Hiouden basic gameplay FAQ 1. Introduction 2. Getting started: The first stage and other very basic but important controls. 3. Moving your troops around a. Pickaxe and other types of keys 4. Important hint on the “king slug” “boss” 5. Important tip on HP recovery 6. Important tip once you have a full party (of 24) 7. Food and healing 8. Planning your attack a. Trap and magical items 9. Responding to a review of the game a. Effective use of the pause button b. hints on formation 10. Effective use of time while the game is moving slow 11. Formations Part 2: lesser used formations a. Another formation b. The desert stages 12. Small tip for battle 19 13. Note on battle 20 14. Final game stats for Richard a. Using mushrooms 15. Companions (blue demon statues) of Richard *** 1. Introduction *** Hello, Carl here. This is the second FAQ I have ever written. The first was way back in 2001 under a totally different user- name that is no longer active, CDexter. Under that name I wrote my only other FAQ, Illusion of Gaia. I am writing this FAQ because there is a serious lack of information on this game, kindly translated by AGTP. Hiouden: Mamonotachi to no Chikai was originally released in Japan only in early 1994 and is famous for having many of the members who later went on to compose music for Tales of Phantasia (snes) and Star Ocean (snes). I consider Hiouden to be a semi active strategy game, you will see why later, throughout the FAQ. This is a bare bones FAQ that will only offer general hints and tips. It is by no means perfect, nor is it complete. At any time I might come back and add more information, either after a 3rd playthrough or if anyone else is kind enough to contribute more information. I figure some information, even if limited, is better than no information. By the way, I will use some words interchangeably, especially mission/stage/level and unit/group (a full unit or group is 4 characters) but for this FAQ, they all mean the same thing. ***2. Getting started: The first stage and basic but important controls *** Let me start by saying that I have beaten the game twice now. The first time took me around 22.5 hours. The second time took me about 18 hours 15 minutes. With that said, use the first stage to get used to the controls. It WILL take time. In fact, I think a big reason why there is a 4.5 hour difference between my first and second playthroughs is nearly 4 hours of that extra time from the first playthrough was spent in the first few stages getting used to the controls and committing them to memory and learning how to do things efficiently. The learning curve is quite steep, I would not consider this an intuitive game. But you will get it with patience. ***Important*** When I tell you to pause and go to the menu, which I say often throughout this FAQ, you can get to the menu via the blue button that says “System” at the bottom and to the center. From here, push up once to get to an old school pencil and paper (save). Push to the right once and your cursor will be over a book which allows you to load one of three saves. Up again, from “save” shows you the map of the stage (looks like a map too and will unfold when the cursor is over it). Up again will bring you to what looks like a dragon head who will do a little roar when the cursor is on him. This allows you to get an overview of the current HP, MP, AT and AC numbers of all party members. This serves as a nice quick over view of how all 24 characters are doing once you have them. While on this screen, look to the left, click on an individual character as well to see what they like and hate as far as food and other nifty stats. If they like a food, that will heal them better. Likewise for food they hate, it will barely heal them. You can click on a character, an arrow will show, click on another character to switch characters between groups. The skull holding a blue ball to the right (from system push up, right, right, up to get to). You’ll know you are there because he will open his mouth. This is where you can equip and heal characters. (Pause the game first!) You can drag unneeded stuff to the fish to throw them away too. More on this later (under part 8). You can move to the blue ball he is holding too, to change settings if you want. I never bothered. To the left you will notice the dragon holding a staff of some sort, clicking this brings you back to the stage where you will see all of your units. On the battle screen, some useful buttons could be the key (sorts all items so the keys appear first), below that is a button that sorts items by magical items. The top potion bottle (opening facing up) sorts healing items by generic first. The bottom potion bottle (opening facing down) sorts healing items by specific food. The flag to the left of the hour glass allows you to cycle between team leaders (you will eventually have 6 and