Just started "Operation Babel"; so far... much better than Abyss.

[aweigh]

Shackleton Courtier Siveon

The first good thing:

- right from the very 1st dungeon and from the very 1st encounter... you will get party wiped if you don't either:

a) use the leveled-up chars they give you for free at game start
b) create your party super-duper-uber min-maxed like a pro

and, of course, (i mention the following because in Abyss this didn't matter):

- besides the fact there are new classes (know nothing about them), if you don't play "for real" and make a good party and outfit them correctly... you will not pass the 1st fixed encounter in the tutorial dungeon.

Soooo, yeah, this is all very very good. Can't comment on the maps/dungeons as I haven't even yet cleared the 1st dungeon, but i'm uploading to YT a 10 min video of the game's beginning + me creating a character.

Will upload more videos soon. Definitely much, much more "interesting" (i.e. less brain dead) than operation abyss, right from the word go.

Important Edit

* uh, i had forgotten to equip my chars properly is what happened. I equipped my lv. 1 party with the provided battle daggers and am owning the encounters after breaking down the excess weapons/armor/accessories you start the game with and using the parts to enchant everybody's shit with +1's.

...i regret to inform that after having done that the difficulty seems to be the same as always. I was all pumped about every encounter being possible party wipe but, just like Code Hazard, is you bother to autistically enchant everybody's shit you will never lose.

...well, we'll see.

what i'm now hoping for is that they balanced the scarcity of crafting (enchanting) materials so that you can't always just upgrade everybody's shit and immediately be more powerful. that was the single biggest problem in Abyss/Code Hazard as, if you were autistic enough, you could farm materials from enemy drops and just always be OP.

also, they added side-missions of the kind where you hunt down powerful enemies for shit. Like in Stranger of Sword City.

* that might have been in the original code realize, don't come at me for not knowing if it was.

 

[aweigh]

for char-gen skip to minute 9.

 

[aweigh]

Those with a slash are distinguished between male and female type of Brad (♂ / ♀)
ex. If the bonus necessary for elegant to become an academic is 1 for Moses, 2 for Joshua

= table showing the required bonus points you need to roll to unlock X/Y char. class if you have X/Y "trait".

a battle = Warrior (wiz terms: Fighter-equivalent)

devil = Samurai (wiz terms: samurai-equivalent)

holy = Knight (wiz terms: Lord equivalent, except there's a new class which might be another Lord offshoot).

learning = that class that unlocks traps and shit, i think the blood code is "Joshua" or some nonsense. Oh, also they're "Alchemist-equivalent" in terms of spells. (Wiz terms: Thief and Bishop rolled up into 1 char. class and they use "alchemy-type" spells like debuffs/buffs).

(also, from what i'm reading in jp wiki, the elite skill they learn dramatically raises % of rare loot drops. this is probably not new, but i didn't know about this).

shooting = Archer (wiz terms: Archer; elminage terms: hunter; as always and forever a useless class)

martial arts = ninja-equivalent. think their blood code name is Assassin.

king = you know what? i have no fucking clue. I'm guessing the Lord-equivalent, and "holy" = Knight. I could also be wrong and the Lord-equivalent is holy, just like always with these games, and it's a new class.

dark = wizard; wiz terms: mage-equivalent.

fist = bare knuckle fighter-type. new class AFAIK.

call = Summoner-equivalent, they're called "Conjurers" here. new class... AFAIK.

Wisdom = Physician class, in wiz terms: cleric.

 

[aweigh]

from the jp wiki, a screenshot of the blood code (char. classes) table. The names you see there, such as for example "Tactician", do not necessarily show up as the in-game blood code name.

remember this has been google-translated and is thus required to be deciphered.

i.e. "Daggers" = Assassin blood code class.

king of knights = obviously Lord

komposhi = who the fuck kinows

calligrapher = jesus fucking christ...

in any case it's easy enough to decipher what is which and which is what by looking over the requirements the table shows for the classes.

 

[aweigh]

and, btw, i love that spell casting column is google-translated as "Witchcraft". hah.

