/vr/ - Retro Games

I beat Asura. It was a somewhat lame fight. She made two attemps at depleting my health bar, the rest of the she spend with casting regeneration on herself, which I immediately dispelled. Now the only thing left for me is being a perfectionist, but the game still draws me in. I love it.

>>4265515
>degenerate PS1 players
REMINDER

>>4266084
can the bosses in the trials drop their items?

>>4266090
Don't think so.

>>4266321
Pretty sure you can get an iron Hand of Light from the Minotaur, but I don't know if I just made that up.

>>4267454
nice ass

>>4267454
I know if you made it up.

Yes you did.

>>4267475
https://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/914326-vagrant-story/faqs/15974 reckons you can. I know I've had a Hand of Light before, but I can't remember which Minotaur I got it from.
>>4267462
ikr

>>4267526
That's a fairly popular myth with Vagrant Story but nobody's grabbed a screencap in all these years of one dropping.

The truth is all the endgame gear drops only in the extra dungeon.

>>4267570

>>4265515
I am the table.

>I was phone

>>4267570
With a couple like the Holy Win not even being craftable normally.

>>4267648
How is this a screencap of minotaur dropping it?

>>4267709
Oh, I see what you mean now. Thought you meant it wasn't a drop.

>>4267720
at all, I mean.

>>4267454
*brraaaaap*

>I am the reinforcements
>does no damage unless you abuse Raging Ache
>miss damage absorb once and you are dead

>70% chance to hit
>Miss most of the time

How do I NOT suck at this game?

>>4267871
Analyze > read numbers > act accordingly

>>4267871
>How do I NOT suck at this game?
Me too. Raging ache and Crimson pain with bare hands is a fun combo but how do I actually play? Most of the time all of my weapons so 2-3 damage on bosses.

Also on the weapon stat page, it shows my Guisarme's blunt damage in white, but its strongest attribute is edged. What gives? What does the white text mean?

>>4268108
it means you combined it with the wrong grip

>>4267871

You have to grind affinities before you can damage anything. When you attack something, your weapon's affinities slowly increase. You can also increase them by repeatedly spamming attacks against those dummies you encounter at different locations. I think the first dummy you see increases your beast affinity, which means your weapon will actually be able to damage beast-type enemies.

>>4268126
You get more of a damage boost just using the right weapon and grip type than you do anything else. You don't need to touch dummies at all. There's a damn good reason for the Rusty Nail being in the Dullahan boss room.

>>4268148
>You get more of a damage boost just using the right weapon and grip type than you do anything else.

But good luck figuring that out on your first playthrough. It's easier to tell people just to grind affinities so they don't have to deal with any of that other bullshit.

>>4268241
>its easier to grind dummies for hours than it is the Analyze and switch weapons
Well okay then.

We all know the real bullshit is that Analyze can fucking miss. Or that not only can Heal miss, but using goddamn shield will increase the chances. VS is chock full of horseshit mechanics, but enemy weaknesses aren't one of them.

>>4268265
>its easier to grind dummies for hours than it is the Analyze and switch weapons

But sadly it is. You have to grind affinities only a few times, then you're good to go for pretty much the rest of the game. You'll put more effort into hunting down gems or equipment-of-the-week that happen to be useful for approximately one boss before they become obsolete again. And they won't necessarily help you with non-boss foes.

>>4265515
They should make a sequel!

>>4268398
pls no

>>4268398
Is a phone game sequel coming out like Breath of Fire? Or do you unironically want modern Square to make a sequel?

>>4268398
>I want a sequel made by this day and age's Square!

just replayed vs last week. hadn't touched it since i first played it about ten years ago. more niggling issues than i remember and way too easy but still a lot of fun. top-notch music and art direction, too.

>>4267454
>>4268567
these cracked me up. after that intro sequence you know that somebody on the staff was an ass man.

"this shot needs something in the foreground"
"on it, boss"

>>4268126
no. you only need to know three things.

