Viceroy (Day 212)

I woke up today at the crack of 7:30 PM with a feeling of anxiety. It's not really an unpleasant anxiety, though--it's that kind of anxiety you have when you realize you have a lot of things you want to do and you're not sure in what order you wish to do them! Chores? No, I'm talking about sitting around at my computer as usual. I realized immediately that I needed to get a blog entry out of the way so I'm doing that now--while catching up on the games of the European LCS, starting with Gambit vs. Alliance.

I'd also like to continue playing The 4 Heroes of Light tonight, which I made a fairly significant amount of progress on last night. I still maintain that it has a lot of questionable features, the most frustrating of which is the smart targeting system, but there is definitely still a salvageable game lying underneath the surface. I must bemoan the fact that skills from different jobs are not interchangeable, but I respect the way the developers chose to take the game. The jobs act as a sort of toolkit at your disposal. Most bosses require unique strategies to conquer. You're expected to change up your party composition frequently instead of slowly and laboriously building up your characters to a final "endgame build."

I was frustrated enough by a recent boss battle to consider quitting the game completely--but I'm glad I persevered. In this particular case, my frequent deaths had nothing to do with my strategy, which was perfectly sound. Nor was I particularly underleveled, as I soon found out after grinding out about four levels in preparation and subsequently getting thrashed once again. My problem was actually so much more obvious than that. My armor was out of date! I've become so accustomed to Final Fantasy II where your armor is almost entirely irrelevant that I have neglected to pay attention to my choices in this game.

Numbers generally skew toward the lower side in 4 Heroes of Light. My party members, which frequently separate and lose their way from each other, are all around level 20 but only one or two of them have broken 100 HP. Similarly, defense and magic defense are single digits. An armor piece that upgrades your defense by 1 is a worthy upgrade. By the same token, a piece that upgrades your defense by 4 is a massive upgrade. This is something I failed to realize. The boss in question went from doing 40 damage to my entire party twice per turn to doing about 12 damage--which ended up being significantly more manageable, all things told.

Simply keeping your armor up to date isn't enough. Sometimes you need specific pieces of armor to have a chance at contesting certain boss fights. There's a certain demon boss early on that uses powerful dark magic capable of one-shotting either of your party members at the time. Fortunately, a shop in the town this takes place sells a shield that significantly reduces the damage you take from dark-elemental spells. Similarly, the Hellhounds outside this town have powerful fire-elemental attacks that can be defended against with another shield. NPCs are almost always worth talking to because they'll give you hints about what equipment you might need at a given time.

Other games might give you these same hints but you would be safe to completely ignore them. In the case of 4 Heroes of Light, ignore any advice you get at your own peril, because it might result in an untimely Game Over. I really enjoy that the game makes your choices and your strategic options meaningful because I've played too many games where you're given lots of choices but none of them actually mean anything. My frustration for the game is slowly turning into admiration instead--and I'm looking forward to discovering more. I'd like to discuss some of the jobs I've unlocked, but I think I'll save that for another time.