[Game Journal] Tales of the Arcaneum

[Arcaneum]

Tales of the Arcaneum​

Prologue

Transcending history, and the world...
a tale of souls and swords, eternally retold...​

Hello traveler. Welcome to the Tales of Arcaneum, a re-telling of the events that happen during my progression in both the section events this year as well as other gaming journeys I may embark on during 2023.

For those unaware - the two events happening are the Game-Along and the Gaming Challenge. In the Game-Along, themes are chosen each month in which you can pick a game that fits and try to complete it before the month is over! In the Gaming Challenge, you set yourself a goal of how many games you plan to play this year.

Chapter 1

PokéCommunity Game-Along IV Entry #1 - Disgaea 2

This month's theme is Free Choice, so I thought I'd go with something that will fill up a lot of my time over the month and also something I have wanted to revisit for a while, that being Disgaea 2! I've done a lot of runs for Disgaea 1 recently and after the disappointment that was Disgaea 6, I wanted to revisit the games again without doing yet another run in 1.

So I decided to play Disgaea 2 (it's nicer anyway imo, bit more QoL in terms of grinding etc.) and this time I decided to limit myself in classes I can play; I picked 5 classes at random that can be used, along with the 2 story characters Rozalin and Adell, throughout the whole game. Those classes are:

Spoiler:

Gaia, the Mothman

The Mothman is a Monster unit, meaning they don't equip conventional weapons and are obtained by defeating the Monster in question, which meant having to wait until they appear to get one! The Mothman unit is very mobile but comparatively frail compared to most other Monster units; their main aim is to spread status ailments around... this was not a promising first pick as generally there are better characters to spread ailments and this class is so weak!



Hades, the Thief

My favourite class in the game, yes!!! I have this in the Claims thread for a reason! The Thief class in Disgaea 1 was horrendous but essential - as implied this class is the only class that can Steal items from enemies, however to counter that in Disgaea 1 they gave the class the worst stats, weapon aptitudes and growth rates in the game, meaning you just made one to steal endgame equipment really. In Disgaea 2 however, the class has been majorly buffed, sporting some incredible growth rates and have actual weapon aptitudes now, resulting in them actually being viable! That and the model change for Disgaea 2 means they're now really cute, too.



Athena, the Cleric

I am SO glad I rolled this - it just makes things a lot easier having someone dedicated to healing and support in the team. The Cleric class, obviously, is all about providing big heals and support to the team by buffing stats. The biggest change between Disgaea 1 and 2 here is that the Cleric now has all of the buffing spells and can buff any of the 6 stats, as opposed to Disgaea 1 where you could only buff Attack or Intelligence (Physical or Magical damage, essentially). This is going to be a huge cornerstone for the team, although it's not going to be fun giving them some other spells... more on that later.



Buddha, the Armor Knight

This is going to be an interesting class. This is actually one I don't normally use, as I feel other units that can use the weapons this class excels in are much better. This is the standard 'tank' class of the game - it sports high defences, high HP, low mobility and an OK enough Attack stat. They do also sport one of the highest Throw values in the game; given my current setup this is actually going to be a good class to have as I generally have a VERY frail team, so it will be nice to have some damage sponges to help things out a little.



Amaterasu, the Magician

Another favourite of mine, the Magician! A good source of magic damage and in Disgaea 2 they gain a support function in that they can debuff enemies, as well. They are a very frail class but their damage output is huge and with the range they can boast, they become a literal glass cannon. Looking very forward to using these to escalate my progress very soon.

So with that out of the way, it was time to get the show on the road! After going through the tutorials, I immediately got Athena to create three more Magicians - one of each element (Fire/Ice/Wind). To quickly explain why - in Disgaea you create characters by having an existing character essentially recruiting them from the Dark Assembly, thus you get a Mentor (the person who made the character) and a Pupil (the created character). Any spells the Pupil learns can be learned by the Mentor, meaning that my magic-based Cleric can now learn some offensive magic options to help with early levelling. After getting her to learn each of the basic spells, I've essentially just been cruising through the story, getting some levels. We're currently on Chapter 3, as we've been a little slow just getting some characters up to speed.

The other exciting venture though is that I have already completed some steps in the Item World! The Item World in Disgaea is where you can go into one of your items, completing procedurally-generated 'Floors' to further boost the stats of it, as well as some other stuff that I'll leave out for now. With this, I managed to pump 10 levels into a legendary (items have 3 rarity levels in Disgaea - Common/Rare/Legendary) Wooden Bow, which has gone straight to my currently fairly weak Hades to help bolster those stats a little.

As it stands I now have all the classes I can use, so I'll be using my merry little band of 7 to try and get some stats/levels/etc. before then considering adding more of these classes in.

And that's mostly been it so far, the early game is always a bit of an eventless grind really, but hopefully next update will have a bit more zing to it (and I'll provide some actual content on my Gaming Challenge entries so far too!).

Current Event Progress:

PokéCommunity Game-Along
January
Free Choice - Disgaea 2 - In Progress
PokéCommunity Gaming Challenge (2/10 Complete)
January
River City Girls - Completed
Borderlands 3 - Completed
Tales of Xillia - In Progress
Disgaea 2 - In Progress

 

[gimmepie]

I think you meant prologue.

Nonetheless, I am excited to read more of your thoughts.