--class/affinity/type points are four times more potent on defense, so hitting weaknesses is vastly more important than just upping a stat (0 vs 0 is substantially better than 100 vs 40 as you're playing through the first time, which is counterintuitive and the instructions should have at least alluded to this).
--max pp on offense contributes as much as 100 cat points, and min dp takes away just as much. instill is great for new weapons and temper is good always.
--pp and dp have a linear effect from 0-max; they aren't all-or-nothing which is all the manual addresses.

there's a combat mechanics faq and reading its first formula section will better clarify things, but it isn't necessary.

if you want people to have a shitty experience, then sure, tell them to grind (or constantly weapon-swap or combine weapons). all you ever need are three weapons, the strongest you currently have of each type (attaching grips with the most gem slots), and proper use of gems, accessories, buffs/debuffs/fusion, and targeting and the game is a breeze. all of that is intuitive as long as you don't bypass treasure chests and you take stock of what you have. not even chaining is necessary, though it'll sure speed up the game.

>>4268148
and for a rapier being a fixed drop three rooms beforehand, after the guy asks you to put him out of his misery in a cutscene.

>>4268265
heal can't miss unless you're using it offensively or if you've equipped something that reduces the chance of you being hit by magic (ex: manabreaker gem on your shield).

I can get this game for $40 at a store. Is that a good purchase? I've seen some of the game from an incomplete playthrough, but the game seems to be slow yet fun if you like timing and knowing numbers.
How strong is punching? I assume not at all.

>>4269301
Yoshida is an ass/thighs man through and through.

>heal can't miss unless you're using it offensively or if you've equipped something that reduces the chance of you being hit by magic (ex: manabreaker gem on your shield)
Yes, you're right. I forgot about those gems. But that said, why wouldn't you be using evasive gems?

>>4269315
The only time I've ever gone barehanded was in like NG+3 or something when your STR is so high it doesn't matter what you use. Honestly, I have no idea how to make barehand viable on a first playthrough.

>>4269358
i still need to play the other ivalice games. now more so than ever.
nier too? mmm...he definitely is.

>why wouldn't you be using evasive gems?
well, when heal misses and you go wtf and finally realize that the hit% goes back to 100 when you unequip this stupid gem, heh. i couldn't even be mad at the game for that one. 'welp, you got me. you said it did a thing and it did the thing.'

it's a solid gem though; no downside when you have the +20 agility to offset it.

>>4269315
if only you could stab gems between your knuckles and fuse your fists with elemental power.

you'd be pissed off enough from the pain alone to do some serious damage.

Thanks to the wise anons in this thread I am now dealing 30 damage per hit to fire elementals instead of 5.

Funny enough I actually had tried to use analyze, and it worked after my fourth try. Then I couldn't figure out where to go to see the results. Up to that point I assumed 'status' was useless on the menu.

I've also reassembled my weapons so that my edged blade with the highest strength is on a grip with high edge. I feel like I was doing more damage with my edge/blunt shortsword, but I can pick at weaknesses much better now.

How hard does elemental affinity matter? Should I bother to have a "undead" weapon if I've already got 3 strong weapons of each class and an undead gem?

Are Break Arts ever useful?

>>4271353
you don't need an undead weapon, but any weapon that has a high elemental affinity like wind or fire that you can push up with gems will steamroll the entire game, if you can say, get your water element near a hundred, then you could even use it against the water elemental that should absorb it's damage just by casting the weakness to water spell and overwhelming the remainder of it's resistance. You can even match your weapon element to the break arts it uses to do stupidly high amounts of damage.

some people praise the versatility of the physical element, but it's a lot harder to raise to stupid levels with gems.

>>4271353
Elemental affinity matters but the trick of Vagrant Story is that you get an elemental buff / debuff spell right before the boss its most useful against.

Also if you only ever use one sword you'll never really be weak to anything. People think the biggest stat determines the damage (which it does in a way) but having a 50 Fire 40 Water weapon will deal more damage than a 10 Water 5 Fire weapon. So as you use the one sword, combining with other blades to get better forms, you'll gain stats across the whole board instead of having multiple weapons that won't do shit to any monster not specifically weak to it.

The beauty of break arts is in the status effects and phys damage type changes they can do. One of the sword break arts deals piercing damage instead of the usual slash damage, useful against armoured foes. Differents parts of a monster are weak to different things - heads are generally weak to blunt, limbs to slash, and torsos to pierce. Break arts let you deal damage types you might not ordinarily be able to do.

