One Sword Man: Let's Play Valdis Story: Abyssal City!

Originally Posted by JBear

ETA: I'm mystified by the reaction to the "cut-scene" nature of the black hole summon animation. I genuinely never noticed it (or, if I did, it didn't make enough of an impact for me to recall it).

Two new finishers. First, Rinn Speras' Great Fang Kick is the cornerstone of most Agi-focused builds. It charges fairly quickly (which is good, because Agi-focused builds get loads of Focus mode time) and the actual attack itself is a ferocious five-hit combo. The only real problem is that without investing in Agi hard, you're not going to be able to make the most out of the damage here, but it's still a strong and straightforward finisher that almost anyone can use if they haven't got a better option.



Plan B isn't quite as versatile, though. Yes, it lets you summon another playable character to help you out in fights, making it particularly useful for boss fights, but the long charge time for the Focus mode, even surpassing Hurricane Rage, means it's basically only meant for players who only ever spend Focus mode in boss fights. Still, there's no denying that having someone else around to help you deal damage and who can take hits that won't screw up your ranking is great, and being dependent solely on having all four playable characters on your crew is easy.



Anyway, this infodump isn't going to have much raw info per se so much as opinion. Which is to say, my own thoughts on the game so far.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think that Valdis Story: Abyssal City is a good game that makes some bad choices.

I picked up the LP of Seiken Densetsu 3 a while ago, and nobody really denies that it's a buggy mess, to the point where a lot of the "meta" of playing it involves acknowledging the bugs and playing around them. Agility and Luck are basically non-stats, but the classes that still specialize in those are considered viable, at least at certain points of the game, despite these problems. Strategies are based around knowing all the weird quirks of the game, which aren't really apparent at all the first time you play, and you encounter a lot of design choices that make you wonder what the devs were thinking (like, say, countering high-level techs with even higher level techs).

Valdis Story: Abyssal City is weird because it FEELS a lot like that, but it's a very carefully designed experience in a lot of ways. Once you know the game back-to-front, you can plan a run around assembling all the pieces of your kit to turn bosses from godawful slogs into speedy affairs that reward you for playing well. The only problem is that learning the game requires you to know a LOT of the key components, and to ignore some of the assumptions you make heading in (don't invest stat points equally, don't upgrade stuff at the first opportunity, don't take the ranking you first get on a boss). Once you do, it becomes really fun!

But again, you have to be able to take all the things the game does, like its awkward control system, its reliance on status effects in an action platformer, boss rankings rewarding players for excelling and all but punishing them for not, and live with them. And these were conscious design choices, mind you. The game has been in regular development since its Kickstarter days, it's had time to get feedback from players and adjust, and in quite a few instances they have outright improved. But all of those things I've mentioned have stayed constant with only the barest of changes (option to change skill cancel from direction to button, reworks to stun and burning that made stun more tolerable and burning less).

It's really weird that the game is honestly and legitimately fun, but only once you've accepted that it's a technically bad game.

First off, Bolverk. He's unique in that unlike every other assist, he adds a Dark affinity to anyone working with him. I'm not really sure WHY since he's not a demon and would very likely be specifically anti-demon, and moreover Dark affinity is the easiest one to obtain for most characters, but so it goes. Anyway, he shows up quick, hits decently hard with an ice-typed attack, and boost your attack damage for a while with Battle Cry. He's pretty respectable.



Next, the Execution Hall. There's two vendors here, and we'll discuss the armorsmith Myzzi first. In addition to upgrading the neutral armors Sezzi doesn't work with, she can craft the Armor of the Grey Knight. This requires you to find all four pieces of the armor throughout Sitheil, as well as to spare Dhistahn so that you can take the Twisted Spirit from the Abomination, but considering these are things a player could do pretty easily on their own, I'll give it a pass. It's pretty nice armor for what it's worth, granting a number of dark-type status immunities to match the Paladin Armor as well as a nice array of stats.



At the other end of the Execution Hall, Geffen runs a relic shop, with four accessories up for trade.

