Part 105: Skills

Now for the final FMW2 segment: skills. Like always, let's go over FMW1 first.



FMW1's main problem with its skills is that there honestly isn't much room for customization. Unless you're purposefully limiting how many characters you're using, you'll never have enough Graze to really play around with what skills you get.



As such, you're pretty much stuck with picking up one or two key skills,



then stacking Unfocused/Focused Movement till the end of the game. Things like countering or lowering Graze damage or whatever just aren't as good as boosting damage and movement/range simultaneously.



FMW2's solution is multifold. First and foremost, there is a shit ton more Graze (or to be more exact PP; they went back to Pilot Points for some reason) in this game. Both because there are more enemies,



and because all characters join with a good chunk of Graze on them now. Most even come with a few skills on them!



And then we get to the FMW1 characters. Any and all skills they might have learned in FMW1 have been lost (you'll see why later), but in exchange they start off with some great skills (Marisa here starts with Instinct Dodge Lvl 6 and P-Hit, Keine has Belief and Berserk Lvl 4, Rumia has Support Defend, etc). More importantly, all of their Graze is refunded.



On a related tangent, an amusing glitch in the first release of FMW2 had Reimu start with like 760 Graze.



FMW2 also features a New Game+ system that carries over Graze earned! This can lead to some insane Graze counts on characters you use a lot, and even people you don't use at all will stock up Graze just because the amount they started with is carried over too.



There's one more little touch. See how that skill on the right is blue? That's because I've already bought it.



If I were to replace it with something else...



I'd be able to buy it again for free. This opens up some room for experimentation, though sadly what skills you've bought do not carry over to New Game +.

Now let's get down to the meat of this FMW2 segment: the actual skills. All of the skills from FMW1 were carried over, but four were changed. In order:


The biggest difference is the balancing of Unfocused/Focused Movement, and the change is probably why Sanbondo didn't just carry over your FMW1 skills entirely. Anyways, now for the new FMW2 skills!


With the exception of Morale (which has its uses), these are all incredible. Combo Attack is overpowered as hell and is practically mandatory on anyone you buy Support Attack for. Ignore Distance makes sniping enemies to death actually feasible, and lets you use the full extent of Master Spark + Shanghai Doll's power from anywhere you want. MP Save is exactly as broken as it sounds. And Ammo Save, while not quite as handy as MP Save, is still pretty damn ridiculous, especially on Reimu (who can very much solo most of the game on Normal if you get it on her).

And then there's the stat up skills. Normally SRW games let you just pump PP into a pilot's stats directly, but FMW2 only lets you do it through a very expensive skill. I think this is a good idea actually, since it means you need to make a choice between pumping your characters stats to hilariously high levels (for perspective, +5 in a stat is the equivalent of 3-5 level ups) or getting all of the other skills. A Reimu with a bunch of levels in Range Up can easily outdamage Marisa, but is it worth it if it means losing Shotgunning? It's up to you to choose. _{As for SP Up, it's flat out mandatory on all Support Units. It's just as good as it sounds.}

tl;dr Sanbondo rebalanced skills by giving you legroom to actually buy things, nerfing the old God skills, and introducing a ton of expensive but awesome skills.

That's pretty much it for the FMW2 segments. I guess I could about how each character has been improved in FMW2, but that seems like a waste of time when I'm playing FMW1.