Sitting down tonight and playing from 8pm until late. Been too busy with other rubbish this week to sit with it properly

*grumble grumble*

Been playing about 8 hours now and just got Esther as a playable character. This game is great! The story is interesting, the music score is excellent and the gameplay is addictive! The only downside is the difficulty, it feels too easy :/ I hope it gets more difficult later on! Especially the boss fights

Everybody saying this game is easy... are you playing on Easy difficulty, or normal?
What levels are you?
I'm at the "pig" level and getting myself ripped a new one

@Teb

Playing normal difficulty, just finished off the fairy grounds. So far the only thing that got the jump on me the first time was That first nightmare.

Find it ridiculously easy, It got even easier with Swaine added now.

Put oliver on Offense with the right familiars, keep Esther on healing and then swaine can dish out massive damage too. Having jump as well makes getting those miracle move gold orbs so much easier as well, since having jump have not missed one of them and those things deal way to much damage.

All my familiars are currently around LV 18 - LV30 as well, with 4 of them evolved into their second forms.

And all decked out with the best equipment I can get for them.

If your struggling just look at your team balance and tactics. Knowing when to defend is so easy as well with those power up moves they do, and then just wait for the blue flash and counter for massive damage then health, mana and miracle orbs.

I honestly hope to unlock the hard difficulty. Like Corr said I suppose it's a family friendly game so they may of lowered the difficulty but by the same token I dont see many kids sitting through the 80+ hour long story lol.

I find Esther runs out of mana waaay to fast. I keep feeding her coffee, but one battle pretty much empties her out again.
Also around 20-30 with my familiars, I grinded for a bit last night and it's now easier. Just find that each new land you open up doubles the monster difficulty. Seems you should level each place till the enemies start running away before moving on

First time so far in my 6hrs that i found a bit of trouble with that first nightmare.
Got my ass wipped so just went and leveled up to 14 and then it was pretty easy.

Just finished the first two trials and need to do the trials of strength now. barely looked into it but can you not set tactics as a standard before the fights? I changed Esther to keep the party healthy but dont know if that tactic sticks or you must select it every fight.

@Posty

You cant change it before a fight from what I have seen but the tactics you set do stick.

@Teb

Yeah it could be your leveling, by the time I have left ever area Iv done every single possible thing I can do, and Iv run back to talk to Old father oak a couple of times.

Also dont forget about your tricks and raising your familiarity with your familiars. Raising levels allows you to increase their growth level from snacks.

So like My little big horn I have on familiarity level two which has allowed to to increase his strength 20 times with milk chocolate, so the little [censored] is now hitting like a freight train, He's his damage is maxed out at 120, despite him being 5 levels lower than my original mite.

@Woofels

Sweet!!


Just wanna get the day over with now

Got a good session in last night, about 4-5hrs in now. Boss fights are quite fun. Just hope the hand-holding let up a tad.

Tebulot said ...

I find Esther runs out of mana waaay to fast. I keep feeding her coffee

Have to agree with Ester and mana
I am not as far as guys are. Only Oliver is lvl 14 and Ester Lvl 12. Also only had a problem with that first nightmare- got him down on the 3rd try

O.o why are you all having problem with her and mana? I have haven't noticed issues with her much? She Most of the time she heals me pretty damn well.

Perhaps it's your tricks your using for healing are all crazy high Mana? I have set her to do concentrate on healing so she generally reserves her Mana for that, and I keep Oliver bumped up with Health with bread, it's cheap and only after really taking a big hit do I need to use it.

Have you guys also got the merit award to drop more orbs? That helps a lot because every time you defend against a big hit or land a successful counter hit itll drop about 2 - 4 orbs which restore anywhere between 3 - 7 health from what i have seen.

Same goes for the mana its often a mix, but yeah Defend and Counter are king for beating the hell out of stuff quickly.

