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 Children of the Zodiarcs is a new strategy RPG by Canadian studio Cardboard Utopia, featuring a tactical grid, cards, and dice. If you could paint your characters, you'd swear it was tailor-made for boardgame nerds. Drawing inspirations from classics like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem, CotZ will seem familiar to genre veterans while adding enough new ideas to be fresh. Well, at least it would if it were calibrated at all. For all the fun ideas CotZ has, it's done in by the fact that the scenario design ranges from standard to boneheaded. The game has several difficulty spikes that are unreasonable to the point where the only solution was to grind out more levels in random battles. It was so bad that the developers had to rush out a patch to cut the difficulty on a few missions to make them manageable. Even then, the experience gain system combined with the way enemies scale leads to a lot of extremely annoying situations, which hits its peak when you gain a new character that will probably be 10 to 12 levels below your main party and risks dying in one hit to anything. Yeah, this game needed a little more time in the oven. Children of the Zodiarcs is also a story about a society of haves versus have-nots, and what the have-nots are willing to do in order to claw their way up in the world. It attempts to be morose much like Final Fantasy Tactics, but whether or not it successfully pulls that off is debatable. All said, an indie game that takes risks and lets you roll dice deserves to be seen, flaws and all. It's not a long game and has enough moving parts to futz around with for an experience that you don't entirely regret. THE CAST  Nahmi, also known as The Ebony Flame, is the main character of the game. A tough orphan and Zirchhoff's #1 thief, she's something of a legend among local law enforcement. She's ruthless and does not hesitate to do anything necessary to accomplish her goals. She's a speedy, close-range fighter who can hit multiple times per turn and has a bit of utility on the side. She can take a hit on the chin if she has to, but it's not recommended that she stay in the thick of things.  Pester is Zirchhoff's safecracker and something of a coward. While he's every bit as much a thief as Nahmi, he doesn't share her determination, and really just wants to make it to the end of the day with his skin still intact. He's mainly a support character with a lot of healing and debuff skills, with a good dose of ranged attacks to complement Nahmi's up-close abilities.  Brice is a bratty orphan who's too young to have any sense of morality, and definitely too young to have a magic gauntlet that burns people alive. She's selfish and generally doesn't think about people beyond herself, and has a deep mean streak like a bully on the playground. Her card arsenal is 100% magic attack, and as magic defense is pretty rare in this game, she specializes in blowing up enemies effortlessly.  Zirchhoff is king of gently caress mountain in the slums. Leader of the gang to which Nahmi and Pester belong, the guards run away just from hearing his name. He's a solid all-around unit with an emphasis on close-range area attacks, smashing enemies two or more at a time. He also might be Mick Jagger.  Argon is a rich boy born into privilege, who is naive and condescending at the best of times. He claims to have a strong sense of justice, but has little recognition of how systemic inequality creates desperation in the lower classes, and is absolutely ignorant of the fact that he exists to reinforce that. TABLE OF CONTENTS Part 1: Introductions Part 2: Safe Cracking Part 3: Dice! Filler! Part 4: Nerfed Map #1 Part 5: Nerfed Map #2 inthesto fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Aug 24, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 01:33
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Part 1: Introductions Welcome to Children of the Zodiarcs, a game that starts off really cool and then shoots itself in both feet because it wasn't calibrated well.  The game is probably fine on normal difficulty. I tried the first few maps on normal, and didn't notice anything particularly wrong with it.  Unfortunately, the game has absurd difficulty spikes on hard, to the point where the only feasible answer is to grind out more levels. One was so bad, I actually had to complain to the devs about it. Luckily, they tuned it down but... Well, more on this game's flaws later. We're gonna be playing on hard because what's a strategy LP if the player doesn't suffer?  To some, a technological miracle, a source of limitless energy, a pathway to hidden knowledge... To others, an infinitely corrupting influence, an alien parasite, a weapon. The Zodiarcs were gifts of the Heralds, who came to Lumus over a thousand years ago from a dark and dying world.  An age that ended in a terrible war.  Over the centuries, fragments of the past were uncovered, including the history of the mysterious Zodiarcs. Wise men found Zodiarc Relics and, in time, rediscovered their purpose. A new Zodiarc Age had begun.     The game kicks off with a pair of generic guards getting thrown through a door and this beefcake here running in.  Nice lips.  If'n this the best resistance the might Toran City Guard has to offer, I might just steal all your precious Relics! To think you weaklings is what pass fer “law and order”... If'n I was a Noble with you protectin' me, I'd be quiverin' in my gold-threaded slippers!Meet Zirchhoff, the big daddy with a street accent that the writers can't keep straight.   Children of the Zodiarcs is a game that works in player/enemy phase, much like Fire Emblem. Even though the developers say this game was heavily inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics, there will be no CT fuckery in this game. Except, well, we'll see.   Basic grid-based movement, nothing you haven't seen before (or can't intuit, if you're new to video games). Since this is a tutorial mission, the game restricts us to guarding for the first turn.  “Help”? “Stop, thief”? Those your last words? Come on, man, you really want that on your tombstone? I thought you Guards were all about honor an' guts? Gimmie your best shot, Guard Dog! Lessee what yer made of!The enemy guard doesn't actually do anything on his turn.   