I know this thread has largely moved on to DQXI and DQ1-3, but I have a quick question about Builders 2. I put the game aside for a bit to focus on the new-old Zelda. When I left off, I had just gotten to the third story island.
I'm referring to the endless war island, to be more specific.
I was just curious about how much longer is the rest of the game? Are we talking another 10-20 hours? Or is it almost over?
I know this thread has largely moved on to DQXI and DQ1-3, but I have a quick question about Builders 2. I put the game aside for a bit to focus on the new-old Zelda. When I left off, I had just gotten to the third story island.
I'm referring to the endless war island, to be more specific.
I was just curious about how much longer is the rest of the game? Are we talking another 10-20 hours? Or is it almost over?
You've got one more story zone that isn't as long as the others. After that you are done with the story, it's all challenges and personal projects from then on.
Nice. I've really enjoyed the game so far, but I was kinda looking forward to finishing the campaign and crossing it off the backlog. I definitely see myself coming back to it when I get an itch for building, and then I'll tackle more of the optional challenges.
I really wanna try that DQXI demo, but I have too many RPGs in the backlog right now, and I'd rather hold off until such time that I'd be ready to jump straight into the full game afterward.
I wouldn't even put all the blame on the feet of said composer. Every aspect of Dragon Quest has been painfully slow and resistant to change. Just for some comparison, the PS2 game released in 2004 originally never had a UI for equipping weapons. It still used the painfully old system of "Open item menu, transfer item to appropriate character if needed, pick equip, repeat for every single slot". It was only the NA release that they finally got with the times and put in this newfangled idea that had been around for decades. As for XI, this might be the first game ever to not make saving a complete and utter chore, though really all they did was greatly expand the number of places you could save from the one guy in town who normally does it. Who still has the useless option to tell you how much EXP you need for the next level. At least that info is on the status screen now. Took them until DQIX in 2009 to figure that one out.
Dragon Quest is an old grandpa hellbent on never using one of those blasted smartphones. I can totally respect that. But grandpa... you're still clinging onto that old hand cranked telephone from the 1910's. At least we've finally convinced him to upgrade to an old touchtone model from the 70's.
I think the bags setup in XI is a bit silly. Your character can be equipped with a bunch of items but also have other equippable items in their own bag which is different from the communal equipment bag and can change where that item shows up in the UI I think? I put everything in the general bag as often as possible. I assume the purpose here is limited space in their individual bag so they don't have access to 99 herbs and 99 strong medicines at a moment's notice (haven't tested this), but again, game's too easy for this to matter. Maybe draconian quest would change that.
Indeed characters can only "use" items in their personal inventory during battle. It's meant to be part of the strategy, like it probably wouldn't a good idea give a reviving item to your most fragile character. Thing is previous DQs had far more limited personal inventory space, limited further by needing to keep alternate equipment in them if you wanted to equip it in battle, such a sword and lance for using their respective abilities. XI not only has larger inventory space, but can equip directly from the bag even in battle, so the only reason for keeping unequipped equipment in a character's personal inventory is if it's something that can be "used" like an item but they can't equip it themselves and thus can't take it out of the bag in battle.
Before you preemptively go insane over the apparent clunky inventory system, there is a way to mass dump all of a character's items to the bag. I don't remember how, and I remember it not being entirely obvious at first. Because otherwise you might think you're stuck having to individually move every single item by hand. It's also fairly smart, it'll remove most basic items, but leave really important ones like yggdrasil leaves and any unequipped equipment that can be used in battle.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
While having a character selected in the menu, just hit X.
It will dump everything but their equipped items and alternate weapons into the main bags.
Yep. Just remember you don't need to keep alternate weapons or other equipment in your inventory now, you can equip straight from the bag even in battle. You only need to keep stuff the character can't actually equip but can still be used like an item, everything else can just be equipped, then used.
While having a character selected in the menu, just hit X.
It will dump everything but their equipped items and alternate weapons into the main bags.
What.
If you look in the lower right hand corner of the screen it says what hitting X does when you just have the menu open and someone selected before going into any of the sub menus.
Did they get rid of first person view on Switch for some reason? I can’t figure out how to activate it. Feels like it would be a weird omission, especially since there are plenty of unmapped buttons.
Did they get rid of first person view on Switch for some reason? I can’t figure out how to activate it. Feels like it would be a weird omission, especially since there are plenty of unmapped buttons.
It was removed along with the crossbow quest.
