The NPC above with an arrow over his head is a very important NPC type. They are called Savants. When you gain a level, you will gain a small amount of HP and MP, possibly a skill point to invest in passive skills (buffs), or extremely rarely a sub-turn point as referenced above. Where you actually get the power from leveling is by using the Savants. As you kill enemies you earn pearls for their defeat, the stronger the enemy the more pearls that character earns. However, only the character that does the finishing blow earns any pearls from that enemy. You trade these pearls into the Savant and invest them in your base stats (such as Strength, Defense, Speed, etc.), and the limit for each of those stats will also go up as you level. It’s a fairly obtuse system, but hopefully you get the idea. It does allow you to choose which stats to prioritize more, but it does come with a ton of micromanagement. Both experience and pearls are distributed relative to your own level compared to the enemy’s level. A mob that gave you 5 pearls when you were equal level will only give you 1 when you were two levels above it, for instance. Unfortunately that does make grinding to be a bit of a chore, whether grinding XP for levels or for pearls to stat up. Really you will only get much value out of your time if you are within plus or minus two levels of an enemy party.
You can possibly gain one more thing from a defeated enemy, and that is a treasure sack drop. When you end the battle, any treasure sacks left on the field will be added as potential loot that you can collect or leave. Gold can be a bit more difficult to come by in this game than other recent RPGs (think similar to Dragon Quest), especially in the early game, so collecting these is important. It also serves the other function of providing enemy drops that you will need for quests or to upgrade your weapons with the blacksmith (in the above picture with the hammer over his head). Almost every quest in this game is a loot collection quest, whether it is a side quest or a main quest. The drop rate of items seems horribly slow at first. But once you are almost half way through the game, you can meet an NPC that tells you the helpful information that if you take the time to step on those loot bags during the battle you will get much better rewards. When I met that NPC I wanted to strangle either him or the developers. That information would have been much more useful earlier. Also, something that they never actually tell you is that you can loot important quest items that just go into your material pouch and if you sell them then it can make several sidequests (even important ones) impossible. Some of those enemies will respawn after several hours, but several objects that you loot from treasure chests are completely gone if you sell them. There is nothing on them that suggest that they are an important item, and you only have space for so many items in your inventory, so this can be frustrating. Also, only the Main Quest givers, like the one above, will have an indicator that they have a Quest for you. All side-quests you will just have to walk around and talk to everyone, then hopefully remember where that person is after you find the items.
The interactive map screen will show you where your next Main Quest is, but only if it is located on the overworld and not inside a dungeon. In the case of it being inside of a dungeon (which is quite often), you will just have to make sure you read the description well to find the dungeon described. Once inside of the dungeon itself, you will again see where the next Main Quest event is on that dungeon’s map. There are no map indications for side quests, and often very little information is given on how to complete them. Also, your final Main Quest just gives you a recipe for creating the device to get home. That recipe will send you sailing to three new continents in the search for all the items requested for the glue. There are no quest markers or anything given to you other than the general advice to head to one of them first for the lowest level enemies. Basically you are left to your own devices for the last 1/3 of the main story after you gain your ship. Before that you could only pass through shallow water with a raft.
Once you complete the main quests and form the teleportation staff that you have been seeking this entire game you can challenge your rival one last time. Well, not exactly yet, first he sends out two large waves of enemies to test your strength. The first wave of enemies you can probably get through (with some buffs) at about level 62. You should be about that level by the time you can form the staff, at the earliest. The second wave, though, will decimate you at that level. So you will likely have to go off and grind you way up until about level 71. Once you beat that wave, you can take on the final boss. Unfortunately, even at level 71, you are going to get your tail kicked. Realistically you are not going to be able to take on the final boss until you reach the storyline cap of level 80. That requires an insane amount of grinding, because as I mentioned before, enemies well below your level give you a pittance of XP. Some “optional” dungeon areas help some, but mostly you will be grinding for many hours in order to reach the ideal power to take on the final boss. Even if it looks like it’s going well for you, wait until he gets under 50% health and starts summoning books that can heal him.
And therein lies one of my primary rubs with this game. I actually like grind heavy games, Dragon Quest and Etrian Odyssey are two of my favorite game series of all time. I also absolutely adore the Disgaea series, so strategy game types are not a problem. This game, however, makes grinding quite a chore. Both with the way in which experience and levels are distributed, but also in how precipitously the XP drops after you get above their level. Another issue with the grinding is that battles will often take as long, or longer, than a battle map in Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics but you will receive a fraction of the XP and rewards from it. Without the reward structure that can be a bit of an intimidating process, and not very fun. Another impediment to grinding is that you have to take your actions at a certain pace. You cannot go too fast for the game or it won’t accept the button inputs. In Disgaea, for example, I could turn the battle speed way up and make grinding out levels a fun contest of muscle memory and hand-eye coordination. Not so in this game, if you go too fast you will just hear an error sound and you will have to redo your button inputs. Once you defeat the last boss you can go above level 80, and then with more quests you can go even higher levels, but for the last story fight you cannot be too much more powerful than he is, you will have to use strategy. But it takes quite a bit of grinding to even get to that point. So really calling any of the optional dungeons by the word “optional” is almost laughable. If you don’t do them, you are in for even more grinding. There are many stark jumps in difficulty during the game, but that final one is probably the worst during the main story.
However, this game is exactly what it wants to be. You should know going in that this is a grindfest, light on story and heavy on content. For $14.99 you get around a 60 hour story experience, that’s how long it took me. But you also get a ton of post-game content if you so choose. There are plenty of enemies that go clear up to level 999, and once you have that bloody diffuser that you have been seeing messages about all game, all the dungeons contain extra paths. On the other strong plus side is that every piece of equipment in the game is well rendered and entirely observable when it’s equipped on your characters. So while your characters initially look pretty dorky, you can end up making them look pretty badass. Their drawn portraits, however, and the flash style cut scenes… the less I say about that art style the better. The polygon work more than makes up for it, but I drew better character portraits when I was in Elementary School. While there is no voice work for the characters other than the basic non-verbal grunts and groans, the sound design in the game is well done. The monsters do have their own set of sounds, as well as your weapon hits. And the special attacks are particularly sonic. The music of the game is good, but mostly unmemorable. I don’t see the music in the game making any of the top gaming soundtrack discussions, but it’s not annoying. So for a fairly small indie title, there is nothing to complain about there.
Really my experience with the whole game is mostly positive. But I have to be honest that this game is definitively not for everyone. I like very grindy games but this still was not quite the scratch that satisfied that itch. When you have constant releases of great dungeon crawler Japanese RPGs and one of the best SRPGs ever in Disgaea 5, it is difficult to recommend too highly a title like this. But if you want a real grind fest in a very old school style, you can’t beat $14.99 for this many hours of RPG combat.
| Review Score | |
|---|---|
| Overall |    |
Review Copy Supplied By The Publisher
