Digimon Adventure - Low Level Game Part 1: Meramon
40Challenge playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSv8zSDR9c3pPezUc45Hy5u0Pgih3Ek_
I've been playing this game (if I were still a 13 year old, this would've been the best game to produce for me I think... Instead, I had to play - let's face it - tedious atrocities that were Digimon World 2 and 3) and I thought for a second that I would enjoy the game a lot more if I LLGed it, which isn't so unusual for me. The only guide available on GameFAQs recommended some really inflated levels for bosses - even early on, I find myself not struggling much despite being, like, 10 levels lower and even forgetting to equip digi-pieces for a boss battle.
This game is almost entirely based on the first Digimon Adventure anime (with Tai, Matt and others), and the number of bosses is pretty damn sizeable. The early battles are a bit too easy most of the time, so I'll be uploading just the highlights (battles interesting for one reason or another) and important storyline bosses. Later on, the difficulty becomes normal and even really hard, so I'm actually not sure if this is possible!
I know I have over 1,000 videos on this channel but I have never uploaded a video that I didn't think was worth watching, so just sharing what I think is worth sharing here - not going for a complete boss series here (which would be, like, 50-100 videos?).
The rules?
Low Level - that's about it for the rules, really. I fight just the mandatory battles, skipping encounters on the maps and also sidequests that have any boss fighting (basically all besides like 3-4, sadly). This means that I will not only miss out on some experience and the levels that come with it, but also items and bonds, which increase the chances of combo attacks and are the single requirement for Mega-digivolving anybody not named Agumon/Gabumon (correct me if I'm wrong, but none of them besides these two ever evolved in the anime... or did Patamon/Gatomon do that in the next season? I don't remember anymore!).
The reserves seem to gain ~1/5-1/4th of the main party's exp and killing anybody off still gives them the full amount of experience, so there's no meticulous spreading of experience of the kind that you would see in, say, a Breath of Fire series low-level run.
Agumon and Gabumon have a significantly higher attack compared to the rest of the party and digivolved into Champions in the earlier episodes, so they're kind of a must in this one. I considered a Rookie like Tentamon because of his +def skill and ridiculous bulk, even compared to that of Champions, but decided a more offensive strategy would get me the victory here.
The reason why I'm uploading this boss battle first is because it's the first (and only, for a while) hard battle during the earlygame. Biyomon is only level 2 here, and, as you can tell by her getting like 150% extra HP by levelling up after the battle, there's an enormous difference between a lv. 2 mon and, say, a lv. 6-9 one that you'd have from engaging at least SOME of the randoms.
Meramon's attacks really hurt and are capable of OHKOing when critting (or even when not critting; depends on the target). So did the attacks of the previous bosses actually, but they also died in like 2 turns, so Meramon stands out for being a good deal healthier. He also stands out for Heat Wave - a multi-target attack he sometimes spams over his single-target alternative.
There's no MT form of healing available yet, so I assign the Heal spell to Birdramon because she's dealing the least damage and taking the most damage from Meramon's revenge counterattacks - so much that she's about to die to a combination of one counter and one other attack.
Garurumon and Greymon, meanwhile, are my main attackers, Greymon sometimes helping out with the healing (but healing is a lost cause in the long run when Heat Wave is spammed).
Early on, the strat is to shock/break Meramon with cheap, quick skills, conserving SP for the finishing line - when Meramon is closer to death, I start using the more powerful and expensive skills. SP restorative items do exist in a tiny number at this point of the game, but there's not a single turn to be wasted here.
I lost Biyomon here, but it hardly matters as long as there's one survivor when the boss is dead - everyone gets the same amount of exp anyway.
I've been enjoying this playthrough lately, so expect some more videos of highlights to show up alongside other series I have been recording series for. Will I make until the end of the game?
I show the storyline Biyomon digivolve at the start of the video just to demonstrate that my computer can't handle recording that part well. However, between this game and Persona 3 Portable, this one doesn't lag nearly as much as you can see. You might also notice that I managed to fix the sound of my PSP recordings, which is going to be useful for the next P3P videos.