Wow, I just got the mother of all glitches for some reason. None of the controller buttons do anything anymore on the overworld, I can't access any menus anymore, even the pause screen. Battles work fine but otherwise I'm completely shut out of every other aspect of the game.
So long, you piece of shit.
Well, I got this to fix. If it happens to you (and I can't believe it ever will since no one else anywhere is mentioning it) you have to somehow make it to someone who has a piece of heart you need and talk to him to force open what amounts to the square button spell screen. Then everything was fine.
But literally the only controls that worked were the sticks and the X button.
Ha! Sailed the wrong direction in the boat and despite being overleveled just got fucking schooled. Where's the island people were saying had some crazy high XP monster on?
Ha! Sailed the wrong direction in the boat and despite being overleveled just got fucking schooled. Where's the island people were saying had some crazy high XP monster on?
North of the Summerlands (where Ding Dong Dell, etc is). There's an island chain. You'll want the smallest and southernmost of them, Ugly Duckling Isle.
This game's version of the Monster Arena has solidified my absolute HATE for the AI/Tactics System in this game. Even with the quick defend/attack options, the AI is just too stupid (or too rigid in its options) to be of any use in a SERIOUS fight, which most of the Monster Arena fights are. You'll see the AI stick to ONE familiar and then fall back on doing damage themselves even when they have other familiars (though not as good as their lead off). And you can't slot the AI to heal itself (each party member has a guy with heals or can heal themselves), oh no because then they are burning through their mana keeping everyone healed or buffed with buffs we don't need. So essentially, if a fight goes longer than one familiars stamina, you're boned into micro-managing in a system that has shit for management controls.
Here in a nutshell is the problem: Game scenario, I've got Oliver on heals, Esther on attack, and Swaine on defense. Esther has the Griffin, and Lemus, Swaine has Megalith and Tin-Man, and Oliver has all casters. In a perfect world, I could set Oliver to "Keep us Healthy", and he'd just spam heals and the occasional magic attack; Esther goes all out with her familiars Psyche Up! abilities, while Swaine uses the two tanks to Yoo-Hoo and Defend. That's what happens in a perfect world. In Ni No Kuni, because you can only ever assign "overall. . ." game behavior and not specific abilities, Swaine will attempt to have the Megalith (who does 1 point of dmg) attack and not defend. Esther will more than likely never use Psyche Up!, instead spamming Sharp Fangs every chance she gets. Oliver will no doubt do a good job, though he will still have the capability to fuck up his mana (because Keep Us Healthy only prioritizes heals, and doesn't exclude use of other spells). This wouldn't be a problem if you could (in a sense) queue up abilities for your familiars instead of losing control completely when you aren't directly controlling them.
All this wouldn't be that bad, if the AI didn't cancel your moves (by casting Animation Spells) or swap back to weaker familiars (for the fight) once you've took control of them.
Immensely frustrating as it is really the one black eye on an otherwise great game - but the black eye is to a pretty vital part of the gameplay.
This game's version of the Monster Arena has solidified my absolute HATE for the AI/Tactics System in this game. Even with the quick defend/attack options, the AI is just too stupid (or too rigid in its options) to be of any use in a SERIOUS fight, which most of the Monster Arena fights are. You'll see the AI stick to ONE familiar and then fall back on doing damage themselves even when they have other familiars (though not as good as their lead off). And you can't slot the AI to heal itself (each party member has a guy with heals or can heal themselves), oh no because then they are burning through their mana keeping everyone healed or buffed with buffs we don't need. So essentially, if a fight goes longer than one familiars stamina, you're boned into micro-managing in a system that has shit for management controls.
Here in a nutshell is the problem: Game scenario, I've got Oliver on heals, Esther on attack, and Swaine on defense. Esther has the Griffin, and Lemus, Swaine has Megalith and Tin-Man, and Oliver has all casters. In a perfect world, I could set Oliver to "Keep us Healthy", and he'd just spam heals and the occasional magic attack; Esther goes all out with her familiars Psyche Up! abilities, while Swaine uses the two tanks to Yoo-Hoo and Defend. That's what happens in a perfect world. In Ni No Kuni, because you can only ever assign "overall. . ." game behavior and not specific abilities, Swaine will attempt to have the Megalith (who does 1 point of dmg) attack and not defend. Esther will more than likely never use Psyche Up!, instead spamming Sharp Fangs every chance she gets. Oliver will no doubt do a good job, though he will still have the capability to fuck up his mana (because Keep Us Healthy only prioritizes heals, and doesn't exclude use of other spells). This wouldn't be a problem if you could (in a sense) queue up abilities for your familiars instead of losing control completely when you aren't directly controlling them.