Nintendo Console Codes
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
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Did they get rid of first person view on Switch for some reason? I can’t figure out how to activate it. Feels like it would be a weird omission, especially since there are plenty of unmapped buttons.
Did they get rid of first person view on Switch for some reason? I can’t figure out how to activate it. Feels like it would be a weird omission, especially since there are plenty of unmapped buttons.
It was removed along with the crossbow quest.
Weird, have they given any indication as to why?
They haven't said. It's odd, though it was only added for the western releases of the original.
Nintendo Console Codes
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
PM Me if you add me!
Just learned something about Switch DQXI that everyone needs to be aware of.
When you switch between 2D/3D modes, you can go back to previous story sections in the game.
If you do this, I think you keep all your levels and items, but...that section of the game becomes your new "maximum reached" chapter for purposes of switching between 2D/3D again.
So if you are almost done with the game and switch to 2D and go back to the beginning just for fun, save over your only file, and then try to switch back to 3D, you'll notice that your only option is that beginning area even in 3D. At this point, your save is not yet unrecoverable, because the game maintains two separate autosaves for 2D and 3D, so you could still go back to the main menu and load the 3D autosave. But if you switch back to 3D, you are now screwed, and stuck back at the start of the game.
This exact scenario has happened to several people over at GameFAQs and everyone is warning others about it now. Dozens of hours lost for people who don't keep multiple save files.
However, the obvious, expected context of switching between 2D and 3D is "I'm switching between modes and can always return to where I was before!" When it doesn't work that way, I don't necessarily blame someone for assuming so.
I have no idea why the game can't save literally one byte of data to keep track of the maximum story section allowed to be chosen on this save file.
DQB2 is really picky at times about what makes up its rooms
What issue are you running into? There was a... well, I can't remember if it was a video or reddit post, but whatever it was, it went in-depth on how the rooms get recognized by the game. The main bulletpoints are:
- The height of the door (one block or two blocks) determines how high the physical walls need to be (at least as tall as the door). As I understand it, the game will still consider the two-block-tall wall space as being part of the room, and anything placed there will contribute to the room's stats, but a one-block-tall door will only require the lower layer of that space to be filled in.
- The walls need to be on the same Z-elevation as the door. On the same block layers.
- Anything above or below the two layers occupied by the two-block-tall-door-and-wall space (which may be filled in with blocks or may be empty air, based on the rules above) is not considered part of the room-as-recognized-by-the-game, even if you make everything look visually as part of the room-as-recognized-by-your-squishy-human-eyes.
So you can build a grandiose 5-block-tall hall and place a bunch of wall sconces on layer #4 of this hall, but they will not be recognized by the game as being part of the room because they are not on layer #1 or #2.
This also means you can play around with this and make some stuff that might not visually look like a room but still register as a room by the game.
@Delduwath I was struggling with creating a restaurant! It turned out to be two things (google helped):
- the dining hall needs to contain small tables, not large tables, to register
- the kitchen can’t be a certain type of kitchen (ie both a castle kitchen and an agricultural kitchen do not work. However, you also don’t have to have a simple kitchen. I simply removed my well from the castle kitchen and it instantly registered as a restaurant!)
Thank you for the tips!
I also put roofs on my animal pens which looks goofy as hell but it did prevent my animals from being eaten.
Ah, I'm glad it worked out! It sounds like you're actually waaaaay farther in the game (and the kinds of rooms you're making) than I am, so if anything I can probably pick up pointers from you.
Yeah, the very specific individual sub-flavors of rooms feel very exhausting to me. I wish, for example, that they didn't make Small/Medium/Large distinctions based on the contents of the room, but just on the physical size of the room or something. Like to go from a "Farmer's Bedroom" to a "Farmers' Flophouse", you need to increase not just the number of beds (which is practical and obvious - if you want a bigger bedroom you need more beds), but also the number of lights, Farming Tools, and Firewoods (despite those all being decorative). That seems very tedious to keep track of. Why are these categories even necessary? Why not just "Farmer's Bedroom", and it doesn't matter how big it is or how many beds are inside?
Yes! Also, you probably haven’t reached the point in the game where you unlock villager preferences yet, but that’s a whole extra layer of confusing. Like one villager wants a tiny bedroom but with a 3 heart fancy level, so trying to stuff enough furniture in to make it fancy enough was... tough.
So, thank you for reminding me of the fanciness of gold blocks! I was trying to create a bedroom for Babs, who wanted a large room with a 3 heart fancy level with a cheeky aesthetic. Now, the only item with a cheeky aesthetic you can build is the naughty nightlight. I only had two (rubies are tough to come by), so I had the idea to balance out all the other aesthetics so that cheeky was the most dominant, if that makes sense.
