Thoughts on the game

[Hades]

I'm somewhere at the point where i have a budding love hate relationship with this game.

On one hand, its premise exceeds what I wanted to see on Triangle Strategy. Getting your units, training them, acquiring skills, fielding different comps on the map based on whats needed, etc. It certainly hits the nostalgia of Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics.

On the other I find some of the decisions of the developers on the game to be weird/unusual. The Deployment Screen has got to be the first thing I have to mention. its infuriating that it eats almost a third of the screen the entire time you're deploying when you want to see the map and where the enemy units are or how they're scattered. Maybe there's plans to have it open only when you need it to be, idk.

The unit splash art is good and i like the style a lot, but the unit sprite is not. You'd think that after playing 2 maps, you'd be easily able to tell what unit sprite the warrior vs the ranger or the mage vs priest. Having strong distinctions between unit sprites is something I've seen in so many TRPGs that I'm really baffled that Crimson Tactics seemed to have not taken this in consideration. Sure I can see the quiver on the ranger's back or the differences in the mage and priest's cloaks but only after i zoom in at about 50% which i cant be on like 80% of the time. This is even further exacerbated when you're at the birds eye view mode which you have to be on when the elevation on the maps are steep and you can't get a good view of that one tile you want despite rotating the map twice already.

Shop and Crafting menu's are decent but is missing a chunk of what I've personally considered as standards. First is being able to see the amount of, say heal 1s, in your inventory while buying or crafting more. Having that saves the players so much time from screen swapping multiple times just to check if they already have enough on an item. Second is something simple. The option to buy items in bulk of 10s. I have no idea how it can be implemented in the game, but just having the option to buy in bulk of 10s would save the players so much time from clicking the arrow buttons once each time.

I think that's everything i want to say about the current state of early access. The game has so much potential to be the spiritual successor of TO and FFT, but also still very far from being the one.

[MADMAN]

I somewhat agree with on the unit sprites although I did get used to it, it definitely took a while to be able to tell what was what.

Also 100% agree with you on the shop/crafting UI needing some work

On a whole I love this game but it definitely would benefit from a little bit of polish

[Reddz]

They got a little carried away with the Tactics Ogre "inspiration." Nearly every detail can be seen in LUCT. The fortune teller questions at the start of the game. Tarot card drops. Class marks. Grimoires. Elemental affinities. Even mages saying a few lines when they cast spells in battle.

But they messed it up with more rng, worse balance, less classes and abilities. The family name stuck as "Frink" lol.

[deuce985]

Would really like some form of control over RNG especially the hit %. I hate RNG in every genre except the genre built around it in rogue-likes. I get why devs use it because it's more of a you can't see what's coming but I feel like it takes too much control away from the player. It's especially evident in hit % when you put everyone in the right position only for you combat scenario to be decided by luck. I'm not just pointing at this game but I think it's bad game design in general.

There's instances where you have bad RNG in a game and tolerable RNG. I don't think there's many scenarios I can think of where RNG is "good". It's very rare in my experience. RNG is an excuse to remove player agency and control over an experience. Though to be fair, most games use some form of RNG even if it's not readily apparent.

On the upside, I'd imagine a player likes RNG because of the mystery what's around the corner. That's likely why rogue-likes do RNG better than most other genres. I guess it just depends on how you use it. I don't think RNG is used well in this game.

[Big Mad Wolf]

Originally posted by deuce985:

There's instances where you have bad RNG in a game and tolerable RNG. I don't think there's many scenarios I can think of where RNG is "good". It's very rare in my experience. RNG is an excuse to remove player agency and control over an experience. Though to be fair, most games use some form of RNG even if it's not readily apparent.

No, it is because of the HIGHs and LOWs RNG provides. Why is old school pen & paper so famous? It is full of RNG. You can have great moments (critical success) and horrible moments (critical failure).

Sometimes you fail a 90% hit chance, sometimes you succeed at a 8% recruitment chance. Managing the risk of failure is part of the game. Sometimes you waste 3 turns recruiting a guy and then he runs away.

I am playing on strategy with automatic difficulty setting, so no idea if I am on hard or nightmare currently. Was fighting level 14 opponents while my main heroes are close to 12.

The worst in this game so far for me is, trying to recruit somebody and him getting healed back up every time and how clunky spell selection works currently.

