Is there a guide out there for the God Eater games? I'm starting to get a general feel for the combat, but I still have no idea what stuff like burst gauge or bond breaks or whatever are
Feel free to ask questions here, and I will try my best to answer.
To start with, bond breaks are when you do enough damage to a specific body part of a Aragami that you break it. For example, hitting a Kongou in the face will eventually break its face. If you know anything about Monster Hunter, it is the exact same thing as the wounding mechanic from that game. Most Aragami have three body parts that can be bond broken, but which exact parts those are vary wildly, even within sub-species of the same Aragami type. Successfully breaking a bond will cause a few different things to happen. Usually, a broken part will take more damage, become more vulnerable to a wider range of attack attributes, or become less effective of a weapon and thus weaken the Aragami's attacks, but there are a lot of exceptions to that trend. More importantly, breaking bonds gets you loot when the battle ends. Each broken bond gives you one extra material drop, and the "Bond Break Bonus" support skill will increase that even more. Also, you need to break a certain minimum number of bonds in a battle to get "tickets" after the battle.
As for the actual process of breaking bonds... that can get complicated. Breakable parts, like any other part of an Aragami, have their own distinct strengths and weaknesses based on the five main attack attributes in the game. These attributes are sundering, melee piercing, melee crushing, ranged piercing, and ranged crushing. Despite the similar names, it is important to note that the ranged and melee versions of those attacks are not equivalent, and some parts can be strong to melee piercing and vulnerable to ranged piercing, to use one example. Basically, you just need to learn what parts of an Aragami are breakable, and target it with the attributes that inflict the most damage. If you pull that off, the bond will break eventually. Because this process is heavily dependent on weapon attributes, which weapons you bring to a fight will determine which bonds you can easily break. Another way of looking at that is that you need to bring the right weapons in order to break particular bonds.
As a side note, the four types of elemental damage (blaze, freeze, spark, and divine), don't really factor into bond breaking or hitting enemy weakpoints very much. Using the right element will boost your overall damage, but doesn't change the effectiveness of your attacks against individual parts.
As for your question about the burst gauge, I will just link to
a massive post I made in the God Eater: Ressurection thread where I explained the basics of Devour, Burst, and Aragami Bullets. However, you will have to ignore the part towards the bottom that discuss Predator Styles, since that system was unique to GE:R and is not present in GE2. God Eater 2 uses an older version of Devour and Control Units which is more limiting. However, all of the other points are still valid.
What are some good bullet recipes?
You know, I would happily answer that question, but I am still adjusting to the big differences between the GE2 bullet editor and the GE:R bullet editor. Apparently, GE:R featured a really nice iterative improvement on GE2's version of the bullet editor, so there are a lot of differences. For one, GE2 lacks some of my favorite customization pieces, like the "improved damage over distance" sniper module or the "gain power over time" orb. A bigger problem is the insane requirement of always starting with a rapid fire bullet for Assault guns or Sniper bullet for Sniper guns. But I suppose I am digressing...
Basic bullet editor advice:
1) Everything has an OP cost, so a good bullet only pays for what it needs. Unless you are fighting at really long range, paying extra for a "long" bullet is wasteful when you can just use a "short" bullet instead.
2) Complexity makes things less efficient. Damage scales down with each hit made by a single bullet program, so you want to minimize the number of hits that precede the strongest part of the attack. Unless you are using a fancy bullet delivery system, it is just more efficient to fire two bullets rather than fire a bullet that shoots twice.
3) Smaller bullets are more efficient, but bigger bullets have better DPS. If your main worry is "I want to do as much damage within 100 OP as possible," use small bullets. If you worry is "I want to deal as much damage in five seconds as possible," use big bullets.
So, here are some basic recommendations:
Sniper: Honestly, the basic M-sized sniper round of any given element is really hard to beat. Maybe attach a bomb at the end, but otherwise just go for the simple shots of your preferred element/status affliction. Sniper guns are good at using lasers in GE1/GE:R, but in GE2 they have to start with a sniper bullet, so that can't be done.
Assault: Simple is good. Keep OP costs very low, since the advantage of this weapon is its ability to shoot a lot of bullets at a rapid pace. It probably works just fine to use bullets that start with a non-elemental rapid fire bullet, and attach small bombs or point-blank shots (M or L size) to trigger upon hit. In GE:R I'd just use short-range M-sized shots and pretty much nothing else, but that's impossible here, so you have to hack it in a little.
Shotgun: Honestly, it is hard for me to recommend anything other than just using straight buckshot. That bullet is pretty damn useful, and trying to make it any fancier just makes it weaker. L-sized Radial shots are also good, but for those it might be good to mix it up a little by combining them with other bullets. For one, make sure to always use the "Follow" type Radial shots, and not the fixed. That lets you move or twist the radial shot to cover a wide area, even if just by using manual aim. It also lets you run around while firing the radial shot without walking into your own blast and knocking yourself off your feet. But another good option is to just attach the Radial to a normal long-range deco-shot and have it stick out the side at an angle, or to connect it to a spinning control unit and whirl around in place.
Blast Gun: This is the weapon that lets your real creativity come through to the front. I'm not really any good at making effective recipes, and I need to test a few more myself, but here are two I like as random suggestions.
1) Deco-Shot (short range), fired at 45 degree angle downwards.
->2) Upon hitting the ground, spawn a Control (Upwards) module.
--->3) At a 90 degree angle down, fire a long range Deco-Shot
----->4) At a 90 degree angle up, fire an LL-sized Radial shot (follow-type)
This creates a giant pillar or fire (or ice or lighting or light) that traces along the ground in a line smashing everything in its path. Not very good for hitting specific targets of a larger Aragami, but great at mowing down clusters of the small fry. It would be simpler to forego the steps needed to make it start at ground level... but it looks cooler this way so that is what I use. The cost of the deco shots is nothing compared to the cost of an LL radial module anyways.
Anotehr one is a bit cheaper and more practical for large Aragami
1) L-sized basic shot, short-ranged
->2) Upon hit, spawn an Orb (Cling type)
--->3) Upon 2, fire a short-ranged M-size Laser
--->4) 0.2 seconds after 2, fire a short ranged M-size Laser
--->5) 0.5 seconds after 2, fire a short-ranged M-size Laser
It's a sticky laser barrage. Lots of fun for all.