And well do far ever boss battle has just been Oliver running around the outskirts cheesing them with spells

Argh... fair warning... I just found the casino. There goes all my future plans

Put in a few hours last night, still in the desert and just finished all the errands and bounties in al Mamoon. Been trying to capture all the familiars in the desert, it takes forever. Is there anyway on increasing the the rate at which you can serenade them? Because I'm level 22 with Oliver, 19 with Esther and it seems really random as the only monster that I've had the chance to capture more than once is the skeleton, I think it's called a bonehead. The rest I've only had the chance to capture once and I still can't capture that damn lightshade no matter how many times I try.

@Death

According to Drippy the stronger you are the easier it is to capture creatures. However in the those sands I am pwning those skulls in two hits and after 62 battles with them I still have not caught one, so I really dont know how the capture rate works in thia game they are really strange.

Like I caught a little big horn on my first try, its really arb.

I just decided to screw around last night and went missioning on the ship, ended up on some arb little Island where i got absolutely bodied lol. Seriously I got destroyed, the one thing took out Swaine and Esther in one hit I was like OAO

I think it might also depend on who lands the killing blow, and the affinities.

Here are some answers from other boards:


From: thundy84 2 weeks ago
Answer
Each familiar has a certain capture rate. There's a merit award later that increases your chances, but it's a percentage increase on a percentage, I believe. Keep fighting. =)


From: reks_rikuono 2 weeks ago
Answer
I've noticed that the familiars are easier to catch if your familiar's sign is compatible with theirs. Could just be coincidence, but it's been working for me. Also that merit badge thundy84 talked about helps a lot.


From: sisyphus1955 2 weeks ago
Answer
I've found that beating them with Esther helps.


From: sixthsage 1 week ago
Answer
I'm not 100% sure, and if anyone has any solid evidence to contradict this, by all means, but when doing the "kill florets with frostbite" side quest for the lady in the port town (can't remember name off top of my head, EVERY SINGLE floret that I killed that way went into the "hearts above head" mode. I don't know if it was dumb luck, but i killed four in a row, all of them became capturable. I didn't capture them, because I needed to kill them, but maybe that has something to do with it. Another thought is that this could be a mechanic to keep your allies from killing them so you can finish them, but it's still odd, anyone else have the same experience?



Answer
Yes there is, more in to the game you unlock a reward from the stamps. that increases the chance to tame monsters, other than that you just kill them


From: WhitexShadow10 1 week ago
Answer
Just keep on fighting u will get anyone on the game i dont think fighting with esther really matters and the stamp thing is much later in the game and u have to do alot of quests just keep on fighting
and (sixthsage ) even if they have heart above their head u will take the items and exp and gold so dont worry about it


From: kmax08 5 days ago
Answer
Nothing but killing enemies will tame them. There are no tricks. Fighting with Esther, killing enemies with particular moved or using compatible signs will not help unfortunately. (Nothing was mentioned in the official guide)
As earlier posters have said, a merit award later in the game will improve your chances of taming enemies, but until then taming probability is based on a percentage relevant to each individual monster. Some are easier to tame than others.

Hmmm i tend to agree with the last guy, just keep doing those quests for the merit awards

Just picked up Esther last night, fought first Nightmare. Nightmare gave me a bit of trouble, but just had to rinse and repeat to beat him.
Keep in mind I'm not grinding just yet, pretty much just going through to find all areas, and as soon as I can quick travel I'll backtrack on all quests.

Unless of course I hit a wall and am forced to grind

Also, I'm assuming capturing familiars is something that will be explained in-game eventually?


Sidenote: By Odin's beard things get busier on screen with a 2nd character. Can't wait for a full party.

@Tiggi

You will get to the Familiar capturing very soon, once you do the trails you pick up the ability to capture them.

@Woofels: Wicked, just one trial away then ^_^

Also, if anyone managed to solve that monkey, moon, star, mite thing without looking it up, you're a liar...Or I'm just an idiot

Hahahahaha I managed to do it

But admittedly it took me 40 solid minutes and a lot of swearing