All this wouldn't be that bad, if the AI didn't cancel your moves (by casting Animation Spells) or swap back to weaker familiars (for the fight) once you've took control of them.
Immensely frustrating as it is really the one black eye on an otherwise great game - but the black eye is to a pretty vital part of the gameplay.
Ya I've ran into all these issues. The AI just plain useless. I've had it grab miracle things, use a buff miracle and then instantly recall the familiar with the buff. Its just nonsense sometimes with their choices.
Seriously, I just equip the other two members with healers and defensive familiars. Then do all the damage and stuff yourself with Oliver and the Mite. I'm about 35 hours played now, and I'm extremely over leveled powered up for most anything and this is really the best way to not get annoyed at the terrible AI. The only other option I've found, is tell them not to use tricks/mana and then micro-manage them a ton... which is just lame.
I could actually forgive a lot of the AI issues if it would simply not burn through mana for no fucking reason. Its such a pain to get it to simply auto attack. Its just pointless to get them to do any "role" other than waste mana healing me. Blocking and taunt abilities actually make "tanking" really easy in this game... but if you dont actively do it yourself, the AI will only do it wrong. Sometimes I swap to a teammates familiar and use "yoo hoo + defense"... but as soon as I swap back they go back to burning up mana and doing nothing, but if I stay as that one and tank, the AI wont do jack shit for damage.
I'm still enjoying the game a ton though. Doing lots of side quest stuff, have a few of the bottom row of merit rewards now. (really powerful stuff to get there too, very worth it) The combat though, just doesn't play out how they intended I think... I've found how to make it very easy, just no thanks to the AI or anything.
Wow. Namco Bandai pretty much screwed up getting a Wizard's Edition of this. The thing goes for $399 on Ebay. Something needs to be done about the scalpers.
It's too bad they didn't manage to make the combat at least local co-op like they did with some of the Tales games. That would have been simply amazing.
I really want to help you familiar researcher guy, but you want a "brown cog" and the only one of those is rare to spawn and never wants to join me.
It's not rare, it's the same cog you've been fighting for quite a while from previous areas. He's very easy to get.
Yeah which I mentioned in my posts after that. I ended up grabbing one from Teehiti. I assumed incorrectly that I needed to grab one from the surrounding area since that's where the npc mentioned they were.
Delphinidaes on
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Wow. Namco Bandai pretty much screwed up getting a Wizard's Edition of this. The thing goes for $399 on Ebay. Something needs to be done about the scalpers.
Namco looked into it. The scalpers bought it legitimately.
What Namco Bandai SHOULD do is a second print run of the Wizard's Edition, including a kit that has everything EXCEPT the game in it, so you can just upgrade to the Wizard's edition. That would put an end to the scalper's gameplan.
Wow. Namco Bandai pretty much screwed up getting a Wizard's Edition of this. The thing goes for $399 on Ebay. Something needs to be done about the scalpers.
Namco looked into it. The scalpers bought it legitimately.
What Namco Bandai SHOULD do is a second print run of the Wizard's Edition, including a kit that has everything EXCEPT the game in it, so you can just upgrade to the Wizard's edition. That would put an end to the scalper's gameplan.
Apparently what happened was that Namco and (mainly) Digital River dropped the ball and didn't put order limits on Wizard's Editions during the "NiNoStarter" campaign they ran pre-release - causing scalpers to grab large sets of them to re-sell. I.e. according to IGN, PlayCanada alone ate over 200 copies of the Wizard's Edition - first selling them for $300, and then jacking the price as their stock dwindled. (It's up to $500 now).
Which is bad enough in itself, but from the looks of it nobody coordinated that order count with the pre-orders on the Namco Bandai site when pre-orders opened up there, so since there was a big rush on Wizard's Editions during the starter, they ended up selling way more Wizard's Editions in total than they actually had.
