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Main story clear and Endgame stopped at Lv. 800 area. All sidequests clear.
Elpsia has one hell of an interesting story that has a much more intersting portagonist and actually takes you to space making it better than most of EXE-Create’s fare. However, the story focused a lot on Aldo and Alice ignoring Ariel and Nate most of the time who seem like tools just to help create Elpsia. I do like the twist with the good guys are actually using you just to save their own ass creating a very interesting dynamic of two teams working to save the world only one is out for themselves. Defo one of the better stories.
Gameplay is fun with exploiting weaknesses and being easy to break as with standard exe-create fare. If you’ve played it once, youve played it all and thats not bad because its comfort food. Leveling feels astifying letting Auto-Battle do most of the work and seeing the number keep going up. I alao liked having tools to use to explore dungeons like Wils ARMs and the dash shoes made it convinent to backtrack through dungeons.
Overall, the atory holds up the game just for how it flips the script but the gameplay is juat ok.
We don't make mistakes. We just have happy accidents.
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I played the PS5 version on Chaos difficulty, with no paid DLC. Console versions make grinding Shop currency easier; in addition to Shop currency from random battles, one can get up to 90 Shop currency a day from Guild missions. This is valuable because Chaos difficulty seems balanced around fully unlocking the Shop “secret room” options to increase physical and magical damage up to 100%. The Shop “secret room” option to increase synthesis-experience up to 250% helped a lot, too.
The only times I lowered the difficulty were to fight the optional superboss on Easy, Normal, and Hard, and then to grind out max stats from the Secret Arena as preparation to fight the optional superboss on Chaos. On Chaos, the Vortex Dragon (a Dead Seas random encounter) also seemed nearly-unbeatable without max stats; a Magicraze or Blastspeed Vortex Dragon would be even worse, but I didn’t feel like cycling through random encounters for however long it would take for an enhanced Vortex Dragon show up.
It took 37+ hours to finish the main game with all sidequests and all trophies. (Unlike many Exe-Create games, there’s only one ending.) It took 50+ hours to finish all postgame tasks and dungeons on Chaos, plus the optional superboss on Hard. This would have been faster if I’d grinded max stats from the Secret Arena sooner, but it was pretty fun to attempt challenges with a weaker party.
After that, maxing out the party’s stats by re-fighting the Secret Arena on Easy, then taking down the superboss on Chaos (and a regular Vortex Dragon on Chaos for good measure) resulted in roughly a 52 hour time.
The story is good, but has shockingly dark moments. Even though the ten-year-old girl Alice is a major story character, I would say this is NOT a game for children under ten without parental supervision.
The gameplay is a refinement of the standard Exe-Create formula. It is NOT a “teams-of-two” battle system like Fernz Gate, Wizards of Brandel, or Asdivine Hearts 2. In Sword of Elpisia, the player controls three party members. “Pets” can be summoned to fight, and pets need to be healed like party members, but pet actions are AI-controlled.
Pets are usually not worth using, except in the early game when the party is incomplete or very weak. Pets take too much real-world time to bother with in regular battles, and they often aren’t worth the turns/MP spent to summon/heal them in tough battles. Grinding “trust” for pets is a slog, too.
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Thanks for your reviews and detailed posts about how you approached the game. I never did figure out how the weapon effects worked, and so I know I synthed away some good weapons. Anyway, it was easy to get level 999, but I found battles tough on Normal Difficulty. I completed the trials, and beat the “secret arena” and the energi park bosses, all on Normal, but I never used Burst and very few skills. I just brute forced on physical, using items to lower boss ranks, etc. Even then I burned up a lot of HP refills. I can’t imagine how you pushed through Chaos mode.
Your tip about abusing the secret arena on Easy is very helpful, but I doubt I will take the time to bump the stats. What about the dogenkasen Tower–is it worth doing? I took your hint and never even used the pets.
Older, but not wiser
One annoying disadvantage of Chaos was that I could not fight large Blastcraze (powered-up) monsters in any area that was on par with the team’s level. I had to run instead. Normal large monsters were beatable, but Blastcraze large monsters one-shot the party, and the battles were borderline unwinnable (or straight-up unwinnable in the case of dragons).
Regular-sized Blastcraze monsters were usually beatable by debuffing them and quickly overwhelming them with powerful attacks, but they were very nasty.
Chaos actually didn’t require much grinding for the main game (although unlocking the 100% damage increases from the Secret Room ASAP helped a lot). Most of the time, I got all the levels I needed just from regular gameplay and the daily Guild missions for Shop currency.
