Forever Zefirocloaked in the midnight glory of an event horizonRegistered Userregular
Well, I beat Trials and did everything I think I wanna do. I got all the Cacti, beat the game, beat Anise once (not too concerned about the time trials), and beat the Black Rabite
Definitely just a wonderful classic JRPG. I wish the companion AI was a bit better. Often they would just stand in red attack zones and take the full attack. Also, they would very often use a big spell or CS right at the very last moment of a battle, which was annoying. Not a big deal on Normal, but I don't think I'd want to try Hard with those dummies.
Overall, fun adventure, fun combat, fun level-up/class system. I almost want to play through with the other three characters (Duran, Angela, and Charlotte)...
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
Sweet! I wasn't really expecting this, but it looks like there's a new patch out with options to make new game + more difficult:
“No Future” difficulty added:
Enemies and bosses are much harder to defeat.
Only selectable when starting a New Game Plus and reverting back to level 1.
Certain abilities are unavailable.
Number of items available during battle is reduced to three.
Time limits on boss battles.
Length of time the attack range is displayed is reduced for some bosses.
Rainbow Item Seeds may yield stronger versions of the same gear obtainable in other difficulties.
Two new Chain Abilities added.
Additional Features
“Expert” difficulty added when starting a New Game Plus.
Switching classes animation and credits are now skippable.
You will be able to access the costumes you have unlocked after resetting your class or restarting on New Game Plus. (Only applicable to costumes of classes switched to after the update. They can be changed after your first class switch.)
You can choose to revert to level 1 when starting a New Game Plus.
New goddess statues added to the map.
Other minor bugs fixed.
Expert difficulty doesn't sound like an increased difficulty, unless they just don't mention boosts to enemy damage and stuff. Heck, the addition of more save statues makes it sound a bit easier.
Probably safe to assume "expert" difficulty is more difficult than base difficulty? It seems pedantic to assume it's not without more detail at least.
The items below expert difficulty aren't sub-bullets relevant only to that. For example, they clearly didn't make skipping the credits and class change animations exclusive only to expert difficulty. Seems safe to assume the same with the goddess statues.
That part seemed pretty obvious, but let me reformat it to clarify a bit:
“No Future” difficulty added:
Enemies and bosses are much harder to defeat.
Only selectable when starting a New Game Plus and reverting back to level 1.
Certain abilities are unavailable.
Number of items available during battle is reduced to three.
Time limits on boss battles.
Length of time the attack range is displayed is reduced for some bosses.
Rainbow Item Seeds may yield stronger versions of the same gear obtainable in other difficulties.
Two new Chain Abilities added.
Additional Features
“Expert” difficulty added when starting a New Game Plus.
Switching classes animation and credits are now skippable.
You will be able to access the costumes you have unlocked after resetting your class or restarting on New Game Plus. (Only applicable to costumes of classes switched to after the update. They can be changed after your first class switch.)
You can choose to revert to level 1 when starting a New Game Plus.
Oh! Oh, I was reading that wrong. The stuff under "No Future" was a list of its features, but I thought that every bullet under "Expert" was features of that specific difficulty.
Like, I thought it was saying that the animation skip, costume selection, new statues, and level 1 reversion was all stuff only on Expert mode. Now I understand that those are all individual features added to all difficulties, and Expert is just one of those features being mentioned. Which most certainly means increased difficulty.
No worries. I didn't bother to restore the formatting when pasting it in because I was being lazy -- it is a bit easier to read with the proper context
Probably safe to assume "expert" difficulty is more difficult than base difficulty? It seems pedantic to assume it's not without more detail at least.
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(The hardest difficult in VP was Easy, and the easiest difficulty was Hard. Hard had a marginally more difficult early game, but Easy/Normal locked you out of a shitload of content and dungeons full of powerful weapons and skills, even more in Easy than Normal, and the 'worst' part of Hard was characters starting at level 1, except that meant that you didn't lose out on a shitload of skill points for every character, so even that was an actual major advantage).
