Part 58: Game Mechanics Chat!

Game Mechanics Chat!

Let's get this out of the way early.



The battle screen. The big bar across the top is the SP meter, a sort of shared special gauge between all the characters. Bottom left is the action menu, which has a rather nifty look to it. In no particular order, the commands around the outside are

Attack: A basic attack with the equipped weapon, just like you'd expect. Every character and enemy has both a long and short range attack animation, which changes up how they move around the battlefield. Character positioning is vital for some skills and magics.

Run: Runs away from the battle. Will not be used ever because it hurts your Swashbuckler rating. Too many fled battles will earn you the title of Vyse the Cowardly, the lowest one in the game.

Magic: The magic system is a bit odd. All spells cost 1MP to cast and only the SP cost varies, so it's generally best to use the most powerful spell you have the SP for at the time...provided you leave enough SP for the other characters as well. There are 6 schools of magic, one for each of the moons, each moon having its own elemental theme. For now all we have is fire-themed Red magic and recovery themed Green magic.

Super Move: The unique skills of each character. At the start all you have is Vyse's Cutlass Fury, a powerful attack on a single enemy at the cost of 7SP. Super Moves have no cost outside of SP, so you're free to abuse them in any random battle rather than plinking away at everything with regular attacks until the boss. Super moves are not learned from leveling up, but by using special items called Moonberries.

Guard: Halves all damage taken by the character for the next turn. Absolutely vital for some bosses.

Focus: Regenerates SP equal to the Spirit stat of the character. You will be seeing this a lot. The basic strategy for most boss fights is to have characters like Aika Focus to fuel the attacks of the beatsticks, as in the Antonio fight.

Item: Breaks the game. Items mostly duplicate the effect of a spell, but at zero SP cost. Sacri Crystals, for example, duplicate the effect of the green magic Sacri to heal 500hp. There's another reason they break the game but I'll get to that when it comes up in the LP.





The stats screens! Power affects how hard the character hits, Vigor affects both physical and magical defence, Will is the magic casting stat and Quick affects what order the characters and enemies move in, Pokemon style. Agile is a bit of an odd one, it doesn't increase as the character levels up like the other stats. It's essentially the character's dodge %, so Aika will dodge 22% of all incomnig attacks, while Vyse dodges a measly 11%. Agile also affects the chance of landing a critical hit.

Finally, the Spirit and MaxSP stats. Spirit is how much SP the character regenerates while using Focus, while MaxSP is the amount the they increase the maximum value of the SP gauge by. You also regain SP equal to the total Spirit of all your characters at the end of each combat round.

Obviously, Vyse is a physical beatstick with fair durability, while Aika is more a magical type. The equips of the characters also affect this – not only is Vyse's base power higher than Aika's, but his cutlasses are more powerful than her boomerangs. Boomerangs tend to have higher Hit%, though.



Finally, the key items. These are the Moon Stones we have, Red and Green. They're used to change the element/colour of a character's weapon. That is, if you have the moon stone of the right colour you can change to that colour weapon at any time you like, in or out of battle. Characters will earn magic exp and thus learn magic of the colour weapon they have equipped, and also do damage of that element with attacks. Very important for elemental weak/resistant enemies.

With that in mind, go back and check the first update again. Vyse's cutlasses are blue in the intro cutscene, despite him not having the Blue Moon Stone. I'm guessing this was because he was originally intended to start with that instead of red, but it was changed late in development. Makes sense, because Dyne's gun is also blue. Alfonso's rapier is yellow – the colour of Valua's moon. That's also why Antonio uses thunder attacks, because the yellow moon is electric themed.

Ok, boring mechanics chat over!