Though, speaking of builds, I haven't had much luck with my Cyclops yet. I love the idea of a spellcasting monster, but... well. He doesn't Meditate or Concentrate (at least up to Level 22.) His MND is terrible, so without Concentrate, status spells are hopeless. His INT's not bad for nuke spells, he nukes roughly like any other non-Wizard who has nukes. His physical attacks are of course, not quite up to the usual monster standard probably because he's also kind of a spellcaster. His special attacks so far (at Level 22) inflict conditions I largely don't value (reduced movement, reduced jump, and reduced evasion against bow attacks.)
The best thing I've managed to do is throw him into melee to take advantage of the MP charging from dealing/receiving attack damage and then have him use Spellcharge to funnel the MP to characters who will make better use of it, but that's not satisfying and will stop being useful at all if I ever find a steady supply of Magic Leaf.
At this point I'm hoping he gets something better at higher levels, or I find an accessory that changes things.
Any opinions on which platform to play on? PC, PS5 or Switch? I saw a review say things are too small to play handheld on the Switch.
I disagree with that review, loudly. It feels ideal on the Switch to me.
Played this a couple years ago for the JRPG Club and can't wait to try out the remake. If only P5 Royal didn't have its claws dug into me quite so deeply...
I started on PC and then switched to Switch. I like the ease in putting the Switch to sleep in a middle of a battle and also the portability Tactis-on-th-go ease.
I was going to skip this, due to finishing it on PSP, but I ended up with some credit and couldn't help myself. I'm really enjoying it so far. There's really nothing like this style of game for me. I've spent a lot of time with Let Us Cling Together, FFT, FFTA, etc. I am wondering if I'm misremembering that in LUCT you could mix and match skills between classes. I keep hoping the deeper I get in the more flexibility I'll have with individual characters, but it seems like it's lacking that.
LUCT had a very limited ability to do that, but it wasn't very extensive and didn't allow any drastic hybrids, it was mostly things like Fighters being able to use Rampart Aura, Knights being able to use Sanctuary, and some weapon/recruitment skills I think? Nothing like, say, a Wizard using two-handed swords or a Berserker flinging Divine magic.
You'll still end up with plenty of flexibility though: with only being able to pick 4 skills per character and all of them eventually getting many, many more than that, there ends up being a ton of ways to build a given class. Granted, it tends to be flexibility within the class' theme, rather than anything like D&D multiclassing, but it should still feel pretty meaty. 
Heads up this is 30% off the Switch physical edition on Amazon, Best Buy, and Gamestop. That was enough of a discount for me to bite. I ended up going through BB as the amazon ETA was in February and Gamestop had $8 shipping as opposed to the $4 from Best Buy.
Looking forward to scratching that FFT itch!
I just got this for Christmas! (Hurray for subtle hints.)
Now I just have to wait until I'm actually in a place I can play it... which won't be for a few days yet.
Saw credits! What a game.
Slowly working my way through this. Just got to the first big decision in chapter 1 and...woof.
I chose to you know, not massacre a bunch of innocent people who just want to be left alone. Vyce's character portrait changeup is pretty funny there. He goes full on gremlin at literally the drop of a hat.
Slowly working my way through this. Just got to the first big decision in chapter 1 and...woof.
Spoiler:I chose to you know, not massacre a bunch of innocent people who just want to be left alone. Vyce's character portrait changeup is pretty funny there. He goes full on gremlin at literally the drop of a hat.
Yeah, its quite a thing. I remember the first time I got to that point (in an earlier version of the game, years back) and being both shocked and impressed that the game went there.
If you have a bit of time and an earlier save, I recommend replaying that decision and going the other way (assuming you haven't already), just to compare and contrast the immediate outcomes.
WellAdjusted wrote:Slowly working my way through this. Just got to the first big decision in chapter 1 and...woof.
Spoiler:I chose to you know, not massacre a bunch of innocent people who just want to be left alone. Vyce's character portrait changeup is pretty funny there. He goes full on gremlin at literally the drop of a hat.
