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Beyond the Beyond: Update 22: The Wonderful Magical Infotainment Center
This is an update that will advance our characters a bit but not the narrative. I'm going to have a bit of a rant here to get something out of my system. It is going to involve some technical discussion of Beyond the Beyond and a couple other games. If that isn't your cup of tea and you want to skip this feel free. You won't miss anything story wise. Everything that is important to our team is at the bottom of this update anyway so if you just want to know what that is just jump to the bottom and scroll up a bit.
For those in the mood for a ranty (although I do try to keep this amusing) update, pull up a chair, maybe pop some popcorn or get a snack of your preference. We're going to get a lesson in why Beyond the Beyond hates everyone. Believe me, it's burned into my brain.
To start, I ran about 180 gold short of getting both Annie and Edward a weapon upgrade in Luna. Knowing it would be some time before I'd be back in Luna if I just continued onward and the fact that I could raise that amount quickly I headed out into the field to do some cash grinding. The following sequence of events is non-canon as far as our story is concerned because I was optimizing my time via savestates but I recorded it anyway for use in this update.
The group is soon ambushed by an enemy group with a warlock. The last time we ran into one of these fellows he didn't get to do anything because Finn and Annie attacked before he could and the Warlock, having lost half his health, used an Herb to keep himself alive a little longer.
This time we're not so lucky and the fight starts with our side taking a blast of Fire level 2 to their collective faces. It hurts. (Note: Edward's VP total has yet to be reduced in this shot. He doesn't have 33 VP.) If there were more then one warlock the odds are that we'd end up eating multiple spells and the entire group would likely be groggied before we ever got to do anything.
As a consequence of that Samson gets groggied by curse retaliation damage when he kills an enemy, allowing me to get a screenshot of it in action. Samson should be a mountain of hitpoints since that's his schtick. He doesn't get any magic. Ever. *grumbles something about poor playtesting and and little thought given to character design*
I digress, however, for this point is about magic damage and magic efficiency. Specifically it is about how the game is (perhaps unintentionally) set up to disadvantage the player. Let's back up one screenshot and go back to that warlock ambushing us with Blaze 2. By spending 5 MP (yes, enemies have MP and obey the same casting rules) that warlock generated 44 damage total; 8.8 damage per MP spent which is pretty good for early in a jrpg. If Edward were to cast the same spell in that battle he would have to choose whether to cast it on the lone warlock (11-13 damage; 2.2-2.6 per MP) or the two worms (22-26 damage; 4.4-5.2 per MP). As should be immediately obvious Blaze 2 becomes more efficient the larger the group it targets. This goes straight to a significant imbalance in the game.
Enemy formations will never start with more then 3 members assigned to each group.
Your party is always considered one group and at 4 members we are already a larger group then the game will ever generate for the enemy. The enemy thus has an inherent spellcasting advantage purely because of how groups are set up. Beyond the Beyond also doesn't have any sort of character reserve or sub-grouping to break the traveling party up. That's a pretty big boost to the AI right out of the gate.
Long before there was Beyond the Beyond there was Shining in the Darkness (or if you're going by the original title Shining and the Darkness). See something familiar with the SitD screenshot? If your answer is the base mechanics Beyond the Beyond would later use then you get a gold star. Many of the icons are similar and SiTD even uses the "can only target a group" mechanic but without the AI purposefully targetting weaker foes so melee damage is applied in a semi-random fashion. SitD also tends towards the two and three member enemy groups that Beyond the Beyond loves. In its case, however, the player group is capped at three so monsters usually outnumber player characters.
SitD doesn't have the 3-member cap that Beyond the Beyond formations use, though, so you'll see enemy spawns of four or more regularly once you get aways into the game.
What this means for us with our current train of thought is that low level direct damage spells don't hit very hard but they tend towards efficiency because you encounter group sizes that make it worth your MP to use them. Even more efficient, however, is to abuse status effect spells and by that I mean Sleep. Pyra picks up both levels of the spell quickly. At 4 MP Sleep 1 hits one group. At 6 MP Sleep 2 hits every opposing unit. It doesn't always work but as might be inferred from my screenshots the success rate is good enough to make it worth the attempt. Furthermore, Pyra gets enough MP to make the game's high encounter rate manageable.
