La Pucelle: Tactics to US

[Captain Vegetable]

Yes. Priere is one of those "I need to get Laharl to level 100,000,000,000 before I can even think about recruting her" characters.

And La Pucelle rocks Disgaea's face concerning levels and leveling.

[Rich]

Man, having no internet for a week (and running--on dialup) has its up sides. I've played for 11 hours since buying this game yesterday after school, and probably putting another 3 or 4 hours in tonight.

[Zenigata]

Crap, I didn't even realize this was out. Need to pick it up soon. I’m still playing through Disgaea (and loving it).

[Captain Vegetable]

Then you'll love this one that much more.

[AaronChance]

Not I. In fact, one of the things I hate the most about RPGs is the constant leveling up you have to do...I take it that La Pucelle isn't that bad in this regard?

You can probably reach the final boss if you play smart without any additional leveling at all, but you won't be able to get the 'good' endings for some chapters and fail to earn some neat prizes, though the leveling you need to get these isn't very much anyway. The game only has one optional boss and you're going to need to level to beat him, but you can do as I did and not bother.

[RedCoKid]

Some graphics were changed in the ending in addition to what I described previously. Depending on how perceptive you are, you might not have noticed otherwise:
The upside-down crucifix to which Croix is mounted was changed to a pair of wings. Moreover, they cut off the sprites showing his arms and boots... his body looks like a limbless stump. In fact, the final level in the J version was littered with upside-down crucifixes. The arms on all the crosses have been shortened or cut off.If that's what it takes to get SCEA approval and/or avoid controversy from the conservative media, so be it. I don't feel offended.

However, what detracted most from my experience was replaying from LV 1 after having worked my way to LV 1183 in the J version. I felt robbed.

Just for fun, here's an example of the best way to get chained miracles in Cave of Trials 3 (prereq: Warp Drive, purification power > ~100). Enter the stage when no source is lying on the outermost panels of the screen. If there is, leave & enter again. Next, bring out a character next to the base panel and end 2 consecutive turns to bring the bats away from the outside edges. Equip & de-equip your characters with the warp drive, and move them around until the streams are arranged like so:

2---------------------1
|.....................|
|.................R...|
|....R............|...|
|.B..|............|...|
|.|..|........G...|...|
|.|.G|........|...|...|
|.|.||....B...|...|...|
|.|.||....|...|...|...|
3->-4>----5---6---7---8

Characters 3 & 4 need to place > items in the lower left. Character 1 ignites the red in the upper right. Next to blow up in the chain will be red, then blue, green, green, blue. The result will be 2 white miracles followed by 2 blue-greens, then a green, and lastly a blue. 5000-7000 pts, plus low level equipped items will increase by 10 levels.

[RedCoKid]

Just for fun, here's an example of the best way to get chained miracles in Cave of Trials 3 (prereq: Warp Drive, purification power > ~100). Enter the stage when no source is lying on the outermost panels of the screen. If there is, leave & enter again. Next, bring out a character next to the base panel and end 2 consecutive turns to bring the bats away from the outside edges. Equip & de-equip your characters with the warp drive, and move them around until the streams are arranged like so:

2---------------------1
|.....................|
|.................R...|
|....R............|...|
|.B..|............|...|
|.|..|........G...|...|
|.|.G|........|...|...|
|.|.||....B...|...|...|
|.|.||....|...|...|...|
3->-4>----5---6---7---8

Characters 3 & 4 need to place > items in the lower left. Character 1 ignites the red in the upper right. Next to blow up should be red, then blue, green, green, blue. The result will be 2 white miracles followed by 2 blue-greens, then a green, and lastly a blue. 5000-7000 pts, plus low level equipped items will increase by 10 levels.

[Captain Vegetable]

Wow, Red. Is there a trick like this in Phantom Brave? There's that leveling trick I found in Disgaea, this, and there's got to be one in Phantom Brave.

Speaking of Phantom Brave, I know it's coming to the States, but do we know who's bringing it over? Is it Mastiff again? I think they did s great job with the translation and voice casting.

That thing that you mentioned in your spoiler kind of pisses me off. I've never been made upset by any changes made from a Japanese translation to the US translation, but this one really bothers me. Not enough to get the J-version, mind you.

[RedCoKid]

Nippon Ichi Software America is localizing Phantom Brave with unspecified help from Atlus USA (see http://www.atlus.com ). Ammadeau would know of more tricks to Phantom Brave than I would. The templates are fun to mess around with, though. You can rip a gold/platinum template from a retrieved item, paste it onto a random dungeon, complete the dungeon, remap the template to another dungeon or to a character to increase base stats.

After completing everything in LP (J) and getting halfway through Disgaea (US), I've felt burned out from these games. It's sooo much work! I cheated the rest of the way in Disgaea, only did enough to see the ending in PB (J), and cheated in LP (US) starting at chapter 4. *yawn*

[AaronChance]

Wow, Red. Is there a trick like this in Phantom Brave? There's that elveling trick I found in Disgaea, this, and there's got to be one in Phantom Brave.

Nippon Ichi were very kind to people in Phantom Brave, probably why they made the optional bosses extra cruel. There's a title you can apply to random dungeons that will reduce all enemy stats by 80%, meaning you can easily take on monsters much higher level and reap big exp rewards.

For me though, that takes the fun out of it, though I'll have to break down and use it if I ever get around to beating Baal. Yeah, he's in PB too and his stats are unbelievable. I had Marrone armed with a weapon with 50k ATK and she couldn't even take 1 point of damage off him. Bastard.

If you don't want to use the title cheat though, there are a lot of fun ways to level that are not only relatively quick (much quicker than leveling in Disgaea) but also extend the enjoyment of the game, least they did for me. Leveling isn't nearly important as beefing up your items though, especially when it's pretty easy to share weapons so you only need a few uber ones. Though you'll have to leveling a bottle mail to take full advantage of that.

And if you need bigger wastes of time, you can customize a whole army of different color prinnies or something, each with thier own personally designed weapon.

As for censoring in PB... well, most of the game there's no reason to touch it, though they might take the cigars out of the mouths of the bears, which would be a shame since it adds to their personality. But there are two scenes, one from the end of the story and one optional, that practically drown in blood. We're talking Mortal Kombat levels here. I could see those being cleaned up for a Teen rating.