So, one thing that makes CotZ distinct is that you don't get a menu of actions. Instead, you have a hand of cards and those are the actions you're allowed to take—think Card Hunter, if you're familiar with that game. Eventually, this will lead into hand management and deck building, but the game's not going to dump that on us yet.  At a glance, the card face will tell us everything we need to know. Red means it deals physical damage, the sword means it's melee, and the number is the base damage.  Pressing the help button brings up a bit more info, such as the range and its area of effect. Right now, Crashing Down is just a basic melee attack with nothing more to it. Thankfully, cards in general aren't “just” anything and almost always have effects on them.  When we highlight the enemy, it'll tell us the damage range plus how much damage we risk on the counterattack. How does a card that deals 8 damage have a range of 4-16?    Welcome to dice rolling, the other half of what makes CotZ so unique! Every time you commit an action, you get to modify the numbers with a dice roll.   We're not gonna worry about the other symbols yet. Just remember that a shard increases damage by 1, and a shield reduces counterattack damage by 1.  drat, Zirchhoff rolled a 3-shard on all of his dice! That's maximum damage for 16. If you notice, the cursor is hovering over a die, and it shows you all the faces—two 3-shards, two 1-shards, and two 1-hearts. All of Zirchhoff's dice are identical, so we got pretty lucky. Not that it matters; this mission is a guaranteed win, but this speeds things up.  A big ugly barges in after we OHKO the guard.  Don't they teach you Dogs snappy lines to intimidate people with? Honestly, you guys needs to work on technique! Gotta at least try to sound threatenin'! Hmmm... With that heavy armor, it's gonna take a new tactic to get through to you... My Skewer attack should get the point across!No, Zirchhoff. Bad dad jokes will not be allowed here.  We can't reach the enforcer in a single turn, so it's time to just move forward and wait. You may notice a new card in Zirchhoff's hand.  The enforcer closes the gap and scratches Zirchhoff. I don't know exactly how counterattack damage is calculated, but doing 0 damage on a counterattack is bad news. This guy has high defense.   Well, there's an easy way to deal with this.  Skewer is good for demonstrating a few new things. First, you can see the blue stars on the right side of the card. This indicates that using Skewer will grant us bonus dice, which will always be colored blue. Each of these bonus dice has four sides with a star and two blank sides. Secondly, this card has a bonus effect. Bonus effects are triggered by getting a star when you roll dice. The 1 inside the star symbol means we only need a single star to get the effect, which is ignoring 50% of the enemy's defense. As far as I know, star effects are not calculated into the damage range preview, so you can gamble on outperforming that readout.  After rolling, we got the star effect, but we're just one damage short of killing this guy in one hit. Luckily, after you pick a card and roll the first time, you can pick up to two dice to reroll. I pick two of the dice that turned up as 1-shards and reroll them in the hopes that I get a 3-shard, which will put me over the top to 8 damage.:thenahmi  Bingo!  For the record, the attack animations in this game aren't very impressive. I'll try to get better shots of them.   Guards, spread out! Do not let this gutter-scum leave the room alive! That's more like it! This guy's got some swagger! And he's brought me the kind of challenge I can sink my teeth into! Ryven brings some friends with him, but they're more of the same and not a threat. I only need to kill one of them to trigger the next part of the fight.     Did you just come in through the window?! …?!? It's HER! The Ebony Flame is here! Dang! Guess I just can't pull off sweet 'n innocent! Alright, Doggie, we'll do this your way! Zirchhoff is just gonna hang back because he's not relevant to the fight anymore.   Nahmi's Blitz doesn't do anything special yet, other than give two bonus shield dice. However, it will become far and away her best card, to a degree that it's actually kind of baffling.   Nahmi's dice aren't nearly as good as Zirchhoff's, as hers only have 1-shard faces. Still, we roll well enough to OHKO this guard.  You, uh, probably shouldn't be quite as into that as you are, Nahmi.  Not much to say here. I don't know the backstab bonus formula either, but it's honestly not that important. More often than not, backstabs are more trouble than they're worth.  You can probably guess how this ends.   This game is not subtle with the “you murdered these people” angle.  Pester, you can come in now!    Wouldn't be cracking open any safes, that's for sure! Alright, quit actin' like children! You know the plan; the two of you can take it from here. I'll lead the rest of these chumps off! Remember, Nahmi; they took away our lives, but they can't ever steal our fight! That fight is who you are! Bring me that Relic! Zirchoff dashes off to let children finish his dirty work.  And after every fight, you earn new dice, which will allow you to customize your characters a bit!  NEXT TIME: Safe cracking! inthesto fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 01:33
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Am I allowed to already hate a character based on their haircut?
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Aug 10, 2017 01:37
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Is the big guy with clown makeup voiced like Foghorn Leghorn? Cause that's how I'm reading him.
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Aug 10, 2017 01:52
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Oh geez, if you have to draw a combination of combat and thief tricks, I can see that getting real annoying real fast.
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Aug 11, 2017 02:21
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So dice affects attack range? I'm cringing already.
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Aug 11, 2017 02:55
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:So dice affects attack range? I'm cringing already. No, range is determined by what card you pick. Glazius posted:Oh geez, if you have to draw a combination of combat and thief tricks, I can see that getting real annoying real fast. It becomes less RNG as the game goes on, because you're stacking so much in your favor. And this game is unique in that it expects you to go infinite on your turns.