On top of that, many people ended up being able to cut in line ahead of people who ordered much earlier, thanks to Digital River's next poorly-planned move.
From the linked IGN article:
When those people complained, Digital River sent them a "secret" link where they could re-order their Wizard Edition which got leaked on CheapAssGamer and NeoGaf. People who used this link were then given top priority and got their packages before people that pre-ordered on the 17th and even some back in July of 2012.
Yeah...All in all a cautionary tale on how not to run a business.
It cannot have escaped most of us that finding publicly available, comprehensive information regarding familiar statistics is (at least for now) difficult to come by. As a first-order effort to ameliorate this problem, I have assembled familiar statistics for all third-level familiars. I have made this information available for download in an Excel spreadsheet at the following address:
This game is plenty beatable without min/maxing, right? I think I'd prefer to be able to pick familiars based on their general alignment and overall appeal, rather than having the absolute best stats.
This game is plenty beatable without min/maxing, right? I think I'd prefer to be able to pick familiars based on their general alignment and overall appeal, rather than having the absolute best stats.
Of course it is. That's why it's called min-maxing and not "use this team or die" :P
Some post game stuff may require a bit more planning/tweaking, but you're fine just using what you want until then.
Oh god, in the time between learning how to tame and getting to my next story area I have SO MANY FAMILIARS. Without even trying, really, just had to make a run back to Ding Dong Dell for something and tamed along the way.
Must focus... must not try to level them all... must focus...
I finally got broken of my habit of taming every goddamn monster available once I got the ship. Because seriously, while I guess I *could* level like mad and tame everything in the ocean right fucking now...that seems impractical.
I finally got broken of my habit of taming every goddamn monster available once I got the ship. Because seriously, while I guess I *could* level like mad and tame everything in the ocean right fucking now...that seems impractical.
i tame one of everything that pops a heart for me, because why not. just stocking up the familiar retreat you know.
I'm trying to get into this game; I really am.... but... it's like playing a game that was geared towards kids (should have been obvious with the "E" for everyone label, I guess).
Animation is great, voice acting is the standard similar to most Miyazaki works. Gameplay is alright, though simple. It's just; I don't know. Hard for me to get into.
I'm trying to get into this game; I really am.... but... it's like playing a game that was geared towards kids (should have been obvious with the "E" for everyone label, I guess).
Animation is great, voice acting is the standard similar to most Miyazaki works. Gameplay is alright, though simple. It's just; I don't know. Hard for me to get into.
Play a little further into the game to the battles that are not geared for kids.
I'm trying to get into this game; I really am.... but... it's like playing a game that was geared towards kids (should have been obvious with the "E" for everyone label, I guess).
Animation is great, voice acting is the standard similar to most Miyazaki works. Gameplay is alright, though simple. It's just; I don't know. Hard for me to get into.
I'm actually finding the pleasant light-heartedness of the game to be very refreshing when most games these days are full of so much drama and angst. It also taps into that rare element of whimsical fancy that is all but absent in today's AAA games.
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b) Switched back to English VA because there were aspects of the Japanese VA that I didn't really like either. Each VA has its pros and cons. Might as well stick to English - it's grown on me at this point.
c) HATE the Great Sage's personality in the temple. I quit playing FFIX about when you get up to the Oglop King. I loathe goofy characters like this. I mean, even in a game like this, there's still some semblance of realism which I feel the Great Sage breaks. Ugh.
d) Over 9 hours to get the ability to tame familiars. Really?
e) Absolutely PISSED that I was forced to metamorphose my Mite at the temple. What the fuck?
f) WHY DO YOU MOVE SO DAMN SLOW IN STORES, OLIVER? Though I found a trick for this...
I love the naivete and the tone. It's actually refreshing, and it meshes really well with the whole "let's go on an adventure" theme. This is the feeling Miyamoto describes when talking about creating Zelda.
The superficial lightheartedness is not to be confused with childshness. There are some pretty dark themes running below it, and they're treated with due gravity.
One thing I love is how POLITE Oliver is all the time. It's heartwarming. The little heartbreak quests are amazing too, I feel really good playing this.
