The GWJ JRPG Club / CRPG Club / Strategy Gaming Group Cross-Play Extravaganza - Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark (Q3 2022)

ubrakto wrote:
Math wrote:

I'm not sure how people think the inventory system is complicated. It seems pretty normal to me. (I do never bother to sell anything, though; so my B-squad just gets the hand-me-downs from the A-team.)

It's not that it's complicated, it's just needlessly time-intensive (or at least it is for me): Who had that x version of the rapier? /clickclickclick/ Oh here it is, but what about that other doo-dad? /more clicking/ Now, can I use that with that other class from before? /more clicking/ Well, I thought I'd put those gloves with this character, but now I think this other one needs them. /repeat until the end of time/

It's a constant process of back and forth in the menus that just doesn't seem all that well thought out to me. Granted, I'm a PC type, and I understand it's a console-first design (with seemingly a lot of handheld sensibilities?). Mostly, it's me wanting the game to be something it's not, which isn't especially fair.

Yeah, I can see that. Luckily, I think that the gear it chooses automatically when changing class isn't too bad, though certainly not optimal. As long as you have a decent pool of gear to draw from.

I'm playing with mouse+keyboard on Steam and am definitely fighting against the console-centered choices in the game.

LastSurprise wrote:

I think it's made a little bit worse by the mandatory unequipping and re-equipping people as they change classes.

I always kind of hate that design mechanic. Someone who has learned how to use swords doesn't suddenly stop knowing how to do it because they're studying another thing. I'd rather see skills that allow someone to permanently equip different types of gear -- but just as a thing you get to do forever, not as a passive you have to equip at the cost of something else.

In my opinion this should be a benefit of mastering a class. Maybe setting a mastered class as your subclass would allow weapon/armour usage, or somesuch.

There's a one button optimize gear. Does that not work?

Why does gear even exist as part of the game if "optimize" is the best way to utilize it?

In all seriousness, I find so far that Optimize does a decent enough job, but I prefer my adjusted equipment layouts (mostly in terms of accessories/footwear, though I do like me some unorthodox weapon/armor layouts too).

My favorite part of the game is the class system. Many other games have tried, but none have ever really captured the magic that FFT created. This is the first game since FFT that has really hit close to the mark, and I absolutely adore it. My only complaint would be the stat growths tied to classes, and really, only the speed stat. Because speed is such an important stat in turn based games, anything less than 1.0 growth feels like a penalty I want to avoid at all costs, even if I get bigger gains on other stats. That's probably because a single item can give 100 attack, so getting 5.5 attack instead of 4.0 doesn't feel that great. Getting an extra 1.5 attack when you have 300 doesn't feel impactful, while gaining an extra speed on 130 does.

As for how the gear works, I usually just end up buying extra items when I swap classes and my person is equipped with an older item. If it's a unique item or something I don't have ready access to yet, trying to equip it tells me who has it equipped so I don't have to go hunting for who has it. But I am coming from a background of playing nearly all my JRPGs and SRPGs on console or with a controller.

I can see the rough edges, but I guess I am just used to them so it does not bother me.

About LastSurprise's story point:

Spoiler:

This is the story section that made me start doubting everyone on the Council. Kyrie reveals her own discomfort with someone she thought was upstanding bending the law like she did. It's kind of telling that Kyrie thinks her own actions are fine or justified, but is quite uncomfortable with Primus doing something similar.

Malkroth wrote:

About LastSurprise's story point:

Spoiler:

This is the story section that made me start doubting everyone on the Council. Kyrie reveals her own discomfort with someone she thought was upstanding bending the law like she did. It's kind of telling that Kyrie thinks her own actions are fine or justified, but is quite uncomfortable with Primus doing something similar.

Spoiler:

To be fair, the amount of damage a person who bends the law can do if they do it selfishly or irresponsibly is proportional to the amount of systemic power they have. I'm more worried about a billionaire cheating on their taxes than a grade schooler stealing milk money.

So, I tried the large battles a couple times. It felt like an interesting tactical conundrum: all of my characters are in this narrow bottom area and the enemy is above, on this large top area. The harpies came down and released some dogs, which I was able to kill off, but most of the other enemies just milled around upstairs buffing each other, which I had to wait through.