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Aug 11, 2017 03:01
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Part 2: Safe Cracking  Not much to the overworld map just yet.  We can go into the menu, but most of it is greyed out for now.   All we can do for now is check the status screen, which gives us an overview of each character. No, we can't even use the dice we earned last fight. To add to that, we can't take a closer look at the cards from this screen, which seems like a pretty huge oversight. The stats are pretty self-explanatory except for “C.ATK”. C.ATK is a coefficient modifying your counterattack damage depending on how many cards you have in hand, i.e. if Nahmi has six cards in hand, her counterattack will do 1.2 extra damage. Nahmi has Pester beat in every stat except magic defense, but we're not going to see enemies using magic for a while, so that stat is irrelevant. Pester gets by by having powerful cards, though Nahmi's are probably even better. Pester just isn't a great character, is what I'm saying.  Also after every mission, there's some optional bits of dialogue to flesh out the characters a bit. Most of the time there will be multiple per mission, but right now we only have one:   I sing for the eagle, flying so high. I sing for the river, I sing for the sea. I sing for my people. Who sings for me? I won't forget you, Mama. I promise. Enough beating around the bush; there's not too much to see between missions yet anyway. Let's get to the next bit of story.   You can't rush an artist, Nahmi! This is a level three multi-set model... and I've almost got it... Well, speed it up, or we're going to have to fight our way out of here. I think Zirchhoff said this was Lord Alix Pedno's residence... that guy is a real jerk about security... Just a jerk in general, actually. I'm glad we're rippin' him off! Alright, it's open! Let's get back to the Shambles! That “piece of junk” is a thousand year-old Zodiac relic called The Arch Compass... They say the Heralds used these things to travel between the worlds before the Age of Apex... Whatever that means... Anyway, it's what the boss wanted, so I'm satisfied. Let's bag it up and get outta here!  He's got more than one pose. He's definitely coming back. Ahh! This guy—what a pain! We've been through all this before, Argon! I'll never surrender to the Nobles, or their Guard-Dogs. You want this Relic so bad? Come and get it! Right you are, Ebony Flame. We are born to our roles as a tiger is to his stripes! I am Master of the Guard, sworn to defend the people and property of Torus. You are a child of the Shambles, born in squalor and raised to be a thief and a murderer.A few years ago, I would have said the writers were laying it on thick with Argon. Now, I'm not so sure anymore.  Very well, Chief Justice... It gives me no pleasure to see you put down, Ebony Flame, but alas, the rules of our world have already decreed your fate—there can be no pardon for outlaws...  Uh... Nahmi, I think we're surrounded... are we really going to fight them all? We're not givin' up, if that's what you're askin'! Either we go through these chumps, or YOU can explain to Zirchhoff where his Relic went!You never realize how badly an RPG script abuses ellipses until you have to transcribe it.  Not too much special to this mission. We're still basically in tutorial mode; this time our cards have actual effects to them.   Pester's hand starts out with two cards: Iron Sights and Compassion. Iron Sights is a basic long range attack with a bonus shard die. Compassion is an area-effect heal with the same bonus die. It's mildly annoying that bonus shard dice have shields on them when neither card gets any use out of shields, but them's the breaks.   Nahmi starts off with Blitz and Knives Out. Although we've seen Blitz before, it looks a little different now. It still has one bonus shield die, but now it's got a star effect, and quite possibly the most powerful one in the game. If Nahmi rolls a star while playing Blitz, she gets to play another card. We're in the early game, so an her extra action isn't easy to get, but by the mid-game this will become trivially easy. Any time Nahmi walks up to an enemy, you should expect that enemy to be gone by the time she's done. Knives Out is a short ranged attack to give Nahmi a bit of diversity. It's not an exciting card by any means. If you'll notice, both of Nahmi's cards have the same base damage, and this is a constant in the game: A character's cards will differ by range, area, and effect rather than by raw numbers.  Since Pester's attacks are all ranged, he'll be softening up targets before Nahmi finishes them off, to minimize on counterattack damage.  You'll see the card symbol on the right, which Pester has on both of his dice. For every one of these symbols you roll, you draw a card. They're pretty nice to have, though a lot of cards will also have a card draw effect on them, so you don't want to go too nuts lest you end up overdrawing your hand like crazy.  Pester pops a guard for 9 damage,  Nahmi is guaranteed to finish the guard, so free action effect might be superfluous, but...  This is Knives Out's sole use, more or less: to give Nahmi more targets after she's Blitzed down an enemy.  This is fairly obvious, but since we're going for pure damage her, it makes sense to reroll the star and shield, especially since they have no effect in this scenario.  Experience gain in this game scales on level differential. Since enemies are the same level as us right now (level 2), whacking gives 3 experience and a kill gives 8. Generally, on hard mode the enemy level will be equal to your highest character level plus 2, but since we're still in tutorial mode, they're fixed at 2.   The officer hits Nahmi and seals his fate as a result. If you'll notice, he's got an area effect. This is extremely common on enemies, and bundling up your units can lead to disaster if you're not careful.   Abilities that don't deal damage (i.e. healing, buffs, debuffs) gain a fixed amount of experience, which can quickly cause levels to go out of control. More on that later.  