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Barreft posted:I'm like 54 hours in, doing NG+ and can't stop. Is FE: 3 Houses like this? Cause I'm gonna buy if so. Three Houses is kind of a welcome return to a more sort of serious and intricate political drama strategy RPG after things kind of taking a turn for the more light hearted black and white sort of story and characterization in the 3DS titles. Even the establishing intro cutscene after you press start is such a hard turn from just about anything that has been shown in the series to date let alone Awakening and Fates. It takes a lot of cues from what many consider the best saga in the series in the Jugdral Chronology and depending on which house you choose to align with you get to see some pretty different sides of a lot of characters, especially arguably the franchises most controversial character to date. IMO the books in the Monastery library you can just sort of read on their own have more actual lore and intrigue to them the entire scenarios of either Awakening or Fates. Like I still enjoyed those games from a gameplay standpoint but the conflict and cast didn't really pull me in at all the same way some of the past sagas like Jugdral, Elibe or Tellius' had or Three Houses did for me and seemingly a lot of other people. It's just a lot more fleshed out again. Just keep in mind your looking at something like a 200-250 or so hour playtime if you want to complete all of the routes. Also depending on what mode you choose Fire Emblem games can be very very unfriendly towards mistakes as when a character dies that's basically it for them unless you choose to replay the chapter with one exception in Genealogy of The Holy War where one of the legendary staffs can bring a character back to life and then it breaks and costs the maximum amount of gold a character can carry at one time to repair. If a main story character dies it's automatically game over though anyway. Three Houses has a casual mode that just has a non-main character get KOed for the remainder of the stage but never suffer a fatal injury, but I've never used it personally. I'd seriously recommend Fire Emblem Genealogy of the Holy War as well or maybe IS will finally hike up it's collective socks and remake the game for Switch like I know they want to since they've been featuring characters from it in Heroes for years now.
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May 4, 2022 07:15
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Cephas posted:I thought the way the game hashes out the ideology triangle was pretty interesting, if strange. It feels very intentionally off-kilter. Based on the colors of the choices, all three characters' ideologies shift in the final choice. Frederica had been championing Liberty the whole time, but her final choice is Morality (do what's right no matter the consequences). Benedict is usually Utility, but his final choice is Liberty (take control of your own destiny by becoming king). And Roland is usually Morality, but his final choice was Utility (sacrifice the few for the sake of the many).
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May 4, 2022 07:24
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The World Inferno posted:The battle is super fun – you have to beat 100 enemies that keep coming and coming. Just when ya think you're on top of things, another 4-8 spawn on the sides and give ya run for it. ... I just spammed 100% lightning over and over for 50+ turns. It was very easy. But very boring. That said I ended with every character with Double HP and Autores buffs.
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May 4, 2022 12:05
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Playing this game now and am finding all the reviewers who complained about too many cutscenes as being weird. The visual novel hybrid aspect of the game is cool.
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May 4, 2022 23:15
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The first 2 chapters are really heavy on exposition and cutscenes but it gets less dense after that I personally didn't like that. Not because I didn't like the story but because I just wanted to kill poo poo and I had to slog through all the dialogue to get there
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May 4, 2022 23:30
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They could definitely mix it up with more early battles, even just like little training battles or other unimportant stuff. IIRC you get multiple scenes of different characters joining you before you even get to try out the previous ones.
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May 5, 2022 00:17
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Clarste posted:They could definitely mix it up with more early battles, even just like little training battles or other unimportant stuff. IIRC you get multiple scenes of different characters joining you before you even get to try out the previous ones. Yea it's a pacing issue rather then a total content issue.
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May 5, 2022 00:18
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Natural 20 posted:... May I suggest instead fighting it head on while repeatedly casting auto-revive and invincibility. You're constantly on edge as the second you lose a couple characters the tide can shift in a snap. Ronald's ending is certainly the worst. Serona and him both join the Saintly Seven and the game tries to say "well the people are prospering", but the vibes are very much "you have become the baddies." To the games credit, it doesn't explicitly say that, which is great. Frederica becomes a wandering prophet who's shaved her head and is publicly stoned for preaching the truth people who don't believe her. .