Worse though, they were resurrecting and fully healing most the enemies I killed, pretty much at their leisure. I find it a bit unusual that resurrection can be done anywhere in the map. Seems like most games you have to be near the body.

Anyway, this was going nowhere fast, so I decided I had to make a push forward. I had to either take out their healers or just outdamage their healing/rezing. But it takes so long to maneuver everyone into their usual positions: tanks first, then melee DPS, then casters, then healers. The healers are slow! They can't climb well. I guess I needed to outfit everyone with jumping boots. It didn't work out, and eventually people got picked off. I was gonna wind up with characters having like 10 injuries as both sides just repeatedly resurrected everyone who died. I got frustrated and quit. This happened 2-3 times.

So... I'm thinking my best bet is to just stay downstairs and fight a long, cautious, attritional battle with Yates using his undead spell to deny them bringing back their dead, one by one. Honestly, this sounds kind of painful, but I'm up for it. It'd be a good idea to get all my secondary characters up to a higher level first though, so they're not pulling the team down. Let me just do a couple of story missions as a palate cleanser... get to the next town, get some better gear. You might be able to predict where this is going.

The autoleveling kicks in and now the enemies are several levels higher! Ugh.

The 4th Temple was the hardest fight yet, since you get funneled into a choke point and the first enemy has reraise on. And there are two root traps on either side of a bridge over lava, so if you try to flank him, you get rooted, and then he pushes you into the lava. I had to restart several times since I was just playing dumb. Eventually I had to switch to my ‘real’ classes to get the fight done, since I was still working on building up AP for several story characters to get some extra abilities from new classes and didn’t have my real setup in place. Just rolling with whatever had worked some up to this point, but that fight wasn’t allowing it, so out came War Mage/Marked Kyrie and Demon Knight/Reaver Anadine to wreck things.

Also, that link that Stele dropped yesterday mentioned a cleave combo that only a couple of classes can use, and holy cow is it powerful. It turns the slow Anadine into an absolute killing machine, taking out soft, squishy units with no trouble whatsoever and often nailing two kills in a turn if played right. Can’t say enough how useful that is, even if it means you’re always flirting with death as her power goes up as her health goes lower. It’s kind of hilarious how strong it is, and I’ve offset her short range with like +2 or +3 range with boots so she can go out and stab pretty much whatever she wants whenever she wants.

Spoilers for the 4th temple fight, including story wise.

Spoiler:

So we learn who the leaders of Sigil are, and their ties to the party. Something had to make it personal, I suppose. Then Anadine blows them up. She was at like 20 HP and was using those big ‘sacrifice HP for massive damage’ attacks, and hit the man for like 500 damage, then the next turn hit a crit on the little goblin for 750. It was hilarious from a damage standpoint and a story standpoint. You were my mom's partner, now I'm slicing you into next year.

But then story stuff had to happen, because of course we’re not done. And the entirely predictable betrayal is revealed.

I’m also at the point where most of my main generic units are getting and mastering the Badge classes, like Princess, Lord, and Lich. By this point, I have either gotten one or two drops of each, and/or can craft more if I want. Only the generic units can use them, so unless you have an army of generic units in rotation, there's enough to go around. I’m trying to rotate them through as many as I can where I can, particularly the mages since several of the good badge classes are for them (princess, lich, vessel). I only have one generic melee unit, so he's picking up lord and vampire, to go with the rest of the classes he's running through.

gewy wrote:

...
So... I'm thinking my best bet is to just stay downstairs and fight a long, cautious, attritional battle with Yates using his undead spell to deny them bringing back their dead, one by one. Honestly, this sounds kind of painful, but I'm up for it. It'd be a good idea to get all my secondary characters up to a higher level first though, so they're not pulling the team down. Let me just do a couple of story missions as a palate cleanser... get to the next town, get some better gear. You might be able to predict where this is going.
...

I am not sure how far into the class progression you are, but if enemy resurrection is getting too bothersome, look at getting a Ranger and Assassin in your setup. Monsters killed by Collect Pelt and humans killed by Collect Bounty cannot be rezzed (it also bypasses reraise). These are pretty invaluable skills to have available since they prevent this battle of attrition. As you noted, Yates' ability also can be useful if you pick someone off without a "Collect" ability.

