I've started playing this game and put about an hour into it. Played the two tutorials and did about 3-4 missions.
I like it but I'm finding it overwhelming me with mechanics and stuff I simply can't remember everything it's telling me when it comes to all the controls. I mean you can press triangle in menus and start to bring yet more options. All the icons are confusing me in menus where it says level 3 next to skills. I'm not overly familiar with these types of games but would like to get into this one.
Im also finding combat overwhelming. What does pressing r2 and square do and why is that greyed out in the bottom right corner all the time? Sometimes I'm glowing yellowy what does that do?
What are link arts? And I don't really get the devouring mechanic? But I can also do a quick devour if I press square and r2 together?I can keep devouring even when the monster is dead? It's all overwhelming me.
Okay, since it seems to be confusing some people, I will do my best to explain devouring, Burst, and Aragami Bullets.
Now, the Devour attacks are a key part of God Eater combat, and they have two key uses. When you Devour the remains of a defeated Aragami, you get three random items from that monster's loot table. This is similar to carving in Monster Hunter, for those people who are familiar with that game. In short, you should always devour every dead opponent once. This is pretty easy to do, since a quick Devour will work just as well as a full-length Devour.
Now, the real complexity is in using Devour as part of combat. When you land a Devour on an Aragami that is still alive, you get two key advantages: you enter Burst mode, and you gain one or more Aragami Bullets.
Burst mode is a huge advantage. Most importantly, it boosts your damage. Being in Burst mode also gives you other new options, such as the ability to double jump. It also enables all equipped skills that have a "B" marker in the skill list, and it also causes your OP gauge (your ammo) to slowly regenerate. To make it simple: you want to be in Burst mode as much as possible. You can tell that you are in Burst mode by the yellow glow that surrounds your character, and the gauge that appears at the bottom of the screen. When that gauge empties, you will exit Burst mode.
Now, this is where the difference between different types of Devour come into play. The charged Devour will give you a full Burst gauge if it hits. On the other hand, a quick Devour will give a third to one-half of a Burst gauge. At the most basic level, they give the same effect, but just give you a different duration. However, if you Devour an opponent while still in Burst mode, you can refill the Burst gauge and extend its duration.
Now, on to Aragami Bullets. When you Devour a living Aragami, you gain Aragami Bullets in addition to the Burst effect. An Aragami Bullet is a type of special bullet that doesn't use your OP gauge, but instead has finite ammo. A charged devour will give you three bullets, while a quick Devour will give you fewer (usually just one). On their own, Aragami Bullets are not that powerful. However, you can use R1+Triangle while in gun mode to fire the Aragami Bullet at your allies. Look for an ally that is marked with a triangular lock-on marker. Aragami Bullets fired with R1+Triangle will home in on that character, and it connects, that ally will gain a "Link Burst".
When an Aragami Bullet is passed to an ally, that ally's Burst gauge is immediately filled. That ally gains all of the normal effects of being in Burst mode, even if they are a character like Sakuya or Kota who can't Devour to gain Burst normally. However, if a character who is already in Burst Mode is passed an Aragami Bullet, something special happens: they Burst levels up to a higher rank. So, they go from a basic level 1 Burst to a level 2 Burst, or from a level 2 Burst to a level 3 Burst. Higher levels of Burst increase all of the stat gains from a Burst. However, if someone in level 3 Burst lets their Burst gauge empty, they immediately drop all the way out of Burst mode and must restart the process of improving Bust level from the beginning. On the plus side, they can still refill their Burst gauge via Devour and receiving passed Aragami Bullets to maintain that level 3 Burst for as long as the team can keep it up.
There is a second benefit to receiving Link Burst: you gain a Condensed Aragami Bullet. Whenever an ally passes Aragami Bullets to you, they don't just disappear. Instead, they become Condensed Bullets. These appear on the UI as text under the Burst gauge, rather than in the ammo listing like normal Aragami Bullets. You can only store one, and it is fired by pressing R1 + Square while in Gun form. It will vanish and be lost if you are passed another Aragami Bullet or your Burst Guage runs out, so it is best to just fire it immediately. Functionally, they work just like normal Aragami Bullets, except they deal
much more damage.
So, to summarize it all:
In Blade Form, use Devour by holding the triangle button or hitting R1 + Triangle to build up your Burst Gauge and acquire Aragami Bullets. Devour can only be performed in Blade form.
In Gun form, pass those bullets to allies by hitting R1 + Triangle to raise their Burst level, and fire condensed bullets with R1 + Square when allies pass them to you in order to deal a lot of damage. Both of these action can only be done in Gun form.
