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.
