FM4: Fin~ Final time was a bit over forty hours. Last two battles were good. The Paris map turned out a lot better when I had the British Army goons bolt for the northwest corner. The Zaftrans still chased them, but they couldn't gang up on me as long as I made it a running battle. Still took a heavy beating once a recon unit reached them (those missiles fucking hurt) but wound up with four of them left. Also, leading Wagner and his flunkies into the sidestreets worked so much better than facing them head-on (all I can say is that I was tired last night).
Final battle was rough, but no one died. Had about 1400HP to spare on the transport plane by the time I managed to get my forces in range to frag the snipers and distract Ivanovna. Being immune to melee attacks made her live a lot longer than she should've, since I couldn't abuse link attacks and score free hits with Darril.
So yeah, fun game. I wouldn't normally suggest you people need to play more games about giant robots, but folks need to be clubbed into this one. Story's not bad--I appreciate attempts to realistically approach tactics and politics, and the two parties operate differently enough to make me say they succeeded (though the villains are varying shades of epic)--but it is mostly gameplay hype. Seriously, this is an equip-tweaker's wet dream. You can customize a PC to excel in whatever area you wish, but they have innate skills too and it winds up being pretty balanced. I didn't die much at all (three times total, I think?), but a few battles did teeter close to disaster and I generally had to exploit every advantage the game offered to pull through. This is about what I like to see from an RPG, challenge-wise.
Since I'm hyping the game's customization options, I may as well ramble about the PCs, for those who've played it.
Durandal side:
Elsa: Dual gunner. Pretty badass throughout the game. I didn't abuse computer skills much simply due to lack of cash, but boosting her to 16 max AP and 16 AP charge seriously paid off. Four machinegun attacks per turn with that skillset would pretty thoroughly rip someone to shreds.
Zead: Ubertank. Built him for max HP and weight allowance and said to hell with evasion. Granted, he tended to not get hit anyway just because his range meant you needed him on the back lines. Missiles are pretty awesome, I've gotta say. Spare melee attacker whenever he ran out of ammo. Not great at it, but hey, may as well use him for something in the event of an unexpectedly long fight.
Hermes: Healer. Pretty much all he did the whole game, yeah. Indispensable but hardly exciting. Especially since repair backpacks weigh so much that I sometimes didn't have room for weapons (at least, before I started building his mech to ensure there'd be extra space). At best I could have him support people with machinegun attacks on enemy turns, but yeah, that's not really what he's there for.
Latona: MVP. Spammability of melee attacks and wider availability of link points turned her into the resident goddess of destruction in the second half of the game. Link her to everyone else, have her sit next to whoever you want dead, and she'll get a free hit in every time someone else attacks. Actually saw her pull out some surprise OHKOs in the last few battles--on fully healed enemies, no less. Fire Strike + 1.5 Damage kicking in at the same time = oh god pain.
Bosch: Fun with bazookas, and I built him up to like 50% evasion or something, which was pretty awesome. By the final battle, he was still using the Grom that the one random dude in the bar gives you just for knowing Latona or something; the storebought ones that showed up after you get that had slightly better attack power but worse accuracy. I'd rather do a little less damage than risk wasting a turn, thanks.
Beck: Probably LVP for this side. Not that having another missileleer is bad, but Zead's better at it. I kept him using salvage backpacks for the novelty of revival, but never actually wound up using that. Air Strike did have its uses, at least (the "Save the carrier" mission on Madeira? Made much easier by the grenadiers being too distracted to move out of the blast range and getting nuked as a group), and Armor Coating probably saved the B.A. dudes in the last Paris battle.
USC/Alianza side:
Darril: Built him as a melee attacker, because what the hell, Latona made it look awesome and Darril's team had plenty of gunners already anyway. He wasn't bad at it, but I probably should've kept him with shotguns. Oh well.
Renges: MVP for this side for most of the game. Sniping for godlike. Being able to target a specific part of an enemy wanzer, having the best accuracy, and generally high damage made him the most reliable by far at fragging a troublesome enemy unit when I really needed it. Wasn't a coincidence that he had a distinct level advantage over his teammates the entire game. Couldn't take much punishment since I built him with whichever arms gave the best Hit boost, but it's not like he was likely to get hit much in the first place since, y'know, the point of being a sniper is to be out of the enemy's range to begin with.
Chaeffer: See Hermes.
Luis: Kinda disappointing. I left him as a dual machinegunner, but he was badly outdone by Thammond in this area.
Ines: Rocket-spamming = love. Best range in the game, AoE attacks? Awesome. Tossed melee weapons at her too so she could get in some extra link attacks once she ran out of rockets (which happened a lot in the mid-game. It was...far too long before I remembered to regularly bring extra ammo with me).
Thammond: Elsa mark II, only just as badass without needing any computer skill abuse. Shows up kinda late but totally kicks ass. Dual machine guns, yes. Double Shot in its various incarnations is some of the best damage around, so why let it go to waste when someone gets it innately?
So, out of curiosity, does a new game+ get you anything special? What carries over?
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Yes, Tal, Ar Tonelico is next.
