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The Pauper Prince
-Let’s look around the town a bit.
-Again, I’m tickled by this SNES-era system where the characters who can use an item have sprites that wave their hands in their air.
-We’re broke? The king sent Noctis to meet his betrothed with no money? This kingdom must be in dire straits. Or maybe it’s a character-building thing.
-The game wants me to talk to Cindy. So naturally, I wander around outside town to check stuff out first.
NOCTIS: “Man, it’s hot!”
GLADIOLUS: “…So lose the jacket.” RIGHT? I love that you actually CAN lose the jacket for a stat shift.
-The restaurant is a nice, greasy diner. Takka’s Pitstop.
-The cook marks my map up with all sorts of points of interest.
OH MY GOD I WANT TO COOK THIS FOOD IRL. Chili con carne, and leiden jambalaya…
-These tipsters also have hunts. Hunts earn me stars, increasing my rank and granting access to tougher hunts. They seem to mix standard kill quests with single-tough-enemy hunts.
-Hee! I love the drawing on the wall of Cid, Cindy, and the tipster. My local diner has the same thing, featuring kids’ drawings of their staff and food.
-Finding a mix of ground items. Random scrap, potions, even an “Oracle Ascension Coin” commemorating Lunafreya’s rise.
-All the fake brands give a real sense of place. It’s a great touch.
-Ok, let’s talk to Cindy. Cid wants to teach us a lesson by charging a ridiculous amount to tune the Regalia. He also gives us a chance to earn some money by killing literal varmints.
So a bit shady, but not a bad guy.
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Hunter Becomes the Hunted
“We need to find some Dave guy.”
Found him.
-“Daemons” come out at night. Idk what that means, but I assume it’s similar to the elementals in FFXII. Some nasty beast we have to play around.
-Dave’s shack is empty. Just a note here about a bounty on a mutant dualhorn called Bloodhorn.
-lolol okay, that’s pretty funny – prompto (the skinny guy) acapellas out the classic FF victory fanfare when we win a fight.
-Ooh, found a camp ground! Let’s try a training option.
-Basic drills are level 5. It’s level 5 (I’m not there yet) and Gladiolus kicks my ass. Still, I’m SUPER happy the game has these! They helped me a lot in Sekiro to practice different mechanics.
-Wow, there’s a whole camping cutscene. Ignis cooks, Prompto takes photos and eats, and Gladiolus sets up the camp.
-have I said how good the food looks cause it looks GOOD
-AHA! You get experience, but it’s banked until you apply it in camp. Camping made me hit level 3.
-Gladiolus’s survival and Prompto’s photography gained experience, but not cooking or fishing. Why not cooking? Rice balls too easy maybe, didn’t use any consumables. I’ll bet if I cook something with consumables, it’ll level me up.
-The next day, I find the cabin. It’s overrun with these beasties.
-Tutorial: Friends propose strategies, and following those strats gives me AP. VERY interesting.
-Dave’s inside. Sprained his ankle, so now we gotta take his place hunting this Bloodhorn.
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The Mutant Marauder
-Wandered across approximately SEVEN MILLION ENEMIES. Barely escaped without dying.
I suck at combat. I feel lost, overwhelmed, and just have no idea what I’m doing.
…Chill. Be kinder. There’s a lot of mechanics, so it makes sense that I’m not fluent in it immediately.
-Let’s treat it like learning a DPS rotation in an MMO. In that setting, I start out on a target dummy practicing a couple of parts of the rotation and gradually mix in new priorities.
What should be part of the basics that I focus on? Let’s try these three:
1) When a block opportunity comes up, hit square to block, then circle to parry.
2) When my health/mana are low, seek a grapple point then to recover.
3) When I have a tech point, use it.
-Camping before taking on the beast. CROQUE MADAME!
-The party talks about Cindy a bit, and her protective grampa. What happened to her parents I wonder?
-Got the Bloodhorn! Focused on that rotation, though I still can’t quite follow the chaos of combat.
I remember feeling like that early in FF Tactics, where shit was happening that I couldn’t parse.
-Before returning to Cindy, I keep exploring. There are some treasure markers on the map I want to check out, and that takes me to swarms of level 8 birds.
It goes… surprisingly well! Better blocking, and using mana effectively to warp strike the birds mid-air.
-The treasure is a Blade of Brennaere, a two handed fire sword with a ton of attack.
[Non-rhetorical question: it has way more attack than Masamune. Is Masamune really just a better-than-usual starting weapon that’s ALREADY outpaced?]
[Non-rhetorical question: Do link strikes just happen randomly if I’m fighting near my party?
Blindside attacks seem to make them happen more – do they ever hard trigger a link strike, or just roll for a link strike chance to happen?
Also, is a link strike just a flat damage burst? Does its damage depend on the party member? Like, if Prompto has a great weapon and Ignis has a shit weapon, does a link strike with Prompto do more?]
-Took out a level 12 direhorn by staying on its butt, and Ignis came up with a new recipe!
This kill also tells me that I shouldn’t feel bound to just fight on-level enemies. (Still level 4 right now.)
At the campsite I try training again. And I DOMINATE Gladiolus. Kept it simple, attacking a couple of times and phasing through his big slow swing.
[Non-rhetorical question: there’s a blue bar on the bottom of my screen that gradually runs out. Does that impact how fast I run? Do my stats in combat go down when it empties? What does it mean?]
-Camping and making a veggie medley gives Ignis a new recipe. I guess those just happen at different trigger points.
-This is Prompto’s first time outside the Crown City.
-Gonna call the session here. This has been awesome, and I’m way more comfortable with the basics of combat now that I simplified it for myself.
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Next time: I may head back to town, or I may just wander and explore more, trying for some of these side quest hunt things and map nodes.]