they are the first character out of 4 shown). Hour glass in the bottom right corner allows you to pause (red) and return to action (blue) which is very important. By clicking on the numbers just above the arrows, you can cycle between your (eventually) 6 groups, useful if they are in different parts of the stage. You will notice right away, in the first stage, that this is a slow paced game. Avoid the temptation to speed through this game. I repeat, don't plow through the game or it will be much harder. Slow down, take your time. Thankfully you don't tend to see hordes of enemies until later in the game (there are 20 missions). Use this fact to your advantage. For the first few missions, generally you will only see monsters in groups of about 4 to 6. ***3. Moving your troops around *** When we talk about moving, obviously we are talking about controls. So, is a mouse required? This game got a lot of attention because it was one of the few games that made use of the snes mouse. However, no, a mouse is not required. I beat this for the first time on a 7.5 inch samsung tablet and the second time on real hardware. As for the controls: There is one button, on the menu at the bottom of the screen to the right, that when pressed cycles between 3 arrows pointing towards a dot in the center and one arrow pointing towards a dot in the center. One arrow means you control each of the six groups individually. Three arrows means everyone goes to one position together. This can be useful. When you need to travel through tight spaces, you want to move each group individually, especially later in the game on the ice level with spikes. However, when you have a wide open space, you can use that space to your advantage. With some patience you can get all 6 of your groups (24 characters) together and gang up on what is usually between 1 to 6 enemies and in later stages usually is not more than a dozen. Keep in mind that some enemies are downright nasty later in the game and you might find an enemy that take up 4 spaces instead of the 1 space your characters take up or most normal enemies take up (king slugs, yeti like creatures, etc. are a few examples of enemies that take up four spaces.). a. Pickaxe and other keys It is also important to note that the Pickaxe, labeled as a key in the game, is incredibly important and helps you to break down various types of rock and ice walls. When you see a crack, it can be broken by a pickaxe. Break as much as you possibly can to provide your troops more space to move to where they need to go. You will also find bronze, silver and gold keys. In a few of the later levels, you will get different colored balls, labeled as a key, that need to be put on pedestals or inserted into walls and act as a way to advance the game. ***4. Important hint on the “king slug” enemy By the way, in regards to that king slug enemy, you will meet him (rather two of him) for the first time about half way through the game. I skipped past some important conversation at the start of this stage. If you missed it too you need to beat them, basically, at the same time. The game gives you some leeway but if you are not quick enough, he will be revived. I suppose if you feel comfortable, this could be a good place to raise levels. Purposely focus on only beat one of the king slugs and let him revive and repeat. Myself, I just wanted to end that stage, personally. He will return several times later in the game. *** 5. Important tip on HP recovery *** You might be fine beating enemies and moving on to the next stage for the first 1/3rd of the game or even up until about the ½ way point. However, those larger enemies you start to meet in the second half of the game or even 4 to 6 smaller spell casting enemies you see in the last 1/3rd of the game might prove to be tougher than usual. Gang up on them, beat them, like usual. BUT, retreat AND cycle through the icon with a sword you see in the bottom menu. You will find the aforementioned sword icon, an icon with two swords, a shield icon, a running sprite and "zzz" at the bottom of the screen, in the menu and to the right. ZZZ will allow you to recover HP without having to use curing items. I can't stress this enough, SAVE your healing items!! Even if it slows the game down to a crawl, use “zzz” if you plan on beating this game in the long run. ***6. Important tip once you have a full party (of 24) *** Once you get a full party, 24 characters, keep playing as you normally do. IF one of them dies (which is likely) once you are at 24 characters, try to hold off on using a revive, you'll see why in a second. Sometimes taking off their equipment, throwing them to the fish (in the inventory, remember, skull head) and getting a new character (awaken a new demon) from blue stone is better than using a revive. you'll need as many revives as you can get in the final mission (20). You can find a demon statue as late as the 18th mission (one statue (and quite a few in 16/17 too. Even if you are not at 24 characters, you might want to drag around their dead corpse to the next stage. Yes, I am aware that sounds very dark, but hey, once you play this game, you’ll see how dark it is for yourself! Any way, lets say you have 16 characters. One dies midway through a stage. You are itching to use one of the three revives you currently have. Honestly, I would hold off. Save the game and see if your 15 characters can beat the rest of the stage. If you are able to, you have one of two possibilities in the next stage. 