Second generation now complete. While the protagonist never gets any better where the heroines are concerned he does show glimpses of a decently entertaining personality when dealing with opponents, so that was a bit of a help. Less helpful is the front and center brother/sister incest plotline that makes up about half the main storyline of that generation.
The third generation looks to be a return to the first, with the new protagonist being rather subdued. A bit too subdued perhaps… and goth as fuck. All these new characters being recently introduced (the elf girl from last gen, the new hero, and the ‘fake little sister’) though is playing a bit of havoc with my skill setup. I’m not sure who exactly I want to use in the final party, I don’t have any points left to train the new additions, and there’s still apparently two more new characters that will join. I was using Fiona and Eva (the Blackhole special move is a godsend) but now they’ve become kind of redundant with one another with Eva being just slightly better overall.
Some general things I’ve since discovered:
- In the upper right corner of the battle screen you can see if any extra enemies are set to appear later in the battle.
- Out of the way areas of the world map often have glowing spots that pop up when you get close which contain Attribute+ items.
- You can press R2 to skip attack animations.
- Reinforcing and Enhancing your equipment makes a huge difference in combat, and most Enhancing at this level is pretty cheap relatively speaking (40k gold and some Ore to max out an item).
- The free DLC dungeons are fantastic places to train/grind since they’re mostly populated with monsters from the next generation.
- Agility is nowhere near as useful as it first appears. It only comes into play if two characters have the same Wait value, otherwise Wait alone determines turn order. Meaning you only need it high on one character to get the first turn.
- Strength/Dexterity (melee) and Intelligence (caster) are pretty much the only stats you should be spending level-up points on. Vitality is only useful on low-level characters (the HP gain is not retroactive) and Mind isn’t really useful at all.
- After completing a main story mission and heading back to town through the portals, leave the town manually to see if any events are waiting to trigger at the outside entrance.