For that mass battle, you really need some characters with good mobility and jumping. About half my roster could jump without needing to go to the scaffolding, or on that narrow second tier had enough vertical reach that they did not need to go higher. I also accidentally sent one of my characters through the door into the fighting ring where she got jumped by three enemies. Luckily it was my person who started as a knight so she survived (just barely) because my healer had like +3 range on her spells and could heal her from the narrow ledge.

I mentioned it awhile ago, but mobility is key to this game. My minimum at this point is 4 move and 6 jump, but really, 8 jump is much nicer. Wayfarer Treads (which are craftable) give you 1 move and 2 jump which gets nearly every class to that 4/6 combo, and a pair of Impala Boots (also craftable) gives an additional +4 jump. That takes up most your accessory slots to do that, so you have no status protection, but it really does free up how and where your characters can move. I always have two people with Panacea 2 which removes all debuffs, and I am up to 3 Remedy uses, so I can fairly easily remove the more annoying set of debuffs.

hbi2k wrote:
Malkroth wrote:

About LastSurprise's story point:

Spoiler:

This is the story section that made me start doubting everyone on the Council. Kyrie reveals her own discomfort with someone she thought was upstanding bending the law like she did. It's kind of telling that Kyrie thinks her own actions are fine or justified, but is quite uncomfortable with Primus doing something similar.

Spoiler:

To be fair, the amount of damage a person who bends the law can do if they do it selfishly or irresponsibly is proportional to the amount of systemic power they have. I'm more worried about a billionaire cheating on their taxes than a grade schooler stealing milk money.

Spoiler:

I probably should not have posted since I was trying to rush out the door and could not quite finish my thoughts. You make a good point about the degree of power the person bending the rules has being a factor, but Kyrie is an Arbiter, an enforcer of the law, and accountable only to the Council. In your example she's not quite a billionaire, but definitely close to like a business leader or politician. She has lots of power and was using her knowledge of the law to bend it to get what she wanted. And I was more trying to make a point of, "Kyrie is a lawful, moral, and honorable person, but she may have some blind spots."

The story definitely feels like it is walking that "Who watches the Watchmen," type of story. These people (Council and Arbiters) have been entrusted with lots of power and the responsibility of keeping the peace, but we have come to the point where most of those people have become corrupt, using their power for their own ends.

Sundown wrote:

Also, that link that Stele dropped yesterday mentioned a cleave combo that only a couple of classes can use, and holy cow is it powerful. It turns the slow Anadine into an absolute killing machine, taking out soft, squishy units with no trouble whatsoever and often nailing two kills in a turn if played right. Can’t say enough how useful that is, even if it means you’re always flirting with death as her power goes up as her health goes lower. It’s kind of hilarious how strong it is, and I’ve offset her short range with like +2 or +3 range with boots so she can go out and stab pretty much whatever she wants whenever she wants.

...

I’m also at the point where most of my main generic units are getting and mastering the Badge classes, like Princess, Lord, and Lich. By this point, I have either gotten one or two drops of each, and/or can craft more if I want. Only the generic units can use them, so unless you have an army of generic units in rotation, there's enough to go around. I’m trying to rotate them through as many as I can where I can, particularly the mages since several of the good badge classes are for them (princess, lich, vessel). I only have one generic melee unit, so he's picking up lord and vampire, to go with the rest of the classes he's running through.

Yeah once I got to that point starting loving Anadine more.

I got one princess/lord badge and that was one place I stalled out. Couldn't decide who to convert. I thought I would just take a break for the weekend but now it's been 12 days since I played or something.

Maybe I should just jump in and try to finish with the good builds I had instead of trying to chase more great builds heh.

And since there was some conversation on that first mass battle, I got through it by basically a war of attrition. I think I had one unit clog up the stairs on one side, then rushed everyone else to the other, and healed off the chip damage from their gunner and mages until they started coming down the stairs one by one. I basically got to the point where I could kill two of their units for every one they could resurrect, so was slowly winning even though most of my team was on low health. And eventually, I snuck a couple of units up the stairs I had blocked off to get to the higher ground so I could stab their healer in the back, and the AI ignored them for some reason. From there, the mop up was relatively easy. In all it took about an hour, and I don't know if I would do it again. It seems like if there is another battle that big with later game abilities, it'll be too hard to keep track of everything.

