In the previous part of this piece I discussed the short history of the Kingdom Under Fire, namely focusing on the Xbox games (as they are what I'm most familiar with). There was even a bit of a information given about the characters that you play as in this game. But I decided to use this portion to share more in-depth explanations for the seemingly complex yet satisfying game mechanics present within Circle of Doom.

Also there will be more pretty pictures for those that prefer to just look at screenshots instead of reading ;P.



One of the features of this game is the synthesis system, which allows you to fuse various items found on enemies and bought from the Idols (which act as shopkeeper NPCs within the game) in order to create far stronger equipment. For instance if you combined a sword with 100 ATK without enhancements with a sword with 90 ATK with several Enhancements, you'd end up with a sword with around 95-97 ATK power that would keep those Enhancements. The benefit of this is of course to increase the power of the weapon you enjoy using so as to keep it's damage consistant with the level of enemies you'll be facing throughout the game.

Of course one of the key components of the synthesis are the afforementioned Enchancements, of which there are around 50+ (according to the back of the box at least) that add beneficial effects to your weapons. These range from allowing you to perform counter-attacks, apply status ailments with each strike, or even increase the experience you earn from defeated enemies. For the most part people tend to pick a few Enhancements they enjoy and work on synthesizing them to the maximum level of 25.

In order to do this you'll need to find weapons that share similar Enhancements. Once you've acquired these items, you can fuse them together to combine their Enhancements in order to produce a higher level of that Enhancement. For instance, say you had a sword with Lvl. 15 Greed (which increases exp gained) and another weapon with Lvl.5 Greed. Upon successful fusion of these two items you'll end up with a piece of gear that has Lvl.20 Greed.

However it should be noted that each successful synthesis increases the cost of synthesizing that weapon again. So you can see where that whole 'sticking with a few weapons' mentality can help save your gold in the long run. Then again I've only played through on Normal, so I'd imagine the amount of gold you find on enemies increases drastically when playing the tougher (way tougher!) difficulties. At least I HOPE so!



Another mechanic of the game, and one that helps give you some measure of personalizing your character, is the inclusion of various spells and skills that your character of choice can learn. In order to learn these spells, however, you'll have to enter the 'Dream World', where NPCs that live in your mind wander. Among these characters are those that will teach you these abilities, enabling you to learn two of them at a time. The reason for this is because you must complete a 'kill so many of these' style of quest in order to earn the right to learn the skill in question.

Of course the more powerful the spells, the rarer the prey you must hunt down. In fact some of the best spells can only be learned by killing monsters found in the Hard and Expert difficulty levels! But the challenge is worth the rewards, for these skills can be quite beneficial in the long run, enabling you to effectively deal with crowds or even inflict potent status ailments that could save your ass in a pinch.

Yet I would be foolish to not mention another use for spells, one that coincides with synthesis. You see when you get weapon to a high enough level, you can actually fuse an ability onto it in order to give it the chance to cast that spell for free. Granted you'll lose that ability until it's relearned, but being able to cast free spells can prove quite handy. There's even an Enhancement that increases the chance of these spells proc'ing, so if you have a spell you love using it's definitely a good idea to fuse it to a weapon with a high level of this Enhancement.

Well folks this post is getting a bit long, and I'd like at least some left for the next part of this blowout. I'm thinking the next one will be the final part (maybe), though if there are any questions I'm sure I could answer them in the next portion as well. I'd go into greater depth than what I've put in this post, but I'm afraid if this got too long than people might not read the whole thing =(.