EDIT: witchcraft refers to mage-school.

link to the jp wiki: http://spoiler.sakura.ne.jp/rr/gxth/CR2FA5C7A1BCA5BF2FBCEFC2B2.html

also, this one (babel / code realize) goes up to level 99 and the install size of the game is 60% bigger than the install size of operation abyss.

i assume that means it's probably longer than chapters 1 and 2 combined (hazard and breaker, i.e. operation abyss).

anyway i'm off to continue playing to see if it keeps being interesting or if it turns into shit.

EDIT 2: oh, and multi-classing is back. thank god. along with sub-classing too, which AFAIK is new to babel/chapter 3.

 

[aweigh]

for the "Traits", here is an extremely handy and nice short-hand describing them in wiz/elminage terms:

Note [Edit] ↑

• The value of AC is from the character of the operation confirmation version. There is a possibility that it is changing with a combination of jobs.

• Standard: Human (AVERAGE in game)
• Elegant: Elf
• Athlete: Felper
• Muscle: Bahamón, Lizardman
• Intelli: Nome
• Funny: Hobbit
• Spiritual: Celestia (this is probably from class of heroes terminology)
• Unlucky: Not applicable.

so yeah, traits = races. If in doubt just go w/ standard as they can potentially be any char. class (blood code) and have no weapon restrictions; downside obviously is that their stats will never be optimized for the class they're currently in.

(obvious example that is almost insulting to your intelligence: athlete trait char will be an exponentially better fighter-type than an average-trait char).

EDIT: oh, and obviously "athlete" is the google-translation... in the actual game that trait is "Muscular".

tee-hee.

 

[aweigh]

ok, difficulty is definitely higher than the Abyss remake. so far i'm having more fun than even with the original Code Hazard, as i'm already looking foward to sub-classing my characters and shit.

biggest downside is the super tedious crafting/enchanting system which, while slightly more streamlined in Babel, still requires a ton of menu fiddling if you want to enchant your shit or craft new shit properly.

i'm gonna try and see if i can clear dungeons 2 and 3 (finished the Tutorial Dungeon) without crafting anything and using just what drops (hint: i'm hoping this won't be doable).

i'll post again when i've cleared at least 2 more dungeons and then i can at least give a legitimate comment on whether or not the dungeon design improved or worsened.

rolling w/

- fighter
- new class Monk
- Knight (lord equivalent)

- mage/cleric/"joshua", i.e. the guy who identifies items and unlocks traps.

was gonna have samurai instead of monk but i felt like trying out one of the new bloods, and besides, in TM's 'crawlers samurai class is always stupid OP and always break the game.

 

[Shackleton]

Cheers for keeping us informed aweigh. Interest levels rising. If it keeps you challenged I think I'll take the plunge after all.

I like these tedious crafting systems so that's not a downer for me, but the dungeon design and difficulty level will be make or break.

 

[aweigh]

thought some might want to look at the skill lists for the classes/blood codes in Babel. Notice the Level 99 one for each class at the bottom.

Next post is a video of footage of me traipsing around the 1st dungeon, killing mobs, then going back to town to change out a party member and equip him and then spending like 3 straight minutes crafting/doing nothing of value. After I do that, I go back to the 1st dungeon in order to finish it and...

...to my surprise getting sucked into some sort of random event/battle after taking a few steps. It's the "abyss" trying to pull the party into it and kill them; and I assume these (hopefully completely random) "events"/battles will continue to happen throughout each dungeon/the entire game. Should keep things interesting.

BTW, it goes without saying the story/characters/dialog are fucking crime against humanity. I love anime like a motherfucker, however I reserve my special hatred for shit like this "light novel" bad-animu-horribly-written-badly-translated garbage that gets in the way of killing mobs and mapping floors.

Seriously, how is it possible a profession game studio with what one would assume employs professionals, and also adults puts out this unbelievably badly written animu light novel garbage in their dungeon crawler RPG games. It is honestly a mystery to me. I mean, why would they not at least try to make the chars/story/plot... you know: at least average!

The main point of the video(s) is really to showcase the streamlining that went into the GUI and shit. It's all basically the exact same crap in terms of menus and what you do and how you do it as Generation XTH: Code Hazard (or Op. Abyss, if you will); but every aspect of the game that requires player "input" has been tweaked and received helpful shortcuts in many cases or simply been flat out condensed.