And I didn't mind how long it took until I got to tame familiars... It feels a natural progression when taken inside the Story's context. I also have mastered each previous skill quite decently when I got to that point. The pacing is really consistent between plot and gameplay.
I love the naivete and the tone. It's actually refreshing, and it meshes really well with the whole "let's go on an adventure" theme. This is the feeling Miyamoto describes when talking about creating Zelda.
The superficial lightheartedness is not to be confused with childshness. There are some pretty dark themes running below it, and they're treated with due gravity.
One thing I love is how POLITE Oliver is all the time. It's heartwarming. The little heartbreak quests are amazing too, I feel really good playing this.
And I didn't mind how long it took until I got to tame familiars... It feels a natural progression when taken inside the Story's context. I also have mastered each previous skill quite decently when I got to that point. The pacing is really consistent between plot and gameplay.
Finally, the Trial of Friendship was really cool.
I really like the tone and I don't have much issue with the pacing.
But the
Great Sage
kind of pissed me off. Hard to explain.
It's not a big deal. It was a blip and I'm past that section, but I really felt like it was a complete dip in quality and a bizarre tonal shift.
Posts
It's not rare, it's the same cog you've been fighting for quite a while from previous areas. He's very easy to get.
Well, I got this to fix. If it happens to you (and I can't believe it ever will since no one else anywhere is mentioning it) you have to somehow make it to someone who has a piece of heart you need and talk to him to force open what amounts to the square button spell screen. Then everything was fine.
But literally the only controls that worked were the sticks and the X button.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
After a whole day of downloading and installing, I started playing this today.
It's a lot better than I expected!!! The localization and English VA are amazing, top notch, the art is to die for... AND THERE IS A CAT KING
Ding Dong Dell is the coolest place ever.
Here in a nutshell is the problem: Game scenario, I've got Oliver on heals, Esther on attack, and Swaine on defense. Esther has the Griffin, and Lemus, Swaine has Megalith and Tin-Man, and Oliver has all casters. In a perfect world, I could set Oliver to "Keep us Healthy", and he'd just spam heals and the occasional magic attack; Esther goes all out with her familiars Psyche Up! abilities, while Swaine uses the two tanks to Yoo-Hoo and Defend. That's what happens in a perfect world. In Ni No Kuni, because you can only ever assign "overall. . ." game behavior and not specific abilities, Swaine will attempt to have the Megalith (who does 1 point of dmg) attack and not defend. Esther will more than likely never use Psyche Up!, instead spamming Sharp Fangs every chance she gets. Oliver will no doubt do a good job, though he will still have the capability to fuck up his mana (because Keep Us Healthy only prioritizes heals, and doesn't exclude use of other spells). This wouldn't be a problem if you could (in a sense) queue up abilities for your familiars instead of losing control completely when you aren't directly controlling them.
All this wouldn't be that bad, if the AI didn't cancel your moves (by casting Animation Spells) or swap back to weaker familiars (for the fight) once you've took control of them.
Immensely frustrating as it is really the one black eye on an otherwise great game - but the black eye is to a pretty vital part of the gameplay.
Ya I've ran into all these issues. The AI just plain useless. I've had it grab miracle things, use a buff miracle and then instantly recall the familiar with the buff. Its just nonsense sometimes with their choices.
Seriously, I just equip the other two members with healers and defensive familiars. Then do all the damage and stuff yourself with Oliver and the Mite. I'm about 35 hours played now, and I'm extremely over leveled powered up for most anything and this is really the best way to not get annoyed at the terrible AI. The only other option I've found, is tell them not to use tricks/mana and then micro-manage them a ton... which is just lame.
I could actually forgive a lot of the AI issues if it would simply not burn through mana for no fucking reason. Its such a pain to get it to simply auto attack. Its just pointless to get them to do any "role" other than waste mana healing me. Blocking and taunt abilities actually make "tanking" really easy in this game... but if you dont actively do it yourself, the AI will only do it wrong. Sometimes I swap to a teammates familiar and use "yoo hoo + defense"... but as soon as I swap back they go back to burning up mana and doing nothing, but if I stay as that one and tank, the AI wont do jack shit for damage.
