Cave Story Enemy Sheets

It turns out that the numbers used for enemy stats in Cave Story are fairly compatible with Paper Mario, and thusly Arpeggio. For the unacquainted, Cave Story is an amazing gem of a game made entirely by one guy over a span of five years, originally released independently for computers and later ported to various consoles, sometimes with updates. The original graphics had a retro style and updated graphics packages try to honor this whilst increasing the resolution, and the music is given similar treatment. The creator, known online as Pixel, is Japanese, and there are a few differences between the original English translation, done by Aeon Genesis, and the later, more official one, but regardless of which version you're playing, it's top-tier game design. Unfortunately, the enemy names are pretty bland and don't really capture the game's flavor all that well, but still, their sheets here give you more options for enemy encounters in Arpeggio. A few have been left out, usually due to operating more like obstacles than enemies.

Because Cave Story's combat is real-time rather than turn-based, and particularly because Quote's weapons can level down as well as level up, we don't see quite the same kind of steady increase in enemy stats that you would in an RPG, at least not with respect to which area the enemies appeared in, but they nevertheless end up covering a wide range of power levels in Arpeggio terms. Another oddity is that Quote usually takes more damage from directly colliding with an enemy than from being hit by one of their projectiles, so some of these enemies have special attacks that deal less damage than their Attack Power stat. These usually still cost the enemy 1 VP since they allow it to avoid contact damage.