Breaking down items / crafting items / buying items outright / Selling items outright / SLEEPING AT THE INN (dr's office)--

--yes, ALL of that is super duper easy. In fact, some things are even easier (in terms of ease-of-use for the player) than Stranger of Sword City's GUI elements.

I think I will probably finally enjoy crafting this time around, prolly.

EDIT: also there is now a "Bank" that automatically stores the money you earn while dungeoneering (at least like 80% of it; i'm not sure how it works TBH as you still accumulate some GP, but the majority of it is always in the lab's Bank).

Oh, and there's no saving inside dungeons.
:")

EDIT 2: at least so far no saving inside dungeons that have been "taken over by the Abyss entities", which so far comprises the first two dungeons...

 

[aweigh]

EDIT: you'll notice, btw, that now a Joshua's identification ability goes on "cool down" (for lack of abetter term) if he/she is too low-level / too low-stat to identify an item.

in GXTH:CH (PC ver) you could just keep turbo-fire pressing identify till it worked.

Also, (don't know if this was added to chap. 2 but it's new to me): party members get "Exhausted" (their stats lower until they're treated) if hit with certain shit like a specific chest trap or some enemies who simply just have that skill to use on you.

sounds good.

 

[aweigh]

 

[aweigh]

oh, sheeet, Babel has SoSC's "Auto Walk".

awesome sauce.

 

[Dorarnae]

the crafting is very easy to use and quick, you just need to get used to it.(go play wizardry xth and you'll cry)

crafting is for gear up to lvl 30-40ish if I remember. after that you'll be farming for unique in the post game, you can upgrade unique but not worth it, easier to farm and hope to get the same with higher +...
the things for me that make operation babel much better than abyss is the sub class and the post game is a lot more interesting(multiple boss and I like farming for tons of gear, just like labyrinth cross blood).

cleric/mage or mage/cleric is OP.

 

[aweigh]

Dorarnae

agreed about the sub-classes. I just sub-classed my academic (identifier/traps class) w/ the new Conjurer bc (summoner class). Oh, and Courtier , check this out:

- in this one (op. babel) they went with an approach regarding poke-capturing that I think is the perfect balance between spamming all enemies over and over due to absurd resistance values / out-right literal pokemon capturing: what they did is...
- although all enemies do have a (hidden) resistance value to getting captured so far in the early game (i'm up to dungeon 3, which is actually re-visiting the tutorial dungeon and exploring a new are of it) i have yet to have to use the command more than twice to capture an enemy.
- however, in a cool twist, enemies only stay with you while you are inside a dungeon and (AFAIK, there might be a high-lvl conjurer ability later on that removes this) as soon as you go back to the lab they disappear.
- and they behave in a rudimentary fashion with more stuff than just attacking enemies. so far most of the runts i've captured almost always run away if i get an encounter with high-level enemies, heh, and i ain't saying they have personalities (far from it) but don't expect dumb monsters to always "do something", they might just simply not take a turn or just run away.
- unknown if character levels/alignments/etc have anything whatsoever to do with making the captured mobs be more effective in battle, although i think it's quite probable conjurers will later on get some skills that make 'em do what you want always and/or not run away.

all bosses and variants (same shit as lineage/elite mobs in SoSC) can also be captured, and I don't know if they disappear like regular mobs. it would be stupid if they do as I assume they'll be harder to poke-capture.

the thing that has always put me off elminage's approach to summoners is the necessity of spamming contract over and over and iv'e never been able to enjoy it. When I modded elminage enemy summon resistance values down to reasonable numbers (i.e. made all of the ones with more than 90% resistance go down to 75%) i thought that would be fine, as 75% is still a LOT -- but for whatever reason i guess due to the game's dice roll / formula calculations, it went from "having to spam contract for 2 hours" to the opposite extreme of "oh wow, I just contracted Belial in first try", even with 75%. no happy balance there, at least not one that i enjoyed. combined with the necessity of needing the Brawler to clean hit to lower those resistances... well, the 1 thing i most hate is having to have a char. class just "for one thing" because they decided that's the way it is. It's why the only thing I dislike about Wizardry-mechanics is the identification being only available to bishops.

anyway, so yeah, the dual classing is fun. got any tips for good combos Dorar? so far the game's difficulty has leveled into only slightly harder than op. Abyss, and decidedly easier overall (in terms of regular mobs) than original versions (i.e. pc ver. of CH), but it's still enjoyable and waaaaaaaaaaaaay better game overall than operation abyss / code hazard.

