Pages

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope - Arena



I have been working my way up in the arena for a while now.  For those of you who don't know how the arena works, you can enter into either a Solo, Team, or Survival Tournament.

Solo Tournaments are where you choose a single character and fight one enemy at a time.  Each character has a separate ranking starting at 103 and goes all the way to 1.  You are able to challenge enemies that are 3 ranks above you, which will raise your rank faster. In the Team Tournament, you fight using your whole Team of Allies and the ranking works the same way, except instead of each person having a separate rank, the whole team now has one.  Adversely, you have to fight a lot more enemies and this can prove to be more of a challenge if you don't level up your characters.  Finally, in the Survival Tournament you fight using your Team, and it goes on for 10 Rounds, after winning each round you are offered the option to back out and take what you have earned.  If you continue you double what you have earned so far and keep fighting, if you lose you don't receive any Fight Coins, but if you fight all 10 rounds you are rewarded with a nice amount of coins.

Also before each Tournament you are allowed to Select a Type of Item set you wish to bring with you, there is an Offensive Set, Curative Set, and a Strategic Set.  Each set has different items based on what type you chose.  Offensive Set contains attack items, Curative contains Healing Items and Strategic Set has more stat boosting items.  The amount of items you can use differs for each Tournament, but they contain the same items.

If you want to survive during Solo Tournaments, I suggest you learn how to use the Blindside feature, because it is needed for some of the enemies later on.  I will also add that when you Blindside an enemy you have a far higher chance to score a Critical Hit on them than when you are in Rush Mode.  Be warned, some enemies come with the ability to Counter a Blindside attempt. You have to watch out for when the Target on you is Red, do not perform the Blindside.  Instead, wait for it to be either Yellow, or Flashing Colors. Unfortunately you can be hit out of a Blindside, if the enemy is performing an area attack or if the enemy is too far away from you.  One thing that can Counter a Blindside Counter, is being able to perform another Blindside Attack.

You gain this ability by leveling up your BEAT: S (strike).  There are 3 different types of BEAT that you can equip your character with during the game, those are Strike, Burst and Neutral.  Strike and Burst level up throughout the game from battling and they raise some stats depending on how high leveled you have them. At rank 20 Strike raises your ATK +100, INT +100 and HIT +78. Strike gives you some nice abilities for Blindside Attack like being able to perform 2 Blindside Attacks and Increased Damage to Blindsided Enemies.Neutral does not rank up at all, nor does it give any extra abilities, but offers some nice stat boosts such as, Max Hp +20%, ATK +100, INT +100, DEF +100, HIT +78, and GRD +78.  Burst offers Max HP +20%, DEF +100, and GRD +78, but along with that you receive an Increased Chance for Critical Hits during Rush Mode, and MP Cost -25%.

After you win any of the Tournament Battles, you receive EXP and FOL just like any ordinary battle, along with Fight Coins which amount is determined by what rank of enemy you fight.  Fight Coins are used to trade for weapons and armors at the counter on the right in the Colosseum. One great thing about the Colosseum is that if you lose during a match, the game is not over, you just lose the match and have to heal your character.

No comments:

Post a Comment