7th Dragon III Code: VFD Part #17 - Update XV - Featuring: Aiden Pearce from the Watch

Part 17: Update XV - Featuring: Aiden Pearce from the Watch_Dogs series

Update XV - Featuring: Aiden Pearce from the Watch_Dogs series

Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer

Alright, Team 2 can take point on this.

Hey... You're not gonna save that old man, are you!? You idiot! What's the point? His lifespan is almost up anyways! C'mon, just leave him! Grrr... Let me make myself clear. You are here to save the present day of UE 77... It is not to become the mystical hero of Atlantis. Just get the True Dragon specimen so you can save Tokyo. Is that really so much to ask?

I'd like to point out that Nagamimi is telling this to Valerie, who lives in Cladeon. She probably knows this guy!

The game really, really does not like it when you change who the team leader is, but you have no choice but to do that if you ever want to use your backup teams!

Anyways, Valerie shakes her head at the notion of leaving her own countrymen to die.

*sigh* Whatever happens, I'm not involved. I take no responsibility for this shit.

Dragon!!!

Music: Battlefield - Furious Predator

Valerie demands your blood.

And Team 1 is ready to assist.

Several turns of MANA regeneration is exactly as good as it sounds.

While Lightning Sword hits hard, has a good chance of inflicting Paralysis, and the Paralysis itself has rather good odds of going off.

I used Aria's share of the grinding DLC rewards to get both her Poetry skills to level 2. This lets Moonlight Poetry restore 6 MN a turn.

If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that nothing this team has costs more than 6 MN. This means that we effectively have infinite MN whenever Moonlight is up.

Forest Poetry, meanwhile, is our first actually useful healing move.

Provoke is extremely handy against dragons.

Now, keep Inoue's damage in mind for later.

This is his hardest hitting move.

And this is how much Forest heals everyone for. The only thing that can hurt the party right now is Poison, and that's only because it ticks after regen.

Unlike Hacker's Regenerator, Forest heals everyone for a fixed amount +10% of the Fortuner's MAT, so it has some power right out the gate and stays useful later on as Aria's MAT gets higher and higher.

Now, you'd think a support class like the Fortuner would have bad personal damage to make up for all their tricks.

You'd be wrong. Aria is dealing 80 damage plus 3 turns of 40 damage from the Bleed. She's outdamaging Inoue backed by Red Flame and hitting a weakness.

The Atlantis classes are where the devs threw what little semblance of balance the Tokyo classes had right out the window.

Oh look, poison.

However, three turns have now passed, meaning Team 1 is ready for a Support.

This notice will pop up at the start of every turn provided everyone has one bar. If you decline to use it at first and then change your mind, you can back out of the first party member's action to get another chance to use it.

And just like that, everyone is fine.

And since the big guy is currently bleeding...

Aria can hit him that much harder.

He then dies to Bleed at the end of the turn.

Might as well show off a few more moves while I'm at it.

Music: Battlefield - Atlantis

You may think that Sleep would be a mediocre ailment to inflict.

But you'd be wrong again. The move itself has surprisingly high infliction rates, and Fortuners are the fastest class in the game. Combined, this gives you a good chance of just locking out a dangerous enemy at the start of a fight while you deal with any flunkies.

And as a bonus, (and never mentioned in-game to my knowledge) all of the Fortuner's Revelation skills have an effect that increases infliction rates if any other ailment is already on the target. This means Aria can land Sleep on turn 1, then seamlessly transition to Bleed on turn 2!

Ice Sword, meanwhile, is sorta pointless when Lightning Sword is right over there. With lower damage (even when I'm not slamming into resists) and a worse ailment, the only saving grace it has is that it costs 3 MN compared to Lightning Sword's 6.

However, we just got Fortuner, and she can easily recover 6 MN a turn, so even that's a wash.

Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer

Other than that one dragon, this right side area only has a few chests.

