• Tag Archives Tactical RPG

  • Wasteland 3 & Triangle Strategy

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    I picked up Wasteland 3 quite some time back on a whim, despite not being particularly fond of its prequel. Played up through clearing the Bizarre location, then put it down to potentially continue later… which occurred around the time I was playing Cyberpunk. So at this point I can safely say I’m not going back to it.

    It’s okay I guess? There’s just this weird balancing issue where you kind of have to max out a couple unique skills on each character as quickly as possible to progress smoothly, while your attribute progression will basically be identical across all characters. I’m not really a fan of the midwestern flavor either.

    Another game I was playing at that time was Triangle Strategy, which I ~think~ I heard about on some forum or other. And as with Wasteland my interest just kind of drained away one day for a similar reason: While the game boasts non-linearity in its storyline decisions it has extremely rigid character upgrade options. You can’t change a character’s equipment and their ability upgrade trees are ~75% generic attribute increases, which gets boring real fast.

    It’s damn near criminal that Final Fantasy Tactics continues to remain one of best examples of a complex, large-scale tactical RPG.

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    This entry was posted in Nintendo Switch PC Video Game Related and tagged

  • A Few Games

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Atelier Sophie 2 ~The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream~ – Gameplay-wise there wasn’t any issue, it’s exactly what you’d expect from the franchise in terms of gathering/crafting and the combat is basically the same as the first Sophie game. The problem is the visuals; everything is very zoomed-in to the point I kind of felt like I was playing an emulated N64 game.

    Bravely Default II – This game, meanwhile, has a decent field of vision but unfortunately suffers from incredibly dumb character behavior. Ended up shutting it off in disgust mid-cutscene.

    Ys IX: Monstrum Nox – Chronologically taking place after the earlier Ys games (Dogi lookin’ real old) this one also features some dumb character behavior. Not enough to be a deal killer on its own, but when combined with the lack of environmental variety (you’re trapped in a single town and its subterranean tunnels) certainly starts tipping the scales in the wrong direction. A bigger issue personally however is the combat; it’s extremely fast-paced and heavy on enemy numbers. To the point where Flash Guard/Dodge can’t really be used strategically in non-boss fights and you’re often reduced to just button-mashing to clear everything out.

    Partway through the third chapter at the moment and unsure I want to bother pressing on. Think I’m going to take a break to poke at Elden Ring for a bit instead, maybe if I bounce off that game like I did Sekiro and the original Dark Souls (while I’m fond of Souls-like games, actual Souls games tend to just feel clunky to me) I’ll give it a second chance.

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    This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged

  • Children of Zodiarcs

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    This game stands out from other tactical RPGs in two main respects.

    The first is that most of a character’s available actions are determined by a personal customizable card pool (Draw Cards and Guard are always available). Characters unlock new cards as they level and you can mix and match which cards you want to include. Which is good since, as with most card-based games, each deck should be kept as small as possible to increase the chances you’ll have the most useful abilities available at any given time.

    The second is that every action gets modified by a die roll. Every time you take an action you get to roll any bonus dice associated with the card along with any dice you have equipped; unlike other games, rather than getting money or weapons/armor as battle spoils you get new dice. Effects from this roll can range from increased effectiveness, to bonus effects, to free healing or card draw, to getting an additional action. So, unless you’ve been debuffed with bad dice, the die roll will never make an ability worse.

    This is a somewhat novel approach that, at least at first, feels fresh without being overly random. The issue is that after awhile (the start of Chapter 2 for me) battles end up feeling pretty same-y since you’re effectively always using the same abilities and hoping for the same bonus effects on die rolls. Compounding this issue is that the characters are pretty one-note so far and the storyline’s just a string of sequential ‘go steal item X’ directives. Maybe it gets more interesting in later chapters, but I’m uncertain at this point whether or not I want to keep playing to find out.

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    This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged

  • Solasta: Crown of the Magister

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Much like Icewind Dale, Solasta is a low-level D&D campaign focused primarily on combat.

