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Tales of Symphonia help (early spoilers, maybe)
Firebrand
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I just started out on Tales of Symphonia. Only cleared the first seal (in the desert) so far, 2-3 hours in, and I could use some pointers on how to play this game, as the manual is really thin and doesn't say much.
- Grade. Am I supposed to spend my grade points on gems, or are they better saved up for something else later on?
- Party AI. Right now my battles are big piles of "wtf is going here", where I'm doing my thing and my other guys are doing something else. Is there a way to pause and assign specific targets for the AI, like in KotoR/BG?
- S-Type / T-Type. I don't quite get how this works. What's the difference, and which is "better" for a fighter or a caster?
Suggestions appreciated. I know there's plenty of info available on gamefaqs, but each time I take a little peek there I'm exposed to some spoiler, so I'm staying clear of it for the moment.
- Grade. Am I supposed to spend my grade points on gems, or are they better saved up for something else later on?
- Party AI. Right now my battles are big piles of "wtf is going here", where I'm doing my thing and my other guys are doing something else. Is there a way to pause and assign specific targets for the AI, like in KotoR/BG?
- S-Type / T-Type. I don't quite get how this works. What's the difference, and which is "better" for a fighter or a caster?
Suggestions appreciated. I know there's plenty of info available on gamefaqs, but each time I take a little peek there I'm exposed to some spoiler, so I'm staying clear of it for the moment.
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S-Type and T-Type are a bit confusing, they basically determine what abilities your characters learn as they level up. It probably is best to check a faq for that, since it's pretty customiseable and varies per character as to what's effective. Some characters get access to hidden skills based on what path they went, too.
Save it up. After you beat the game, you can load your save and go into the Grade Shop, where you can buy bonuses for your next new game.
I don't think you can give them specific targets, but I think that, in the strategy menu, you can pick options like "Help me out" so they attack what you're attacking or "take out flying enemies" so they...take out flying things first.
S-Type = low, heavy hits. T-Type = Lots of slightly weaker hits. In terms of magic, S-Type will give you huge one hit no/low area spells and T-Type will give you spells that hit a big area/the whole screen.
For the most part, T-Type is better. Lloyd gets the incredibly useful Sword Rain skill tree, Raine gets full party heals, and so on. For a few people, like Presea, S-Type is better. But really, it's completely up to you.
Technically speaking, if you want the absolute best skills for everyone, you'll have a mixture of S and T but that's really annoying and you shouldn't worry about it your first playthrough.
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3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Aha. Don't think I'll be replaying this game though, so is it just gems I'll buy with them then?
Yeah, had a peek at that earlier. I'm setting my damage casters to save most their TP for boss battles, I don't think I want to be going into those menus for every single battle though.
Generally, you don't want to spend your grade on EX Gems. There is a better use for for your grade later.
In the menu, you can set the general strategy for your party members. You can pause and do this during battle. This gives you some degree of control over which enemies your party members will attack, but I don't believe it's possible to manually set the targets for your AI-controlled party members.
There really isn't any "better" choice with regards to S-Type and T-Type, in my opinion. S-Type skills will typically have fewer hits with more damage per hit. T-Type skills will have more hits with less damage per hit. There are certain skills that are overpowered, so there may be a "better" choice in that regard. I'd just go with the flow and not try to max out your damage potential, especially on your first playthrough. One of the fun things about Tales of Symphonia is the joy of unlocking new skills, and I wouldn't want to mess with that by reading too many FAQs. You can always change the orientation later if you feel you really missed out on something.
Also, set up the base strat so your magic users stay back and your melee guys stay up front. Set Raine to Heal.
AI healer > any human playing as Raine, ever.
Set your magic guy (Genis) to stay back and cast spells
Set another magic dood (preferably Raine) to stay back and heal
Set remaining sword packing guy (Kratos or ..uh... that other guy who's name escapes me) to be right in the frontlines
As for who to have your people attack, go ahead and experiment with it... but most of the time you'll be fine letting the AI choose for itself whome to attack.
The S-Type/T-Type thing doesn't have much bearing on the game, it just determines which set of special moves you'll learn as you progress through the game.
Grade is pretty useless, don't worry about it. Only spend it if you REALLY need/want a new EX gem. EX gems grant your characters certain abilities, some far more useful than others, for instance there's a combination of gems that will let Llloyd do a 4 hit combo followed by 3 special moves. There's another combination of gems that will cause your spell casters to never ever fail casting a spell even if they get hit while casting, that one is extremely useful when you get towards the end of the game.
