Story continued:
Ok, I think there are a couple loose ends that never get wrapped up. First, when you're revealed to be a clone, Birdy goes from being your friend, to just falling apart emotionally in the lab with the cloning tank. When you get to round 3 of the Battle Arena, Birdy is in Lena-te's party and you end up having to fight against him. It would have been better if you could get Birdy in your own party, or at least to have him talk to you again after you beat the second scenario. Next, the original version of Anesu that you're cloned from is still in child form in the cloning tank in the secret lab. While you do fight against him in adult form in battle event round 4, it's just a hologram of that character, and not the real, real thing. I'm wondering if the clones in the tanks ever get freed. Third, there are a lot of rocket capsules left behind, and I think some people in sleep capsules that don't wake up. There's just this feeling that there should be a second run of the ending credits, and possibly a way to go off-planet. I have been able to clear all 15 Scout Master Q quests, and the top prize is just one copy each of the AtkUp-Sp, DefUp-SP, MindUp-SP and SpdUp-SP skill books. Frankly, this isn't that great a prize, because it's possible to obtain them through monster breeding. No idea what happens if you beat Aroma in the Event Battles, but that looks to be a HUGE amount of work that I don't want to bother with now.
Anyway, it just feels like there are loose ends, and I'm still missing part of the story or something.
There are two other things that I haven't been able to finish. First is the Queenie accessory items quest. The very last thing is to find an item that only shows up rarely, at random, in a black chest at the back end of the grass fields chapter 1 island. I have never seen that chest in the 200+ hours I've played the game. The reward is just the ability to make the last of the high-powered accessories. According to the Japanese walkthrough, Nintendo gave out promotional code awards in magazines for a bunch of stuff you can use in the game, and one of the promotional codes was for this rare item. I have the code for the Queenie quest item, but I can not find any way to enter it into the game. It's possible that you have to log into the Nintendo online site via a wireless connection, but I can't get that to work on my 3DS either. I don't think this is worth the effort. I tried finding a set of three code words for making a disk for the B1 disk system for obtaining the item as a prize for the relay chase quests, and I gave up after an hour of just getting crap rewards.
The last thing I haven't finished is the Slime Challenge. This is a mini game you can access from the window at the right-hand back end of the Central room, behind King. You have to go through a long, boring tutorial, then you get to pick your ride monster. You start at rank C, and the entry fee is fairly cheap. You're up against 3 NPCs, each with their own ride monsters that are just slightly better than what you have. When the whistle blows, you're supposed to ride to the middle of the playing field and grab a slime. Blue slimes are worth 1 point, I think silver are two and gold are three. Shields protect you against one attack, and meat fills your tension bar. The tension bar normally fills slowly. When it is high enough, you can use the A button to turbo charge your movement for a few seconds. The X button lets you attack an enemy to stun them for a few seconds, and the B button makes you jump up and down. If you use a flying type monster, that ability is disabled for the game. Occasionally, a boulder bomb will appear. If you drag it to an opponent's goal, the bomb will explode, the opponent will lose points, and a gold slime will fall out that you can grab. You have to drag the slimes you've collected to your own goal to collect points, during which time everyone else will attack you from behind. The round lasts a couple minutes, and when the time goes to zero, the player with the most points wins. If you beat the rank C round, you can choose to play at the rank B level, which costs more money to enter. I've beaten rank S, but stalled at rank SS. Your monsters are not rated by their current stats. That is, a rocket monster with a speed stat of 1,700 is no faster than the same monster with a speed stat of 800. Ride monsters are classified by type, as having speed, tension bar fill rate and defense stats of 1, 2 or 3 stars. I readily admit that I do not understand the ride monster rating system, since monsters that work really well for the NPCs are 20-30% slower and weaker when I use them. Losing the round gives you one skill seed (increases one skill of one monster by one point), which I consider useless because all my party monsters have 300-500 extra skill points they can't use. I forget what winning gives you, but I think it's just exp., and going up one Ride Master Class level. Maybe it unlocks an achievement medallion, giving you another code word for the disk system.
That's everything storywise I know about, and most of the overviews of how to do the important stuff needed for surviving the game. The following sections will be more detailed descriptions of things like menu operations, getting monsters from the disk system, and using skills.
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Game Overview:
The Screens:
Like most 3DS games, you have the upper and lower screens. The upper screen shows you the part of the field or world map you are in, character stats if you press the X button, monster stats if you press the reactor button on the touch screen while looking at the monster, and other information depending on the action you are taking. The lower screen gives you the forward view of what you're facing in the field and world maps, the items you can select in inventory or when breeding monsters, and the battle screen when preparing for, or doing the fighting. For the most part, the game doesn't really use the stylus or touch screen for anything you can't use the controller buttons for. The exception is the big gray button in the lower right corner, which activates your reactor. Your reactor is used for obtaining monster stats prior to engaging them in battle, and for finding anything invisible, such as bridges, stealth boxes and hidden monsters (turn in the direction of the thing you want to check, press the reactor button, place the cross hairs over that thing, and press the A button to get information. Later in the game, you can get more information by subsequently pressing the Y button).
