Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-25941257-20160118075333/@comment-27460754-20160120052643

Exactly, it can flavor scenes, but it's not vital. Middle ground is best at any case. I'll probably do a playthrough that at least is minimal in the back and forth between Stineford and Ferroholm and skip the merchant camp, but it's not high on my list of priorities as I've seen that Simon and Aka's paths don't suffer for not having really high secret scores.

On the other hand, this is a game where grinding, for both money and EXP, is not a priority or even worked into the system (beyond the slimes) so little things like the extra monsters in the cache of Devils pass and the money from the merchant's goods can make a small but not so useless difference.

Honestly, I think I was happier not knowing about the secret stats, as now it's just one more thing to worry about affecting gameplay rather than just enjoying the game and story.