But... all the furniture I was adding wasn’t adding that much to the fancy level, and normal was still the dominant aesthetic - I needed something else to balance it out. Turns out that gold bricks has a cool aesthetic, so I turned the walls to gold and voila - I had a large, fancy, cheeky room.
KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
I'm still missing 3 things off the blue tablet and I'll be done with the tablet objectives. I spent ages making sure my cows and sheep were happy, but neglected the dogs/cats, so now i'm paying the price and waiting slowly for their happiness to go up enough. Got the white dog and brown pattern cats, but still AGES away from 4th gen cats/dogs.
One of these days I should go back to DQB1 and finish the time challenges to get my plat trophy.
I just got told a story about how an evil witch showed up and cursed this town and Serena said "ooh, it's like something out of a fairy tale!"
Girl on our travels we have experienced:
- castles, kings and princesses
- enemy wizards and dragons and griffons and trolls
- literally magic spells that you can cast
A witch is probably the most run-of-the-mill thing that could happen in this world.
Tags along simply because he thinks it'll be a great adventure.
But then your next two are all about you being the Luminary and you go right back to being propped up on a pedestal of gold.
I feel like the last bit here ends up downplaying those circumstances a little, that was possibly my favorite part of the game. More than enough justification for them.
Basically just Erik, Veronica and Serena were weak.
I swear Nose For Treasure is going to double my playtime. Doesn't help that all the guides I've found are for the PC/PS4 version, which is unsurprising, but that version didn't have Nose For Treasure, so there there's no quick check for what number should be remaining after taking inaccessible areas into account.
Wasn't as bad in DQVIII because the lower amount of detail and less lighting effects made pots and barrels not as easy to miss.
I swear Nose For Treasure is going to double my playtime. Doesn't help that all the guides I've found are for the PC/PS4 version, which is unsurprising, but that version didn't have Nose For Treasure, so there there's no quick check for what number should be remaining after taking inaccessible areas into account.
Wasn't as bad in DQVIII because the lower amount of detail and less lighting effects made pots and barrels not as easy to miss.
I gave up on that around Hotto I think.
It really does seem like basically nothing is permanently missable, as little sense as that makes in some of these cases...
Beat act 3 last night at around 65 hours in... and level 65.
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
Just finished DQM Joker. Man, I wanted to love it so much but that might be one of the most lifeless modern DQ games I've played.
World and characters (what few there are) completely lack any charm. Not much in the way of motivation or plot, just a constant grind while going from island to island looking for dark rocks.
Luckily I'm also playing DQ Builders 2 which is the greatest thing ever.
I swear Nose For Treasure is going to double my playtime. Doesn't help that all the guides I've found are for the PC/PS4 version, which is unsurprising, but that version didn't have Nose For Treasure, so there there's no quick check for what number should be remaining after taking inaccessible areas into account.
Wasn't as bad in DQVIII because the lower amount of detail and less lighting effects made pots and barrels not as easy to miss.
Yeah you just have to completely give up on that, which sucks because then it's like...well why should I consider this ability useful for 90% of the game? I guess some areas can be cleared out completely at least, but still.
There's some island in the middle of nowhere with nothing on it that would indicate hidden items anywhere and the NOSE told me 4 treasures in this area and I was like wtf? And I looked it up and it's nuts. Nose will not really help for most of the game.
As somebody who was stupid/insane enough to try and clean out every possible area of treasure, I can't remember if there were any areas that would ping as having treasure, but otherwise be completely impossible to collect. Spots do get locked off due to story, but they are eventually unlocked.
Really the problem is that the maps are utterly enormous 3D spaces, and finding items can literally be akin to finding a needle in a haystack. I swear, I combed through every single centimeter of Helidor Slums looking for the last item there... five fucking times, before I eventually found the thing. I'm currently playing through DQ3, and this is retroactively pissing me off because this game has a spell that will just highlight the damn treasure on screen.
Try and do your OCD a favour here... ignore the bloody thing. The only item of any value are the mini medals. And you can either just use a guide for them, or simply farm the damn things anyways. Don't lose your mind over trying to collect the last damn medicinal herb in the area, it doesn't matter!
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Endgame you get medals as a participation prize in horse races for instance. A race takes a little over a minute to run. And I'm pretty sure there are faster ways.