I already subbed my mage w/ cleric and my cleric w/ mage (same as in SoSC, and just like in that game... OP city, as you said). thinking about subbing my Monk w/ assassin just simply because it's lulzy to me to have the two asian stereotypes rolled into one. Also thinking of subbing my Lord w/ academic just to have him have access to alchemy spell school. (yes i know these are wiz/elminage terms, i don't care, you all know what i mean).

i imagine subbing fighter w/ samurai will probably be super broken.

EDIT: right now what i'm most enjoying is subbing chars and going after the high-lvl enemies (i.e. 99% of the time = Variants) in order to get top tier loot. I still find the crafting not only incredibly tedious but I also opine that it is detrimental to the elegant Wiz-style mechanic of rewarding players with tangible shit when they win battles and successfully explore a dungeon floor.

getting "materials" instead of actual items while clearing dungeons is super bad game design (IMO) as, without the ability (or at least possibility) of crafting inside dungeons it makes the player (me) feel that loot is "worthless" and it makes fixed encounters not something i look foward to but instead just tedious busy-work as beating them won't give me anything i can use until I eventually return to "town" and spend 20 minutes crafting bullshit.

SoSC is a superior game by default for eschewing the crafting. The simple fact that you get loot when you kill an enemy immediately puts it over every single other Exp Inc game. It could definitely use a crafting system (SoSC) just one similar to Elminage, which is perfect.

EDIT 2: yes, dorar, I know you also sometimes get actual gear instead of materials as drops.

 

[aweigh]

oh, i forgot to add:

- to this day, still, best summon system ever seen by human eyes is wizardry empire's approach: Each dungeon features a super-secret-hidden optional enemy you can find and then fight, and if you win they become your summoner character's pokemon.

- instead of summoner-character having a spell school he spends the party's GP in order to summon his beaten/captured monsters (because they're intelligent creatures after all plus traveling between dimensions needs $$$).

- this means wiz empire games feature a small amount of summonable creatures, but each and every single one is unique and "hand-crafted", and each one fulfills different and various roles in any given party makeup.

- instead of wiz empire giving summoner-characters aforementioned spell schools they get access to alchemy spell school and "psionics" spell school. that means they can fill a supporting role in any party even if you never beat any of the summons. (or if you find yourself out of money and can't summon anything).

it's so simple and yet so elegantly full of hidden depth. it contributes to making every single game dungeon extra-interesting because it's one more thing to "loot", them secret pokemens, plus getting/finding the end-game summons is very rewardingly difficult in terms of the maze navigation involved. i.e. it fleshes out even more the exploration aspects of dungeon clearing.

 

[aweigh]

 

[Haplo]

Good stuff, aweigh. Thank you.
I'm just starting Abyss, but I guess a lot of that info will be relevant to me.

One thing I'm not sure I agree with is comparing Abyss/Babel/SoSC Knight with the Wiz Lord class. The Knight has no spellcasting ability. The Lord can't intercept enemy attacks against full rows (can defend a designated character, I suppose... but all chars can do it). The only similarity really is that they both can wear heavy armors and the Knight eventually becomes immune to some nastiest status effects, while the Lord earns special % resistance to all Status effects.

 

[aweigh]

i'm currently up to around (i'd say) having completed approx. 30% of the game (judging by the jap-wiki's table of content/events list), and my party's just hit level 8. I'd say i can officially say now whether i think it's good or not and give my op:

...it's good. it's better than Abyss remake, BUT not as good (especially in terms of enemy difficulty, item scarcity, etc) as PC version of Code Hazard. I also think it's inferior to SoSC, but that's forgivable as SoSC is like almost 9 fucking years later than this remake game.