Exactly! It's pedantic to look for the small possible exception that may exist in a handful of videogames -- there are bajillions of them out there and an exception to prove every rule as a result -- instead of assuming that expert means "more harder" given that they didn't give more details. It's very narrowly possible, but incredibly unlikely.
But Enlong wasn't really being pedantic, because my formatting made it hard to interpret and it was an easy mistake to make.
I wonder if the "Expert" is more in line with Xenoblade's "Expert" which is mostly game level modifiers but not really a more difficult experience. Still, these updates look real good! I might actually do another run.
Ok after devoting quite some time to Expert Mode (about to finish up Charlotte's route with only one Benevodon to go)...
Man I'm not sure about Expert Mode. I probably should look at reddit/gamefaqs or something for a proper build. I went with Charlotte, Duran (for funsies and I already had Class 4 gear with me) and Hawkeye (for Lucky Find). Reset my levels to 1 and off we go. Since I had no endgame gear on me, I had a ROUGH time starting out. Decided to just use Love of Mana to buff my levels and used Kevin's ability to get +50 Strength on Duran and hoo boy. Even then all boss fights have taken a LONG time to kill. Meanwhile, I'm melting through all regular encounters. It's SO weird. I mean, at least the boss fights are quite challenging but man I can't imagine how tough No Future Mode is.
Yeah, Expert mode is... yuck. Boss fights are just a slog, party members pop and die. If you're not cheesing it with +50 str and gear and shit it's just, no, you can't do anything.
No Future lets you make party members not pop and die. Regular fights aren't bad - it's a high stakes brawl, but doable (if you carried over gear). And then boss fights are fucking miserable.
I got this game about a month ago, took a break after my fist playthrough, and am working through my third now in what's apparently a plan to get all achievements. It's good, but ... I dunno. I guess I have some issues with the plot? I like Secret of Mana more, and I don't think it's just nostalgia talking? I also like Legend of Mana more, but that's in my top 10 games of all time, so I know that it makes me the weirdo.
On the other hand, there's something relaxing playing this game on NG+, using all the Murder Everyone class skills or just being at Level Fuck You compared to your enemies.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
I got this game about a month ago, took a break after my fist playthrough, and am working through my third now in what's apparently a plan to get all achievements. It's good, but ... I dunno. I guess I have some issues with the plot? I like Secret of Mana more, and I don't think it's just nostalgia talking? I also like Legend of Mana more, but that's in my top 10 games of all time, so I know that it makes me the weirdo.
On the other hand, there's something relaxing playing this game on NG+, using all the Murder Everyone class skills or just being at Level Fuck You compared to your enemies.
Having played a little further, I learned that even at Level Fuck You, Expert still gets pretty tricky. Even with one party member at level 99 and two others at level 90, I got as far as the fourth Benevodon when even the CS attacks weren't killing enemies. So I switched to Hard and could effortless kill Benevodons in like a minute. I feel like there may be a bit of a missing gap in the difficulty settings here.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
I got this game about a month ago, took a break after my fist playthrough, and am working through my third now in what's apparently a plan to get all achievements. It's good, but ... I dunno. I guess I have some issues with the plot? I like Secret of Mana more, and I don't think it's just nostalgia talking? I also like Legend of Mana more, but that's in my top 10 games of all time, so I know that it makes me the weirdo.
On the other hand, there's something relaxing playing this game on NG+, using all the Murder Everyone class skills or just being at Level Fuck You compared to your enemies.
Having played a little further, I learned that even at Level Fuck You, Expert still gets pretty tricky. Even with one party member at level 99 and two others at level 90, I got as far as the fourth Benevodon when even the CS attacks weren't killing enemies. So I switched to Hard and could effortless kill Benevodons in like a minute. I feel like there may be a bit of a missing gap in the difficulty settings here.
It's not just you, the scaling on expert is dumb. No Future is actually easier because it lets you set a passive where the AI partners can't be killed (they stop at 1 HP).