New on this map is the Draw Cards function. In lieu of playing a card or guarding (which gives you a bonus to your physical defense), you can just draw two cards. Maximum hand size is 7 cards, and if you draw over the limit, the game will automatically discard your leftmost (i.e. oldest) card until you're back down to 7. For the most part, unless you're already at 6 or 7 cards, you want to draw instead of guarding—and even if you're at 6 or 7 cards, drawing can help get rid of cards you don't want.   Nahmi draws another copy of Knives Out and a new card, Will To Live. The green indicates that it's a healing card like Pester's Compassion, but this one is only single target. As long as we have Pester around, Will To Live isn't very useful.  Around the corner is more mooks, but CotZ has a very primitive AI where the enemies generally sit still until you move within their range. There's no reason or incentive to engage them until Nahmi and Pester are both at 7 cards again, which is precisely what I do.   Once we're full up on cards, it's trivial to pull out the enemy one by one and pick them off.   This will get more interesting as the game goes on. Probably.   Nahmi and Pester move up to the next set of enemies, back to back. As counterintuitive as this may seem, lining up your characters back to back is a good way to avoid backstabs, since only rear hits matter. There's no advantage of hitting the side as opposed to the front.   One trick the officer has is a buff card that will give himself a bonus shard die. We also have a new enemy here, the prosecutor, who is the basic ranged unit for the guard. They get a lot of long range and area-effect attacks, much like Pester.  They are not particularly dangerous at the moment.   Pester's final card is Draw Out, which is our first area-effect attack. There's not much to say about it other than that and Iron Sights will quickly outpace it in usefulness, but it's nice to have for now.   You also get cumulative experience for hitting multiple targets.  Prosecutors are much squishier than officers, so it's best to rush them down as soon as possible.  The AI really likes to prioritize backstabs when it can. The only other thing it will prioritize higher is catching multiple characters in an area-effect attack, even if that attack is really lousy. This can be abused later in the game.  Pester, the squishier character, is getting backstabbed by a melee enemy with two bonus shard dice (the blue is from the card, the green is from the Stand You Ground card we saw before), and it still barely hurts.   Area-effect attacks also have friendly fire. It is, in fact, possible for Pester to shoot himself in the face. In fact, you can just sit around having your characters whack and heal each other forever if you really want to, but doing so only nets you 1 experience per attack. I don't think this game will ever be popular enough for somebody to get to level 99 on the first mission.  In the final room we've got the mini-boss with an officer and a prosecutor. The mini-boss isn't much tougher than the basic officer, so this isn't going to be much of a problem.  Hetz starts off with a card that would be really, really nice if we ever got, but we don't. This will give every enemy on the map a bonus green die with four stars faces and two blank faces. Bonus star dice eventually get card draw faces too. Bonus star dice are awesome.   Yawn. We're so early in the game that star dice don't actually do anything for enemies.   I play it safe: Eliminate the injured officer and heal back up to full.  Crowd control is still a crappy do-nothing card for the enemy. Interesting to note is that if you use a ranged attack at melee range, you're still vulnerable to counterattacks. Conversely, if Pester were to use Iron Sights on an enemy while right behind them, he'd still get backstab damage. Execution style.   Even the mini-boss who's  a full level higher is a moderate threat at best. But drat, look at having six dice on the first map!  Pester clears out the prosecutor for Nahmi, even though he'll eat a counterattack as a result. He also fires gangster style.   And so we see our first instance of Blitz chaining. Nahmi rolls a star on the first Blitz, goes again, and plays Blitz again. In the second shot, I could have even rerolled for another star, but doing so would have been pointless. But I could have. This will be far from the last time we see Blitz chaining.  Goodbye, Hetz. It was strange that you got your own unique art. You were probably a kickstarter backer.  Wait! Better than a live one, right? Can we leave now? My life might suck, but I've kinda gotten attached to it... Quiet! Someone's watching us... OKAY, WHOEVER YOU ARE, THERE'S NO POINT IN HIDING! I CAN HEAR YOU BREATHING! SHOW YOURSELF!  Wait a second... Haven't I seen you around the Shambles before? Just how long have you been following me? A spy! Spill it, runt—are you working for the Black Fang, or maybe the East Side Gang? Here to rip off our score, huh? Or maybe you're just looking to get your face rearranged... Try me! I'll put you in the dirt next to this guy! Is this kid for real? Whose Zodiarc guantlet you wearin'? You even know how to use that thing? It's mine! Jumped a grown-up and took it! And it's easy to use... Brice's psychotic glare will never go away. Between a coward and a murder-child, Nahmi doesn't keep good company. That's a Judge's gauntlet...We don't know this yet, but the judge is the basic magic enemy, which should give you a hint as to what Brice does. Kid, what happened here? I wanted to watch you fight—but this guy spotted me. He... he was gonna hurt me, just like they always do, I know it! Grown-ups are creeps, all of 'em! But now I have this thing... No grown-up's ever gonna hurt me again. My name's Brice... But you can call me...  You gotta be shittin' me, kid. We don't have time for this now. The Dogs will be here any minute... Come on, Brice; I ain't no babysitter, butt I won't be responisble for no kid dyin' either. If we don't get into the Inbetweens right now, we're all as dead as he is!  NEXT TIME: More dice! And filler! inthesto fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Aug 12, 2017 |
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Aug 11, 2017 03:32
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I'm really glad you're LPing this game, because while it was on my wishlist for ages, when it finally dropped I just didn't feel compelled to pick it up. Mostly because I saw Zirchhoff's design, assumed the game was a comedy, and decided that I'd wait to hear if it was amazing or not.
