Labyrinth of Refrain: 03
Aug. 11th, 2019 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dinoblobSo after several hours of consideration, I finally went ahead and used all three Witch Troop Pacts to start to form my brigade with more than just five members.
I made the mistake of trying to grind up one new puppet in Astrom and they got completely annihilated, and because I couldn't justify such a horrible beginning for them I just restarted the game and made a separate set of soldiers and went to the first dungeon instead.
After looking online for some tutorials--by the way, you never truly appreciate having tutorial text to be accessible in a menu somewhere until a game like this comes along and just DOESN'T HAVE ONE, not a single place for me to review what it taught me. This being my first DRPG and also the game also having its own quirks, it's just not as intuitive as other JRPGs--anyways, I found out the hidden LUC stat is determined by the name you give your unit upon creation... and uggh, that was kind of a bummer.
There were just a few things I let to randomization when creating my soldiers in this game, I randomized names (in an effort to not get as attached to the units, but surprise, that didn't stop me from forming minor headcanons for them anyway), I randomized their lucky number which is what I thought the LUC stat may have been based off of, and to a point I randomized the personalities. At least, I didn't have personalities so much in mind ahead of the character but I tried to make them match what made sense for their facets as well as the voices, granted they're only 3 voice styles to choose from anyway.
I have a small bit of delight in the Rapport system which I don't really understand all that well, assuming that soldiers may gain more rapport with others if they share a coven or just battle frequently together a la Fire Emblem? Anyways, I initially set up Mikhail as the Aster Knight, Sevran as the Peer Fortress, and Matilda as the Maze but serving as a healer in the Rearguard. You can't really do anything about sharing covens at this point since the free soul pacts are all single soldier slots.
Mikhail was set as the standard protagonist type, but honestly nothing stands out about him other than a sense of duty to fight, he was given a Brave nature. Sevran was intended to be a rival of sorts choosing to think before he acts (hence being a defender type) but this can be his own pitfall if he can't decide what to do before it's too late, he ended up being a Pouty nature LOL. Matilda's voice lines made me think she should rather be Optimistic in nature, so honestly she spends time daydreaming about whether she'd rather court Mikhail or Sevran, but they're both just oblivious romantically, recognize her battle prowess and just don't want to fuck up the team synergy in any case (so she's outta luck for the time being).
When it came time to adding a Shinobushi to the group, I was hesitant to use a female unit honestly because the designs are pure fan service in the worst way, so I bite the bullet to make Another Hot Dude and now my brigade is a reverse harem, and that's more bearable than adding a scantily dressed loli warrior tbh. Thus, Ryuken was born as the Nihilistic ninja of the group, the rogue that's taciturn about his own past and personal life.
Although I guess none of their backstories matter if we take into account these are supposed to be puppet soldiers, just souls adhered to puppet bodies that will only be animated upon exposure to the dungeons' miasma. Maybe they have remnants of their memories when they were alive and are trying to make sense of their new existence as a troop to rely on each other?
After a bit more grinding in the dungeons I finally got more support type pacts and wanted to see what other class/facet I could use to balance out the offense heavy team I have. And also to balance the gender mix a bit more, I ended up with Theatrical Star Lena, with a Pure nature. She suspects she may be half-siblings with Ryuken but doesn't have proof and merely tries to pester him about his past which he stubbornly keeps mum.
...and, now that I've explain the Main Group and their creation, I have to explain how DUMB it is that the LUC stat is based upon name during creation because Mikhail and Ryuken have DESPAIR level luck, which is the worst level. This can't be changed with a name change either so... If their heads ever get destroyed in battle I'm going to have to go through the whole, this Unit is really GONE-gone like hard-mode Fire Emblem and frankly I wasn't ready for that, mostly because I wasn't prepare to get attached to these units, but once personality (aka stat growth, but c'mon, it's called personality) was part of the character creation I guess I couldn't help thinking about how the party would actually interact with one another.
So basically my one bit of delight was that this main crew was formed slowly over time, for learning the game and not having the resources to make 5 characters off the bat, but the characters gained rapport in ways I had imagined them anyway? Mikhail is the first to "Be open to small talk" with Matilda which is adorable; apparently Matilda only knows the names of Mikhail and Sevran so I guess that part is either off or she could Only know their names and still go off fantasizing before she really gets to know them and make True Friendship Bonds.
Lena is "Interested" in Ryuken so that plays well with her being curious about him whereas he's open to small talk but isn't ready to open up completely to her.