(in fact, op. babel / code realize is pretty much where they "beta tested" majority of SoSC stuff/elements/ideas).

it isn't as hard as i wanted (random encounters can be breezed thru with eyes closed using atk-all / fast-fwd option; at least SO FAR), and the Variant Bosses are indeed fun to fight, but again, nowhere near as hard as the Lineage enemies in SoSC.

all that said it's still a very fun Wiz-clone and the crafting, the dual-classing and butt-load of dungeons (it's got like 15 dungeons, of which 2 are brand-new post-game dungeons made for the remake), for what I paid for it definitely has my official recommendation.

 

[Dorarnae]

Dorarnae

agreed about the sub-classes. I just sub-classed my academic (identifier/traps class) w/ the new Conjurer bc (summoner class). Oh, and Courtier , check this out:

- in this one (op. babel) they went with an approach regarding poke-capturing that I think is the perfect balance between spamming all enemies over and over due to absurd resistance values / out-right literal pokemon capturing: what they did is...
- although all enemies do have a (hidden) resistance value to getting captured so far in the early game (i'm up to dungeon 3, which is actually re-visiting the tutorial dungeon and exploring a new are of it) i have yet to have to use the command more than twice to capture an enemy.
- however, in a cool twist, enemies only stay with you while you are inside a dungeon and (AFAIK, there might be a high-lvl conjurer ability later on that removes this) as soon as you go back to the lab they disappear.
- and they behave in a rudimentary fashion with more stuff than just attacking enemies. so far most of the runts i've captured almost always run away if i get an encounter with high-level enemies, heh, and i ain't saying they have personalities (far from it) but don't expect dumb monsters to always "do something", they might just simply not take a turn or just run away.
- unknown if character levels/alignments/etc have anything whatsoever to do with making the captured mobs be more effective in battle, although i think it's quite probable conjurers will later on get some skills that make 'em do what you want always and/or not run away.

all bosses and variants (same shit as lineage/elite mobs in SoSC) can also be captured, and I don't know if they disappear like regular mobs. it would be stupid if they do as I assume they'll be harder to poke-capture.

the thing that has always put me off elminage's approach to summoners is the necessity of spamming contract over and over and iv'e never been able to enjoy it. When I modded elminage enemy summon resistance values down to reasonable numbers (i.e. made all of the ones with more than 90% resistance go down to 75%) i thought that would be fine, as 75% is still a LOT -- but for whatever reason i guess due to the game's dice roll / formula calculations, it went from "having to spam contract for 2 hours" to the opposite extreme of "oh wow, I just contracted Belial in first try", even with 75%. no happy balance there, at least not one that i enjoyed. combined with the necessity of needing the Brawler to clean hit to lower those resistances... well, the 1 thing i most hate is having to have a char. class just "for one thing" because they decided that's the way it is. It's why the only thing I dislike about Wizardry-mechanics is the identification being only available to bishops.

anyway, so yeah, the dual classing is fun. got any tips for good combos Dorar? so far the game's difficulty has leveled into only slightly harder than op. Abyss, and decidedly easier overall (in terms of regular mobs) than original versions (i.e. pc ver. of CH), but it's still enjoyable and waaaaaaaaaaaaay better game overall than operation abyss / code hazard.

I already subbed my mage w/ cleric and my cleric w/ mage (same as in SoSC, and just like in that game... OP city, as you said). thinking about subbing my Monk w/ assassin just simply because it's lulzy to me to have the two asian stereotypes rolled into one. Also thinking of subbing my Lord w/ academic just to have him have access to alchemy spell school. (yes i know these are wiz/elminage terms, i don't care, you all know what i mean).

i imagine subbing fighter w/ samurai will probably be super broken.

EDIT: right now what i'm most enjoying is subbing chars and going after the high-lvl enemies (i.e. 99% of the time = Variants) in order to get top tier loot. I still find the crafting not only incredibly tedious but I also opine that it is detrimental to the elegant Wiz-style mechanic of rewarding players with tangible shit when they win battles and successfully explore a dungeon floor.

getting "materials" instead of actual items while clearing dungeons is super bad game design (IMO) as, without the ability (or at least possibility) of crafting inside dungeons it makes the player (me) feel that loot is "worthless" and it makes fixed encounters not something i look foward to but instead just tedious busy-work as beating them won't give me anything i can use until I eventually return to "town" and spend 20 minutes crafting bullshit.

