Resonance of Fate [PS3/360]

[Paddy]

It means you have to have some gunfights to get some hexes, then use your controls to lay them down efficiently. Also, be careful of the red warning marks on the map. They are extra battles that willl help you level up but can be quite tough. If you can't beat the enemies you'd have to reload as well.

[crocky-chocky]

8 Hours in and enjoying this immensely.

It was looking a bit wobbly after several tutorials didn't actually tell me what I had to do (Cripes. I nearly lost my mind on the Smackdown tutorial). But it all clicked quite quickly when I actually took on some missions and started to explore. It soon becomes a joy.

It actually reminds me of Demon's Souls in that there's no unwelcome embellishments to the gameplay. Just a handful of mechanics that are all equally compelling. The hex system makes uncovering the world oddly satisfying, the gun customizing ticks the nerdy menu fiddling box, and the combat is simply ace. I'm yet to tire of flipping directly over some giant robo-thing and busting out my gat.

The story seems neatly shoved behind the gameplay too. Just like in Souls, though to be honest that could just be because it's not really taken off yet. I actually like the characters too, or rather I don't hate them as with 90% of voice-acted RPG's. Like Paddy says, they just seem like good chums, and I'd take their comedy japes over FF's 'listen to your heart' emotional jazz any day.

Looks lovely too. Reminds me of so many games with great art-styles. There's Bioshock's neon, Ico's breeze-filled architecture, Fallout's apocalyptocity...and I'm rambling now.

Really enjoying it and it needs mo' love. I'd say it's light years better'n FFVIII. Light years I say.

[SuperBeatBoy]

Just started this the other day, haven't spent much time with it yet. Just wondering if its best to aim for a leader assault?

[crocky-chocky]

Hmm...Mostly yeah. There's bound to be fights later on where the leader's tough to get to straight away...But so far the leader's rarely been much tougher than the others or even the same enemy type.

[SuperBeatBoy]

Just wondering if there were any disadvantages to this like less xp, items etc. I do like how you level up during battle though, nice touch.

[rmoxon]

Your team members gain XP indivdualy when dealing damage to enemies so its best to kill all enemies in a battle. Also each individual enemy you kill drops its own items, such as hexes and gun parts.

Leader assualt is somtimes the easiest method and somtimes the hardest, if you dont take out any enemies qiuickly you can often end up with no hero guage and end up in critical condition, which makes killing the leader extreamly difficult.

[Adrock]

I think the enemies drop a good portion of their loot when you initiate a leader assault anyway rmoxon. I've not checked conclusively if you get more for taking out all of the enemies or not.

But yes, experience is gained by the damage dealt. So if you want to build your characters up take everything out. I like to try and get my machine gun man (Zephyr) to take them down to complete scratch damage. That gains him the most experience possible and it also means the handgun person next time gains all of the experience as if he had taken out all of the enemies HP.

Also, I like to sometimes change up the weapons my guys are using. Overall levels are made up of weapon levels. So getting a few quick levels on their weakest weapon will give you a decent boost in HP. That'll work for thrown weapons too.

I'm about 10 hours in myself and I'm enjoying it tons. At the moment I'm grinding to try and get as many yellow hex pieces as possible. I'm trying to get that forest place and all of its amps functioning.

[SuperBeatBoy]

Are Tri-Attacks useful? I'm guessing these are really hard to pull off during a battle, probably best on boss fights or weaker enemies.

[Adrock]

I've never pulled off many tri attacks properly during normal fights, they seem quite difficult to get into a decent enough formation to make a big difference during normal fights.

Getting the resonance points up seems to be a bit of a task too at the moment with such a small hero gauge. I've got a couple going before now and they can be devastating, taken out some enemies very easily using them.

[eastyy]

well i love this game combat is awesome

what i try and do is set up tri attacks ....using one guy to cause scratch damage then using other characters to smash them after ...resonance points i am getting the hang off the secret is really when you use them ....to time it to kill a small enemy to get them back or to do a tri attack on a boss to get them back

[vanpeebles]

I've noticed that for extra leveling you can switch the grenade box to other people to post their levels. Or a pistol to a scratch dude or vice versa. Ah just saw Adrocks post

[hush]

i picked this up over the week but i've only have time to play it for about an hour and just sitting doing the tutorial .
Maybe someone can help me i don't get the Tri-Attack or i am just doing it wrong but i for the love of me can't pull one off also i like the Hero move and the combat i have done so far. Will spend more time one this tonight but it is good

[Sane]

I'm about 30 hours in so far and it really is a great game. My only gripe with is the environments, which are all very similar and not very interesting. Oh and the story is some random vague BS, but I tend to expect that in JRPG's.

That said, the combat system is brilliant and it alone makes the game worth picking up.

About the tri-attack, a tactic that works wonders in most battles is as follows:

Put your machine gun character in the middle position so that when you open a battle with a hero action you also gain 1 resonance point. I usually aim for the leader or when there's no leader I start picking off an enemy to the side so I don't land in the middle of a big pack and get pummeled. It works best to start off with a jumping hero action (don't wait too long with firing, straight above the enemy usually works best) so so you do scratch damage to all his parts. Now you have 1 resonance point and a scratched enemy and you have put your characters in a position to do a tri-attack (provided you avoided putting obstacles in their running paths).

A nice trick now is that when you start a tri-attack you can actually switch to any character with RB and LB. So if the enemy you scratched is not completely blue it's usually a good idea to switch back to the MG character again (yes he gets to go twice in a row) and aim the tri-attack direction with Y so that he can shoot the same enemy again and the other 2 chracters can finish him off (if the body is completely blue but he still has some green around him make sure to jump and shoot from above).

Also, only do the jumping attack if you want to hit all the body parts, if an enemy only has a main body don't jump as running attacks will give you a chance to get the enemy airborne and start some massive juggles.

[Paddy]

I agree with you here. I'm about the same amount of time into it (gonna play some more after this post) and it's certainly unique. Like the music a lot as well (many flavours of rock) and really appreciate that you can change the looks of the 3 main characters (a lifesaver as you only get 3 to play as far as I can see). Anyway, will keep on playing to see if there are any more suprises.

P.S When using tri-attack be careful of walls. Unless you switch to the character in time they can potentially bump into something and so they will be taken out of the attack. Keep that in mind.

[Paddy]

well i love this game combat is awesome

what i try and do is set up tri attacks ....using one guy to cause scratch damage then using other characters to smash them after ...resonance points i am getting the hang off the secret is really when you use them ....to time it to kill a small enemy to get them back or to do a tri attack on a boss to get them back

And there in lies the strategy. At first the game may appear to be all flash but as you play you see that there's a fine balancing act between 'looking cool' and redeeming your Basels. At least until you get more basel shards (which you can find by unlocking the map with hexes or from the red hot-spot battles you enter sometimes).

And it is cool when you do a tri-attck with 6-7 levels of resonnance built up. It just keeps on going!