I need tips or this game will lose me again

[cikame]

I played it back in the day but never got very far because it's so hard, the PC release gave me new hope at trying to beat it but now i've hit a wall again.
I'm heading towards the mission where i need to get the guys female mannequin, but i feel like i do so little damage that i'm missing something, i've only got 3 bezels and as soon as i'm down to 1 and can run anymore the damage starts pouring in.
I know the combat has about a hundred mechanics going on i might be using incorrectly, so assume my knowledge is at about 20 hours experience.

[VasSerMan7]

Mannuquins have an "opening" at their backside where there's no green bar, try to shoot that open area when hero running with a machine gun to full scratch the body. Buy and Equip auto trigger accessory to all characters, this helps at lower levels.

[Vlesh]

Emptying your bezels is a death sentence. Just normal attacking does not use a bezel, so if things look a little grim, don't hero run. Just stand still and attack until you get some bezels back.

You get bezels back from killing an enemy and most commonly destroying Shields. Situating yourself to Target or bypass enemy Shields can be tricky, jump attacks though have a chance of getting every Target an enemy has including the health of the enemy unless the enemy is shielded all the way around.

So you get down to one bezel, ask yourself:

Can I destroy a shield on an enemy or kill an enemy this turn?

If the answer is yes, go for it, if you've been charging resonance you can always burn that with a tri-attack and almost always manage to kill at least one enemy.

If the answer is no or you're not sure, don't move and just charge an attack with a machine gun and maybe you can fill scratch a shield or the hp of an enemy for a single standing still handgun shot for the kill or destroy. If all that is left is one enemy, you can just straight up bully them with standing shots, it usually knocks them in the air even with one charge and interrupts their attack. The downside to this is you will lose all of your collected resonance.

Gun customization is also needed, and it makes no logical sense, just explore with it a bit, dismantle some things at the shop, use the materials to craft some parts, mess around with it, just throw logic out the window.

There's also the arena, you can do battles there and level up as well as keep the dropped materials and gold.

Also, make sure you're letting each character use every weapon type, their skills with the three weapon types level separately and combine for the character level. Use those grenades, level that grenade skill, drastically increase character levels.

[cikame]

I haven't found a use for the tri attack yet, it's a way of dealing scratch and direct damage in one bezel but they're often on opposite sides, so if an enemy has shields nothing is really achieved, also having a hard time leveling grenades as i haven't found a way to buy them yet.

[Vlesh]

Originally posted by cikame:

I haven't found a use for the tri attack yet, it's a way of dealing scratch and direct damage in one bezel but they're often on opposite sides, so if an enemy has shields nothing is really achieved, also having a hard time leveling grenades as i haven't found a way to buy them yet.

During Tri-Attack, build up some charges with SMG and jump attack, scratch all shields and possibly health, standing attack or jump attack with handgun. Longer distances or bigger the triangle the longer the attack (Also the longer the charge time for distant enemies) as well as resonance you've built up from hero dashing between your other characters in sequence.

Grenades are craftable at the shop, dude on the right in Ebel. Dude on the left in the shop can dismantle parts for more materials to craft with, a lot of dismantable parts give grenades as well as materials. Pay attention to the item descriptions in the menu, some items are listed as "Selling at the shop", sell those for cash. The descriptions tell you what you should use what item for when it comes to junk.

But to summarize: Shields can be bypassed with a jumping attack.

[EvPointMaster]

Originally posted by cikame:

...but they're often on opposite sides, so if an enemy has shields nothing is really achieved...

You need to jump during the hero action/tri-attack, especially if the enemy has limbs surrounding them. Attacking while in the air will make you hit all body parts. Naturally as damage is calculated per bullet, your damage will be spread, but it should allow you to destroy some limbs. Also as long as there is one part of the body that is not shielded, you can hit the main body while attacking mid air. Make sure to charge your machine gun as much as possible and not fire it after a single charge. Bullets have a spread to them, so try to be as close as possible to your target when shooting it with machineguns; starting your hero action close to your target and then shooting it from across the room when your attack is fully charged will not do much as most of the bullets will miss from greater distances.

In another thread I uploaded my savefile for NG+, so you could play through the game without much pressure, if you just want to get accustomed to the game.

As a general tip, sell all of the healing items, they are not that useful and can get you lots of money, which you should use to buy auto-triggers, if you haven't already.
Also these wood sprites and icy enemies are very susceptible to fire damage from rounds and grenades.

[bruhmanfromthefifthfloor]

Originally posted by EvPointMaster:

Originally posted by cikame:

...but they're often on opposite sides, so if an enemy has shields nothing is really achieved...

