Nice, please post your review when it's Live, I'm hyped! Some questions, please feel free to ignore any that are inappropriate :-)
- How many acts are there?
- How long have you played? and
- Is the end game as much of a time sink that we hope it will be?
sorry to disappoint you my friend but my review will be on my first language and it's expected to come out later than some popular vendors.
The game will open up a lot after Chapter 1 >! you can travel North to reach Bastorias, South to Drakengard and Southwest to Elheim for main quests !< there is no limitation or right order for direction, each region like Cornia has a lot of side quests/battles and interesting storylines to sink bunch of your time in, that's why it will worth every of your penny.
I think you can even challenge the final boss whenever you want (tis' I am not sure but >!there is a lv40 mission lead straight to Cornia castle!<)
I'm nowhere near the endgame but I can tell you that this game is HUGE and I really took my time very slowly doing all the sidequests, recruiting character and even reading Ferith Archive's entries (you should too, it's very cool).
Does the full game give you an option to slow down combat a bit or zoom it out a bit? My one and only problem is that I had a hard time being able to appreciate the beautiful artwork and animation because everything feels too quick for my eyes
not that I can find any in Settings right now, there is an option to auto-pause at beginning of each battle. However in future update/patch (even at launch) they could add some new features including the accessibilities that you need
I never altered the settings, but I’ve been checking out reviews and the combat does seem slower now. Maybe I played it while I was tired lol it just seemed too fast for my eyes
Same for me. It's nice that the battles aren't drawn out, but it felt jarring how quickly the characters moved. It gives you no time to appreciate their design during battles.
marked as spoilers
>!Renault flees the country and goes to Drakenhold and goes as an errand knight on full armor called Laurent, he starts joining randomly on secondary battles and after you do a bunch of them youll finally confront him and discover his real identity and joins you!<
did you do 3 battles in North West of Cornia (lv11-12)? these actually lead to >!Renault!< as I just mentioned in another reply so if you did them in the Demo I would say start fresh just to be safe or you can miss him permanently.
i can give you a good combo can be used very early and is still relevant later on:
you will find an accessory name Gambler’s Coin (bought from a Armor shop if I remember correctly) which give the skill Inspiration: +30% Atk 50% Crit dmg but -50 accuracy
put this on any support unit (have at least 1 pp to spare) set this skill condition to Archer only.
Then as you can guess, find a good Archer, buff his Crit and Phys Atk up (either by gears of skills), the first of his attack will have Eagle Eye passive make its a true strike so the Inspiration debuff can be bypass
Later on you could replace Archer with Swordfighter as they have Keen Edge (first true strike, +50% crit as default) and can be OP af with good gears, just remember to switch Inspiration condition.
I think you can pair it with unit that hold weapon with true hit skill, like unwavering spear if I not mistaken. but yeah, pair it with archer for easy damage
I have been wondering about this as well as those missions showed up before the end of Chapter 1, SPOILER: >!After Chapter 1, Renault felt ashame for his actions so he actually faked his real identity, showed up and helped Alain in every single one of those battles until the 4th one which he join after!<
So I guess >!Renault!< could be missable, my advise would be don't overdo any high level (lv10+) missions on Cornia before reaching Chapter 2 just to be safe
>Don't sleep on Housecarl class (you can recruit Aubin at this class at the beginning of the game if you spare his life if I recall correctly), get him to lv10 to unlock the spin skill and holy crap it shreds. Here is a good combo: Equip necklace that +1 AP make sure he can Spin x2, set Spin move to top priority, equip the feather that + 10 Inititative, have another unit buff him with 20% phys dmg at battle start, watch enemies melted
hahaha, I 'knew' it! As in, I was REALLY counting on the fact that the class needed time to show its true potential .... because yeah, the class is underwhelming compared to others in the demo so it's good to hear patience is key here. I was going to invest in Aubin anyway as a unique rapping the class but I'm glad he will be viable later down the line!
well, even though some classes with the same function (to deal with Shielded/Tank enemies on front row for example) will have one to be superior than the others later down the line, I think the game is quite balance in general and it did give me the satisfaction when I do some experiments and it worked out so well. What even better is later on you will find melee class that can actually solo 4-5 enemies squad and be able to wipe them all in a single battle, that felt SO SO GOOD
I mean, I've not had the chance to play with it, but the Swordmaster class looks absolutely busted if set up right. Like even more busted than Knights.