>>4271389
>Also if you only ever use one sword you'll never really be weak to anything. People think the biggest stat determines the damage (which it does in a way) but having a 50 Fire 40 Water weapon will deal more damage than a 10 Water 5 Fire weapon. So as you use the one sword, combining with other blades to get better forms, you'll gain stats across the whole board instead of having multiple weapons that won't do shit to any monster not specifically weak to it.
you can get one element high enough that it works on everything period, and because it works on everything, it gets trained in that element by everything you fight. getting just that one element to that accelerated state you completely lose the need to combine and swap weapons anymore

it was my favorite fresh playthrough that I tried other than my first of course

>>4271396
Combining weapons to increase their tier/material is literally always worth it.

I always tell people to stick with the beginning sword, use it to forge higher grade swords and kill absolutely every enemy you run across and the game becomes far less complicated.

>>4267871
Deal 50+ hit combos with only enough health to survive one strongest attack from the enemy. Close the distance to ranged enemies via jumps. Steamroll through everything without giving a flying fuck about schmaffinities and whateverthefucktheycalled.

>>4271623
Why not rapier?

>>4271674
You can take whatever weapon you want as long as it's the first one you get. Run the game with it and it'll always be your best choice as long as you learn how to buff yourself properly.

Speaking of, I love how there's a coop battle to demonstrate to clueless players that a) buffs are essential and b) how they can sometimes stack.

>>4271764
You mean the 2v2 with Sydney right? He certainly buffed me with prostasia (my luft fusion was better for that fight anyways) and the enemy buffed with prostasia but I didn't see any stacking.

>>4268398
They should remake the game with the same atmosphere, music, story and art direction but remove the autism and basically overhaul the combat itself completely.

I don't know how many times I restarted this game trying to do it the 'right way' after seeing advice online and it was still as convoluted and tedious as ever. Real pity.

>>4271389
>the biggest stat determines the damage
it's the only one that does. 40 water works when you're using the water fusion spell and it becomes the biggest number; otherwise, it does nothing and you're using the 50 fire.

solid strat though if you don't mind combining (bronchitis?). a couple bosses are strong to everything except physical, but by then you can have two physical gems (or lotus palm, if you knew to get ten barehanded kills) so a garbage physical stat shouldn't matter.

>>4271396
>it gets trained in that element by everything you fight.
affinities change based on enemy affinity, not the weapon you use. water goes up and fire goes down if you're fighting fire enemies, and physical goes down against everything except physical enemies (who raise physical and lower other affinities at random, but this hardly matters because physical enemies are rare).

affinities go up over the course of the game because they raise slightly faster than they lower. so yeah, if you train one non-physical affinity, it'll keep going up, but so will every other non-physical affinity (assuming you're fighting a variety of enemies).

>>4272093
you can have both a sorcerer spell and an enchanter spell applied at the same time (ex: herakles and luft fusion).

>>4272118
no they shouldn't, enough with the fucking remakes

unironically helpful thread

>>4265515

>>4265515

>>4265515

>>4273232
This game is fucking great if you have a bro explain the finer points beforehand.

>>4272174
Its not slightly, for every two gains, there's a loss. What's really neat about this system is every third gain is random and every second loss is random instead from an opposing stat. Also you cannot have a loss without a gain to compensate.

So what? Affinities at 100 aren't eligible for random loss, only opposed loss. Basically once one stat hits 100 your gains stat to add up even faster since you don't have to worry about, say, your 100 Water dropping randomly because you hit a Dark creature.

Also any weapon with 100s keeps those 100s when combined, so if you were so inclined you could use the training dummies to grind three weapons for various non-opposed affinities and combine them for an all 100 weapon that will never lose any affinity because it cannot gain any either.

>>4273890
I played it as a kid got stuck and stopped playing. I've started it again recently and I totally get why I got confused when I was 12.

>>4273916
I really have no idea if some parts of this games mechanics are stupid or clever, or why it does such a bad job at explaing itself. What probably drives a lot of people away, is that you have more options to fuck yourself, whereas you only need to do some simple things to succeed.

I kind of wish it had a team, it feels lonely with just one guy, but it'd be a very different beast with more than one PC.

>>4274721
>why it does such a bad job at explaing itself.