I got this game about a month ago, took a break after my fist playthrough, and am working through my third now in what's apparently a plan to get all achievements. It's good, but ... I dunno. I guess I have some issues with the plot? I like Secret of Mana more, and I don't think it's just nostalgia talking? I also like Legend of Mana more, but that's in my top 10 games of all time, so I know that it makes me the weirdo.
On the other hand, there's something relaxing playing this game on NG+, using all the Murder Everyone class skills or just being at Level Fuck You compared to your enemies.
I think part of it is just the game is very simple and the plot and characters are just SNES simple. They just remade it to play and look a bit more modern.
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
I quite enjoyed the remake. One thing I appreciated is that they seem to have balanced the five stats you can train (Strength, Vitality, Intelligence, Spirit, and Luck) such that useful character abilities are unlocked on every path. In the original, for a character like Angela you'd just pump Intelligence every level because that's how you get your spells, but in the remake the various elements are all on different stats, so you have to choose which ones you want to invest more heavily in. I actually had Angela running a Strength build for most of the game because that path gives her a passive that lets her generate MP with her melee attacks, which is a godsend for someone who gets all her damage from casting. Plus you can actually re-spec if you need to, so long as you're willing to pay the gold cost.
So, uh... I vote remake, I guess?
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
Granted, but I also like the story of Secret better. I think the reason for that is something I call the "journey factor," and I'll go into detail in the spoilers because we have at least one person in the thread who hasn't played the game yet.
For an example of the journey factor, I'll go over the events in most of Chapter 2. You arrive in a new town, which is overrun by Nevarl invaders, themselves under mind control as you may or may not realize this early in the plot. Obviously, if Reisz or Hawkeye is in the party, they have additional comment on the subject. Then you climb the mountain, only to fall unconscious due to sleep-inducing flowers. But you wake up in the resistance camp of Laurent survivors, where Reisz is already waiting if she's not already in your party. The resistance is planning a counter-attack, but lacking a method of doing so, they suggest you talk to a tactician from the last war against the Dragonlord. So you go back to a trade city, get the item that shrinks you, then go all the way back to the Rabite Forest, the first non-prologue hazardous area in the game to find a town of tiny pixies. The tactician you were looking for goes all "trickster mentor" on you before telling you that you need Sylphid's help to spread the sleep flowers into the Laurent camp as prelude to the attack. So you go BACK to the mountain and solve a short dungeon's worth of wind puzzles, fighting a boss to get Sylphid's help. Now armed with the third Elemental's power, you raid the fortress, fighting two back-to-back boss fights for your trouble, accomplishing a major character moment for either of the related heroes, especially Reisz, in the process.
Now, this isn't all a GOOD plot. You have to go up and down the mountain too many times, and the tactician's advice is literally the next thing you would have tried anyway, except that there is a barrier blocking it that conveniently gets removed while you were out talking to the tactician, for reasons wholly unrelated to your actions. There also is technically no reason TO help Laurent, in the grand scheme of things, once you got Sylphid. Obviously it makes sense if you have a party member with a personal investment, but otherwise your time is arguably better spent leaving to find the other Elementals. That said, it's a great example of the journey. You don't just get a plot MacGuffin and leave. There are complications, the party's fortunes changing repeatedly with tons of fun character moments both within the party and with NPCs, and party members you might not have in your current group show up for major roles, explaining what they're doing when not saving the world with you
After this, though, the MacGuffin hunt starts to really kick in. For the Water and Fire Elementals, you go to a location, fight a boss, get the Elemental, and leave. There's a bit of character drama at each place, which may or may not matter to any of your party members, but nothing really complicates your mission. The Moon elemental is about the same, and honestly the character moments here are HILARIOUS if you don't have Kevin or Charlotte in your party, as you never met the opponents before and Kevin's angst at a major rival's death is largely undermined by three strangers just showing up and resolving everything. The Wood elemental has a bit more meat to it, mostly Charlotte related, but then you hit the game's Act 2 resolution, giving your Flammie, wiping out 2/3rds of the enemy forces, and then setting you up for another MacGuffin hunt with the Benevodons.