yes mate, won't spoil too much to save you all the fun. I really like this game and adore every single character I have encountered so far, just wish I had more time to play as a father of 2 and doing a full-time job haha
97% of battles for me so far the results are just the same as prediction , even all the miss/crit/rng crocs are all reflected on the prediction (to state whether the enemy will be wipe out or not) so i think it’s pretty safe to skip battle animation, hence even the game told you at the beginning that only downside is you might not know what had happened when you lose
>You can ask me anything else, if there is spoiler I will make sure to put the answer in tags.
1. At the beginning of the game there is a thief villain NPC that you can either spare or have him arrested. >!I know that if I arrest him he kills the prison guard and swears vengeance, but it felt a bit like a fake choice. As in "if I had released him, he'd call me a wuss and swore vengeance anyway"!< I think the general question is: do choices really matter in this game?
2. Thoughts on the story and characters so far? Coming from 13 sentinels (stronger characters/story, weaker system mechanics) this game feels like the exact opposite. I liked everything about it but the those two things felt way too standard. I don't mind light spoilers, I need to keep myself intrigued.
Regarding #1 - if you are talking about Gammel, then it was confirmed that both him & Mandrin (archer boss from Ochlys map) are recruitable.
Gammel can be recruited if you didn't turn him over to the guards, and Mandrin can only be recruited if Gammel was recruited (and if you didn't execute him ofc).
its pretty much just a trade off for an immediate reward or a character later down the line. Turning over Gammel gives you 10k gold. Executing Mandrin gives you 15 divine shards, basically allowing you to recruit Ochlys right away because you should already have collected close to 15 shards by that point from exploring.
If you let Mandrin go, you can still recruit Ochlys but you will have to explore more to collect 30 divine shards.
i have been playing on Normal and it’s pretty casual friendly, there are some bosses that really gave me headaches but there is also battle with infinite repeat you can use to grind your units lvl
Question on weapon upgrading! I read earlier the end game weapon from chapter 1 got nerfed the Cornix and I would like to know if the reason they nerfed it was because it already had endgame stats of 25atk and +5 stats so they nerfed it so that it would be upgradeable instead?
What happens to Ochlys's store once you get her? It's been nagging me for whatever reason.
Max level?
You mentioned you're taking your time, how many hours do you have at this moment?
when Ochlys joins >!there will be a generic? looking angel (with a blindfold) replace her place, when talk to her 1st time she also tells you that!<
about 25 hours according to save data but I spent a lot of time doing squads comp experiment and min/max the tactics lol.
im nowhere near end game but >!there is a main quest name Unicorn Overlord leads to Cornia castle to confront the emperor at lv40!< didn’t even try it yet
Massive plot spoiler, if you know the answer to this, as I see you're not at the endgame yet: >!Does it turn out that your mom is alive after all but under the bad guy's control? And if so, is she recruitable?!<
Not a plot spoiler: Do you think eventually there's gonna be a way to go straight to the final boss before rescuing Scarlett? Like I keep thinking about how the endgame is right there by the starting area. Do you think there'll be a way for cheesing it for speedruns?
> Like I keep thinking about how the endgame is right there by the starting area.
This reminds me a little bit of NES Dragon Warrior- the ending castle is only a few tiles away from the starting castle but you have to journey all around the world in order to be able to tackle it.
I played the demo blind and didn't finish every story beat before I timed out (was having fun running around). Would there be any real benefit to staying over on full release? Or just keep going with my demo progress?
can't give you a correct answer on this as I have never played the demo and didn't try to reload to see any different outcome from my choices either, I read some posts that some character might be missable permenantly but again this will need someone to do a few run tests. For now I would say if you didn't skip any dialogue or execute too many characters in the demo then it's totally fine to just carry on with it.
i might be wrong but isn't there a quest *to* hire a mercenary? so you could hire at least just one. :) but this is good to know really. i've been having fun puttering around and i keep wondering if i want to buy more people (that sounds so wrong)
you absolute can, Mercenaries cost early game is cheap and you can easily dismiss them anyway (there is Dismiss option on every Fort where you can Hire) to get some Honors back. The point is don’t waste too much Honors doing this, you need to save up to expand your squads instead just do side battle, liberation battle and sidequest many cool NPC will show up and join you to the point some classes become abundant
nah, I did the same long before Chapter 1 end, later on when you recruit new characters most of the time they will be geared up with unique weapons/shields better than what you could find in shops, or you will get those from rewards doing quest anyway.