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Aug 11, 2017 03:56
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inthesto posted:The stats are pretty self-explanatory except for “C.ATK”. C.ATK is a coefficient modifying your counterattack damage depending on how many cards you have in hand, i.e. if Nahmi has six cards in hand, her counterattack will do 1.2 extra damage. To clarify (since you said in the previous post you didn't quite understand them), my understanding is that counterattacks deal (C.ATK * ATK) for each card in your hand, minus the enemy's defense/defense pips. But I could be mistaken - my understanding was also that grinding didn't do much given the level scaling, but you clearly think otherwise, so what do I know. inthesto posted:They're pretty nice to have, though a lot of cards will also have a card draw effect on them, so you don't want to go too nuts lest you end up overdrawing your hand like crazy. Given that all emptying your deck does is reshuffles it and immediately starts drawing again, endlessly cycling cards is hardly the worst thing in the world. Looking forward to seeing what the patched level was like pre-patching - based on the notes, I definitely remember having trouble with that one.
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Aug 11, 2017 04:06
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Nick Buntline posted:Looking forward to seeing what the patched level was like pre-patching - based on the notes, I definitely remember having trouble with that one. They just cut enemy levels by 1 across the board. It was a pretty uninteresting way to fix things, but then again, the map was difficult for uninteresting reasons to begin with.
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Aug 11, 2017 04:15
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Your assessment matches my experience with the game as well. The general concept was interesting and workable, but the actual encounter and map design was absolutely horrendous and a tactics game lives or dies by its encounter design. I'm holding out hope they go back through and fix up their terrible encounter designs but it seems unlikely due to the volume of work it would entail.
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Aug 12, 2017 07:13
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So far the writing is making me despise everyone, both the
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Aug 12, 2017 11:13
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So are the difficulty spikes as bad as, say, Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth?
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Aug 12, 2017 20:12
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The character design and art style is just so goddamn generic. Which is another thing tactics games survive on: art.
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Aug 12, 2017 20:54
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Oh, your deck doesn't run out? You can just mill it forever?
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Aug 13, 2017 04:10
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Glazius posted:Oh, your deck doesn't run out? You can just mill it forever? Nope, which is why going infinite is the go-to strategy in the later stages of the game.
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Aug 13, 2017 05:27
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I was really into this game based on the trailer, but hearing the complaints that have been raised, it sounds like things get a little...rough. Shame, it's a really cool idea. Excited to read the LP, though.
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Aug 13, 2017 07:07
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Part 3: Dice! Filler! After beating the second mission, we've nabbed our third party member and unlocked the dice screen.  Brice is our mage. She's very squishy, which makes archer-type enemies like prosecutors very dangerous for her, but because magic defense barely exists, she blows away most enemies effortlessly.  Now we can switch dice in and out. On the right, you'll see the dice we've earned from beating missions. I swap out one of Nahmi's dice for another that's almost the same, except it trades out one shield for one shard. Not a big change, but squeezing out every bit of damage early on is useful. As of now, Nahmi needs as many stars are she can get and card draw isn't really a priority for her.  Pester doesn't have any good dice at the moment, so I'm gonna leave his alone. If you'll notice, one of his die has red faces on it—these are negative effects. The skull will deal 5 damage to pester and the broken star will negate a star. We can deal with red dice effects later, but for now we want to avoid equipping dice with them.  Not much to see here. There's a few more conversations, which I'll put in their own cutaway post. Mission 3 Moments of Quiet  Quite a few people have complaints with the art, but frankly I think it's quite nice.  The Dogs don't enter the Inbetweens much. Guess their noses don't agree with it. That's not why. This place is haunted... old spirits, they've been here a long time—Torus is an ancient city—these ghosts remember the Age of Apex... They're lost down here, wandering in the darkness. Seriously, Pester, you're too old for this make-believe Shadow Cult stuff. The only monsters down here are exiled bandits who couldn't cut it outside... That's plenty bad news without your “old spirits”. The good news is these tunnels connect the whole city—they're our short-cut home. Oh hey, a scene transition. I wonder what this could possibly mean!  Well duh.  What the—THERE SHE IS! IT'S THE EBONY FLAME! Great. More jarheads... Must have been sent in here looking for us after they found that body by the tunnel entrance... Oh wow, it is her! It's our lucky day! We found the Ebony Flame! The bounty on her is HUGE! The famous Ebony Flame! She's... she's just a little kid... We can totally take her! We're rich, bro! I'm going to spend a week in the pleasure chambers! Yeah! We finally hit jackpot! I'm going to buy an apartment in the East Tower, with a marble bathtub and one of those fancy stainless steel ice boxes like the nobles have!The mooks aren't exactly sympathetic.  