apparently the unlocked difficulty you get by beating the game does introduce permadeath, but i have to assume this doesnāt affect the story at all and is ignored in that regard. but who knows, maybe thereās tribute to them at the end?
the post-game is basically one giant battle that is decently fun and letās you recruit all of the Zenoira generals when you beat it. you can also talk to all your party members inside the main city, which is cute and reminds me of stuff like the end of Earthbound or Chrono Trigger.
but itās hard to know what to do with the extra recruits, since there is no DLC (supposedly) planned, no New Game+, and nothing else to do but the Colosseum (i think there are also some one-off battles that unlock). so i guess i will fiddle around with making some kind of super party and play the online battles more, but that will probably get old kind of fast.
Iāve been ill so have had plenty of time to grind through the remaining half. Iām in the beast people continent and I appreciate theyāre still introducing new classes, but I do worry theyāre running out of ideas a little. Every class here just engages in PP shenanigans.
Iāve spent a lot more time doing cleanup elsewhere as you can play for long stretches without doing missions or combat. Just prep and picking up collectibles/rapport conversations is almost worth it given the amount of honour you can get. I think it might be quicker to do compared to some of the longer missions.
The colosseum is my favourite idea for recurring content since it works as both a quick challenge with simple progression but also a place to go to tweak the gambits/equipment for marginally better outcomes. Iām determined to get the dreadnought lady early and am in 4th place there atm. Some of the battles you encounter in the beastperson content can last about 2 minutes before you actually see what your gambit changes do, and it becomes too tedious to watch after a while even though you can theoretically get good intel from it. The gameās complexity kinda thwarts what it wants you to be looking out for and it really doesnāt become worth watching much this late in the game (except the colosseum).
Iām starting to get 5 person units now as well which feels like a huge boost. I think the game never really overcomes the problem of certain characters basically being units unto themselves. If one or more of them are in a unit, that unit is just better. Making a versatile unit out of ānon-heroā classes is really difficult or basically requires a cleric/bishop. Nearly at the final continent but sad to think thereās no NG+ to play around in. Did you know thereās an item you can get to change the appearance of any character but Iām not sure where you buy more. Wish I could do colour co-ordination by default, itād be a really satisfying loop on top of everything else so itās weird itās tied to a rare consumable.
One thing I liked about the last part of this game is how the final mining area you encounter is so generous. You can just go wild with chaining and collecting rare materials.
I never thought about doing this but itās a great idea to have the characters in a āfinalā unit all matching. Wish Iād thought of it before Iād totally exhausted everything that can be done in the game.
Nearly done with Albion and at the endgame. Iām basically skipping every combat encounter except when I reconfigure a unit. Sadly the game devolves into status effects once everyone has beefy stats. It feels like class counters matter less and less the bigger units get.
I spent 40 minutes adjusting equipment.
I recruited a knight called Jerome and it was one of the few ārecruit or executeā cases. I recruited because thereās no reason not to and it turns out Alain was swayed by a witness who testified to Jeromeās character. So not only did Alain let Jerome say his last words like a psychopath while waiting to reveal this NPC, he would retrospectively have never met this person had I chosen execute. Just a weird moment.
Iām ready for the end and the game is maybe one continent too long.
Iām amazed at how many recruits youāre getting 60 hours in. I finally got Amalia and itās nice to have another uberclass up my sleeve. Almost all units are at 5 members and the capital awaits.
I think the game is probably not really that good in a numbers and long-term pacing sense but I wouldnāt have finished 80 hours of it if I didnāt find it quite absorbing.
The exploration and prep phase become a very podcast-friendly shopping list after a while and it is nice to see so much lavish attention on so many parts of the game which you only see for like an hour or even a minute.
Iām convinced that having to tweak and edit 50 gambit and equipment lists over this playtime length is simply an unsolvable game design problem. You just have to enjoy it. Having an optimise function is fine but you really need proper synergy in later encounters with well-synergised enemy groups. Itās funny then that the final boss Galerius is a single unit and is easily countered once you know his move order. He loses because heās outnumbered, you can just stun and AP/PP drain him into submission.
The number of classes is generous but some are just clearly inferior to others in all but a handful of specific cases. I could almost never make Sainted Knights/Paladins or Doom Knights work.
I kinda want to tell Vanillaware that they donāt need to work so hard but then lavishness seems to be their MO.
Loosely related to the discussion, did anyone play Vanillawareās PSP game Grand Knightās History?
I always wanted to play it but it didnāt have an English translation for the longest time (looking it up, seems like it does now though: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/2259/ ). Curious if anyoneās tried it out.
I picked up a copy many years ago in a PSP bargain bin in Japan and I think I would call it manual transmission Unicorn Overlord
I donāt think my Japanese was good enough at the time to fully appreciate it or progress meaningfully, so I should probably give it another shot when I have more time on my hands
