"DRPG" Stranger of Sword City

[mogwaimon]

I was mostly concerned about multi-classing because of my mages, since Cleric gets native MP regen so it has more staying power, but I find my cleric sitting on its ass waiting to heal or tossing an occasional buff more often than not while my wizard blows through all her mana but has nothing to regain it with. I realize Cleric later gets Mana Exchange but that means risking my healer being down. So I'll probably just multi-class those two characters and the Samurai since SAM/NIN seems to be highly recommended here.

Not fond of the overly sensitive level scaling mechanics either, makes it a lot tougher to fight under-leveled.

I realize that is the common motivation. Absolutely NOT worth it, IMO. Like you noticed, Cleric gets Mana Exchange and can fill the Wizard up (although that is deceptive, the wizard will have a much higher MP pool total , so he will get mana from cleric only once he's actually very low). In a pinch, there are also MP pots. Mana Regeneration is based on Piety and the first Mana Heal I is actually very weak. Mana Heal I is absolutely not worth it. Mana Heal II is much better, but then the grind to reach it becomes serious business.

Only for hardcore grinders IMO, along with the Cleric status effect immunity ability. Very neat, but absolutely not necessary. Particularly considering that you can spam Spirit Wall for the same, party wide, effect. Sure, it costs Morale.... but you should put it to good use anyway, right? And with a high Piety/Luck Dancer Morale is an endless resource.

For me, it's much more important to get the high level caster abilities and spells faster, as they are actually what makes or breaks these classes. Master casting (x3) the top level Tri-elemental spell is like casting 9 regular spells in one round. Cleric needs the Mana Heal II ASAP and his healing spells better be full heals, preferably party-wide. And you want the mage weapon-temper spell and Cleric armor-strengthening one ASAP. They are a HUGE boost to damage/survivability and what you spend the most MP on eventually.
Again, a Cleric 15 / Wizard 25 will be much weaker then a straight Wizard 30.

Guess a case can be made for teaching the Cleric Wizard dual-cast ability. 3-cast is too much work IMO. And possibly teaching the Wizard the Cleric Multi-Hit/Evade spells. Though with a good tank, the Cleric high level armor strengthening spell, Light/Dark Veil, Ninjas who can ignore enemy defenses and high level Samurais with high Agi and Hit, even those are absolutely not needed.

At least for the normal game. I admittedly haven't finished the post game. I hear some of those portal elemental realm bosses can be quite strong. But for what I did play, I used Hit/Evade very sparsely in end-game and early post-game. Certainly you don't need several pre-buff turns and Hit/Avoid at 99 to beat any regular content. But then it's important to be high level in your main-class, so your party member's Hit, SpE, Evade and Armor are naturally high, without pre-buffing.

See, I'm going to try for the post-game so I'm planning ahead a bit. I certainly don't want my multi-class characters to fall too far behind, but as of earlier today I did class-change 3 of my characters. The wizard and cleric changed places as expected and I ended up changing my Fighter to Ninja. This all happened at level 14. They are currently behind a bit in terms of level, true, but they are slowly catching up. I think when I shut the game down they were at level 14 in their new class while the three who didn't and probably won't multi-class are at level 18. The worst part is that, while they are getting max HP/MP increases, they're not getting any new stats, which is a bummer but I also heard that in post-game you can remove that limitation when multi-classing so you can eventually max out all your stats if you really felt like it.

So far I haven't had any real problems with them. I spent like an hour grinding Orcs in the Forest to bring them up to somewhere around level 10, and then I played normally from there. The mages have been playing support while I explore the Mausoleum of the Sea (I beat all three starter dungeons BTW) and the Ninja has quickly become one of my top DDs despite her low level because of Assassinate paired with the Heresy Mace she had when she was a Fighter (Since upgraded to Heresy Mace + 8) and a pair of Silver Katars +13. She got poison, KO, and silence because of that grouping. I also do find the Multi-hit/Avoid spells useful to have on both mages since I can stack them quicker against Lineage types. I usually pop the healing light divinity, then apply Sky Dragon div/Confine on the boss and stack Avoid on my guys and I'm set. My weak spot is magic though, I try and get magic resist on my Knight where possible but I haven't done a lot of farming for lighter armor for my squishier classes in this next item tier yet.

