Lost Dimension character breakdown: Himeno Akatsuki and Toya Orbert

Following last week's Lost Dimension character breakdown of main protagonist Sho Kasugai, this week it's the turn of Himeno Akatsuki and Toya Orbert.  Himeno is a very cold fish, despite her fiery powers, while Toya is a rather entitled master of magnetism and electricity.  Read on as we discover their strengths and delve into some of their best skills :)

When I first began playing Lost Dimension, I liked Himeno a lot.  The initial level is set up so that her skills are likely to be the first you'll use. The fact she can set her enemies ablaze with her pyrokinesis ability is also pretty cool.

Some of her later powers are incredibly useful too, provided your allies make sure to keep their distance.  Here are my favourite of Himeno’s skills:

Burn: This is Himeno's first available skill and is a useful single-enemy attack.

Damage is high considering its low GP and Sanity cost, plus for a basic attack it really looks kind of cool :)

Ignition: This is a useful passive skill (and if you read last week’s blog you’ll know I’m a big fan of passive skills!) If you continue to use combustion skills in succession, the damage from those skills grows higher each time, once Ignition is unlocked.

This can be extremely useful against larger enemies who will typically take several turns to kill and means you can mob-rush them solo with Himeno on later levels, or with someone else who stacks damage in a similar way, like George.

Icicle Strike: This is a really great attack because it has a decent chance to debuff the enemy it's targeting.  It’s also not too expensive.

Lava Burst / Volcanic Eruption: These two are maybe my favourite area attacks of the game. Both are very cheap considering the area of effect they have.

They hit hard and can be moved some distance away, meaning you can attack from behind even when characters are in front of you. I love these two!

As you can see, Himeno has some great powers, but she does have her drawbacks.  She’s quite slow in moving and has seriously limited range with her regular knife attacks, which also aren’t all that powerful unless you manually buff them, so over longer fights she may have less impact unless you plan ahead with GP/SAN replenishing items.

On to Toya now, who I find to be most useful in the early part of the game.

He’s initially very important as he has a decent range on his regular attacks and some early skills that help engage over longer ranges. Here are his best skills:

Coil Shot: This is Toya's first available skill and is a useful single-enemy attack with a very long range.

Early on, when your movement stat is low, it’s really useful, allowing you to end battles a turn earlier, for that elusive S rating.

Thunderbolt: This is a pretty powerful attack with a chance to Bind enemies who are hit, fixing them in place.

It’s also boosted once you’ve raised your Electron Master skill. The fact it’s also acquired fairly early helps out.

Tempest: This psychic based area attack is more expensive to use than Thunderbolt, but in busy areas it’s great, because unlike Thunderbolt it won’t hit allied characters inside its range.

If everyone’s bunched together with enemies it’s well worth the extra cost.

High Voltage/Static Charge: If you find Toya at a loose end then cast Static Charge which will boost your passive ‘High Voltage’ skill up one level, boosting your Skill attacks and cheapening their cost.

Over longer levels this can stack up very nicely and I find myself using it a fair bit, as I often employ Toya further back than the rest of my team.

You can see that Himeno and Toya approach combat in very different ways and they can complement each other well.  I find myself using them both regularly, especially Himeno who’s become a firm favourite of mine.

Next week I’ll be looking at two more very interesting characters: Mana and Nagi. See you then.

(Blog written by Ghostlight Ltd. All screenshots are taken from the PS3 version of Lost Dimension.)