The grind is seriously extreme in this game. It's actually pretty fun gameplay but it's very repetitive and requires a lot of grinding. It's also pretty hard to know what you're supposed to do. E.g., you build reputation for some people by gifting them the right items, even if they explicitly tell you that they don't want presents (the girl) or are insulted at the idea of being gifted anything (the lion guy). You also only get the prompt to have the person come to your house / join your party if you clear a high level dungeon while keeping all your teammates alive...i think. I'm like 80% sure that's what the trigger is.
Also for anyone else that doesn't realize, you should HOLD the special attack button. You'll spin in a circle and be immune to all damage while you still have charge. Invaluable ability, especially against the fucking flower fireball spitters.
There doesn't seem to be an actual ending to the game, you can clear the final level of the underground cave, fight the demon guy, and then it just sends you back to the village like any other mission. Pretty disappointing. Maybe you have to get to a certain number of days but I'm not going to day 300 to check.
So... What's the point of inviting someone into YOUR party?
Yea this is part of what's non-intuitive about the game. You don't lose access to the missions, the person you recruited is just replaced by a generic Knight leader for future missions.
The people you recruit are abnormally strong. At level 20 they are about as strong as the MC at level 40.
Your own party can become stronger than the mission parties, which allows you to grind EXP much more quickly since every kill in your own party gives you exp, rather than just the monsters you kill yourself in the mercenary missions. You basically want to alternate between doing actual missions for the gold, and doing party missions for extra EXP.
Some other random things I figured out while playing:
- Deliberately letting your teammates die to pick up their items can yield a ton of gold by reselling, especially early on. You just have to be confident that you can finish the level or else you don't get any loot from the mission.
- Losing rep seems pointless at first but that's because the early parties don't require any rep to work with. Losing rep on e.g. asian guy, lion guy, or fairy girl is a pain in the ass because then you have to grind the gold to buy the item to raise your rep before you can fight with them again.
- You only get EXP from enemies that you kill, unless its your own party in which case every kill gives exp. You have to balance this with harvesting resources in the early game.
- Enemies only drop monster cores (with some probability) if you kill them, except on party missions, same as exp. Selling monster cores is a good way to get early gold fast.
- The more you repay your debt the more stuff the guy will sell.
Overall fun game that, with some tweaks and adjustments could be really good. As is it's too much repetition and grind, and has no ending or payoff.
Oh, and just to add, wtf is the translation that was posted here? I got this game from another source before seeing it pop up here...and my translation is completely fine, if a little engrish still. Every character has 3 talk options, "about their past" "why did they come here" and "what presents do you like". How the fuck does someone translate "why did you come here" to "listen to the magic mountain"???