[Click here to start from the first progress log]

Right after I finish up a progress log, I typically jump right back into the game in question to get a head start on the next day’s videos. That means that my near-complete lack of time yesterday impacted how much progress I made today, though I still managed to figure out how several things work regardless. I’m definitely starting to get a handle on how everything functions and work out how to best use the mechanics, though there are one or two things that I’m mystified by. Anyway, I made sure to have plenty of free time later today, so tomorrow’s progress log should cover quite a bit more ground. I’m getting deep enough into Azure Saga: Pathfinder that I’m going to start easing up on the long, potentially spoiler-y videos, though.

The whole party levels up

Shortly after resolving everything in the sewers, the party meets the king and is tasked with doing some busywork to establish their value to the kingdom. Both Clery and Kishar are party members for this, which means that we can pick and choose a three-person party out of four characters. One of the things you can never take for granted in a game like this is how unused party members are handled; sometimes everyone gains experience whether they were involved in combat or not, while other games allow unused party members to slowly fade into obsolescence by only providing experience for the ones you use. Thankfully, Azure Saga: Pathfinder goes with the much friendlier former option, as all party members gain experience.

Here’s what’s mystifying to me, though—if you pause right at 21:19, you can see the results screen with experience amounts, and what’s strange is how much everyone gets in this particular case. The icons suggest that killing multiple enemies or being the one to finish enemies off may impact how much that character gains, which makes sense, but the weird part is that an unused Synch somehow gained more experience than Clery despite her actually participating in battle. The only obvious difference between them is that she was a level lower than him at the time, but this ultimately makes it more confusing since you’d expect that to increase the amount of experience she gains rather than decreasing it. It’s hardly a big deal since everyone has been staying at roughly the same level either way, but it’s still incredibly strange.

Avoiding tedium

Random battles can quickly become tiring, but the enemies thus far have been interesting enough to offset the hassle of occasionally having exploration stopped by an encounter. Take this chest enemy, for example. Normal attacks inflict 1 point of damage against it, so you have to use special attacks and unite attacks to defeat it. Mana potions are expensive early on (compared to what you make fighting enemies) and only restore a small amount of MP, though, so it’s a balancing act where you’re trying to level up and explore while not burning through all of your items.

Inflicting and receiving damage in battle increases characters’ “fury” bar, with unite attacks supposedly increasing it even more (though it’s hard to get a feel for how much since performing them means never going into the menu that shows you the bar). When full, characters can perform a powerful fury move. For example, Clery has a healing move that resurrects and heals everyone, while Noide has a powerful gun attack that attacks all enemies and stuns them for a turn. Since the fury bar is persistent between battles and boss fights have thus far been noteworthy difficulty spikes, I made sure to save everyone’s fury attacks for the next boss fight. This allowed things to go much smoother than the past two by making it easier to pick off the helper enemies early. That way, everyone could focus exclusively on the boss.

Name capitalization comes and goes

The occasional missing words and punctuation still aren’t bothering me, but I’m starting to notice some confusing capitalization. If names were fully capitalized the first time you heard them, that would be consistent and understandable, but a lot of the time Azure Saga: Pathfinder switches between writing the names of people you’ve long since met normally and in all-caps. During a tense exchange full of other capitalized words, this makes sense, but sometimes names are the only words that are capitalized, and I haven’t noticed a pattern to this. The picture above isn’t an ideal representation of confusing capitalization, but the later example I have where multiple names are the only capitalized words could be considered a story spoiler.

[Click here to go to Azure Saga – Pathfinder log #1]

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