Burst benefits both forms equally, and you want to be in Burst as much as possible. Enter and sustain Burst by Devouring foes and receiving passed Aragami bullets.
As a side note, only other New type God Eaters armed with both a blade and gun can pass Aragami Bullets. However, AI allies are very eager to do so, which is exactly why ally New types like Alisa are very useful. You should bring them on missions as much as possible.
And, now that the simple part is done, I'll move on to Predator Styles. This only really starts to matter when the Predator Style menu is unlocked later in the game, but it adds a lot more options and greater depth to the system. There are five kinds of Devour attacks in the game: Charged, Quick, Combo, Step, and Jump. Charged Devours are performed by holding triangle, and are slow and strong. The other four are activated by hitting R1 + Triangle while standing, attacking, step-dashing, or jumping respectively. For each of these five types, you can independently equip different Devour attacks, which do different things. For example, you can change it so that the Step Devour will rocket you forward at high speed and your Combo Devour will pull you away from the enemy to safety. These different options also adjust how much a successful Devour will fill your Burst Gauge and how many Aragami Bullets you will acquire, so there are some trade-offs to be made.
The second main functionality of the Predator Style system is the Control Units. In the original PSP version of this game, Control Units were a normal piece of equipment, right alongside the main parts and the upgrade units. Back then, they provided skills that would activate during Burst. This time around they are similar, but function in a more complex way. Each of the five Devour attack slots can be fitted with its own Control Unit, which determines a special benefit that you will receive when you hit with that particular Devour attack. For example, if you attach the Blaze Resist+ Control Unit to your Quick Devour, then you will gain the Blaze Resist+ buff after hitting an enemy with the Quick Devour attack.
This buff will last until your Burst gauge empties, and it won't stack with itself. However, it will stack with the buffs provided by
other equipped Control Units. So, if you hit with a Quick Devour armed with Blaze Resist+, and then follow that up with a Step Devour equipped with Spark Resist+, you will benefit from both Blaze Resist+ and Spark resist+ until your Burst Gauge empties. You can track these by the small colored lines just above the righthand end of the Burst gauge. Each colored line indicates a buff from a different Devour attack (the same colors displayed next to the Devour attacks in the Predator Style menu). In other words, you want to arm each Devour with a different Control Unit, and then hit the enemy with all of your different Devour attacks to stack up a wide range of buffs. By keeping your Burst going, you can keep these buffs up as long as needed, but you will lose them all and have to restart from the beginning if the Burst Gauge empties.
There are also a few Control Units that behave a bit differently. For example, the first two available to you are attack buffs (one for Melee and and one for Ranged attacks), but rather than provide a constant buff, they only last until your next attack. Both the effect and the colored line marking the effect will vanish after a single attack, but can be regained with another successful Devour. These are good if used in combination with particular set-ups (like Blast guns loaded with expensive bullets), but in general I find the long-term buffs to be better.
As a final note, each Devour attack has a certain rank of Control Unit that can be attached to it, ranging from 1 to 3. A slow and simple Devour like the Type One can equip level 3 Control Units, and thus can equip any of them, while some faster and fancier Devours can equip only a level 1 Control Units, and thus are restricted to using only the weakest Control Units. So, you might need to make a trade-off between the Devours you like and the buffs you want.
In the early parts of the game, just focus on trying to land devours and get into Burst mode as much as you can, and try to get into the habit of passing Aragami Bullets to your allies as you get them. Those two actions are really the most important parts of the system. A team where everyone is in Burst mode will do a lot more damage than one where no one is in Burst. I hope this overview is useful to someone, but if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Just wondering, at what difficulty should you start to get invested in making custom bullets?
The simple answer is: whenever you get interested in messing with it. You don't ever have to mess with Custom Bullets in order to get through the game, but if you want to get involved with the system, there are a lot of simple tweaks to the basic bullets you can make to improve their efficiency. The system exists to let you modify things to match your own playstyle and preferences. If the current bullets work for you, you might never need to mess with them. On the other hand, if you favor really close range shooting, you can always modify your basic assault-type bullets to have less range and thus cost less OP per shot. If you don't like aiming, you can make so simple homing bullets. It can be daunting to really figure out the system and get bullets to work right, so I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to avoid all of that. However, I think that some of the most significant and useful stuff you can do with the system is the simplest stuff.
Been so busy the past couple of days that I just saw this. Excited to hop back in once Pokemon Go removes its grasp from me and I become less enraged that my account won't let me log in... -_-
