Part 15: Side Note: Some Useful Information

Part 14.5: Side Note: Some Useful Information

Last time, we got some assorted tutorials that we never ended up checking. I figured I’d use this opportunity to go into those and also the various skill types.



This game has a ton of negative status effects, most of which are new or at the very least renamed. Let’s review them.



Burn, Freeze, and Shock are applied by Fire, Ice, and Electricity skills, respectively. This is the only way to inflict them. Burn is just the old RPG standby of Poison, making you take damage every turn. Freeze prevents you from acting, while Shock is the same, but with the added potential of passing the status onto others. This includes enemies who use melee attacks on you, and vice versa.



Dizzy reduces our accuracy, Forget prevents you from using skills just like Silence, and Sleep prevents you from acting until woken up, usually by getting attacked, but with the interesting twist of minor HP and SP restoration every turn we remain asleep.



Confuse causes us to waste items or throw away money. Fear causes afflicted party members to ignore commands regularly and occasionally even flee the battle entirely.



Now, Despair is wholly devastating. You can’t act, your SP drains, and you fucking die in three turns, which is an… interesting take on depression. Rage is Berserk. We’ll attack automatically with increased strength, but much worse defense.



Brainwash causes us to heal and buff enemies and attack allies. Hunger just lowers our attack power considerably.

Remember that many enemies, discounting bosses and minibosses, are just as vulnerable to status effects as the party is. Unfortunately, not that many of the party’s skills (outside of Ann’s) have the potential to inflict statuses. Ann’s also the only party member to get any skill with a high chance of inflicting any status. Considering I ended up not using Ann all that much in my previous run, it’s easy to forget how useful they can be.

Also worth noting is that depending on what status the enemy is hit with, it may make them unable to negotiate. Enemies that are asleep or frozen, for example, are obviously in no state to talk. Attempting to negotiate in this case will cause the relevant status to be cured.



Now, Technical attacks are like Critical strikes in that they deal more damage, but different in that they don’t knock down the enemy or give a 1 more.



Wind can’t inflict any status ailments and can only perform one kind of Technical attack, which might be why it costs slightly less SP than the other spells.



Once we get Nuclear skills, they’ll be a good way to follow up on these physical ailments.



Anything afflicted with a mental ailment will take extra damage from Psychokinesis.



And asleep or dizzied enemies will also take extra damage from all sources.






This is just more information on how to deal with Shadow negotiations.

I feel I should also cover the weird skill language while I’m here:

• Agi is Fire, Bufu is Ice, Garu is Wind, and Zio is Electricity. Kouha is Bless and Eiha is Curse. Also, we haven’t gotten to them yet but Frei is Nuclear and Psi is Psychokinesis.
  
• For buffs and debuffs, which we’ll go over the uses of later, Taru-, Raku-, and Suku- are Attack, Defense, and Hit Rate/Evasion, respectively. Likewise, the -kaja suffix means it increases that parameter, while -nda decreases it.
  
• Ma- at the front is multitarget.