You could ponder if skills like stuns should always hit, to make a bit more predictability into the game. But this also means enemies will never miss with those skills, so a two-edged blade.

[Horatio Hornbag]

I definitely really like it as well, i think this is gonna be pretty fun once it gets more fleshed out. It definitely goes beyond "influenced" by tactics ogre, I agree, but i mean... tactics ogre is pretty much my favorite game of all time and since its essentially a dead IP now I really don't mind it being copied. If Square Enix isn't going to release more ogre battle games I can get behind playing a copy that just has a different story and characters instead.

Agree with the unit designs. I know theyre generics but they're too... generic, lol. I really enjoyed the tactics ogre ones, each of them do feel quite distinguishable and theres a good variety in designs. These ones feel like the same character just wearing a different outfit and holding a different weapon. Which i guess is realistic since its not like changing class would make your hair magically grow longer, change color, and give you an entirely new face. But lets be real its way more fun when it is, it makes units easier to distinguish as mentioned, and as someone whos not very interested in any of the generic designs so far a little variety would be nice. Go wild and have fun with it! Make them really unique. Even if people dont like one the fact that there's a male and female variant means youll probably like one of them. Not to mention with so many classes its not the end of the world if there are some styles we dont like.

I havent looked at the crafting menu and only was in a shop for like a split second, so I cant comment on those. Not sure what the criticism about the deployment screen is. Its not big, ive only seen it maybe be a maximum of 20 squares. And if the issue is that you cant see the enemies Im pretty sure its possible to zoom in and zoom out. Maybe i need to play more to see what the issue is though.

Also some balance is needed. I swear to god in the prologue, half of all attacks got blocked. Like, i remember counting at some point because it was getting so ridiculous and it was basically half as i thought. It stopped being an issue once you gain control over the MC but i'd still be wary of that being an issue at higher levels. Blocking and missing should really be uncommon. You dont want to bank on them and they should really only happen when you least expect them to. Like a 1/20 chance normally and if you did something to your character to make blocking more likely maybe 1/5. TRPG fights in general are quite long as it is, and we dont need the fights taking twice as long because all the characters keep blocking and missing.

Having said that Im really looking forward to how this goes. I had a blast with what ive played so far and i hope the finished product winds up being a banger. Itll need some work for sure but i think if they listen to the community they can hopefully get it to a pretty impressive state.

[heffay1122]

If I might add onto this and get some other opinions.. While I agree with most everything here, there is something else that bothers me.

Unit cap.

It varies so much that it is hard to have more than 6 dependable characters. I *wanted* to use mounts but you cannot dismount in the deployment screen. So if the unit cap drops, that mounted character takes up two slots. Yes, I know you can save before and reload bit it adds more headache on top of everything that is mentioned. I don't like being forced to take story characters, either. No spoilers here but there are some that I could just literally have done without. They disrupt my whole synergy and require me to take someone out of my standard team comp, further disrupting it.

Anyone else have this issue or maybe knows something that I don't?

[deuce985]

Originally posted by Big Mad Wolf:

Originally posted by deuce985:

There's instances where you have bad RNG in a game and tolerable RNG. I don't think there's many scenarios I can think of where RNG is "good". It's very rare in my experience. RNG is an excuse to remove player agency and control over an experience. Though to be fair, most games use some form of RNG even if it's not readily apparent.

No, it is because of the HIGHs and LOWs RNG provides. Why is old school pen & paper so famous? It is full of RNG. You can have great moments (critical success) and horrible moments (critical failure).

Sometimes you fail a 90% hit chance, sometimes you succeed at a 8% recruitment chance. Managing the risk of failure is part of the game. Sometimes you waste 3 turns recruiting a guy and then he runs away.

I am playing on strategy with automatic difficulty setting, so no idea if I am on hard or nightmare currently. Was fighting level 14 opponents while my main heroes are close to 12.

The worst in this game so far for me is, trying to recruit somebody and him getting healed back up every time and how clunky spell selection works currently.

You could ponder if skills like stuns should always hit, to make a bit more predictability into the game. But this also means enemies will never miss with those skills, so a two-edged blade.

Yeah, I think the game needs so more heads up information. You nailed it on the highs and the lows and that's exactly my issue with RNG. You have a degree of mystery there is this going to connect, will I gain this, can I recruit this, etc. but the downside to it is always at the expense of the player being able to control the situation.

