After reading Sthenno's comment to my previous post about this game I decided to actually do a little research into the level system of the game. Part of me feels like I've lost my gamer nerve to be doing so instead of just plowing in and mapping it all out as I go, but so be it... One interesting thing I discovered is this game was apparently the first game Square put out which sold over a million copies which is pretty cool.
As far as the leveling system goes it turns out there are actually three pretty distinct leveling systems! One for humans, one for mutants, and one for monsters.
Humans level up pretty much solely by spending money on potions for permanent stat boosts. They can also put on up to 8 pieces of gear. Actually doing combats does nothing for them, except maybe earn some cash to use on stat boosts in town. Humans are apparently the easiest to twink out and therefore make for the easiest playthrough.
Mutants level up randomly at the end of every fight. They can gain or lose stats or abilities. The guide I found even went so far as to suggest saving after every single fight since if you randomly lost a critical ability you were in a lot of trouble. This sort of works like FFII in that you're more likely to gain stats by taking actions which use that stat. Mutants can also wear 4 pieces of gear. Mutants are random but tend to trend upwards and have a reasonable time beating the game.
Monsters have one stat that matters: their current race. That determines their stats and their abilities. They can't use gear. They can't power up in any way. One goblin is the same as every other goblin. The way you level up is by killing enemy monsters and eating them. There's a huge transformation table based on a few simple rules and I think I may just make a spreadsheet to track the possible changes. Monsters have a finite cap on power and are therefore the hardest race.
Part of me wants to fire some of my dudes and hire one of each type to experience all the leveling systems. But part of me acknowledges that I'm unlikely to play again, and that I want to do the hard thing, and that I already randomly chose the four monster party anyway. So I'm going to stick it out and see if I can't play through the plot with four monsters and find out how hard it really is. I was a little disappointed at how easy FFII actually was once I'd twinked out, so maybe being unable to actually twink out will be a good thing!
1 comment:
In FFL2 mutants who learn new abilities always swap out the fourth one on their list, so you can protect three abilities you want to keep. In FFL1 it's random, so reloading when you lose good abilities is par for the course.
I didn't even remember stat up potions. I recall getting stats at random (which is what humans and mutants do in FFL2, though I assume in FFL2 you'll be playing with robots [just because it is an option]) but I suppose I just played about ten times as much FFL2 as FFL1.
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