Shin Ankoku: Day 3

I'm up to Chapter 10 now, with a time of 8:33.45. You can see that I take my time, but I've generally tried to avoid wasting turns for no good reason (such as waiting around and healing when all enemies are dead). My current team is: Marth, Sheeda, Oguma, Navarre, Barts, Hardain, Abel, Freyr, Doga, Kashim, Rena, Maric, the Pirate guy, and Julian (when I have the space or want a Thief around).

Out of that group, Navarre and the Pirate guy are the ones disappointing me the most. Navarre's strength is sad (6), and the Pirate guy simply can't hit anything. I considered changing Navarre into something that would boost his strength, but the drawbacks are too high to be worth it.

Anyway, it's time to bring back the numbered list format I like so much:

1. This one gets first mention, because the potential is amazing. Apparently, there's an option (available from the start too!) to skip enemy turns entirely. No joke.

All you do is change to that setting in the options menu, and then sit through a black screen with the word "skip..." on it, for what I assume is a varying amount of time (depending on enemy count). After the screen goes away, it's your turn again, and crap happened. Obviously, this would be hard to get used to for casual play, but the feature just screams "Run this game!"

First "animations: off" in Megami, and now this? Thank you, Intelligent Systems.

2. Maria's in-game art actually looks good! This also means she doesn't look like a man! Huzzah!

3. Weapon triangle is just like Thracia: +/- 5%. Not exactly a good thing, but oh well.

4. Tomes don't consume usage if they miss. This is good.

5. Hand Axes aren't boomerangs anymore. This is also good, but I still hope for an overhead toss instead.

6. Forging is weird in this game, but drastically improved nonetheless. This time around, you enter the weapon shop from the base (don't remember about the ones on the field) and choose what weapon to alter. A lot of weapons can be played with, including Marth's Rapier and Sheeda's "Wing Spear" (or whatever the name is), but unfortunately, the guy won't touch Maric's Excalibur tome. I assume this means "real" personal weapons can't be messed with either, because of that fact.

Forging options: +/- 10 might, +/- 50% hit (1% increments), +/- 30% critical, and +/- 10 weight. As you can see, things have definitely improved.

7. The "talk" part of the status menu has been removed, so it's back to old-school when it comes to recruiting characters. This is a bit painful, but I'm managing well enough so far.

8. There was an Armor Knight with pink hair in Chapter 8, and he was tricky to recruit. I let him come to me the first time I tried the chapter, and none of my people could speak to him. Because of that, I restarted and tried a completely new batch of people, but no luck there either.

My next theory (still attempt two) was that maybe he would join after the chapter if he survived. Therefore, I did some warping and completed the chapter. Still nothing.

After this, I just decided to play through it and leave him alive if at all possible (even if I had to end the chapter with him around). After killing the boss, I noticed Sheeda could speak to him (a yellow square appears under the target when this is possible), and so I sent her over to him. +1 Armor Knight for my team after that, so I'm pretty pleased that I figured that out on my own.

9. Dragon stones function like they did in Fuuin and Seima, but with a noticeable drawback: they consume usage even if you don't attack. I noticed this when fighting the boss of Chapter 9, as I had Maric blast him from a distance the entire time.

Please note that they function on a "per morph" basis, so if they double in a battle, it only consumes one use.

10. Blizzard doesn't seem to be effective on Fire Dragons anymore. Thunder also isn't effective against Dragon Knights, but that's not exactly a huge surprise.

11. The battle model for Fire Dragons is really stupid looking. It's like some giant balloon animal.

12. Bantou's character art actually got a bit of an improvement, but that's not hard to do. Amazingly, he doesn't look like your other characters. Wow!