Quite a bit has changed since I last posted about this game. I was 7 hours in then, now I’m 14 hours along. My party was around level 18, now they’re between levels 30 and 34. I’ve found out more about the story, why Sabi Chantier machines keep attacking people, why it’s so important to rescue townspeople and what my final solution is to all this fighting.

My party has changed as well. I decided that I needed a healer because healing items were costing me a fortune, so I switched Mallarme out for Ceres (very, very reluctantly). Ceres appears to be one of those characters who are useless until they learn their best attacks at very high levels. She only just learned her first All attack, and while it’ll probably be powerful once I’ve maxed it out, I’m not impressed at all right now.

In any case, training up low-level characters is hard in this game. It’s been several hours and several levels later, and Cain and Ceres haven’t quite caught up to Wolf and Rushdie yet. Cain is close, Ceres is about 4 levels behind. So you have to pick a party quickly and stick with it, none of this trying to keep everyone evenly-leveled stuff. Unless you really, really, really like grinding.

It’s mainly your equipment and skills that make the greatest difference to your death or survival in battle, but you can’t get skills without leveling up, so they’re linked. Skills work like this: every time you level up, you get a point to assign to a certain skill. Leveling up certain skills allows you to unlock other ones, and so it goes. It’s not a new system, but Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari is more forgiving than most similar systems, in that it allows you to easily reset and reassign your points any time you like. In exchange for a hefty amount of money, but what’s money when your characters are getting killed?

Now that by trial and error I have chanced upon attack and support skill configurations that work great for me, battles are relatively easier now. I recommended getting Astral Edge in the last post, but now I realize Defense Line (gotten by leveling up Wolf’s Sword Taunt a few times) is better for all but emergency cases, so get that instead.

For random battles, I leveled up Rushdie’s  Sleep Attack (暗示：碧) and got the updated version (暗示：翠) which hits all enemies. I have it maxed right now. Words can’t express just how life-saving it is to put even one enemy in a gang to sleep. Since Rushdie almost always goes first (with a little help from accessories), he can strike with it right at the beginning of the battle, and he’ll usually get at least half of the enemies, usually more.  Just bring it, bad guys! He had an equivalent that paralyses enemies (暗示：緋), but even grunts tend to be resistant to paralysis so I cancelled that and redistributed the points.

That’s not the only reason why Rushdie is my favorite party member, though. Apart from his speed and his sleep attack, he also has an ice attack, Tsumi no Rakuin II (罪の烙印II) that hits every enemy on the field. The attack description said it only hits one, so I ignored the move for a long time, then I tried it on a whim and WHOA! My attack pattern now goes: first turn, put most of them to sleep, second turn, put them on ice. For weak enemies, this is a one-hit kill. Enemies that survive will almost certainly be picked off by my other party members in rapid succession.

When it comes to boss battles, though, Cain does the most damage, hands down. His fire attack (揺らめく紅刃) hits even bosses for a minimum of 300 when maxed out, and his HP and VIT are only second to Wolf’s. In fact, he still has all his SP intact because he doesn’t go down easy. At first his low MP was a liability, but it’s come up quite a bit now. I also have a lot of MP refilling items I haven’t had a chance to use, and in a pinch I can always use his SP move to refill everyone’s MP. He’s pretty awesome.

It’s rare to find RPGs where physical and magical attacks are perfectly balanced and do equal damage. Usually one will dominate throughout, or be more powerful at the beginning and get weaker as the game progresses. In this game “pure” physicals were better at first, but now magic and magic-based physicals are overwhelmingly more powerful. When you level up or when you rest your MP is automatically refilled, so you don’t have to hold back on the heavy stuff either.

Okay, I’m definitely getting cocky now. I’m almost done with the West Gate, then there’s the Main Gate to go through, which should be the final dungeon unless they pull a surprise on me. Maybe the enemies there will kick my attitude back into shape. Or maybe I’ll ride roughshod over them in my usual manner. No clue who the final boss or the mastermind behind the war is so far, but the final confrontation should be fun either way.

Also known as Final Promise Story, imageepoch’s first release under their “jprg” brand. I won’t say it’s one of the reasons why I bought a PSP, but it certainly helped. I try not to follow game development too closely, because then when it comes out you’re not surprised or impressed at all, but I liked the little I saw of this, so I started playing it a few days ago.