The newbies of the brigade are Lyssa, Geist and Argon.
Lyssa is the genki girl of the group, a training aster knight she is now studying under Mikhail in the same coven. I have a feeling she'll excel as she has Fortunate LUC and a Happy personality.
Geist is a new Peer Fortress who has heard tales of Sevran and is a bit of a fan boy for him, down to mimicking Sevran's Pouty personality, but I think with time he'll grow a bit more into his own.
Argon actually has history with Ryuken, it seems they were frequently partnered as mercenaries in the past so he has pre-established respect for Ryuken. Ryuken occasionally cracks a smile when he fights in sync with Argon but it tends to disappear just as quickly. Something about Ryuken's past when he wasn't with Argon bothers him and he can't quite reminisce the same way Argon does frequently. Argon is Brave and a skilled fighter.
I purposefully paired the newbie units with their seniors in the Witch Troop Pacts, to hopefully help them not get totally singled out during attacks. This does leave Matilda and Lena in their own covens for now which may hinder how their rapport builds with the others but I guess we'll see how that goes. So far since Mikhail, Matilda and Sevran spent the most time together they still have fairly more rapport with each other compared to the others.
As far as the game's story progression goes, I'm near the end of the Astrom Kingdom but I plan on grinding for a bit because I'm honestly just scared that one bad RNG roll will result in a critical gore that will lead to the fall of the party. It really seems hard to recover from something that can strike so randomly. The bosses are also intimidating just because you have no HP info or anything like resistances/weaknesses or a way to scope that out to begin with.
I've been surprised a few times when I was battling against random mobs, I think they were the gnome cavalries that are riding on caterpillars, those little guys had crit Sevran early on and I decided to retreat back to base afterwards. I'm hoping with the option to stock experience it won't be so bad to grind the area so that the newest soldiers could at least be level 20 for whatever the boss fight ends up being.
I've already run into one purple enemy that I had to run away from, I think it was another witch statue but this was much stronger than the Event one. Still, they're obviously posted as mini-bosses before the final area so not feeling super confident about going straight to the end if I'm still avoiding the unique monsters. Maybe they're put there to be somewhat impossible, but I do want to see if I could be safer just grinding up the the team to be stronger so that they're the ones critical goring the enemies.
I made the mistake of trying to grind up one new puppet in Astrom and they got completely annihilated, and because I couldn't justify such a horrible beginning for them I just restarted the game and made a separate set of soldiers and went to the first dungeon instead.
After looking online for some tutorials--by the way, you never truly appreciate having tutorial text to be accessible in a menu somewhere until a game like this comes along and just DOESN'T HAVE ONE, not a single place for me to review what it taught me. This being my first DRPG and also the game also having its own quirks, it's just not as intuitive as other JRPGs--anyways, I found out the hidden LUC stat is determined by the name you give your unit upon creation... and uggh, that was kind of a bummer.
There were just a few things I let to randomization when creating my soldiers in this game, I randomized names (in an effort to not get as attached to the units, but surprise, that didn't stop me from forming minor headcanons for them anyway), I randomized their lucky number which is what I thought the LUC stat may have been based off of, and to a point I randomized the personalities. At least, I didn't have personalities so much in mind ahead of the character but I tried to make them match what made sense for their facets as well as the voices, granted they're only 3 voice styles to choose from anyway.
I have a small bit of delight in the Rapport system which I don't really understand all that well, assuming that soldiers may gain more rapport with others if they share a coven or just battle frequently together a la Fire Emblem? Anyways, I initially set up Mikhail as the Aster Knight, Sevran as the Peer Fortress, and Matilda as the Maze but serving as a healer in the Rearguard. You can't really do anything about sharing covens at this point since the free soul pacts are all single soldier slots.
Mikhail was set as the standard protagonist type, but honestly nothing stands out about him other than a sense of duty to fight, he was given a Brave nature. Sevran was intended to be a rival of sorts choosing to think before he acts (hence being a defender type) but this can be his own pitfall if he can't decide what to do before it's too late, he ended up being a Pouty nature LOL. Matilda's voice lines made me think she should rather be Optimistic in nature, so honestly she spends time daydreaming about whether she'd rather court Mikhail or Sevran, but they're both just oblivious romantically, recognize her battle prowess and just don't want to fuck up the team synergy in any case (so she's outta luck for the time being).