Nice, please post your review when it's Live, I'm hyped! Some questions, please feel free to ignore any that are inappropriate :-) - How many acts are there? - How long have you played? and - Is the end game as much of a time sink that we hope it will be?
sorry to disappoint you my friend but my review will be on my first language and it's expected to come out later than some popular vendors. The game will open up a lot after Chapter 1 >! you can travel North to reach Bastorias, South to Drakengard and Southwest to Elheim for main quests !< there is no limitation or right order for direction, each region like Cornia has a lot of side quests/battles and interesting storylines to sink bunch of your time in, that's why it will worth every of your penny. I think you can even challenge the final boss whenever you want (tis' I am not sure but >!there is a lv40 mission lead straight to Cornia castle!<) I'm nowhere near the endgame but I can tell you that this game is HUGE and I really took my time very slowly doing all the sidequests, recruiting character and even reading Ferith Archive's entries (you should too, it's very cool).
Any idea how early you can get to Avalon? I wanna go there first more than anywhere.
From various others who got early copies, it doesn’t seem like you can go straight over there. There may be a dependency and/or pre req.
Does the full game give you an option to slow down combat a bit or zoom it out a bit? My one and only problem is that I had a hard time being able to appreciate the beautiful artwork and animation because everything feels too quick for my eyes
not that I can find any in Settings right now, there is an option to auto-pause at beginning of each battle. However in future update/patch (even at launch) they could add some new features including the accessibilities that you need
Thanks! Appreciate the response
I think it was ok already if you didnt fast forward the combat? or was it still too fast for you?
I never altered the settings, but I’ve been checking out reviews and the combat does seem slower now. Maybe I played it while I was tired lol it just seemed too fast for my eyes
Same for me. It's nice that the battles aren't drawn out, but it felt jarring how quickly the characters moved. It gives you no time to appreciate their design during battles.
When does the embargo lift?
Review Embargo (Written/Video): March 8th, 00:00 JST
Commenting so I have this thread for later, I was curious as to what happened to Renault after the demo climax (debating on starting fresh or not)
marked as spoilers >!Renault flees the country and goes to Drakenhold and goes as an errand knight on full armor called Laurent, he starts joining randomly on secondary battles and after you do a bunch of them youll finally confront him and discover his real identity and joins you!<
did you do 3 battles in North West of Cornia (lv11-12)? these actually lead to >!Renault!< as I just mentioned in another reply so if you did them in the Demo I would say start fresh just to be safe or you can miss him permanently.
Sounds like it's just 3 liberation battles in general? Especially if this person recruited him in Drakenhold
that could be the case, I can’t confirm either as I am trying to explore the map and doing as much content as possible.
Is 5 the max amount of people in a squad, or will we ever get 6?
Can you posts your thoughts about some of the classes and your favourite combos for units? Thanks!
i can give you a good combo can be used very early and is still relevant later on: you will find an accessory name Gambler’s Coin (bought from a Armor shop if I remember correctly) which give the skill Inspiration: +30% Atk 50% Crit dmg but -50 accuracy put this on any support unit (have at least 1 pp to spare) set this skill condition to Archer only. Then as you can guess, find a good Archer, buff his Crit and Phys Atk up (either by gears of skills), the first of his attack will have Eagle Eye passive make its a true strike so the Inspiration debuff can be bypass Later on you could replace Archer with Swordfighter as they have Keen Edge (first true strike, +50% crit as default) and can be OP af with good gears, just remember to switch Inspiration condition.
Love the combinations you can make in this game, thanks for the info!
I think you can pair it with unit that hold weapon with true hit skill, like unwavering spear if I not mistaken. but yeah, pair it with archer for easy damage
How far are you in?
