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Update 3



Welcome back to Epic Battle Fantasy 3! We're starting things off with a sidequest, and an anime reference. The game has a few characters from various anime standing around, offering quests and such.

Konata's from Lucky Star, a show about a bunch of girls living their lives.



"Wh-what... I uhh.. yes, but I uhhh... Do you want to see my gun!?"

"Stop harrassing my party members!! They're not good at talking to girls. ...And I'm pretty sure you're a bit too young for.. y'know..."

I like how the author can't quite decide whether an ellipsis has two dots or three.



"I hope you're trolling..."

This exchange left me shaking my head, though not QUITE as much as when I was googling around trying to confirm something related to this game, and discovered that there's an EBF wiki.

That alone wasn't too bad, but Lance's page contains this line:

"He has a known crush on Natalie, although the love is just toward her looks and her breasts. Many fans enjoy pairing him with Anna more often, despite the fact that Lance doesn't seem to think much of her in the game."

If I had to read this, so do the rest of you. (To add an extra kick in the pants, it didn't actually have the information I was looking for. Shipping > Mechanics, apparently.)







Let's just pretend none of this ever happened, and get some more sidequests. Most of these will probably take a little while, and to make matters more annoying, many quests require items you could also be using for forging, forcing you to choose between quests, or improving your weapons.

Personally, I prefer to get a lot of quests out of the way before I start doing too much forging, but in Epic difficulty, it might be worth doing a bit of extra grinding so you can do both.

Anyway, moving back into the forest, and heading east from that screen with all the logs...





Where we find MORE QUESTS. This game has quite a few.



We also encounter a new breed of slime, by interacting with that small green slime on the map. These guys aren't particularly scary, though.



Not until this happens, at least. Sometimes, when you kill all enemies on screen, it's just a trigger for more to come dashing in. This can be pretty nasty later on.



Even so, Lance manages to take quite a beating, so we have Natalie heal him right up.



Still, they're slimes. Even with a bunch of them, we can take them.



Also, character portraits in the menu change depending on how healthy a character is. It's a nice touch!



Matt has finally earned enough AP to learn a skill ,too! You can tell how close we are to being able to actually learn a skill by how th eicon looks - if it's all lit up with a white plus/number, we can learn/upgrade it right now!

If it's somewhat lit up, with a red plus/number, we COULD learn/upgrade it, but don't have enough points.

If it's more faded, we're lacking a prerequisite skill.



In this case, we get a medal for learning our first skill! I like to have Matt learn Nettle quite quickly. Poison is pretty great in this game.



"Well, what can we do to get inside?"



Our heroes might be screwed a bit on the 'pure heart' front, but fortunately, the only thing that matters is the medals. Most areas of the game have a 'you need X medals to enter' zone, meaning that getting these achievements actually has a point!

As for what's in them, you'll have to wait and see.





We also have Natalie and Lance pick up a skill each, so let's try some of them out!

First, we interact with that cat-looking slime to get into a fight, then...



Nettle is a pretty decent attack, and causes poison. That 1 that shows up on the now-poisoned snail means it has one 'stack' of poison - through multiple hits, or higher-level poison abilities, you can cause up to 9 stacks of poison, with more and more intense damage for each stack.



Fire is fire. It's a low-level spell that doesn't cost much MP and deals a bit of fire damage. Handy at times, gets a bit too weak to be super inspiring later.



Quite a few of Lance's attacks hit multiple times - even his basic attack hits twice. Plasma, as shown here, deals some lightning damage.



While we have all our fancy new attacks, some enemies have neat little things they can do, too. Snails can briefly hide in their shells to buff their defense + magic defense by quite a bit.













That doesn't look like leaving them alone to me!



I'd complain about keeping bacon next to a pig farm, but this is actually a pretty great find. Bacon permanently gives a character a bit of a boost to their attack stat.

Matt and Lance are both decent candidates for this, but I tend to have Matt stuff his face with them. Lance has a mix of both attack and magic based attacks, making it a bit tough to decide what to give him.



We also get a new hat for Natalie!



Speaking of equipment, here're the hats we have for Natalie so far.





I'll stick the star hairclip on for now - it's not super useful, but it's better than boosting a spell we don't have, and I tend to favour things that boost skills over ones that just provide resistances.



A nice touch is that changing equipment does actually change what the character is wearing/holding. This is especially impressive when you remember there's quite a bit of equipment in this game.



Anyway, I've been stalling enough! Let's go interact with that big slime.



First, we fight our way through a couple of junk opponents, then...



Good lord, that IS a big slime. This is the first fight in the game that might actually pose a bit of a challenge, if you've not done any levelling up or anything.

It's not a boss or anything, though.



Anyway, one pro-tip for anyone playing along: Don't do what I did the first time I played, and poison this despite it being resistant, thinking it'd still do some damage.

The scan doesn't differentiate between resists/immune/absorbs, and this thing absorbs poison. By poisoning it, you effectively give it HP regeneration every turn, which you have no way of getting rid of.



It can hit a single party member for decent damage + poison...



Spread a hit across the party for fairly mediocre damage and no poison...



And get set on fire by Natalie for quite a bit of damage.



Thanks for sharing, Lance.



Anyway. Toughest fight so far or not, it's sitll not THAT hard, and we win handily, getting a nice chunk of stuff for doing so, as well as access to then ext area.







Lance is right, though. Through wandering around through the trees a bit, totally unable to really see what we're doing, we can find our way to these well-hidden chests.





We get a new sword spear for lance out of the deal.





And another new hat for Natalie! Boosting her healing magic is definitely a good thing.



