So, Monday night I beat Ring of Fates. The first playthrough ended with me having played 23 hours and 31 minutes, with the main character (Yuri) at level 42. Am now working on my second playthrough with New Game+, which includes a new level that apparently was on Crystal Chronicles for Game Cube (River Belle). With this level included, I’m now halfway through the game (the first visit to Rela Cyel) with a time of 29:50 and my characters at 57/56/50. I have done a bit of leveling up; Gnash was at level 46 or so when I first got him.
With the higher levels comes new, more useful weapons and abilities that can be built into them – namely HP/SP Regen, HP/SP absorb (absorbs with each hit), and the ability to have your non-active party members use healing magic automatically.
As far as gameplay goes, it’s virtually the same as the previous playthrough. The monsters have leveled up with you, so they’re just as hard (or easy) to beat as they were the first time through. The bosses are just as hard (not really), and they’re made easier by already knowing how to beat them.
One of my main problems though, is that the monsters all drop new items. The scrolls for making weapons/materials/armor are better, but I’m constantly having to go back and get rid of older ones just so I don’t keep dropping the new ones (you can only hold 99 scrolls). And since I’m a packrat and like to think to myself “Man, I might need this in the future!”, it’s difficult XD Though I suppose I could use some of the excess scrolls and materials to make new weapons and such; then at least I can sell them for a bit of cash.
The battle system, while still obnoxious, is getting a little bit easier to deal with and work around. Your party members still get in the way of friggin everything, and half the time end up just dying so I don’t even bother with them. >_>
This game has disgustingly low HP. Only Yuri has managed to get over 800 HP, with the help of a lot of HP boosts and HP boosting weapons/armor/accessories. But since I took half of them off for other things, he’s somewhere in the 650 range with HP/SP absorb on his equipment so having his HP lower (he has the highest ATK/DEF stats) isn’t too bad, since he makes back pretty much all the HP he loses when I buttonmash enemies.
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It’s, uh. Been a day since I started this post so I’m now a bit further along – out of Rela Cyel again and since I had Meeth and wanted to level her up, I went to River Belle, which is the shortest, but most obnoxious area to work in because the entire area is covered in poison, including the boss battle area (good thing I brought Meeth along!). There are a few not-so-strategically placed Lilty pads that’ll give you a protective barrier for a short time. But even those are a pain in the ass because even though you can pick up the pot and run off with it and keep yourself protected, half of your douchebag party members don’t follow you properly and end up getting poisoned anyway. >_> Losers.
But. Yes. Main points of my ranting are:
1) This game is disgustingly easy.
2) It’s also obnoxious.
3) It does, however, provide mindless entertainment.
I think that about sums everything up >_>
Beat the game 4 times, loved every single minute of it. It’s amazing really how much content there actually is in this game, the storymode only scratches the surface of it.