    While the implementation of the 5e ruleset is remarkably good, particularly in regards to movement and reaction abilities, the game suffers from a lack of party diversity; you can only have 4 party members, there’s no multiclassing, and the Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Monk, and Warlock classes aren’t available.

    There’s also something of a lack of equipment variety, party due to this being a low-level campaign (meaning relatively little money with +1 enchantments being the norm) and partly because a lot of stuff is locked behind Faction relationship levels. So you kind of need to use crafting to get the most out of whatever party composition you go for.

    I ended up playing through with a party consisting of sword/shield Paladin (never do this), a 2H-Spellblade (decent-ish), a Marksman (okay), and a Shock Arcanist (pretty good).

    As it turns out, having a Paladin use a shield is a terrible idea for the simple reason that nearly all of their spells need a free hand to cast (2H weapons are fine since you can temporarily hold them with one hand). The Spellblade meanwhile suffers from a severe lack of defensive and melee-touch spells, but ends up remarkably mobile for a Fighter. Ranger is useful mainly for the Goodberry and Hunter’s Mark spells (the Marksman specialization didn’t add much)… although running a Greenmage might be a better idea in the end… and I have no complaints regarding Wizard’s Shock Arcanist variation.

    Putting aside mechanics we now come to the game’s primary flaw: Its storyline. The plot is… generic at best, while the character interactions and dialog in general are atrocious. Fortunately, unlike in Iron Danger, you don’t actually have to pay attention to any of that and can easily skip through it all.

    So is the game worth picking up? If you like turn-based D&D combat and are willing to sort through a bunch of Mods to enhance variety, then by all means. If you want roleplaying choices and engaging developments however it would be best to avoid it.

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    This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged

  • Dungeon Siege II & IRON DANGER: Shard of time

    Posted on by Offkorn 1 Comment

    In a fit of nostalgia I decided to revisit Dungeon Siege II… only to discover I’d never played it before. What I thought were memories of II were in fact of the first game in the franchise.

    While notably better than that first game in the gameplay department, it suffers rather badly from some of the worst character interactions ever conceived. And though better than DS I the gameplay is still not particularly engaging. Rather than Diablo, it instead brings to mind a proto Titan Quest. There’s just a certain emptiness/soullessness about the enemies and loot situation which, when combined with the limited ability system, makes progressing past a certain point far more trouble than its worth.

    Sharing the malus of atrocious writing, Iron Danger takes a notably different path where gameplay is concerned. It’s a ‘real time with mandatory pause’ tactical RPG featuring a time manipulation mechanic you’d expect to see in a puzzle game. Rather than simply take turns acting, characters move about in segmented (paused) real time which you can advance or rewind at will even if your characters die. So every combat encounter essentially becomes an equation to solve by finding the right actions to take during the right segments to most efficiently eliminate the opposition. It’s pretty cool.

    The problem is of course the aforementioned writing; it’s infuriatingly bad. If this were an action RPG where the storyline didn’t matter it would be an acceptable price to pay for the innovative combat system… but that’s not the case. The game’s very clearly story/character driven, and that story and those characters are insufferable.

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    This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged

  • Fae Tactics -THE GIRL WHO DESTROYED THE WORLD-

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    A mobile iteration of Final Fantasy Tactics‘ gameplay with a bright, cheery visual theme (as well as protagonist) along with some fairly dark storytelling, Fae Tactics ends up a pretty decent tactical RPG.

    The gimmick here is that you only have 3-4 actions available at any given time; attack, assist, or wait with the possibility of casting one spell per round (depending on cooldowns). Some things can modify those base actions (Ultra attacks/assists unlock at level 10, which will replace the default action with a more powerful version), but essentially what you have at level 1 is what you’ll have at level 20. Character customization comes in the form of summon, accessory, and weapon choices (leveling simply lets you choose one of three stat groups to increase). While there are a wide range of accessories and summons acquired through combat drops, each main character only has a maximum of three weapons (unlocked through quests) and accessories usually just amount to a specific stat increase.

    So the game pretty much comes down to summons… which is a bit of an issue since you can only summon 1-2 decently powerful units per battle.