Sundown wrote:

And since there was some conversation on that first mass battle, I got through it by basically a war of attrition. I think I had one unit clog up the stairs on one side, then rushed everyone else to the other, and healed off the chip damage from their gunner and mages until they started coming down the stairs one by one. I basically got to the point where I could kill two of their units for every one they could resurrect, so was slowly winning even though most of my team was on low health. And eventually, I snuck a couple of units up the stairs I had blocked off to get to the higher ground so I could stab their healer in the back, and the AI ignored them for some reason. From there, the mop up was relatively easy. In all it took about an hour, and I don't know if I would do it again. It seems like if there is another battle that big with later game abilities, it'll be too hard to keep track of everything.

I fought at that same location a second time (a "Large Patrol") and they had my team start on the highest level with enemies down below. It also gave me a friendly NPC mender who was largely useless.

Well. I've just done a new "hunt" mission. It took me an hour and twenty minutes. An hour and twenty minutes.

First time I gave up after the first turn because one of the creatures used an ability called "intimidate" (I think) and made every single one of my party fall asleep. All of them. Three of them were dead at the end of the first turn and the rest had two more turns of sleep left. That one I just went back to the loading screen.

Attempt 2, I bought a load of those things that give you sleep immunity (I'm swimming in cash at the moment) and tried again. At no point during this second attempt did any of the creatures use that ability again.

However, they did continually cast rebirth on each other, or resurrections if they couldn't. I killed every single creature at least 3 times if not more. One of them I killed six times. Six Times

You want to know what's not fun? That. Criminal offense No. 1 in gaming. Making a game not fun. I'll mostly just be pushing through story missions at this point thank you very much. If you are going to pull sh*t like that, then make bloody sure you explain it before the fight starts.

It's nearly as bad as the ridiculous spell resistances in Pathfinder games.....

I think a lot of people need to go to options, difficulty, and set Enemies Use Revive to None and enjoy the game a lot more.

No! We will soldier through on default settings and grumble about it!

gewy wrote:

No! We will soldier through on default settings and grumble about it!

This is the way.

I've seldom run into situations where I felt I just plain couldn't keep up with enemy healing / revives. While obviously I'd prefer if the enemy stayed dead, and try to use abilities that prevent revives (like Yates' zombify ability), when a revive does get through, I've typically wasted at least two enemy turns (one to revive and another to heal the revived unit back to fighting strength) plus moved a front-line enemy that had been threatening my units into the back row where they're, at least temporarily, less of a threat. So I'm at least making some kind of progress.

But then, I'm playing on Beginner, so that might affect the math a bit.

I've finished 5 missions, I think, since I last posted here: the next story mission at Oldebzar, an optional patrol there, a return to the desert to get a very-high-up treasure chest, the sidequest at Restful Stones, and then a patrol there. On the story front:

Spoiler:

Got Bzaro! Very excited for that. And, in sending mercenaries to kill us, I've got confirmation that Septimus is a baddie. No word yet if that means Primus is good, or just a different kind of bad.

Oldebzar had an interesting layout, plus a character restriction (couldn't bring Reiner) made the fight a bit more complicated than it might have been. I did the patrol because I noticed, after clearing it, that Oldebzar had a treasure chest. The patrol was extra tough, especially as the map introduced me to Sorcerers and their giant, hard hitting, area-affect spells. Oof. Then at the end of the map, I found that I couldn't access the treasure chest after all. Womp womp.

The desert map was a slog, and made worse by the presence of two Daodrenners -- those things that look like a furry unicorn with a long giraffe neck -- that were AMAZING healers. But by the time I got there, I had also acquired a wrangler from one of the missions! So I made it my goal to capture it, and after a slog, was successful!

After the battle, I was very excited to use this animal. I got even more excited after realizing, in the crafting menu, that two items of animal-specific armor (the Black Collar and White Collar) give +10 speed, in addition to other decent stat gains, in addition to good elemental resistance. I slapped the Black Collar on this new companion to negate his vulnerability to dark damage and sent him out into Restful Stones. Unfortunately, I lost him very quickly when the enemy focused on him, and also had my Anatomist get injured (and a 3rd unit that I forget). Clearing those injuries was part of why I stayed behind for an extra Patrol mission there. The other reason, of course, was finding that extra treasure chest. It was tricky to find and I had to look it up:

Spoiler:

There's a button on one of the statues that you have to interact with in order to open up a grave and get a Blood Crest (for vampires).

