Ricker said:
I think I have one thing left to understand in this game...last evening I clicked on a flashing red hex near Lucia,turned out to be those harder fights I guess(i`m just in chapter 3,going to the forest of idols),against a big Troll looking guy at level 48,I actually came kinda close to beating them if I understood the circles/barrier/colors more.How does this work,let`s say i`m using Zephyr with a MG,the damage he does is for one written in blue,compared to the red og Vashyron let`s say with a HG,also those half circle meters around the ennemy,i`m not sure what it means as well as the yellow meter below the names and level of the ennemy sometimes,instead of being red or whatever...I do a gauge broken every once in a while but i`m not sure why I did that...because of those half circle meters on the Boss,I guess I wasn`t doing damage or something at one point for like 5 rounds,until I finally went critical,and finally got killed...
Okay. Let's try to simplify things one at a time. First, I will address the general user interface and what stuff mean:
- Lifebars are shown in green. When it starts turning blue, that is scratch damage. Scratch damage is damage done by SMGs as well as damage done to the party as long as you have at least one hero bezel left (theses are the red dot icons at the bottom center of the screen).
- Scratch damage recovers automatically over time, but any single hit from a direct damage weapon (HGs or grenades) will turn all scratch damage into actual damage, and the blue parts of the life bar will be taken away for good.
- The arc bars that surround an enemy indicate the armor that enemy has. They are positioned in a precise way, such that if there are gaps, this indicates unprotected parts of the body. When you hit an enemy from the ground, if you are shooting at the direction protected by armor, you will damage the armor piece instead of the main enemy body. If you hit an enemy from the air, you will generally spread the damage around the entire enemy. Sometimes this means you will damage all armor parts a bit, sometimes it means you directly hit the main body. It is much harder to control what you are hitting when you are in the air, as opposed to being on the ground.
- A target icon over a character's name indicates that an enemy is charging up an attack on that character. If it is yellow, it means the attack is either still charging, or the enemy is still moving towards that character to get into range. If the icon is red, it means that the next move is the attack, which has been fully charged. If you skip a character's turn, that attack will go off. If you perform a hero action, at the end of that action the attack will go off.
Here's a short explanation of how skills in the game work:
Every character, as he/she levels up each weapon type, games the chance to have special skills in an attack. Let's take "Stun 5%" for example. For a certain character, using SMGs and building up at least 4 levels of charge before activating an attack will result in 5% chance that the attack also ends up stunning an enemy.
As for gauge break, it is a normal HG skill that builds with each charge. You'll notice that the more you charge an attack, the higher the gauge break ability goes up, increasing your change of breaking the enemy's HP gauge(s).
When you break a HP gauge (this can be the main body's HP bar, or any of the armor pieces), you divide that HP gauge into two. This increases the number of bezels you can recover from dealing actual damage to that HP bar. A successful break also stuns an enemy, cancelling any attack they might have charged and stopping their movement for a turn.
For SMGs, building multiple charge levels increases the amount of scratch damage done, and is VERY useful for clearing out enemies fast, especially later in the game.
