Tutorial
-I can revisit cleared areas to level up. Makes sense.
-The overworld theme is quite peaceful.
-Since I’m in an airship from the start, I can travel over the entire world map! I can’t really land anywhere, but still.
The north continent has a giant blasted mountain, and the eastern one has a lake with and city.
-Gonna check out the primer/tutorial.
-Confuse means “unit cannot take commands.” That’s not TOO bad. (Charm is the thing I hate, when it makes my party members attack each other.)
-Heroism seems new. Increases magick and physical attack both. Maybe it was in FFXII. I don’t have a great memory.
-Berserk is described as “cannot use magicks/abilities.” The description doesn’t say anything about the berserk unit automatically attacking. Hard to say if this is just cause the status effect descriptions only tell part of the story or if that’s really the way it is in RW.
I’ll reserve judgment. I have a feeling there’s more to it, as with Berserk.
I gotta lock this image into my memory.
-The A Button jumps to a friendly summoning gate. I’d just clicked over to the gate last time, which was a pain in the butt when the summoning gate was on a different screen from combat.
-At the start of battle, espers matching the group leaders’ attack type will be assigned to them. Makes sense. Put the flyers with Filo and Llyud, the ranged with Kytes, the melee with Vaan.
I’m not sure when I’ll want to mix them up.
-Expeditions are a thing. The sound like hunts or bonus missions.
-The game explicitly tells me that if I find an area where the enemies are too powerful, I can use “melee battles” against unbound Yarhi or freebooting sky pirates to level up. Good to know that if I get stuck, I might be able to grind/brute force past it.
This reminds me of something I really liked from last session. When I lost battles and got game overs, the game STILL gave me (some) xp. So even if I lose a few times on a fight, it helps progress my party.
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Character Status
-The character stats seem pretty straight-forward.
-Kytes and Penelo both have a “Nature” icon. Kytes is fire, Penelo is healy. I wonder if this can be changed with equipment.
-Let’s test. I have an earth-natured Gaia Rod. And… yep! Equipping it changed Kytes from fire to earth. I like that the game shows this in an easy way, so if for instance I’m having trouble with a fire-based enemy I can scan my character screen and see who’s wielding fire-weaponry.
-Something else changed when I swapped from a Fire Rod to a Gaia Rod. Kytes had two magicks/abilities before, “Fire” and “Firaga.” The Gaia Rod changed his “Fire” ability to “Stone.” That must be the kind of basic auto-attack.
[Non-rhetorical question: what does the “B” icon stand for? Basic, as in basic auto-attack?]
-Filo’s weapon, the Spectral Edge, is described as a “colorful skybandit ideal for beginners.” Not sure what an ideal is, but this thing sure looks like a hoverboard.
-I’m glad potions and elixirs aren’t a thing. There’s enough to worry about on screen without managing consumables for an army.
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Trying a Battle Again
-I want to try combat again, knowing what I know now. I head back to the prior battlefield.
-Ok something I IMMEDIATELY LOVE is that it shows me who I’m about to fight. There’s something similar to FFTA in this. I can adjust to my opponent before the fight starts. I can swap to gambits and esper set-ups that fit the situation.
-This pre-fight menu shows me enemy names, levels, stats, strengths and weaknesses.
-OMG THESE ENEMIES ARE SO CUTE!
My favorites are the Gnoma, a happy lil mushroom, and Quetzalcoatl, a skeptical birb.
-Some of these assests are definitely from FFTA, and the new ones are in the FFTA style. Love it.
-Most of the enemies are level 4 but the Yellow Wyrm is level 9. Maybe a boss.
-Enemies have a “rank.” Dunno what that means, except as a general indicator of strength, similar to level. I’ll guess that if there are two enemies of the same type, each the same level, one is rank 1 and the other rank 2, the rank 2 one is probably stronger somehow and gives more xp.
-I can create three Esper “troupes” before the battle. I can’t seem to do much with it now. Maybe once I have access to more.
-Success! Felt much more comfortable this time around.
-The wyrm “boss” went down super quickly. That level gap didn’t impact much when I have so many party members.
-Llyud learned Revive afterwards. So this is FFIV-style ability, where you get abilities for leveling up.
-I like that Llyud gets revive. His only prior ability was Jump, so I expected him to just get dragoon abilities, but this previews more of a hybrid job system. Much better than, say, Penelo getting all the healer abilities.
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Back to the Ship
-I head back to the ship, and Penelo is awesome. She confirms that the stuff we find here we’re giving to Llyud. No colonizer, this one.
-The islands’ chests’ contents are ancient aegyl offerings to the gods to keep Lemures safe. Llyud is okay with us using the treasure up here, as long as we use it in defense of Lemures.
omg filo lololol
-I found the ship’s log. I’ve completed 7 missions out of 81.
-There’s a recipe book for new weapons. Sort of an FFVIII-ish system.
-My inventory’s item descriptions show where I can find the item if I need more. Not yet enough materials to craft anything.
-There are slots for 14 different recipe books. I only have the starter book for now.
-Hee! I can actually see the parties’ entries in the logbook that Penelo demanded. Some of the back-and-forth in the logbook is delightful.
-The Folio shows both history and lore. Checking through it.
-I didn’t know Penelo used to be a dancer when she was a kid!
-The aegyl have short life spans.
-Vaan’s lore: “Traveling with Ashe and Balthier changed my life. It changed everything. And Penelo, well… wait, what were we talking about?” Vaan and Penelo sitting in a tree…
-lol Penelo’s lore is a quote from Migelo scolding her and Vaan
-Kytes started studying magick after the events of FFXII.
-AH! A “skybandit” isn’t just another term for sky pirate. It’s the name of the type of hoverboard Filo uses.
-Llyud’s lore describes him as curious and reliable. Sounds though like the rest of the aegyl may not take too kindly.
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Next time: continuing with the main story.
