And we're back! And now, with this reasonably long post, I shall conclude...
CHAPTER 6!!!
Um, yes, we're the ones who came up with that plan, you know.
Ok, I could have sworn that you just said "Graneblos is not our enemy anymore!" not too long ago.
BUt if they're not our enemy, then why are we fighting them?
Thank you Alicia for interrupting the moron.
Let me guess: Our plan is to charge in head on, with no regards to our survival, and hope everything goes ok?
Probably? How do you not notice a large flying airship hovering over your airspace, combined with the fact that your Emperor himself just faced off against us, only to end up with a Dragon Blast TO THE FACE?
Good question.
That...sounds like something resembling an actual strategy, huh?
How is it the Princess with absolutely no combat experience knows more about combat strategies and tactics than our Fearless Leader over there?
If you guys have forgotten due to the length and general text heaviness of this chapter, Alicia apparently has talked to Palpaleos a lot, and when they did, he use to rave about Battle Strategies and such.
I'll let YOU figure out where she learned it!
Or maybe its just indigestion. I mean, that cookie I found in your room didn't seem very...sanitary.
I see you're easily satisfied, brother.
Anyway, I think its about time we FINALLY got to, you know, FIGHTING AND STUFF. All this plot has given me a head ache!
well, first things first; we shall...SET UP OUR TEAMS!
Teams courtesy of some combo of Sage, Grefter and...I think someone else, hell if I can remember, its been a while!
You'll notice there's a few things new to this list however!
First off, you'll notice Alicia is one of our PCs. Yes, she's joined us, and she's pretty much identical to Sendak (barring some minor stat differences), being a summoner and all. Naturally, Grefter/Sage/other people in chat were nice to me and requested 2 Summoners be placed together, which yields some...fun results <_<
The other thing is...well, you'll notice Barclay is placed in "Other" teams. This is cause he's an extra PC that there isn't a team form. When you have more PCs than teams are allowed (at the moment, we can only make 5 teams), then the PC gets put into Other and is unusable in that map. Naturally, between Maps, you can swap units around at will!
As a side note, before we continue, its worth noting that on this next map, I forgot to swap Elecman back with Matelite's group, so Matelite was especially lackluster <.<;
Say, what's this new option over here? I say we check it out!
Ooh! We get a choice! Lets see what happens if we choose the first one, shall we?
Oooh! Another map! With pretty straight forward conditions too.
Ok, might as well stop the act and get to the explaining.
Side Quests are Bahamut Lagoon's method of grinding. Since it lacks a world map, a convenient Egress skill, or what have you like other SRPGs, the game gives you these. Anytime you reach the formation screen (which is occurs right before each plot map), you can access these side quests. You can play them as many times as you want to.
What side quests available vary based on what chapter you're in. The two you see now are the only ones that are going to be available for a while. Here's a quick explanation of them:
Granbelos Fortress: Its a pretty standard fortress map. Walls around that you can smash, mote that you can freeze to cross, trees to burn, what have you. Enemies you face here are all humans, for the most part, and are similar to enemies faced in the past few chapters (so we'd be facing complete failures at the moment, since that's all we've been facing lately, really; its early game, what'd you expect?)
There's also a random surprise in these maps! If I ever come across one, I'll show you it <_<
Easy Dungeon: As the name implies, its an Easy Dungeon, and yes, there's a Hard one, but that's available much later. Basically, its a cave, and the stuff in it you'll see later. Essentially, this dungeon is all about Monsters being scaled to what you've been facing lately (...so basically, just things in that forest.)
Yeah, you go to these for cash, EXP, items, etc. if you want more of it. Anyway, I say now its time we beat the snot out of some imperial failures!
Say, I wonder what this new ability does...
Hey! That name sounds familiar! Lets see if you guys can figure out from where <_< >_>
And...huh, standard spell range, and...3 Panel Radius? I think this spell is worth looking into! Lets try it out shall we!
Oooh, shiny!
(Summons are big and flashy to the point where the game can't really do them justice on as a field attack animation, so it doesn't try, instead cuts to what looks like a battle scene, and shows what looks like the entire team summoning the dragon (even if its just your summoners technically <_<), then shows the animation. There are a few other spells the game does this for as well, but its primarily summons that have this distinction.)
Umm...wow, that...was pretty painful.
For the record, level 8 in summons is pretty high right now (not sure what boosts Valitora's levels though, given he's Non Elemental maybe the mind stat? And if it does...I don't think I have a Dragon with 100 Mind...) even if there's 2 summoners. Granted, the fact that he's Non Elemental means his drops are crap, so I shouldn't use him TOO much. Though its hard to argue with that offense.
Sadly, due to me later altering my Dragons around a bit, Valitora lost some power and became merely 600 damage to that radius ;_; (...600 is still pretty high, granted, especially for a field effect and especially for a move that has better AoE than any other move <.<)
In any event, I just clean up the rest of this fight. While you can't see it, yes, there's far more enemies than 4 shown here; the map is fairly standard sized, those are just the starting bunch. I'll get to showing you more of the map later.