Endgame you get medals as a participation prize in horse races for instance. A race takes a little over a minute to run. And I'm pretty sure there are faster ways.
Races you'll probably be doing a lot of if you want all the rewards along with the best time, because holy fuck some of those times are tuned way too tight!
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Thus far in a guide I saw that there is a literal needle in a haystack, a field in the middle of nowhere that you just have to happen to stand in the right place to notice a UI arrow pointing at the ground, which I think gets you a mini medal.
YggiDeeThe World Ends With You ShillRegistered Userregular
There's a bunch of places where the items are inaccessible until the post-game. Then they spawn flying monsters you can ride.
Also for the needle/haystack, I think there's a hint for that one. There's a blackboard in the Academy where someone's drawn a map with X marked on it and that might be what it aims for.
So one thing I noticed about 2D mode is that AoE heals hit people not currently in the fight too. And if you tag out they don't lose a turn.
So you can swap a damaged person out of the fight, which pauses their buffs, and lets you bring in someone undamaged. Then you cast an AoE heal that turn, but the boss can't go first and kill them.
Dragon Quest XI Switch version spoilers/review on new content between Act 1 and Act 2:
For those who don't know, in this version instead of watching the world tree get destroyed and then waking up as a fish in Nautica to continue your quest, there are four individual character interludes.
- Sylvando escorting Tetsu the smith from Gondolia to Hotto and starts a traveling parade along the way (very long segment)
- Jade at Octogonia trying to help people enslaved by monsters, fighting Booga's girlfriend in an alternate battle arena dimension
- Erik on some floating rock cave/prison escaping with the help of a healslime and gives up his memories for the power to fight
- Rab reliving key moments in Dundrasil and dreaming that it never fell, realizes it's fake and a test from Grand Master Pang
- Nothing for Serena/Veronica, at this point it goes back to the hero
In my opinion, this was all a huge mistake.
Were people clamoring for this? It takes hours to get through and brings story momentum to a screeching halt. Even as someone who never played the original it all sticks out like a sore thumb. Worse, like any prequel material created after the original, it completely deflates and spoils a lot of revelations you would've encountered naturally before.
Right now in Puerto Valor people are abuzz with rumors about a lot of youths wearing ostentatious clothes acting wildly, some say they're possessed by the Lord of Shadows. But now I know for a fact it's just Sylv's group. By contrast I've heard a different rumor about someone whose ship was destroyed at sea and he just repeatedly mumbles about a red light, and that's something I don't know about yet. It's more tantalizing of a rumor and more interesting.
The same applies to the rest. I'll probably have to fight Booga eventually but I've already seen him so he's no surprise. Whenever and wherever I find Erik he will have lost his memories, instead of seeing him and being happy at first and then learning he doesn't remember me.
More than those small moments it would've been more impactful to go from the end scene of Act 1 to underwater, then seeing visions with the queen of the bleak place the surface world has become, rather than going from that end scene to Sylvando just randomly in a town and wandering the world near Gondolia and Gallopolis and seeing that honestly it doesn't look all that different. The queen talks about "the few people who survived" but I already know a bunch of people survived. The Last Bastion doesn't seem so "last" when I know at least 3 towns are mostly fine.
I saw it mentioned by someone that if they really wanted to do this, each of them should've happened the moment you rejoin that character.
Force a campfire scene and ask the player, "learn what brought Sylvando to this point?" and they could play through it if they felt like it.
Also now I'm imagining playing through the game a second time and having to go through all that again and it's not a nice prospect.
Posts
I really wanna try that DQXI demo, but I have too many RPGs in the backlog right now, and I'd rather hold off until such time that I'd be ready to jump straight into the full game afterward.
Indeed characters can only "use" items in their personal inventory during battle. It's meant to be part of the strategy, like it probably wouldn't a good idea give a reviving item to your most fragile character. Thing is previous DQs had far more limited personal inventory space, limited further by needing to keep alternate equipment in them if you wanted to equip it in battle, such a sword and lance for using their respective abilities. XI not only has larger inventory space, but can equip directly from the bag even in battle, so the only reason for keeping unequipped equipment in a character's personal inventory is if it's something that can be "used" like an item but they can't equip it themselves and thus can't take it out of the bag in battle.
It will dump everything but their equipped items and alternate weapons into the main bags.
What.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Yep. Just remember you don't need to keep alternate weapons or other equipment in your inventory now, you can equip straight from the bag even in battle. You only need to keep stuff the character can't actually equip but can still be used like an item, everything else can just be equipped, then used.