You're okay, Pester. Huh? Who's this joker? You kids are out past curfew... time to say goodnight! We've got a pretty simple 3v3 affair here.   Brice's opening hand has Ruiner and Heartless Cruelty. Ruiner is a magic attack that hits everyone in a line, friend or foe. Heartless Cruelty is a debuff that gives its targets a cursed shard die. Debuffs generally aren't worth your time in this game, as deleting opponents is much more important. Heartless Cruelty would probably be a decent card if Pester had it instead, but Brice's insane damage is too high of an opportunity cost.  We can also take a look at the enemy status screen to check out their status and dice. Not much to see here, really.  Since Brice shows up at level 3, I want to feel the experience to Nahmi and Pester who are level 2. Normally I wouldn't use Heartless Cruelty ever, but...   Debuffs don't care about level differential when it comes to experience gain. I can have my cake and eat it too!   I think this prosecutor has higher stats than normal, for some reason. Usually they're supposed to have less physical defense but higher magical defense.  And we get our first level up! In addition to gaining stats, leveling up will also upgrade your cards and unlock dice slots. Iron Sight has now gone from a basic ranged attack to being really drat good.   I take for granted the idea that Blitz will grant an extra action, and Nahmi ends up rolling short. Oops!    Nahmi and Pester end up eating a bit of poo poo as a result, with Nahmi down to 7 HP.   As awesome as it would be to unleash Ruiner on these jabronis  Probably not a good idea to waste Nahmi. For the record, Nahmi's biggest weakness is a total lack of magic defense, and Brice being able to overshoot somebody's maximum HP is going to become more common as we keep playing.   Nahmi uses Knives Out to finish off one officer and gain a level. Knives Out is now upgraded, not that I'll be using it much.  Those are some lovely dying words right there.  Pester fixes everyone up for the next round. Area healing effects are good.  Brice draws cards, pulling her third and final card Damned. It's a long-ranged, single-target magic attack and will become her bread and butter through the game.   The AI will always want to shoot Brice because she's very fragile when it comes to physical attacks, so making a wall for her will be a common tactic.   Brice really is capable of laying waste to most enemies. Damned also summons a skull on its target. In case the card names and animations haven't tipped you off, Brice is Not A Nice Person.   Pester will frequently be playing the role of healer. Since healing, like debuffs, doesn't care about level differential, it's easy for Pester's experience gain to go out of control.  Let's just do in this mini-boss.  Okay, that's even worse than the marble bathtub.  The last officer tries to whack Nahmi and does from counterattack damage.  Oh, were you actually in that fight? I hardly noticed! You should work on your quick-draw, Pester...Nahmi, you'd be dead if Pester weren't filling you full of Compassion. Also, Iron Sights is a far better card than Quick Draw.  Umm... guys? You're welcome, “Ebony Flame”! Haha! Where'd that come from anyway? Don't look at me—you don't get to pick nicknames the bad guys call you... Anyway, at least I'm famous! Guys? You sure are! Sometimes I wonder why the Boss even bothers with these dusty old relics when he could just turn you in and claim that sweet bounty on your head! Hey! Listen! More Guards comin' our way! And now we have them! Attack!You didn't think this mission was just three mooks, did you?  Two more officers, two more prosecutors. Nothing exciting.  Due to the AI being dumb as bricks, I just hang back and draw cards until everyone's at 7 again.   Iron Sights got quite the drat upgrade. In addition to the extra star and shard dice, it now has a star effect that allows it to ignore half of the target's armor. The star effect isn't calculated into the damage range, so Iron Sights can do a lot more damage than you expect. Pester will gain more cards in the future, but this is easily his best attack card.   Pester and Brice work together to rip one officer's head off.  This is slightly more sympathetic than the other two guards who had death lines.  A bit of dialogue when the second set of enemies finally attack.  Long Shot is such a pathetic card, I'm not even sure why it exists. It's a total mercy when the AI chooses to use it.   Nahmi teeters dangerously close to death, but the last prosecutor chooses to hit Pester and Brice with an area effect instead. Hooray for abusing AI patterns.    Brice cleans up and Pester patches up.   Believe it or not, I'm intentionally leaving Pester open to backstabs, so he won't counterattack and get more experience. Since enemy levels are scaled off of your highest level character, having characters unevenly leveled can create problems.   Nahmi, I know it's still the beginning of the game, but if you would just roll some stars, we could get this over with faster and start getting to the part where you break the game.  Even Brice's minimum damage is higher than this guy's maximum HP.  I'm trying to remember why I did this instead of just finish the drat fight. I think I was trying to milk experience.   Brice, stop. He's already dead.  Hahaha! What's up, Pester, you some kind of chickenshit or somethin'? That was fun! Nah, he's right. Besides, it stinks like Zirchhoff's farts in here and this whole dark 'n moody crap was getting old anyway... Let's get outside to the Shambles before anything worse than a few Guard Dogs show up! NEXT TIME: A map that had to be nerfed!
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Aug 13, 2017 14:38
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Wow, none of these characters are very sympathetic, are they? Maybe Pester, but definitely not the girls.
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Aug 13, 2017 15:16
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Leraika posted:Wow, none of these characters are very sympathetic, are they? Maybe Pester, but definitely not the girls. This is intentional. Torus is a pretty crappy place to live, and the game isn't subtle about driving that point home.
