It's been a wild ride, still around the last part of the 1st act, and I can tell things are starting to look too hopeful. The gangs are slowly catching up with each other, finding strength, and meeting the affable Gestrals in their village. The humor didn't disappoint.
What was more was learning how the power dynamic works between each of the characters, Gustave is better as a team support, while Maelle and Lune are the damage dealers, giving pure damage and sustain effects. It's all thanks to an amazing combination of Pictos and Luminas gear. RPG stats literally playing out like every board game player's wet dream.
- Meeting the cooler people
Finding the Gestrals were a tricky task, that's thanks to the multiple pathways set up, which can get quite confusing, but are littered with new discoveries, including a closed off areas with paint spikes. Oh yeah, one of the seniors asked me to find the little guys. All 9 of them.
I learned a lot of interesting stuff, did you know cars existed? They literally tried driving Pierce Arrow model types. Seems like Gestrals aren't fans of metal based vehicular transportations, hence the scrapyard mess they've become. It's also tragic that Expedition 63 lost their way of exploring, and seemingly also succumbing to the paintress's world.
- Being tested on mantle
RPGs tend to create these levels where you linger, lost in mazes, so that they can add more dialogues to flesh the characters out. Plus, I've learned more of the Gestral's culture, how they build large mechanized bots to deal with serious threats. Including, well, probably us.
While I can tell how some of the environments look pretty similar, thanks to how familiar Unreal Engine is from the vast majority of games I've played; there's something uniquely captivating, as if they serve not only as environmental storytelling, but has this leitmotif to them. Then there are the inhabitants, ocean life, aura of mysticism from how stuff don't always follow the laws of physics.
We finished exploring, there's one area I couldn't get to because of the paint spike. But before we could proceed further, their last line of defense, the manifestation of their "brilliant engineering" and aptitude for "defense through offense" finally came to be the Ultimate Sakapatate. Ok, this thing is a joke, every single attack is easy to block or parry even.
The defenses are airtight, which helps me to experiment and figure out how to dismantle or bypass through. The majority of my equipment and skills allow various elements, including fire, to be induced. Which is Luna's specialty, and also allows Maelle to play around stances.
Especially with Virtuose, which is possible using a skill on inflamed enemies. With 200% damage, and marking the target via Gustave, a Percee skill that uses 2 AP points in Virtuose stacks insane damage. Like, 3 times the damage, I've won so many difficult battles thanks to this. Maelle is easily overpowered once the rest of the party members are well utilized.
- Haunting dreams
We finally reached the village, talked to the Gestrals, and man, these guys are so silly. They're so emotionally rich, full of character, I made a kid cry because I told him he's too young to fight Nevrons. Some of them drunkenly started fights with me.
Even going as far as to commit daylight robbery, but because that guy lost, he took the loss and gave me something in return. Also, a new store for some rarer items, neat. But we came here to talk to the Chief, her request was that we participate in the tournament. So one by one, I took them out, and finally, we found Sciel. Our next stop was asking the legendary Esquie for help.
But in her dreams was an unexpected visit, for Maelle, both Renoir and Alicia came, speaking about events yet to unfold. As if they saw things foretold and our paths will meet some way, maybe ending in great loss. I'm not going to spoil what's coming, with act 1 being almost over. More doom and gloom later, we meet up Esquie, and boy, compared to the Gestrals, he's an enigma.
He needs his magical rock to unlock other far stronger abilities, that included fighting his rockshell friend, and the fight was laughably embarrassing, we barely won. Also, bit of sidetrack, but I realized just how interesting Sciel's attacks are. It involves stacking cards on enemies.
- Four is a great pack
As in, the next turn, she can increase damage based on no. stacked. But her Twilight skill turns Twilight mode on for two turns, which increases damage and doubles the stacking. She seems like the easiest one to master, after Luna. Though, It'd be nice if she had powerful AoE skills.
Because the enemies later on, are super trickier. Shielding themselves, throwing hard to see projectiles, needing AP to waste to remove their floating orbs, and the sister warriors stabbing themselves to stack up shielding themselves and anyone else, while also pulling strong yet predictable AoE attacks on us. Thankfully, stacking burning is possible somehow.
I know I'm at the end of act 1, but man, it's been a rollercoaster. I've learned to parry, dodge easier, realizing that sound and timing is much important, which is super rewarding from attacking back, and getting APs from Luminas. Stronger enemies can scare me off, though.
Esquie is a godsend, this giant is full of funny anecdotes and soliloquies. He also exists to transport us faster through the map, and supposedly get us flying everywhere in the later act. Also, I finally got the dress from the Gestral Beach challenge. Platforming here could use some QA refinement.
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