When it came time to adding a Shinobushi to the group, I was hesitant to use a female unit honestly because the designs are pure fan service in the worst way, so I bite the bullet to make Another Hot Dude and now my brigade is a reverse harem, and that's more bearable than adding a scantily dressed loli warrior tbh. Thus, Ryuken was born as the Nihilistic ninja of the group, the rogue that's taciturn about his own past and personal life.
Although I guess none of their backstories matter if we take into account these are supposed to be puppet soldiers, just souls adhered to puppet bodies that will only be animated upon exposure to the dungeons' miasma. Maybe they have remnants of their memories when they were alive and are trying to make sense of their new existence as a troop to rely on each other?
After a bit more grinding in the dungeons I finally got more support type pacts and wanted to see what other class/facet I could use to balance out the offense heavy team I have. And also to balance the gender mix a bit more, I ended up with Theatrical Star Lena, with a Pure nature. She suspects she may be half-siblings with Ryuken but doesn't have proof and merely tries to pester him about his past which he stubbornly keeps mum.
...and, now that I've explain the Main Group and their creation, I have to explain how DUMB it is that the LUC stat is based upon name during creation because Mikhail and Ryuken have DESPAIR level luck, which is the worst level. This can't be changed with a name change either so... If their heads ever get destroyed in battle I'm going to have to go through the whole, this Unit is really GONE-gone like hard-mode Fire Emblem and frankly I wasn't ready for that, mostly because I wasn't prepare to get attached to these units, but once personality (aka stat growth, but c'mon, it's called personality) was part of the character creation I guess I couldn't help thinking about how the party would actually interact with one another.
So basically my one bit of delight was that this main crew was formed slowly over time, for learning the game and not having the resources to make 5 characters off the bat, but the characters gained rapport in ways I had imagined them anyway? Mikhail is the first to "Be open to small talk" with Matilda which is adorable; apparently Matilda only knows the names of Mikhail and Sevran so I guess that part is either off or she could Only know their names and still go off fantasizing before she really gets to know them and make True Friendship Bonds.
Lena is "Interested" in Ryuken so that plays well with her being curious about him whereas he's open to small talk but isn't ready to open up completely to her.
The newbies of the brigade are Lyssa, Geist and Argon.
Lyssa is the genki girl of the group, a training aster knight she is now studying under Mikhail in the same coven. I have a feeling she'll excel as she has Fortunate LUC and a Happy personality.
Geist is a new Peer Fortress who has heard tales of Sevran and is a bit of a fan boy for him, down to mimicking Sevran's Pouty personality, but I think with time he'll grow a bit more into his own.
Argon actually has history with Ryuken, it seems they were frequently partnered as mercenaries in the past so he has pre-established respect for Ryuken. Ryuken occasionally cracks a smile when he fights in sync with Argon but it tends to disappear just as quickly. Something about Ryuken's past when he wasn't with Argon bothers him and he can't quite reminisce the same way Argon does frequently. Argon is Brave and a skilled fighter.
I purposefully paired the newbie units with their seniors in the Witch Troop Pacts, to hopefully help them not get totally singled out during attacks. This does leave Matilda and Lena in their own covens for now which may hinder how their rapport builds with the others but I guess we'll see how that goes. So far since Mikhail, Matilda and Sevran spent the most time together they still have fairly more rapport with each other compared to the others.
As far as the game's story progression goes, I'm near the end of the Astrom Kingdom but I plan on grinding for a bit because I'm honestly just scared that one bad RNG roll will result in a critical gore that will lead to the fall of the party. It really seems hard to recover from something that can strike so randomly. The bosses are also intimidating just because you have no HP info or anything like resistances/weaknesses or a way to scope that out to begin with.
I've been surprised a few times when I was battling against random mobs, I think they were the gnome cavalries that are riding on caterpillars, those little guys had crit Sevran early on and I decided to retreat back to base afterwards. I'm hoping with the option to stock experience it won't be so bad to grind the area so that the newest soldiers could at least be level 20 for whatever the boss fight ends up being.
I've already run into one purple enemy that I had to run away from, I think it was another witch statue but this was much stronger than the Event one. Still, they're obviously posted as mini-bosses before the final area so not feeling super confident about going straight to the end if I'm still avoiding the unique monsters. Maybe they're put there to be somewhat impossible, but I do want to see if I could be safer just grinding up the the team to be stronger so that they're the ones critical goring the enemies.