SoSC is a superior game by default for eschewing the crafting. The simple fact that you get loot when you kill an enemy immediately puts it over every single other Exp Inc game. It could definitely use a crafting system (SoSC) just one similar to Elminage, which is perfect.

EDIT 2: yes, dorar, I know you also sometimes get actual gear instead of materials as drops.

wiz/cleric is mostly OP because of being able to spam that wish spell every turn. Wish does drain all your lvl 7(or is it 8 in this one) mage spell, but with the cleric passive if you have enough wisdom you'll regen one point each turn. Of course that's not til post game but it's strong hehe.

I do like Knight with assassin, it gives higher evasion to your knight
archer with academic was fine for disarming during the main story, but once in the post game I had a hard time to disarm chest, til I got the spell to disarm.

 

[duanth123]

No one's mentioned how much more tolerable the plot is than the first. Clear objectives, an above-average villain, a Professor Saotome-like ally, and the completely sidelining of that mary sue Alice.

They even lampshade different colored eyed animu chick when it's revealed early on

Spoiler

that she's an artificial being created specifically to deceive and infiltrate the Xth team

 

[aweigh]

i die inside a little whenever i am forced to disagree with a fellow blobber lover but

dude


















....dude. seriously. bluntly speaking so far op. babel's plot, chars, dialog, events, world, fuck even the fucking nomenclature and terminology and everything else is utter lowest possible effort trite.

surprisingly, surprising myself even, i actually find it muuuch more tedious and "wordy" (in the worst way) than PC version's Code Hazard. at least in Code Hazard you actually got opportunity to go and clear long ass dungeons and it would be sometimes hours and hours before you had to get pestered by a waifu telling you to do something stupid.

in Op. Babel it's like, fucking 15 minutes straight of atrociously bad anime cardboard cutouts endlessly spouting every single bit of exposition that is humanly possible so the devs could fill their "word quota", often repeating same shit multiple times, and when not doing THAT the actual interactions themselves... once again, again surprising myself here, I think/found CODE HAZARD's interactions (while fewer in number) to be MUCH better quality.

the students you met and talked to in CH were funny or semi-believable or whatever; and I miss the NPCs that would be inside dungeons in CH with which you could engage in optional shit like giving them gifts to win their trust. They also had better dialog, btw, as most were to the point and spoke in character.

and you know why CH had such a stronger word-skill, right? C'mon. y'know why. Because it was localized by a fan group. obviously. Exp Inc is the kind of studio that reuses art assets from their first game 10 years ago, and that ain't necessarily wrong at all mind you, but this localization of Babel is ATROCIOUS and it was probably done by 1 single person (not joking).

sure, he got paid, but i guarantee you there was no professional "group" translating this game. BTW, same goes for SoSC which actually has a worse translation (tons of typos, tons of mis-translations that miss the mark such as the MAUSOLEUMS, lol; they were not fucking mausoleums the more proper translation for those dungeons would've been reservation as in protected area, obviously finding a cooler word than reservation, but those mausoleums are all basically prefactures with some of them being legitimate towers/castles).

seriously, i would bet money i don't have that the SoSC translators (again, prolly just 1 dude) has no idea what a mausoleum is, haha. it's just such a fucking weird choice to decide on THAT word as the translation for those areas!

EDIT: but ofc nothing and no one will ever top Starfish. Elminage: Original, PATCHED (!), still says on Thief character's sheet, under skills...

- Expart Theif

Now that's quality work right there

 

[aweigh]

oh, btw none of that has any bearing on the gameplay itself. heh. still better and more polished than previous chapters, which should be logical as it's newer. Overall though, it's not as good as SoSC. You can really tell how much Babel / Code REalize served as the Early Access build(s) for their eventual development of SoSC.

biggest reason SoSC is so much better aside from what i mentioned about their decision to eschew craft/mats and give you actual loot; the fact that it's the least "wordy" Exp Inc game.

music is somewhat moody, complete contrast with abyss/babel music which is elevator music done in jpop style that is so bland you wouldn't remember a single melody from operation babel if someone put a gun up ur ass.

dungeons are deadlier mostly because enemies are harder. that makes a ton of difference.