Yeah, its quite a thing. I remember the first time I got to that point (in an earlier version of the game, years back) and being both shocked and impressed that the game went there.
If you have a bit of time and an earlier save, I recommend replaying that decision and going the other way (assuming you haven't already), just to compare and contrast the immediate outcomes.
I do have a separate save set aside from this, but I believe they added in a function with the remaster where you can just go back to a previous decision point and resume playing from there. Whether or not I have enough time to do that is another matter...
On a separate point, is there something I'm missing with how in-battle recruitment works? There were a couple of lizard dudes that looked interesting earlier in chapter one, and I'm pretty sure the skill my wizard had to recruit a lizard was the correct one to use (the percentage display that popped up when selecting that unit with the skill did have one of the "no-go" red circles with a stroke through it), but the percentage never moved from 0 even when their health was down in the ~50ish range. Were they just particularly loyal lizard guys?
Finally gotten some playtime in. It's mostly been a matter of getting my head around the differences from the PSP version, 'unlearning' certain habits (for example thinking in terms of how experience is distributed across classes, and then remembering that's not a thing anymore), and having mixed feelings about the voice acting (almost nobody sounds like they originally did in my head). Still enjoying it though.
A few early random observations:
- It's quite nice getting more immediate access to certain spells and abilities like Spiritsurge, Meditate and Exorcism. The new 'auto' skill category is interesting too.
- It's going to be difficult getting used to not being able to give Rampart Aura to most of my frontliners.
- The battles so far have been mostly easier than on the PSP it seems, possibly due to certain abilities being available early—early days though, and certainly not in all aspects.
- The AI behaves somewhat differently from before. I think generally smarter, but the jury's out.
- It's a shame the rogue class in apparently NPC only (not that I'm that far into the game yet); last time I played I made Denam a rogue, so now I actually have to rethink my build plans.
- Man, those blue cards just appear everywhere.
An observation about a certain very early optional fight that might constitute very mild spoilers, so I tagged it to be safe:
Okay, doing Quadriga Fortress immediately upon it becoming available was pretty brutal. It was always a step up in difficulty in the PSP version, but in that version I could consistently defeat Nybeth without any incapacitations, nor with Vyce or Catiua bailing out early. In this version, I had at least five incapacitations, and Vyce was just gone after a point. Though I did manage to win the fight on my one attempt, it was something of a rough slog. That said, with some better item preparations and maybe a training fight or two, I'm ready to give it another go to see if I can win it more 'cleanly'.
I hate to admit that I grinded to get through that “cleanly”. The process was off-putting enough that between that and the lack of character customization I went back to playing Phantom Brave. Reborn seems like a good game, but I wish it was closer to the PSP game.
It does seem, given the ability to switch class easily and 'inherit' all the skills available up to your level, that the game is now more about customising your battle party on the fly for the next fight than gradually developing a unique set of characters over the course of the game. I guess I'll see how I feel about that in the later chapters when I start getting more special characters dropped into my party roster.
On the plus side, the addition of the 'scout' command at least means you know what you're fighting, so you can actually do that customisation on the fly. I really liked the prior versions of the game, but the number of times I deployed my frontline, only to have to restart the level because the layout of the map wasn't what I expected—or in at least one chapter, there was an actual building directly in the way...
I do wish it had a classic mode. I would have dipped into that, even as someone who never played the original.
I found a bunch of classes (and their marks) in hidden encounters, so I suspect there is a way to get Denam to be a Rogue. I also failed to unlock a bunch of classes (now that I beat it I've been googling lol.)
Difficulty wise I found it quite varied in a decent way. There were some stretches that were brutal and some that felt easy. I definitely found that I rarely settled into a "standard" party for any stretch.
Huge difficulty spike came for me on the Chaos route in I *think* Chapter 3 (might have been tail end of 2?) - it made thematic sense because it felt like Denam was making a choice that would create rather insurmountable odds.