Compare that with any screenshot thus far showing Edward's max MP. Beyond the Beyond - it has SitD's encounter rate but is still stuck in the Shining Force spell cost and MP limit mindset. Even if Edward had the same spells they wouldn't see much use because he'd run out of MP after a few encounters. Beyond the Beyond has some rather nasty formations. I'm always wary of using MP when they show up because what do you do if you burn down such a group just to encounter another a few steps away and you just spent the last of your MP? That's usually when you start running for your life and hope for the best.
Speaking of Shining Force, Beyond the Beyond reminds me quite a bit of playing Shining Force CD. At least Sarah as shown in the SFCD screenshot above will recover her MP because she has a Mystery Staff equipped. Spoiler Alert: Beyond the Beyond does NOT have MP regeneration equipment. This comparison is thus a little unfair because it is being made to SFCD's bonus battle - a stage with a fixed party whose levels, stats, spells, and equipment are set and tuned precisely for this one stage. A better comparison is with the base game.
Meet Slade. He is an unfortunate hobbit from my SFCD playthrough who ended up underleveled in the last fight of Book 2 because he dies if an enemy looks at him funny.
Now compare Slade to Sarah, who is closer to the average fighter level on the team but only has 5 more MP. Slade has slightly worse MP growth in SFCD but heal-wise he only learns single target spells. (He doesn't have Heal 3 yet in this instance.) Sarah is the game's primary multi-target healer even though she does learn the full line of single-target heals. I usually thus split the two's duties along those lines. This Aura 1 spell will cost her 7 MP but it will heal five characters which is the most efficient way to handle this specific situation. This sort of MP limit makes sense. Unless we're in the realm of 1-hit kills healing translates directly into combat endurance. SFCD clamps down on stat growth because it is a game of careful resource management.
Healers with limited MP pools force certain concessions in team make-up. In this instance they force more reliance on sniper units able to deal damage reliably without risking counterattacks that would then drain limited healing resources. SFCD has some of the better archers in the series and they tend to be very reliable in making up the gap imposed by the game's lowered stat growth. (Since allies tend to have less hitpoints and less ability to heal, damage output must therefore increase.)
This is not to say that SFCD doesn't have ways of hurting the player anyway. Here is Dava, the fastest unit in the game with her blistering, lightning speed of 37, about to super beam cannon the entire Force before any of the them can move at the start of the battle with her. It doesn't actually hurt all that much and the scripting here is pretty generous but it's still one of those little things designed to sucker punch the player and chip away at their resources. (On a side note no I don't know why the devs repeatedly insisted on giving enemies with no MP-using abilities lots of MP. Dava here has about 160 MP and she'll never actually use it.)
An astute observer might note a conspicuous lack of attack casters in those screenshots with Iom. That's because their lack of MP makes them a liability. To illustrate that here's a screenshot of May. This is from SFCD Book 3 when the entire force has been ground up to at least level 20. That's where their stat growth tables end so barring a rare random +1 here or there this is as good as May is going to get.
May has only 48 MP maxed out. This... is not a good thing. Sure she knows Slow 2 and Desoul 2 but compare that with Graham's stats. Graham's the blue bowknight helping Chester blow up an Iom worm back in Book 2. His attack power isn't the highest of the team but it's in the top 5. Shade, at 81, is the best followed by Rush at 79, Nick tied Graham at 77, and Stock barely fell behind at 76. Three of the top 5 attackers are thus snipers!
The biggest bang casters have is Bolt 4 and they get, at best, two measly casts of it. After that they have just enough MP for a debuff, attempt to desoul, or to tickle an enemy with a low level elemental spell. Sure there's one Mystery Staff in Book 3 but that would be ten rounds of waiting to regenerate after a single Bolt 4. Further complicating things, the Hero and Prince classes learn the full Bolt line in SFCD meaning that when you need that sort of emergency bang you can use a much sturdier unit that can continue attacking when they run out of MP. Honestly at this point in the game using a wizard character comes down to Natasha or Wendy because they can cast the Attack spell and thus produce a multiplicative effect for the frontliners. The other casters don't have the same buffing capacity and also don't have the mana reserves for sustained nuking.