Collecting plot trinkets is just a fact of life in most Mana games, with their eight elementals and related lore. But with Secret, that only becomes a problem with the Light, Dark, and Moon Elementals right after you get Flammie. After that, you move on into the endgame while getting the Wood elemental. By then, the overworld music gets ominous, you pick off the remaining evil generals one after another, and the last evil general betrays the emperor to become the real big bad in classic SNES fashion. To put it mechanically, 3/8 of Secret's MacGuffins are resolved by short quests directly related to getting said MacGuffin, with the rest a side effect of the rest of the plot happening. Trials has a less impressive 12/16 ratio, plus or minus one depending on how you count the ghost ship or the Darkness Benevodon's placement in the final dungeon. I was really into the plot in the first two chapters, coming up with little plot details and character quirks in my head (there was a who little gay romance between Angela and Reisz developing in my headcanon there.) But by the time I was polishing off 3 Benevodons in a play session, that interest waned, like I was fighting Megaman bosses without fun levels before them.
All that notwithstanding, I still enjoyed the basic gameplay loop and experience of the game enough to be playing towards getting all three endings, so don't treat this as too scathing a critique.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
I hope it's okay to necro this thread, but I'm extremely late to the party here. Just picked this up from a clearance bin.
I was gonna roll with Duran and Angela since they seem to be the "main" characters. I'm not sure who to pick for my third though. I was kinda leaning toward spear lady or dagger guy. Having a balanced party is nice, but I'm more concerned with which characters might be annoying. Like the little girl looks like she'd be super annoying.
The 'main' characters are whoever you pick and the story will change focus to make it so, but if you're going for multiple playthroughs, the main bad guys for the late game will be linked to your first character pick.
So you'd want Duran/Angela for one playthrough, Hawkeye/Riesz for another, and Kevin/Charlotte for the last.
But you only need one of those pairs, so you can go with almost whichever combination you want (and any team can get incredibly OP, especially if you're playing NG+).
(And yes, Charlotte is very annoying, but I just mashed through her dialogue before I had to hear much of it)
Thanks. I might just go with spear girl as the third.
The game is easy enough that you don't need to worry about party composition at all. I think in the original if you went Angela/Carlie/Riesz you might have a little trouble without a good physical attacker, but even that was plenty doable. Angela is (even more) of a damage monster in the remake, so you'd be fine. I advise taking a "story pair" (Kevin/Carlie, Duran/Angela, Hawk/Riesz) and any other third. Guarantees you a balanced party too, nicely.
Yeah, I went Duran/Angela/Riesz. I'm usually one and done with these kinda games, but if I ever do a second playthrough, it'll be Hawkeye/Riesz/anyone but the little girl.
The way that Charlotte speaks is fine. It's not played up for laughs and the voice actor does a good job depicting a real life speech impediment called rhotacism, where there is a difficulty in pronouncing the letter R. (side note, thanks for putting an R in the word to describe the condition where Rs are hard to pronounce)
Sure, it would be a different thing if her speech impediment was mocked or super exaggerated, but it's not. At least not in game.
I honestly hated her a lot less than anticipated once I had her in my party. The subtitling is a lot more annoying than her voice actor. She's kind of fun once you're around her for awhile, and I was definitely dreading it to start.
The Mana mobile gacha game released last week; Echoes of Mana. As one may presume from my avatar on these internet forums I am a sucker for anything from the series. Anyone else dip a toe into this at all? I've been going through and 'progressing' a little bit but I'm kind of confused as my player character is capped at 15 and my dropped characters I've gathered are like 22-23. NO idea if you just leave the PC there or have to pay to upgrade or somehitng.
Its not bad, pretty similar to the FFRecord Keeper except substitute 'Action' for 'Turn Based' in the levels, there's a bit more control to survive for dodging attacks and MMO style dmg zones.