It comes with a built-in manual in a help menu that explains everything I've said in this thread. Nobody ever seems to bother to actually select that incredibly robust "quick manual" option in the menu before bitching that the game never tells them how to play.

>>4276760
Tieger and Nissa were supposed to be allies before the funding for the game got slashed and 50% of the planned content was immediately scrapped.

>>4277203
>It comes with a built-in manual in a help menu that explains everything I've said in this thread.

this is what I like about matsuno, most of his games have in-game manuals which you can use whenever you want so there's no need for lengthy tutorial sections
wish more developers adopted this approach

>>4273916
that sounded odd, so i did some testing.

there are exceptions, but the 2-1 gain-loss ratio is close to how affinity change pans out over time (so my bad on saying "slightly"), with an exception i'll get to later. however, the rest of your first paragraph is incorrect.

affinity change usually works as described in the post you replied to. gain and loss is fixed to those specific affinities; there isn't ever an affinity selected at random for a change. also, you can have several consecutive gains or several consecutive losses, and you can have several losses to one affinity without any loss to the other affinity (or others, in the case of attacking a physical enemy). this gives a result that looks like weighted rng (although vs probably doesn't have a true rng), and it's very possible for affinities to get drastically skewed simply due to weird luck.

as a curiosity, an exception to this are blood lizards (i assume there are more enemies that do this but i don't know which ones; i found blood lizards by chance). their affinity is water, but they raise both phys and fire (instead of just fire, and phys is raised about twice as fast as fire), and they lower all affinities (including phys and fire; water is simply lowered faster than other affinities instead of being the only one lowered). over three tests, they raised affinities by a total of 107 points and lowered them by 94. gains and losses still seemed like the result of weighted rng.

i'm fairly certain that a weapon with a maxed affinity can still lose points in all non-phys affinities to phys enemies and in all affinities to enemies with blood lizard behavior. but i don't have a grinded blade and i'm tired of testing, so someone else can verify that if curiosity strikes.

it's a nice touch that combined weapons keep the highest (and lowest) stats and that they'll keep multple stats if they're tied. so folks who want to create ultimate weapons can do so... for whatever that's worth.

>>4277917 cont.
pastebin with results: https://pastebin.com/ku6cp9jF

there are a couple other curiosities with blood lizards (in the first test, with a phys weapon, light was also raised and fire was raised about half as fast as in later tests; later tests used a fire weapon). needs more testing but i've had enough of that.

>>4277203
not sure which posts were yours, but there's been a lot of stuff said in this thread that isn't in either manual. also, the weighting of class/affinity/type points on defense vs offense is nowhere to be found in either; without that info, a new player has no clue how numbers relate and thus can't know how to best tackle bosses. the player won't fully understand why the most recent attempt worked better than previous ones, so the satisfaction of actually solving a problem is denied.

that sucks, but that might still be passable - with enough trial and error (and often just with intuition), any boss can be easily overcome - except the manual then gives the suggestion to build class points. that's the worst advice you could give at any point, and to a struggling player it basically says 'yeah you're boned, stop having fun and go grind'. on top of that, you have the kickass chaining system, but a struggling player can see that and say 'well fuck grinding, and fuck getting single-digit damage until i screw up then have to eat resources and then repeat two dozen times for one boss'. so even one of the best parts of the game gets unfairly smeared, and most of the thanks are due to the manual.

this is a game that would invite ignorant bitching regardless, so it didn't need legit complaints on top of that. especially when one is indiscernable from the other to new players and it all melds together in a resounding clamor of 'this game sucks'.

the manual is a failure. by extension, one could argue that the game is a failure. i wouldn't - i think it's great - but it's a lot harder to see things as i do with only what the game gives you. so the implication that all anyone needs to do is read the manual is garbage. the pitch ought to be to give a small number of non-grindy suggestions that will allow players to better understand all the tools that are at their disposal, which i'm pretty sure is what most people here have been trying to do.

