Ashton is our next character, and he is rather interesting. He's a warrior like Claude, but unlike Claude he uses two swords, and generally favors offense over defense. He is mainly known for his distinctive sword techniques, especially his "ultimate" technique which looks and acts a lot like a big spell(without the downsides of one, thankfully).
Ashton isn't found easily, you first need to overhear a conversation in Harley about a dragon in the Salva Mines, then return back there. Once you do, you can enter a portion of the mines that was formerly off limits, and find him there. The entire process is time sensitive, so you need to pay attention to the map and event triggers.
This portion of the map has considerably stronger monsters, featuring lesser versions of the monsters inhabiting the Ell continent and the Sacred Grounds of Linga. Most dangerous of these are the jellies, being quite strong with their shots and having a chance to detonate when struck. They often come in large groups, making it very difficult to maneuver past them. Their detonation is especially dangerous because it tends to spit damaging shots in every direction, and up close multiple of them can hit, often meaning complete annihilation!
The dungeon itself isn't too long, but the encounters can take a while to chew through, especially since your party is likely underequipped to fight them.
At its end, you meet him in a cutscene and recruit him. And yes, he does have two dragons on his back! It's a silly little bit of his story. Unfortunately they don't really effect gameplay much, which is a shame, they really could've gone places with a twin dragon swordsman.
GALAXY
Ashton starts out fairly well equipped, though some of this gear will be replaced before long. His Twin Fury is weak, but can be easily replaced with a reward from the local weapon store. Which is available right after recruiting him, so that's what his starting weapon is, effectively. But once again, you need to pay attention, else you can easily miss it! Weird bit of design there.
Skill wise, Ashton is a completely blank slate. No actual skills pre learnt, almost no starting talents, just 200 SP to spend. Same with his combat skills, only he gets 130 BP there.
He does start with his first three moves, which is a nice gesture on the game's part. It would be disappointing to have to still grind them out after going through all of this work. I will be examining them in combat of course, but not before assigning him some skills!
Basic character building routine for any character: max Determination, invest a little into all the character skills, and get Godspeed up. Of course, 200 SP and 130 BP was rather paltry for this, Ashton was intended to do some sidequests before getting to speed. Thankfully, these are optional and not required for permanently recruiting him, so I'll be skipping them, but the lack of character points did hurt him! Not too much though, as this was still the early game, relatively speaking.
His toolset seemed pretty competent and flexible for now - he had a medium ranged stab in Twin Thrust, a quick push forward in Cross Slash, and a variation of his regular attack that launched a long ranged icicle in Northern Cross. That latter move was quite slow however, and often not practical for use. Often he just spammed Twin Thrust, falling back to his regular attack when he ran out of MP. The latter was fairly fast and easy to use, and chained quite well, like Claude's regular attack. I just wished it had more range, his swords seemed pretty short.
A flying stingray encounter showed a rather glaring flaw with his moves - none of them had much vertical range! His only reasonable way of damaging them was jumping up in the air to slice them, and that put him in some dangerous positions! Thankfully they weren't particularly hard enemies, at least not after a few levels of Herbology, but it's something I would have to keep in mind for the future.
One unexpected advantage of his blank slate start was that item creation was actually quite profitable for him - he had many opportunities to discover new talents and reap their big bonuses in character points. Each talent was worth 100 SP and BP! That made building him up relatively painless, and in no time, he reached level 6 Customization with the aid of a Rainbow Diamond. That let him forge Shield Swords, and with some gambling on his spare pair of swords, he made a Twin Needles set too. At 500 attack, they would last a long time. I also noticed that his swords seemed to give him boosts to hit and evade stats, which made thematic sense and would definitely help him out in combat too.
Past Lacuer, Ashton unlocked Piercing Blades. These threw three projectiles in a wide arc, and while they didn't do much damage, they did have some good range on them. What's more, they could stack up close for some good damage AND shield damage. Wow! I would definitely consider upgrading it once he was done building up his core skills.
The Lacuer continent up to Linga was a breeze. Ashton got Customization up to level 7, and forged the Double Smashers. The Sacred Grounds of Linga continued to be a cakewalk, he was a pretty swift killer! He was also quite evasive, especially with the Escape Shift battle formation. His normal attacks were definitely his most effective asset, as they took the least time to execute and he didn't really need the effects of his special abilities yet.
Speaking of which, he unlocked another one of those after the Sacred Grounds. This looked cool and kind of silly, making him teleport and slash his target twice. The animation seemed a bit too long for my tastes, but he did seem to go invincible during the teleport, and it did let him close the distance quickly. I would certainly keep it in mind for future battles. So far, his special moves had followed a general pattern of providing some utility over his regular attack without superseding it directly, which I was glad to see. This meant that he would have more options overall in combat instead of being forced into a few "good" moves.
He continued mowing down everything in the Hoffman Ruins. He was just too strong, and not even the dreaded archer ladies could stop him! He eventually got to Customization level 8, and that let him craft his slew of ultimate weapons:
The Mephistofar raised his HP by 30%, which would be handy for any scenarios requiring defense. The Holy Cross was just a very powerful sword. The best of the lot was the Gemini, which had worse stats than either of the two but granted an extra hit innately, along with being light elemental. He also crafted two Rings of Might from some Rainbow Diamonds earned off challenge missions, while most of his crafted items list was some bizarre mix of Claude and Celine's items, these were extremely useful!
With these, his offenses became outlandishly powerful, and he simply started slicing through everything! The Halfnyxes died in a flash. The monsters of the Ell continent fared little better. Cynne could've been a bit tricky, as he resisted all elements. However, the Tri Shift 2 battle formation pretty much negated that.
In no time, Ashton reached Energy Nede. His exploits there shall be covered next time. See you then!
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