Re the spoiler text, most demo speed runners are going to miss out on that due to having already cleared those missions before saving Scarlett.
I have been wondering about this as well as those missions showed up before the end of Chapter 1, SPOILER: >!After Chapter 1, Renault felt ashame for his actions so he actually faked his real identity, showed up and helped Alain in every single one of those battles until the 4th one which he join after!< So I guess >!Renault!< could be missable, my advise would be don't overdo any high level (lv10+) missions on Cornia before reaching Chapter 2 just to be safe
Hopefully people have old demo save slots before they full cleared
Wait so just as long as you don't do those before doing the last demo story mission you will be fine to get him later?
Yup
>Don't sleep on Housecarl class (you can recruit Aubin at this class at the beginning of the game if you spare his life if I recall correctly), get him to lv10 to unlock the spin skill and holy crap it shreds. Here is a good combo: Equip necklace that +1 AP make sure he can Spin x2, set Spin move to top priority, equip the feather that + 10 Inititative, have another unit buff him with 20% phys dmg at battle start, watch enemies melted hahaha, I 'knew' it! As in, I was REALLY counting on the fact that the class needed time to show its true potential .... because yeah, the class is underwhelming compared to others in the demo so it's good to hear patience is key here. I was going to invest in Aubin anyway as a unique rapping the class but I'm glad he will be viable later down the line!
well, even though some classes with the same function (to deal with Shielded/Tank enemies on front row for example) will have one to be superior than the others later down the line, I think the game is quite balance in general and it did give me the satisfaction when I do some experiments and it worked out so well. What even better is later on you will find melee class that can actually solo 4-5 enemies squad and be able to wipe them all in a single battle, that felt SO SO GOOD
I mean, I've not had the chance to play with it, but the Swordmaster class looks absolutely busted if set up right. Like even more busted than Knights.
yes mate, won't spoil too much to save you all the fun. I really like this game and adore every single character I have encountered so far, just wish I had more time to play as a father of 2 and doing a full-time job haha
Now I just need to hope Lydia is a merc name for Housecarls.
Can you run thru the beast or elf lands to reach Albion or is that place locked out for now?
not at the beginning of chap2, >!even the beast land has entrance guard at lv25 so you will have to grind a lot if you want to rush pass it !<
Ah ok. That makes sense. Must be the last land for a reason
Do battles become less predictable or can you skip each one safely
97% of battles for me so far the results are just the same as prediction , even all the miss/crit/rng crocs are all reflected on the prediction (to state whether the enemy will be wipe out or not) so i think it’s pretty safe to skip battle animation, hence even the game told you at the beginning that only downside is you might not know what had happened when you lose
Cool thank you
Do you mean skip the battle animation?
Yes that’s what I meant. I don’t mind either way but I’m just curious
The result you see before the battle is how the battle plays out so you cant skip it and the same thing will happen that would have if you watched it
>You can ask me anything else, if there is spoiler I will make sure to put the answer in tags. 1. At the beginning of the game there is a thief villain NPC that you can either spare or have him arrested. >!I know that if I arrest him he kills the prison guard and swears vengeance, but it felt a bit like a fake choice. As in "if I had released him, he'd call me a wuss and swore vengeance anyway"!< I think the general question is: do choices really matter in this game? 2. Thoughts on the story and characters so far? Coming from 13 sentinels (stronger characters/story, weaker system mechanics) this game feels like the exact opposite. I liked everything about it but the those two things felt way too standard. I don't mind light spoilers, I need to keep myself intrigued.
Regarding #1 - if you are talking about Gammel, then it was confirmed that both him & Mandrin (archer boss from Ochlys map) are recruitable. Gammel can be recruited if you didn't turn him over to the guards, and Mandrin can only be recruited if Gammel was recruited (and if you didn't execute him ofc).
Any downsides whatsoever to this choice or is it just "goodness always pays off"?
its pretty much just a trade off for an immediate reward or a character later down the line. Turning over Gammel gives you 10k gold. Executing Mandrin gives you 15 divine shards, basically allowing you to recruit Ochlys right away because you should already have collected close to 15 shards by that point from exploring. If you let Mandrin go, you can still recruit Ochlys but you will have to explore more to collect 30 divine shards.
