Maybe!
Iāve repeatedly looked at buying this game off of Amazon before. Itās NIS, itās some strategy RPG claiming ādeepā mechanics, I donāt give two shakes of a dogās tail how anime it is; all things point to something Iād enjoy playing. Then reviews and screenshots do their utmost to drive me away.
Iāll end up buying it at some point as some curious deeply flawed game but with an attempt at uniqueness of play.
Itās actually not by NIS, thatās what caught my eye the first time I saw the box because I can usually tell that if thereās an NIS stamp on the cover art, that itās usually kind of filth I enjoy.
Itās by a company called KadoKawa Games and was published in the US - from what it looks like Kadokawa develops videogames and also publishes manga in Japan. Theyāve not developed anything else Iāve ever heard of but it looks like the rest of their catalogue is mostly strategy games.
Funnily enough, in Japan they publish one of the manga I also bought at Hastings! What a fucked up, vile world.
Last night I learned that I can extend my turns a lot to move around the map at a ridiculous pace, so now Iām slidin all over the place when available
Damn straight.
This game does look interesting, the link system and ridiculous abuse of the turn system sound a lot like Agarest, which I am just disgusting enough to have enjoyed.
āIām worried about dating you, Iām a little bit of a time investment for some people.ā
"How much of a time investment could you be?"
pulls down pants to reveal a NIS stamp on groin
3 Likes
Yeah, this game is solid. Iām early going and my only complaint was how slowly animations go, causing you to wait a while for actions on a turn to resolve. But today I found out you can fast forward through most of it and the pacing has improved immeasurably, moving the game from a āneat but I wouldnāt recommend it due to one fatal flawā to āyeah, I think itās worth checking outā.
The game has a penchant for being brutally difficult (even in the US where it launched already containing the patches that adjusted the game difficulty) but it doesnāt really feel that way to me so far. I can see it being frustrating if you donāt understand the mechanics but thereās a decent tutorial that explains some strategies, thereās a long and enlightening menu of tips (one tip is that you should have multiple save files), and at the beginning it even gives you a couple of dungeons you can play several times to experiment inside. I think the emphasis on utilizing the game systems to their fullest to succeed in pretty much every battle works in the gameās favor, especially since the Turn Linking and the Tactical Linking stuff are actually interesting mechanics. They provide the game a unique angle with which to think about your strategies as you think about how to most efficiently tackle situations that previously gave you trouble.
The map design has been moistly straightforward cave corridors in the first maps, not allowing a whole lot of room to move outside of a mostly-linear path, but I think this gives you ample time to gain a strong understanding of the gameās fundamentals inside controlled environments before it starts opening up the maps like Iāve seen in the couple of most recent levels I did.
The graphics are butt ugly and the voice acting is amusingly bad, and the direction of the plot is transparent- except for one plot event at the beginning that blew me away. Itās not like itās changed the plot direction at all but it was a decision that I did not expect the developers to do at all. Bravo to them, even if that dramatic cutscene was actually hilarious*.
Major early game spoilers obviously, and a bonus shot of the gameās amazing graphics after that scene (still spoiler territory).*
** This is a Playstation 4 game.
Coming back to this picture:
I now realize pictures do no do this UI justice because you donāt see that the text actually scrolls across the lines and it looks great if you love targeting lines in your strategy rpgs.
1 Like
the PSN listing containing the phrase ābut be warnedā makes it sound like the copyeditor was genuinely afraid theyād sell too many copies of this
1 Like
I think they were trying to sell it as The Dark Souls of Strategy RPGs.
Check out that thumbnail for the DLC mission. Crazy monster design.
god I really want to play this garbage
I re-read the OP and realized Glam never got around to explaining one of the two main gimmicks of the game, the Turn Link system. It talks about the Tactical Link system, which is where you get bonuses to your attacks based on how you position your party members within the map. If you have two or more people target the same enemy you get a huge boost to damage; if you have character 1 attack enemy 1 and character 2 attack enemy 2 and their line of sights to their targets cross each other then you get a cross bonus that increases your chance of critical hits; if you have a range attacker and a physical attacker attack the same enemy you get smaller boost to both damage and crit chance; etc. Furthermore the farther distance there is between each of your attacking units the stronger the effect of the Tactical Link.