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May 5, 2022 01:07
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Barreft posted:I'm like 54 hours in, doing NG+ and can't stop. Is FE: 3 Houses like this? Cause I'm gonna buy if so. Three Houses feels like it's at least 50% "dating sim" type game play. A huge part of the appeal is getting to spend time with, train, and collect the roster of waifus/husbandos, while Triangle has pretty standard jrpg character progression. Three Houses also suffers from current-era Fire Emblem syndrome where it throws too many character advancement opportunities at you making the game super easy. But maybe I'm just a grump. It's also not that similar to Triangle Strategy. Triangle Strategy is descended from the Tactics Ogre->FFT line of games while Fire Emblem is more of its own thing. I guess the "pick one of four different paths" story structure is similar, though.
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May 5, 2022 02:10
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I would definitely say Fire Emblem is worth a shot, though, if you like tactical RPGs at all. It's the most enduring tactical RPG franchise and while liking a Tactics Ogre-style game like this doesn't necessarily mean you'd like Fire Emblem, you stand a pretty good chance of finding something to like. Definitely a very different style of game, though. I'm actually more used to the Fire Emblem style now so I had to re-learn how a more Tactics Ogre-style game works when I started playing this. I wasn't used to caring so much about elevation and unit facing and things like that, or having both player and enemy units being relatively more durable than they are in Fire Emblem. Or having player and enemy turns all in one big initiative order rather than having distinct player and enemy phases like Fire Emblem. If you do try Three Houses, do yourself a favor and play on Hard. It's one of those games where Normal is actually easy mode and Hard is actually normal mode. Casual vs. Classic mode (whether or not you want permadeath basically) is probably down to personal taste. I tend to prefer Classic just because I think it makes it more fun to essentially force myself to do every map deathless (because like hell I'm letting anyone permadie  ) and it makes me play more strategically.I really like both styles of tactical RPG, but also I just generally love tactical RPGs so I'll happily take any kind I can get. Harrow fucked around with this message at 02:21 on May 5, 2022 |
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May 5, 2022 02:18
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I'd say the main distinction of of the Fire Emblem branch of tactics RPGs is that the maps are much bigger, you deploy more units at once, and the units are more interchangeable: defined more by different stat balances than variety of skills. Which is sort of ironic since they also tend to place a whole lot more emphasis on defining each character as a unique person rather than a gameplay piece, possibly because otherwise you'd find it hard to care about them at all.
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May 5, 2022 02:52
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Yeah, Triangle Strategy's approach to unit design is fairly unique among tactics RPGs. Even in games where characters have set base classes and there's no class change/job system (like earlier Fire Emblem games or the Shining Force games), there's almost always more than one character with the same class, and often you can pick between a couple different classes to promote a character to. Triangle Strategy, meanwhile, makes every unit completely unique, even units that share the same combat role (healer, tank, offensive mage, etc.), and that's a cool twist on the formula. I'm not sure I can think of another tactics RPG that does that with its characters.
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May 5, 2022 12:57
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I think I'd compare it to Freedom Force, though that's real time with pause.
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May 5, 2022 13:12
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I don't think "every character is unique" is that unusual, to be honest. XCOM Chimera Squad comes to mind, but like, literally any game without job changing.
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May 5, 2022 13:38
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Huh, I was unaware that Chimera Squad existed. Cool. Of the tactics RPGs I've played, most of the ones without class/job changing still have multiple characters of the same class. Even if they might have different stat spreads, their core abilities remain the same. Though yeah Chimera Squad appears to be different from the other XCOM games in that you just have a squad of totally unique characters, which is cool. I'll have to play that sometime, I like XCOM. But it's also possible or even likely that I just don't know much about tactics RPGs outside of the biggest franchises.
