So, I played FE8 on my computer. So what have I been playing portably lately? Oh, just a game I sorta half-knew already, and in fact voted on in the old DL despite not having technically played it myself (SCANDAL). I wanted to experience it on my own terms though in retro mode, so didnt' want to chat about it here before hand or during, + I also tried to keep the FAQing low. Anyway, I've basically been Ciato+1: she played FE7 & BoF3, so I took a look at a game I got on sale from PSN for like a dollar or so...
Breath of Fire IV: Interesting! Very much a window back to the world of PSX era games, I think. Minigames! Obscure sidequests! Terrible camera angles! Long attack animations! Untranslated Japanese! And yet it's pretty cool anyway.
I'm playing this on Vita, so they map R2/L2/R3/L3 to the rear touch pad. It's pretty awkward; when I want to switch who's in front, it often takes several taps, and sometimes when wandering around I'll get stuck into a constant switch of standing in place as everyone rotates crazily due to it detecting a constant press. Oh well.
Anyway. My impressions are *mostly* positive, as the game has an interesting setting, some reasonably compelling overarching plots, and pretty much all of the cast is likable (or hatable for the villains). I also rather like the intentional decision to not have Alliance-Empire War II break out and to have a lot of the quest be about ramping down tensions and shrugging off slights rather than make some big affair of honor out of it, something many games screw up. Fits very well with a war-bringer vs. peace-bringer type setup. On the other hand, the low-level plots leave something to be desired. Actually quite a lot. I mean, I'm a person who authentically can enjoy plenty of "journey-is-the-destination" type games where you move from town to town solving their minor little problems a la Grandia I/II. And I can see an angle where the dragon who was busy with the Big Political Problems of the world was too blind to see what the guy who was fishing and meeting random travelers found. But... the actual low-level plots suck. They're bland and uninteresting. Way too much "pure travelling" with some BS obstruction in the way, like not having directions, and too much "you need X keystone to get into Y" (don't ask how the enemies you fight got in). Now, I respect that if you're not going to have a big war or something going on, you have to lower the stakes some, but you can still have there be some *interesting* excuses for a dungeon. Like, "awakened earth monster on the isle of fire stops the wind in the sea" is probably one of the better quests-along-the-way they have, and that's a pretty low bar! Sigh.
Additionally, the B plot (save Elina) is weirdly underplayed early when it's the best thing they have. The A plot is compromised per usual by silent protagonist (another horrible decision) and the fact that it's introduced as "Ryu, you must level up a lot!"... so that he can... send Deis back to wherever Gods come from?! And she thinks that Fou wouldn't do this for her because ??? but Ryu will because ???. Sure, the Fou/Ryu arc turns out well, but I don't particularly like the way it takes over too soon and shoves out a more interesting plot. The whole thing about paths & streams is a little creepy too - if Ryu had actual lines, then you can write it off as a side-effect of his charisma or the like, but nope, fate is literally making people slaves to his will or something. Doesn't matter that Cray doesn't trust Ryu in his lines sometimes, he's stuck because magic. I guess this is sort of okay in that it's reinforcing that Ryu & Fou-lu can literally set the fate of the entire future, so it'd make sense that they'd naturally take over everyone around them and bend them to their path, but once again, it'd be helped a lot by Ryu having lines.
