Yggdra Unison Game Mechanics, Explanation and questions Options

[P.P.A.]

My copy of Yggdra Unison arrived in the mail a few days ago, and while I initially bought it merely as a collector's piece, I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it turned out to be! It did not look very entertaining from gameplay videos, but—especially for a cheap, money-making former cellphone title consisting mostly of recycled graphics—it's quite enjoyable and addicting.
Alas, the Japanese language means it is also a little confusing. Thus, in this thread I will try to give a small introduction to how it works, although in a lot of cases I am quite unsure about that myself. Questions and uncertainties will be written in red italics. Perhaps I'll download the ROM to be able to add a few screenshots later.

❧ Choose Your Character

 Upon starting the game, a short, skippable introduction will leave Occidentals confused about what this “Warring States Period” is supposed to be and why Paltina is suddenly China. Thereafter, you will be able to select your faction, although initially only Milanor and Yggdra are available. These differ in their starting positions on the map (and thus the might of their neighbours), and the initial number and quality of their generals.
I unlocked Ortega after beating the game with Milanor, and completing Yggdra's story made Dort's faction available. Completing his story in turn gave me access to Emelone.

❧ Battlefields

 After you have selected a spell card and a neighbouring region to attack (the exact map of which will be affected by which other regions in its vinicity are under your control/from which direction you attack), you will be directed to the battlefield. The goal is to defeat the enemy general and to capture the fortress they are defending, while making sure that no enemy units reach your base (the flag icon), which would spell Game Over. The battle will start after you have touched the flag and summoned one or two of your five units.
 You can move your units by touching them with the stylus and then dragging a hairline cross to the place you want them to walk towards. Their movement speed is determined by their type and the ground on which they thread; for example Golems will always move at 1 speed, while Undines are—naturally—quickest in the water, most other characters will speed up when traversing roads or towns, Cruz seems to traverse forests very speedily, and so on.
 As mentioned above, you can only summon two units at the beginning of a battle. To bring in the rest of your army, you will have to direct your units over to the various icons dotted across the battlefield, such as catapults and cannons, villages, and towns, of which however only towns and those catapult things increase your limit. Be warned, however, as whenever an enemy occupies one of your square, it could result in the unit supported by it needing to retreat at the cost of half of their HP!
 Besides towns, catapult-like icons, and a village which seems to appear only when you are close enough to it and changes location every time, and the enemy fortress, there are three other types of icons: Cannons and catapults, of which there exist four variants (a catapult that tosses 3 spreading rocks, a cannon that shoots a laser beam, one that fires a slow-moving cannon ball, and a giant crossbow shooting an arrow; all of these will knock back the opponents of whoever controls them and deal a bit of HP damage), barricades, which cannot be captured until an enemy has set them up first, and a small thing that looks like a key (which behaves like the village in that its location is random and it is hidden at first). Stepping on this will set up your spell card, which will then randomly fire at some point in the battle and do… stuff. I have no idea what the criteria are for the spells activating, or what exactly their effects are (if it isn't obvious). Anyone wiser than me here?
 Any square can also be taken by an opponent, which will increase their troop limit, so you are well advised to make sure you keep everything under your control so you only have to deal with one enemy at a time.

❧ Clashes

 Once two enemies meet, the action freezes, and one attacks the other. I don't know what determines which side has the first strike; usually it seems to be the player's, but not always. The action freezes for a moment, and each of your units on the field is assigned a number. Upon being hit, the defending unit is pushed back a bit. If you did not ignore the game boldly telling you to “TOUCH!” the bottom screen, you will now see a square in its centre, as well as a circle around the enemy character. The size of this circle is determined by the unit which attacked, and can be of Small, Medium, or Large size. If any other characters of yours fall into that circle (indicated by them glowing), you can quickly write their number into the square and tap the button above it to have them attack as well. This can be done up to four times in a row.
 The trick is to position your characters in such a way that they can knock the enemy around between each other, or that they will push the enemy into a desirable direction (i.e. usually opposite of your base). But there are other factors that need to be considered: Any units will block attacks of a type inferior to theirs (this largely resembles Yggdra Union's system, in that swords > axes > spears > swords, bows & crossbows >/< anything else depending on who has the initiative, Valkyries > Golems, etc.), while a superior strike will knock them down (and far back), leaving them defenceless towards consecutive attacks, which will thus deal a lot more damage thank usual. This can also be achieved by just attacking them three times in a row even at a suboptimal setup. The CPU is unable to do any of this, so you will always only face one foe at a time; however, it might block your attack and knock you down if you attacked with the wrong type of unit.
 In some cases, a unit might become stunned from a particularly powerful blow, but I don't know the exact requirements for this.
 Not always is it the attacked who is knocked back, however. If the defender occupies a barricade, a town, or a fortress—which will be indicated by a glowing outline—the attacker are pushed back even if the attack is successful. This means that in order to unseat such units (to which the enemy general always counts, although it lacks the outline), you need to assemble your units in a small radius around the enemy, attack with as many at once as possible, walk them all back, and repeat. As your characters are pushed back in a straight line, it would make sense to position them in such a way that they end up in favourable territory (water for Undines, roads for Knights, etc.) and don't have to climb mountains and wade through swamps before they can try again.
 Once the enemy's HP hit zero, they will escape if left alone, or you can continue your assault to kill them, and go even further for a “Kill Out”, which will cause them to die. It would be unwise to do this against the general though, as it would prevent you from recruiting them afterwards.