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May 5, 2022 14:03
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There definitely aren't many in the Western sphere of games as the majority of tactical RPGs always seem to spin off from D&D which means the core of the game needs to involve character customization. The differences between what exactly makes up a CRPG/SRPG/TRPG is pretty blurry these days so I'd just lump any 3rd person of grid based game that doesn't have a focus on large military armies, like say the Total War series or Romance of the Three Kingdoms games, into games to look into. If you don't mind moving away from the square grid, and having a mix of repeated abilities with a handful of unique characters and a more war/terriorial conquest kind of deal, you can check out Brigandine. I was extremely happy to see that old playstation title a new sequel on the switch and is 50% of the reason I finally bought a Switch in the first place. Back in 90s there was a badass game called Dark Wizard on Sega CD that my friends and I played the hell out of. Prior to that there was Shining Force on the Genesis which I have to think is one of the predecessors of Triangle Strategy here. Square even tried one with Bahamut Lagoon but I remember that even after a decent translation came out the game just wasn't that great. Also back in the 90s Sierra/Dynamix put out a loving classic called Betrayal at Krondor, based on the book series that had some grid style combat although it's kind of hard to say the characters were unique in that they were basically either knights or mages, but they were not customizable beyond gear. Before that you had the old D&D goldbox games, but for the most part the western stuff always leaned heavily into the wargame/roleplay side of things so characters were either highly specific jobs with no customization or completely open ended with all the customization. Those of course led into all the D&D games we have which are almost always pretty customizable. Chimera Squad was alright but the pacing of fights sometimes makes it feel like more of a puzzle and less of a back and forth fight. It's good for what it was but I'm hoping that we get a better version of it with this new Marvel Knights game. Just saw another one dropped on Steam recently, King Arthur: Knight's Tale looks like it might be good. Wartales was another one I saw on Steam a while back and it seems pretty good but still in early access. Fell Seal also on Steam is a pretty decent FFT descendant. Then there's all those Disgaea games if you court madness; I only played a few but I seem to recall the core cast typically having unique skillsets. I always heard good stuff about the Shin Megami Tensai stuff but never got into them. If you don't mind the cyberpunk aesthetic then the Shadowrun Returns games are definitely worth your time.
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May 5, 2022 15:43
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Just made it to Chapter 16 and I’m 30 hours in; i dunno if I’m going to do an immediate replay when I get through the story, but the game has hooked me more than I would have thought when I first started. Spoilers up to Ch 16, haven’t finished the battle yet; Serenoa being a Jon Snow bastard son isn’t an original or unique twist but it still managed to blindside me and it is pretty effective in this scenario. Plus, whatever happened on the Roland route seems intense because not only is he completely buckling under the weight of being king, he… seems very pro-exile and execution suddenly to keep what little control he has. I’m betting someone told him about how Serenoa is his half-brother because he is acting super suspicious too. Also lmao at Benedict being: “hey, keep all this a secret for now but technically you could usurp the throne” Hyzante remains eternally frustrating to watch and deal with, but when thinking about it… I feel like it’s a mark of good writing (and depressingly historically accurate) that these characters believe in their religion this strongly and it permeates everything from how they interact with any human being down to their governance. And every time Serenoa finds something that can prove the religion false, someone else is like “true but lmao good luck with that, that poo poo won’t be easy and it may immediately blow up in our faces.” The game is upfront that someone rightly needs to do this, but that poo poo will be *hard* Probably also going to revisit FE Three Houses now that I’m in a SRPG mood after this; I only finished Edelgard’s route and my partner finished Golden Deer; from what they told me, I missed *a lot* of the story apparently
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May 5, 2022 15:53
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PaybackJack posted:Prior to that there was Shining Force on the Genesis which I have to think is one of the predecessors of Triangle Strategy here. Shining Force 2 was the first tactics game I ever encountered. I was addicted to that way back when I was a kid. I remember playing Shining Force Gaiden on the Game Gear, too. I'd been meaning to check out Brigandine. I've had the demo installed for ages but just haven't booted it up yet for some reason. MechaX posted:Probably also going to revisit FE Three Houses now that I’m in a SRPG mood after this; I only finished Edelgard’s route and my partner finished Golden Deer; from what they told me, I missed *a lot* of the story apparently Yeah the stories in Three Houses diverge pretty significantly. They're all pretty much the same in the first half of the game, but the second half isn't just minor variations--they're totally different stories at that point. Definitely worth going back and playing the other routes if you're in the mood.
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May 5, 2022 15:56
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Fire Emblem has been poop for the last three games. They’ve taken a winning formula and remixed it variously with opaque ability systems, dating sims and poo poo stories. Sometimes I look at a cool thing like Dragon Quest, which has essentially been the same for thirty years, and wonder why game studios feel the need to shake things up so radically.
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May 5, 2022 16:05
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Vegetable posted:Fire Emblem has been poop for the last three games. They’ve taken a winning formula and remixed it variously with opaque ability systems, dating sims and poo poo stories. Sometimes I look at a cool thing like Dragon Quest, which has essentially been the same for thirty years, and wonder why game studios feel the need to shake things up so radically. I mean, it's pretty clear why. Fire Emblem Awakening sold nearly six times as many copies as the previous non-remake Fire Emblem. Fates sold more than that, and Three Houses even more than that. They found an even more winning formula.
