I said in my last post that I was putting UnchainBlades Rexx away, but then I thought “Just one more run” and got sucked in again, so here we are 20 hours later. Addictive dungeon crawler is addictive! I finally got all three parties put together, which increased my monster limit to 100 and my item limit to 60. Now I can stay out all day exploring if I want, which puts a whole new perspective on things.

The gameplay is getting more and more fun, but the story is getting dumber with every passing moment. I know, I know, it’s a dungeon RPG, not an Oscar-winning movie. Dumb is still dumb, though. Seeing as the point is dungeon exploration, you don’t necessarily have to have a reason for all the crawling, but when you do, the least it can do is not be insulting. Spending 5 painful hours exploring a dungeon just so [SPOILER!] my party member with a lolita complex can wish for my other underage party member to like him [END SPOILER] is wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to start. The wish didn’t even come true, but [SPOILER!]I felt dirty just having him in my party, so I replaced him at the first opportunity.[END SPOILER] Anyway, the one who really needs help is the writer who thought it would be a good idea and the rest of the game company who sat back and watched it happen. Bunch of sickos, all of them.

The rest of the characters seem to have similarly frivolous wishes. Like “I wanna be less ditzy” or “I wanna become a dragon because a dragon saved me once.” or “I don’t want to be afraid of men.” Ma’am, I’m not climbing for 6 hours just so you can get a boyfriend. Save that crap for Dragon Ball. Only two characters seem to have any proper wishes, and it’s weird because the game makes the wishes out to be so serious and urgent, but then one of them gets the chance to wish and passes it up twice. What could those wishes possibly be? I’m looking forward to finding out.

Apart from that, nothing new on the gaming front. UnchainBlades Rexx is all I did this weekend. I forgot to mention a few more things about the battle system. The first one is Judgment Battles. Judgment Battles are the whole reason why I frequently had to stop and catch monsters just to proceed, so I can’t believe I forgot to say anything about them last time.

Judgment Battles: Battles between your monsters and the local monsters in the dungeon. You are forced to do them at least twice per dungeon, and there are several optional fights as well. Judgment Battles are carried out DDR-style by pressing the directional buttons at the correct times. At random points, a master (i.e. one of your party members) can step in and give support. This happens in a very short window and if you fail to press the correct button your chance is gone. There is also the occasional “Single Combat” chance, which is basically “Mash O to win.” I suck at button-mashing, but it doesn’t matter because all Judgment Battles are won and lost by the number, strength and level of your unchained monsters.

That’s why they serve as a roadblock, because your monsters become useless so quickly you’ll be stuck without adding at least a few high-level monsters to your party. But! If they’re high-level, they’ll be incredibly difficult to unchain – especially since you’ll be trying to stay alive while unchaining them. Now you see why I had to roam around for 3 hours unchaining monsters before I could continue? I hate Judgment Battles.

Anima: I mentioned Link Skills last time and said they were a pain to use because you had to get monsters with the same Anima as the skill you wanted to use. What I didn’t add was that there’s a way to give certain Anima to monsters. If you level up a monster to its Max level and then dismiss it, it leaves one of its Animas behind, which can be equipped to other monsters. E.g. If Monster A drops the “Lightning” anima, you can give it to Monster B in addition to what it already has.

The reason I hadn’t bothered with this before now was because it wasn’t practical. For much of the game, you have a 30 monster limit. Because of the aforementioned Judgment Battles, you have to make sure they’re always the strongest, highest-level monsters you can get. Since monsters level up so slowly, it was easier and faster to catch new ones than to grind weaklings to their max level.

Merging parties in chapters 4 and 5 solved that, however. First it raised my monster limit to 60, then to 100, and more importantly it brought several weak monsters into the fold who could be leveled up much quicker by fighting high level monsters. Plus right now my party (Fang, Lucius, Marie and Lapis) is strong enough that it doesn’t have to depend on friendly monsters taking the occasional hit for them.

They’re strong enough, in fact, that I’m still not bothering with Link Attacks, because I can get the battles done just fine without them. The only one I need is Marie’s Sleep Song, which has a very high chance of putting every enemy on the screen to sleep. I learned that lesson from Final Promise Story: sleep attacks are the best! And they don’t ever wake up unless you hit them, so the battles are far less difficult now. *sniff* I’m so happy…

Sheesh, I’m not sure why I’m going into so much detail about a game that’s never going to cross the Pacific, but whatever. I’m having fun. I’m almost done with what is probably the last-but-one dungeon (they say it’s the last one, which means there’s gotta be one more left), so I should be done soon. Awwww…