picked it back up. here is the main problem with this game:
it is a fire emblem that uses the thematic and aesthetic elements of matsuno games exclusively as set dressing. it has fire emblem dialogue and fire emblem character progression and fire emblem branching paths; it meanwhile attempts to do the war and class storytelling of tactics ogre and gets the scale and tone completely, completely wrong.
it’s not the worst fire emblem I guess
it’s really funny to me that the writers looked at game of thrones and looked at tactics ogre and they were like: “OK, here’s what happens – your party fucks up constantly, to the point where you might as well not have been involved in these conflicts at all, for the entire first half of the game, and every time they agonize over it afterwards so it isn’t funny or interesting or anything, they just can’t stop fucking up, that’s the main narrative thrust, and as you’re wondering how the world and your characters are going to grow and change in relation to one another, it finally, gradually dawns on you that the ending of the entire campaign is building toward you making one lone good decision.”
anyway it’s kind of funny to me that every one of these big feb/march releases has in fact sucked except elden ring which is undefeated on every level
me three days ago, putting it down until they patch it / me 7 hours ago, picking it up again
there’s a pretty good chance I’ll finish it out of loyalty to the genre but I want to be very clear – do not recommend. It’s like, a maximally disappointing C+
I did not expect the story to become even more grating after the demo but here we are.
I actually would be having a much nicer time if there was no story at all and the game was just a series of disconnected battles. Everything about the characters and writting actively detracts from the experience and makes me question what I’m doing with my time.
Theres so much I hate but Im going to complain about two things in particular.
Minor nonspecific spoiler but having a battle where your win condition is protecting an npc and then having a cutscene immediately after completing the fight where that character is killed because your party wasnt protecting them enough pretty much sets the tone for how this game about decisions respects your decisions.
The way that new characters join your roster is just mind numbing. Every single one is just a rando showing up, telling you what theyre good at, and then kissing your ass and begging you to let them die for you. Similarly talking to anyone in your encampment boils down to them saying some vapid shit about how they are forever in MCs debt despite the fact that your troup is basically incompetent throughout the narrative.
The thing is, theres still some cool stuff going on mechanically! I still prefer fft and tactics ogre’s freedom to build units and modify classes, but the prebuilt units here have a lot of ideas on display. The merchant who tanks by taunting enemies at a distance and then running away to where they cant hit him, the smith who builds spring traps to move enemies around and ladders to get your other characters up terrain, tactician that uses tp to move around tp between characters. I want to see more of that!
Its just… not good!
I’ve started fast forwarding all the dialogue which is an atrocious judgment on a game whose inspiration I basically memorized the script of to the point of rewriting it in my head over a decade
this was incredibly insulting for the first fight that you were required to actually purchase the game to play! ha ha ha I can barely believe it
and then the whole next hour or 2 of narrative decisions were just a constant refrain of “babe… babe… what are you doing…?”
Next time I make a series of ill advised, self destructive decisions against the well-intentioned advice of others I will just tell them I am attempting the triangle strategy
I know it’s like a running joke with this dev team that every time they appear to be successfully recapturing an aesthetic that no one else has taken a credible shot at in 20 years, in practice the game is going to determinedly suck beyond your imagination, and this is just matsuno fans’ turn to be insulted, but geez
I’ve been cracking up at this post for several days now by the way
re: tactics ogre versions, i’ve definitely been like “no no no it’s good actually” when felix has complained about the psp version because i find the prose in those translations very funny for some reason (and the soundtrack is lovely) but i tried replaying it last year and found it way too easy + absurdly grindy if you want to use anything but the starter jobs
only shining force is allowed to do this
yeah i use cheats to get all classmarks and also to bring up the level of classes i want to try out because the system is dumb
i find One Vision’s difficulty to be pretty engaging though
i have been avoiding posting in this thread to not be a hater but i’m also sorry to see the game disappointing people.
this dev team is not good at making videogames. they might be good at making DQ3 (someone else’s videogame) or they might be good if paired with another team, but on their own, it’s like they all love the same games as me, but were only ever interested in the most superficial and basic aspects of what made those games interesting.
In retrospect its very funny that I saw this game and initially thought Wow that seems so much better than octopath, when really its just the exact same core with a matsuno skin
I underestimated how attractive a matsuno skin could be
exactly
I’m at like chapter 11(out of 21) already though and I need a little break from elden ring and I’m kind of fed up with everything else this month so I’m gonna finish it, but it sucks
it’s probably only like a half letter grade worse than fire emblem three houses but that was a pleasant surprise in a mediocre series that really focused its strengths, and this, conversely, is an embarrassment to its superficial inspiration
Similarly I am on chapter ten and out of town (and away from my ps4 with elden ring) for the next two weeks so I will probably end up finishing it
But its gonna feel like Im pranking myself the whole time!
So hey completely different game but since I saw Matsuno mentioned… the 3DS store goes down soon, is Crimson Shroud worthwhile if one has no experience with tactical rpgs or would it just be better to go with one of the known “landmark” genre games.
it didn’t do a lot for me