was it also the case for bravely default or octopath that, after being very initially charming then turning excruciating, the endgame stuff was actually decent? because I have actually been enjoying this again from chapter 12 onward (currently at 18 or 19), though I want to be clear, this game is incredibly stupid, and unpleasantly so from at least hours 5 to 15
I managed to win the first of these because it had a very useful gimmick that even my circus performers could operate. the second one is looking like a catastrophe that I might not have the energy to finish
the bravely default endgame has you repeat the same chunk of the game four times in service of a really silly plot twist if you want the best ending/true last boss
the postgame superbosses though, are actually pretty interesting if i remember right and need some weird strategies that arenāt at all meta/viable for anything else
2 Likes
Ah like the extra job role ones in Octopath.
I finished this. wound up having to crank it down to easy for the remainder of the divided-party battles because my backup guys were too underleveled for it to be any fun, but there were 3 more full strength fights after that which I went back to hard for.
the final boss, who you fight after 30 hours if and only if you manage the good ending your first time through, feels like he shouldāve been the first boss of a game whose pacing was any good at all. I cannot stress enough how idiotic the narrative turned out, I literally fast forwarded the ending dialogue and wondered what I was doing in the first place.
it does a reasonably good job of maintaining tactics ogre balance throughout, better than any matsuno game probably did ā most of your guys can get two-shot under many circumstances and you have to play well in order to avoid that, and for the most part you get more powerful without getting more durable (except for late abilities that bend these rules) which keeps the game feeling mechanically satisfying. they did an OK job there in the end, although the enemy AI bails you out too often by being atrocious.
I do not in any way recommend this game
11 Likes
30 hours seems like a gift compared to how ridiculously overlong Octopath was.
here are some things I liked about this game mechanically:
-
your main character has a really nice āparty leaderā style skillset despite him not dealing the most damage nor being particularly tanky ā he has an attack that slightly delays enemy turns (like casting a temporary slow effect) which is low key one of the best status effects in the game because no one is immune to it and it canāt miss, he has a medium distance lightning stab type move that only deals regular damage but ensures heās always in range of someone, he can accelerate your magesā MP recovery which only support classes can do otherwise, and he gains the counterattack ability earlier than anyone else. I probably finished more battles with him dead than almost any other character because he would always get in there and do his best, but the main character problem is pretty common in these, and they made a real effort to solve it.
-
the weather effects are really fun and reminiscent of original sin. there is like one optional mage character who can meaningfully manipulate them and imo sheās practically mandatory, more than any other optional character (they were paying attention to tactics ogre when they made a shaman lowkey the best mage class in the game).
-
there was exactly one mid game battle that I felt like Iād softlocked myself into, riovanes style, and had to really strategize hard in order to win. the ākeeping levels from game over runsā really helped keep this interesting ā for the record, it was chapter 13, hard mode, if you go for the bridge destruction route. there were other decent fights, hard mode is well balanced, but that was the main āhow am I gonna win thisā standout.
5 Likes
you also get one Regular Tank (can provoke enemies, extremely useful for both soaking up attacks that would hit anyone elseās physical defense much harder and for berserking healers) and one Sexy Tank (can charm, as overpowered a status as ever, and has extremely high evasion making them good for wasting enemy turns regardless) which I feel is a good balance
and the inevitable Agrias type character you get needs to use HP rather than MP for her swordskills. All good decisions. I feel like the people who really wanted to sit down and balance the shit out of a matsuno game actually acquitted themselves pretty well
4 Likes
I looked up the other endings after having gotten the good one and compared to mine which was embarrassingly tidy, the others are shockingly bad, like nothing is resolved at all
thatsonewaytodoit
Not pictured: triangle strategy MC
2 Likes
I ended up not using the weather mage because I was more interested in seeing the expanded move sets of the merchant and the architect who I got around the same time, and at the time I unlocked her I already had another mage with all the same moves. Luckily the xp curve is generous enough that it probably wouldnāt take much to catch her up.