1. There are demon statues in the next level who can replace the dead character. Even more useful when a new demon statue is just replacing character #24 who died. 2. No demon statues? Maybe think of using the revive in this case. 3. If you come to a new stage with all 24 characters and see that there are several demon statues, you can afford to be a little more aggressive and take risks, by the way. Again, consider that blue demon statue as a “revive” of sorts in case one character does go down. However, until you have 24 characters, and if it is not too much of a hassle, restart the stage and try to complete it without a character dying. Save often, so if you do need to restart, maybe it does not have to be the entire stage. ***7. Food and healing*** Again, you want a balance between leveling up Richard enough and getting the other 23 enough levels. Remember, as you use your characters they will get hurt and sometimes you will have no choice but to heal them. When you are in the heat of battle and someone is getting hurt badly, I would not recommend the “run icon” on the menu at the bottom, it does not work that effectively, sadly. Instead, resort to healing (and this is more of the case in the second half of the game). So, healing your character, how? Every character has their preference for food (which heals). Use those preference foods to heal them more while avoiding the things they do not like as it will literally only heal, sometimes as little as 1 HP. Click on each individual character to get their stats and other useful info such as food preferences and what they do not like. This can be found at the top part of the menu after pushing the blue system button, remember? It is the dragon head. You get that nice overview of how all 24 characters are going and by clicking on one, can see all sorts of great things, including what they like to eat (or hate). ***Please see my chart in Part 15 for specific likes and dislikes of many of the characters in the game. You will sometimes get more “generic” (or traditional) healing items and MP restoring items. Since they can be used on all characters with equal success, it is better to save these and use the food items first. The generic healing items will have basic names like Mp medicine (or Mp medicine MX) Hp medicine (or HP medicine MX). These heal all characters equally the same and, along with the revive, are what you want to save the most. ***8. Planning your attack *** You can get pretty close to enemies without them reacting (poor AI). Save, test it out, if it does not work, reload. You will get the hang of it in regards to just how close you can get before they attack. This is especially useful when you need to move one group at a time through small spaces or corridors where enemies are waiting on the other side. HOWEVER, enemies in the last part of the last mission, 20, are very aggressive. You won't have time to sit around or make plans. Luckily mission 20 is in a pretty open space, so you can just use the three arrows key to send everyone down at the same time. However, I recommend making sure Richard’s group is at the front of this hoard which might require you to use the one arrow key to move his group to the front before switching back to the three arrows key. a. There are also trap items you can place, they need to be placed where one of your characters are standing. Honestly I did not use them at all, trap items include but are not limited to: 1. Lightning rod 2. Tiger trap 3. Land mine Magical items include but are not limited to (I did not use most of these): 1. Orb of the starved 2. Pow hammer 3. Horn (I used this in battle 20 during my first playthrough and remember it being useful, I think it is a power up item). 