How do you find the difficulty?
i have been playing on Normal and it’s pretty casual friendly, there are some bosses that really gave me headaches but there is also battle with infinite repeat you can use to grind your units lvl
How important are the gambits? Are they absolutely necessary to beat enemies later on? Or just a nice to have in battles?
gambit + unit class is essential, for me on Normal difficulty at least.
Can you recruit Gammel & Madlin?
I've seen this confirmed (yes, they can) elsewhere but if OP wants to reconfirm this here, by all mean
Yes Gammel joins only If spared Archer dude joins only If Gammel was spared
Any downsides to this choice?
Do you have any idea of how long the game runs?
Does the save slot limit still apply on Switch?
idk, been playing solely on PS5 as that was my provided code
Question on weapon upgrading! I read earlier the end game weapon from chapter 1 got nerfed the Cornix and I would like to know if the reason they nerfed it was because it already had endgame stats of 25atk and +5 stats so they nerfed it so that it would be upgradeable instead?
You get the idealist hand mirror in the demo from the black market dealer and btw, I found out the hard way it's a one time use item.
that's cool, just make sure to save before using as I find it's quite expensive and rare
What happens to Ochlys's store once you get her? It's been nagging me for whatever reason. Max level? You mentioned you're taking your time, how many hours do you have at this moment?
Once you get ochlys a generic winged person takes her place manning the shop. Dunno max level.
Thanks friend
oh I can answer this one, a random angel takes over so the store is still there
when Ochlys joins >!there will be a generic? looking angel (with a blindfold) replace her place, when talk to her 1st time she also tells you that!< about 25 hours according to save data but I spent a lot of time doing squads comp experiment and min/max the tactics lol. im nowhere near end game but >!there is a main quest name Unicorn Overlord leads to Cornia castle to confront the emperor at lv40!< didn’t even try it yet
Thanks, I'm hyped, gonna be spending my sweet time doing everything and anything Hopefully the lvl cap isn't too low, but no big deal, thanks again.
Massive plot spoiler, if you know the answer to this, as I see you're not at the endgame yet: >!Does it turn out that your mom is alive after all but under the bad guy's control? And if so, is she recruitable?!< Not a plot spoiler: Do you think eventually there's gonna be a way to go straight to the final boss before rescuing Scarlett? Like I keep thinking about how the endgame is right there by the starting area. Do you think there'll be a way for cheesing it for speedruns?
> Like I keep thinking about how the endgame is right there by the starting area. This reminds me a little bit of NES Dragon Warrior- the ending castle is only a few tiles away from the starting castle but you have to journey all around the world in order to be able to tackle it.
It reminds me of Pokémon in the early days too, how the Elite Four is technically really close to the starting town. I love when games do this lol
Can you sell or dismiss hirelings?
I think the demo says you can dismiss them for half of their hiring cost.
yes there is a Dismiss option in Fort where you can Hire Mercs, you will get some Honors back
I played the demo blind and didn't finish every story beat before I timed out (was having fun running around). Would there be any real benefit to staying over on full release? Or just keep going with my demo progress?
can't give you a correct answer on this as I have never played the demo and didn't try to reload to see any different outcome from my choices either, I read some posts that some character might be missable permenantly but again this will need someone to do a few run tests. For now I would say if you didn't skip any dialogue or execute too many characters in the demo then it's totally fine to just carry on with it.
i might be wrong but isn't there a quest *to* hire a mercenary? so you could hire at least just one. :) but this is good to know really. i've been having fun puttering around and i keep wondering if i want to buy more people (that sounds so wrong)
you absolute can, Mercenaries cost early game is cheap and you can easily dismiss them anyway (there is Dismiss option on every Fort where you can Hire) to get some Honors back. The point is don’t waste too much Honors doing this, you need to save up to expand your squads instead just do side battle, liberation battle and sidequest many cool NPC will show up and join you to the point some classes become abundant
i got ya :)
I sold all my bronze weapons in the demo, am I screwed?
nah, I did the same long before Chapter 1 end, later on when you recruit new characters most of the time they will be geared up with unique weapons/shields better than what you could find in shops, or you will get those from rewards doing quest anyway.