Okay, I just redid the Nybeth fight, and this time...
...I managed to do it without any incapacitations, guest character bailouts or use of the chariot tarot, so I'm obviously pretty happy about that. I didn't need to train, but I did load up every character with a couple of +1 cure leaves each to make absolutely sure I'd have enough healing on hand, and also used some items at the start to give 'sidestep' to my support characters and 'resilience' to my frontliners (though to be honest I'm not sure how much impact that had). I basically just had everyone congregate at the foot of the fortress, then focused on healing over damage and on keeping the undead stilled with only limited exorcisms (to stop Nybeth summoning too many fresh undead). Eventually Nybeth was close enough that Voltare and Canopus could tag-team him with the occasional assist from Denam and Sara (who otherwise had other problems to deal with). I was probably lucky that Vyce didn't get too far ahead this time—that was usually the problem with playing this fight defensively in the PSP version.
Onwards!
It does seem, given the ability to switch class easily and 'inherit' all the skills available up to your level, that the game is now more about customising your battle party on the fly for the next fight than gradually developing a unique set of characters over the course of the game. I guess I'll see how I feel about that in the later chapters when I start getting more special characters dropped into my party roster.
This is my beef with it. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I feel like Let Us Cling Together was closer to FFT where each character would have learned skills that made them unique.
That's part of why I returned to Phantom Brave for now. I really enjoy having characters that are highly customized. It's what I loved about FFTA and FFT, the games that originally got me into this genre.
On the plus side, the addition of the 'scout' command at least means you know what you're fighting, so you can actually do that customisation on the fly. I really liked the prior versions of the game, but the number of times I deployed my frontline, only to have to restart the level because the layout of the map wasn't what I expected—or in at least one chapter, there was an actual building directly in the way...
True. I'll return to this game. The polish is unparalleled. It's just not what I want right this minute.
One thing that's really been bothering me is how obtuse all of the status effects are. Like, if there's an item I can buy that will give a unit the spellslip effect, if I hit the - button on the Switch to bring up all the explanation of all the stuff on the screen...under effect it just tells me that the unit will be afflicted with spellslip. Thanks game, I got that from the item description. What does that actually mean? Is that something I want on one of my units or to apply to an enemy?
If you look at a weapon that applies a debuff in the crafting menu it tells you what it does, but it's frustratingly difficult to figure out what any of this stuff does, especially given that some of the effects are so powerful.
I feel your pain. I wan new to Reborn and bounced, at least for now, for similar reasons
I've played the PSX version, PSP version, and now am playing Reborn, and I can't quite put my finger on why but this feels like the toughest version yet. That or I'm old and rusty and not as good at strategy JRPG's as I used to be. I'm very happy with it though, but I think so far I prefer the mechanics of the PSP variation the most so far.
It’s much tougher. I’ve tried to put my finger on it as well, but I think it’s because there isn’t a distinct way to optimize character builds to get an advantage.
This was almost 50% off during Black Friday this year, so I thought I’d finally give it a try, as I had always wanted to play it. So far I’m digging it. But I was immediately confused by it telling me it was part VII… and then it turns out there have only five games all together? Pretty odd. Also the battles are a bit long for my taste, luckily I can just put the Switch into rest mode. The lengths of the battles must have been a pain in 1995 on the SNES.
This was almost 50% off during Black Friday this year, so I thought I’d finally give it a try, as I had always wanted to play it. So far I’m digging it. But I was immediately confused by it telling me it was part VII… and then it turns out there have only five games all together? Pretty odd. Also the battles are a bit long for my taste, luckily I can just put the Switch into rest mode. The lengths of the battles must have been a pain in 1995 on the SNES.
I think the original developers had this whole myth arc in mind for the Ogre Battle series that never got realised. Fortunately the game stands on its own, albeit with some references to and recurring characters from the original Ogre Battle ('Part V', if I remember correctly) for those few (like me!) who've played it.
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