Next, it's either on with the story, on to that 9-person fight, or on to the Arena for a 3-fight series. Not sure what I'll tackle next, honestly.

Oh, and I also learned that those missions which award a bonus unit seem to award it at around Kyrie's level. Plus any tamed monsters will, of course, be at the level they were at on the map where you tamed them. My new Wrangler, Daodrenner, and another new tamed animal (that flying monster) are immediately able to contribute.

So at Scene 42, I finally hit my first thing that really annoys me in combat. I’ll drop it in spoilers since it spoils things both storyline-wise and mechanics-wise.

Spoiler:

Remember when people thought it was interesting when an Immortal joined you in combat and started dropping the enemies into the water for 1 hit kills? It’s a lot less amusing when they do it to you. I quit out before I got wiped, and then checked, since I thought I had “can swim” as one of the traits for each of the areas. I don’t know if that is only for patrols or what, but it turns out there is a narrow slice of the map north of Illuster that us up in the mountains which isn’t covered by any of the zones of control, and thus nothing applies there regardless of how that mechanic works.

Anyway, I’m going to grind a little, put flippers on my whole party and try that again. And considering they had a gunner that was using the All for One combo from the knight, I think the game is trying to subtly teach you powerful stuff by using it on you in key battles.

And I think I've reached the point (it happened earlier, but this is the real one) where you're screwing around sets and grinding out AP can't be used anymore in story missions. There is less class shuffling as a result. Fortunately most of the regulars are pretty well set at this point, so the only thing left to do is grind a little, change up my equipment as needed, then get back in there and try again.

LastSurprise wrote:
Spoiler:

There's a button on one of the statues that you have to interact with in order to open up a grave and get a Blood Crest (for vampires).

I found that button/chest combo while playing yesterday, but couldn't hop down into the hole to actually access the chest. At first, I thought I just didn't have someone with enough jumping, but on a subsequent map there was a similar item on a lower ledge, and my guy with jet boots on still couldn't hop down to get it. Am I missing something?

Rolled credits on the game. This was a fun one, and I'm glad I took part. Took a little bit for me to fully get on the game's wavelength, and it maybe overstayed its welcome by a couple missions, but overall, it was a good one. I'm glad I didn't try to get too completionist. I didn't use the DLC, I didn't try to master all the classes, and I never wound up messing with the Vampire or Reiner's unique class (never found them organically, didn't look up how to do it) or the Lord (got the badge, only to realize that all my generic martial characters were ladies) at all. I stumbled through without a walkthrough, doing a lot of trial and error and only checking a wiki when I got stuck or wanted clarification on how some ability worked, and probably had more fun than if I'd tried to shoot for the One Pure Perfectly Min-Maxed Build for everyone.

Spoiler:

The story was fine, ending was fine. Sequel hook!

There are far too many DLC missions that essentially boil down to "if you do not have the exact build and happen to know the exact counter for the monsters here, you will die". Of course the others are a cakewalk, it's the difficulty spikes that just speaks to a developer not thinking it through. They are all over the place.

I'm not sure what they were thinking with it to be honest - I can see the idea but it's just more busy work at the end of the day. I'm starting to regret getting the game with it packaged up.

ubrakto wrote:
LastSurprise wrote:
Spoiler:

There's a button on one of the statues that you have to interact with in order to open up a grave and get a Blood Crest (for vampires).

I found that button/chest combo while playing yesterday, but couldn't hop down into the hole to actually access the chest. At first, I thought I just didn't have someone with enough jumping, but on a subsequent map there was a similar item on a lower ledge, and my guy with jet boots on still couldn't hop down to get it. Am I missing something?

I don't think so? Only thing I can think of is that the chest occupies one of the two tiles in the hole, so maybe if you had range to get to that square but not the other one, the game was not letting you jump on top of the chest.

I think I know the other map you're talking about. Is it the one with all the ropes that allow some vertical climbing? If so, I just played that map earlier today and I had no trouble getting the chest. But the perspective was a little weird, because I think the tiles leading up to the chest were actually behind the bridge that passes overhead. Maybe you didn't quite have as much distance as you thought, to get behind the bridge?