• The Ninja Scroll is a curious one, meant for parry-focused characters. I've used it before, but I only vaguely remember how it works. Long story short, it modifies your existing parry attack to temporarily teleport behind the enemy that triggers your parry to attack them, at a sharp cost to your Resist stat. It's pretty handy, especially against long-range enemies, but you need to be super-careful around mages. Since Gilda can't block, this instead grants her the Tactician skill.
• Meant almost exclusively for either pure Int characters or those with more mana than they know what to do with, the Sorcerer Regalia makes your spells hit much harder, at the cost of making them consume much more of your MP. It also has a light affinity, if that matters, but I think the MP cost is the larger barrier. Unfortunately, most of the ways you'd overcome a sudden hunger for lots of MP involve other accessories, so the Sorcerer Regalia is a sometimes food (unless you're Gilda because LOL CHANTING).
• The Highlander Hood is a very dangerous but very powerful accessory, especially for Str/Int split characters. Basically, each kill grants you a slight boost to your damage, at the cost of a slight hit to your max HP and MP. This goes up to a cap of 75 kills, at which point you'll do absolutely monstrous damage, but will be functioning with only a quarter of your health and mana reserves. Again, uh... don't get hit.
• Slightly less stupid, but still in that same vein, is the Tunnel Vision, requiring some Strange Glasses you can find in the Sewers. These are great for a pure Str build, since each hit you land grants extra Armor Ruin, up to a maximum of +30. However, each hit also decreases your armor, down to a lower limit of 40, and both things reset as soon as you take a single hit. I can't really recommend it to anyone except a pure Str build, but for someone doing just that, it's pretty amazing.

Anyway, as I mentioned, there are three instances where towns can just die off. It's possible to save all of the towns, but you basically have to know beforehand for a lot of them that there's an actual risk. In older versions, these events were tied not to player events, but to the actual time on the game file, which got artificially inflated whenever the player did a retry. Yeah, I'm glad they removed that.

• Tagrum Village is the first one at risk and the easiest to save. In this playthrough, Atalan killed Zeige when he revealed his angelic allegiance, but if you don't stop back at Tagrum to check on him (I don't know what the cutoff point for this is) then the angels head in and kill everyone in Tagrum. In addition to being the easiest to prevent, this is the least costly if you miss it, since the vendors here mostly deal in crafting components, with the exception of Mesmer.
• To save Ishk, you need to fix their mana heater. We're already most of the way there, since after talking to Schultze you have the option to ask Claudia for a mana heater core. Once you have that, it needs a charge of lightning, which we can supply from the lightning magic soul once we get it, and then Schultze can install it no problem. Ishk can't die off until you get the Divine Key from Sezzi, but in older versions, the quest to save Ishk didn't exist. You had a pretty generous time limit for actually saving Ishk, but it was still something completely unavoidable. STUPID.
• The Execution Hall is perhaps the most "gotcha" of the towns to save, since it's very easy to miss that there's a town there at all. If you don't kill the Yeti before reaching Ishk, it leaves to the Execution Hall and kills everyone there, with your only clue being the scattered bones of its former inhabitants. Considering the number of pretty valuable craftspeople there, this is pretty dang rude.

Originally Posted by Kalir

In addition to upgrading the neutral armors Sezzi doesn't work with, she can craft the Armor of the Grey Knight. This requires you to find all four pieces of the armor throughout Sitheil, as well as to spare Dhistahn so that you can take the Twisted Spirit from the Abomination, but considering these are things a player could do pretty easily on their own, I'll give it a pass.

Originally Posted by JBear

I didn't arbitrarily spare the life of a jerk-wad that Wyatt (the character) would absolutely not choose to spare (which is why I killed him).

Originally Posted by BEAT

So we got the last soul and a new crewmember. First, the Soul of the Warden. This lightning type soul claims to specialize in defense, but really I think it's better at gap-closing than anything. Either way, it's a pretty solid set of spells, even for physically-focused characters, only hampered by the relatively weak status effect of static, which reduces attack and magic values by 40%. (Note that this applies to healing and brand spells as well!)