You need to jump during the hero action/tri-attack, especially if the enemy has limbs surrounding them. Attacking while in the air will make you hit all body parts. Naturally as damage is calculated per bullet, your damage will be spread, but it should allow you to destroy some limbs. Also as long as there is one part of the body that is not shielded, you can hit the body while attacking mid air. Make sure to charge your machine gun as much as possible and not fire it after a single charge. Bullets have a spread to them, so try to be as close as possible to your target when shooting it with machineguns; starting your hero action close to your target and then shooting it from across the room when your attack is fully charged will not do much as most of the bullets will miss from greater distances.

In another thread I uploaded my savefile for NG+, so you could play through the game without much pressure, if you just want to get accustomed to the game.

As a general tip, sell all of the healing items, they are not that useful and can get you lots of money, which you should use to buy auto-triggers, if you haven't already.
Also these wood sprites and icy enemies are very susceptible to fire damage from rounds and grenades.

Quick question in regards of the ammo box, is it ideal for the SMG carrier to use it, will it net more scratch damage? Or its it more logical to have it on a handgun user.

[TTVV88]

Don't waste valuable special ammo on your Handguns... Always pair the Ammo Box with the SMG's. If you need to deal more Direct damage for whatever reason, just use Grenades.

[cikame]

Just want to update and say these have all been great tips, i think i have now passed where i got to in the 360 version and going strong.

[bruhmanfromthefifthfloor]

Originally posted by Anhiro:

Don't waste valuable special ammo on your Handguns... Always pair the Ammo Box with the SMG's. If you need to deal more Direct damage for whatever reason, just use Grenades.

gracias

[EvPointMaster]

I believe the ammo box can be used with machine guns only. Special ammo can be useful when you know the weaknesses of enemies. When I have the choice between ammo box and 2 machine guns and customization isn't severly limited by weight, I always go with 2 machineguns, because it does a lot of damage regardless of weaknesses.

[noctemdracone velk.ca]

Take the time to farm hexes and open up as much of each floor you can access as you can. You can find all sorts of stuff doing this, to include bezel shards to get more bezels for hero actions.

Another thing you might consider doing are smack downs and bonus shots. They are both started the same way but using a hero action and charging at an enemy rapidly doing attacks to try and knock them into the air.

For smack downs, you then want to leap into the air and damage the enemy when you are above them in the air. This smacks them downward, knocking extra loot from them including silver and gold chips which can be sold and damaging every part on the enemy.

For bonus shots, stay on the ground when the enemy goes airborne. Then start shooting the enemy. You might get a circle that appears on the enemy in the air with a section of it lit up. If you miss this area, it grows bigger the next time you trigger a bonus shot on that same enemy. If you hit it, you will instantly do a rapid charge on the enemy that builds beyond your level up to the max(100) until you either fire it off, or the enemy hits the ground, whichever happens first.

[Setnaro X]

Spend some time leveling up your characters in the arena when you can. Each character levels up their weapon abilities individually (handgun, machinegun and grenades skills respectively). If you see one is trailing behind in any of these, swap the equipments around so they're able to use the weapon needed to level up. You'll only be able to level up each weapon skill by actually using that particular type of weapon, so if for example Leanne has a level 15 HG skill but has a level 5 MG skill, have her use the MG to bring that up.

Leveling up each skill is important for a number of reasons. For one, each time you level up a particular weapon skill, you're granted one additional charge for it. Charging as in that thing that rotates whenever you take aim and shoot; more charges means more damage and special quirks like gauge breaking. So for example, if one character has a level 15 machinegun skill, that means you can charge that weapon up to 15 times. Each skill has a level max of 100, which means it's possible to get 100 charges as well as maxing your character to level 300.

Another benefit to leveling up is your character will be able to hold heavier weapons. This is important because later on you'll find more guns and accessories to equip, but if your character isn't at the proper level, they won't be able to dual wield or equip certain accessories due to the combined weight, especially when using weapons that are heavily customized.

It is possible to dual wield guns too (provided it's the same type; you can't dual wield an HG and MG weapon at the same time). Dual weilding combines the weapon power and can make for devestating damage, especially when you start customizing your guns, which is another thing you should spend some time doing.

By chapter 6, you'll be able to craft some rather interesting gun pieces in the shop in order to start making some interesting customization. Focus on customizing your gun so that it has increased charge acceleration and charge speed. Charge acceleration determines how fast each charge builds up after each rotation while charge speed determines how fast each charge is based on distance. The better the charge speed, the faster you can complete a charge no matter how far from the enemies you are. Hope this helps!

[Algester]

ammo boxes can be used by all the weapons (Pistol or SMG) the point is that you get more buck for your money using it to scratch the enemy than just directly dmging them thats the point remember Pistols are slow on the DPS which is what is important towards the making more DMG
Tri-Attack if you have the resonance then have the SMG user run arround shooting anything inside the triangle then switch to pistol or grenade and directly damage them from there
jump if you have obstacles