Beyond that I have no ideas.

hbi2k wrote:

Rolled credits on the game. This was a fun one, and I'm glad I took part. Took a little bit for me to fully get on the game's wavelength, and it maybe overstayed its welcome by a couple missions, but overall, it was a good one. I'm glad I didn't try to get too completionist. I didn't use the DLC, I didn't try to master all the classes, and I never wound up messing with the Vampire or Reiner's unique class (never found them organically, didn't look up how to do it) or the Lord (got the badge, only to realize that all my generic martial characters were ladies) at all. I stumbled through without a walkthrough, doing a lot of trial and error and only checking a wiki when I got stuck or wanted clarification on how some ability worked, and probably had more fun than if I'd tried to shoot for the One Pure Perfectly Min-Maxed Build for everyone.

Congrats!

I had the same problem with Lord. My starting mage was a guy, mender a girl, and then I just keep creating female characters. So all my non story physical fighters are women. Oops.

Quietly chipping away here - after initially not being so impressed, spent some time understanding the basics and buying lots of gear upgrades.
On my way to the 4th temple now. I’ve had to retry a few battles because I wasn’t prepared, but now things are starting to get difficult and needing multiple tries. I’m starting to see enemies that can hit twice, or kill with one hit. And still on “beginner” difficulty.
The class / skill system is interesting but it’s very easy to accidentally limit your characters if you forget to go back to “assign skills” after “change class”. Still having fun though.

I've not really been trying to grind, but I've gone back into maps to get treasure chests that I missed, or to find the Obelisk clues when I didn't get them initially. I also did the first big 9-person battle, one of the optional hunts, and an optional mission to get one of the story characters. And in every fight, I always use Kyrie.

So even though there's level scaling, by the time I got back to the story missions, Kyrie and my primary characters were a couple levels above the top of the level ranges for those maps. I was fun to wreck the enemy!

hbi2k wrote:

Rolled credits on the game.

Congrats! I'll get you leveled tomorrow.

LastSurprise wrote:
ubrakto wrote:
LastSurprise wrote:
Spoiler:

There's a button on one of the statues that you have to interact with in order to open up a grave and get a Blood Crest (for vampires).

I found that button/chest combo while playing yesterday, but couldn't hop down into the hole to actually access the chest. At first, I thought I just didn't have someone with enough jumping, but on a subsequent map there was a similar item on a lower ledge, and my guy with jet boots on still couldn't hop down to get it. Am I missing something?

I don't think so? Only thing I can think of is that the chest occupies one of the two tiles in the hole, so maybe if you had range to get to that square but not the other one, the game was not letting you jump on top of the chest.

I think I know the other map you're talking about. Is it the one with all the ropes that allow some vertical climbing? If so, I just played that map earlier today and I had no trouble getting the chest. But the perspective was a little weird, because I think the tiles leading up to the chest were actually behind the bridge that passes overhead. Maybe you didn't quite have as much distance as you thought, to get behind the bridge?

Beyond that I have no ideas.

Yep, the second map is that rope ladder one, but I was able to get to the chest in the background. (Yay, jet boots!) But there was another container in the foreground where you place your squad that I couldn't get to. Like, I have no idea what I'm not doing to access these, but it's probably stupid obvious, and I'll be embarrassed as hell when I inevitably find out I just didn't locate the mouse cursor properly or something.

ubrakto wrote:

Yep, the second map is that rope ladder one, but I was able to get to the chest in the background. (Yay, jet boots!) But there was another container in the foreground where you place your squad that I couldn't get to. Like, I have no idea what I'm not doing to access these, but it's probably stupid obvious, and I'll be embarrassed as hell when I inevitably find out I just didn't locate the mouse cursor properly or something.

For reason that aren’t really very clear you need

Spoiler:

riftwalker boots

to reach that container. Only go careful - I’ve been back to that map several times to try and reach that container and at higher levels it spawns some really dangerous, continuously rehealing, multiple actions per turn monsters. Last time four of my squad died. Including the one with the right equipment.

I don’t think I needed those. I just used flier

Spoiler:

Bzaro, set to the Arpia class

I had a creature that could fly but they couldn’t reach it? Maybe it has to be a named person or something. You probably need to be able to move far enough too.