Nil Bid

In Part II of our ongoing preview of Mugen Souls, we talked about money and other forms of currencies used to get ahead in the game. In our latest intstallment we discuss the mysteries of the Mugen Field and why it is pretty important that players make an effort to slog through it to get the most out of the game…

At a certain point in the game the Mugen Field opens up, giving you another avenue to grind up those levels and build the perfect Undisputed God of the Universe. You can use the characters provided by the game in the main storyline, or create your own peons, but whatever you do, the Mugen Field is the best place to gain experience and the only place to get large amounts of G Up points, so it’s pretty important to use it as much as you can.

At first blush it seems like an endless dungeon but the Mugen Field only has 100 levels, with three different paths you can take: Event, Normal, or Hard. Obviously the Event path will provide more random occurrences, while Normal offers fewer surprises, and Hard throws everything but the kitchen sink at you (at least at the higher levels). Besides fighting against increasingly difficult sets of enemies, the game will occasionally throw a mid-boss into the mix, or a random ship battle to keep you on your toes. At every tenth level you’ll face a boss battle that provides more of a challenge but a larger reward of experience points.

Mugen points and gold are not the point of this mode – experience points are – so it’s the perfect place to level up those low level characters. Although you can only have four characters in your main party, you can have a group on standby and anyone in that group still levels up with you. This is a great system because it allows you to switch out those main characters when they get hurt but it also allows you to grow low level characters whogain from the benefits of being on the front lines (earning large amounts of experience points from high stakes fights) without being put in any mortal danger. Naturally this means that a level 1 character could easily be leveled up to level 40 or 50 from one battle without having to worrying about the poor newbie dying.

After reaching level 10, the game will put you into a special area where you do all kinds of things with Mugen points. You can upgrade skills, buy new offensive skills, buy slots for additional defensive or passive skills (similar to Evilities in Disgaea 4) or buy additional equipment slots. You can also unlock new kinds of skills or even new proficiencies related to weapons. Of course there are plenty of other things to spend those Mugen Points on like extra slots for your standby party, extra voices for created characters and more.

But what makes the Mugen Field such a great place to level grind becomes available after getting past level ten. A special feature called the Mugen Control Room allows you to handicap yourself for bonuses becomes available. By removing some abilities from your repertoire you can increase the amount of experience points you get from the game after every battle. For example if you turn off character switching, magic attacks, and Peon Ball attacks, then you’ll add a certain percentage to your bonus. Of course, doing this also means that the fights you normally encounter will begin to get a heck of a lot tougher and the oddball occurences you face from the game are thrown in at random to make your life difficult. It’s simply a matter of risk vs. reward. But most of the time the reward outweighs the risks as long as you prepare for it.

There are other reasons to go to the very last level of the Mugen Field. There are certain events that only happen in this space so completing the Mugen Field actually affects the ending (some call it the “true ending”). If that’s important to you or you are simply the kind of player that likes to complete everythin,g grinding through the Mugen Field will be of paramount importance.

Like the Disgaea series, there are plenty of ways to survive the Mugen Field if you are finding it too difficult; there are items that allow you to skip a level or even exit the Mugen Field altogether. The drawback to skipping ahead is that you don’t gain anything from doing it. Exiting the Mugen Field can save your life and your progress (if you die in the field even at level 99 you have to start from the beginning again), but  you lose the benifits of any percentage bonuses you set up via the Mugen Control Room.

The best way to think of the Mugen Field is like Item World or Character World in the Disgaea series; while you could probably avoid going into completely, the only real way to unlock the most powerful skills and gain the highest levels is by using this system.

Before we end this preview, I want to mentione the Hot Spring. Using the Hot Spring is an interesting way to give your entire roster of characters a short term or temporary boost in stats. In the Japanese version of the game, apparently there was a mini-game that allowed you to wash the women when they were in the Hot Spring taking a bath, but NIS America removed it. While some are calling this a case of censorship I’d have to say that it was a good idea to ditch it; after all what kind of creep wants to soap up under-aged girls??? So while you may still be able to gain the benifits of the Hot Spring, you won’t be able to wash any girls. Sorry if that’s the only reason you planned on buying this game.

During your adventures you’ll be given strange items – sopa and shampoo – but you won’t know the heck they are used for until the Hot Spring opens. Basically both soap and shampoo offer a percentage on stats and when you combine them they create a multiplication to those stats they affect. For example if you have a bar of soap that offers a 2 percent boost to attack and Shampoo that offers a ten percent boost, when you use them, everyone in your party would get a temporary 20 percent boost to attack.

When I say temporary I mean that you use it in the Hot Spring, enter an area and it will last until you return to the main part of the ship. It’s an interesting way to get a slight edge, particularly when you are going through the Mugen Field or getting ready for a major battle. ..

FIN.

In our next Mugen Tale, we’ll delve into the intricacies of combat, the wild variables the game can throw at you and all the crazy things you can do by sending your foes into the air.

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This entry was posted on September 2, 2012 at 4:37 am and is filed under Preview, PS3, RPG, Video Games. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Compile Heart, IDEA Factory, JRPG, Mugen Souls, Mugen Souls Tales, NIS America, Preview, RPG

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