupt it(like being silenced, slept or paralyzed, or a literal interrupt-causing ability), something that's a big part of the tougher battles in the game. Bigger spells usually have bigger delays while physical attacks go off instantly.     All encountered enemies also leave an Archive entry, tracking their drops, steals(if any) and abilities, which is primarily useful for a few rare/valuable drops and once we get the Blue Mage expy class, because of course there is one, and we need to find its learnable abilities in the wild.         Hamza: Oh, but I have!     Hamza: An appetite for jumps! Tau: ...we're never getting anywhere, are we? Vanessa: Well, we're going up! That's somewhere!      Chests are colour coded: Brown chests contain consumables, red chests contain equipment(and are thus very important) and purple chests contain miscellaneous items, often keys and quest objectives.  The Spawning Meadows have a number of these chests around, containing equipment for each of the starter classes, all of which are considerable power upgrades and will make the next area very easy.        And of course, because the Crystal Project dev(Yes, singular, ONE guy made all of this, except for the open source assets) is a smart cookie, a lot of "secret" areas are layered, with another bit of acrobatic exploration available beyond them.         The Cleaver, for Hamza, is our first introduction to the Variance trait that all axes have. It means that on any given swing, the damage done my vary by, well, the Variance either upwards or downwards. Aside from Variance attacks and critical hits, damage is another wholly deterministic aspect of the game.    Vanessa: What's that over there? Tau: ...we already went past there, did we miss a way up? Hamza: I'm sure we'll find it later, onwards!         If I have one critique of the basic exploration and platforming of Crystal Project, it's when there's solid ground underneath jumps, because it means that a flubbed jump has you walking all the way back to reset it, while water just pops you back immediately. There are a few, optional, jumps where this can get frustrating.      Hamza: Finally someone who isn't a Nan. What's up, buddy?   The squirrels are for this guy. Get him three and he moves aside and lets you access his treasure.  Also worth noting, NPC's count as objects you can stand on to reach/jump higher.         I think there are four or five squirrels around. As far as I'm aware there's no reason to grab the "spares" except completionism, but they're there in case there's one you can't find or can't grok the jump to reach.     The stout shield would be for a Hamza without the Cleaver, and the Stabbers are a dagger upgrade for Vanessa. Daggers all(or almost all? I think it's all) have a bonus to crit damage, meaning they synergize well with things that increase or guarantee crits.         Third black squirrel get. This one can look like an impossible jump if you're new to the game, but hey, no falling damage means infinite retries.      Vanessa: I told you, they wouldn't just have something here for no reason. Tau: Does that count as a quest? I think that was our first quest!    That may seem like a crude joke reward, but the Squirrel Dung is actually a stat-boosting accessory! It goes to poor Vanessa since she wants those crits. Luck is kind of an all-round booster, providing a subtle bonus to stuff if you've had repeated fails(like several misses in a row) and also helps attacks with Variance land right-side up.          Down the path is one more tutorial encounter before we reach the Nans' lodge.      Which has our first Home Point. Home Points are save points and also warp points, but by default we can only have one saved to warp to.        It's also where we can change classes and apply subclasses. Subclasses do not apply their equipment options or their class passive bonus, but all their skills can be used. You may as well throw some White Magic passives on people if you have nothing else to have more healing options and some MP use for non-mage classes. I also apply one of the two Assist options I'll be using for this LP, and they are ones I would suggest everyone use.     They are, by the way, hidden inside the More Options section of the Options menu. I would never recommend playing without Enhanced Home Point on unless you really like travelling. There are a couple of places that are ABSOLUTE pains in the rear end to get back to for a while. But between the Assists, the difficulty level and the challenge options, Crystal Project has a very modular difficulty. If just ONE thing is ruining the experience for you, you can moderate it, the only real exception being the platforming.   Tau: I like the Nans. Why does no one else seem to like the Nans?        The Lodge has a few Nans, some of which dispense advice, some of which are low-level merchants selling starter gear and one of which gives us our first map. Mapping happens for areas even without the map, but you need the map for the zone to actually SEE the map. If you're in a zone you have a map for, your minimap in the lower right automatically pops up.    Some items are bought with ingredients and money, or just ingredients, instead of purely money, as a sort of crafting system.     There's also a full heal inn. Despite the implication, no matter how many stays you have, they remain free. There's an option for Home Points to heal you in the Assists, but I feel like that makes things a bit TOO easy.          The Lodge's roof is climable, there are very few "true" diagonals in the game(which work as slides), instead most are just stepped stairs that you can easily walk up, down or stand on.      One of the limiters on your adventuring is how many consumables you can carry at once, but most main types of consumables have collectible Pouches that each increase your storage capacity by one.    