It occurs to me that instead of doing “W” for the DS SRT game they could have used T but whatever.
I guess this is already the 4th post of mine about Mugen no Frontier. I have to believe that I’m more than 3/5 of the way through the game. I’ve had a hard time identifying who the characters in OG saga are based off of. Most of them are probably amalgamations between character, name, design, personality, and color scheme, sometimes of multiple characters. Marion was obvious but I almost spontaneously realized that An and Bony (poni? bonie?) are probably supposed to be Rin(g) and Irumguard. It was the retarded “hair” of Bony that clued me in. I think the wolf king is possibly supposed to be Axel. I’m unclear about the Orchestral army, the skull guy puts me in mind of Zengar but that leaves the question of who the hell the two girls are supposed to be. Oh well. OH WELL
As promised I played until past the point when I got the other two mecha. Unexpectedly although quite logically rather than getting the units one at a time and thus getting a special attack for each one of them, instead the Alteisen and Weissritter join at the same time and combine for the attack “Rampage Specter” which is of course the signature Kyosuke and Excellen/alt and weiss combination attack (typically Rampage Ghost) and quite possibly the strongest move in the game. Certainly to the point I’m at (characters around level 40) it’s the most powerful normal move. I’m not sure that Suzuka’s “heal one kill one” attack isn’t stronger but I have never once had it attack an enemy and you can’t risk wiping out one of your own in a hectic boss fight and you can’t rely on it to hit the enemy to end a fight and get the 1.3 times EXP bonus. Rampage specter really shines against bosses because wazas can’t be blocked or countered and all hits combo without fear of the enemy hitting the ground. Not that that makes much difference… Of course if all 4 of your characters used all 5 of their attacks and their 2 support attacks in a row and the final one used their hissatsu waza that would be more powerful (even 2 characers, 4 supports and a HW might be if you manage to combo all the hits and get a lot of criticals), but against bosses at the point you get RS you’re lucky to even complete a single character’s attack without being countered and unless the enemy is faster than all your characters it’s unlikely that you’ll even get the 4 turns in a row anyway. The com cost is higher than ideal at 80% but the sp cost remains 50 like with the gespenst kick which is pretty reasonable (especially since after getting the move you can buy a +250 SP accessory from Dorothy for 20,000G that effectively almost doubles your sp). It would be nice if the move hit multiple enemies and did the same damage but that would be overkill that would give you no incentive to use regular moves or other characters in normal fights.
Moving on, it turns out that the way supports work once you have all 3 mechs (and 7 characters at that rate) is that each time a mech is eligible to support one will be randomly be chosen each time. I still seem to end out with the gespenst showing up most of the time, to the point of making me wonder whether or not more than one unit could show up in a single battle when I first got the other two mecha, and the weissy showing up the rarest for some reason. It’s hard for me differentiate the amount of damage between the units but I’m assuming the alt has the most powerful attack, the weiss hits the most times (21) and the gespenst is right behind (20, although if your character knocks the enemy back just right instead of the slash ripper it will be able to hit for more hits on the way back I think) while the the alt hits the least (17).
Something else I finally figured out about the mechs in the game is that their strength/damage increases along with Harken’s level. Their critical rate is also possibly linked to his as they seem to hit criticals about as much as he does. You are actually told this many times (manual and game) it’s just that I didn’t figure out what they were saying until now. For this reason and considering that you always have to use your SRW units for the first support attack you’re arguably best off leaving Harken in your party all the time to reap the most EXP and rotating the other 6 characters at your discretion. As the game goes on their stats and spells sort of duplicate and even out somewhat although Harken remains the only one with “luck” (though kaguya gets miracle which throws in a casting of it) and Suzuka with “cheer” (Reiji has the self-only version, harken gets “trump card” which includes it, Kaguya has the move that casts a random spell on herself, the technique that casts that on everyone while healing them, and xiaomu has the spell that casts a random spell on any of your characters once per turn) so I’d recommend those two for bosses to get the most value. Healing and charging spells aren’t really a big concern since you can compensate with items without issue but at that point what spells are most useful for attacking is open to speculation. So far only Harken, Reiji, and Xiaomu have nekketsu, tamashi, and nekketsu respectively (when Kaguya gets miracle it casts tamashi and harken’s trump card casts nekketsu along with other spells) although I find that chougeki (which none of them have) ends out being pretty useful to jump right in to doing damage to heavy bosses who otherwise block your first attack or two, and if you’re going to do successive attacks then Harken’s group toushi (whatever it’s actually called that’s what it does) is more useful since it lasts 3 turns and you can do successive attacks. Also other than Harken who gets “flash” that doesn’t seem to work great the other two don’t have defensive spells (kaguya does, maybe reiji later got one too). You can compensate with Xiaomu’s random spell sometimes but that’s not something you want to rely on and even with her sp and sp increasing items you’ll eventually run out after 4 castings a turn that likely just duplicate effects you already have down.
The last thing I’ll say for now is again about support attacks. Maybe I already said this though I’m not sure. They are not all equal as far as damage, hits, ease of comboing, and knock up/down/back go. Whether that justifies using a weaker party for the sake of stronger supports I can’t say but I’ll go ahead and go over them really quick. The worst one by far is Aschen’s which hits the fewest times, seemingly does the least damage, and has a low kick up, though is pretty easy to work into a combo. Suzuka’s move is by far the hardest one to combo all the hits with as she runs into an enemy and then brings it back, usually missing one or the other, but does pretty good damage if executed right since her attack stat is high and it gets a lot of hits. Xiaomu’s is kind of tricky to start as she shoots an energy wave along the ground that usually misses before trapping the enemy in the energy pulse she uses in shinrabanshou, it does have a fair amount of hits and is really easy to follow up on since she holds the enemy in place, although sometimes heavy enemies will slip to the ground in the middle which is below ideal, the damage isn’t great. Reiji’s attack is easy to hit with and does a fair amount of damage but doesn’t have a lot of hits and is really quick so if you don’t time it right you end out missing out on most of the damage at the start, and because it’s so fast it’s harder to follow it up with a successive attack, you might think of putting him in the 7th slot (3rd back/support) to get around that, it knocks the enemy backwards and bounces them off the “wall” which I find to be the best juggler. KOS-MOS possibly has the most powerful support which also has a lot of hits but since some of its moves actually knock the enemy down before the final hold move like Xiaomu’s it doesn’t work as well on heavy enemies but it is easy to combo both ways. Kaguya’s support is pretty average all around and knocks the enemy up slightly at the end, it works better as a starting or middle support than an end support since it’s almost as quick as Reiji’s. As to Harken’s it’s pretty good, very easy to hit with as harken swoops in and shoots the enemy rotating upwards before hitting them into the wall with his pile driver like at the end of his attack “texas hold’em”, does a good amount of damage and has a fair amount of hits, and is probably the easiest one to combo with. As to the SRW unit attacks you get most used to the Gespenst one which is a pretty fair combo move and one of the most powerful (I think) although it’s not easy to hit for the maximum amount of times or damage since the titular gran plasma sword hits pretty low to start (though is the most powerful part) and the Slash Ripper at the end can actually hit coming and going but it usually only ends out doing one or the other unless a character with knock backs like Aschen launces the enemy before the slash ripper launches them, being one of the longer lasting attacks that actually traps the enemy (suzuka’s is long too but the enemy gets away a lot) after you get used to it it’s easy to combo with. The weissy’s combo (partisian launcher x) seems to do more damage than the gespenst’s and also knocks the enemy back but it pushes down at the start and if a heavy enemy is low it will break the combo which isn’t great but since you can’t control which SRW you’ll get and it always has to be the first support there’s nothing you can do about this. The Alt has a pretty good combo too which might be the most powerful and knocks the enemy back although you kind of have to let it run by itself since it goes all over the place and you’re unlikely to be able to have your character actually hit more than a couple of times while it’s bouncing the enemy around, since the Alt is the biggest thing and it keeps knocking the enemy around it keeps the combo going pretty well even against heavy enemies. The problem with using the srw units to support is that when you get all 3 it’s hard to get used to the timing of the weiss and alt after being so used to the gespenst, and of course it is also difficult to anticipate when you should launch the move (with ample time for them to hit a falling enemy) since you don’t know who will be starting in on the enemy where, the alt and weiss kind of go right at the enemy it seems but the gespenst stands there and blows off its powerful plasma sword. For what it’s worth my current max combo record in the game is 16x (damage is like 140,000 or so) which I’m pretty sure was actually only 3 characters in a row, without all hits connecting, didn’t have all 6 potential supports, and ended with a hisatsu waza. I think it was suzuka, kos-mos and aschen against a boss. Generally I end out with max combos under 100 though which tends to be just a couple of characters hitting. I think suzuka, kos-mos, and kaguya have the most hits though not in that order (suzuka probably does have the most though) but as to who is 4th I’m not sure but it’s close between xiaomu, aschen, and harken, reiji definitely has the fewest. I find the two guys to be the easiest to combo all 5 moves 2 supports and the hisatsu with though. I’m imagining that the maximum possible combo in the game is over 300 but I could be off on that. Since aschen gets the fewest support hits you’re probably better off using her in the combo regularly with kos-mos and the double princesses if you’re just aiming for a high number anyway. Also your best chance to try and max out a combo is going to be against a lower leveled random grunt enemy but you’ll end out having to juggle its corpse around for a while so if you miss with anything (usually a support attack) then it’ll all be over.
Just to mention it I have my characters set up with their 5 attacks in the order you receive them/they’re listed and I find that this set-up works well for me and leads to very natural combos except sometimes against heavy enemies (who you probably have to move cancel against to keep your combos alive) but I have no idea if it yields the most hits (probably not) or the most damage (probably under normal conditions since I think it’s the only way to utilize the full 100 com with 5 attacks for all characters, excepting using a move to boost your max com and using just your two most powerful attacks to combo like 3 hold-ems and 2 five studs with Harken and his 150 boosted com) and I’m not really that interested in experimenting. This is however not a set-up that has the final move being one that causes a status effect for all characters so it might be worth setting up that way. I find that you so rarely inflict status effects, that don’t work against bosses anyway, and so often either kill an enemy with one character or have a second character do a successive attack to finish them off so its a moot point really. But it is there if you want to make use of it.
Alright well I’m not sure what the next mile stone for me will be in the game, possibly beating it. I’ve gotten to a point where there’s a lot of back tracking for items to be done which is pretty tedious. Secretly I’ve been learning advanced math and it’s not going well for me. I wonder whether or not the order of operations actually holds out in the universe and if not if that explains various problems. I wonder how it was determined. I really kind of hate math.