Related to this, there's a plot element which I'm not exactly complaining about - ambiguity can be good, especially for things like "workings of divine beings" - but seemed a bit conflicted. In the world of BoF4, gods are summoned for a reason but have little wills of their own - they're shaped by their summoners. Okay. Fou-lu was summoned because the people prayed for peace or something, and his interpretation of fulfilling that was to unite everyone under one empire rather than many warring ones. This is all fair enough, and furthermore this plays into the idea where Ryu's story hijacks the plot - that the Empire was trying to capture Ryu so that he'd be their servant and do whatever they ask, while Ludia's prince wants Ryu to serve the Alliance. Yet... there's a line that Nina has late C3 along the lines of she thinks Ursula has realized that even if she delivers Ryu to the Empire, he's not really going to be their plaything, he's his own person. Well... maybe?! The whole way everyone is acting is as if you can just capture a dragon then tell him your wishes and profit. And then there's the line about how they're worried that Ryu might destroy the world too or something, but Ershin is all "I wouldn't worry, he's totally under Nina's thumb anyway." Well, if this was supposed to be a lovebirds gibe, fail, as this has been built up 0 even given a silent protagonist (unless you think Nina talking about her crush on Cray to Ryu counts?!). But I guess you can sorta assume this really was literal and Ryu has already been shaped to be an instrument of Nina's general nice & fluffy desires?! Or alternatively that she sculpted him into being his own person and that's a person who wouldn't despair like Fou did?! Maybe. Seemed like they wanted all of the above to be true simultaneously or the like.
Also, everyone knows this already, but Lord Yuna is a memorable slimeball. Great that he gets away as well. Well done. (I already knew the rough overall plot arc but it worked out well enough playing it through.)
Anyway. Gameplay! This weird blue-haired guy is just an amnesiac, it'd be cruel to force him to fight out of some selfish desire to get sandflier parts. So I'm not going to. Nor am I gonna bother farming minigames or fishing or making items or gathering skills. Make things interesting and more to the point!
Note that bosses provide quite a lot of XP, so I'm not as far behind on levels as you might think, *but* individual levels are quite potent in BoF4, and more to the point you are horrifically short on money. Every purchase is precious, coming from boss money & chests.
Long boring list of actual bosses of note + gameplay comments...
Random desert town + scavenging: Why'd they have the first town be one where they explicitly comment it's confusing and hard to see what's going on?! Look, you can hide the layout problems by not having super-narrow alleys where you have to constantly rotate around to see which way's which.
North Chamba: This place has zombies & skeletons & such! We're clearly no match for them, run away. Took me embarrassingly long to solve some of these puzzles. A skullfish eats the poor helpless amnesiac guy, although nobody seems to comment on him becoming this weird winged thing when attacked. Shame, that means he stays pitifully low level compared to the boss of the expedition.
Prophetic Dream: I'd just like to say this is a weird way to introduce the Elina plot. Nina & Cray don't even comment on what they're doing at the beginning of the game, and now Ryu of all people gets to see the future or something? 'k.
Path to trap town: Not knowing the system, I accidentally give Ershin a master in RWolf, and find you can't remove masters once set. Oops. Kinda don't want to use them, not that I want a DL-legal team exactly, but I want to experience the characters as they are and not risk screwing them up permanently. Ershin seems like a physical attacker with those deadly fists so this is clearly the wrong build for her. (Oh, young SnowFire, how misguided you were.)
Trap town: DIE PARROT AND YOUR YUFFIE MINIGAME
Trap forest + Maman:
Reset #1. After all the annoyance of placing apples and running around, Maman, the giant monster the mayor's cheesed off, is a super badass. I dunno if Meeple missed a move in his boss topic or if his damage is just way better against underlevel & underequipped characters, but he can throw out 600 damage in an attack (2x hits of 300) which is a OHKO to anyone that isn't Aura dragon. When I don't have any revival items. Off good tankishness. And his other moves aren't bad either; his stun seems to always connect (certainly a way better hit rate than most of the status moves in the game, and his stun is attached to damage!). Crushed.
I do notice that there are revival items for sale now that I look ("Ammonia" wasn't obvious from a glance), but they're expensive, and this is actually a horrible enough loss + the dungeon is annoying enough that I decide to briefly break my no-killing-not-in-self-defense vow and hunt some monsters in the forest. Ryu in particular badly needs it being like level 2 or level 3. After this, it's not so bad.
Kahn: Looong slugfest, and has nice damage, but he wastes a lot of turns on stuns that don't do anything and useless buffs and WHY IS MY FACE MELTING AFTER HE BUFFED UP. Still, no problem, not as hard as finding the dang kids with bad camera angles getting in the way.