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May 5, 2022 16:09
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Harrow posted:I mean, it's pretty clear why. Fire Emblem Awakening sold nearly six times as many copies as the previous non-remake Fire Emblem. Fates sold more than that, and Three Houses even more than that. They found an even more winning formula.
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May 5, 2022 16:12
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Harrow posted:I mean, it's pretty clear why. Fire Emblem Awakening sold nearly six times as many copies as the previous non-remake Fire Emblem. Fates sold more than that, and Three Houses even more than that. They found an even more winning formula. it's one of those "oh yeah, women play games too" sales moments lol
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May 5, 2022 16:13
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The Edelgard route in Three Houses was originally intended to be an Easter Egg route that was obscure to unlock. The others share some DNA but it is basically its entire own self-contained story.
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May 5, 2022 16:28
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Harrow posted:I mean, it's pretty clear why. Fire Emblem Awakening sold nearly six times as many copies as the previous non-remake Fire Emblem. Fates sold more than that, and Three Houses even more than that. They found an even more winning formula. Yeah, IIRC Awakening was planned to be the last FE because the series just wasn't selling anymore. I don't care for the new direction either, but it's understandable.
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May 5, 2022 19:20
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The Moon Monster posted:Yeah, IIRC Awakening was planned to be the last FE because the series just wasn't selling anymore. I don't care for the new direction either, but it's understandable. It's the same thing as Persona, really. Adding in those social elements starting in Persona 3 massively increased the wider appeal of the series but probably left behind a decent portion of existing fans. Personally I'm one of those people who like both early and modern Fire Emblem and Persona but both series definitely made a huge and very noticeable shift.
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May 5, 2022 19:36
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With Persona at least you still have the mainline SMT games for all your antisocial demon summoning action. Speaking of which, SMT: Devil Survivor 1 and 2 are my all time favorite "tactics" jrpgs. They should make a new one of those.
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May 5, 2022 20:23
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I wasn't really a fan of Awakening or Fates, but Three Houses rules. I'd love a more straightforward Fire Emblem one of these days, but apparently I'm a sucker for social link poo poo if you put it in a home instance that actually matters.
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May 5, 2022 21:05
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Devil Survivor could be a bit tricky to wrap your head around at first, but once you got the hang of breaking the game wide open with absurd combinations of demons with broken racial skills that let you boost your movement or teleport or attack from two squares away so you don't get counterattacked, it became incredible.
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May 5, 2022 21:08
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Vegetable posted:Fire Emblem has been poop for the last three games. They’ve taken a winning formula and remixed it variously with opaque ability systems, dating sims and poo poo stories. Sometimes I look at a cool thing like Dragon Quest, which has essentially been the same for thirty years, and wonder why game studios feel the need to shake things up so radically. I found that to be the case much more with Awakening and Fates than Three Houses. The franchise has definitely been more of the plucky waifus and husbandos persuasion since Awakening but its not the all out joke script where the storyline barely seems to matter like with those two games with Three Houses exactly. I really just could not get invested in Fates storyline at all and in particular. It didn't even make sense to have child characters in that one either and they did a really bad job of trying to justify it. In Genealogy and Awakening at least it makes some sense. Kale fucked around with this message at 21:14 on May 5, 2022 |
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May 5, 2022 21:12
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Three Houses was the first strategy/tactics rpg I had played since I tried the OG FF Tactics on my PS1 as a lad. I never got through the first battle and refused to keep trying because I got sick of sitting through the beginning cutscenes over and over since you can't save until after the battle. Three Houses was excellent brain poison, I'm still low-key/high-key obsessed with all of the students and can't wait for Three Hopes. I would not have tried Triangle Strategy if I hadn't loved Three Houses and while they're definitely different I definitely enjoy both of them a ton.
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May 5, 2022 21:22
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It kind of says a lot about how popular three houses was that they made a whole musou game out of just its cast and the previous musou game was an amalgamation of popular characters from everything else.
