Sumez wrote:Does "dump INT" mean dump a lot of points into it, or ignore it altogether?
Bonus question: Is Dungeon Explorer II playable in Japanese without understanding the text? I have the game, but it's the jap version since the US one is impossible to find.
You should ignore INT. Agility makes you move faster, which is important. Attack makes you do more damage, which is really important. Strength/Power gives you more HP, which is nice. Intelligence improves your magic, which depends on an unreliable resource and often isn't useful anyway. A lot of the best magic abilities, like healing spells and damage buffs are useful even with no investment in intelligence. It isn't viable at all to build a magic attacker who uses attack as their dump stat. I haven't played every character extensively so it's possible I've missed something, but I don't think it's worth raising INT unless everything else is maxed.
You could definitely finish DEII without understanding the text. NPC interactions are minimal and the item system is as simple as can be. Just keep exploring areas you haven't cleared and you'll get there. Probably the biggest obstacle will be a part where a soldier is blocking your path, and to get past him, you need to read a book in the next town and then return. The book in question is glowing, you won't miss it as long as you check every house.
You might have a hard time with side quests and finding weapon upgrades. For a lot of that stuff you need to bring a certain character to the right NPC. The character-specific areas are usually really short and come with laughably bad rewards so it's no real loss. The exception is the dwarf's area which is an entire side dungeon with a boss and a gem and everything. I wonder if the original intention was for every character to have a proper dungeon, but they just ran out of time. Anyway weapon upgrades and class upgrades aren't vital but you don't want to miss them. All of the initial characters' class upgrades become available at the same time. Around 2/3 of the way through the game you'll beat a boss who drops both a standard gem and a unique orb. There's a side dungeon near the beginning of the game that ends with a sort of ice palace with a big dude on a throne you can talk to. Take the orb back to the big dude and he'll give your current character their class upgrade. If you're playing as one of the unlockable characters and want their weapon I guess you'd just talk to everyone until you get it. Princess Miriam's item is in the castle you started at, everyone else's is either near to or after the point when they join.
If you can't tell what your stats are in the japanese version, it goes like this:
Yellow: Speed
Blue: Damage
Purple: HP
Green: Don't do it