The walkthroughs available at www.gamefaqs.com are pretty good for getting you through "Saiyuki: Journey West" from Koei for the PlayStation. However, here are a few things that I noticed while playing which might help you too. 1. You don't have to accept the first character given to you when you are placing multiple characters for a battle. Usually this is Sanzo, and you may not want him/her to fight in this one. Just press the triangle button, and you'll get the character selection wheel, now with a free choice of characters. However, in some battles you are forced to use a particular character, so this trick won't work then. 2. If you don't like where you placed a character, but before you've placed all of them, just rotate the wheel to the greyed-out character and press the X button to remove them from the map for placement again. 3. The jobs available at the various Posts are an easy way to earn gold, and fight some (usually) easy battles which might even score you bonus items. While I didn't see this during Chapter 1, during Chapter 2 I noticed that the bandits showed up less often after I'd done several delivery missions. This made going for even the highest payoff deliveries much quicker. 4. During the bandit battles (usually they're bandits) that might appear while you're on your way to the given destination for a delivery job, you are allowed to turn Were. And there are items hidden on these battlefields. Not often very good ones, but I got a speed potion and ring of speed from the "Sham Merchant" mission out of Kucha. 5. You get Were points for every battle except Dojo ones, even if you never turn Were during them. The bonus is apparently higher when you quickly finish the battle, and often it's much higher than the base amount for that battle. 6. If you have an analog controller with a left joystick, make sure analog mode is on, and you can use that joystick for easier overworld map movement. It can also be used for battle map cursor movement, but that's not as convenient as the directional arrows for me. 7. You get experience both for hitting enemies with weapons or spells, and for casting beneficial spells on your characters. In many cases, particularly when you've got higher level characters than the enemies, you get more for the spells on yourself. These spells, such as Cure, Heal, and Ironskin, are extremely useful for building up your character levels. Cure can be counted on for 10 experience every time, even if there's nothing wrong with who it's cast upon. Experience for damaging enemies gets a bonus if you do extra damage, such as by attacking from above or the side or rear or using an "opposite" element spell. The experience seems to be based on the levels involved, and the bonus is due to both the situation (+1 for side attack, +2 usually for back attack) and level difference between character and enemy. When your characters are lower levels than the enemies, such as when the two little girls first join your party, they can get huge experience for hitting the enemy. Later, you'll find that only 2 or 3 experience is awarded for similar strikes once the level is higher. 8. A minor source of experience is through Were changes and Were attacks. You don't get much for these, as the Were form is apparently considered higher level than the character. 9. When a character goes Were, any damage already suffered is applied proportionally to the Were form's (higher) HP. Similarly, when the Were form changes back, damage suffered will appear in the same proportion on the character. 10. You may have already noticed that you can't directly Heal a Were. However, Sanzo's Guardians (Mother and Emperor) will heal up a Were just like all the other characters on the map. 11. Some of the special Post missions cause new locations to appear on the world map. So don't worry if you don't know where to go when you accept the mission. A new road to the new location will appear when you exit the town with the Post. The road is colored gold like all the other "allowed" roads, so you just have to look at the map for new places to know where to go. 12. If you don't want any of the jobs offered at the Post right now, just leave it and come back to refresh the list. Some of the special jobs take a while to show up. 13. While the counter is showing the changing numbers of what your Were experience was for a battle, or how much gold you got, you can press the X button to skip to the end. 14. The "Aikanki Band" Post mission to Wusun River includes a "guest" Vagrant. He'll probably get killed really quickly, and there's almost nothing you can do about it because you can't Heal him. You're also forced to use only Goku and Gojo for this battle, so they should be pretty capable before you go into this mission. 15. Regardless of the facing that you put in for a character at the end of their turn, characters will turn to face their attacker if attacked from the side, even if it misses. 16. In Chapter 2 "Westland", all the town background graphics look like they're in Afghanistan, even Yuimen. However, all the shop people are still the same Chinese faces from Chapter 1. And whenever you make a delivery into a town, or have a sequence showing an event in a town you just entered, the architecture still all looks Chinese. 17. The "Maze Hall" battle with the rolling ball has random arrangements of bridges that raise and lower each turn. Due to incredibly bad luck on my first try, when 3 characters got paralyzed at once, which were 3 out of the 4 that knew Cure, and Sanzo eventually died, I had to play this battle again. 18. In that same "Maze Hall" battle, if anyone is on one of those bridges at the end of their turn, then that bridge will not drop or change. 19. In case you hadn't figured it out from the "--" for Retreats for Sanzo in the battle results, if Sanzo dies then the game is immediately over. Anybody else, since they're all Were, in the party just drop out (Retreat) until that battle is over. 20. Maybe it was just me, pushing Son Goku so far up the middle, but in that Maze Hall battle Tigra always just stood in the same place and got run over by the ball nearly every turn. Annoying that it does only 92 damage to Tigra, but over 150 to Goku! And Goku was a higher level than Tigra too. 21. The enemy AI doesn't notice that other enemies have been Charmed. In the battle with Taurus, I watched a Lizardman rush to the rescue of a badly damaged (and Charmed) Ghoul. In return for getting a WaterHeal, the Ghoul then moved around and attacked the Lizardman. Priceless. 