My thoughts and feelings on the gameplay and story of Eight Dog Chronicles. Also, I was wrong—we get to roll for Tametomo with this event, not two years from now. I’ve since updated my article on Traum to reflect that.
Table of Contents
Story
The story of Eight Dog Chronicles reminded me of Yoroiden Samurai Troopers (known here in the States as Ronin Warriors). The concept of eight virtues represented as beads, possessed by each dog. In YST, the armors represent a virtue. In the case of the titular five warriors, they possesses a bead that summons their armor, which is engraved with the kanji of the virtue that armor represents.
The big difference here is that there were nine virtues in Samurai Troopers—each representing an armor and an element.
Comparison to YST/RW notwithstanding, in this minute Singularity, our nemesis is Minamoto-no-Tametomo. This is our opportunity to square up with him after he was defeated by Astolfo in Traum.
In this event, Archer Servants bring a damage bonus with them for reasons that become obvious as the story progresses. While the protagonist is off with Omichi gathering up the dog warriors, the Storm Border has to defend against additional attacks. To do so, Da Vinci rather cleverly comes up with a means of deploying our own Archers to defend against Tametomo’s attacks. At the end, it falls to William Tell to deflect the final attack—a Servant that we’ve seen very little of since he was introduced in Lostbelt 4.
While the Storm Border defense is happening, we’re running around the Singularity gathering up beads for each dog warrior. I absolutely loved Lobo and Barghest’s role in this event. Every time Lobo was on screen, I kept thinking “aww good doggo.” And we end up seeing a softer side to Barghest that was only hinted at in Lostbelt 6. It’s nice to know that despite how Lostbelt 6 ended for her, at least she got a happy ever-after in Chaldea.
Another surprise was the inclusion of Izo in this event—whom we rarely see outside of GUDAGUDA events. While it was nice to see him outside of GUDAGUDA, it was hard—for me, at least—to figure out what his purpose was, other than to provide a foil to Bakin whenever he took over Omichi’s body.
The boss-fights were about what you’d expect from an event—gimmicky but not very difficult. I took out Tametomo by having Scathach (NP4) repeatedly impale him on each break-bar. The final fight against Bakin was anti-climatic—for that fight, I brought out the Valkyrie-killer/murder-loli (Jack the Ripper)—whom I now have at NP4, thanks to EX-rank Gacha luck from the Traum summons campaign.
I also managed to summon Charlemagne—who I’m going to level up once I’m done farming this event.
Event Game Play
Points ladder—’nuff said. While I’ve said that I hate points ladders, they seem to have gotten better with the events that require them in the last year or so. Namely, to me, it looks like point drop-rates without event CEs have definitely gotten better so the amount of farming needed to both purchase those bonus-drop CEs and farming the points needed to continue the story isn’t as arduous as it was in the past.
Or maybe it’s just because the double-Castoria farming setup makes points farming easier.
There’s another dynamic that involves expeditions. As the story progresses and you add each dog to your party, you can send them out on expeditions to gather more points and ascension mats, which range anywhere from 6 to 12 hours long.
Gacha Luck: ——
Nah, not this time. I only rolled for event CEs. I don’t have the money to whale for Bakin or Tametomo. I would have liked to roll for Bakin and I’m sure I’ll get a chance in the future, and as for Tametomo—not interested. I already have a pretty solid line-up of Archers.
Clairvoyance EX: Future Events
Looking ahead, we might be in for a dead week or two. The next event coming up looks to be the release of Main Interlude: Ōoku, which I’ll probably skip. After that, it’ll be the 7th Anniversary Event, and then the Summer Event (Arctic Summer World). Summer—we have the welfare Servant, Valkyrie (Assassin) who possesses an AoE Arts NP. Similar to the Halloween 2019 event, there are three versions to choose from so choose wisely 😉 Somewhere in there is Advanced Quest 7—and I need to get off my ass and finish the other Advanced Quests.
Later 😉