❧ After the Battle

 After having taken the enemy fortress, the battle is won, fanfares play, and you are redirected to a results screen, showing the following:

• Time taken.
• Enemies defeated/total troops available to the enemy).
• Icons (cannons, towns, etc.) secured/all on the field).
• ???/5 (I have no idea what this stat means. The max total is always five, but thus far I have never gotten past 0/5. Any information would be welcome here.)
• Points/Money gained (more on this below)

 If you avoided killing the enemy leader, he will be dragged before you and, while their stats are being shown on the top screen, you have the option of [executing/exiling/imprisoning/ignoring] them (right option), or recruiting them for your army (left option). However, even if you invite them to join you, they may reject your offer. What determines their decision is beyond me. Your performance? Your leader? The characters they talked to on the field? The character who defeated them? I would be very grateful if anyone could help me out here. If you are successful, you can choose which of your old characters to discard in their favour.
 After this, you will be presented a screen where you can equip items to your characters, or give them medals to recover their VIT. While it has never happened to me, I presume once this depletes (by being damaged in battle) completely, they will die. The less VIT they have, the lower their max HP are.
 The next screen is the save screen; choose the right option if you want to save in the slot selected, and the left if you wish to continue without saving.

❧ The Mystery of the Dungeons

 Once you leave the save screen, you will be greeted by a merchant. Here, you can buy dungeon exploration sessions for your generals (generic units cannot participate in this) in exchange for the points you accumulated during your battles. And this is where the game stops making sense to a I DON'T KNOW JAPANESE BUT I LIKE TO PRETEND I DO! gaijin.
Each of the dungeons is located in one of your conquered regions. It seems that depending on the distance from the dungeon to the last region you conquered determines how long the characters will be gone searching the dungeon. Or they have a varying number of floors. Not sure.
 However this may be, if you decide to send someone down there, the top screen will show a still image of the dungeon interior and a portrait of the character making enthusiastic or confused comments as you guide them around using the four arrows on the bottom screen and the automap shown next to it. You have 30 turns to arrive at a crate, bag, or fancy box, which are usually found near the outer walls of the labyrinths, and, when found, marked by a red square on the minimap.
Then, your character might randomly disappear forever.
 I have no idea how any of this works. My character are prone to vanishing without explanation or obvious reason. Are some of these boxes traps that kill them? Do they run out of VIT while in there? Do they get lost trying to find the way out? Your guess is as good as mine. For this reason, I generally avoid these dungeons altogether; I haven't had any problems beating the game without any of the items from them.
 You are afterwards again prompted to save (topmost option; the middle one is continuing without saving, and the lowest one shows some statistics), but as you cannot know if your general is still alive at this point, I would suggest skipping it or only saving in a separate slot.

❧ Moving On

 You will now receive your spelunkers' loot and be able to re-integrate them into your army, tossing out whatever generic or newly recruited units filled their space. I presume a point of these dungeons is that you can send generals you don't presently need on longer expeditions so you can recruit new ones in the meantime without needing to replace your veterans.
Afterwards you collect taxes in the form of medallions from your conquered regions. Initially, you will only receive one, but as your realm grows, this amount will eventually double. If you receive and treasures from a dungeon, your gain is again halved however.
 Next, you can select a spell card from your collection, which encompasses all the ones you have encountered during your conquest. Initially, none of them are visible, and you need to select blank cards which will then turn into a random one during the next battle. If you miss the space you need to occupy to activate them, the next time you visit this screen they will be black and corrupted, unable to be used again.
 Afterwards, a messenger arrives and you can observe on the top screen a battle between two other factions in a random location with a random outcome. The winner annexes the loser's territory, or, if the leader of a faction is defeated, their entire realm. This can prove useful for you if you want to finish the game quickly, as you might be able to swallow large chunks of land by taking out the leader of a particularly successful army. For this reason, I usually head to Gulcasa on the most direct route. Not only will this reward you with a third to half of the entire map, but along the way you can recruit a couple of excellent generals like Aegina, Emilia, or Zilva. The only downside is when for example Milanor annexes the Undines, and you need to battle through each and every territory before you can make them all your own.
 In the last screen before returning to the one allowing you to choose your next target, you will hear rather gruesome wails of pain and of suffering, and random regions on the map will flash red—what this means I do not know; when I attacked such a blinking region, I didn't notice any obvious changes. The messenger's words might explain it, if they were just intelligible.
There also seems to be a hidden region north of Ortega's bastion, as indicated by two lone pixels. Does anyone know how to access it?