 

[Arcaneum]

Tales of the Arcaneum​

Chapter 2

PokéCommunity Game-Along IV Entry #1 - Disgaea 2

So with not long left until we reach February, it was time to start kicking things into overdrive a bit, as unfortunately due to both physical and mental health issues I've been somewhat waylaid! As I didn't get too far initially... this meant flying through 10 chapters to get to the game's end in about 4 days, this is definitely going to be a challenge! Before we dig in, I will just post a reminder about the conditions for this Disgaea 2 run.

In this run, I've randomly selected 5 classes, which will be the only classes I can use (alongside the two story characters Rozalin and Adell). These classes are in the spoiler below:

Spoiler:

Gaia, the Mothman

The Mothman is a Monster unit, meaning they don't equip conventional weapons and are obtained by defeating the Monster in question, which meant having to wait until they appear to get one! The Mothman unit is very mobile but comparatively frail compared to most other Monster units; their main aim is to spread status ailments around... this was not a promising first pick as generally there are better characters to spread ailments and this class is so weak!



Hades, the Thief

My favourite class in the game, yes!!! I have this in the Claims thread for a reason! The Thief class in Disgaea 1 was horrendous but essential - as implied this class is the only class that can Steal items from enemies, however to counter that in Disgaea 1 they gave the class the worst stats, weapon aptitudes and growth rates in the game, meaning you just made one to steal endgame equipment really. In Disgaea 2 however, the class has been majorly buffed, sporting some incredible growth rates and have actual weapon aptitudes now, resulting in them actually being viable! That and the model change for Disgaea 2 means they're now really cute, too.



Athena, the Cleric

I am SO glad I rolled this - it just makes things a lot easier having someone dedicated to healing and support in the team. The Cleric class, obviously, is all about providing big heals and support to the team by buffing stats. The biggest change between Disgaea 1 and 2 here is that the Cleric now has all of the buffing spells and can buff any of the 6 stats, as opposed to Disgaea 1 where you could only buff Attack or Intelligence (Physical or Magical damage, essentially). This is going to be a huge cornerstone for the team, although it's not going to be fun giving them some other spells... more on that later.



Buddha, the Armor Knight

This is going to be an interesting class. This is actually one I don't normally use, as I feel other units that can use the weapons this class excels in are much better. This is the standard 'tank' class of the game - it sports high defences, high HP, low mobility and an OK enough Attack stat. They do also sport one of the highest Throw values in the game; given my current setup this is actually going to be a good class to have as I generally have a VERY frail team, so it will be nice to have some damage sponges to help things out a little.



Amaterasu, the Magician

Another favourite of mine, the Magician! A good source of magic damage and in Disgaea 2 they gain a support function in that they can debuff enemies, as well. They are a very frail class but their damage output is huge and with the range they can boast, they become a literal glass cannon. Looking very forward to using these to escalate my progress very soon.

Now to start things off, I got some good hauls from my last jump into the Item World, so I decide to start the progression upwards and pick an item with levels around the same as my party, this time choosing one of the spears I have (as Buddha was looking a little weak and that is his primary weapon). As is usual in Item World, what this mean is that I managed to get to floor 10 and get even more hauls... so the grind starts to begin. As time IS an actual constraint here, I stop after a few items, decidely a rare Imperial Seal. These items are good for the early game, as they increase all of your stats and this has certainly helped as I put it on Hades who was starting to fall off a bit. After all of this, I was rocking an average level of about 18 or so, which was way higher than what I was facing in the story, so I decided to just power through until I got to a point I felt I needed to stop and grind some more.

This actually ended up being quite a way it seems! Chapter 3 was an absolute breeze as expected... until the horror that is Tragedyland. This is where the game, poorly I will add, explains the Felony system of Disgaea 2. Felonies are essentially stacklable on characters, built up from Subpoenas you get for things such as having too high a stat, lots of money or even just destroying Geo Symbols in the game. With each Felony on a character, you get things such as EXP boosts and the like. Tragedyland, the last level of Chapter 3, requires you to have obtained a Felony on a character before proceeding. UGH. Thankfully the Subpoenas themselves are fairly easy to do - go into the Item World and go to the same floor number as the level of the Bailiff in your item, enter a portal and you're in the Dark Court where you obtain your Felony.

So now we've been extra naughty, it was time to complete Chapter 3. But first, we meet an old friend of ours...

Etna!!! She's one of my favourite Disgaea characters and it seems she's made an appearance here in Disgaea 2 as... a boss?! DDD:

Now again this was just more of a timesink, as this is a battle you can infact not really win (at least in a fresh game) so you are supposed to lose. With that out of the way, we then fly through Chapters 4 and 5, with our levels still sitting comfortably above the average of the enemies. I did do a LITTLE grinding in Chapter 4, as it features the first "power-levelling" map of Disgaea 2. This map has a Geo effect in which any enemy on the coloured panel has their level increased by 10% every turn. So after some careful setting up, I managed to get one enemy on their own and tied down enough that they got to about level 60/70 and didn't kill my whole team, whilst netting Buddha a whopping 6 levels, bringing them right up to speed with the rest of the party! After that I did then stop the playthrough, as I know Chapter 6 is a bit full on both in content and story, so I wasn't quite ready to tackle that this evening.

However, that stint alone has us at the halfway point of the game now, so I think we're well on track to get this completed before February!

Current Event Progress:

PokéCommunity Game-Along
January
Free Choice - Disgaea 2 - In Progress
PokéCommunity Gaming Challenge (2/10 Complete)
January
River City Girls - Completed
Borderlands 3 - Completed
Tales of Xillia - In Progress
Disgaea 2 - In Progress
Fire Emblem Engage - In Progress