Captain Rasso / Ymechaf:
An epic & long slugfest. Not a lot to say other than it required me to use a fair amount of precious revival items. Also around now I think I figure out that not just Ryu can learn skills, but everybody can! Luckily it seems like most skills don't matter. Also unlike FF7, you can learn skills then run, so there's that. (Also why do they say later this broke the gate? It clearly functioned well enough to send us back, and we fought a reasonable distance away.)
Chapter break: This is where I"m just gonna mention there's some weirdly different rates on item drops (something you notice a lot when buying rarely). Swords in treasure chests are super-rare, but Ershin fist drops are all over the place, for example. Scias keeps his starting sword, the Jang'do, until literally the final dungeon (although I guess I could have given him Ryu's Flame Sword, but nah.). Additionally, although it doesn't crop up yet, how do some people know about the Yorae Dragon, anyway?! It literally doesn't exist, or possibly half-existed 600 years ago. Like, the dragons, sure, and maybe the Wind Dragon told somebody? But otherwise this makes even less sense than the townspeople talking about exactly what's in the treasure chest at the bottom of the monster-infested cave. How do you know about this anyway?!
Sparrow: Haha. Oh, these mischevious fairies, possibly murdering random passerby with their silly magic! Hilarious.
Kahn 2: Notably easier than his earlier form, dunno what's up with that. Since I've already commited the sin of using a Master, I move Ershin to Una to get better fist beatdown.
Nightmares: Most are EZ, but one of them is an utter pain because he's practically immune to everything. High subtractive defense or something? He ends up way tougher than the "real" boss, I have to unload all of Ryu's AP on him and go dragon and everything. Every death he gets adds up too since I don't revive early thinking he'll be easy and I don't need to spend resources, and that's fewer people regenning AP in the back. Anyway, yeah, Shining Blade did like 100 damage to him at most, lots of stuff bounces off, ugh.
Metal Gear Nina: Soldiers are EZ, even underleveled I can unload combos to win fast enough. Also this plot point about the King's Sword is weird. It's been in my inventory the whole time (the broken one, not the replacement?) I guess the Empire taking it didn't translate to gameplay. The refresher LP I'm looking at to make sure I don't forget something seems to think that Yuna also made a fake Sword to send to them? Dunno about that, but maybe.
Wyndia: No boss, but Momo is a cool enough master I decide to break the no-masters thing for non-Ershin types and have everyone sign up with her (except Ershin). More HP is good if the goal is "don't get OHKO'd" which is really all I care about in an LLG, and she doesn't screw up other stats, and she knows the importance of sleep-management in boss fights. Good times. Also the music in this town is utterly awful, possibly the worst piece in the game. Also one of my 3 fairies dies for some reason, so I have to go harder core on the hunting it seems. Ah, the fairy race: stupid and flighty left to their own devices, they just need a white dragon's guiding hand to tell them what labor to conduct. They actually like doing it and WANT to be ordered around, no really.
Random goons from Ludia:
First off, what's everybody doing here?! Shouldn't you have needed the damn Tower of Wind key? And if you came in after how'd you get here before me?
Anyway, these guys are badasses and push me to the brink. They kill everyone but Ryu and kill one of his dragon forms, but Ryu limps through. We then almost have one of the rare cases of losing to a strictly easier fight in round 2 with the goons, as despite Scias's help, I have 3 party members at 1 HP and Ryu without much AP. Luckily, Nina's learned Cyclone by now I believe so she has MT damage, and Scias has a healthy supply of Multivitamins to toss (share your stash with me, bro!) which combined with some revival helps me pull through. Of which I'm very glad, doing this dungeon again would have been annoying.
Flip side, this definitely also plays into the streams crossing thing... why does Scias help me out? Because he hung around Ryu too much and got his fate tied in. He doesn't actually have a reason and is confused himself. Creepy.