Havenāt ended up having time to play this since last week but I stopped just before chapter 12, so Iām hoping youāre right about the midgame being better (things were already marginally better just by virtue of leaving the castle that my party had been holed up in for the last 5 or so chapters).
Also Im guessing that refusing to use the war crime weapon that the game practically begs you to use probably plays into the best ending youve been talking about? I was so annoyed by the way the game presented it that I stubbornly refused to use it, but the battle definitely felt balanced around the expectation that you will. I was only able to beat it by getting my mages up on the roofs and exploiting the terrible boss ai and it felt very much like something I shouldnāt have been able to do
1 Like
yup, to get the best ending you have to either not get that battle at all because you canāt persuade your party not to give up Roland (lol) or hold off on using it entirely. you then have to spend chapters 9-12 on gaining Svarogās trust (by helping the smuggling at first) and learning the Roselleās secret, and go see your dad in chapter 15. I found most of these intuitive with the exception of the first one so maybe youāre already on your wayā¦
1 Like
Yeah Iām in the middle of smuggling right now since it seemed super obvious that you had no proof against Svarog and stupidly betraying him would get you all killed.
That was the hardest branch to actually convince my party so far though. It took a couple reloads for me to find the right townsperson dialogues to influence my hidden values enough for one of them to listen.
They were all so against smuggling illegal salt becauseā¦ its dishonest? Even though the narrative makes it clear that this is a life saving resource otherwise monopolize by a few elites? Everyone was utterly convinced that if we just show up in front of another countryās head of state with an illegal shipment and claim it came from one of his most trusted advisors he would have to believe us becauseā¦ its the truth! Why would someone not believe the truth!
I canāt believe these children have managed to stay alive as long as they have.
2 Likes
yup, so it sounds like you, like me, will wind up with the best ending by accident by following your intuition. you need svarog and the roselle as allies in aesfrost and hyzante respectively in order to achieve a good outcome for the kingdom, and you need to not have alienated your father or your entire demesne by burning it down. if you choose based on those principles youāre good
1 Like
and you face zero consequences from repeatedly throwing roland under the bus because there is no helping him
Man, reading all this me feel like Iāve chosen the most dumbass route possible, haha. Maybe I just donāt have a very strategic mind. Iām up to chapter 17 or something and Iāve done the following:
- Burned down my demesne
- Remained faithful to Roland throughout
- Returned the illegal salt shipment to Hyzante which led to Seronoa being appointed one of the saintly seven
- Blew up Glenbrookās bridge which seemed like the best of a bunch of bad options?
- Refused to visit Seronoaās dying father in favour of publicly murdering a royalist (okay that decision was pretty dumb in hindsight lol)
- My party hasnāt even met Svarog yet lol
Seems like Iāve still got a few chapters left so maybe thereās some hope for me. Despite it all I do like this game. I stand by my above comment that itās a good adaptation of game of thrones. Though Iāve found some of my more recent battles pretty tedious, especially those that make you run around a massive map (the mine cart one, for e.g.).
Expected to make a lot of progress on this during my long flight yesterday but ended up getting immediately stuck on the first (that Ive encountered) failable exploration chapter. Youre supposed to look around the oppressed anime hair town to find their secret macguffin and then pick the correct of several findable objects. I kept only finding 2 out of 3 and assumed I was picking bad dialogue options, but after several times scouring the town and talking to every NPC twice I figured I just missed a key item in a previous chapter and hit a dead end. I looked it up now and turns out you need to talk to 3 of the NPCs in a particular order, just talking to them multiple times wont do it. Classic. Leave it to this game to find a new way to punish me for skipping their unbearable dialogue
5 Likes
Thanks for this long thread for showing why I donāt like this genre. Oh yāall enjoy the micromanagement and grinding and inherit conservativism of in battle choices. Maybe I can free myself of 20 years of peaking my head into this genre to retreat.
Or i will try Oninusha Tactics of all things.
1 Like
divinity original sin is by far, not even close, the most fun and accessible game with SRPG-style combat from the past decade if youāre seriously considering it!
2 Likes