Anybody play Arcanum Knights yet?

[Ghaleon]

I haven't due to language barrier. But I was curious if anybody here has, particularly diehard Touhou labyrinth fans like myself. Please tell me all about it! Is the music as good as Touhou Labyrinths? (I prefer the original, not the special disk set). I've seen people qq that it's too hard, but I'm assuming they're just nubbing it up and thinking you can win with the attack-command...kinda like in TL where doing so would get you owned pretty fast.

Also, if anybody has heard any news on some group thinking about translation patching it lemmie know where provided it's a non-pirate site or something please >=).

[Pesco]

I tried it a bit. There's a crapton of customization you can do with your characters. Your starter guy is pretty straightforward. You get new party members by making them at the bar. Choose their race, which comes it's own set of racial bonuses like DnD. Set their stats, select a portrait. Choose their class that determines what their starting specialisations and skills are.

There's no spamming skills in the game. All spells have a 1 turn cooldown. HP and MP don't get restored between battles. The Attack command is kinda usable if your gear is good enough. Guard makes quite a difference in the severity of enemy attacks. Focus in battle restores some HP and MP.

Lots of exploring, lots of dodging encounters and lots of game over screens.

[Ghaleon]

Any game with tons of customization and a language barrier SHOULD give lots of game over screens, if it didn't. I'd be really scared >=P. But thanks! Hopefully rockin' android or someone does something to it...though I doubt it.

[Vilkni]

I have been playing it as well for 2 hours - there's a few other things Pesco forgot to mention and a few corrections:

Accuracy is in the game, and does have stats contributing to it, thankfully. Equipment has weight that goes up when you spend money to upgrade it, and the only way to equip equipment is... str, since 1 str = 1 weight. I know this because I repeatedly upgraded the first armor you can buy for 8 CL to +70ish upgrade levels (which cost me zero CL to upgrade to that point for some reason) and it put the equipment at 71 weight, and nobody could equip it.

Also, a correction to spell cooldowns: The basic healing spell that the main character and a few created characters can get somewhere in the separate skill lists has zero cooldown, but as you can see, it costs 8 mp to cast that thing. Also, I got a physical skill that has a 2 turn cooldown and a few other magic spells that have zero cooldowns but are expensive to cast.

Pesco is correct in that it has ton of customization, but I need to note the difference between the passive skills AND active skills: While passive skills don't really need stats to go up in levels, active skills need a certain amount of stats after the first level (I.E, one active skill needs 30 str and something else to go from level 1 to level 2). Also, press left and right during these skill lists, because there's a lot of lists to go through.

I have to say that the hp not being restored after battle is wrong - but it costs LP to restore hp after battle if you suffer enough damage during it. MP not being restored is correct, though. Also, if you have people in the back row, they restore both HP and MP in small amounts but only at the end of each turn. Fleeing does cost LP as well, like in Labyrinth of Touhou. Be forewarned: Inn healing costs go up as you level up across members.

And yes, I patched the game to the latest version of 1.012.

[Ghaleon]

There is accuracy eh? hmm. Is it a 100% hit 100% miss kinda deal? or are there partial misses/hits.. or do you get enough attacks per turn that a complete miss isn't really very complete since you have 7 other attacks that might hit or miss?

I love accuracy/evasion mechanics in games, but I hate them when you only get 1 attack per turn...or if they're like disgaea, and even though your skill supposedly does 30 hits, they all go by one single hit/miss roll.

[Vilkni]

You do get "white" hits, chips, "gray" hits, misses, criticals, etc, IIRC, for the deal with partial misses/hits in relation to physical attacks, although I'm not sure if magic skills can miss, because I kinda forgot about these. Also, you have up to 6 slots (3 in front row, 3 in back row) for the battle party, so if one misses, you have 5 other attackers to hit/miss with.

EDIT: I actually did forget one vital thing: See, each active skill list has a set of skills, right? Except I forgot that in addition to requiring stats to level up from the first level on, you actually do need to get the related passives to active skills. Except for one problem... if you have the active skill equipped but forget to equip the required passives related to the active skill, you're unable to use the skill in battle at all. No exceptions.

[trancehime]

i'd like to play arcanum knights but no time and also don't have it...

ahh well

[Pesco]

I tried to make a bow-skill attacker but ended up with a buff/debuffer :ohdear: The game is like LoT anyway. Nothing that skillpoints and money can't fix.

[Ghaleon]

EDIT: I actually did forget one vital thing: See, each active skill list has a set of skills, right? Except I forgot that in addition to requiring stats to level up from the first level on, you actually do need to get the related passives to active skills. Except for one problem... if you have the active skill equipped but forget to equip the required passives related to the active skill, you're unable to use the skill in battle at all. No exceptions.

Uh oh, that doesn't sound cool... I mean it sounds like a recipe for cookie-cutter builds...provided that you could read the game properly and you knew what you were doing >=P.

[Pesco]

Cookie cutter builds be that as may be but there's just so many of them.

I got as far as clearing almost all of the Grassy Areas and second level of the Cave. Too many of those black and white barriers for me to have any idea of where I'm going right now.

[Ghaleon]

Well, if there's a language barrier for you, there will be a whole lot more potential builds than if there isn't. I mean, good, not "imma shoot myself in the foot by using a dumb" builds.

I mean, I'm not saying it'll break the game. Labyrinth of Touhou has 2 forms of customization, where you invest your level and skillpoints, and which characters you use.  The former is heavily subjected to cookie cutters. Almost every character has only 1 or 2 optimal major investments for leveling, and skillpoints is more determined by your view on how to invest them in general for every character (just change which ones you invest the most in...which will be the same as level), it's pretty cookie-cutter too.
But yeah, the massive amount of party members you can have, and can bring in battle makes for a very deep form of customization.

Arcanum knights might have large permutations of potential parties too which will make it very customizable by default. But if the builds are indeed cookie cutter, each individual party member will most likely have only 1 or 2 "best" builds, and everything else, despite having a great amount to choose from, are going to be simply ignored, and might as well not even be there for silly stuck-up "power" gamers like me >=P. (I can't help it, I'm a statistic nut).