@Alexandier I ran into the same issue when I gave it a try. You want to go to Ascend Ally when you select your MC under the Allies screen. You get the resources you need for the first few levels under the Bingo board rewards.
I tried it too but I really, really, really hate having to use the touch screen to move. It's not really a game I can hop on and do stuff real quick. Requires a bit more effort.
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Definitely just a wonderful classic JRPG. I wish the companion AI was a bit better. Often they would just stand in red attack zones and take the full attack. Also, they would very often use a big spell or CS right at the very last moment of a battle, which was annoying. Not a big deal on Normal, but I don't think I'd want to try Hard with those dummies.
Overall, fun adventure, fun combat, fun level-up/class system. I almost want to play through with the other three characters (Duran, Angela, and Charlotte)...
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
Eh, not really. I played it on the Switch, so there's no achievements or trophies to worry about
It would be neat to see the differences, but I don't think I can dedicate that time to do mostly the same stuff again. So many other games to play!
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
The items below expert difficulty aren't sub-bullets relevant only to that. For example, they clearly didn't make skipping the credits and class change animations exclusive only to expert difficulty. Seems safe to assume the same with the goddess statues.
That part seemed pretty obvious, but let me reformat it to clarify a bit:
Like, I thought it was saying that the animation skip, costume selection, new statues, and level 1 reversion was all stuff only on Expert mode. Now I understand that those are all individual features added to all difficulties, and Expert is just one of those features being mentioned. Which most certainly means increased difficulty.
Terribly sorry; that was all my misunderstanding.
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(The hardest difficult in VP was Easy, and the easiest difficulty was Hard. Hard had a marginally more difficult early game, but Easy/Normal locked you out of a shitload of content and dungeons full of powerful weapons and skills, even more in Easy than Normal, and the 'worst' part of Hard was characters starting at level 1, except that meant that you didn't lose out on a shitload of skill points for every character, so even that was an actual major advantage).
But Enlong wasn't really being pedantic, because my formatting made it hard to interpret and it was an easy mistake to make.
Man I'm not sure about Expert Mode. I probably should look at reddit/gamefaqs or something for a proper build. I went with Charlotte, Duran (for funsies and I already had Class 4 gear with me) and Hawkeye (for Lucky Find). Reset my levels to 1 and off we go. Since I had no endgame gear on me, I had a ROUGH time starting out. Decided to just use Love of Mana to buff my levels and used Kevin's ability to get +50 Strength on Duran and hoo boy. Even then all boss fights have taken a LONG time to kill. Meanwhile, I'm melting through all regular encounters. It's SO weird. I mean, at least the boss fights are quite challenging but man I can't imagine how tough No Future Mode is.
No Future lets you make party members not pop and die. Regular fights aren't bad - it's a high stakes brawl, but doable (if you carried over gear). And then boss fights are fucking miserable.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
On the other hand, there's something relaxing playing this game on NG+, using all the Murder Everyone class skills or just being at Level Fuck You compared to your enemies.
Having played a little further, I learned that even at Level Fuck You, Expert still gets pretty tricky. Even with one party member at level 99 and two others at level 90, I got as far as the fourth Benevodon when even the CS attacks weren't killing enemies. So I switched to Hard and could effortless kill Benevodons in like a minute. I feel like there may be a bit of a missing gap in the difficulty settings here.
It's not just you, the scaling on expert is dumb. No Future is actually easier because it lets you set a passive where the AI partners can't be killed (they stop at 1 HP).
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I think part of it is just the game is very simple and the plot and characters are just SNES simple. They just remade it to play and look a bit more modern.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
So, uh... I vote remake, I guess?
Remake. The SNES port is neat, but I think the remake is the better game to play in 2020.
But the remake is good and I am very much in favor of them doing more work on the Mana Series as a whole, it was always my favorite.
Granted, but I also like the story of Secret better. I think the reason for that is something I call the "journey factor," and I'll go into detail in the spoilers because we have at least one person in the thread who hasn't played the game yet.