>start new game
>nothing past the golem takes damage
>reach the dragon by killing everything with Raging Ache
>have to give up and return to workshop
>fix weapon and attach dragon affinity gem
>turns out I wasn't doing damage because I wasn't healing and my body was fucked
>kill dragon and exit dungeon
>get raped by the priest and his bodyguards because they take no damage
>attach human affinity gem
>damage still doesn't go above single digits
>the priest parries every single attack despite having a 95 hit chance
>spams Explossion for the entire battle
>he's immune to debuffs and you can't return damage to him

I'll never get how this game works no matter how many times people attempt to explain things to me. The damage values are retarded and so I am.

>>4278035
You need to see if they're weak to blunt, piercing or slashing damage.

>>4278035
you need to keep your risk at 0 by using items and use chain combos sparingly

>>4266090
This post is from nearly a week ago, but yes they can. I fought Asura over and over again until I finally got a Marlene's Ring.

>I AM-I AM-I AM

>>4278050
>>4278321
Not very helpful tips.

I got past the priest and got into the next dungeon, wasted 20 minutes killing a Goblin Leader and tried 6 different weapons on him, yet all of them did the same laughable damage (yes, I did Analyze, although it took 5 times before it worked).

I'm now trying to kill the dragon on the midle path and it's the same deal, except it's fire breath kills me in one go and I can't seem to block it. Prostasia and Degenerate change nothing. The only """weak""" part of it's body seems to be it's tail (5 fucking hit points) and I can barely get close to it because the dragon always faces Ashley and hugs the wall.

This game is one huge test of patience and I'm only in the beginning, I've dropped and restarted Vagrant Story a lot of times and this is the furthest I got every single time.

>>4278673
Dude, just do this: >>4271664.

>>4278681
>deal 50+ hit combos
Now explain to me how to accomplish such a feat without hitting an enemy 50 times and getting my RISK to 100, all my attacks deal single digit numbers.
>with only enough health to survive one strongest attack
I just said the dragon is one shooting me, no, it's not because of my Risk, I always try to stay below 25.

>>4278673
the dragon should definitely not be one shotting you
you do have a shield, right?

>>4278704
Pretty sure I got a shield equipped, just not a very good one, It's not like the game is giving me many of them anyways, still, I don't see how a mediocre shield would make a difference.

>>4278696
That's the whole point, you do just that. n-th hit in the combo, if it lands (and some hits always do), deals AT LEAST n points of damage (meaning, 10th hit, if it lands, deals at least 10 damage, and so on), PLUS the bonuses, connected to the type of the strike itself (yep, Raging Ache as every second strike). The whole point of this tactics is just saying "fuck it" and always being at 100 Risk.
>I just said the dragon is one shooting me
Close the distance to the fucker in jumps, then, once he's at melee range, he won't use breath, only melee attacks. Then slaughter him via berserking.

>>4278696
I am not sure, but some "+ 20% to hit chance" gems may be necessary for this to work. You gain one such gem in the beginning of the game, another - somewhere in the middle. Although going from one to two such gems in my rapier didn't do much for the actual frequency at which my hits connected, while berserking, so, I guess, it should work just as well, without those gems at all?

>>4278728
Also, when you do this, it's absolutely inconsequential whether you manage to land the first strike or not (you will probably miss), you just proceed with the longest combo possible regardless, so that to give as little possibility for the enemy to strike back, as possible. Also, use locational damage.

>>4278717
shields mean the difference between life and death dude

>>4278732
I'm not playing the game right now, but I'm pretty sure I got that gem attached on my shield and it doesn't make much of a difference (maybe I am supposed to attach it on my weapon, but I'm using affinity/elemental gems on it).

>>4278728
>>4278735
I don't know what to say anymore, I've killed plenty of enemies this way because there's just no other option other than staying at very low health and chain Raging Ache over and over for 20+ damage per hit.

>>4278759
In situations where you don't want enemy to strike, it's WAY more preferable to do several LONG-ASS chains - as opposed to a lot of 1-2 hit ones. Every pause between the chains gives the enemy an opportunity for a strike. When you do the chain, the time basically stops, and the whole chain (be it a 2-hit or a 50-hit one) is regarded via the game as one singular point of time.

>>4278673
go back and re-explore the dungeon looking for secret areas. You're missing treasure chests and bottles of wine and shit man

>>4278783
>bottles of wine
Is this a typo or is there actually a bottle of wine in the second dungeon? Right after you enter Leá Monde?