I'm still enjoying the game a ton though. Doing lots of side quest stuff, have a few of the bottom row of merit rewards now. (really powerful stuff to get there too, very worth it) The combat though, just doesn't play out how they intended I think... I've found how to make it very easy, just no thanks to the AI or anything.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
id guess approximately 0%.
Yeah which I mentioned in my posts after that. I ended up grabbing one from Teehiti. I assumed incorrectly that I needed to grab one from the surrounding area since that's where the npc mentioned they were.
Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
The game has been out for over a year in Japan, right? Anyone know of what they are saying about the AI on Japanese message boards?
4 months or so, and no idea.
Edit: Oh right, it's 2013 now. Year and 4 months >.>
Game came out in 2011 in J-Town.
Namco looked into it. The scalpers bought it legitimately.
What Namco Bandai SHOULD do is a second print run of the Wizard's Edition, including a kit that has everything EXCEPT the game in it, so you can just upgrade to the Wizard's edition. That would put an end to the scalper's gameplan.
Apparently what happened was that Namco and (mainly) Digital River dropped the ball and didn't put order limits on Wizard's Editions during the "NiNoStarter" campaign they ran pre-release - causing scalpers to grab large sets of them to re-sell. I.e. according to IGN, PlayCanada alone ate over 200 copies of the Wizard's Edition - first selling them for $300, and then jacking the price as their stock dwindled. (It's up to $500 now).
Which is bad enough in itself, but from the looks of it nobody coordinated that order count with the pre-orders on the Namco Bandai site when pre-orders opened up there, so since there was a big rush on Wizard's Editions during the starter, they ended up selling way more Wizard's Editions in total than they actually had.
On top of that, many people ended up being able to cut in line ahead of people who ordered much earlier, thanks to Digital River's next poorly-planned move.
From the linked IGN article:
Yeah...All in all a cautionary tale on how not to run a business.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Some post game stuff may require a bit more planning/tweaking, but you're fine just using what you want until then.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
http://www.pikminwiki.com/Jellyfloat
Must focus... must not try to level them all... must focus...
I think they are higher forms of the rhino guys.
Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
i tame one of everything that pops a heart for me, because why not. just stocking up the familiar retreat you know.
Animation is great, voice acting is the standard similar to most Miyazaki works. Gameplay is alright, though simple. It's just; I don't know. Hard for me to get into.
XBL: GamingFreak5514
PSN: GamingFreak1234
Play a little further into the game to the battles that are not geared for kids.
I'm actually finding the pleasant light-heartedness of the game to be very refreshing when most games these days are full of so much drama and angst. It also taps into that rare element of whimsical fancy that is all but absent in today's AAA games.
Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
It's kind of beautiful.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
whoa, where did you find that?
Some thoughts. Spoilers through Al Mamoon:
b) Switched back to English VA because there were aspects of the Japanese VA that I didn't really like either. Each VA has its pros and cons. Might as well stick to English - it's grown on me at this point.
c) HATE the Great Sage's personality in the temple. I quit playing FFIX about when you get up to the Oglop King. I loathe goofy characters like this. I mean, even in a game like this, there's still some semblance of realism which I feel the Great Sage breaks. Ugh.
d) Over 9 hours to get the ability to tame familiars. Really?
e) Absolutely PISSED that I was forced to metamorphose my Mite at the temple. What the fuck?
f) WHY DO YOU MOVE SO DAMN SLOW IN STORES, OLIVER? Though I found a trick for this...
The superficial lightheartedness is not to be confused with childshness. There are some pretty dark themes running below it, and they're treated with due gravity.
One thing I love is how POLITE Oliver is all the time. It's heartwarming. The little heartbreak quests are amazing too, I feel really good playing this.
And I didn't mind how long it took until I got to tame familiars... It feels a natural progression when taken inside the Story's context. I also have mastered each previous skill quite decently when I got to that point. The pacing is really consistent between plot and gameplay.
Finally, the Trial of Friendship was really cool.
I really like the tone and I don't have much issue with the pacing.
But the
kind of pissed me off. Hard to explain.
It's not a big deal. It was a blip and I'm past that section, but I really felt like it was a complete dip in quality and a bizarre tonal shift.