Double update today, but one’s a short little mechanical thing.
So now that we have an actual party, it’s time to poke around in the menu a little bit. Right now it’s just Tsubasa and Itsuki, but this screen will get more and more crowded as we get more party members and supporting cast. If you let it go long enough, the characters will even go through some idle animations like Tsubasa looking down at Itsuki and smiling.
Anyway, Skills and Items are exactly what you think they are, so let’s dive into some of the more interesting stuff.
The Wardrobe screen is your equipment menu. One of the more interesting design decisions is how much this game simplifies dealing with equipment, opting for just a weapon, accessory, and costume.
Your weapon is far and away the most important bit here. Not only does it determine your attack power, it also determines what your weaknesses and resistances are, as well as dictating what skills you learn. This can lead to some very interesting situations where you stick with a weaker weapon because it makes you resist ice instead of being weak to it, or using something that screws with your resistances because it has a skill that you would otherwise never be able to learn.
Accessories, on the other hand, are a combination of stat boosts/special effects and armor. Because of how you unlock new weapons, they’re also the only thing you actually have to buy, so by endgame it’s not at all uncommon to drop three million yen on upgrades for your entire party.
Costumes are purely cosmetic and change how your character looks in battle. They’re mainly useful as something to dump your millions and millions of excess yen into near the end of the game.
The status screen really just lets you quickly check up on your stats if you really care, because the important information (read: your resistances) is already on the equipment screen.
It does have a quick bio though, if you’re absolutely dying to know what Tsubasa’s blood type is. :shrug:
One last thing of note - you can save at any time, anywhere, for any reason. It’s great and super player-friendly, but there are a few times I wish they’d have put a regular save point in before bosses or something, because it is incredibly easy to forget that you can save whenever you want and end up losing a couple hours of progress.