• The up spell, Volt Aura, isn't a brand spell like you'd expect, but instead creates an electrical barrier around the caster that automatically counters enemy attacks. Since it's not a brand spell nor healing, it's hard to make a case for it, although I suppose it's not bad for people who don't need healing from their spells. Do note that Axen, one of your assists, gets a drastic power boost if this spell is active, so that's one instance it's nice.
• The side spell Lightning Chain is a pretty solid midrange attack spell. It only hits once, but anything it hits gets yanked to melee range, where you can follow up with physical attacks. It's a shame that it competes with so many spells that are otherwise great at melee range, making it hard to use for Int builds again, but sword-wielders love it.
• Cast in the air, you get Bolt Shackle, a version of Lightning Chain that aims diagonally downward. That's all I have to say about it, but it USED to be Bolt Jump, a spell that provided a double jump and a piss-poor magical attack. Needless to say, you get that from Daemahn Afro Samurai now.
• Pikachu's Down-B special move is Thunder Struck. This causes a bolt of lightning to strike from the sky, making it great for fighting enemies above and right next to you. In addition, this boosts the caster's defense for a short time. This is probably the best lightning spell for actual casters to leverage, as the defense boost can shore up their poor Armor score and the hit itself is pretty solid.

Synthie is another trader like Honest Davion, who gives accessories for 2 Ancient Coins apiece.

• First, and by far most important, is the Necromancer Lexicon. Most of the benefits are pretty weak, with +1 to each stat and +10 resist, but this thing blocks all status effects. All of them. Every single one. I don't think I can stress this enough, and I've been spending the entire LP railing against the inclusion of status effects. Only problem is that having it equipped damages you when you use light magic, so in theory you would have to forsake healing magic to carry this around. In practice, apparently there's a bug that renders the Soul of the Saint Lord (the healing one) safe. HMMMMM.
• I don't want to ignore the Priest Tome, though. In addition to slightly boosting Int and Luck, this drastically increases the power of all Light type magic used by the bearer. Assuming it's not bugged like the Necromancer Lexicon, this could make for a super strong healing accessory. The downside is kind of funny, in that any enemies of the opposite gender from your character now deal contact damage. It's to their credit that the gender balance of enemies throughout the game is even, so this isn't better for dudes by virtue of dude saturation or anything.
• Finally, the Magebane Seal. Everyone except Reina can get a Null Shield that blocks one shot of magic, but takes 20 seconds to recharge. For these characters, the Magebane Seal halves that recharge time. (For Reina, it doubles the effects of her Spirit Walker skill, which gives increasing Resist boosts with each spell you cast.) It also grants a tasty +3 Int, but the cost to your Armor score is hefty. Save this for fighting magical enemies, leave it at home for physical ones, and even then only if you actually have the skills for it to be useful.

Okay, running out of things to dicsuss without getting into FULL ENDGAME HELL. But I haven't talked armor yet, so now's as good a time as any for that, I suppose.

Every character has some starting armor that doesn't actually work as armor, it basically just provides extra damage in Focus Mode and some other ancillary benefits (things like Wyatt's Leather Jacket granting +5% to Attack and Magic). There are a TON of armors in the game, though, and the only one I've even discussed is the Paladin Armor and the Armor of the Grey Knight. So let's take a closer look: what do the assorted armors actually do? I'll sort them by vendor, even though I'm just using the screenshot here. Let's start with Durga, the demonic armorsmith in Hrukk. Do note that armors all give increasing stat bonuses as you level them up, making them an ideal way to shore up stats you didn't invest your levels in.

• The first armor most players get is the Murderous Raiment, which primarily improves Agi but also boosts Luck and Int. It's not very strong defensively, but it grants bonus crit chance and amplifies the strength of any spell you cast after landing a critical hit. Note that this amplification also applies to healing and brand spells. As you might guess, it's a great choice for Agi/Int builds, or even Agi/whatever builds that want some magic power.
• My armor of choice is the Dreadnaut Armor. This heavy duty piece mostly grants Str, with a side of Agi and a vestigial point in Luck. Wearing this makes the next melee attack you make after a parry (which will usually be the counterattack from the parry itself unless you skill cancel out of it) even stronger. Considering that parrying has some really tasty i-frames to it, this makes for a great armor set for wading into a fight and not worrying about things, provided you can predict enemies properly.
• Next up are the Warlock Vestments. With plenty of resists but low armor, these favor Int mostly with a side of Agi, and provide a built in affliction chance boost, making this armor great for stacking status effects. In particular, it strongly favors fire magic, especially when in Focus Mode, as entering Focus Mode with this active drastically boosts all dark class spells. Stack five layers of burning on anything and it tends to die fast enough.
• There's one last unique armor obtained in the Ziggurat, the Deadman's Fury. In exchange for having no defensive stats, it grants solid Str and reasonable Int and has a Fury mechanic. Every hit builds up Fury, while getting hit resets it to 0. At maximum Fury, all of your attacks get extra fire damage, life leech, and crit damage. As mentioned before, it's best used in the hands of all-out offense characters, particularly Str/Int or Agi/Int fighters.

