Part 7: The Whale in all of us.
Update 7: The Whale in all of us.Well, it's time to get out of Sadal Suud. I kinda like it here, but honestly I'm ready to move on to a new place.
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Eh, it's just four of them. I'm sure the two of you could pull it off. Although I guess killing a bunch of soldiers right in public would look bad, but it's not like Kalas has an image to maintain.
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...or...that...uh...yeah, I'm not going to pretend I know how that was supposed to work. You'd think the pilot/driver/whatever wouldn't time his departure so perfectly in the protagonist's favor. Maybe he just likes trolling soldiers.
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Here we have the proper world map. The plot will be shuffling us around automatically between islands for much of the earlygame, but we will eventually get to explore on our own. Sadal Suud is on the center right...
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...and Diadem is the pink cloudy mass below it. Also, check out the frame around the world map. I have no idea what the meaning behind it is, but that guy on the lower left is pretty crazy looking.
Music: Bellflower
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I just now noticed this...the ship has some sort of shrimp thing hanging off a rod in front of it to entice the beast that's carrying it. Nice touch.
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Kalas, I think you need to write a message on your cape. Something like "The wearer of this cape does not want to be friends with Xelha". Actually, no, she'd just pull it off and keep stalking us anyway...sigh.
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Well, I actually won't be shopping in this update, but I do need to remember to do that before I move on to the next dungeon. I've got that Nunkirantula picture I still need to sell, and I could use an update in healing stuff if nothing else.
At any rate, I head into the building, and before I know it...
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Wow, I don't even remember this woman. I'm glad I decided to talk to all the NPCs or I would have totally missed her. I mean, it's not like I couldn't have just come back later, but it's still nice to have that over with. Too bad she didn't have anything interesting to say.
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I also find a Fire Yell. Yells are a special kind of Magnus which I honestly have never cared much for. You can only use them immediately after using another magnus of the same element. Xelha could do Fire Burst -> Fire Yell, but not Fire Burst -> Light Flare -> Fire Yell. Yells are somewhat unique in that they can be played on offense or defense turns (again, assuming you play a same element card beforehand), but in general I don't think there's ever any incentive to use a Yell specifically.
Yells are also interesting in that they each have four levels, with each one being it's own Magnus (and thus having it's own place in the Gathering list). You can level up a Yell by using a specific appropriate-element card before it; for example, to get a Chronos Yell level 4, you have to use a Forbidden Fruit followed by Chronos Yell III.
The best part? Yells deteriorate over time.
Pretty much the only time I will ever use Yells is when they are in a new character's starting deck, and even then I switch them out pretty fast. It's just not worth the effort, especially since the high end yells aren't really all that good compared to other high end Magnus.
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Several NPCs comment on how this is a fishing village and that fishing has been going quite badly as of late. Sucks be to them, I guess.
Video: The Ambassador
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And then a kid appears. Read all of his lines with the most affected, obnoxious, self-righteous-hick-brat voice you can, and you've got the next minute of dialogue.
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The game's being pretty subtle here. I don't know why it doesn't just come out and say that Lyude is from the Empire.
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As annoying as the kids are, I like how they've all collectively decided that Kalas is evil.
Despite the scene we just saw, it is perfectly safe to go over and chat up Lyude. In fact, it may even be mandatory to trigger a later event - I didn't test it out, but it seems probable.
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Well, that was...candid. Don't see many ambassadors who say things like "Actually my country gives zero shits about you guys, I'm just here because my country doesn't like me that much either."
Talking to him again...
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Well, he seems like a decent guy. Couple that with his disappointment in his homeland, and I suspect that we've got a future party member on our hands, or possibly a supporting NPC! Unless he's just a really talented liar. That's also possible I suppose. I mean, he is an Ambassador...
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And here we have a fisherman bitching about strangers. They're already down on their luck, and now we're showing up...I don't think our stay here is going to be a pleasant one...
Our next destination is the building on the far right. It's the local tavern! I wonder if Kalas is old enough to get a drink?
Video:Anna the Barkeeper
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So many Greythornes!
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Well, that's okay. I'm sure Kalas is up for stealing a boat.
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Well, we've got a prospective helper, but...
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...he's nowhere to be found!
And so we come across one of those "wander around until you accidentally trigger all the cutscenes you need to trigger before the next plot event happens" monstrosities. I must have spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out what the hell to do here in my first playthrough. You can even leave the village on your own, but it's just like Anna said - the road is flooded and we can't get all the way through the field dungeon between here and Sheliak, plus the monsters on that road are a pretty decent challenge at this point.
As I mentioned earlier, I believe you have to speak to Lyude to advance the plot. But there's one other scene we have to witness as well...
Video: Adventures in voice acting, old lady edition
Music: Soul Spring of the Blue Ocean
We have to go to the house on the far left of the village, near where Kalas and Xelha first entered from the dock/fishery building.
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Whoa, it's like Giygas but it's on fire this is fucking awesome
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So we have some background on the lore of Baten Kaitos. We'll be getting even more later in the next island, but this is still an interesting bit of mythology.
Incidentally, I did a bit more research on the Baten Kaitos constellation and learned that it's actually sometimes called (or in the shape of?) a whale, so the name isn't completely arbitrary. Also, one of the stars in the constellation is called Mira, which as you may recall is the island where we (that is, Legion) met Kalas.
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Anyway, Xelha decides she has something to say.
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There are so many ways to take this statement, but personally I like to translate it as "Shut up, bitch".
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And we are once again left to our own devices. Let's see if I hit all the event flags I need to make Gibari show up.
Video: I have
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And then, walking in from offscreen, we have...
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...this colossal asshat.
For best results, read his lines in the voice of Biff Tannen. It's not anything like what his VA sounds like but it's just so fitting.
