Together RPG - Anachronox - 10/01-12/01

[MrPopo]

You're about to enter my favorite part of the game. When you get to it you'll know.

[Ack]

Ok, I have made it all the way through Limbus and back to Anachronox, and I am now gearing up for what appears to be the final battle. Nearly all of my characters have their Excellent weapon(except for PAL and Stiletto), and many have their master level skills as well as at least 2 of their battle skills. Most have 3 or 4. My minimum character level is currently 32, and Boots is sitting up at 39. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure I missed a TACO somewhere, as I'm at 19/20.

I'm debating at this point whether I should bother to try and do any side stuff or to go ahead and make my push against Detta. As much as I like Anachronox, I'm ready to move onto playing something else in my backlog.

By the way, I never did figure out how those Elementor things with the bugs worked.

[MrPopo]

So the elementors are explained piss poor. I think I figured out how it works.

First, you pick a base bug. That bug will define the element of the magic (so who uses it best) and define a shape on the grid that gives you the ability to enhance it with other bugs. Higher level base bugs enable more nodes.

You then add bugs to the open nodes. These will increase the power and cost of the magic spell. You get a bonus if you put the same colored bug as the slot color. However, you can't mix opposite colored bugs; you have to fill those in with special bugs; there's only 8 of those in game I think (if you do an elementor of only those bugs it's the ultimate damage magic).

Finally, some elementors have multiple base slots; this gives you multiple spells to cast off a single elementor.

The biggest problem I had with the system was you had to do a whole lot of backtracking in order to get more bugs and leaves to feed them and level them up. With the stuff I did pick up I did end up having an elementor that did more damage than a regular spell, but not by a huge amount, and only for one character.

[Ack]

Hmm...not sure it's worth it then. There is already a lot of backtracking in the game just to swap out characters. Frankly I wish the game had treated your shuttle as your base of operations instead of that one bar on Sender Station. It would have made things a lot less annoying in the long run.

My preferred party is Boots, Paco, and the Big D, but I'm betting I'll have to do the usual JRPG routine and use everyone in the final dungeon. Think I'm good to go for it?

[MrPopo]

Oh, you're definitely good to go for the final dungeon. The main piece of prep is to ensure everyone has a good weapon, a good shield, and a decent piece of MysTek. You're correct that you will need to use everyone in the final dungeon; think of a situation like Kefka's Tower where you switch between parties and unlock routes for each of them with other parties.

[Ack]

I guess I should just sit down and do the final push then. I wanted to do it yesterday, but backtracking ate up a lot of my time.

[Ack]

Boom, done. I made it through and have come out the other side, a little wiser but none worse for wear. Anachronox's skull is now added to the pile.

Final boss aggravation is spoilered here:

It was a difficult final boss battle, not because it was actually hard, but because PAL-18 took a turn for the totally worthless. Only one character in my party could be hit by the Nuts status effect...and it just happened to be the one character who had to override that status effect. An extra half an hour got tacked on because I was trying to deal with taking out that orb and getting PAL into the proper place, but every time I would come close, PAL would just get hit with Nuts again and move out of position. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I also discovered the hard way that there is apparently no way to treat status effects in this game; you either get that character killed or wait them out.

I'm done now though. Anachronox is finished! I had a blast, and I'll be putting my thoughts in the Games Beaten 2015 thread later today. I found the game to be a delightful but definitely flawed gem. I wish more of you would play it.

[MrPopo]

I had a similar problem with PAL; fortunately he never moved, just lost his turn right when I was ready to lock him in. However, there is one way to cure statuses that is another thing that is barely mentioned in game and needed a better explanation. If you cast a magic with a status on a party member it acts as a cure. So casting Freeze magic on a Frozen party member unfreezes them. Of course, probably didn't help you because PAL was the only one who could cast that status due to the affinity system. That's where a multi-element elementor would be useful.

[Ack]

Well, posted my thoughts:

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1008849#p1008849

This has been a wonderful and wild ride. Really guys, more of you need to play this.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Well, posted my thoughts:

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1008849#p1008849

This has been a wonderful and wild ride. Really guys, more of you need to play this.

I am going to try and squeeze it in before the month is over. So much to play and so little time!!!