There's also the angelic armor, as handled by his rival Reyga.

• There's one raiment, armor, and vestment for each of the three alignments, and they all tend to work on similar builds, but in different ways. The Judicator Raiment boosts Int and Agi in equal measure, and grants you an extra skill cancel just for wearing it, which is great. It also grants you mana whenever you land a crit. However, like its companion, its defenses are pretty threadbare. Fittingly, this handles a bit more defensively than the Murderous Raiment while still favoring the same stat builds.
• Oh, Paladin Armor. Nobody actually wants to use you, but having those status immunities is just so attractive! Taken on its own merits, it provides a chunk of Str and a bit of Int, plenty of armor, and a light magic burst every few physical attacks. If you want to actually use this directly, it's pretty obvious what build you want: a Str/Int one. Still, having it around just for the status immunities, especially early on before you get other options for handling status effects, is nice.
• The Cleric Vestments provide no armor but boatloads of resist, making them a great antimagic option from the word go. Primarily boosting Int but also slightly favoring Str and Luck, the unique feature here is that your spells gain extra Spell Ruin as you spend more and more MP. It's 1 extra spell ruin per 2% of max MP lost, making this armor pretty great for pure Int builds that just want raw magical might.

Sezzi is a jerk, but he does work on armor sometimes.

• The Goibniu Armor is the neutral companion to the Dreadnaut and Paladin Armors (and like them, has plenty of armor and decent Resist), and focuses exclusively on Str. In addition to that and increasing attack damage, this armor set lets you ignore all enemy armor when you're at low health. If you're running pure Str, this is definitely the way to go, as being able to cut through any enemy's armor when it's providing a massive barrier to your sole form of attack is critical. (Or you could just run Str/Agi or pure Agi like a sane person, but hey.)
• Sezzi can also upgrade the unique Monk's Robe. This increases all of your stats slightly, and offers little defense but a reasonable max HP boost. While in Focus Mode, your unarmed attacks get stronger. This plus the Fighter's Bandages is exactly as powerful as it sounds, so the Monk's Robe is especially valuable to builds specializing heavily in Luck or Str. However, the scattered bonuses and low defenses make it ill-suited for pretty much anyone else, especially if you're not running unarmed.

Myzzi is the last craftsperson who works on armor, and specializes in the neutral-aligned things Sezzi doesn't work with.

• As mentioned, she can craft the Armor of the Grey Knight if you have all the unique kibbles and bits for it. Granting immunities to poison, burn, and corruption is nice, except that you get it far too late for most of those status effects to scare you. Thankfully, that's not all it has going for it. It boosts Str mainly, and Int and Agi as well, and grants a mana shield property, where attacks will be dealt to your MP before your HP. It's hard to use if you rely on spells to any real degree, but if you don't, hell yes take this thing.
• There's also the Str/Agi focused Gladiator Vest you can upgrade here. This piece of armor is built around focus mode in two ways. First, it increases the duration of Focus Mode itself by a few seconds, adding more with higher levels. Second, should you fall to critical HP levels, it activates a pseudo-focus mode for a time. This focus mode doesn't grant access to your finisher and is exited when you leave critical HP, but is for all other intents and purposes identical. It's great for a Str/Agi character who knows how to press their luck, but the awkward pseudo-focus is hard to play around if you have any kind of regen active.
• Back to the triumvirate, we have the Wanderer Raiment. Chiefly Agi focused, but also favoring Str, this straightforward set increases the damage from critical hits and grants bonus attack damage for a short time after killing an enemy. On-kill benefits are kind of hard to make a case for in Valdis Story, but I can't deny that extra crit damage is very attractive. Builds running Agi or Str in any capacity can make use of this, although they may have better choices.
• Finally, there's the boring-ass Magister Vestments. The only thing that's unexpected here is that they boost Luck slightly more than they do Int, but otherwise you get exactly what you paid for here. Your magic power gets stronger, and your MP regen spikes while in Focus Mode. In addition to the obvious value for pure Int builds, this is particularly nice for any character that's likely to be low on MP often and wants a way to deal with that.