If you look in the lower right hand corner of the screen it says what hitting X does when you just have the menu open and someone selected before going into any of the sub menus.
It was removed along with the crossbow quest.
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
PM Me if you add me!
Weird, have they given any indication as to why?
They haven't said. It's odd, though it was only added for the western releases of the original.
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
PM Me if you add me!
The solo section after was quite long too, then another started. It's going to be a while before the gang is back together isn't it?
When you switch between 2D/3D modes, you can go back to previous story sections in the game.
If you do this, I think you keep all your levels and items, but...that section of the game becomes your new "maximum reached" chapter for purposes of switching between 2D/3D again.
So if you are almost done with the game and switch to 2D and go back to the beginning just for fun, save over your only file, and then try to switch back to 3D, you'll notice that your only option is that beginning area even in 3D. At this point, your save is not yet unrecoverable, because the game maintains two separate autosaves for 2D and 3D, so you could still go back to the main menu and load the 3D autosave. But if you switch back to 3D, you are now screwed, and stuck back at the start of the game.
This exact scenario has happened to several people over at GameFAQs and everyone is warning others about it now. Dozens of hours lost for people who don't keep multiple save files.
I have no idea why the game can't save literally one byte of data to keep track of the maximum story section allowed to be chosen on this save file.
Let's Plays of Japanese Games
- The height of the door (one block or two blocks) determines how high the physical walls need to be (at least as tall as the door). As I understand it, the game will still consider the two-block-tall wall space as being part of the room, and anything placed there will contribute to the room's stats, but a one-block-tall door will only require the lower layer of that space to be filled in.
- The walls need to be on the same Z-elevation as the door. On the same block layers.
- Anything above or below the two layers occupied by the two-block-tall-door-and-wall space (which may be filled in with blocks or may be empty air, based on the rules above) is not considered part of the room-as-recognized-by-the-game, even if you make everything look visually as part of the room-as-recognized-by-your-squishy-human-eyes.
So you can build a grandiose 5-block-tall hall and place a bunch of wall sconces on layer #4 of this hall, but they will not be recognized by the game as being part of the room because they are not on layer #1 or #2.
This also means you can play around with this and make some stuff that might not visually look like a room but still register as a room by the game.
- the dining hall needs to contain small tables, not large tables, to register
- the kitchen can’t be a certain type of kitchen (ie both a castle kitchen and an agricultural kitchen do not work. However, you also don’t have to have a simple kitchen. I simply removed my well from the castle kitchen and it instantly registered as a restaurant!)
Thank you for the tips!
I also put roofs on my animal pens which looks goofy as hell but it did prevent my animals from being eaten.
Yeah, the very specific individual sub-flavors of rooms feel very exhausting to me. I wish, for example, that they didn't make Small/Medium/Large distinctions based on the contents of the room, but just on the physical size of the room or something. Like to go from a "Farmer's Bedroom" to a "Farmers' Flophouse", you need to increase not just the number of beds (which is practical and obvious - if you want a bigger bedroom you need more beds), but also the number of lights, Farming Tools, and Firewoods (despite those all being decorative). That seems very tedious to keep track of. Why are these categories even necessary? Why not just "Farmer's Bedroom", and it doesn't matter how big it is or how many beds are inside?
Also, through Reddit I found the single most useful database.
Other sites’ checklists aren’t wholly accurate; that one is user-compiled and hasn’t steered me wrong so far!
Oh: One other tip! On Awakening, if you create a field you have to have a farmer NPC assigned to that area in order for crops to grow.
And to the "garish as hell" stat, as well.
So, thank you for reminding me of the fanciness of gold blocks! I was trying to create a bedroom for Babs, who wanted a large room with a 3 heart fancy level with a cheeky aesthetic. Now, the only item with a cheeky aesthetic you can build is the naughty nightlight. I only had two (rubies are tough to come by), so I had the idea to balance out all the other aesthetics so that cheeky was the most dominant, if that makes sense.
But... all the furniture I was adding wasn’t adding that much to the fancy level, and normal was still the dominant aesthetic - I needed something else to balance it out. Turns out that gold bricks has a cool aesthetic, so I turned the walls to gold and voila - I had a large, fancy, cheeky room.
It looks... well...
One of these days I should go back to DQB1 and finish the time challenges to get my plat trophy.
I just got told a story about how an evil witch showed up and cursed this town and Serena said "ooh, it's like something out of a fairy tale!"
