Dragon Lapis is a retro style JRPG with a unique “growth plates” system. You find, equip and unlock various growth plates throughout the game, which also unlock jobs. The story is quite involved and some of the cut scenes (which are essentially characters speaking endless text to one another) are rather lengthy. There’s one main quest and 15 sidequests.
Job plates let you increase stats and learn skills. Jobs come in three levels, and each level is ranked up five times. Finishing a job plate also gets you an extra stat bonus. There are some special plates only available for LLP currency (see below) but they’re not needed to win the game. You’ll eventually accumulate too many job plates and need to ditch some.
In terms of eq: try to ensure that every character eventually has an MP regen item. Then you can just endlessly blast skills without ever running out of MP. It might mean you use a weaker wand or robe than one you later find, but it’s worth it.
There are three types of currency in the game:
- Gold – not far into the game you’ll have more than you’ll ever need, so don’t stress about saving it at the start. I never needed to buy any consumables, in fact by the end game I had maxed most of them out because I didn’t really need to use them either
- Coins – you get these from converting Magestones to coins, then some items are available. I never found I needed to buy any of these
- LLP – you pick these up through battles at a very low rate, and you can also IAP them. If you unlock the game/go ad-free, you get 600 LLP. The only thing you really need to buy (since you’ll find pretty much everything else) is the Critical Ring which is lethal. By the last stages of the game, I had earned enough through the game alone to buy the ring (so as I had unlocked, I could have afforded two, but I only bought one).
If you complete the Goddess Tower when that’s available, you’ll be effectively overpowered for the rest of the game. The Heroes’ Grave was a breeze after that, and the end game fights were one hit.
Another tip: when you finish the game and it saves, reload that save. Because there’s one more enemy still to fight.