There's two armors that aren't upgraded here. One is the Gambler's Rags, a garbage level armor that boosts Luck, Agi, and crit chance for you and enemies. Should you land 3 crits in a row, you get a Hot Streak for a short time that all but guarantees crits, but getting hit during this time deals double damage and ends the Hot Streak. Pass.

The other armor requires you to play with the game's Arena mode, which I have zero experience with. Maybe we will discuss that someday.

Originally Posted by Kalir

Originally Posted by Regulus

Did it ever actually work that way? I don't remember that. Regardless of how it did in the past, though, here's how it works now: If you are at critical HP and not currently in Focus Mode, you're instantly set to 100% Focus, it enters cooldown (120 secs or something), and you are free to choose to enter Focus Mode at will. There is nothing pseudo about this Focus mode, either; it heals you upon activation, it isn't cancelled if you come out of critical HP, and you can use your finisher.

It's honestly one of the best pieces of equipment in the game. It also offers more cumulative stat points than any other armor, as I recall. +16 total (8 STR and 8 AGI), whereas most others cap at +12 in the story mode.

If you have three Ancient Coins, you can spend them to hire Brizhal, a mercenary hanging out at the top of the Tagrum Derelicts. Brizhal's sword punches through armor, but it only really shines when used during a large combo. The higher your combo, the higher your damage. With a pretty hefty cooldown and no other benefits to show for it, it's hard to recommend Brizhal unless you're running a weapon that can land lots of hits in a very short time, like the Seraphic Blades. That said, there does not appear to be a cap to Brizhal's damage except the good ol' 9999, so if you CAN ratchet up your combos that high, go nuts.



Uh... I guess I can discuss difficulty levels? I guess???

Valdis Story: Abyssal City has four difficulty levels available to start out. Normal, Hard, and Extreme are all fairly straightforward. I think the main thing affected by these difficulties is the moves rank and file enemies start with and their raw stats, so at higher difficulties, enemies start with more moves and do more damage. Pretty straightforward, but I strongly suggest that anyone playing for the first time sticks to Normal.

God Slayer is where the enemies start with all of their moves unlocked. Additionally, beating the game on God Slayer with any character unlocks a special scene during the credits depending on the character chosen. I have yet to beat the game with anyone on God Slayer, but I hope to do so someday using Reina and Vladyn.

Goibniu Mode is only unlocked after clearing the game for the first time. It is functionally identical to God Slayer, except that you cannot save or retry, and you get your score measured on a leaderboard for trying it. I should mention that on my God Slayer Reina file I'm trying out, I've played it maybe three or so times and have yet to reach the first save point without dying.

Arena mode is a bit more reasonable. It still has leaderboards and is still only available after clearing the game once, but I think it's just a boss rush mode. All the traders and vendors you need are there, but with much simplified conditions (I think they all take Ancient Coins, and you get those for clearing stages). I might try an Arena run for the hell of it.

Don't worry. I actually know what I'm discussing next time. It's super secret, though, so don't tell anyone.

Originally Posted by Kalir

Goibniu Mode is only unlocked after clearing the game for the first time. It is functionally identical to God Slayer, except that you cannot save or retry, and you get your score measured on a leaderboard for trying it.

So, the Feral Manawar is one of the few enemies in the game that drops an Arch Feral Spirit. However, nothing we've seen so far requires an Arch Feral Spirit to craft, so it's a bit odd that we get one here. There's a few other ways of getting them, too, and you'll need them all to get access to the golden weapon.



One place you can find one is the Lower Central Skyway. Randomly, instead of two Feral Puffers that seal the exits, you'll find Fisherman Gully here. If he's around and you wait for a bit, eventually a fish will pop out of the water. Hit it before it lands to get his attention. Do this enough times without missing...



And a super strong variant of the Feral Hermit will show up. This little guy is speedy as hell but isn't too dangerous if you're at this point. The vexing part is the fishing minigame, honestly. Remember, Fisherman Gully shows up randomly, the room locks and forces you to defeat two Feral Puffers if he's not there, and missing a single fish jumping out means screw you, leave the room and try again.