The Field Map:
The game is made up of 7 floating islands that you reach by activating, then using, a teleporter. Four of the fields are effectively assigned an element (fire, water, air, earth). All outdoor areas can have a time of day (day or night) and weather (raining or clear skies). Field monsters can appear based on the time of day and the weather. Fields in general will have a village area (a building, or a cave) and the outdoor area (the exceptions are the Core, which is all indoors, and the Tower, which is 50% indoors and 50% out). Villages have an Inn (for HP and MP recovery) and an item shop. Item shops sell recovery potions, antidotes (anti-poison, anti-sleep, anti-confusion), and maybe meats for aiding in scouting monsters. Otherwise, villages may have treasure chests, and NPCs to talk to for advancing the story.
Chests and found items:
Fields can have colored chests, simple found items, and stealth boxes. Found items can include bags of money, rocks you can throw during battle (1-2 hits each max, which are pretty useless), low-grade potions, and low-grade scouting meats. The disk for accessing the metal slime area in the disk system is a found item in one of the passages on the ice island. Other found items are used for making accessories in the accessory shop in the Central building.
Brown chests can be fixed or random. Fixed brown chests can contain money, potions or special items (skill scrolls, master road stones, etc.) Once opened, they remain opened throughout the game and are not replenished. Random brown chests can contain accessory items or potions, and are regenerated at different locations on the map every time you come back to that field. They are always visible without the reactor.
Green and black chests are random, refilled, and can contain rarer items used for accessories.
Stealth boxes can be green or gray. Gray boxes can include rare potions, rare skill scrolls, rare master road stones, etc. Green stealth boxes contain the Color Fondue brothers. There are 5 brothers, and once freed from the boxes, return home to the hut on the chapter 1 island. The green stealth boxes can only be found in hidden rooms or caves (use the reactor to look for a panel covered in white noise). Stealth boxes are fixed, and go away after being opened.
Mimics look like brown chests, but are monsters and will attack you if you get too close. Mimics can use instant kill skills, so try to scout or defeat them fast. They will show up as monsters if you look at them with the reactor. They appear randomly both indoors and outdoors, and will give you a coin when defeated (give the coins to King in Central building for rewards).
Monsters:
While you can find monsters in the villages, they are friendly and you can't fight them (you can talk to them to advance the story). Monsters in the field are fightable and scoutable. If they are higher level than you, the lower rank ones will generally rush to attack if they spot you; if you're higher level, they'll drop monster poop (found item) and try to run away. High rank monsters (C rank and above) may ignore you. Most monsters appear in fixed locations, but will respawn if you walk far enough away from where you defeated them. Monsters are identified as ground-type (they only walk or run), aerial (they only fly) and aquatic (they can only be found in or on the surface of water). Story-level monsters are ranked as F through A based on their exp. levels. Most monsters are level 50 or under, while some are in the 60-75 level range in the later chapters. All this really means is that the monster you're fighting is stronger or weaker right now. Monsters can be invisible, depending on the type, but will show up on the reactor. Central floors 29 and 30, and the Core have invisible trap monsters that activate if you trigger an alarm.
A few rare monsters appear only in fixed locations and under fixed conditions. The Sun planet is located at the top of the Central building, outside, during the day in good weather (use Ruler to teleport to floor 30 of the Central building, use a flier monster to go up the broken ladder, then go outside and fly straight up as high as you can go). The Moon planet is in the grassy field island at the top of the enemy hideout building, at night in clear skies.
Some monsters sleep at night, others only come out at night. Some monsters will kill and eat others to change into a new kind of monster, or wander into a poison pool to become a skelegon or something else.
You'll find a few of the big 3-slot monsters on the World Map when you try to go to Point Zero.
Flight Signal:
After finishing the first scenario, you're given the Flight Signal item. This can only be used outside on the field map, on islands that don't have black ash rain (are dominated by cyborg boss monsters) and if you have a 3-slot monster assigned to the down button on the cross controller via the Ride Monster icon in the main menu.
Time and Space Eye:
Every so often, when you're wandering around outside in the field, you'll get a notice saying that the reactor is responding to something. Stop, activate the reactor and look around. When it spots whatever is invisible, press the A button to mark it. Sometimes these are stealth boxes, other times they're "eyes". Eyes are big, black football shapes that teleport you to pocket spaces not part of the regular field. Eyes have fixed purposes, but you can leave them when you want, depending on the purpose. Some eyes have found items you can hunt for, others have mixed types of monsters you can fight or scout. Twice, I've found eyes that open to the Golden area that has King Metal slimes and the Gold Slime. These types you can leave when they get boring. In the third type, you can fight a scout master. The scout masters can be low or high level, and you can try scouting their monsters (if you succeed, you automatically win the battle). Victory can net you 8-10 coins (take them to King), or 3 seeds each for boosting the stats of your monsters (these boosts disappear if you breed the monster later), or for boosting the Tension bar in battles. Eyes can be useful for scouting very rare monsters, or getting coins quickly.
Continued...