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Aug 13, 2017 16:29
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Wow, the tutorial's only kind of just over and already you're getting dogpiled. Seems like it only takes like, what, three guys focusing fire to wreck any given person on your squad?
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Aug 13, 2017 19:11
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inthesto posted:This is intentional. Torus is a pretty crappy place to live, and the game isn't subtle about driving that point home. Sure, but it also makes me not give a poo poo about the main characters, which is never a really good place for a game to be in.
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Aug 13, 2017 19:44
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I'm also having the same problem with not giving a crap about the main characters. There are ways to make a story with unsympathetic characters engaging, but that's harder than with a sympathetic cast and I don't think this game's writing is up to the task.
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Aug 13, 2017 20:17
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I don't find Pester and Nahmi to be unsympathetic or unlikable. Brice is a psychopath but that's about what you'd expect to happen if a kid suddenly got the power to set people on fire by pointing at them.
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Aug 13, 2017 22:40
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Obligatum VII posted:I don't find Pester and Nahmi to be unsympathetic or unlikable. Brice is a psychopath but that's about what you'd expect to happen if a kid suddenly got the power to set people on fire by pointing at them. Kids are psychopaths to begin with, this is 100% true.
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Aug 13, 2017 23:30
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Hey, we've seen them for three missions. Give them some more time to grow/develop, meet new characters and stuff. Maybe it'll be like Steel Ball Run, where the rear end in a top hat protagonist becomes a better person because of Plot happening to them!
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Aug 14, 2017 02:05
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So far, I'm rooting for the enemies to win. As far as I can tell the 'protagonists' are just unrepentant murderers. The mechanics seem fundamentally sound so far, though. I'm already starting to see what you mean about poor tuning, though. Which is a shame; this is the exact kind of game I would have bought by now if it weren't for the 'beautiful disaster' framing. I love turn-based tactics, especially with non-random scenarios. Sorites fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Aug 14, 2017 |
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Aug 14, 2017 05:13
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Awarding unit's XP for performing specific actions in combat is a terrible idea that leads to horrible design problems and exploits which can be really hard to fix. A game I worked on used a similar mechanism, and we had so many issues with it I'm lobbying for us to never attempt it again. poo poo like: 1) You get XP for shooting an enemy, so you get an enemy stuck in cover behind a wall then have your units shoot at them at max range so they do minimal damage and can just keep shooting until they all level up. Bonus points if the enemy has regeneration and can outheal your damage 2) You get XP for healing an ally, so kill all bad guys except one, then sit there letting him damage you turn after turn while you spam heals. 3) You get XP for buffing an ally, so waste time at the start of each battle spamming all possible buffs It is possible to get it right (see Skyrim and Dota), but in turn based games it gets much harder, especially if your AI is easy to manipulate.
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Aug 14, 2017 14:56
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Gerblyn posted:Awarding unit's XP for performing specific actions in combat is a terrible idea that leads to horrible design problems and exploits which can be really hard to fix. A game I worked on used a similar mechanism, and we had so many issues with it I'm lobbying for us to never attempt it again. poo poo like: Other turn based games like Fire Emblem has mostly solved these issues by scaling the rewards. Generally, the higher level you're above the enemy or ally you're helping, the EXP is severely reduced that it's only worth it if you literally grind for hours. Then there's other games like SRW that don't care about levels, since combat is assumed to be tackled by multiple units. Zodiarc barely has scaling and combat is assumed to be done 1-on-1, which are its two flaws that compound the issue.
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Aug 14, 2017 17:12
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CotZ's primary pitfall is that while damage-dealing actions are scaled on level differential, everything else (healing, buffs, debuffs) is not. Depending on how you build your characters, this can make keeping levels in check a gigantic pain in the rear end. At least it's not Shining Force where it's scaled on level differential and how much damage you do. :puke:
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Aug 14, 2017 17:22
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Tae posted:Other turn based games like Fire Emblem has mostly solved these issues by scaling the rewards. Generally, the higher level you're above the enemy or ally you're helping, the EXP is severely reduced that it's only worth it if you literally grind for hours. That makes sense. How does it deal with something like, 2 level 20 units spamming heal (or some other buff) on each other over and over again? Level scaling wouldn't reduce the XP reward in that case, and you could just farm XP forever?
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Aug 15, 2017 11:09
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The deterient is that it will take literal hours doing the exact same thing, and at that point just let the player be overpowered. Also, staves cost money and are limited, and most fe games are finite in resources.
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Aug 15, 2017 11:53
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Fire emblem's XP implementation for healing characters is incredibly tedious bullshit.
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Aug 15, 2017 11:53
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Fair enough, the game we made was more competitive so this stuff was mainly an issue in PvP play by email type games. Single player didn't really suffer too much for it, probably because most people just couldn't be bothered. Anyways, I'm liking the LP and I'm wondering if the game's actually fun enough to play now... It looks like a laugh, but the frequent, ominous warnings of design mess ups make me feel that maybe I should just wait for a few patches to land first.