The game pretty much teaches you how to play it, I know when I first started playing the game it all seemed like a huge cluster fuck of nonsense.... but in actuality it is pretty straightforward. Be sure to read all of the tutorials the game gives you. You should be able to access them from your items menu, it will tell you how to fight, use ex gems, perform special moves and combos, everything you could possibly want to know really.
I heart this game... I suddenly want to play through it again!
Oh God yes.
Yeah, that's about the way I feel right now. But I recall feeling the same about Skies of Arcadia at first and I ended up really liking that one, so I'll stick with it for now. Gonna toy around with the AI customization and see what works.
Thanks for the help, guys.
Just for the record, Lloyd gets a tree of Sword Rain on either S and T. He just doesn't get Sword Rain Beta in S and instead of Sword Rain Alpha (which is unchainable off its last hit) gets Sonic Sword Rain, which is.
For the most part though, it's pretty much meaningless which you stick to, except that if you switch to or from S and T as you're going through the game, make sure to delete the old S/T skills so you can learn the replacements and their children skills. The only exception is Raine. You want her to have T, as S doesn't learn any group healing spells.
And suck it up and let people use their TP. You regain about 5% at the end of every battle plus another 1 per hit you do, so it's not like there's a dearth of it, especially early on. Just set the AI of your healers to only use it to heal or the like.
It's also far more useful to set your party to spread their attacks out than to focus on one person. Killing one thing quickly sounds nice, but it takes a lot longer when your cronies are being attacked from behind by the other guys... especially when there are mages or such on the field. I consider Raine compulsory to use for her healing, then set one person to interrupt spells and another to "attack someone that I'm not attacking" or whatever it's called and that'll pretty much get you through the game.
Just one tip: I don't know if you did it yet or not because I don't remember which seal it is... but the first time I got to the Fire Seal, the boss raped me up the ass because I wasn't leveled enough. I know it was near the beginning of the game though... so if the same happens to you, just run around in the desert killin things until you gain a couple levels.
I think that's the only part of the game where you might not be leveled enough when you get to it following the natural progression of the story.
EDIT: Oh, and about TP. During the game you'll get items you can equip that will really reduce the amount of TP your characters use and other stuff like that. So make sure you check out what every item you pick up does in case you pass over something really useful like that.
Speaking of being leveled up enough in the natural course of the story. There's a bit of sequence breaking you can do that's just about right after the fire shrine. After you go through the mountain pass, you're supposed to find a port town. DO NOT go anywhere except the port. It's really close to the exit of the mountain, but some people (due to the angle of the camera, I guess) don't see it and thus end up accidentally forcing themselves through harder path.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Yeah you can go north and get assraped by monsters that are way too powerful for you to handle. It is possible to bypass the port going that way, though.
Also made the mistake of peeking in a FAQ and finding out that there's a shitton of stuff you can "miss", like not getting a certain title for Lloyd if you change his weapon early in the game. O_o I guess that one's more of a "secret", but I'm gonna be paranoid for the rest of the game about missing out on stuff because some arbitrary choice made earlier in the game. Reminds me of FF7, it does.
I usually have Genis learn Explosion and Indignation from T, and learn the necessary skills to pick up Absolute, Atlas, and Prism Sword from S.
Once she learns Revitalize I make sure to ditch Ray, go S-type and pick up Holy Lance.
And Photon is the best spell in the game anyway, so just stick with that for Raine.
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And you can do Photon Tempest with it. That's a fairly decent unison attack you can earn early on.
Though it was fun fighting that Lion guy when I figured out how to Jump. He'd do that beast move, i'd jump over it, and do it to his behind.
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There are all sorts of titles that are nigh impossible to get without stuff from the grade shop anyway.
You're going to miss a bunch of stuff, no matter what. IIRC, it takes a minimum of three playthroughs to get 100% in this game, and to do that you'd have to be playing with the guidebook in your lap. Tales games in general have a shitton of stuff that you'd never find unless someone told you where to look.
Don't worry, there's a New Game+ mode.
I got like... 2 figurines on my first playthrough and then promptly forgot that they existed. I was trying for the low level one, but I miscalculated and ended up about two over the limit no matter how I arranged my party, and even killing people didn't help. That made me a bit grumpy and I haven't really touched it since.
But man did the battle system ever kick ass. Any RPG battle system that's pretty much solely responsible for driving an otherwise utterly forgettable and cliched 40+ hour game is fucking golden in my book. Makes me want to go fire it up again.
Also, tech glitching kicks ass. Lloyd was a fucking monster in my game thanks to it, and Genis too.
It woud be ok except, obviously, I lost all my saves. Plus, I lost one of the big 152 block ones and got a 50 block in return.
I had tons of grade saved, too.
I'ma go replay it again. This'll be more 4th time.