Deis mind elemental pillars of doom:
Reset #2. I hope you enjoy my ghosts haunting you forever, Ershin. I misplace which pillars are weak to which elements, which isn't TOO bad as Cyclone is still MT, but non-Nina offense clowns around in the wrong way, and the pillars have nasty regen if you don't take out the supports (clearly intended for you to use combos here). Anyway, the pillars are glass cannons: while I take down the Wind-weak one, the others wreck me pretty hard. Their offense is pretty good if you let it get rolling! Nina being the only good mage in this set doesn't help.
In attempt #2, I blitz the wind-weak one harder and use that to set up kills on the ones that aren't getting regen. The wind-immune pillar isn't so bad when it's the final one remaining and can get taken down by Scias's magic.
Captain Rasso 3:
Well going Aura first certainly extends this up a bit, as I frustratingly wail on the nearly invincible boss! Then Kaiser happens and I realize it's a plot fight. Whew.
Ursula is kickin' rad, being way higher level than my team (L20 or 21 or so, when my team is L12-L16?) and also has MT magic. Prepare for lots of Firestorm -> Cyclone/Simoon for the rest of the game. She joins the cult of naps as well of course.
Kahn 3: Exciting. Harder than Kahn 2, easier than Kahn 1 thanks to better items? Tiger Fist still defintiely a potential problem. Also what's up with the horrifically dated art from the 1910s & 20s you got from us of blacks. :( I am horrible at the Nina fightan' minigame, as she really likes jumping to her doom after a bounce near the edge. Takes me like 4 plays of the game to finally knock the soldier off.
Evil below decks critters: They're exciting but I win with fire-wind combos, but it's close IIRC.
Glebe (rock monster on the isle of fire that controls the wind on the seas): An epic, drawn-out, knock-down fight. Naps are very important to keep AP up; Firestorm -> Cyclone won't clear the tankier minions he summons in one turn, so he gets turns to mess with me with both a OHKO & an MT 2HKO. Additionally I find out the hard way that Kaiser can just randomly beat up your own party members. And that Glebe automatically counterattacks any PC attack with his own physical for ~600 damage or so, so get wrecked Cray. (And to a lesser extent, Scias.) This perma-locks some people as dead which means less naps! (Yes, yes. I found out later that you CAN target the back row with healing / revival, but at the time, I thought that you had to have someone in the front row target a front-row person for healing or revival, and if that person died before they got their action, welp, too bad.) Anyway this battle has to take at least 30 minutes, with Ryu going through 2 full AP bars and only 3 characters surviving. It turns out that Summon Minion costs AP, and furthermore Glebe is required to use it if he's alone, so I eventually run him out of AP after 20 or so castings of it, which renders him useless as he's required to keep attempting to summon more minions. Hooray!
Also WTF Capcom at the Sea Dragon location, I'll admit I FAQ'd this one up.
And while we're at it and mentioning FAQy things. Why do they even let you turn over a dragon form to random stereotype merchant without making it clear what you're doing?! Sure it's a useless form, but that's a permanent loss. Waiting for pottery is also boring. Also the idea that Ursula can't find the capital seems faintly ludicrous; are there really no soldiers to talk with? Bah, dropped balls, this arc of the plot from the salt flats to sailing to pabpab village to the edge of the Empire is bad. Again, I respect the idea of flashing between Fou-Lu having crazy shit happen while Ryu is fishing, but bah. I also think that investigating Fou-lu's tomb is something we could have reasonably wanted to do on our own, or be given a good excuse for. Why is it a path between cities?! Sigh.
I do make one notable last-ish purchase: the +10 Wisdom staff for Nina that gives her more CP AP regen. Sweet. Most of the rest of my war supply will go into items from here.
Anyway...
Won-qu: Another badass! Brutal MT damage that can OHKO a person and generally screw everyone up, decent magic, ridiculous BoF durability. Good thing he occasionally uses Sanctuary & a crappy status move that never hits even into no status resistance. This is another knock-down, drag-out 20-30 minute fight with lots of needed napping. Luckily I'd figured out by now how to heal the back row, which helps a lot.
Also, screw you red eye. I ignored the damage because it was lulzworthy, didn't realize that was coming out of my max HP, although going back outside for a save is honestly not a bad idea anyway since the next boss is kinda random and also tough...