Chaos early game required a little grinding because the characters start out weak (and it’s the one point where pets are very useful), but once there was a three-person party, Exe-Create’s experience scaling system made level grinding mostly pointless…
…until the optional postgame content, when the party’s assigned tasks demanded way higher stats than the party naturally had. Then I had to grind levels on the level 200 and level 500 islands with Step-by-Step plate to force encounters. (Grinding on the level 800 island isn’t worth it on Chaos.) I bought one experience booster from the Shop just to cut the time required for the level grind in half. Fortunately, the 3x battle speed and autobattle features helped a lot.
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Your post really helps–those details let me know how to proceed. I did defeat the Secret Arena on Chaos (quite easy after grinding). I’ll try the 500 island and see what happens. I have weakling Nate as my healer/debuffer (if I don’t run out of nightmare spray), but I can’t decide if I should move him to the rear row (I think he gives a boost etc to adjacent allies–for me that is Aldo) to give him some protection. I doubt my equipment is optimized, but I do love Ariel’s Aegis Tielocken when she absorbs massive hits and turns them into only 1 point damage.
I’m wondering, from your comment about the oversize monsters, if the Buster equipment is appropriate for those battles.
Question: where is the Dead Sea? I didn’t see it on any of the posted maps, and it is just one of several areas I’m missing in the catalog.
Older, but not wiser
In the thread
https://www.rpginsanity.com/forum/sword-of-elipsia/43795-looking-for-2-monsters/
Prajna uploaded a map of Terra.
The red dot for the Dead Sea is due east from Suttungr island and the Guild. I think the Dead Zone red dot is in the middle of the Arago continent.
The Dead Sea is an area of water mostly enclosed by rocks, surrounding an island with a sign on it. The sign warns of powerful monsters (no level mentioned), and reading it gives the party the ability to warp to the Dead Sea. I believe you have to sail the waters to meet the Dead Sea monsters.
The Dead Zone is similar, except it’s an enclosed stretch of land only reachable by airship.
Dead Zone monsters are deadlier than the level 800 island or the postgame final dungeon monsters, and the Dead Sea monsters are the toughest non-boss monsters in the game.
You should encounter all of Terra’s dungeons just by proceeding through the main game and the postgame content; multiple dungeons are postgame exclusive.
Aside from the Dead Zones, there are a couple outdoor areas that you might not set foot on during the main game. When searching for them, keep in mind that the list is in chronological order following the party’s journey through the story, so a missing outdoor area will almost certainly be near either the previous or next area/dungeon in the list.
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OK, thanks. The 800 monsters were no problem, and most of the dead land monsters were not bad. BUT, as you posted, the large dragons are well…hard to see how to defeat one without cheating with an all-restore magic ball, etc. Although with a bit of RNG luck, I think I can beat one. I need to change some equipment and try for a burst knockout on turn 1!! I’ll let you know how close I come.
Older, but not wiser
With your directions I found the Dead Sea. I read the sign, killed monsters, and departed. However, the area does not show up on the menu of warp locations. I can fly there, so I don’t need the warp.
Older, but not wiser
You wrote: “On Chaos, the Vortex Dragon (a Dead Seas random encounter) also seemed nearly-unbeatable without max stats; a Magicraze or Blastspeed Vortex Dragon would be even worse, but I didn’t feel like cycling through random encounters for however long it would take for an enhanced Vortex Dragon show up.”
I see what yo mean. I’ve had over 200 battles on the Dead Seas, and no Vortex Dragon. The low frequency of it showing up isn’t just a pain, as it means I don’t have any practice to see if my equipment, skills, and tactics will be sufficient to emerge victorious. I sure don’t want to expend the effort to fight the monster twice.
Older, but not wiser
The fastest way to cycle through Dead Seas random encounters (or any zone where one is hunting for a specific monster) is to equip the accessory that guarantees the first turn in any battle – I think it’s from a chest from the postgame final dungeon, although I’m not sure. Then it’s just a matter of equipping Step-by-Step Plate to force encounters, and running away from everything that isn’t the Vortex Dragon.
I’m pretty sure the Vortex Dragon only shows up if the party is on a ship in the Dead Seas. I don’t recommend searching for him on the island in the Dead Seas.
For a monster to be recorded in the Bestiary, you just have to see it. The monster can run away, or you can run away, and its entry will still be recorded; beating it is not required.
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