065227N'S PROFILE

Finished game. Random thoughts.

Well, not a big fan of a linear series of battles up to the end but I guess contest limitations and all that.

This game somehow manages to make money management/economy interesting, so kudos for that I guess. You can buy consumables that are never rendered obsolete and never considered "cheap" at any point of the game. I think it's the best part of the game.

Resource management (basically how MP/TP/HP carries over through battles) seems wonky to me. Since you can 100% run from any battle, as a player I basically

1) Ran from everything and picked up all the chests first.
2) Go back to the entrance and just grind there, leaving the dungeon if you need a full heal.
3) Run all the way to the boss with full resources.

During the battles, I usually find myself completely stocked full of either MP or TP, depending on the character. Usually MP except for Camelia (even then, once you get a couple of good gear...). I think I spent the whole game wishing Faith had some way to dump MP to use her passive.

It's annoying trying to keep track of exactly what buffs/debuffs are on yourself and the enemy with the standard UI... ESPECIALLY the enemy since you can't see any of its status. Especially annoying on the last boss.

Some game mechanics, I don't think was made clear, especially the fact that characters get up 3 turns after being dead.

Individual character thoughts(in battle):
Jirou: Coursing Tides seem to become completely ineffectual halfway through the game even if you try to gear for it. Guardian doesn't seem to work on bosses... or at least not on the one boss I tried it on. Buff doesn't seem to be worth it past early game at least as far as I can tell, I didn't actually math it out. Which kind of makes him have lots of MP and nothing to do with it (I mean, Faith doesn't want MP, Katsu is super cost efficient... Camelia is the only one left I guess. MAYBE Etsuo...)

Jack of all trades with some niche (like only guy with revival), passive is a nice tank breaker for randoms. Flexibility drops a bit because you only get 1 turn per character, so you can't use him to fulfill every role. He ended up just being my single target heal monkey in boss fights as the game goes on. I would prefer having the heal cost MP instead of TP (although I'm saying that personally, and not under the lens of game balance or whatever) but it is probably the most cost-effective for single target heals.

Camelia - Indignation seems bugged. Every time I use it when Camelia is about to die, it always just does 0 damage for me. Tides of Pain seems to stop being viable halfway through the game. She has a spell that steals TP but you use TP to refuel MP which... generally isn't a problem for me.

Because of that, she's basically a really boring character. You use the magic buff and you use Danger Zone a lot... and that's about it. Maybe the buffs once in a while but I rather she has expensive powerful buffs rather than cheap ones. She's not a BAD character, but definitely the magic equivalent of a fighter.

Etsuo - Another jack of all trades. I think he's at his element in fights with around 2-3 people to keep Stormcloud semi-reliable and where there isn't any enemy tanks so you can use Multistrike effectively (it's not great against bosses IMO). Big Smile is nice for TP heavy parties. I think probably my favourite battle character in the game because he just has so many options.

I usually use him for First Response for bosses, whose combination of decent healing and debuff removal is nice.

Also I almost never try to spread his stats. Seems to me it's more effecient to just think about what your team needs in this area and focus on gearing that up.

Ren - party wide AOE heal, party wide DEF/MDEF buffs. Good for bosses.

Faith - Okkk... Whisperwind is basically one of the best random battle abilities and seems to be affected by MDef a lot less than normal? The damage is really consistent and while the damage is not impressive on single targets, as long as there's about 3 enemy in battle, the total damage is pretty high.

That being said, I don't know about the rest of her skills. I don't think I have ever seen Initiator deal significantly higher damage in randoms and it's only single target. Maybe on bosses I guess but it's not really impressive considering what Katsu or Camelia can do. Then I guess there's exhaustion, which once again, is outdamaged by Whisperwind in randoms, and in boss battle it has the whole "I don't know whether the boss is going to die yet" problem.

There's the TP dump skill which seems nice for bosses but Faith isn't exactly great at generating TP.

Just about no other utility abilities, so probably the only character I will say I really dislike the skill design.

Katsu - Great for bosses. He has one skill that seem to be made purely for randoms but I dunno.

Oushi - Should have randomed with this guy just to try him out. OH WELL SKIP

Akane - Is Chie. Ok not really, her skillset is much more interesting than Chie. Seems like a physical version of Katsu where she's really great at boss battles because of all the debuffs and high damage attacks she tosses around, but has some niches in randoms. I'm fine with her.

TLDR version: I think Faith and Camelia needs some looking at, better interface for keeping track of states would be nice and personally I prefer more non-linearity but that's a game design decision I guess.

Can someone tell me what the criterias for getting Elena is?

I've gotten her twice when I played the game 2 years ago but I can't seem to get her again now.

I gotten the note that the Prophet threw her in the General Store, which I assume is the building with a rope (I think?) that's a portal and also another locked door that is a portal. None of them have Elena in it (although one of them does look a lot like where I remembered rescuing her the last two times I played)

I hope I didn't accidentally miss her or anything.