Like I said above, you can do everything smartly and push a tactical mindset everywhere but still be punished. I don't find RNG like this rewarding because it's not letting me control anything based on my decisions. I'm relying heavily on luck rather than my ability as the player.

To my point above too, I think just about every game uses some form of RNG. The difference is whether you notice it or not. If you tend to notice it in my experience it's bad RNG, imo. Like you said in those moments it tends to be the lows that demoralize you.

[Big Mad Wolf]

In the end it depends on the 'Delta of Randomness' (Extra History on YT) and your own taste in that regard.

So far I'm okey with the RNG in this game. 25 h in and just at the beginning of the second arc, why team is so well geared, that in randoms encounters enemies put hardly a dent into my units. And even the story encounters have an hard time of being a real danger.


My friend and I enjoyed playing Divinity Original Sin a lot and got easily bored in Divinity Original Sin because they removed pretty much all kinds of RNG. If there is no RNG you do not really need to adapt, you just need to learn certain patterns like in one of the oldest games in the world: Chess.

I also do not enjoy to much RNG like in Darkest Dungeon when pretty much everything feels negative, so you do not even want to risk stuff and exploring tends to backfire.

[sebinjapan]

My first few hours I felt like I was forcing myself to play, I hated the RNG. It felt like the game was always giving the edge to the enemies and I was struggling to not let any of my unit permanently die. However I felt like I couldn't stop playing as this has everything I was hoping to get from tactical game since FFT.

Since then, I don't know if it's because of patches, the game balance shifting as the story progress or simply my unit being in a decent place level/gear-wise, but I am at a stage where I don't feel like the RNG is that bad anymore. But it still feels like some part of the game are not well balanced,and I hope this get fixed.

I also wish that they come up with something to speed up the beginning, like a new game + or option to skip the intro. I don't see myself having to go through it again as it felt painful and dragging. I don't care playing units that won't be mine or something that could have been a cut scene (although it was a good way to learn to play the game, there is 0 need to replay it).

Graphic wise I also feel undecided. Sometimes the sprite looks nice, some other time they look so blurry and weird. Also feel like they need to work on more movement for them to add fluidity.

Overall, so far I like it - looking past the flaws, I think it's an amazing TRPG. I tried so many new games and they just didn't itch my FFT needs.

[Hans]

An option to completely skip past the tutorial/prologue and directly into the game would be nice. Also, since there is no variation in the first few missions, I'd also like the option of starting the game post-Udwin (or whatever that knight's name is) since you get no XP/items from those fights and they're really just proforma and an extended part of the tutorial.

I'm going to start a third game to try to power through the first part as it turns out I enjoyed strategic more, but even rushing through, it took me 54 minutes to get to the point where the game really starts in the Duke arc.

[Big Mad Wolf]

Yes, skipping the intro should be an option in the future. Probably will as this game is still EA after all.

[Espirit]

The game need to fixed the mount as i am not getting a mount if i can assign extra dps to clear the enemies.

[ChaosFred]

I just adding note:
Because this game runs on Unity, it is "possible" to mod this game thru many methods. One I had fun was setting up the number of deployed units to maximum number of deploy field + increase the number of enemies. However, this makes mount even less desirable since it takes 4 squares instead just 1 as normal character, so I just usually increase to 16 or 18 (the maximum deploy field usually 24 squares or 6x4 size). But this does not solve the issue. The only best way is to make mount unit has its own slot, eg: Mount no longer counts as extra unit, but there is a maximum number of mount you can have on the field, eg: 3 horses OR 1 dragon, no "... and ..."

If the dev perhaps provides official modding support later when the game released, Then it will extend a lot of this game playability, similar to XCOM series.

Originally posted by heffay1122:

I don't like being forced to take story characters, either.

Forced unit is common in RPG. For example, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactic Ogre and Fire Emblem have some stages where your MC must be deployed.

What you probably want is that MC allowed to change job/class so the MC is more viable.

[Big Mad Wolf]

The MC is allowed to change job, after a certain point. He is my most multiclassed unit so far.

[Crax]

Having played through the game once I can confidently say I can ace the early game much easier than I had at the beginning. Game is actually pretty easy when you realize that, for example, you can just buy up those raw materials and equip everyone with the best available equipment. Hard to lose once you get to that point.