sageoftruth said:
I've played a few of those games (Escha and Logy, and Mana Khemia 2) and I've been eyeing this one. I'm not interesting in getting one of Koei's shoddy PC ports, but I have a PS4 Pro as well that could use a few more games for its library. How does Firis compare to the others? Does it have some new mechanics? Is the character support/vanguard still a part of the combat? I've been having trouble finding reviews for it online, so I'd appreciate it.
Well I've only played the Iris and Khemia line, so I can't compare it to Escha/Logy. The battle system is worse than Mana Khemia's, but is an improvement over Sophie's. There's less time cards and no support swapping and all that makes me kinda sad. There's a chain system and a bigger emphasis on item usage. In Khemia you could more or less just beat the shit out of everything straight, but in Firis you better know and use your bombs.
Crafting is a lot different than Iris/Khemia in that there's a bit of a minigame involved instead of just slapping items together and in Khemia's case, messing with the wheel. You assemble ingredients in a grid, and you can use catalysts which add bonuses for filling up certain squares.
Each item also has its own exp bar, leveling up to 4 times. The more proficient you are at creating an item, the more you make, the more traits you can transfer from the ingredients and you unlock the ability to rotate ingredients within the crafting minigame. Some items are grouped, so by crafting one you gain experience for all items within the group.
There's a butt load of random sidequests you can get throughout the game. They are fairly arbitrary and aren't particularly written with scenes or anything. Just something extra to do to gain rewards. Money and idea points.
Idea points is a currency you can use to unlock crafting recipes. There's two ways to unlock recipes - either by following the clues in your recipe book, which will have comments like "If I harvested more of X" or "If I made more of Y" and other stuff. If you want the recipe immediately, you can spend idea points to unlock it. But you can't just spam idea points to unlock every recipe ever, you still need to find the initial inspiration for the recipe which is triggered in all sorts of ways.
The first part of the game has a time limit - but it's pretty generous. The goal is to reach a certain city and pass an alchemist exam. After you do that, the credits roll and stuff but there's till more to do. The time limit is gone, your character decides to go search for a goal in life and off you go. And well, increase friendship levels with all your potential party members. Kinda like Mana Khemia in that sense, where you build your friendships up throughout the school year. Here you gain friendship by just taking them along with you, exploring, fighting, leveling and you eventually unlock scenes and quests.