I haven’t gotten too far yet, just finished killing the boss in the screenshot way down below. He doesn’t have a name but BOY does he pack a punch. I grinded Wolf from level 14 to 18 and switched out Gyro for Mallarme before I could take him down without losing any SP. That screenshot down there is probably from very early in the development process, firstly because that annoying Lissete is missing, and also because Ceres hasn’t joined your party at that point. By the way, it’s blatantly obvious who’s going to join and who’s not, because they all have rooms in your headquarters from the start. Thanks for spoiling, imageepoch.

About the game itself, Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari is a dungeon crawler. A pretty, glorified dungeon crawler, but a dungeon crawler nevertheless. It’s about Yggdra, a country on the verge of ruin and the last survivors currently making their last stand in one part of the stupidly vast castle. The main character Wolf Stingray (yes, that’s really his name) and his team are charged with rescuing the last 2,000 civilians and bringing them to safety. So the game consists of taking a mission – go save these guys – running down looooong corridors for ages and ages, finding the NPC(s) you need to save and fighting off the enemies attacking them. Then you go back and repeat the process again.

Every time you finish a mission, time passes. Every couple of missions Lissete (your controller/navigator/manager) will come up with a mission that progresses the story, you’ll do it, and then it’s back to grunt missions again. It’s very repetitive, but that’s a dungeon crawler for you. I’m astonished by the relative lack of urgency in this game, though. Your country is mostly destroyed and 90% of the citizens have been wiped out, but still everyone in the Grand Hall is just chilling. There are soldiers all over the place guarding empty rooms or just chatting in the hallway. I was seriously expecting a scene out of Gone with the Wind or something – injured soldiers, harried nurses, wailing relatives, etc etc, but even the people you save are just like, “Hey, y’all, wassup?” Well, maybe not so casual but not quite panicky either.

Anyway, it’s a dungeon crawler, which means the battle system is the most important thing. You take four characters into battle, and you get a first-person perspective like old-school Dragon Quest. It looks like this:

I only chose this development screenshot so I could show you the boss that kicked my ass so hard. In the finalized battle system, there’s this annoying girl perched in the top right corner who just repeats the same words over and over and over again: “The enemy had changed its target! The enemy has changed its target! The enemy has changed its target!” ad nauseam. There she is, right there:

Btw, “The enemy has changed its target” indicates that the enemy is going to attack whoever attacked it or healed last. They especially like to gang up on anyone who uses healing magic or items, which makes healers like Sasha pretty hard to use until Wolf is strong enough to draw all their attention. Ideally you want enemies to attack Wolf at all times because he has the highest HP and Defence. He even has two skills, Sword Taunt and Astral Edge, that gets the enemy to focus on him. If you play this, try to get Astral Edge as soon as possible. It consumes SP, but it’s so useful I use it regardless. I’ll stop when Wolf’s SP goes down to 20.

The overriding principle in the battles is this: You have to keep your allies from being KO’ed if at all possible. Imageepoch heavily promoted Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari‘s “Death is Permanent” system, but that’s not quite the case. See the SP stat under HP and MP? When your allies get hit after they’re KO’ed, it starts to go down. When it reaches 0, they release one final, mighty attack and then they kick the bucket for good. Incidentally this refills the SP of all your other members, so I’m thinking of sacrificing Sasha whenever it becomes necessary. I hate her. I hate Ceres more, but I’m positive I’d be Game Over’ed if I knocked her off, so too bad.

I am not a fan of the female characters in this game. Lissete would be okay if she didn’t keep harassing me in battle. My kingdom for a “Shut Lissete up” option. Ceres’s high-pitched squeal grates on my ears and her “naive princess trying to be strong” gimmick was old eleven years ago in FF9. I’ve taken to muting the PSP whenever she opens her mouth. And WTF is wrong with her, switching from a sensible uniform to a horrid frilly white dress with blue ribbons? Dress your age! I just got Mallarme a while ago, and her poor dress sense and fake flirting act (if she really liked me, she’d let me sleep in her bed!) rub me the wrong way, but if she continues to kick ass in battle like she’s doing then all will be forgiven.

That’s what happened with me and Cain, anyway. Mouth off all you like, just get the job done when it counts. Presently my favorite character is Rushdie because he’s fast and accurate on the battlefield and calm, collected and supportive off it. As a result I’m really worried he’s going to betray me at some point. It’s always the nicest guys who turn traitor, after all. And doesn’t his portrait make him look like he’s constantly smirking? Very suspicious. I’ll never forgive him if he turns Judas though.

Enough gaming for one day, on to other things.