22. There's the typical opposing elements in this game, except that with 5 it's not so easy to see which ones get the benefits. I got into the habit of putting spells of several elements on characters whenever possible, and looking through all of them whenever I could cast a spell to see which ones made the enemies show up "blue". You don't get extra healing for casting Heal on a Life character, so all I care about is when do the enemies light up red (less than normal effect) or blue (better than normal effect). Element: Life Earth Water Fire Gold ] Color: green brown blue red gold ]- Attacker's spell element Defender is: ----- ----- ----- ---- ----- Life none red none none blue Earth blue none red none none Water none blue none red none Fire none none blue none red Metal red none none blue none The red or blue tint indicating a penalty/bonus may be tough to see on some monsters. And it only appears for all enemies when you have a red/yellow highlight for target squares. For those spells like RockGuard that create a green highlight on the target squares, only the enemies in the range will get the tinting. And if the Poison or Numb status is already inflicted on an enemy it's almost impossible to see any extra tint. So it helps to know some simple rules (or look at the above table) for how to get extra damage out of your character's spells, which translates into larger bonus experience. In general, the next element clockwise gets the blue damage (+20%) & experience bonus, and the next element counter-clockwise gets the red damage penalty. The element difference between your character and the enemy is also the reason for small differences in the predicted damage values for the normal weapon attack. It's very obvious when you fight Dojo battles against enemies that differ only by element. 23. When using Genshi's MagicSink against an Earth enemy, the bonus means that Genshi can gain more MP than the enemy ever had. 24. Side attack will do +10% to predicted damage. Back attack will do +20% to predicted damage. Critical hits occur based on the attacker's Luck value, and can do much larger damage than the predicted value. 25. Spells that target multiple enemies often have a built-in penalty to the predicted damage. Only enemies that are tinted blue might get extra damage. 26. Once you enter Chapter 3 "India" it becomes annoying to still see Chinese portraits for all shopkeepers, and the same background images while in the shops. At least the isometric graphics for towns are different, and there are some Indian portraits shown. 27. Son Goku and Taurus have special actions that have no element. For Son Goku, Cloud is something that unfortunately won't get better - have a longer range for instance - with practice. For Taurus, his Levitate is a bit tricky. Maybe you just need to try it several times, or raise his level, but it doesn't have a 100% chance of working. The first time I tried it, while standing on grass in a Dojo battle, I got a "Miss" result with no experience. After raising Taurus a level, I tried it again and it worked for 10 experience. All Levitate does is remove elevation restrictions on Taurus' movement. Without something like boots of striding, his 3 movement per turn makes him a poor choice for most battles. (Other character's specials are either invoked as a Spell even though they're a physical attack, or they're completely passive like Gojo's and Reikan's WaterMeld. Arrowstrike is a strange exception, in that you never invoke it on Kinrei, you just have to meet the requirements for it to occur during Ginrei's attack.) 28. During what is supposed to be an extremely brief interval between the end of the battle against Taurus and the next one against Pyric, Sanzo's staff changes description to "Wooden staff", and its weapon level drops to 1. You can still see all the Guardians on the Were/Guardian screen though. And if you use Sanzo in a Dojo battle, the attack animation still looks like the same staff. But it definitely isn't as good a staff as before, so you'll be glad to ditch this shoddy replacement. 29. Diary entry #37 could be missed by some people, like the person who wrote the Diary FAQ. It's for an optional battle with Prince Reikan and some other enemies at Helmet Peak. It has the same title "Followed Again" as what's shown for #40, and the same text except for "Helmet Peak" instead of "Mt. Cloud". Because you can only fight this battle once, although at different locations, you can't ever get ALL the Diary entries in Chapter 2. The missing #41 could be a third location for that same optional battle, but I don't know for sure. 30. It bothers me that I didn't get Diary #28 either, unless it's a girl version of #29. 31. I missed both #53 and #54 in my Diary, so #53 might be an alternate way of learning about Dragon Cliff without reaching Tokhara first. 32. Sanzo's special attack "EarthBow" from the Luna Guardian does NOT do extra damage for being higher than the enemy. 32. During battle 31 against Deva, if Sanzo attacks Deva then during Deva's turn you get this dialogue: Deva: You've grown. Sanzo: What!? Deva: Never mind. Forget I said anything. 33. Characters and enemies will all "slump" when their HP drops below 25% of their normal maximum. This works even for bosses with "??? HP" shown. Everyone still fights the same when "slumped" though. 34. I was finally able to unlock the final Dojo Master battle with Genshi at level 38, Taurus at 39, and everybody else at level 40 or higher (Ryorin at 51, Sanzo 48). So I'm not sure what kind of checking there is against lowest level in the party, since you'd think I'd have had to get Genshi to 39 for the Port City Dojo to show the Master battle. 35. The last few special Post missions at Port Town in Chapter 3 will appear only after you have completed the battle at Kannaoj. This includes the one that gets you the Clone scroll for Goku, that is if you also completed all the Aikanki Band missions in Chapter 2. 36. Save the game in Chapter 3 before you enter the Thunder Temple location. You'll have to fight the next two battles, which end Chapter 3 and officially start Chapter 4, without any opportunity to change equipment. So you won't get to try out the treasures you got until you see the Heaven (Chapter 4) map. There are no stores in here, so I hope you don't need anything you could have gotten in India. Kind of silly that you still get money from fights in here, because once you enter Heaven there's no way to spend it. 37. The very last battle is pretty strange. One thing the FAQs don't explain is that you'll need to move the characters from the "back" to the "side" so they can actually use their normal attacks. Even with a weapon range of 3, like for Goku, you can't do a "back" attack. 38. Once you've completed the final battle and seen the credits, then you can invoke the "Bonus" option at the game's main menu. This shows you the BGM and movies menus.