Fuzzy guard dice: REVOLUTION IS THE DEVIL. That's the "invert everyone's HP" move, and yes, he can follow it up with MT magic. So full life -> 1 HP -> ded. I eventually learn that I need to keep my HP at around half to be safe, since the MT magic isn't super dangerous and isn't a 2HKO if Revolution didn't screw me up. I fight this boss on July 4 of course, so revolutions are tough. I have maybe 3 Ammonias left by the end. At least Ershin's physical build finally has a reason to be relevant vs. the magic immune die... from checking Meeple's boss topic, it's not that Ursula is a super mage, it's that bosses in this game tend to have crappy Fire resistance and great physical resistance, much to Cray's displeasure. I bought him an upgrade for his log at some point and regretted it since, Cray is an item boy and I should just forget he has an attack. (At least Scias's magic is okay, especially with Nina for Cyclone -> Ice Blast/Lightning). And Ershin seems to do fine damage with Blizzard & Quake anyway even without building for it (hey, she has L3s and no one else does!), so sheesh, I see now why Ershin is apparently a fighter who turns into a mage. Weird.
I notice I can buy Vitamins from the Fairy Village, which is excellent since MT healing is awful or non-existent. I think Nina just learned Vitalize around now? But that's just 400 HP or so of healing. Vitamins, with 1000 HP for everyone, are much better. Healing items so useful in pacifist underlevel BoF4.
Undead dudes @Astana: EZ, they get rekt. While we're here, though, the timelines are a little weird - lots of running back & forth from Astana & the road to the capital and the town in-between. You'd think that a major emergency like what happened here would have had more repercussions. Also Yuna, you can cut back on your shit-eating grin, your little experiment got all the staff killed you'd need to fire the Carronade anyway, so I don't think your sacrifice plan would have worked that well. Also give me back the damn Dragonslayer, that weapon was sweet.
A-Tur: He uses Frost Breath on turn 1 and wrecks me, but his AI seems to use Sanctuary way more often than Won-Qu? Maybe just good luck, but those extra waste-a-turns help a lot until I can grind down his Frost Breath to something more manageable. I try out Kaiser again (possibly vs. Won-qu too?) and am pleased to see that the berserk rate seems smaller, he mostly just spams Kaiser Breath now. Also Chedo as a dungeon is great, a good reminder that Fou-lu is in fact the bad guy here.
Castle: Sheesh this place can be confusing, but it's pretty interesting, too. This is what Suikoden Tierkreis got wrong: I'm fine with a labyrinth that's flavorful, interesting, and distinct. Just don't give me bland passages with nothing in 'em. A fine final dungeon, except for the part where it's pretty hard to tell where the Blue Charm is and that you can pick it up. On that note...
Dragonne: Lots of ST, so he eats up a bunch of Ammonias (the main thing my money has gone into), but not too bad otherwise... except when he uses Wither, the MT ID spell. Why does this one have an okay hit rate when all the other status moves in game are so awful?! He nails 2/3 with it the first time he uses it. Anyway, ST focus is still not going to win vs. sandbagging revival, so I outlast.
Tyrant:
Reset #3. I may be at the end of my rope here. I *barely* survive Dark Wave - somehow - it deals ~1000 damage to my full front row, leaving them on their knees at 50-150 HP or so. Ryu can go Kaiser ASAP and he can tank things and hopefully not kill me, but ow ow ow, I just can't deal with constant near MT OHKOs that are faster than me. Vitamins only go so far when Fou can also just outspeed and smash the Vitamins user dead, and I have a limited supply as well. Not sure what the right strategy is here! And since I know Astral will be coming after this, and it's a looong walk down + scenes in order to refight, my patience to give this too many tries may be low. I may have to break my vows once more, like I did for Maman. For reference, Ryu/Nina/Ursula are L27, Cray is L26, Urshin is L25, and Scias is L22 (he managed to end both A-Tur AND Dragonne dead, and they gave out mad XP).