❧ Opinion

 When I ordered Yggdra Unison, I thought of it purely as a collector's item to add to my Dept. Heaven stuff. It looked quite lame from the videos I had watched, and my expectations from a mobile phone game using entirely reused graphics were fairly low. What a pleasant surprise when the game turned out to actually be quite fun, and addicting no less! It is simple, of course, but nonetheless motivating and certainly enjoyable for two or three conquests at a time, and cements Sting's excellence as game designers, turning even a quick money-making mobile game into a solid and worthwhile experience. While not living up to its brethren, it is—in my opinion—still not deserving of the lack of attention or appreciation it suffers from. Now I just wish its finer aspects made a little more sense to uneducated Westerners. ❦

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Aug 15 2011, 07:40 PM

[P.P.A.]

I remembered that I actually own the YZ guide book and flipped around in it a little, eventually finding these pages:

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

They seem to explain what determines whether or not you can capture an enemy general. Could someone with Japanese skills please try to translate them, or at least give a brief run-down of what it says? It's a rather central mechanic after all…

[Rhiannon]

First paragraphy thingy (or all but the last sentence of it, anyway): Whether or not an enemy general fails to join you is decided by the player army's number of conquered territories, the relationship between the player's army and the enemy's initial army, and the enemy's pride value. If the relationship between armies is "Neutral" then the number of territories you own must be equal to or greater than the enemy general's bride (yes, it says bride. Clearly it means Pride though). If the relationship is "Gloomy" (I'd just say bad for this but the site I was using told me gloomy was a possible translation for the kanji used and it's cuter this way) then the number of territories you own must be equal to or greater than the enemy general's bride x2 for recruitment to be possible. If the relationship is "Friends" then they'll swallow their pride and join you. Or swallow their bride. Yeah. THIS HAS BEEN A RHIA TRANSLATION.

And here's an Englishland version of the first chart:

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

I'll translate the bottom of the first page and see what the other one is about later. AND IF SOMETHING'S WRONG WITH THE ARMY NAMES IN THE CHART THEN SHUT UP IT'S NOT MY FAULT I HAVEN'T PLAYED YU IN ENGLISH IN FOREVER

[P.P.A.]

My deepest gratitude, this is extremely useful and finally puts an end to all that fruitless and confused speculation! Thanks!
Alas I don't have the guide at hand any more (spending ~a week in Bonn again), otherwise I would look if it lists everyone's pbride anywhere. Once I get the chance to check, I'll post the values here.

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Aug 15 2011, 10:42 PM

[Rhiannon]

NOW THE STUFF UNDER THE CHART. Which I didn't really get (probably because I don't play the game) so the translation leaves much to be desired. Also, the last sentence from above that I never translated just says something like "The relationship between armies also affects the recruited general's fighting spirit decrease value". WHAT IS FIGHTING SPIRIT DECREASE.

For units that "existed in the war just before":
"Friends" --> 1 decrease
"Neutral" --> Fighting spirit decrease value only/just decrease (I don't have a clue)
"Gloomy" --> Fighting spirit decrease value +1 decrease

For units that withdrew in the war just before:
"Friends" --> Fighting spirit decrease value only decrease
"Neutral" --> Fighting spirit decrease value +1 decrease
"Gloomy" --> Fighting spirit decrease value +2 decrease

So um... yeah? Maybe Tsuki can read this stuff and make sense of it. I never learned about this "dake" nonsense. Also, this fighting spirit nonsense totally does not use the same kanji YU used for morale.

[P.P.A.]

I… have no idea what's about. I've never seen any such stat in the game, or anything that could resemble it. My closest but still rather wild guess would be that it's related to the bar that appears once you have depleted someone's HP; if you keep attacking, you can drain the bar and ultimately kill or “kill out” the enemy. Sometimes they can still escape wounded if the bar isn't drained completely, though. Perhaps it's related to that…?
Or it's some kind of hidden value related to or even identical with a character's bride.

EDIT: Or it determines how much VIT a character loses when they are attacked, or after being captured.

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Aug 16 2011, 03:20 PM

[P.P.A.]

So I am back in Remagen and thus have access to my YZ guide again, which I searched for bride values—apparently successfully!

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

• Yggdra: 12
• Durant: 11
• Cruz: 7
• Mistel: 9
• Milanor: 16
• Kylier: 12
• Flunky: 3
• Gulcasa: 16
• Luciana: 12
• Eudy: 10
• Emilia: 3
• Canaan: 8
• Monica: 8
• Baldus: 15
• Zilva: 10
• Russell: 7
• Aegina: 12
• Elena: 2
• Leon: 14
• Emelone: 15
• Nietzsche: 2
• Ishiene: 11
• Rosary: 13
• Golem: 1
• Roswell: 13
• Skeleton: 1
• Ortega: 9
• Mizer: 4
• Dort: 9
• Golem: 6
• Juvelon: 2
• Amareus: 5
• Mardym: 6
• Gordon: 14
• Pamela: 4
• Mizer: 4
• Nessiah: 14

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Aug 18 2011, 08:07 PM