Girl on our travels we have experienced:
- castles, kings and princesses
- enemy wizards and dragons and griffons and trolls
- literally magic spells that you can cast
A witch is probably the most run-of-the-mill thing that could happen in this world.
I feel like the last bit here ends up downplaying those circumstances a little, that was possibly my favorite part of the game. More than enough justification for them.
Basically just Erik, Veronica and Serena were weak.
Wasn't as bad in DQVIII because the lower amount of detail and less lighting effects made pots and barrels not as easy to miss.
I gave up on that around Hotto I think.
It really does seem like basically nothing is permanently missable, as little sense as that makes in some of these cases...
Beat act 3 last night at around 65 hours in... and level 65.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
World and characters (what few there are) completely lack any charm. Not much in the way of motivation or plot, just a constant grind while going from island to island looking for dark rocks.
Luckily I'm also playing DQ Builders 2 which is the greatest thing ever.
Yeah you just have to completely give up on that, which sucks because then it's like...well why should I consider this ability useful for 90% of the game? I guess some areas can be cleared out completely at least, but still.
There's some island in the middle of nowhere with nothing on it that would indicate hidden items anywhere and the NOSE told me 4 treasures in this area and I was like wtf? And I looked it up and it's nuts. Nose will not really help for most of the game.
Really the problem is that the maps are utterly enormous 3D spaces, and finding items can literally be akin to finding a needle in a haystack. I swear, I combed through every single centimeter of Helidor Slums looking for the last item there... five fucking times, before I eventually found the thing. I'm currently playing through DQ3, and this is retroactively pissing me off because this game has a spell that will just highlight the damn treasure on screen.
Try and do your OCD a favour here... ignore the bloody thing. The only item of any value are the mini medals. And you can either just use a guide for them, or simply farm the damn things anyways. Don't lose your mind over trying to collect the last damn medicinal herb in the area, it doesn't matter!
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Races you'll probably be doing a lot of if you want all the rewards along with the best time, because holy fuck some of those times are tuned way too tight!
Also for the needle/haystack, I think there's a hint for that one. There's a blackboard in the Academy where someone's drawn a map with X marked on it and that might be what it aims for.
So you can swap a damaged person out of the fight, which pauses their buffs, and lets you bring in someone undamaged. Then you cast an AoE heal that turn, but the boss can't go first and kill them.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
- Sylvando escorting Tetsu the smith from Gondolia to Hotto and starts a traveling parade along the way (very long segment)
- Jade at Octogonia trying to help people enslaved by monsters, fighting Booga's girlfriend in an alternate battle arena dimension
- Erik on some floating rock cave/prison escaping with the help of a healslime and gives up his memories for the power to fight
- Rab reliving key moments in Dundrasil and dreaming that it never fell, realizes it's fake and a test from Grand Master Pang
- Nothing for Serena/Veronica, at this point it goes back to the hero
In my opinion, this was all a huge mistake.
Were people clamoring for this? It takes hours to get through and brings story momentum to a screeching halt. Even as someone who never played the original it all sticks out like a sore thumb. Worse, like any prequel material created after the original, it completely deflates and spoils a lot of revelations you would've encountered naturally before.
Right now in Puerto Valor people are abuzz with rumors about a lot of youths wearing ostentatious clothes acting wildly, some say they're possessed by the Lord of Shadows. But now I know for a fact it's just Sylv's group. By contrast I've heard a different rumor about someone whose ship was destroyed at sea and he just repeatedly mumbles about a red light, and that's something I don't know about yet. It's more tantalizing of a rumor and more interesting.
The same applies to the rest. I'll probably have to fight Booga eventually but I've already seen him so he's no surprise. Whenever and wherever I find Erik he will have lost his memories, instead of seeing him and being happy at first and then learning he doesn't remember me.
More than those small moments it would've been more impactful to go from the end scene of Act 1 to underwater, then seeing visions with the queen of the bleak place the surface world has become, rather than going from that end scene to Sylvando just randomly in a town and wandering the world near Gondolia and Gallopolis and seeing that honestly it doesn't look all that different. The queen talks about "the few people who survived" but I already know a bunch of people survived. The Last Bastion doesn't seem so "last" when I know at least 3 towns are mostly fine.
I saw it mentioned by someone that if they really wanted to do this, each of them should've happened the moment you rejoin that character.
Force a campfire scene and ask the player, "learn what brought Sylvando to this point?" and they could play through it if they felt like it.
Also now I'm imagining playing through the game a second time and having to go through all that again and it's not a nice prospect.