Stranger of Sword City - Thoughts & General Info Based on Xbox One Version

[BooneIronshield]

Ok, first the thoughts, this is game is a LOT of fun, probably the pinnacle of first person dungeon crawlers. 

 

Now for some general info I've noticed which might help others.

 

Age - Age determines starting Life Points and also determines minimum bonus points when creating a character. The greater your character's age the fewer life points but the higher minimum bonus points they can start with. I would assume that your characters age but I've seen nothing that actually mentions if they do or not so far.

 

• Ages 10-19 start with 3 Life Points and have minimum bonus points of 3.
• Ages 20-39 start with 2 Life Points and have minimum bonus points of 5.
• Ages 40-59 start with 2 Life Points and have minimum bonus points of 7.
• Ages 60-99 start with 1 Life Point and have minimum bonus points of 10.

 

Main Character - Like was the case with Demon Gaze, the main character in Stranger of Sword City is fixed in race but unlike Demon Gaze, not fixed in sex. The main character is fixed as Human but also gets the unique Talent called Chosen One which prevents Life Points from decreasing, as well as a few other effects I won't go into. Barring any other restrictions based on age then this means you could make your main character 60 and start with the biggest set of bonus points possible, which would be 10+. I picked 40 for my main guy and with just a few bonus point rerolls he started with 11 bonus points.

 

Class Change - I'm putting this up towards the top because it's kind of an important one. You can change your class 5 times per character. It's 5 total changes even if it's just back and forth between 2 classes. So if you're wanting to grab abilities from different classes to put on a single character you'll want to be careful and plan out how you'll do it.

 

Artwork - This game features 2 different art styles. The default style is Oxijiyen which is listed as Type A in the Options menu. The other style is Yoko Tsukamoto's artwork which is listed as Type B in the Options menu. The Type selection in the Options menu only affects how the NPCs look. Unfortunately the portraits are a bit lacking in certain areas. If you want a portrait of a female holding a bow you're out of luck except for 1 and it looks like a Migmy, plus I'm not 100% certain it's female. 

 

For character portraits there are actually 3 different styles and they're all available from the very beginning for characters you can create. The first set of portraits are done by Oxijiyen, Mogeo Fuji and Toridamono.

 

The second set of portraits are done by Yoko Tsukamoto and Raita Kazama.

 

The final set of portraits are from Experience Inc's game Students of the Round and are done by artist Satomi Murakami.

 

Life Points - These determine how many times a particular character can die before dying permanently. The good news is that these can be replenished in the Base area of your headquarters. Recovery has 2 speeds, a slower one that is free but takes time and an instant option that's stated as being pretty costly.

 

Talents - When you create any character other than the Main Character you can pick from 5 different talents. Each character can only have 1 talent and these are the same across all races.

• Fortunate - Lower chance of being ambushed. Character Creation Bonus Points +3.
• Educated - Specializes in item and monster identification.
• Invincible - A sturdy body to defend against paralyze and critical attacks.
• Intuition - Specializes in finding treasures and identifying traps.
• Wild Eye - Detect secrets within the labyrinth with animal-like senses.

The talents you pick are entirely up to you but I went with Chosen One for my Knight. Since he'll be taking hits for other members I figured being the Chosen One might be useful. I also picked Invincible for my other front line characters. I took 1 each of Educated, Intuition and Wild Eye to round out the party. Every single character has the Identify and Open Lock skills but putting the Educated and Intuition talents on a couple characters just gives you better success at those actions.

 

That's all I can think of so far. If I notice anything else that might be useful to add here I'll do so.

Edited March 22, 2016 by BooneIronshield

[mako-heart]

Shit, I didn't realize this was out. I ordered Trillion.

But I didn't beat Demon Gaze yet (I doubt it matters game wise, but it matters to me lol)

 

i want to play all the games ;~;

[AJ Maciejewski]

You outlined a lot of great stuff, BooneIronshield!

 

I just published a review for this and I agree that it's one of the best dungeon RPGs ever made: http://videochums.com/review/stranger-of-sword-city

[Kishnabe]

Did not expect this to have a console version. Still picking up one day for Vita.

 

After finishing Op Abyss and Moe Chronicle.

Edited April 12, 2016 by Kishnabe

[BooneIronshield]

After completing the Xbox One version I have to say that my initial assessment still stands. I haven't really been a fan of the ninja or wizard type characters in their other games but in this one both were amazing and the Ninja seemed better than the Samurai this time around. Granted though that could be because I built my Samurai around using Dual Wield and Slash 1/2 like in previous games but in this game since there are no class restricted items, just skill restrictions such as Hammer, etc., all of which can taken care of by leveling up as a different class, then a 2h wielding Samurai might be a powerful destructive force. Especially since if you forego Dual Wielding then you don't need to bump up Agility as much as you would have otherwise.

 

One other thing I noticed is that multi-hit weapons seemed pretty powerful in this game. Maybe they were in previous games as well and I just never noticed, which is probably the most likely explanation, but it seemed like damage bonuses were applied to every hit so even though on paper a 5x10 damage weapon would seem weaker than a 1x50-100 damage weapon, the 5x10 would do the same amount of damage or even more.

[IntroPhenom]

This game is on sale right now, and threads like this make it that much easier to pick up.  Nice work, @BooneIronshield