Spoiler-free tips for Antiquia Lost

[Victar]

When I played Antiquia Lost (PS4/PS5 version), I felt that the highest difficulty of "Hell" was the only one that presented a significant challenge, if only because I know more about how Exe-Create games generally work than I used to. Here's some spoiler-free tips, with no discussion of the story's plot and no details about specific boss fights.

The fundamental way to break Antiquia Lost, or almost any Exe-Create game, is to use the real-time garden (if there is one) and put all stat-boosting fruits on one character. Your super-powered character will get extra turns from their high speed, hit extra hard, and shrug off damage like a tank. The only thing that can stop them is bad status; if you can find a way to prevent/nullify that, you're golden.

Antiquia Lost has one character whose stats are easy to max out by design - Lunaria. Halfway through the game, you can buy gems from regular shops with ordinary gold and feed them to her to skyrocket her stats. Lunaria can eat fruits as well, but it makes the game substantially easier to give all fruits to another character, so that someone other than Lunaria is also super-powered (especially during the first half of the game, when the player can't buy gems with gold).

I recommend giving all stat-boosting fruits to the main hero Bine, because he is the only one who can invoke powerful super moves. Without high speed, he will never get a turn to use the super meter, unless he has special equipment that forces him to get a turn at the beginning of the battle, or unless a fast character uses a spell to give him a turn.

Speaking of the super meter - always use it right at the beginning of any challenging battle. If a character dies (and this WILL happen if the battle is a genuine threat) then you lose super meter, and you almost certainly won't get it back fast enough to use a super attack. The quickest way to replenish the super meter is through Overkills, which usually won't be possible in the middle of a boss fight. Jade's super meter ability is the best one to use in nearly all cases.

Weapon enhancements can accelerate the process of maxing out stats. A 50% speed boost on a weapon can go a long way toward giving a character extra turns. However, all stats cap at 9999 except hit points, which cap at 99,999. Weapon enhancements will NOT surpass this cap, but battle spells that buff the party WILL - buffs and debuffs are extremely important throughout the entire game.

The Countdown weapon enhancement is broken. It can be raised to 100%, unlike later Exe-Create games that recognized its brokenness and cap it at 25%. Countdown doesn't work on bosses, but it will work on the most ferocious regular enemies and is often the quickest way to kill any strong monster that isn't a metal monster.

The Critical weapon enhancement is virtually the only way to kill metal monsters, and also quite powerful in general.

The weapon enhancements that regenerate HP or MP (especially HP) are broken. High HP regeneration makes a character immortal unless the enemy can kill them before the character's next turn.

Skills can be leveled up by repeated use in Antiquia Lost. Leveling up a skill improves its damage and healing, and reduces its mana cost. Spells that do not have any damage or healing only get their mana cost reduced. Items that restore MP are easy to get, so don't worry about leveling up skills that do no damage or healing (such as buff or debuff skills).

It takes a LONG time to level up skills. If you're willing to get one thing from the Shop, make it the item that permanently increases skill experience, and get it early! Also, carefully choose which attack abilities suit you best, and concentrate on using those.

Healing spells can be leveled up out of combat. The party can take damage from environmental hazards, or just equip and unequip an accessory that boosts HP, cast a healing spell to level it up, and repeat. However, it is not worth the effort to spend a lot of time on this. Boosting low-level healing spells a few ranks can help you get through the early game, but by the late game and the postgame you'll need to rely on high-level healing spells or powerful healing items anyway.

One of Jade's postgame sidequests requires him to have rank 3 trust (not max trust, but quite high) to break a rock. You can buy items to increase (or decrease!) his trust from the Arena. Rank 3 trust with Jade is also valuable for powering up his super move. Keep in mind that trust levels among the party members do affect the game's ending.

Once you get access to the ship, be warned that the world is VERY dangerous. If you sail to any island or coastline other than where the story prompts you to go, you can easily run into ultra-powerful monsters that will destroy your party before you ever get a turn. If you have an accessory equipped to guarantee that someone goes first, then at least you should be able to run away.

[Mastertrek]

I have broken several games by mistake already so will definitely check the game out if I'll ever finish the game I'm playing (Digital World: Reborn) which is fun for me.

 

Is the story of Antiquia Lost fun and worth playing to see? And is fighting fun (I mean, is there Autobattle preferrable with setting that keeps it on etc.)? I deleted Dimention Cross a few days ago without finishing it burt it was more of free space issues at that time rather than game itself.

[Victar]

I thought the story of Antiquia Lost was okay, nothing special. Although there's a serious plot, the tone and presentation are usually lighthearted, with plenty of comedy. The jokes can get repetitive at times.  There are character-based relationship meters that affect both the Normal Ending and the True Ending.

Maidame Curie, Jolie Curie, and the maids were the best part of the comedy. The serious side of the plot isn't handled badly (as opposed to, say, Alphadia Genesis 2, which horribly bungled its attempt at a serious plot in multiple ways).

The battle system was fun on the hardest difficulty setting of Hell. I turned it up to Hell early, because nothing else was a challenge, and even on the highest setting it was mostly Arena battles (with a low-level party) and other optional fights that forced strategy and careful thought.

There is an auto-battle feature, and an instant-win feature against weak enemies.

I put a detailed review of every Kemco RPG I finish on the "Games" page, although there's sometimes a delay between when I put a post on "Game Length" and when I add the review. Feel free to check those out.

I'm currently playing the Atlus game Soul Hackers 2 (which has an excellent, character-driven story), so it will be a while before I play through another Kemco game. I'm not sure which Kemco game in my backlog will be next. Asdivine Hearts 2 is a top contender because it's a direct sequel to a game I've played, and it has Maidame Curie.