This is a fundamental problem plaguing RPGs in general. Caster characters often don't have enough MP (or spell charges, for those games that use those instead) to continue being as effective as melee fighters. In a game with dangerous random encounters some magic needs to be reserved in case such an encounter appears. Meanwhile bosses also usually require dipping into the stock. It is a resource that has to be thoughtfully managed. Sometimes the high end game flips this, with cheap or free spells that easily mow down random enemies, but not always. Shining Force and Beyond the Beyond definitely do not. Thus casters tend to be situational units who spend a lot of time standing around doing nothing.
But don't just take my word for it. Let's actually put this principle to the test. Natasha spends 7 MP and increases Graham's attack power by 20 points. Meanwhile May starts to fire up a Bolt 4 spell.
At 39 and 52 damage, respectively, May produces more damage (Wonder Mushes only have 55 hitpoints max) but at the cost of almost half her MP. Meanwhile Graham will continue to have boosted attack power for two more turns. The effect will degrade until it fades and a bug prevents Attack from having its full effect when cast but even so if Graham does get to attack three times he's going to produce more damage then that one Bolt 4 and at only 1/3 the MP cost.
This isn't even taking into account the fact that enemies can have 25% or 50% resistance to one or more elements and critical hits come in 125% and 150% flavors. Spells can critical but since players tend to cast less often than they attack spell criticals are rarer.
For comparison here's Shade attacking a mushroom sans any buffs. 33 damage is pretty damn good for a non-critical hit in SFCD.
Now I've made a lot of comparisons using Shining Force CD and it might seem a little unfair so let's venture out. First up is Shining the Holy Ark and its resident sorcerer Forte. The above screenshot is from the endgame but Forte is not max level. He's experienced enough for our purposes. In this screenshot he knows Blaze 4, Shield 2, Mute 1, Attack 1, Freeze 3, Bolt 2, and Desoul 1. Forte thus avoids falling into the one-trick-pony trap. (We'll see that later.) His direct damage spells aren't terribly helpful at this point in the game because enemy health totals have grown too large and Forte tends to die easily if he gets an enemy's attention. His buffs, however, ensure that he can always help the team when things get rough. Shield raises magic resistance, a very necessary thing in StHA, while we've already seen what Attack does.
Forte can also attempt to outright kill a target with Desoul. Hahaha, as if that ever works for the player. (I'm still bitter about that playthrough of the Shining Force Challenge hack where the one time the Doomblade's insta-gib ability fired it was against a target that was going to die anyway. Thanks, Balbaroy.) Forte does have 217 MP in the above screenshot and StHA has MP regeneration equipment so Forte can actually keep casting for awhile provided he doesn't die.
I mentioned earlier that Samson should be a tanky sort of character with plenty of health so here's a comparison to how Beyond the Beyond stacks up against Shining the Holy Ark in that regard. In StHA the player gets 8 characters but the active team can only be four people at a time. The others wait in reserve and can be swapped in and out in battle on command. Two characters out of the eight have no MP and never learn any spells. Fortunately they do get plenty of hitpoints so they have some staying power and considering how much damage they can crank out if they hit a streak of criticals it is not at all unreasonable to go heavy on melee in the late game and keep the casters and hybrid characters in reserve so they can heal between battles.
That's enough for Shining the Holy Ark. Let's move on.
Representing Shining Force 2 is Kazin. He's the first mage the player gets and if you don't choose to take Tyrin from Creed's collection he's your only mage until you recruit Taya after battle 30 (of 43, not including the two optional stages). His element is fire and as a mage or wizard he can only deal direct damage by use of the Blaze spell. Otherwise he learns only debuffs and Desoul. I'm sure the devils are thoroughly intimidated when he tries to cast Muddle 1 on them. Yeah, his base spell list is... lacking. This makes base Kazin more or less a one-trick fire pony who can occasionally kill something with Desoul. Well I suppose he also has Dispel but even if it works enemy casters can usually be killed before they become a problem while those that can't are either immune to Dispel or have superior casting range. If you're in range to Dispel the enemy that means they have been in range to Freeze 3 Kazin or worse and at that point you might as well have the melee characters attack and kill the enemy mage. That will guarantee that they never cast anything else.
That's why I included the second screenshot of Kazin as an endgame Sorceror. Summon spells only have 2 ranks so at level 23 he's almost learned everything. He's also doubled the MP he had as a level 20 mage so his MP growth lets him nuke for awhile. Opting to go Sorceror with Kazin is optional but has always struck me as the better choice.