Now, this isn't all a GOOD plot. You have to go up and down the mountain too many times, and the tactician's advice is literally the next thing you would have tried anyway, except that there is a barrier blocking it that conveniently gets removed while you were out talking to the tactician, for reasons wholly unrelated to your actions. There also is technically no reason TO help Laurent, in the grand scheme of things, once you got Sylphid. Obviously it makes sense if you have a party member with a personal investment, but otherwise your time is arguably better spent leaving to find the other Elementals. That said, it's a great example of the journey. You don't just get a plot MacGuffin and leave. There are complications, the party's fortunes changing repeatedly with tons of fun character moments both within the party and with NPCs, and party members you might not have in your current group show up for major roles, explaining what they're doing when not saving the world with you
After this, though, the MacGuffin hunt starts to really kick in. For the Water and Fire Elementals, you go to a location, fight a boss, get the Elemental, and leave. There's a bit of character drama at each place, which may or may not matter to any of your party members, but nothing really complicates your mission. The Moon elemental is about the same, and honestly the character moments here are HILARIOUS if you don't have Kevin or Charlotte in your party, as you never met the opponents before and Kevin's angst at a major rival's death is largely undermined by three strangers just showing up and resolving everything. The Wood elemental has a bit more meat to it, mostly Charlotte related, but then you hit the game's Act 2 resolution, giving your Flammie, wiping out 2/3rds of the enemy forces, and then setting you up for another MacGuffin hunt with the Benevodons.
Collecting plot trinkets is just a fact of life in most Mana games, with their eight elementals and related lore. But with Secret, that only becomes a problem with the Light, Dark, and Moon Elementals right after you get Flammie. After that, you move on into the endgame while getting the Wood elemental. By then, the overworld music gets ominous, you pick off the remaining evil generals one after another, and the last evil general betrays the emperor to become the real big bad in classic SNES fashion. To put it mechanically, 3/8 of Secret's MacGuffins are resolved by short quests directly related to getting said MacGuffin, with the rest a side effect of the rest of the plot happening. Trials has a less impressive 12/16 ratio, plus or minus one depending on how you count the ghost ship or the Darkness Benevodon's placement in the final dungeon. I was really into the plot in the first two chapters, coming up with little plot details and character quirks in my head (there was a who little gay romance between Angela and Reisz developing in my headcanon there.) But by the time I was polishing off 3 Benevodons in a play session, that interest waned, like I was fighting Megaman bosses without fun levels before them.
All that notwithstanding, I still enjoyed the basic gameplay loop and experience of the game enough to be playing towards getting all three endings, so don't treat this as too scathing a critique.
I was gonna roll with Duran and Angela since they seem to be the "main" characters. I'm not sure who to pick for my third though. I was kinda leaning toward spear lady or dagger guy. Having a balanced party is nice, but I'm more concerned with which characters might be annoying. Like the little girl looks like she'd be super annoying.
So you'd want Duran/Angela for one playthrough, Hawkeye/Riesz for another, and Kevin/Charlotte for the last.
But you only need one of those pairs, so you can go with almost whichever combination you want (and any team can get incredibly OP, especially if you're playing NG+).
(And yes, Charlotte is very annoying, but I just mashed through her dialogue before I had to hear much of it)
The game is easy enough that you don't need to worry about party composition at all. I think in the original if you went Angela/Carlie/Riesz you might have a little trouble without a good physical attacker, but even that was plenty doable. Angela is (even more) of a damage monster in the remake, so you'd be fine. I advise taking a "story pair" (Kevin/Carlie, Duran/Angela, Hawk/Riesz) and any other third. Guarantees you a balanced party too, nicely.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Sure, it would be a different thing if her speech impediment was mocked or super exaggerated, but it's not. At least not in game.
Its not bad, pretty similar to the FFRecord Keeper except substitute 'Action' for 'Turn Based' in the levels, there's a bit more control to survive for dodging attacks and MMO style dmg zones.