there’s a key in crimson shroud that only drops from a skeleton in a fixed encounter which sucks because it didn’t drop for me after 10 tries so 
2 Likes
i remember it kind of feeling like buying a sort-of mediocre single, released in between albums, by a band/artist you really like
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It’s not a tactics RPG, just a regular one.
I found it pretty OK, I got into the mechanics enough to play it twice. It’s sort of initially hostile and weird and it takes about the duration of the game to fully get, which made the second playthrough that much more engaging. The key thing suuuucks though and comes relatively early
There’s a strong sense of mystery and exploration but I had a hard time taking the small Matsuno plot too seriously because of the girl’s tacky character design
People really seem to like the physical RPG fetishization in this game (characters are figurines, you get to throw dices, etc. It’s like Voice of Cards and Unlimited Saga)
2 Likes
I am up to Chapter 14 in this
the game is finally OK-ish at this point – I have (highly rationed) revives, I have enough skills and a large enough party that customization and battle tactics have become marginally more interesting, and my idiotic troupe of children is finally making more nuanced decisions that aren’t “should we eat shit, guess so.”
so be warned that while the demo seems cautiously playable, it takes a nosedive for the entire mid-game and only really improves in the last ~third
I’ve been playing this instead of Elden Ring for some reason and I’m actually really digging it. I haven’t played many tactics games so don’t have a lot to compare it to, but I’ve had some pretty compelling battles in my story arc. I guess I can see how true tactics heads might find it a bit mechanically simplistic or whatever but for me it has the right amount of party/menu management without becoming boring. The Game of Thrones style narrative is cheesy, but I honestly find it more entertaining than 99% of JRPG narratives.
I even find the decision-making stuff way more interesting than I expected. I like that your party constantly fucks up and presents you with impossible decisions to make. And I think the game actually calls you out for trying to make straightforwardly righteous decisions. Normally when I’m presented with these dumb decisions to make in games I choose the most righteous option (equality for all, whatever), but whenever I’ve taken that road in Triangle Strategy, I have characters calling me out on it, like ‘are you a dumbass or what, that’s too idealistic given the circumstances and it’s not going to work’.
In that sense I think it’s actually a pretty good adaptation of Game of Thrones, for what it’s worth. Like the whole thing about Game of Thrones is that all decisions—even the most righteous ones—have consequences, and that in these sorts of settings, you can’t just blurt out what you actually think, you have to be a bit more circumspect and take everyone’s positions into account. It’s not, like, thematically complex or anything, but I enjoy Triangle Strategy for the same reason I enjoyed (most of) Game of Thrones, which I think is an accomplishment.
1 Like
just thinking about the incredible exchange between Ramza and Wiegraf at Orbonne in which Wiegraf accuses you of being sanctimonious, asks if you’ve ever tried to do anything without the help of your station, Ramza says “I’m trying!” and Wiegraf says “then your efforts have come to an end!” and tries to kill you – phenomenal – and then you kill him and he becomes a demon obsessed with taking revenge on you regardless of anything he once believed and you have to kill him again and then make up for the damage caused by someone whose struggle was nobler than yours could ever have been from birth
the way they wrote his entirely justified hatred of you and your eventual determination to do exactly what you were going to do anyway is so beautiful
nothing like that here sadly
9 Likes
Ok now that the game is becoming tolerable in its last third here are some good aspects, mostly having to do with losing, this game’s favorite:
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the mechanic where if you lose a battle (or can fold at any time) you get to keep your level ups is very smart, because exp scaling in this is heavily logarithmic (one thing they didn’t fuck up from tactics ogre) so your practice runs simultaneously function to equalize your levels with the enemies. very elegant, no additional grinding, doesn’t cheapen your loss in any way.
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the way save scumming works is also pretty elegant! every 10 turns of a battle you get a new quicksave that can be used once. you don’t control when it triggers, so sometimes it’s right after a bad turn and you’re fucked, and if you use it, you have to make it at least 10 turns again to get a new one. actually very smart and balanced, I like when games make save scumming doable with severe restrictions.