Finally, representing the original Shining Force are Anri and Tao. Anri has learned all the spells she's going to as her specialty is ice magic. Casters in the original game are much more specialized and endgame they only have one elemental spell apiece that's worth anything. Their secondary spells are usually buffs/debuffs but they aren't terribly useful. The same problem Dispel has in Shining Force 2 exists here. Why spend a turn moving your wizard dangerously close to an enemy to attempt a sleep spell that might fail (doing nothing and wasting MP) when you could Blaze 4 it and bring it that much closer to death?
Then there is Boost. An astute observer may notice the icon looks like the Attack spell in SFCD. That's because the two spells do the same thing... almost. In the original Shining Force Boost targets one ally within 3 squares and increases their attack power by a flat 15 points. It also costs a whopping 15 MP to cast. The same effect can be had with the Power Ring (they in fact call the same spell routine, 32) making the Boost spell largely pointless because of the poor cost to effect ratio. Shining Force 1 does have a defensive boost spell and it is just as poorly balanced. It's called Quick, there are two levels of it, and it is learned by Lowe. The first level costs 5 MP, targets one ally within two squares and increases that ally's speed and defense by a flat 10 points each. The second level increases the casting range by one and changes it to a five-target AoE. The stat boost is the same but Quick 2 costs a ridiculous 16 MP to cast. Sure the duration of Quick is bugged and it lasts longer then it is supposed to but that still doesn't make it worth that much MP - on a healer no less! There are some spots mid-game where the first level of Quick can be used to good effect which is the only thing that saves the spell from the scrap heap. The high MP costs would be justified if the spells lasted the entire battle but that is not the case.
I suppose the takeaway here is that the series suffered serious magic balancing problems in the genre-shift from dungeon crawler to turn-based strategy. These problems were gradually worked out such that SFCD is pretty well balanced even if casters end up less useful then melee later on. Then the switch was made to traditional jrpgs leaving Beyond the Beyond in a sort of experimental state where the developers didn't seem to really know what they were aiming for with the magic system. That means poor Edward is saddled with an ineffective spell list. I suspect part of this is due to having to make a deadline and thus not having the time to fine tune the system. (For a comparison look at the magic system of the original Breath of Fire. It's not well balanced either and tends to make the game's bosses a joke.)
As an aside, those familiar with Shining Force 1 may realize there's something screwy with that screenshot of Tao. That's because I put the game into debug mode via chapter select, edited in a Forbidden Box, and used it to quickly boost Tao to a level 19 wizard. The Forbidden Box was used for debugging the game so I felt that would fairly represent Tao as the developers intended her to be. Shining Force 1 is unique in the series in how much randomness factors into stat growth. In fact it is so random (and weighted so heavily to +Agility) that the system would be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up in Shining Force 2. By using the Forbidden Box, however, this variance is suppressed.
Here's a comparison between debug-boosted Hans on the left and a savestate powerleveled Hans on the right to show the variation. Even with the two level difference between them their stats are fairly close. The biggest difference is in hitpoints although I'm certainly not going to complain about a sniper that can take a few hits. (Note: I didn't have a bowmaster Hans leveled up without powerleveling to add to the comparison but Hans usually does not fare well if you just let the chips fall where they may.)
Finally, because I was gathering screenshots and couldn't resist temptation, here's Galam's spell list via the Control Enemies mode. All that MP and nothing to do with it. Oh well. SF2's AI only uses the first damage spell on the list anyway when deciding attack actions so it's not as if they could load any AI unit up with tons of spells. Well, they could, it just wouldn't do anything.
I considered adding Hawel from Final Conflict to this rant but Final Conflict is the third and final gaiden game made for the Game Gear. The first two have already been covered in talking about SFCD. The stat growth is about the same but enemies in Final Conflict tend towards the low end of hitpoints and spell costs are about the same so it would be familiar ground. There's nothing new to note.
As mentioned before groups in SitD can spawn with more then 3 members and in this screenshot most of the group is disabled by one quick Sleep spell. Trust me, they are even if they don't all have synced ZZZ animations. Aww, the cute little ghosts had no idea what was in store for them when they attacked us. One sleep spell was all it took to shut the entire group down - quick and efficient. (Really I'm just including this because I like the monster graphics for these ghosts.)