While it doesn't count as a boss, this is one of the other locations for an Arch Feral Spirit, so clearing this fishing minigame, so to speak, is required for the golden weapon. Where's the other, you might ask?



Frozen Crypt, in the room with all the torches. This one's pretty straightforward. Light all the torches with the Soul of the Purifier (I believe there are three total)...



And a rare fire-typed Feral Siren shows up. They're pretty dangerous since their fire spells ricochet off of the ceiling, but what's even more dangerous is the hidden screw you. See, the torches, once lit, stay lit forever. The Feral Siren only shows up when you light the last torch, and if you leave or slay them, they don't come back. Do not just go save and heal up between lighting the torches and fighting the Siren.



If you do this, the Arch Feral Spirit here is permanently missed, and no golden weapon for you.

I'll discuss them later, after we face the boss you need to clear to even get a shot at crafting it.

So the last time Kalir asked me to write one of these things, I said "SURE THING BUDDAY" and then spent an entire week absolutely not writing a single thing. So when he asked me again, I swore upon my honor that this time, THIS TIME things would be different!

So yeah, guess what I spent the last week doing?

Here's a hint! IT WASN'T THIS THING THAT YOU'RE READING NOW. Assuming you ever get a chance to read it, I mean, because honestly I wouldn't blame Kalir for a second if the moment he sees this he laughs, prints it onto a piece of paper and then burns it in effigy inhaling deep of the toxic fumes as part of a long dead hexing ritual to bring plague and famine upon that asshole BEAT, a stupid Z-tier let's player that can apparently only fulfill simple joint-project expectations when either consuming alcohol or waiting for his plane to board, inevitably resulting in incoherent run on sentences about mindless tangents like the one you just finished reading right... now.

I'm waiting for my plane to board this time. Airport Wifi. Going to Talcon, even though I still don't play board games. It's a funny old world. What was I talking about?

Oh right, Valdis Story.

I don't take back anything I said in my prior spoilerpop hijacking. I also don't take back any of the times I might have referred to the game as "fucking unfun bullshit" with like, my audible voice, over the course of several hours of stream video. All of those statements were absolutely representative of my first impression of the game. And let me be frank, in a lot of ways this game doesn't make a very good first impression at all.

It's second impression though? When you know what you gotta dump your stats into? When you've checked a youtube of some supergamer S-ranking all the bosses and go "Oh so that's what I was doing wrong"? When you've got it through your head that for some reason agility is what makes your attacks terrifying and ruinous while strength just makes your HP bar so long that losing becomes a chore?

Then it's actually pretty good! For what it is, anyways. And what it is is the purest example of a Guide Game I have ever fucking seen.

By guide game, I mean a game you shouldn't even try to play blind. Think the original Legend of Zelda, Simon's Quest. They can be fun sure, but if you're a first time player you're not going to have any fucking idea what "GROOOWWWL" or "GRAVEYARD DUCK" means, and unless you go and look it up, you're stuck.

Valdis Story takes those egrarious "How the fuck was I supposed to know that" moments and applies it in ways I didn't even think was possible. I'm not talking about shit like "What area should I explore next". I'm talking shit like "Which stat should I dump into?" "What spells are for movement or even plot shit instead of attacking?" "Which items are impossible to get more of and which ones are just rare?" What arbitrary things do I need to do to keep entire towns alive?" The game never teaches you any of these things, every time you mess up, it takes away chances to make your character better.

How dedicated is this game to punishing you for shit no reasonable person would know in advance? Well, for my first playthrough, which you have now watched, I didn't just consult a text guide, I had a literal guide in the form of Kalir, sitting on my shoulder and telling me what I needed to do next! And even that wasn't enough to get me to the point where I could get more than a scant handful of much-needed S-rank bonuses. Sure I can get them now, but only on my private file, where I used the other recommended dump stat, grinded to half the level cap before the first fucking boss, and consulted youtube S-rank Videos for strategies every step of the way.

So yes, Valdis story can be fun. But if you asked me if you should grab it during the next Steam Sale, my answer would be a flat no. Because I've never seen a game more determined to keep first time players from enjoying it than this one.

Originally Posted by BEAT

At least until we go do the bonus bosses.

Originally Posted by Kalir's spoilerpop infodump, hijacked by BEAT

I've never seen a game more determined to keep first time players from enjoying it than this one.