There's also an upgrade for Charity here.  But we still haven't reached that one plateau.     The trick is using NPC's as stepladders.     Provides +15% to Steal attempts. I rarely made great use of Stealing in previous runs, but it can definitely have some potential at points.        And there's another Tonic pouch if you're willing to push on. Considering their ubiquity as free healing between fights, Tonic pouches are surprisingly handy.     In any case, that about finishes off the Spawning Meadows. Tau: Finally, are you two done? Hamza: I've done all the jumps and fights this place had. Vanessa: And I think we picked up every potential quest item. I knew those squirrels were going to be important!         The way out has a few inspirational Nan quotes and then...   ...we're in autumnal Delende. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDokgvuuS7E I really like the Delende theme. It's got some energy that makes me want to go exploring and a light-hearted feel to it, like there's no pressure at all. Charity: Hey, can anyone hear me? Vanessa: You can talk?! Charity: Yeah, I had mute on by accident. Nice jumps, by the way. Hamza: Don't need to tell me twice. Tau: Can we just follow the road for once? Hamza: Not a chance.         From this point on, the tutorial reins are more or less completely off, at least in the sense of overt tutorials. Areas will still teach you things, but in a pretty natural way where they just slowly introduce stuff and then by the end of it, you'd better have it figured out or you get your rear end kicked.   With a new area comes new enemies. They're still just basic physical attackers but...   We can steal their nuts and they hit a lot harder than Slimes and Wisps.  They also take a good bit more killing to put down, getting in a good few more whacks on Charity before the fight's over.            For a lot of easier chests, you can just sort of back-track a path to them. Start at the chest, a place that reaches the chest, a place that reaches that place, etc. until you get to one you can actually get to.  Earrings provide a small mana boost, and if a character wears two, there are two misc. slots, they get double the bonus from each.       On the west side of the first chunk of Delender is this ledge with a hidden upgrade for sword-and-board Warriors, as well as an NPC we can't reach up above, and one we can reach down below...              Charity: He seemed nice! Tau: Really, Crystals? That's what you're here for? Hamza: You gotta jump to reach them, and fight to get them. Vanessa: Nice to know there are some people to chat with here. Maybe we'll bump into him again. The Home Point stone is a pretty nice item and, unless you're really into some wild speedrunning poo poo, thankfully not an item you can miss. If you try to walk past Astley, he'll sidle over and enforce a conversation.    Delende's a pretty vertical area, there's a lot of looping around and reaching higher parts of it.        Speaking of: gently caress them roads, we're going treeclimbing.         The reward is just a +Strength item for Hamza, but it's the principle of the matter.             You can catch glimpses of this location from below, but it's plausible you might not find it until a good bit later unless you really like poking into all sorts of corners and crevices, which describes, I'd say, the ideal Crystal Project enjoyer.          Hamza: This Astley guy must like jumping, too, to have gotten up here. Maybe we have something in common?          Tau: Hey, this isn't fresh at all! Charity: Did that guy just scam us? He zooms off so fast he's practically invisible in motion.          Just over the river is this ring which just flatly ups the chances of loot dropping from dead enemies. Always worth a slot in the early game.     This guy actually does sell Fresh Salmon. It's a quest item, too! I grab one.     And the Fishgutter for Vanessa since it's an upgrade and Hamza already has a Cleaver. The book is an odd item. Most caster classes will use Wands(boost Mind, for damaging spells) or Staves(boost Spirit, mostly for healing spells and also some Monk shenanigans). Books will generally boost neither, but instead provide a max mana bonus and occasionally misc. advantages, giving you more casts in exchange for their being weaker casts. I generally find alpha striking more important, but possibly they have their place in some strategies. I was never a huge fan of them.   There are three fishers in the world, and if you get a Lure and a Fishing Rod, we can buy the worst of the latter here, you can pay them a pittance to have them fish up random items for you, with each combo of Lure and Rod unlocking a table of drops. Incredibly I don't think anyone's catalogued all the possible combos and their rewards, so it's still sort-of a mystery what you can get, but obviously a better fisher gets you better stuff with better gear.     Downstairs is just an inn and a small storage closet to loot for a free mana recovery item.      Charity: Well, this seems fun and we made a lot of progress. Same time tomorrow? Hamza: Hell yeah, we can find our first crystal! Tau: And advance the plot! I bet there's a cool plot. Vanessa: Maybe find out what that Astley guy's about... he seems fishy. Tau: He seems nice. END SESSION VOTE A: Collect the next crystal immediately, so we can get new classes that I can talk about. B: Head off-road to do some more jumping and finding of items. Maybe there will even be dogs to pet.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 11:10
|
|
|
A, especially if one of those classes is the blue mage class, which is the best class on principle
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 14:00
|
|
|
A, more classes means more toys to play with!