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I don't even understand how it's possible to be this full of shit.
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And then Reblys just kinda wanders off. Presumably because he knows if he stays he's gonna get his shit wrecked.
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note: Gibari is technically correct in saying that the Lesser Celestial River is "on the way to the city"...because it's flooding the road that actually IS on the way to the city. The part we will be visiting is not on the way to the city. Naturally.
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I like the implication that Kalas doesn't look trustworthy.
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Well, there you have it. But before we go...
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How do battles work?
Currently, all of my characters are able to use three cards per offensive turn. The main trick, then, is to
->orient my deck so that I can help increase the odds that I'll have a good hand to use against the enemy, and
->Pick the right cards from my hand to deal optimal damage.
Deck building depends on the player's preferences, as well as what you expect the character to be doing. Since there is no dedicated healer, some players opt to load one character up with a bunch of defense and healing magnus to sort of create one. In general, I try to have my character's decks with a little over half being attack magnus, a little over half of what's left being defense magnus, and the rest being healing/status recovery stuff, although that also can fluctuate over the course of the game, especially as I get more finishers.
Picking the right cards, then, is what the battles are all about. Not only do the cards themselves matter, but the order you pick them in can also impact things. Let's take a more in depth look.
I went ahead and proceeded slightly farther into the game to where Gibari is in the party and went to the Cloud Passage to demonstrate some things. I also turned the battle results on, because they're an excellent visual aid and explain the mechanics fairly well.
Let's start with elements.
(note that I use the terms "physical" and "non-elemental" interchangeably here: the game does not distinguish between physical and magical attacks, just elements.)
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First off, most if not elemental cards actually have two damage types: the physical damage, plus the actual elemental damage. In this case, Xelha's hand dealt 32 physical damage, 15 fire, 26 light, and 9 wind (the card has 18 attack power, but the enemy is 50% resistant to it), for a total of 82 damage.
Since most enemies have at least one elemental weakness and strength, it's helpful to keep your deck diverse so that you are always able to target a weakness that you need to. Xelha is particularly good at this, since she has easy access to all of the elements. Of course, if you know what element your enemies will be strong against/weak to beforehand (or can glean that information based on your surroundings) then you can stack your deck appropriately in favor of the elements they would be weak to.
So, as you've no doubt noticed, the ability to use more than one attack per turn equates to the ability to use more than one element per turn. But that's not always a great idea...
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This hand dealt 36 physical damage, 27 light, 27 dark, and 10 wind, for a total of 100 damage...except that the light and dark damage canceled each other out and left the attack doing 44 damage instead!
This is what happens when you mix elements. Opposing elements (water/fire, light/dark, wind/chronos) will offset each other's power when used in the same attack. As such, once you use a wind attack, you're better off not using a chronos based one until the next turn. This is another reason why stacking the deck in favor of three elements over their opposites can be desirable (with the obvious drawback that the character will now be ineffective at dealing damage of the element you took out).
One important thing to note (which I believe I've touched on already) is that enemy attacks are sometimes elemental as well. When being attacked by an enemy, you want to use armor of the opposite element. Let's demonstrate...
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In this picture, Gibari was just attacked by an enemy. Before factoring in defense magnus, the enemy did
48 physical/non-elemental damage
30 fire damage
31 wind damage.
Gibari's defense cards negated 52 physical damage...and ONLY PHYSICAL DAMAGE. Even though he negated 52 points worth, he still only ended up negating the 48 physical damage - the remaining 4 points were essentially overkill (overblock?) which do not spill over into blocking the fire or wind damage. To negate that damage, I would have to use chronos and water defense magnus.
In other words, an enemy could do 50 physical damage, 50 light damage, and 50 chronos damage, and even if I played a card that had 400000 physical defense, my character would still take 100 damage because I did nothing to block the elemental damage.
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And blocking with the wrong kind of element, like using Fire to block Wind, is equally fruitless.
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I took these two pictures to demonstrate another point: Enemies WILL do the same amount of damage to any character if they don't use defense magnus. A string of attacks that targeted Xelha did the same damage as the same string of attacks against Gibari, despite their wildly different DEF stats.
Okay, enough about elements. Let's talk about the numbers.
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The numbers on the cards are another important feature which will become extremely useful later in the game. As some people in the thread have mentioned, some cards have more than one number - we'll even be seeing cards later on that have up to four different ones, one on each corner. When selecting the card, you can use the c-stick to choose which number on the card you want to use.
When choosing your hand, there are two ways the numbers can be helpful. The first, demonstrated above, is if you can get all of the numbers to be the same. Doing this will give you a positive damage modifier which can make a substantial difference in attack power later on in the game. You can also just make it so that each number appears more than once (such as 23223 or 345453, but not 444441), although I believe that gives a smaller damage modifier than having a hand entirely composed of one number like this is.
(also note that one of the cards I used was a "Voice" card. These do no base damage but add an additional damage modifier at the end. In general the damage modifier isn't worth as much as the raw damage you'd get from using another attack card).
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The other way you can use numbers to help is by playing numbers in a row. Whether it's ascending or descending (567 or 765), you'll get a nice damage modifier to boos the attack.
The numbers modifier also applies to defense and even healing magnus. For example, guarding with a set of defense magnus and picking 5 for each will make you take less damage than normal, and using a bunch of healing magnus that go 345 will recover more HP than normal.
Finally, there are status ailments. Most of them are pretty standard - burn and poison make you take damage every turn, sleep and frozen disable you for a while. There are a couple interesting ones that I'll bring up as they become relevant, though.
I think that pretty well covers the major things to worry about. So I'll leave you with one last thought...
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Don't forget, you have something to vote on!
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Nice to meet you.
(ignore him)