The Turn Link system is the gameās turn order manipulation mechanic. You can see the turn order at the top of the screen and it roughly alternates between one of your guys and one of the enemies. Everyone gets a turn within, uh, I donāt know the terminology but I guess Iāll call it a Phase. So after every character and enemy has had a turn the phase ends and the turn order loops back to the beginning. Pretty normal stuff turn order mechanic for strategy RPGs.
Turn Linking, though, is how you can have multiple character act within a single turn. A lot of actions will allow you to pull up turns for other characters if theyāre within a certain range of the acting character, letting multiple characters act earlier than usual within the Phase. But most importantly Turn Linking also works on characters whose turns have already ended. After you have Character 1 attack an enemy, if Character 2 is positioned well you can have Character 2 do something and then have Character 1 also do something that same turn. Character 3 can potentially have Characters 1 and 2 act again on his/her turn, etc. You can of course mix and match. If you have a really slow character who is usually positioned at the end of the phase you can Turn Link that character to get them to act every turn alongside your earlier characters.
You can use Turn Linking to multiply attacks, you can use turn linking to have characters move a lot of spaces over consecutive turns, you can use turn linking to quickly pull characters away from bad situations you realized you created from their previous turn, and so on. The game is designed such that you will not win any battle unless you use this system because the enemies use it too. It provides an interesting way to think about and plan Phases because turn order is no longer linear.
Turn Linking typically requires some proximity between characters to utilize. Tactical Linking requires some proximity to initiate and then encourages you to create as much distance as possible, but if you create too much distance then doing a Turn link on the next turn can become difficult or impossible. You will have to find ways to compromise when using these two mechanics in battle but both are essential to winning starting from the very first (well, maybe second) stage.
itās a while since i played it but i think if you turn link a slower character before their turn, it counts as their turn, which brings more risk into system (so they can go earlier this phase, but in the next phase they are back at the end of the turn order making the time between turns huge and leaving them open to attack)
i really love how just complicated this gameās mechanics were and that they visually just put all that on screen i a direct way.
Oh yeah, I just remembered that the game used the term Initiative for what one would traditionally think of each characterās āturnā in a Phase in a regular strategy RPG (each characterās right to act once per phase). I guess this was to avoid confusion with the word turn since Turn Linking can make characters have multiple turns but each character only has one Initiative per phase, and the order of Initiative is what you can see and keep track of at the top of the UI.
But yeah, youāre right. If you Turn Link with a character who has not already used up their Initiative you are subsuming their Initiative into the current turn and thus use it up. The benefit is that you can have that slower character act sooner but the sacrifice is that they wonāt have an Initiative on which they could Turn Link all the character that came before them. Itās something you often need to be thinking out several turns in advance to use well but has a lot of different ways of usage.
One of the ways the game tells you upfront is that you can pull up a gunner alongside some melee guy at the front so they can provide automatic cover-fire for the rest of the phase. Or, if you have a character whose Initiative is at the end of the phase who has no abilities that will let them start a Turn Link that phase or if you have a character who is just kind of located far away you can Turn Link them early on and pull them closer to the action so they can get Turn Linked by everyone elseās Initiative for the rest of the phase. On the flip-side, if one of your earlier characters has a strong ability you want to use repeatedly you might want to save other characterās Initiatives to Turn Link with that one character and get them to use that ability over and over within one phase.
Turn Linking also lets you do things like move someone into enemy territory to take out the enemy with the next Initiative and then use Turn Link to pull that character back to safety. The game designs charactersā abilities with specific conditions on how it can start a Turn link so sometimes you may value an ability not for itās stated use but instead for how it starts Turn Links. Abilities are learned from your skill tree and you can respec it whenever you want outside of battle so you can play around with character builds the suit the level youāre on or strategy you prefer. The Turn Link mechanic has a lot of viable applications and it gives the game malleability in how battles can be approached.
Should I continue to make trash threads, y/n
y
1 Like
Iām open to recommendations. Iām particularly interested in playing games other SB folkx might be too embarassed to try out.
From what I can tell from my limited time with it, the Agarest series combines some of the best trash mechanics. Weird combo systems, convoluted methods of moving units, cute anime girls who are secretly 1000s of years old. And if my understanding is correct it also does that 3DS FE thing where you have kids but I think the game just continues into the next generation? Also Iām 99% sure its also a dating sim.
I wish I had more time to dive through this trash cause it seems like such beautiful garbage, but Iām a busy dumpster diver.
Just @ me next time