So anyway, what happens when you win a Side Quest?
You get that!
Basically, this screen has everything you could care about game play wise. Talking to Sendak lets you continue the game (brings you back to the formation screen.) The Battlefield Salesmen sells you Weapons, Armor or Items like he does in chapters when he's NOT on the ship, and the Dragons are there so you can feed them. So yeah, its essentially a quick "Make use of your profits immediately!" aspect which is rather nice, since you won't be running around with a lot of useless stuff until you finally reach a plot point where a shop/dragons open up.
Anyway, since they're here, I say we feed our dragons!
If its not obvious, Dragon transformations will becoming a lot less...frequent. I might show you anytime they shift between stages of Grand Dragon, Glorious, Crusader or Gladiator to one of the others, but not sure.
As of now, though, I've decided I want at least one of each for once. I've also decided that Fireman will be a Grand Dragon. Both Ciato and Trips have demanded that Iceman and Cutman are to become Crusaders for some reason, so...that leaves me with Bombman and Elecman to become a Glorious and Gladiator.
If anyone has requests about forms, feel free to speak up!
Also, random fact: Elecman's Crusader and Glorious forms look identical! The game doesn't even indicate he changes between the forms, just the name changes. As a result, he was changing between Glorious and Crusader at random and I didn't even notice half the time.
Anyway, with our Dragons fed, lets go raid the Easy Dungeon this time, only so I could show you guys it!
Not much to say. Well, ok, see all those red spots? Those are lava pits. You can't walk over those since well...you try walking over lava!
However, you can make them passable terrain if you hit them with an Ice attack. Yet another random Terrain Manipulation thing from BL!
And yes, that is a Poison Swamp in the upper right hand corner.
That wall looks suspicious, don't you think?
I'll let you figure out what just happened <_< >_>
(actually, there is one in a more convenient location from the starting point, but like an idiot, this occurred to me long after, so I had to go out of my way for this one.)
Anyway, with Easy Dungeon lacking anything else interesting, its back to the intermission area, and feeding our dragons and...
Huh, so Gladiator is the LIGHT form while Crusader is the DARK form? Weird...
(if you don't understand, Gladiator has Recover > Poison, while Crusader is the other way around, if they are tied, Intimacy kicks in, yada yada yada, I explained this earlier!)
In any event, if we are to get the Emo Dragon to become a Crusader, its going to take quite a bit of work, if you so much as look at his Recovery and Poison values <.<;
Anyway, how will I be treating side quests in this play through? I'll be going to them on occasion, but not abusing them. Skipping side quests is skipping half the fun of the game, but at the same time, I said I don't wanna break the game, and that'd just be boring grinding anyway (having gotten all Dragons Maxed asap, I can safely say its not the most fun of things >_>.) So yeah, expect to see some results from battles you might not see or something!
Looks like Zomberd wants more!
Anyway, this fight looks really tame, what with there being like 6 enemies and him total or something silly like that. Piece of cake, no?
Along the way, I tried to Screen Cap me drowning an enemy positioned on a rather long bridge with no land near bye...and I succeeded at the drowning part! ...but not the screen cap part cause I was getting ahead of myself, whoops!
As we are progressing and killing the few failures along the way, and insuring they don't notice us lurking, using the power of kills to our advantage against their numbers...
Damn it Matelite! How many times do I have to tell you that Role Claiming this early is *NOT* a wise idea to relieve suspicion!
...great, not only did they manage to get a whole Mason to Role Claim, but a cop figured us out, and they have a Doc too! God damn it! If we lose this game, it'll be all your fault!
There better be an ITP somewhere to mess things up!
...huh, that's some damn good Night Kill powers right there! We may yet have a chance!
Gameplay note: Honestly not sure WHAT provoked that nice fat "+10" to Inspire's level, but as we can see, its a significant boost given Inspire should NOT be hitting that much damage til much later.
My guess is that the terrain being surrounded with Gunpowder and such caused that (that's what those cannisters are.) In any event, I'm not complaining, as a few other attacks (like Javelins from Lancers) get this boost too!
Damn it! Looks like they got a Day Vig ability! This is one screwed up game!
(yes, that pic was shown purely for Trips' amusement or something)
Wow! It seems we got their Mega Beloved Princess, of whom when she dies, Scum automatically wins!
We got lucky there, lets hope this keeps up in future games!
Well, we saved the day, but at what cost?
(This shot is shown just for the amusement value of what BL's terrain altering can do to the landscape, be it on purpose of accidental.)
Also, notice that Exp Bonus for all thing?
Yeah, never showed that, did I?
Well, to insure that no one falls behind due to lack of participation or something, anyone who fights in a battle and LIVES gets the EXP shown above, including dragons. Pretty simple, really, its a way to have everyone keep up at least to some extent.
And with that, I officially declair Chapter 6...
COMPLETE
