Any pointers
Deleted
7 years ago
England

With the level-up exploit being banned there's not really any massive tricks that can be used. as far as strategies go, just familiarise yourself with which characters are good and using them and why they are good. i'll make a short list of the most important things here:

I'm going to assume, for all of this by the way, that you're planning on running cadet difficulty. If that's not the case, just say so.

Eidolon Shiva: Number 1 on my list. Not only is Shiva really fast as far as movement goes, she does obscene amounts of damage with obscene range and her momentum carries through most of her attacks so you can sort of "drive-by" enemies. Pros: Super powerful. Super fast. Sick nasty AoE. Cons: Can't get before mission 4. Ice Physics. Can't kill enemies that're immune to Ice. Can't use in Trials.

Jack: Overall Number 2 on my List. Incredibly fast attack animation, crazy high damage, and inherently huge crit rate when attacking from behind. Pros: Obscene damage, easy to use, lots of invuln frames on dodge. Cons: SLOW AF. Not nearly as good before getting Slipstream.

Trey: Ridiculous Ranged damage potential in trials. fast enough to justify running around as him for short distances rather than switching. Pros: Ranged. super easy to hit damage cap. the venom bow (if you're good at shinryu) Cons: Kinda slow. Attacks require charging a couple stages before oneshotting things. Squishy.

Rem: Rem is basically an invincible summon battery. Basically as fast as Cater and Eight once she gains access to slipstream due to an incredibly far-travelling, incredibly fast dodge. Her magic is also obscenely powerful, and an obscene mp pool to go with it. Pros: Undying Wish lets you summon for free (minus a technically-a-casualty at the end of a mission). Oneshots most weaker enemies with Blizzard BOM. basically 100% invincible with slipstream+untouchable. Cons: Slow without dodges. Cannot use in Trials.

Cater: Joint fastest (human) character runspeed with Eight. For most of the game, your running around as not-shiva will be done as Cater, since she gains access to accelerate very early. Also fairly powerful with magic. Pros: Can take out weak enemies fast with blizzard BOM. really fast runspeed. good invuln on dodge. Ranged i guess, even though her basic attacks are bad. Cons: really bad basic attack dps. Very squishy.

Eight: Joint fastest (human) character runspeed with Cater. Eight is actually better than Cater at running through areas than Cater, technically, due to Phantom rush, but he learns accelerate far later. His Triad attack is also the best in the game by a fair amount. Pros: super fast. basic attacks come out near-instantly. Phantom rush makes you literally invincible if you're controlling him. Cons: ass range. ass at magic. ass damage (except for his Triad)

Queen: Basically a worse version of Rem that doesn't get free reraise. She's my second magic-user for Trials, after Cater. Pros: Magic, MP pool, fast attack animation, fairly fast. Cons: Squishy, melee, pretty darn average overall.

Machina: Useful in a single Mission: mission 3. there's a couple things in this mission that can take a little while to kill, but Machina shreds through low-def high-hp targets instantly. Pros: Cyclone drive. Cons: pretty much everything else.

General strategy for missions 4-9 is basically summoning Shiva on anything and everything that moves and destroying it. You have to do a little learning/memorising of where enemies immune to ice are, as well as small corridors, and areas where you have to harvest phantoma before continuing, since you cannot control Shiva for any of those things. She'll oneshot just about anything that stands in your way.

for the specifics on what i do (and i'm relatively confident my route is pretty good, at the risk of soundign cocky), you'd probably do better to watch my recent run real quick. Almost everywhere that i use Cater/Jack/Trey/Rem/Eight is actually those characters being useful or wanting the tasty leftover exp from Shiva. Everyone else, when placed in the party, is usually just "summon fodder".

I have a short, not-very-specific-at-times set of notes here: http://pastebin.com/Z12aUSJq Don't rely on them for telling you much on what to do early game or for the actual trials, though it will tell you who to take for each trial.

Any further questions, just post here, HMU at twitter/twitch/wherever really. Want to see more competition on this game :>

Oh yeah, one thing of note i forgot to mention: don't feel bad comparing yourself to PC runs. they have a speedup function that console doesn't have if i'm not mistaken. that's why categories are split.