ARLYEON'S PROFILE

Just wanted to say, this game was amaaaazing <3

>> I basically just made an account to comment on this game, so! Here goes. Overall, I found it to be a pretty enjoyable experience. It's cheesy, but not in a bad way. The homage to just about every generic high fantasy plot, in tandem with all the anime tropes were pretty well done.

Game wise, it had a pretty good difficulty curve- one which is -ensured- by the fact that there is a limited amount of experience and gold you can accrue in the game, since monsters don't respawn, and there isn't exactly optional areas. I will confess, I was mildly dissapointed by this. Doubly so when I hit level 16 from killing the last boss, and found out I could have gained a new attack, if there was only more things to kill and eat. Er. Loot. Murder, Maim and Loot. Yeah. I have a certain fondness for bullying monsters- getting loot from an area, and then coming back to bully the monsters again like a jerk. The lack of respawns and inability to really revist areas sort of prevented me from doing that (And the lack of inns and such likely would have proved fatal in tandem with that).

One major offbalancing factor I found was the stores in watra...which I essentially used to increase everyones defense by 90 >>... in tandem with buying all their final gear. I also jacked Haddys MP, agility and int up the wazoo. Fergus got similar treatment in regards to his attack and agility, and some extra defense. >> I didn't particularily bother with his MP, since his power strike (Read: All of his skills :/) -quickly- becomes useless (It does less damage than his normal attack by end game. Less than half, in fact. It pretty much just seems to do a set 50-60 damage...with upwards of 70 if you defense down someone. And that was with the 460 attack power of the great sword, and Steroid..er Attack + abuse. ..which is embarassing compared to a consistant 280-380 damage...with high points of 890-1100~ ish damage from crits)

On one hand, I can see the importance of selling the stat boosters, as they give the player a certain degree of being able to customize their characters (And it compensates for Ferghus terrible special attack tree >>). On the other hand, ...it is just a touch broken, and if I had decided to put all the effort I had divided between 3 characters -solely- into Ferghus..I would have likely -decimated- the last boss.

The reason I say this, is because Physical damage scales -very- nicely, a fact I noticed when Fergus was outdamaging Maddys tier 3 spells by a fair amount (And he's able to consistantly toss out 'Attack' command spam). It didn't exactly help that Maddys spells were somewhat scattered- and had a number of...gaps in them - so I couldn't be sure if her abysmal damage was because I was supposed to be taking advantage of an elemental weakness she just never gets to exploit. (I never found anything past bolt 1 :<).

Basically, it summed up as >> Ferghus outstrips Maddy as a nuker midpoint during the game, and never quite recovers from it. :s.

Really, in the end, I would have been a bit happier to see her skills balanced out a touch- or for her to have some sort of...Magic damage buff or some such, so that she didn't become an afterthought combatwise by the end of the game.

>> I don't have any realm qualms with midard, however. It would have been nice to be able to get him a weapon, so he could gain some degree of extra damage output- for all those turns I didn't need to heal, but. He functioned exceptionally well as a healer, so I had no qualms there.

So- yeah. I apologize for the rambly nature of this. I found the games story pretty fun, I enjoyed the setting- I just found the balance a bit questionable here and there. (One of the songs ..in the cave before Ordin? ...The tourney city.. Was mildly grating due to a high pitched tone that sort of trails on for a bit, but otherwise- I found the soundtrack sort of nostalgic, because I recognized alot of the themes).

It also occured to me that It's quite possible to get stuck at later areas, if you squandered your heals and and such- because areas stop giving you free hp/mp respawn points. (The castle is a notable and appreciated exception to this- though I only really needed to use it after I killed everything in the castle..and I didn't really need to use it that much due to super Ferghus.)

So yeah. Er. That's really about all I can say, on that.

I found it a very fun, though occasionally flawed romp through popular anime and fantasy tropes. ...Cumulating in a curb stomp battle.

P.S. I really find it dissapointing that If you have to put up with Haddy berserking and generally being flipping useless in the last fight- you then -lose- her as a party member in the next game. Yes, it's so you can have 'help from above' in the next game- but it still sort of bites. Having her berserk cast, would have been somewhat..interesting. Alternatively, cranking her magic stats for that fight -would- have made sense, and would have made her more useful (Even if/especially if you balance the stat boosters).

Overall, it would be sort of nice that if you have to tolerate the last fight basically being ferghus doling out any real damage (Doubly so if you had the gall to kill the old man :<... I had him live, of course), that you garner some way to get her back at least end game.

>> It basically boiled down to me doing both endings, so I can see how the mage town place is under her leadership...and than simply switch to the ending where she gets to stick around with me- since I'd rather have her running commentary throughout the game >>. *ahem* Yeah. I'm actually done now. Honest. Seriously.