Speaking of healing magic, we can now have her pick up Healmore. Counterintuitively, it doesn't heal more health, but it heals more people, letting you heal the whole party at once.

I believe in EBF4, Natalie comments that it's the best spell in the game, and it's hard not to agree.

(also, even in those little mugshot icons for skill stuff, it still shows the equipment she's wearing! Hat, at least.)



Lance, meanwhile, picks up Flameshot. Being able to set shit on fire in a forest is always handy.



While I'm already faffing about with menus, I should probably talk a little bit more about forging, too. I've mentioned it a couple of times already.

First, when you click Forge, you get to choose which class of equipment you want to mess with - Swords (Matt) Staffs (Natalie), Guns(Lance) or hats/armor.

Natalie has her own sets of armour and hats, while Matt and Lance share.



Forging is pretty simple really. You click on the thing you want to upgrade, and the game shows you the cost, and what the item will be like post-upgrade. All equipment has 5 levels, and many of them get some kind of special ability/boost as you level them up.



Remembering that this is not, in fact, Epic Menu Fantasy 3, I go back to the previous screen and get into a fight.

Lance has some sage advice for us here - these birds are a pain in the arse to actually hit. Lance generally has the highest accuracy, so he's a good candidate for shooting them out of the sky.





Still no real threat, though.



plus, we now have enough points for Matt to learn Quick Slash! It's not super useful, but it's a prerequisite for very good skill - plus it'll help against those crows, and other foes like them.



We also manage to pick a fight with a tree.







Yyyeah. These things can be a bit of a pain, but if you just spam fire-themed stuff against them, they'll die too fast to really take advantage of it.





Also, as if the damn birds weren't dodge-happy enough already, they can kick sand at you to make you hit them even less. Joy.





Turtles are acutally a pretty damn nasty foe, though. As Natalie notes, they have a ton of health.



A lot of resistances.



And an attack that hits the whole party a shitload of times, and can cause poison.



We still beat this one into soup, though.



You might notice that we're levelling up stupid-fast. Don't expect that to last forever - the game has a level cap of 30, and I believe you do actually have to grind a fair bit if you actually plan on hitting it. Levelling slows down quite a bit later on.







We complete Natalie's basic elemental spells set, and have Lance pick up a nice little attack. Unlike Matt's quick attack, Snipe actually has pretty good damage, especially with the fact that his current weapon boosts it.



"We'd be a fair bit further if our animal rights activist was not trying to protect every creature and plant we see."

"Nuh uh, I don't mind if you kill the slimey ones."

"You have a slimey heart."

"Uguuu..."



"A snake?!?! Did you want to try one? I'll catch it for ye!"

"Let's just get out of these trees before I get bitten by something."

Even if Matt's an idiot, you can't fault him for enthusiasm, at least. I think I said it before, but I don't really mind the whole 'idiot hero' archetype.



There's also a chest here. Good luck seeing it though!





Lance's flame shot is pretty cool, and deals a lot of damage.

Honestly, the attack animations get a lot more impressive later. Still, even the simple ones are pretty snazzy - I do really like this game, and a lot of work that was put into it. It's sometimes easy to forget that the writing is often silly, that there's a fair bit of sexism played for laughs, etc, and just enjoy the really solid battle system.



Then I remember you get a medal for clicking Natalie's breasts to make them bounce enough times.



We quickly make our way to the next screen, and are greeted by a fight with some of the most adorable soldiers ever.



Natalie's lightning will come in handy later. I do like the animation for it more than fire's, I must admit.



Some enemies do get some pretty cool-looking attacks, too! Though the cat soldiers aren't necessarily super threatening.





With Lance's current weapon, the huge sniper rifle on his back, Snipe's damage is boosted. Still, it hits pretty shockingly hard.



2/3rds of the party making silly cat faces after cat murder... I can't decide if it's fitting, or just silly.







Past those cats, more loot! This staff will proably not see much use - I tend not to really use Toxic, despite how good poison can be in this game. Natalie just generally has other things to be doing with her turn.



Anyway, more cat slaughter!



Also another giant slime, the sorta-not-exactly miniboss thing from earlier.



One thing this game isn't afraid to do is take the same enemy from before, and level them up a bit. This version of that giant slime hits quite a bit harder!



Matt sums things up quite nicely, though.





And more skill-learning! Having Nettle at level 2 will let it do more damage, and I think it can also apply more than a single stack of poison at once, which helps make things much faster.

The real treasure, however, is wind slash. Matt doesn't get a lot of skills that hit all enemies, so getting one ASAP is definitely not a bad idea.



Speaking of treasure. More loot!



And, if we head east, even more loot! Shurikens are another attack item which I tend to forget exists, and the ninja hood is a hat for the guys.



We also get some precious gems in a well-hidden chest. By which I mean, a completely bullshit chest that you cannot see.



I can't tell if this is meant to be some kind of stereotype, or just ridiculous.



"Looks like we're almost out of the forest. Hope we don't end up in a swamp or something instead."



I can't help but hear the MGS "!" sound whenever I look at this shot.

"Wouldn't get your hopes up, the boss is probably a giant vegetable."



This is, again, fairly good advice. All bees are a pain in the ass, though.



They're pretty good at dodging, and they cause some annoying status effects. Lance, for example, is currently stunned. He's unable to act for the number of turns displayed next to the stun icon.



Still, though. They're just a normal enemy, and we're a party of (admittedly de-powered) heroes, the results are obvious.

This update is running pretty long, though, so I'm going to call it here! Next time, we might just make it out of the forest.