    The limited summons combined with only being able to field 3 party members at once means you’ll often be heavily outnumbered. With the universal action system on top of that battles end up fairly challenging and almost puzzle like; you have to figure out the best ratio of allied-to-enemy element types in order to maximize outgoing damage and minimize incoming damage (elemental affinity has a sort of rock-paper-scissors dynamic).

    Currently I’m conflicted: I don’t like the visuals/protagonist or overwhelming simplicity, but the storytelling is pretty good (albeit heavy on loading screens). I like the non-linearity of the quest selection, but find the implementation overly haphazard/disjointed. I want to keep playing to see where the storyline goes, but I also don’t want to have to re-arrange my party every single battle to take advantage of element synergy.

    I guess the safest thing to say is that it’s an acquired taste.

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    This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged

  • Mordheim: City of the Damned

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Whereas Warhammer proper has you building armies to face off against one another, Mordheim narrows the focus down to skirmishes between two groups of 10 individuals or less.

    Visually, it’s pretty dire. Mechanically… it’s not much better.

    The concept of building/managing a warband is solid and the roguelike elements (Veteran achievements give bonuses across all warbands) are decent enough. The integration between the combat and exploration aspects however is sorely lacking; you basically have to focus on killing the enemy (since numerical superiority is essential) which means you won’t have time to loot anything notable from the battlefield. It’s almost like you’re being punished for success. The winning warband getting to loot everything in their direct line of sight or receiving an extra turn or two after a win to loot would’ve worked far better.

    The other, more significant, issue is that the combat isn’t any fun. Since all offensive actions draw from the same resource pool most of the time you end up standing in place trading basic attacks until someone misses once too often (which is often just once due to the similarity between enemy and ally health/damage totals). It’s incredibly dull and the spellcasting system being actively antagonistic certainly doesn’t help.

    In a sense the game is reminiscent of Darkest Dungeon in that you probably have to be a masochist to get any significant amount of enjoyment out of it.

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    This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged

  • WARHAMMER 40,000: MECHANICUS

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    I’ve never had much luck with digital versions of Warhammer games so had put off picking this up until it was exceptionally cheap (which it recently was). All I ever wanted was an adaptation where you could build an army and fight turn-based battles just like the tabletop version, ideally with some form of leveling or upgrade system.

    Yet every PC version features either real-time combat (most of them), 4X elements (Total War, Gladius), or has extremely limited army selection (Sanctus Reach). And unfortunately, this game falls into that last category.

    You don’t really have many options here and all of the challenge lies in avoiding bad event choices until you have your first 3 Priests at about Rank 12 or so with access to an AOE weapon (like the Flamer or Grav/Torsion Cannon). Save scumming works, as does referencing someone else’s run. If you want to do things naturally, then make sure to listen to the other characters’ advice (if they suggest acquiring something, acquire it) and choose options that fit the mission objective (assuming everything’s a trap is a good rule of thumb).

    After that point you can pretty much roll every encounter and clear missions with 0-1% awakening rates. Then once those Priests hit Rank 19-20 there’s little reason to bother looking for Blackstone any longer and battles just become an annoyance. I ended up upgrading two additional Priests into pure troop-summoners just for the hell of it; instantly summoning a flame-spewing battle robot anywhere on the field is mildly amusing.

    So yeah, the game’s fine for one playthrough… but at this point I can’t imagine ever replaying it.

    Some Stuff:

    [Builds]

    Tech 9, Lex 5, Explor 3, Dom 2
    Tech 1, Lex 9, Explor 3, Dom 5
    Tech 9, Lex 9, Dom 1 || Tech 1, Lex 5, & (Explor+Dom) 12
    Tech 1, Sec 9, Dom 1

    [Armor Stats]

    Head
    Explor = 2 HP, 1 P.Arm
    Sec = 2 HP, 1 E.Arm
    Tech = 2 E.Arm
    Lex = 1 Arm
    Engine = 1 P.Arm
    Dom = 2 HP, 1 E.Arm