Been having trouble finding the Lineage Types in Sea but I guess that's because they're all past a story-gated area minus the one I did find so I dove into Mausoleum of Fire. Haven't found any bosses yet but have gotten great EXP off the zombie hordes.

 

[an Administrator]

Are dancers any useful later on?

 

[Haplo]

Well, I've found mine to be useful for Song spamming duty, which in turn allowed me to spam Divinities. Also helpful while farming ambush spots, obviously.
But they need high-ish Piety and Luck for their Song to yield best results.
Obviously 6 levels are very good for all melees for unlimited attack range. Although that was of limited value for my Samurai, as I've found many excellent Spears, which he can dual-wield. So he had a secondary equipment set with which he could attack the enemy back row anyway.
Debatable if it's worth it to go all the way to level 13 for the ability slot token. I didn't.

 

[Efe]

maybe you could pair it with rangers concentration until damaged ability and spam dancerss multi hit skill

 

[Haplo]

Yeah, of course. But that Ranger's ability is again, end-game. So that's again some serious grinding to do. Plus probably needs to dip into another class to actually have decent weapon selection.

I prefer to multi-class either front-loaded classes, like the Samurai or small dips - for weapon proficiencies. Anything beyond level 13-15 is final class territory for me. I believe that starting with level 13 all levels cost the same experience, so no quick catch-up beyond that point and the final class could actually be that much stronger (late Abilities, Hit, SpE, Evade, Armor), so the tradeoff for some small low-level extras is actually not worth it.

 

[Delterius]

You can get many extra level ups from class change, netting a positive change to your HP. The multiclassed characters can stand on their own on higher level content (say, level 7 Fighter > Samurai earning Mausoleum of Flames EXPs). Its win win if you are careful. That on top of your earned versatility.

 

[Haplo]

Eh, and what do you need those few extra HPs for?
To take 5x stronger hits cause you're current class is lower then the expected level? Having 50% higher health pool total can hardly compensate for that.

Your Knight could safely entirely ignore most attacks in his defensive mode, but now you need to use Black Wall, babysit and heal him every turn because his 5 levels lower then the enemies expect him to be...

 

[Efe]

Use the tools that you are given.
its not like he's telling you to waste dolls or such

 

[Dorarnae]

I dunno, grinding isn't that bad. I managed to finish the game in 15 hours and multiclassed a few times (even lost 1 or 2 char in the beginning)


I find being able to double cast your buff/debuff is very useful, and once you get ninja last ability you pretty much one shot any boss

 

[mogwaimon]

I'm gonna second the double casting for both mages argument, it's been a great help. Slap Sky Dragon on the boss, double cast Multi-Avoid on top of Force-Avoid, Confine, etc. and you're golden. Then you can double-cast nukes for good measure.

Speaking of golden I just went back to the Shadow Palace with my team, figured i'd try to fight the gold knight again since I got a few levels. That guy was tough as nails and I had two casualties but I beat him. Damn boss level scaled from the 35 he was when I last saw him up to level 41. Now my cleric is down a life point and I had to buy the butterfly item in the store to get my ranger's life point back but ah well. To get an insta-recover on the cleric would cost 127k which I don't quite have, but I'm getting stronger medicines so eventually I'll get something to get his LP back instantly besides the Poinsey Powder.

 

[Dorarnae]

I'm gonna second the double casting for both mages argument, it's been a great help. Slap Sky Dragon on the boss, double cast Multi-Avoid on top of Force-Avoid, Confine, etc. and you're golden. Then you can double-cast nukes for good measure.

Speaking of golden I just went back to the Shadow Palace with my team, figured i'd try to fight the gold knight again since I got a few levels. That guy was tough as nails and I had two casualties but I beat him. Damn boss level scaled from the 35 he was when I last saw him up to level 41. Now my cleric is down a life point and I had to buy the butterfly item in the store to get my ranger's life point back but ah well. To get an insta-recover on the cleric would cost 127k which I don't quite have, but I'm getting stronger medicines so eventually I'll get something to get his LP back instantly besides the Poinsey Powder.

yeah some boss are though and should be killed later in the game.

 

[mogwaimon]

I'm gonna second the double casting for both mages argument, it's been a great help. Slap Sky Dragon on the boss, double cast Multi-Avoid on top of Force-Avoid, Confine, etc. and you're golden. Then you can double-cast nukes for good measure.

Speaking of golden I just went back to the Shadow Palace with my team, figured i'd try to fight the gold knight again since I got a few levels. That guy was tough as nails and I had two casualties but I beat him. Damn boss level scaled from the 35 he was when I last saw him up to level 41. Now my cleric is down a life point and I had to buy the butterfly item in the store to get my ranger's life point back but ah well. To get an insta-recover on the cleric would cost 127k which I don't quite have, but I'm getting stronger medicines so eventually I'll get something to get his LP back instantly besides the Poinsey Powder.

yeah some boss are though and should be killed later in the game.

Sometimes it's fun to fight a tougher boss though, haha. Except for when you can't tank, I made it to Mausoleum of Ice last night and having no skills really grinds my gears. I was able to get past the first room just fine but then I went deeper in search of the Magic Stone so I could nab it and while I was doing an ambush I got attacked by this chimera boss that just completely wrecked my team. I think today I'm going to start with Mausoleum of Storms first, hopefully that won't block my skills. My characters are between level 20-22 at this point so not sure if I'm under-leveled or not.

 

[Hirato]

Sometimes it's fun to fight a tougher boss though, haha. Except for when you can't tank, I made it to Mausoleum of Ice last night and having no skills really grinds my gears. I was able to get past the first room just fine but then I went deeper in search of the Magic Stone so I could nab it and while I was doing an ambush I got attacked by this chimera boss that just completely wrecked my team. I think today I'm going to start with Mausoleum of Storms first, hopefully that won't block my skills. My characters are between level 20-22 at this point so not sure if I'm under-leveled or not.

Yeah, my strategy for most of MoI was to have my front line defend and have my casters triple-case multi-avoid until everyone had at least 60 avoid.
If you're purposely baiting a rare enemy to show up, eg that big bad dude in the poisoned town, use that time to buff your avoid as close to 99 as possible.

 

[mogwaimon]

Sometimes it's fun to fight a tougher boss though, haha. Except for when you can't tank, I made it to Mausoleum of Ice last night and having no skills really grinds my gears. I was able to get past the first room just fine but then I went deeper in search of the Magic Stone so I could nab it and while I was doing an ambush I got attacked by this chimera boss that just completely wrecked my team. I think today I'm going to start with Mausoleum of Storms first, hopefully that won't block my skills. My characters are between level 20-22 at this point so not sure if I'm under-leveled or not.

Yeah, my strategy for most of MoI was to have my front line defend and have my casters triple-case multi-avoid until everyone had at least 60 avoid.
If you're purposely baiting a rare enemy to show up, eg that big bad dude in the poisoned town, use that time to buff your avoid as close to 99 as possible.

I'm gonna try that MoI strat soon, I've been farming butterflies to get a few levels so I can buff up, especially since I found out the next tier of weapons required 10 PIE to equip...so now my knight has this badass new Mythril Shield + 7 and I managed to bag a Mythril Bow + 7 for the ranger and a pair of mythril knuckles (+20 and 17 respectively) for the ninja.

Gotta buff ninja's LCK next for better hiding, and I didn't realize bows for Ranger apparently scale with STR, so I've been giving my ranger VIT after maxing his AGI while his STR is still 9....so gonna start buffing that too though he is putting out decent numbers because of the new bow and Rapid Fire.

I've actually killed all the Lineage Types that have shown up except the ones in MoI and MoS, including the 5 star threats in Ghost Town, Forest, Metal, and Sea. They were all pretty easy compared to the Golden Knight in Shadow Palace.

Also found out that Revisited is out in English, I had thought it was JP-only so I busted out the PSTV to see if

Spoiler

my firmware was 3.60 or below because I can't spare 23 bucks right now only to find that even if I did do naughty things with the system the game requires a higher firmware than 3.60.

I did see that Sword City got a price cut on Steam recently so perhaps that bodes well for a Steam release of Revisited. Vanilla has me hooked so much I already kinda want more and I haven't even beaten the game yet.

Spoiler

Also if a PC version comes out it'll have custom portraits again. This is my cancerous party making their way back to MoS and I've already got ideas for my next party in whichever crawler I next play that also supports custom portraits.

 

[RuySan]

I like this kind of games, but the Japanese kind of it eventually annoy me with its autistic tendencies. How this one compares to elminage and etrian Odyssey? It's less of a grind of our time resources

 

[Efe]

anyone has tips for bosses that come after clearing white palace? the ones you teleport through portals near magic stones.
round wizard i kind of managed but dragon boss seems invincible. dispels and takes down 2k+ hp frontliner in a turn.
also maps had ambush spots (i didnt bother at that point) but once boss is gone portal also disappeared. did i miss out on stuff?

 

[mogwaimon]

I can't give any specific advice since I haven't made it back to White Palace/post-game in my NG+ yet, but for dispel don't forget to keep Force Guard up with your Cleric if you aren't already.

I don't know if the portals eventually come back but I do know once you enter the portal you can't leave until killing the boss, so...there's probably sick gear at the ambush points but the environment isn't exactly farming-supportive.

 

[Hirato]

Dragon?
You mean this guy?

At first my front row spent the bulk of their early time defending/hiding, then it was pretty much just Hide/Assassinate.
as for the back row, the ranger lady used the skill that slightly lowers the boss' hit a lot.
and the two mages alternated between Holy Shield and triple-casting Multi-Avoid up till 99 (and multi-hit to about 70), then I had them do just double Holy Shield every turn unless I needed some healing or had to recast Force-Guard or whatever that skill was called...

The fight took a while, but I cleared it eventually.

 

[Efe]

afaik holy shields do not stack. i had force guard up but they dispelled it and then one shot (a lucky hit?) my back up knight in same turn. he just kept getting rows of dragonscales. it was all downhill from there.
im stingy with poiney/merlin dolls (or other rare consumable).. maybe i should use them but hoarder in me cant .

the dragon i mean is bosess after you complete white palace. its not really visible in that picture but could be.
kinda let down at being massacred after taking down mage boss in one go.

oh well. it was bothering me S equipment never had good modifiers after ambushing so long so i used the hourglass and started anew. not gonna lose that much defense and damage this way

 

[Hirato]

that dragon god is the post-game boss you fight in the slums area.

I wondered if the holy shields stacked myself, so I did a simple experiment.
from what I recall, with 1 holy shield, it blocked about 3 attacks before before shattering, with 2 it managed 5 attacks.
and I think it gets reinforced if it manages to survive the turn without shattering and you use holy shield again next turn.
I don't know to what degree they stack, but they clearly do (probably caps at 2x the holy shield's strength of the last character to use it).


I personally wouldn't bother too much with dolls - they're useful for countering the 'Missing' status (whatever that was called), but you have far better means of countering insta-death available.

 

[mogwaimon]

oh well. it was bothering me S equipment never had good modifiers after ambushing so long so i used the hourglass and started anew. not gonna lose that much defense and damage this way

That's what I did, still haven't made it back to post-game since I get really bored on NG+ but it may be worth it just for the increased racial stat caps, and also NG+ does have increased + modifiers on gear so you can improve any S-level gear. Another point is that you get a reset on your class changes and you become able to gain stats from low levels on class change instead of being unable to gain stats until you level up past your previous highest level, so before you NG+ you can class change everyone to classes with skills that you may want but don't want to level the actual class for. Like say if your Samurai is level 52 and is a pure Samurai, you can change to Cleric to pick up Holy Soul automatically since level 26, change to maybe Knight for the extra Defense skill, then change to Dancer to pick up the level 6 Weapon Trick, do the hourglass, then switch the character to Ninja for 12 levels for the Cicada and Evade Training skills, then back to Samurai or keep them on Ninja. All along that path you'd be picking up more skill slots as well every time you hit level 13 with a new class.

Of course you don't want to go too low since the enemies level up with you, I had my party at an average level of 8 when I began NG+ and it's still been a snoozefest going back through everything. I'm up to Mausoleum of Sea with the Chivalry Medallion or whatever and with my entire base of physical fighters knowing Slash 2 and my Wizard having 40+ INT and Master Cast....everything dies pretty quickly even though the mobs are all in their 50s-60s.

 

[Efe]

mine all had 13 knight 15 ninja for def/avd boost and 26 cleric for holy soul. all except ninja cos she was indispensable.
if i continue i would definitely up piety to get mana heal every turn.
that being said, it seems early on is already a snoozefest like you said. it got boring quickly when you dont plan any fights and just use slash and fire storm.
i think ill start elminage gothic.

also thank you celerity for recommending this.

 

[newtmonkey]

I bought this a while back and just started playing it now since I became obsessed with Wizardry (PC) and Elminage Original (3DS). I thought it would be a nice break in between work etc. that would be more accessible than either Wiz or Elminage.

In most respects, it is. It's very easy to just drop in and play some battles, most of which require zero thought (at least early on). I mean, the early game in SoSC vs the early game of Wiz 1 is night and day, since starting characters are strong enough in SoSC to easily deal with the encounters in the first dungeon, and the death/revive system is extremely forgiving.

On the other hand, the game is way slower to actually play than Wiz 1 or even Elminage Original. The problem is with movement. Even doing auto movement through the map is slower than just walking in Wiz 1 or Elminage (with movement animation turned off). On top of that, compare the first dungeons (or dungeon levels) in all three games. It's a simple matter to pop into the dungeon and head in a direction you've yet to explore in both Wiz and Elminage, whereas in SoSC, the first dungeon is so linear that if you stop halfway through to resupply, you have no choice but to just retread a ton of boring ground just to get to the place you left off. I am hoping this will improve with later dungeons.

--If you don't want to read my rant about Japanese game dialog/poor translation, skip this section--
--RANT--
The second issue is the story. My god. Never mind the fact that 90% of the dialog is absolutely pointless garbage (it goes beyond anything I have experience with Japanese RPGs, in that a character will explain something to you in the most convoluted way possible, ask if you understand, and if you say "YES"... they still summarize what they just said! AND THEN THE GAME/NARRATOR EXPLAINS IT TO YOU IN HUMAN TERMS). It of course also has that thing where a character will say like "So you need to gather this thing" and then the two NPCs in the room with you will also say "Yeah, so gather the thing" "He's right, gather that thing" This drives me up the wall. It's made 100x worse that this is a console port, so it can only fit five words in a single dialog box (slight exaggeration), and the game has to slowly fade in and out between characters talking, for some reason.

It would be one thing if this had excellent writing. Doesn't even have to be Torment level, I would even accept the quality of the Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land translation. I thougth aweigh was exaggerating about the poor quality of translations in these blobbers, but this is really awful.
(I tried switching to Japanese to compare, and while (of course) you don't have to worry about the shitty translation, the subject matter/writing itself is the problem.)
--RANT DONE--

Once you get past all that, it's fun. I like the enemy art and the (original) NPC/character art. I REALLY like how it handles death and reviving. The game encourages you to keep a stable full of backup party members to switch in and out because 1) backup characters all earn experience and money in the background and 2) dead characters can be revived but need to recover if you don't want to sacrifice life points. This is a cool way to encourage using classes you might otherwise ignore, and to make death meaningful—but not something where the only choice after a random decapitation is to risk losing the character permanently or restoring your save. I filled the entire roster with characters from every class, and actually LOOK FORWARD to character death, so that I can try out a new class I wasn't ballsy enough to choose at first.

In summary, fun game, not as well designed as Wiz 1 or Elminage Original, Japanese game companies need editors (or at least translators who are able to actually localize dialog [and that means completely rewriting or even removing dialog that is redundant or awkward]).

 

[Zeriel]

The story actually gets a lot better as you go on. I would never say the game becomes about the story, it's still a blobber, but the early stages (and you appear to be primarily complaining about tutorial stuff) really don't put the games best foot forward.

Also, I assume you know, but the game has auto movement. You can select a spot on the map and it will automatically move there for you. While I agree the movement is slower than some blobbers or grid-based games I've played (like lightning-fast Demise), the auto movement saved it for me. I never found movement tedious as a result.

 

[newtmonkey]

Yes, I am still only a few hours in, so I hope that a lot of the things I complained about won't be issues in a short while.

I do know about auto movement, but I found even that to be slower than just walking around in Wiz 1 or Elminage (with movement animation turned off) (or even Demise as you mentioned... great game!!).

I took a peek at some maps later on in the game (just to see if things improve or not), and looks like it's only the first dungeon that is so linear. Looking forward to the game opening up!