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May 5, 2022 21:52
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Three Houses in general feels like a game where they said “this is our biggest budget game ever on the most powerful thing we’ve made an FE for, let’s go for broke” and some things worked and you can tell they were pushing right up to the deadline. It is poorly plotted but it’s because they swung for the fences making essentially three different second halves that use the situation very differently and are unafraid to just not tell you poo poo if it’s not relevant to the path you’re on. Plus dramatically expanding the support system to make it persona-like and building a whole open world map to run around. It’s a whole lot of game, and you can definitely tell where they started to use a lot of duct tape and spit at the end to get it out on time but it’s still quite the achievement. Also the character writing is excellent, both in terms of quality and just how much there is. All of the characters are built around a few key traits that allows you to get a hold of who they are instantly and then the supports shade them in and make them more complex. The 5 year time jump also helps a lot with this because you get to see how all of the students grow over not just a tiny span of time. It makes some weird edge cases with the supports in the second half where they feel like regressions if they were written to be seen in the first part but there’s not a real good solution that fits with what they wanted to do.
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May 5, 2022 21:56
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speaking of three houses, if we get triangle strategy sequel it needs to up da homo
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May 5, 2022 22:03
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Yeah Three Houses is an excellent example of just how far good character writing can take you (to paraphrase my own write-up for the 2019 GotY thread). The plot is pretty messy--not nearly to the degree of Fates, but still pretty messy--but the character writing is strong enough to carry the story portion on its own.
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May 5, 2022 22:03
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I would kill for most of the Black Eagles. Triangle Strategy does have some strong characters, but I don't know if I'd lay down my life for any of them. Other than Frederica, obviously.
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May 5, 2022 22:12
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DC Murderverse posted:Also the character writing is excellent, both in terms of quality and just how much there is. All of the characters are built around a few key traits that allows you to get a hold of who they are instantly and then the supports shade them in and make them more complex. The 5 year time jump also helps a lot with this because you get to see how all of the students grow over not just a tiny span of time. It makes some weird edge cases with the supports in the second half where they feel like regressions if they were written to be seen in the first part but there’s not a real good solution that fits with what they wanted to do. I thought the character writing was pretty good, except for the main character who was comically terrible and warps all the other characters by their proximity. They have all the personality and presence of a confused pigeon who flew onto the screen and yet a quarter of the game's dialog is everyone gushing about how incredible they are at absolutely everything. I would have rather just picked one of the faction leaders to play at the beginning. I guess they needed a blank slate to make it easier to have them befriend/romance every other character, but they took it too far  Oh well, FE player insert characters are a mixed bag. The one in GBA Fire Emblem who barely existed was pretty funny.
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May 5, 2022 22:15
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The Moon Monster posted:Oh well, FE player insert characters are a mixed bag. The one in GBA Fire Emblem who barely existed was pretty funny. The gba's tactian proves the worth of their existence by providing the sprites where Lyn looks directly at you and is your friend
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May 5, 2022 22:17
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Snooze Cruise posted:speaking of three houses, if we get triangle strategy sequel it needs to up da homo Yes please.
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May 5, 2022 22:18
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The Moon Monster posted:I thought the character writing was pretty good, except for the main character who was comically terrible and warps all the other characters by their proximity. They have all the personality and presence of a confused pigeon who flew onto the screen and yet a quarter of the game's dialog is everyone gushing about how incredible they are at absolutely everything. I would have rather just picked one of the faction leaders to play at the beginning. I guess they needed a blank slate to make it easier to have them befriend/romance every other character, but they took it too far Yeah this is completely fair. I wish they had just recorded their dialogue like the rest of the characters, having the MC be voiced but only during non-story scenes is a weird decision that I have to imagine was a time constraint thing. All of the VA work is phenomenal and I bet they could have added more texture to that character without having to change anything else. (Although I guess it worked out for them because when they had to replace the Male Byleth voice literally as the game was coming out it only took a few months)
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May 5, 2022 22:27
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DC Murderverse posted:Yeah this is completely fair. I wish they had just recorded their dialogue like the rest of the characters, having the MC be voiced but only during non-story scenes is a weird decision that I have to imagine was a time constraint thing. All of the VA work is phenomenal and I bet they could have added more texture to that character without having to change anything else. (Although I guess it worked out for them because when they had to replace the Male Byleth voice literally as the game was coming out it only took a few months) Yeah after the guy dirtbagged his way out of what would probably have been the biggest gig of his career to date. Well he had a lot of baggage going into the game, but what ultimately sunk him was breaching his NDA by bragging about the role on social media before Nintendo was ready to go to PR. Now its Mr. Main Anime self insert character himself Zach Aguilar who honestly seems like an all around decent personable guy from what I can tell.
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May 5, 2022 23:04
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