I’ve been putting off writing something about Massive Chalice or progressing my playthrough. I’m at Year 130 & have seen all the enemy types in non-advanced form. Here’s all the negative stuff I have so far:
- no fuck-up fixes, if you set up a keep with the wrong classes/region it takes 10-20 years to get another keep + 10 years to get someone suitable to move in. Having rewind points would help when you realise “oh that should have been over there” halfway through the game. On the plus side, buildings are pretty much the only thing you can screw up; if you mislevel someone, no problem, they’ll be dead after 2-3 missions anyway.
- ‘Balanced’ traits, for every Dexterous perk there’s a corresponding Clumsy flaw. It sounds dumb but regauging the stats so that the baseline is normal (previous clumsy), but some chars are nimble (previous average) and some more are graceful (previous dexterous) would feel way better than the baseline being the average. Every char with a trait taking them below-average feels like a loser, and I need winners on my team/sat in a keep until they die. It feels bad to look at my elite retinue of the best-of-the-best and see ranged units with accuracy penalties or melee with lowered mobility.
- Strategy layer stinks. Build OR research? The countdown to year 300 is the world’s worst progress bar, I dread returning to it because it brings the next terrible thing closer that I can’t prepare for and I feel all the agency drain out of me. There’s occasional events that look fun, “Alice and Bob want to raise funds for vunerable people, Approve/Forbid?” but every choice backs onto either a positive or negative outcome, and it’s chosen randomly. Your pro-strat is to know which choice has the worst potential downside, and avoid picking it. The main game loop feels so hollow, you want to engage each mission to extract the XP from the enemies so your retinue is leveled for the next mission, &c. There are no dramatic proactive actions for you to make a minor goal out of, you are constantly the underdog fighting against a stronger, unavoidable enemy. You can’t even decline to go on a mission!
- Tactical encounters are ok, mostly scouting in stealth and chess move to stun. No clocks so it’s fine to scout the map and wait for Cadence to randomly wander into an ambush. I didn’t know about stealth for the first 50 years and it was brutal. Then I tried it and found you can use it on every move & unlock armour to stealth to any position, so hello, alpha strikes. I think the combat would be more engaging if I was better at predicting what the Cadence would do/see, but I don’t understand their sight/move ranges. No injury system, so your chars are always fighting fit unless they lose their last hit point & die forever, so you’re best off taking ranged classes. Also, the basic ranged class is the stealth class, so why not take 4 or 5?
Here’s the current situation:
The big blue guys swap location with a character, and stun on hit. I can charge the upper left one to push them into the rocks & stun them, and use a knockback bomb on the lower right one as well. That will leave the other one to the right active, hopefully I can alpha strike them with the remaining 3 attacks and soak the hit from the Lapse on the left with someone I don’t mind losing XP. OR I can do nothing & hope they cluster up. - Marriage system, I expected Fire Emblem levels of horny but the rigid lifecycle for decent chars (in training, mission from 17 to mid-30s, trainer, die of old age) means you’re sending out teenaged randos with your 50+ group of fuckos who are too terrible to do anything else. There’s no battlefield dynamics, I have no idea who any of these people are despite making every significant life event choice for them, looking at them fills me with revulsion. Here’s one of my best melee chars:
Worst thing is, you have to retire a char from missions for them to become a parent, so there’s no way to field a Dad Squad/Take your Daughter to Smash the Cadence Day. - The fucking Chalice, why can’t I teleport trainers out on missions through the chalice, why did they put in all these terrible announcer lines, why do Double Fine think stale Monty Python riffs are humour
Would love to see this list if you can share it!