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 14:06
|
|
|
I played a good ways through this game before getting distracted from it, and I'm glad to see it being shown off well so far! There is a whole hell of a lot to find if you go hopping and wandering in strange places. Looking forward to see what later stuff I missed out on.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 14:10
|
|
|
Oh, and one tidbit I'd like to add: although Warrior's skills being weapon agnostic does make them a versatile subclass option, they'll still run primarily off of strength, so a lot of non-strength based classes won't get the full damage potential out of the skillset. The debuffs can still be useful, but a lot of them can also be applied by other classes too. Edit: although almost everyone benefits from the stances! A rogue just needs Berserk stance and they can deal some massive threat-free hits! Every physical class can make a strong case for slotting in Warrior subclass just for Berserk, at least early on until more options open up. IthilionTheBrave fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Oct 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 14:40
|
|
|
Ah, inspirational Nan quotes  I'm sure this Astley guy would never let us down. A- Let us obtain new classes!
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 15:02
|
|
|
B, obviously the answer is petting dogs. You better not have lied about the petting dogs 
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 15:34
|
|
|
Always B jumping
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 15:41
|
|
|
I vote for B. Any gamer knows you exhaust all the side stuff before proceeding with the main story. I'm liking the party chat by the way, nice to give them a little personality and helps break up the flow of screenshots. Am I reading that correctly? Once you turn an assist thing on, you can't turn it back off? That... doesn't seem right to me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 18:14
|
|
|
Haven't made it all the way through the update proper yet, but for the class writeups in the OP, it'd probably be worth mentioning the innate passives that each class has. A couple other notes:PurpleXVI posted:
Pretty sure this bit is incorrect, though I'd agree that storm stance is pretty meh overall. Maybe if you could have multiple stances active at once so you could stack it and mind stance together... PurpleXVI posted:Warlock Not a correction exactly, but you didn't call any attention to this and I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to gush about what is, imo, warlock's biggest selling point: all of their spells are instant cast. Even a short cast time can mean the difference between getting your spell off before the enemy's next turn and, uh, not doing that, especially over the course of a longer fight. Mixed magic not having to worry about that is the main thing keeping it relevant once you start learning the stronger abilities from other skill trees. The damage spells still fall off pretty hard eventually, but a heal or defensive buff (or two!) at a crucial moment never goes out of style. (Also protect and shell are genuinely just very strong effects that none of the other starting classes can replicate, and even later on there aren't that many ways to apply them.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 19:00
|
|
|
Another perk to Mixed Magic is the status cure spell, Remedy, having a small heal attached. It's not major and single target only, but still a nice deal and has a nice synergy down the road from another class. That and dual cast having drastically reduced cost makes Warlocks surprisingly solid supports and healers who can pitch in more specialized roles depending in subclass.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 19:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 16:30 |
|
|
Cattail Prophet posted:Pretty sure this bit is incorrect, though I'd agree that storm stance is pretty meh overall. Maybe if you could have multiple stances active at once so you could stack it and mind stance together... Well, I wouldn't say it if I wasn't sure I was right, but I'll see if I can't get learn this one and then get Charity punched in the face a couple of times to set it off, for testing purposes. serefin99 posted:I vote for B. Any gamer knows you exhaust all the side stuff before proceeding with the main story. It's read correctly. I think it's to avoid weird edge cases with regards to stuff like suddenly removing some of your saved home points, though I believe that any of the ones that have a scaling effect(like boosted LP earning) can be turned up and down still, and stuff like "Skip Minigames" just opens up the option to skip minigames, rather than forcibly skipping them every time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2023 19:38
|
|