4. Magical banishing seal 5. Demon binding rope 6. Ancient symbol 7. G-destroyer 8. Bomb 9. Barrier ***9. Responding to a review of the game and hints on formation I want to respond to this quote from a review I found on gamefaqs: "From this, more issues arise. Even on a "Fast" scroll speed, the pointer still moves extremely slowly, #a. so in the heat of battle you find yourself lagging behind and watching your units die while you try to move your pointer over to a healing item. #b. You also cannot scroll the screen by pressing the pointer against the edges; you instead have to move the pointer to an edge, then press the A button, where it moves one grid space over. #c. And finally, it is extremely difficult to move your units through tight corridors." -----My response----- #a. You can pause the game and go to the blue “system” button found at the bottom of the screen, in the center, go to the skull head and heal and equip from that menu while still paused. If the hourglass is blue, everything is active. If the hourglass is red, the game is "paused", hence why I referred to this game as semi active before. You can pause the action. In fact as you have likely noticed, every battle starts this way, paused. Once you push start, the hour glass is blue (active). Your characters WILL take a beating BUT there is absolutely no reason to try and re-equip them or heal them "in the heat of the battle" while the hour glass is blue (active). PAUSE the game (red hourglass) anytime you want during the battle, go to the menu (the skull head) and take your time healing and (re)equipping. #b A solution I found to this is to, again, simply pause the game and go to the menu. There is a little map symbol in the bottom center. Cycle between the 6 different groups while in the map and have them move where you want to, or have them move as one 24 character party (remember the menu on the bottom of the screen, look for the button with the arrows - 3 arrows is everyone, all 24, one arrow is one party at a time). I found directing troops from the map, while paused to be a heck of a lot easier and you can move around the map quicker. Once everyone is directed, unpause, even while still on the map. Scroll on the map to where you want to see on the battlefield and switch from the pointer to the magnifying glass, push the part of the field you want to see with the magnifying glass and you will see what you want. Then unpause. #c. There is another button on the bottom menu, on the right, with dots (this symbolizes different formations) & you can cycle through 4 or 5 different formations. One looks like this: . . . . Another looks like this: . . . . And so on. IF you are in a square formation (like this): . . . . of course you won't be able to move through a tight corridor so switch the formation! Moving through tight corridors IS annoying and it takes patience and practice. It is better to sort out your different groups (which takes time) and then move them one unit at a time while in one of the first two formations I showed and move them to the other side (but just barely) of the tight corridor as usually this is still far away from enemies (again, something that just requires trial and error, save often). Line them up on the other side, but not in the way of the other groups passing by the corridor. Bring the next group to the other side of the tight corridor and so on. Often easier to manage from the map while pausing and unpausing and reloading if anything goes wrong. Admittedly, this is hard to do on the ice stage where spikes & enemies & a yeti boss awaits on the other side but can still be done, with patience. Unless you have wide open spaces don't move everyone together or characters will indeed get stuck in small spaces and tight corridors. This is where your micromanaging skills are put to the test. I found it better to move them group by group and use the three arrows to get them to one point when space was no longer tight. ***10. Effective use of time while the game is moving slow*** Another quote from a review I saw: "the game moves like molasses" It can be slow but this can be solved in part by looking for ways to be efficient. There are all things players of this game can identify with several times throughout: Units lose a lot of HP? Need to move a long ways to the next group of enemies? Don't want to use more healing items? God this game is slow! This can all be solved by pressing the button with the sword icon to cycle to "zzz" then move your characters. They will regain HP as they move without having to use your limited healing items and you will be making better use of your time! All four issues solved with one solution. Use "zzz" as much as you can even if you have to remain still (though that does not solve the issue of time). I often watched a youtube video while I waited for everyone to recover in later battles where I could not move much because the next group of enemies was so close (still need to recover that HP without using items!). Better to take things slow as I said/conserve items. Don’t forget to cycle back to the sword icon, or whatever you feel is appropriate, when ready to do battle again. ***11. Formations part 2 **** A formation I rarely used but some might find useful: . . . . When I wanted to level up Richard and another lucky character (I picked a Samurai) I used the above formation and