    Arms
    Explor = 1 P.Dam
    Sec = 2 HP, 20% Crit
    Tech = 1 HP, 20% Crit
    Lex = 2 HP, 20% Dodge
    Engine = 2 HP
    Dom = 1 E.Dam

    Torso
    Explor = 3 HP, 1 P.Arm
    Sec = 4 HP
    Tech = 4 HP, 1 P.Arm
    Lex = 4 HP
    Engine = 3 HP, 1 E.Arm
    Dom = 3 HP, 1 E.Arm

    Legs
    Explor = 2 HP, 3 Mov
    Sec = 3 HP, 1 Mov
    Tech = 2 HP/Mov
    Lex = 2 HP/Mov
    Engine = 2 HP, 1 E.Arm
    Dom = 3 HP/Mov

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    This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged

  • Book of DEMONS & Some Other Games

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Book of Demons is a hack & slash game with some minor roguelike elements modeled on the first Diablo. One greatly simplified into a mobile game format where you walk along rails while clicking on anything in your ‘light radius’ to interact with it, and equipment/skills are represented by upgradable cards that you can assign to unlockable action bar slots.

    Despite its simplicity and lack of depth (leveling up gives a choice between +1 Health or +1 Mana), it ends up a pretty fun diversion in the vein of Candy Crush for when you have a few minutes to kill. Not sure what sort of longevity it’ll have though since the levels are so far are all pretty similar (up to the Cook quest boss) with the abilities of various enemies occasionally crossing over into ‘bullshit’ territory.

      As for the titular “other games”:
    • Sword Legacy: omen – I installed this ages ago, played the first battle or two, and then put it aside out of general disinterest. I can safely say now that I have no intention of ever touching it again.
    • MONSTER HUNTER: WORLD – Got through the opening, messed around in the training area for a while… and then promptly uninstalled when I discovered all the hunts have time limits.
    • The: QUEST – A game styled after classic first-person RPGs (think Might & Magic X: Legacy), it felt to me both empty and overpopulated. Leave town and there’s a whole bunch of nothing in every direction, yet there’s also an inexplicably large number of scantily-clad archers waiting to kill you. There’s just a pervading sense of unease about the whole affair.
    • DEEP SKY DERELICTS – After spending a minute or two wandering around the first ship finding a whole lot of nothing, I ran into a battle. There I discovered that every action you take in combat reduces your Energy level (run out of Energy and you die; moving also costs energy). I have no interest whatsoever in dealing with such severe resource management bullshit.
    • Celestian Tales: OLD NORTH – The characterizations are all pretty painful and the visuals are notably lackluster.

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    This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged

  • STAR RENEGADES

    Posted on by Offkorn 1 Comment

    Structurally, this game is similar to Slay the Spire: Traverse three semi-randomized branching paths capped by a static boss fight, fighting turn-based battles and collecting items along the way, concluding with a much smaller endboss level.

    As a roguelike, you’re expected to play through multiple times with different characters in order to unlock various features such as new classes, class variations, individual character bonuses, a larger pool of possible equipment spawns, and a few relatively expensive general ease of use buffs (e.g. additional merchants). Like StS it manages to avoid feeling like these unlocks are a grind or the main purpose of playing; it’s perfectly possible to win with the starting characters on your first playthrough. The endboss changing after every win is a particularly nice touch that provides a remarkable amount of variety.

    Combat is a pretty straight-forward affair with everyone (usually) getting one action a turn and each action having a different speed value which determines the action order. Where the strategy comes into play is that if you attack before your opponent, that attack will end up a guaranteed critical hit. Whereas criticals in most games are just a simple +% damage, here each attack has its own specific bonus and each critical hit also refills the equivalent of your mana pool (used for free actions or combo attacks). Which means making sure you attack before your opponent is essential to success. A task assisted by a stagger system which lets you delay an enemy’s action a certain number of times.

    All in all it provides a remarkably well balanced mix of randomization and skill. Oh, but do be aware that the style of humor is extremely irreverent (think Cosmic Star Heroine).

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    This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged