So What Are YOU Playing?

[Kiarax]

Throw CFW on that shit and download Portable 3rd with the translation patch. I couldn't go back to MHFU afterwards.

[Myrrh_Quetz]

Too lazy to hack my psp. And my friends and I are doing a whole MH FU2 thing, starting over and having fun

[Rokku]

It just seemed odd to stop in the middle of saving the universe so you could deal with someone's "daddy issues". When I think about it, "daddy issues" sums up almost every loyalty quest pretty well.

Just wanted to quote this for truth and whatnot. It's not that I didn't enjoy the loyalty missions or anything, but yeah, there was definitely a central theme across almost all of them. There's maybe 4 exceptions to that rule, but overall they all kept to a pretty standard theme.

I guess I can't blame BioWare though, given how they fit into the story (wrapping up loose ends and whatnot before the SM), it kind of makes sense that they'd all sort of run in the family/life issues vein.

[Yuri-G]

ok what the fuck is this Tales of Destiny 2 shit about. I like it, but the battle system seems particularly brutal, maybe because I'm not used to it yet.

- first off, I take massive amounts of damage even on normal mode. in fact, I don't see much of a difference between normal and second yet. after a couple of battles Kyle is almost dead, is this normal? am I supposed to be abusing healing techs since my TP automatically regenerates? I figure I'm missing something fundamental about the way the battle system is meant to be played.

- second, why is it so hard to get good grade?? if I get hit even once it seems like I'm in the negative. the battle has to be damn near perfect to get positive grade, and even then it's only .5 at the most. meanwhile if I take two or three hits I get at least negative -1.5. unfair!

- third, anything I should be aware of? I'm looking through guides and stuff to get a handle on the battle system and customization. the hardest part of playing games like this in moonspeak is not even the storyline - it's the damned menus. the more customization-heavy the worse, and Tales games are usually on the more complicated end of that equation. I'll probably follow a guide all the way through anyway, but does anyone (cough kiarax cough) have any hints, tricks or tips before I set out on my grand adventure to, oh I don't know, save the world I'm guessing?

[Yuri-G]

sending out the kiarax signal...

Spoiler: show

there, that should do it.

[Hitoshura]

Play Ys instead.

[Yuri-G]

I have Ys 7 on my PSP as well :D got bored trying to find my way through the giant tree, but I'll pick it back up I'm sure. the battle system is incredible.

[Kiarax]

It's very easy to get negative grade in ToD2. Hitting the enemy with elements they resist or "missing" (when you attack them with a melee and it makes that chink noise) will all cause your grade to drop. Accuracy is a pretty huge deal in this compared to other games, if you're not playing as Judas (who has way higher accuracy growth) you're probably gonna find yourself falling short on accuracy unless you equip gear to increase it. You'll get in to the habit (for bosses at least) of guarding and holding the boss off until one of your mages hits them with a spell, then going in to a combo and trying to keep them locked up from there. Since they're already in hitstun from the spell (which can't miss) you're then free to start comboing them. Your accuracy at that point still effects how long each hit staggers them, so it's still important to have enough to keep them stunned long enough to chain your stuff, but at least you won't be missing. As for the arte customization, you'll probably wanna reference Arcor's guide, but I'll post the important ones (imo) and a quick breakdown:

You can equip 2 different enchants on (almost) all artes. Top slot is for passive increases, pretty self explanatory. Will increase attack, accuracy, crit rate, etc of that arte. For passives I generally always use Attack, Accuracy or Faster OVL. OVL in this is basically just a hidden bar that goes up and down depending on what happens, "missing" enemies or repeatedly hitting them whilst they're guarding will lower it, almost everything else will raise it. Equipping a higher tier makes the bonus bigger but costs more "uses" of that arte, pretty self explanatory once you try it. The two I didn't translate are for lowering enemy resistance to X element (wind in this case) and some anti-stagger crap that I can't remember how it works. I wouldn't worry about them too much either way though.

As for action enchants, these are activated by holding down attack (not arte button) during the arte. Assuming it connects it'll automatically link to the enchant. Imo these are mostly worthless, but the extension ones are probably the first thing you'll want to get. These automatically extend your arte in to another arte. So instead of doing Base -> Arcane arte, you can do Base -> Base Extension -> Arcane. Extension will always be the bottom option and it's the same for spells too. For Arcane artes and the highest tier of spells, Extension is replaced by your Mystic Artes. You can use these whenever you're in Spirit Blaster/OVL by holding circle like any other Action enchant. Oh and the one I labeled re-combo lets you link the arte in to a normal combo again, never really messed with it myself since I prefer just sticking with extensions.

There's far far more enchants than the ones I listed, every character has some different stuff and some artes have difference choices compared to others, I'd recommend just having a glance through the guide I linked, it lists all of them on there. Probably wrote too much already but it all comes pretty easily after a while, lol. I can try and cover the refinement system a little later since it takes a while for it to open up, but I'm not too knowledgable about it, I just keep it simple with Attack/Accuracy equips.

[Kiarax]

Oh and easily worked out but just incase... these top 2 figures are Attack and Accuracy. Those are your best friend assuming you're playing as a melee.

[Yuri-G]

wow thanks for the tips. that's a lot of info. more complicated than I would have guessed, too. I'll have to check out that link when I get a second, but this should help a lot.

[Kiarax]

If you wanna keep it simple, equip Attack/Accuracy and the bottom Action enchant for pretty much everything and you'll be set lol. Also worth mentioning is that Kyle doesn't get spell extensions for most of his stuff, the bottom option will use some of your SP to instantly cancel out of the cast animation. Pretty unimportant for playing normally, but if you're soloing or some crap you can use it to hit a boss with a spell > cancel it and then combo them whilst they're still in hitstun. If you play as Judas though his bottom option will be extensions for lower tier magic, he can't use any magic mystic artes like Reala, Nanaly and Harold can though.

[Yuri-G]

sweet zombie jesus that sounds complicated. I'll probably stick with attack + accuracy and using Kyle then.

by the way, do action enchants matter for your other party members or just the one you're controlling? I would assume the latter but not sure if they activate automatically on other characters or something.

[Kiarax]

Other characters use em too! You'll wanna make sure you check their enchants every so often and enable their mystic artes and stuff.

[Ramor]

Dungeon Defenders! or at least I will once I'm off work, we kept tripping the circuit breaker last night at my friend's place, apparently 6 computers/8 monitors and a minifridge were too much for the 100 year old house =(

[Rokku]

Dungeon Defenders! or at least I will once I'm off work, we kept tripping the circuit breaker last night at my friend's place, apparently 6 computers/8 monitors and a minifridge were too much for the 100 year old house =(

Is that thing any good? I've been crazy tempted to pick it up on the PSN, but haven't seen or heard much about it.

[Yuri-G]

alright, thanks to Kiarax I am doing much better. some more questions though:

- ok I had this whole thing typed up about why I can't equip certain skills or enchants even though I meet the required levels - then I realized what I thought was the "required level" is actually the number of levels left before you can equip the skill/enchant. correct me if I'm wrong.

- I ran into ToD2's version of overlimit just now. Kyle was flashing red at the end of one battle and then flashed white midway through the next battle, at which point he seemed to gain infinite TP and SP. I know this has some connection to hi-ougi's but I'm not worried about that yet, and won't be for a while. anything else I should know about it though?

- what's the deal with usage counts... as far as I can tell, they only affect whether or not you can equip certain enchants. is that right?

I can see why you love this game now. battle system is fun as hell. it's similar to the system in Hearts but not nearly as abusable... assuming that doesn't change later on.

[Kiarax]

Levels are weird in ToD2. I'm guessing you've played Eternia, similar to that where you need certain Slash/Thrust (Or Punch/Kick for Farah) levels you need certain levels in each attribute here too. Here you have Attack, Skill, Magic and Chain/Combo ranks. All of them will eventually go up over time, but depending on what you do more of, some will level faster than others. You can see what % of the experience goes towards each on your status screen, but you should generally get all but Magic up fairly quickly if you play as Kyle, that'll lag behind a bit but it'll still go up over time too. Incase it's not obvious, Attack = normal swings, Skill = arte usage, Chain/Combo is chaining stuff together. Ontop of that you have 4 different elements associated with that character that go up the same way, these are used for spells whereas the other 4 are for melee artes. But yeah, if you highlight a skill it'll tell you how many more ranks in X category you need for it.

Spirit Blaster/Overlimit gives you infinite SP, stops you from being staggered and I think lowers damage received and increases damage done too (not 100% on that part though). When a character is flashing red that just means they're close to entering Spirit Blaster. You need to be in this mode to use hi-ougis since they require 95-100 SP to use, so you don't have enough unless you abuse a certain technique, but I won't get in to that lol.

Usage count is purely for arte enchants as far as I know, not like other games in the series where it makes the arte stronger or modifies them in some way.

[Yuri-G]

thanks! I think that pretty much clears up all of my questions for now. certainly a unique battle/character progression system but it makes sense once you wrap your head around it.

grinded outside of the ruins for a while to get a handle on things and I'm mostly getting 1~3 grade per battle; not bad. think I'm ready to move on.

[Vimes]

Dungeon Defenders! or at least I will once I'm off work, we kept tripping the circuit breaker last night at my friend's place, apparently 6 computers/8 monitors and a minifridge were too much for the 100 year old house =(

Pretty sure that's too much for any house if you don't use different outlets/circuits. No melting plastic yet?

[Yuri-G]

alright, definitely enjoying ToD2 now. it might be my favorite of the 2D games (though it's hard to top Eternia). consistently getting 3~6 grade now on second mode so I must be doing something right. though I read that second mode boosts your grade as well.

just reached the second town and had some fun trying to figure out why the fuck I always got a skit when I tried to leave town. god damn moon runes! I was on the bus, so no access to a walkthrough. eventually got several cut-scenes to trigger and found the cave I think I'm supposed to be exploring so we're back on track.

one minor complaint related solely to playing the game in moon runes: I wish the game would show all of your stats when equipping or buying a new piece of equipment, instead of just the stats that change. would make it much simpler to figure out how the new equipment effects the stats I care about. oh well, guess I'll have to learn a few moon runes, no big.