I put Richard and the Samurai at the front, a magic attack mage (who got some of the MP mushrooms) as character 3 and a healer (who got most of the MP mushrooms). a. The desert stages A place I found somewhat risky but very useful in leveling up Richard (and the Samurai) was the desert like battle. Please note there are two battles in desert like environments and they can be found in the last ¼ of the game. The desert battle I speak of (it is NOT the one where each group has to step on 1 of 6 switches and get ambushed, NOT that one) You'll know what I am talking about when you get to THAT "ambush" battle. While on the topic of the ambush battle though, I always recommend scrolling around the map while paused (remember: you can get to the map via the blue “system” button at the bottom of the screen, in the middle). to just check it out. When you get to this particular battle you will see 6 different white switches - that is the "ambush" battle. BUT, to level up Richard, what I am talking about is another desert battle described below: In this "Richard-centered" battle, if you scroll around the map while paused, you will see various pedestals at the north and the middle pedestal has a locked gate behind it and a river near the pedestals too. You will also see various treasures you can't currently get surrounded on all sides by yellow brick or stone structure. you defeat one group of enemies, get a red or yellow or "twany" ball, bring it to a pedestal and open up another area with more enemies and another treasure with another color ball. In this stage I take my time and level up Unit #1 (Richard, samurai, attack mage, healing mage) with the above formation. it is risky, again, since you are facing all sorts of different bosses and enemies that take up 4 squares from previous stages. But if done with patience and a lot of "zzz" in between unlocking the next group of enemies with the colored ball, it can work and Richard gets a lot stronger. I found that when I rushed them with all 24 characters in this stage, for some reason in this stage more than any other, too many characters died so I reset and tired with just one group and it worked better. By using this is a specific battle to level Richard, I escaped with no deaths. HOWEVER, when you go to unlock the last treasure, I had everyone go to battle because the last two groups of enemies proved to be too much for just one group. Again, most of the stage can be beaten with patience and a very strong first unit. As for the ambush battle, I did it differently in both of my playthroughs. The first playthrough, after they all stepped on the switches and got ambushed (one of the more stressful moments of the game) I paused the game (red hourglass) and pushed the button with the arrows to have three arrows and directed everyone to the far left. I got lucky and got all 24 to the left and systematically, slowly, killed off one group at a time by directing all 24 to one group, than another until all 6 groups were killed. On my second playthrough for whatever reason this tactic did not work for me, not all of my troops were cooperating, even with the "run" button pushed. You can have your 6 different groups fighting 6 different battles all at once BUT it is very likely and recommended you will be pausing a lot to check the status of everyone and heal from the menu often. Pause all the time and go into the menu and go to the top center area to get a quick overview of everyones status. This is a battle where you will likely use a lot of healing items if the first strategy I mentioned does not work out. That is a strategy I also used, to decent success in the "space" battle much later in the game (at the very “top of the tower” as well as the last part of battle 19 when everyone is finally together. ***12. Small tip for battle 19*** Battle 19 is also very long. For part of battle 19 your troops are split into two groups of 12. BTW, when everyone is split in two groups in battle 19, once again, use zzz to fully recover before using the colored ball (serves as a key, forgot to mention that above) to move on to the next section that has more enemies. Your two groups of 12 will have to go through several battles while separated before finally joining back together at the top of the map. ***13. Note on battle 20*** This is the final battle! Congrats, you are so close but this is a long battle! There are three parts to this battle too so don’t celebrate when you beat the huam foe or the snake looking “final boss” that comes from this evil human. After the snake the background changes again and more enemies appear. These are the toughest of the tough and will cast tons of spells. Try to have four of your groups focus on beating the normal enemies/bosses from the previous chapters while your two strongest try to take out the huge final boss. You have hopefully saved tons of