More Nova Details from Shogai (+ Gigantes info)

[Mike]

Shogai was upupdated with info from this week's Famitsu and Dengeki magazines. Here's what know about Nova so far:

Development

• Nova is 40% complete
• The PSO2 team will only be supervising Nova, the rest will be left to Tri-Ace
• Yasuyuki Tsuzuki from Sega will be a producer for the game
• Yuji Tamura from Tri-Ace will also be a producer
• Motoi Sakuraba will be doing the music
• Dragon Sakai Satoshi Sakai also gets a listing in the credits as "series producer"

Character & Story

• You get to make your own character with a character creater
• NPCs are created using PSO2's character creator
• Mission happen as you progress through the story
• Clearing missions allows you to progress further
• Players belong to Arks Planetary Exploration Group "Alter"
• The Alter ship the players are on, the Delta Valient, crashes in to Machia
• Machia is a planet where photons have no power
• Because of this, Photon Arts and Techs will not be usuable
• There will be something else in thier place though
• You will fight with the Gigantes while trying to get off the planet

NPC Characters

Lutina

Lutina is an 18 year old human force. She is the PC's partner in Nova. In the preview video, she is the one that is standing by what looks like a bridge of a ship.

Sail

Sail is an 18 year old human hunter. He's a hot-blooded guy and his friends are very important to him. He doesn't show up in any videos yet.

Fieldia

Fieldia is the 28 year old acting captain of the Delta Valient. She is also a hunter. In the preview video, Fieldia is the woman standing by the grave.


Enemies, Drops & Weapons

• Various PSO2 enemies show up like the cylcops enemies and a green Vol Dragon
• The Gigantes has an alternative version known as the Agrios
• Standard PSO2 classes exist with weapons like swords, partisans, and rods returning.
• Weapons will not drop
• In their place, materials that can used make weapons will drop
• A new ranged weapon type called the "Pile" is in the game.
• Piles shoot anchors which create a weak point where they hit the enemy
• Piles have additional effect on the Gigantes.

Shogai is calling Nova "Monster Phanter." I think that's right.


A second article has been posted detailing how to defeat a Gigantes using the Pile weapon.

Pile weapons look like the Astral Riser weapon from Infinity. If you participated in one of the PSO2Vita tests, you may have a promo version of this item. Anyways, one way to defeating a Gigantes is to take control of if by using a pile. Hiting a some of the Gigantes' armor with an anchor will destroy the armor and get the anchor stuck in to the weak skin underneath. Then you climb up the Gigantes, using a system similar to the one in the Dark Falz Dios fight from Infinity (which is really just using a chat shortcut to create a mid-air platform), and attack the anchor, driving it deeper in to the Gigantes. Once the anchor is far enough inside, you take over control and win the fight.

Shogai mentions at the end that quests that involve taking control of enemies and defeating enemies are actually seperate things. This will likely be explained in another article to be post tonight.