I still think the mid game is protracted and excruciating – this thing feels like it’ll be 30 hours long overall and those are ridiculously lopsided, like they were trying to fix the notorious inverted difficulty curve these games tend to have and did it in the worst way, cannot recommend, but it’s at least leaving me with a slightly better impression.
6 Likes
also I’ve played the whole thing on hard and despite feeling like I was being locked into choices I didn’t want earlier in the game, I wound up with the best ending route – which is ridiculously obscure it turns out – by accident, basically by trying to act not on morality, but as a halfway decent editor, like “how do we get this abandoned character/plot thread actually followed up on”
3 Likes
Didnt know about that, good tip!
Totally agree about the xp, in general I do actually find the battles themselves to be mostly compelling, just everything around them is dragging them down.
The more I think about it the funnier the branch path mechanics are to me.
They’ve created the perfect simulation of being stuck in a group of incompetent people and having to steer them in the direction that least fucks them over, not by making sound arguments, because these are not reasonably people, but by telling them exactly the right thing to make them feel like agreeing with you.
Many of these branches involve the majority of the party being totally set on doing the stupidest possible thing, like yes lets definitely trust this person who has done nothing but betray people for the entire narrative, and then you spend the whole chapter literally begging them not to get you all killed.
Mechanically this usually involves talking to each of the people who disagree with you and presenting your reasons, such as “this dude literally said he only cares about money and would betray anyone”. Followed by them countering with something like “yes but he seems nice :]” After that its put to a vote and everyone tells you that they feel very strongly about the very good plan presented by William H Backstabber and the game shows you a cutscene where everyone talks about how they had no choice since this was the only obvious plan. Then you can reload your save and go talk to people in town. Talking to people in town lets you take buzzfeed personality quizes which randomly change the mood your party is in. If you take the quizes good (read: randomly being super mean to a towns person) then one of your party members might decide today they actually feel like listening to you and maybe not dying. Not because you made a sound argument, youre saying the exact same thing as last time, but because they saw you totally own that peasant earlier, and they think thats cool.
I’m really only slightly exaggerating. Its hilariously close to what it feels like to be randomly assigned group members in a college class or something
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also your main character might be the worst blank slate dip shit I’ve seen since jedi fallen order. like, really, they couldn’t have done better than that?
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I love it when I answer a question in a way the game doesnt want me to, causing the NPC to lecture the main character which he always responds to with embarrassed apology
Like his default mode of operation is fucking up
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fully convinced now that this is the most realistic game of all time
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this game has a mine cart level immediately prior to a chapter called “if griefs could passions move”
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I know you all keep saying this game is bad and not recommended but your posts keep having the opposite effect on me
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this by the way is signalled by the main character, who previously “got out the scales” and made everyone with exactly one thought in their heads vote for every big decision in the plot up to then, instead pondering them alone in his office and deciding to just ignite them all at once, symbolically inaugurating his big tent dictatorship
prior to that they pull the thing again where you have a battle with a “protect so and so” objective and you can’t let his AI get him killed during the fight without having to restart but then he drops dead for plot reasons two minutes later
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they do a neat Phoenix Cave thing at the end where they make you split your party up and fight on multiple fronts at once except of course I haven’t used half of the suikoden circus performer assholes at all so I now have multiple parties with three decent units in them and four absolute turds and I think it wants me to grind
one thing about the writing that I like though I have no idea if it’s intentional is that, while several of your party members are seen to grow and mature in response to being exposed to all this conflict, one of them just gets more and more traumatized and irrational, to the point where every time he proposes a major plot decision the rest of the party is like “what? man, no, that’s even worse than last time”
then of course you can make them all pick it
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mate im going round in circles here, first you put me off and now you’re making it sound really, really funny
they also stole another late plot twist directly from game of thrones
this is such a hack job it’s unbelievable
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there is a late game siege weapon which is best described as a “Lot’s Wife Laser”
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