Arcana [37] Dragons, Dragons, and More Dragons!

I've been playing Summoner off and on for the couple couple of weeks (it helps pass the time while dumping video or rendering things) and going back and playing this I started comparing and contrasting the very different methods of handling pets - by which I mean the summonable, non-human allies - in both games.

In Arcana spirits level up with Rooks but gain very little in the way of attack or defense. This means that as the game progresses they become increasingly vulnerable and have only their magic to even the odds. Now for the most part it's not too bad as most enemies have an elemental affinity so you can swap spirits around - which is, by the way, extremely #$@%ing tedious. Once you run into anything that can toss out the AE Attribute spells though they really don't stand much of a chance. Heck a spirit out of MP is of little help and they regain it rather slowly compared to how high the spell costs and encounter rate are at this late stage of the game.

By contrast Summoner has a bunch of weak, easily-killed minions who have to constantly be protected by magic and a watchful healer's eye and a few who can hold their own. In thinking about it I realized what the big difference was: combat skills.

To compare and contrast take the Red Minotaur - a fairly decent monster and better then the Blackfire Elemental for sure! The Minotaur usually doesn't pull aggro due to a relatively long delay between swings. However if it does get attacked it doesn't have the necessary skills to ward off blows and needs constant heals. By contrast the Celestial Samurai has pretty high Dodge, Parry, and Counterattack skills so it can take a beating and remain standing.

The other decent monsters are the Jade Golem - blunt damage, high defense, immunity to knockdown, and Jade Beam can hurt some monsters immune to everything else but poison, the Poison Elemental - chains use no AP, has Trip maxed, and procs poison, the Wraith - a caster with life drain and a super-fast version of Lightning which costs it little AP to cast, and the Blue Imp - critical vulnerability to fire is easily negated with the Faith spell, can cast heal, and a variety of Ice-elemental spells to injure and paralyze foes.

Arcana's spirit system would have fared better had the made the stat growth for some of them better. Why in the world does a giant earth elemental hit like such wuss? Why is there no gear for them to equip at the very least? Come on game give me something to work with here!

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• arcana
• bintel
• castle
• chapter
• five