healing items and revives, now is the time to use them as you will need them! If Richard is at least level 45 and you have two solid parties of characters all over level 40, you should have no issue. Use all of your MP restoring items on the healing mages, as a priority. If you feel comfortable, use a few on the attack mages as they help to take out the regular enemies quickly. Again, you will have a lot of deaths. The first time I beat this I was left with 3 or 4 characters. The second time I still had about a dozen. ***14. General Tips and information about Richard *** Final game stats for Richard. Aim for stats around these numbers: 1st Playthrough--2nd Playthrough Level 47---------Level 45 HP 290-----------HP 270 Attack 285-------Attack 221 AC 36------------AC 42 Halberd----------King’s sword King’s shield----King’s shield King’s armor-----King’s armor King’s helmet----King’s helmet Gold Gauntlet----Gold Gauntlet Blue ring--------Blue Ring ****Mushrooms**** Speaking of stats, in this game you will sometimes get different colored mushrooms. These are stat raising mushrooms that, depending on color raise HP, MP, both HP and MP, Attack or AC. Other than one type of mushroom, every other mushroom you get, give to Richard. THE ONLY MUSHROOM not to give to him is the MP. Pick a favorite magic caster, preferably a healer, and give them the MP mushroom. As far as companions to go along with Richard in his team, Musashi was incredibly useful in my second playthrough. Hanzo in my first. As far as the actual stats, not sure if the Halberd is just much stronger than the King’s sword or those two extra levels made a huge difference between the first and second playthrough, but wow, 285 strength vs 221. Still 221 was fine enough to beat the last boss in my second playthrough. ***15. Companions of Richard ****Including prefered and hated food and possible advanced classes**** This is, by no means, an exhaustive or complete list of the many allies you will come across in this game. I also do not have the levels you find them. However, I hope that it will serve some use in helping other players to potentially plan ahead for the type of party they might want. More than one advanced class is possible. For example, the same character could be a necromancer or a summoner. Character--Advanced class--Favorite food--Hated food Richard----Human-----------Ham------------Arm Musashi----Samurai---------Sushi----------Ribs Hanzo------Ninja-----------Sushi----------No preference Daman------Dullahan--------No preference--No preference Theo-------Summoner--------Lobster--------Cake Leon-------Titan-----------Beef-----------Flower Babuel-----Cyclops---------Arm------------Ham Jubei------Samurai---------Sushi----------Ribs Celia------Witch-----------Cake-----------Lobster Mauricio---Dragon----------Chicken--------Bone Saizo------Ninja-----------Sushi----------No preference Ishmel-----Spectre---------No preference--No preference Enrique----Necromancer-----Lobster--------Cake Gomez------Titan-----------Beef-----------Flower Nueno------Necromancer-----Lobster--------Cake Alfredito--Dragon----------Chicken--------Bone Pancho-----Cyclops---------Arm------------Ham Rosen------Necromancer-----Lobster--------Cake Milly------Witch-----------Cake-----------Lobster Gorgonia---Titan-----------Beef-----------Flower Tito-------Dullahan--------No preference--No preference Rodriguez--Cyclops---------Arm------------Ham Raphael----Dragon----------Chicken--------Bone Machito----Spectre---------No preference--No preference Oscar------Summoner--------Lobster -------Cake Toni-------Witch-----------Cake-----------Lobster Francisco--Dullahan--------No preference--No preference Isabella---Witch-----------Cake-----------Lobster Ernesto----Dragon----------Chicken--------Bone *Apple is another food item. **Please be aware there is usually more than one possibility for advanced classes for each character. ***Above you can see at least 28 companions. Richard can have a maximum of 23 at anyone time. That means 5 possible revive replacements if needed, at least. (Remember, if you are dragging around a dead body and come across a blue statue, better to unequip that body, throw it to the fish (I know, morbid) and use the blue statue to avoid using a revive. Again, maybe you are tired of hearing this, but conserve those revives!!) Unless you are really attached to a certain character, then by all means use one. There are also class changing items that will help your player grow into a new, stronger class. Including but not limited to: 1. Blue Crest - turns character into summoner 2. Flying wings 3. Red crest 4. Dragon’s tusk 5. Executioner’s axe 6. Deadly claws 7. Symbol of darkness 8. Blue talisman 9. Titans symbol - Turns character into titan Good luck, hope this helped and if you have anything to add to this, please feel free to ask questions: carld18@yahoo.com