Not that straight up attacking enemies in SitD isn't sometimes just as much a crapshoot as it is in Beyond the Beyond but it's the thought that counts, right? Right. *sigh* As if Beyond the Beyond pioneered the ability to annoy me with characters utterly failing to hurt things.
AHEM! Moving right along the party encounters a pair of dark priests.
Encouraged by Steiner's giggling Finn decides to try his hand at this whole magic thing.
Edward, meanwhile, queues up an ice spell.
Illusion always targets a group but the success rate is low. Not that it makes any difference since, as far as I can tell, being under illusion status does absolutely nothing. If it has any effect at all it might make it easier for an illusioned character's attacks to be blocked but I doubt that is true.
I'm guessing the intention behind Illusion was to function like Muddle 1 in Shining Force. Muddle is an accuracy debuff and it does exactly that but the debuff is so small that it is really only noticeable in Muddle 2 (which adds confusion to the mix, further complicating matters). An accuracy debuff doesn't work in Beyond the Beyond because characters always hit whatever they attack. They cannot miss. They can only be blocked. Therefore an accuracy debuff is rendered useless by the basic mechanics of the game itself.
With Finn's spell a bust and Steiner struggling to stay aloft for all the laughing, Edward's turn eventually comes around. He gets to cast his Ice 1 spell. For 5 MP Ice level 1 hits one target for 10-13 damage. It is therefore thoroughly underwhelming and Edward will only be casting Ice spells if he absolutely has to. On the upside enemy casters who love ice magic burn through their MP that much faster. (I'm trying to stay positive, okay?)
A much better use of Edward's magic is casting the Attack spell. As might be inferred from the target selection window in the screenshot above it targets one allied character. 6 MP is steep for Edward's poor MP growth thus far but we'll have to work with what we're given. At least it is better than the 7 MP cost Attack comes with in SFCD.
As advertised the Attack spell raises the attack power of one character. In this case it makes Finn hit as hard as Samson does when he manages to actually attack - 20 damage to one priest. The spell only lasts three actions so it isn't practical unless you're facing something that can endure that sort of punishment, a.k.a. bosses. When you factor in the ability to critical and double attack the boost granted can quickly eclipse the damage any direct damage spell would deal to one target.
Edward therefore channels the spirit of his SFCD ancestors and realizes it is his destiny in boss battles to stand around buffing other people's attack power. Eh, I can live with that. When he's not buffing attack power he can toss out items to heal his allies and that means someone who should be attacking doesn't have to do that.
With that note on attack power the team has raised enough money to buy Annie an Iron Rod and raise her attack power by a nice seven points. That was the point of this entire endeavor, after all. I am puzzled, however, on why Finn and Samson can't use what amounts to a big iron stick. I guess the notion hurts their pride or something.
The vase dealers aren't the only ripoff to be found in Luna. The inn charges 40 gold per person and apparently expects our entire party to squeeze into one bed. Being the only inn in town and with a long walk to another town the team has little choice but to pony up their hard-earned cash.
I hope this armor doesn't rust in all this salty air. 
Don't worry, Finn, your armor won't rust. Are you sure? Sure I'm sure. Your head will rust long before all that bronze.
Ha, ha, very funny.
I'm still searching for a store that sells fabric dyes. You'd think I'd find something in a port city, but nooooo! So I'm still stuck in all red. Was there some bizarre fashion fetish nobody told me about?
I think you look nice in red.
Eh, it's ok.
Well not all of us can be green and brown all the time. I know but nobody sells pants in any other colors. Just look at Sir Samson, he's stuck with brown too. I noticed.
You're not going to say anything about Finn and Annie standing around wasting time ranting about pant colors?
Nah.
*raises an eyebrow*
Why would I?
Are you doing everything you can to baffle me on purpose? *laughs* No.
Hey maybe Edward knows. He's always wearing bright colors.
Oh no. Edwaaard, Finn's got a question for you. About fabric dyes?
Yup. Well, uh, I'll try to answer as best I can. So, what do you want to know?
Next time on Beyond the Beyond - the story really should get moving again, shouldn't it? The world's problems aren't exactly going to fix themselves after all. If they did we wouldn't be playing a video game.
