Once a party member loses all their Life Points they vanish for real. It is immensely important to keep an eye on your party members Life points and switch party member often to ensure that you always have a backup plan that doesn’t require starting the game over from the beginning due to poor choices. The tradeoff is that older party members have higher stat points so constantly finding the balance between the two is just as important as what classes you bring to the fight. The age of your party members actually determines how many times they can be defeated in battle before they are dead…PERMANENTLY! Your main avatar however, while they can be defeated, is immune from permadeath, but that doesn’t make having your team wiped any less painful or costly.Įach member of your party is assigned a certain number of Life Points, separate from Health points, based upon their age with younger members having more and older ones having less. While choosing your character’s age seems like a seemingly innocent feature it’s actually one of the coolest and very important aspects of Stranger of Sword City. When you created your character you got to choose your characters avatar, class and even your age. Here is one area where I think Sword City really shines as a dungeon RPG. Luckily you get to gather a full party nearly right off the bat after the mandatory tutorial of your base and how basic combat works. Much like in Demon Gaze, you are going to a need a full party at all times as the enemies in Sword City will wipe the floor with you with no remorse what so ever. They play an important part in which ending you get but before you get one you have to actually get through the game’s challenging if not brutal difficulty. I really enjoyed how you never really knew the true intentions of the respective leaders of the Strangers Guild, Kingdom and Medell Co. Stranger of Sword City is an adventure where its inhabitants and factions are just as mysterious as the circumstances that landed you in the world of Escario in the first place. This is largely due to the way the combat, character creation and story elements all come together. At first glance Stranger of Sword City definitely takes after Experience’s other titles in its design but after sitting down and investing more hours than I care to admit into it it’s something quite special. The Strangers Guild is your main base of operations and the only place you can actually save in the game. Sword City serves as the main hub world of the game which is where you do everything from progressing the story to learning new Divinity Skills and managing your party and gear. Those from Earth, like the player, are special among these adventurers though as they are the only ones capable of defeating Escario’s most unique and extremely deadly enemies called Lineage Types to harvest their Blood Crystals found throughout each of the dungeons. You’re quickly shoehorned to the Strangers Guild where others like yourself have gathered with the common goal of finding a way home. See you aren’t the first “Stranger” to find your way here if the visuals of the Mausoleum of Metal (or M.o.M.) are any indication. Turns out you aren’t the only human to get sucked into this world of monsters, elves, dwarves and others as you find your way to the titular Sword City. The story kicks off with you awakening after your plane disappears from the real world during its flight and crashes into a fantasy world where you are the only survivor among the wreckage. Speaking of presentation, Stranger of Sword City is a bit darker in its overall visuals and story. While using the same basic engine from Operation Abyss, Stranger takes things in a more cohesive direction for a more immersive presentation. The Vita however is also home to some of the coolest RPGs on a portable device and Stranger of Sword City is awesome in its own way with a few issues that subtract from its overall enjoyable package. A lot of this is due to the fact that Stranger requires your full attention and isn’t really a title that falls into the short play session fare that one would expect to find with the Vita. While this is the third title to be released on the Vita by the folks at Experience this is by far the most challenging yet enjoyable one to date. I’ve played some tough RPGs over the years including the Souls series but Stranger of Sword City, the newest entry from developer Experience Inc., was an unexpected adventure on the PlayStation Vita.
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