SP Ups are a lot less potent in VFD, now that they have to be split six ways.

With that section cleared out, we now head to the left.

A bit further ahead is the exit to this area, but I still have a dragon here to kill, so I head back.

Oh wow, a treasure chest behind a waterfall, how original.

Ah, the bridge is out.

I'll probably have to loop back from the next area.

Heading left and down sounds good.

Jackpot.

And there's our dragon.

Music: Battlefield - Furious Predator

Our next victim shall be...

A Megamouth Dragon, finishing off the set of dragons we fought during the DLC!

This also means that, on top of the DLC Megamouth having 3K HP, you're missing both two classes and the backrow system if you try the DLC as soon as it opened. And that's on top of just having so many less levels compared to now.

Valerie's going for an EX-boosted Lightning Sword to try and land Paralysis.

It fails, but it certainly hurts.

All the random encounters means that the new guys are pretty much fully caught up with the starting members at this point.

Everyone else spends this turn and the next setting up.

Could you maybe not?

Compared to the Aquaria, a Megamouth's poison is much more deadly. That's almost outpacing Aria's regen!

Inoue's damage.

Valerie's damage.

Lightning Sword is stupidly good, you guys.

Hehehehehehehe...

You fool.

You absolute buffoon.

You're not allowed to play by the same rules as me!

So yeah, as if VFD's change to buffs were bad, but at least they were even. I get to buff up and break things in half, but enemies could do the exact same back. The introduction of Buddy skills, however, means that said change is now entirely one sided. I get to buff up all I want, and all my enemy's buffs get instantly broken because I have someone with a 1 turn charge on both teams. The only way an enemy can make use of buffs now is if they do it on the very first turn, and even then they'll only have one turn to use it before I break it.

Welcome to VFD.

That was his big charge move, twice in a row, and I didn't even have to block.

Opal manages to join in.

And it falls.

Music: Finish Them Off

Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer

Intelligent Boy: Me? Well, I wanted to research dragons, but I got trapped here instead. Thanks for saving me!

That's the map cleared out.

Oh, more rewards when we get back!

And there's the chest right next to him.

I head back and take a path to the right.

And run into a new enemy on the way.

Despite being covered in grass, this thing isn't weak to fire damage.

Pokemon lied to me.

There's some rubble between us and another civilian.

And a dragon right after it!

Strangely, it's a Hammer Dragon, which we've already fought as a barrier dragon.

Barrier dragons in the 2020s were always their own dedicated thing, letting them be a cut above the normal dragons you fight in the dungeon. Letting them mingle in the general dragon pool means that barrier dragons will have to be a fair bit weaker to account for how they can be fought at any point in the dungeon.

I believe you know how this team works by now.

There's a chest behind some more rubble.

Moving ahead, we get this nice shot of Cladeon's water.

There's a chest at the end of this path, but more rubble forces us back.

We also run into a Crab palette swap on the way.

There's a dragon blocking off a civilian.

Fun fact: Only the front row team can use their skills in the field. No getting cheeky and using Opal as a backline healbot or something.

Let's give Team 1 some fun.

Music: Battlefield - Furious Predator

Holy shit Aiden, this is your first serious fight!

Clearly being freed from Ubisoft's clutches has given him a massive power boost.

Shame I forgot that madstrife.exe doesn't work on pre-emptives.

And that I got the wrong TROY for Yuno to exploit.

Oh well.

Second time's the charm.

Yuno finally gets a chance to show off her other Field Spells.

While the Hammer is forced to deal 140 damage to itself.

I'm pretty much showing off as much as possible at this point.

Because he doesn't last long.

Music: Finish Them Off

And as an extra level of power creep, the ability to freely swap teams means I can switch from one the moment they start to tire and let the rested backline team take over. By the time the new frontline team runs dry, odds are that everyone in the back has gained a level and fully refilled their LF/MN. So now I can basically ignore attrition in dungeon crawls.

Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer