Would you mind touching up on this? I pretty much enjoy whenever you talk about a Level-5 game and this is one I always wanted to play.
Yes! As a huge fan of Level-5 I'll buy anything they make that gets localized sight unseen. This was taking a while and importing was easy so I have the physical Switch game, three of the knockoff amiibos (Datafigs), about 40 snacks, around 30 Jara, and a Fairypon so I'm sufficiently invested to have a good grasp on how the game works.
The graphics and design of the world are fabulous, everything I want from a L5 game and they are loaded with charm. The story is pretty basic, though.
Gameplay sees you venturing to two types of locations; fixed areas like deserts or woods that don't change every time and randomized dungeons. These locations are filled with monsters and occasionally bad puzzles. When a monster dies it has a chance to drop its Snack chip, letting you add it as a member to your party of which you can have a max of 3 + you. If you're super unlucky you can guarantee a Snack chip for a particular monster by killing it a lot. So say 50 kills on a Witch to get a free copy of her chip. They will also drop money and crafting ingredients.
The "puzzles" are generally annoying locked doors that see you scouring a randomized dungeon with respawning enemies for two switches to unlock it.
The MAIN problem I have with the combat system is how tedious it is. Remember how simple and fun Fantasy Life's combat was? Imagine that but with everything having limited uses, cool downs, and type affinities having the MOST to do with damage dealt.
Say you enter a new location. Oh, a goblin! An icon will pop on the bottom of the screen promoting you to press ZR to switch to a Sword which goblins are weak to. You press it and you have your sword out now so you kill a few goblins in one hit. Now an Owl is coming at you. Press ZR to auto switch to a bow, kill it in one hit. Now four fairies, press ZR, switch to stave, kill three of them in one hit before realizing your Stave is out of Jara energy and you need to switch to a different weapon cause this one is hitting for 1 damage now.
Switch to sword again, attack the fairy. Oh the fairy resists everything but staves! You're hitting it for 3-4 damage each time while your party members are next to useless.
This is every dungeon, even the tedious randomized ones.
Luckily, bosses are fun with Final Fantasy 14-style attack indicators and different mechanics to figure out.
Then at the end of the dungeon you get a few chests based on performance that have a CHANCE to drop the "rare" weapon for that dungeon.
The only way to upgrade weapons and equipment is crafting! You have to have duplicates of items to upgrade them so you'll be grinding a LOT and hoping for the items you want to drop.
How do you speed up the process? Spend money!
The toy weapons you can buy in blind boxes can be scanned once each day. They will always drop an assortment of materials and items and they also have a CHANCE to drop the weapon or equipment they represent. So you scan every day and hope while grinding a dungeon for the same weapon in order to max it out.
Physical Snack chips work similarly, except they level normally and duplicates grant you literal duplicates so you could feasibly have a party of 3 Chups if you wanted.
The Datafigs give good materials every day but every I think 15 days of scanning they fill out a stamp card as they go and on the last day you get REALLY good materials.
The Fairypon let's you charge toy Snacks and Jara with "Mana" a substance that you can use to buy rare weapons in the game. There are I think 5 different colors of it, each exclusive to a different device. So say the Switch charges mana color A, the 3DS charges color B, the Fairypon charges color C, the store display charged color D and so on. The ONLY way to get that color of mana, and thus more easily buy the rare items associated with it instead of grinding is by charging with these various devices. It's tedious and scanning takes forever so going through 40 snacks gets lots of materials but takes a solid 30 minutes.
There's more to talk about like quests and stuff so the content is DEFINITELY there and if the game clicks with you you could spend hundreds of hours grinding and playing multi-player online and customizing your character but the combat just felt really tedious to me so I haven't been as in love with it like I usually am with Level-5 stuff!
Sorry for the novel. :P