on the other hand Op. Babel completely wrecks SoSC in terms of providing lots of classes and a better multi-classing system than SoSC, in my humble opinion. I am finding so far the sub-classing in Bable to be MUCH, MUCH more intelligently designed than in SoSC. it's much SIMPLER, yes, but ends up being better gameplay.

i went to the jap wiki and peeked at the added content (the post-game content) for this remake, and looked at the floor maps (not all of them) and man, gotta say definitely seems worth at least reaching post game. looks like it's there (i think it's like 3 post dungeons total, two being real dungeons and the final 3rd one being 1 massive floor that serves as a stupidly-hard "gauntlet" of pain)-- looks like it's in the post game where the map design really takes off.

 

[duanth123]

I meant better than abyss and some other recent games I've played like SMT Apocalypse, MEIQ, and Demon Gaze. I don't mean to say the plot is good.

BTW, are you at he Museum dungeon yet and if so when you you acquire Hachi's workout. I equipped the Izalith device for +3 mob levels but I heard there's another which increases it by an additional 5.

Im steamrolling this game with a K/As, As/Mk, P/W, Ac/Mg, Mg/P, C/Ac setup right now

 

[aweigh]

i just finished the first "abyss dungeon" the one underground Aoi Shrine place. yes, it is getting increasingly disheartening how easy it is so far. makes it even more amazing when you then think back remember how even EASIER Abyss remake was.

it seems they tried to make fixed encounters tougher by having enemies constantly just join the fight right after you win so you're forced to continue battling more and more enemies without stopping, which has the potential (in theory) to cause major problems for the party....

... but it boilds down to hey, lemme double tap Fast Fwd key like a savage wee.

er, what i mean is that i was thinking of editing the enemy values to make them tougher (hp/ac/etc, whatever), but i realize that the game's default design is quantity over quality, so i now hestitate because those "surprise enemies" one after the other, combined w/ kinda stupidly high encounter rate + buffed enemy stats; hmm, i think that would make the game not more fun, bhut rather, way more tedious.

at very least it's a relaxing game to play (heh), kind of like class of heroes, where you're never worried, not really, but the gameplayting itself is just slightly good enough to enjoyable.

like i said tho, SoSC is Exp Inc's best game, and by FAAAAR. I am now LEGIT EXCITED for SoSC 2. I woulda ctually be playing through SoSC again right now, instead of Babel, if I could edit the items/enemies, but unfortunately, THAT game (sosc) has tons of encryption on its files so i dunno how to hack it. Imagine doing a new playthrough of SoSC with enemy stats changed, all items changed, etc. Not saying changed crazily, i mean just having loot be more complex as almost half the weapons in SoSC are always inferior to the other half)

but what i'd really love to do is edit the classes. the SoSC classes have the bare minimum but they still have it, enough to be interesting, man if one could only tweak them, fix them, etc. I lost my SoSC save file and i want to do its post game but can't stomach playing through it from beginning right now without any type of mods/edits.

i'm gonna go open up CODE HAZARD pc. version's files now in the hex editor, open up side-by-side with the correspondin files over in Op. Babel and have 'em both onsreen and i'm'a start going through every line of everthing to see if i can figure out how the fuck the group did that translation (GTXH: CH) so i can then learn to edit Op . Babel, maybe even hopefully it'll help with editing SoSC too.

EDIT: oh, btw, currently only my Academic is dual-classed (w/ Conjurer). I have Fighter/Paladin/Monk/Cleric/Bishop (the academic) and lastly a Mage.

what duals well with what? i could just go read the jap wiki but it's google-engrish shit better to read it from an actual player.

 

[Shackleton]

Well, I picked it up and spent an hour or so obsessively gambling my points trying to roll higher than a 7. Ironically, my planned Academic char who will be probably utterly useless in combat managed to roll a 10 right away and silly me thought I'd try and go back to change her starting type so she wasn't heavy on Luck and Speed before I spent the points. Yeah, not going to make that mistake again.


Sad to hear difficulty takes a dive later on, but not unexpected considering EXP inc's previous games. How's the dungeon design? Is it 'follow the corridor' like SoSC or mazey and dangerous?