Things slowed down enough to get some gaming into my schedule. Even so, it's hard to motivate myself to play Phantasy Star II. I've played about 5 hours in the past month and I've barely mapped Skure, plus part of the overland on Dezo. But, let's get back to it now. Maybe, with luck, I'll be done with the game by October.
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| Off to a new frontier |
"Let's make it more challenging," I said, "it'll be fun." Well, it is more time consuming. The battles are taking longer due to tougher enemies, but I'm also doing less damage. I found myself making little progress and needing to recover after one or two battles. It took about an hour of grinding before I could explore past Skure. The robot enemies, which are still around in moderate force, have the highest defense and require the use of magic to defeat in a timely manner. I have found some items that allow indefinite use of some spells.
I've been fortunate to discover that the Snow Crown doubles my defense, and everyone has an item that does 20 - 30 damage. The crown alone has increased my survival rate to a point where I'm comfortably roaming without fear of dying from a single fight while at full health. I still only have 3 healing items, and am wondering if I missed one.
I've discovered three towns, Zosa, Ryuon, and Aukba. I believe there's only a small portion left, and while not expecting to find any more towns, I hope to find a dungeon soon.
My new party is disappointing.
Sean (Hugh), the biologist, only has a single heal spell, Res. He does have one of the most potentially powerful spells though, Vol. I say 'Potentially' because it misses the majority of the time. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but all magic seems to have a small chance to miss, yet Vol has only hit once out of 10 tries. He's not outstanding in any other way so far.
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| Did that just say 510 damage? |
Cana (Anna) has proved to be one of the best characters in my new party. I've got her wielding dual slashers, which hits all enemies in a single group. Robots are proving to be a problem, but I've been told they fade away after a while.
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| Gotta slash them all! |
At this point, I'm really beginning to dislike Shir. She has a random chance of stealing an item when exiting a shop. The drawback, she leaves the party when this occurs. Here I am, in the middle of nowhere, and Shir decides to wander off, forcing me back home on another planet to retrieve her. The gain is a paltry item worth about as much as a single good fight. Beyond that, her tech skills are underwhelming. Her only redeeming quality is a high agility, which allows her to act first or second. She's using the Snow Crown to protect the party before enemies charge.
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| Not even a goodbye |
There's lost lore abound in abandoned Skure. Humans used to live here, but left many years ago due to a leak of poisonous gas. Cats, kept as pets, were still roaming around and it's possible to hear their thoughts with a Magic Cap. I also learned, and found, a fake Magic Cap called Mogic Cap; I was warned to beware.
When talking with the local denizens I heard the same conversations, that Dezo people are the best in Algo. The local shops were prohibitively expensive. I lacked any leads. Luckily I had Sean (the person, not the character) around to give me some hints. The one that helped the most, I should use the Mogic Cap when talking to Dezo people instead of the Magic Cap. Why was this necessary? I'm not really sure, but it cut prices by half and gave me some actual insight for progress. Maybe the Dezo people were the ones that created the fake caps, but that's only a guess.
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| What, no Dezo women? |
Three cities later, I was going to continue exploring near Aukba, but Shir decided it was time to steal again. Two clues: an invisible place that can't been seen or touched, and a strange guy is living in isolation on Dezo(oh, and he never ages). Word of an eclipse-torch blamed for the reason of the accident is also mentioned. I'm expecting a prism to come up soon. It was mentioned in the manual as an item that allows one to see invisible objects.
Session Time: 5
h00
m (
Total Time: 24
h31
m)
I still think you're going to want to use that guide. The dungeons on Dezo are brutal. Seriously. BRUTAL.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, persevere man! Think about CRPG Addict beating Rogue or Wizardry or something. You can do it!
I'm fairly confident I'll get through it. It might take a few extra hours what with the additional combat that comes from wandering around mapping. The combat is definitely the most time consuming part of the game, especially with all the item use now necessary.
DeleteI'm on the third hidden Dezo dungeon, of course the hardest one, but I already have half the fourth floor mapped, which just leaves the fifth. After this, there's only one more area to search before heading back to Lutz to see if he'll show me the final dungeon yet. I figure there's a good 4 - 5 hours left, and I've put in about 6 since this last update.
Woohoo! new update! :)
ReplyDeleteCan't quite believe your total time has reached over 24hours though, they sure made these games long.
Based on what you've written, why do you keep Shir around? or give her an important item? I'd consider her too much trouble.
Yes they did, and I wouldn't be surprised if I reached the 40 hour mark with the amount of time these battles take.
DeleteI'm keeping Shir around mostly for my own reasons. She has the Snow Crown, and she has enough agility to go off first or second in the turn before the enemies can react. So, she serves a purpose.
Based on items I've been getting though, I'm guessing Rudo was meant to be in the party and Amy as well. At least I have Anna, but I have this Nei Armor, which might as well be useless junk.
Actually your not too far off. The recommended party, at least according to the hint book is Rudo, Hugh, Anna. I think I used Amy. Your basically losing a lot of firepower by not using Rudo. He's a tank. You could probably use a lot of The biologists and your main characters spells more before falling back on the items. Hugh is basically your wizard with the magic spells, against non robots of course. Your not gonna be able to use the nei crown cause only Amy can use it. You do get to use nei cape on shir but cannot use nei armor because only Rudo and Kain can use it. Also you cannot use the Nei shot as its a gun and ya only Rudo can use it. All the other Nei items you can use. Second best items are the laconium items. A laconium mace would be great for Hugh for single enemies, does 40 damage. But the best headgear you gonna get for Anna and shir are the color scarf and wind scarf.And Hugh's best armor is gonna be the ceramic chest.
DeleteDezo... yeah, Killias has a good point. Dezo was pretty tough. There is some light at the end of the tunnel though. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to beating this game and putting it behind me. I'm hoping there's only one or two more dungeons to go. I'm fairly sure there's a Nei Sword somewhere (according to the manual), so there might be one more Dezo hidden tower or Lutz might just give it to me for collecting the rest of the items. We shall see.
DeleteSo, how many boss battles have there been so far. I remember the first game did a Final Fantasy 2 (Famicom) on me and made a lot of the bosses just strong standard enemies, but I didn't mind that in either so much. I still feel stuck in a never ending dungeon in PS2 because I never got to Nei First. I liked the overworld, towns, and the battle screen (even if the interface is horrible and kind of weird), but there was just nothing special about those pipe-obscurred dungeons.
ReplyDeleteGreat to have you back!
So far, there haven't been many bosses. Actually, Nei First is the only real enemy I could call a boss. There are the robots that captured me in the last dam, but with how easy they were they'd be more like mini-bosses. I'm expecting it'll stay like this until the last battle with Dark Force (I'm guessing that is the boss).
DeleteWell, there are 3 bosses in this game. And I'm not going tell you whether Dark Force makes a return or not. Actually there is a another protagonist as well, I suppose you could call it a boss. Well, you'll see soon enough. You got the 2 hardest dungeons in the game to fight through first and then e last one which is just hard based on the enemies they throw at you.
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