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Aug 15, 2017 12:16
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Okay so one thing I already am finding to be a super strange choice is AoE's on enemy attacks being a common thing, to the point of what looks to be a simple melee having an AoE on it. Also I would like to echo the "enjoying the LP" remarks so far. I heard a lot about the game during its development and then it seemingly disappeared when it was released so I am super curious about it.
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Aug 15, 2017 15:27
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Part 4: Nerfed Map #1 So after beating mission 3, we finally have access to the deckbuilder.  ...except there's nothing to actually customize. Minimum deck size is 18 (and I will always be keeping deck size to 18), and right now every character has 6 copies of 3 different cards for... 18 cards. New cards are earned by leveling up. However, because enemy levels are functionally fixed at this point, it's nearly impossible for the characters to be higher than level 4 and get more cards. (Note that I could spend time grinding by having my characters beat each other up and then healing, but I have much better ways to spend my time). Mission 4 Moments of Quiet  That said, I didn't earn any dice worth equipping from last fight, so let's just move on ahead to mission 4.  Aaahhh! I can't believe how good it is to be back in this dump! Smells a bit better at least... but we're not home-free yet. This is Black Fang turf; let's try to get across without running into 'em.     Shut up, you idiot! Do you have any idea how many people she's killed? This ain't just some regular kid... And she wouldn't be here if she didn't have to... Comin' from the 'District... they gotta be carrying somethin'... a stolen Relic maybe? Black Fang! We may be sworn enemies, but I'll forget my blood oath and let you live if you give us safe passage—I don't want to kill you, or any of your crew today. 'Preciate the offer, sister, but half the Shambles already heard about your little social call by now. Kingdog would skin us alive if we let you disrespect Black Fang turf. You know the rules kid—only one side walks away from a thing like this. This is our hint as to the gimmick of the map. It's nothing novel, but at least we're finally moving away from straightforward “move through the map and kill everything”. Wait! We don't have any beef with you guys, we just want to go hom! Why we gotta fight each other anyway? The Nobles and the guards are the real enemies! We don't have to do this! Cry about it later, Chickenshit. These creeps are itchin' for a rumble, can't you tell? Dibs on the big one's boots!Brice, you are a child. They don't even fit.  Hey look, finally an alternate win condition! Any time a mission has a condition other than “kill everyone”, that's a signal that the map is about to rough you up. This was one of the maps that needed its difficulty adjusted soon after release. I personally found it pretty doable blind, but it's very easy to see why a lot of people couldn't handle it.  We're introduced to a new “faction”, sporting two new enemy types. Thugs and Outlaws are analogous to Officers and Prosecutors, respectively. The main difference is that Black Fang enemies generally sport more HP but lower defenses, and will also pack debuffs rather than buffs.   Sadly, Nahmi only has one copy of Blitz in her starting hand, so no deleting enemies for her. Instead she'll throw a knife at the other thug. She rolls a star and activates the star effect, which will prevent the thug for moving for one turn.  Pester also starts with really crappy draws; since Quick Draw can't hit multiple targets, I would much rather have a copy of Iron Sights. Oh well, it's not like this mission is timed or anything.  Pester tips over to level 4 and snags a new card as a result. Flash Bang hits all targets adjacent to Pester and forces them to discard a card. It gains star effects at higher levels, but I have no idea what they are. Flash Bang is an exceptionally lousy card because: 1. you don't know what you're forcing the enemies to discard and 2. it requires Pester to be in beating range of multiple enemies to have much of an effect.   Brice finishes off the thug and gets hew own new card at level 4, Leech. It's a melee-range spell that heals Brice for however much damage it deals. It's useful early on when healing is somewhat limited, but it's not a card to keep around long-term.   The thug who can't move (as indicated by the chains) does the only thing he can do and forces Nami to discard a card. This is a mild annoyance, and more or less shows why Flash Bang is useless. I mean, I didn't even plan on using Will To Live when Pester's Compassion is much more useful anyway. Also no, I do not know why Flash Bang and Smoke Bomb are different cards other than “Pester gets one and enemies get the other”.  I forget to screencap Nahmi finishing off the thug with another Knives Out, and she gains a level. Risky Strike is a decent enough card. Using it early on is a no-brainer, though it gains drawbacks as you level up. All in all, Nahmi's cards are pretty good across the board though everything takes a backseat to Blitz.  Once you round the corner, an outlaw and another thug confront you. Once again, area-effect ranged attacks aren't dangerous, but that cursed shard die debuff will become annoying later in the game.  Right now, though, enemies just don't have the sheer dicepower to activate it reliably.    Nahmi and Brice proceed to put him in the dirt while Pester patches things up.  Game's really trying to tell you that there will be reinforcements.  And they show up once you punk the outlaw. There used to be a fourth guy who would spawn here, but he got removed to make the map easier.   The thug near the party decides to be annoying again—remember, the AI will frequently choose to hit multiple targets even if it involves using a really bad card. Meanwhile, one of the reinforcements closes in on us.    Yawn.   Thugs also have a short-range attack called Dagger Throw, which is nearly identical to Nahmi's Knives Out. I believe they'll gain different star effects at higher levels, though.    This time, Nahmi heals because it's only one target, while Pester and Brice take down the thug.  So, here's probably what gave people the most trouble about this map. There will actually be more reinforcements on this map, but they don't spawn until you step on the line where you see Nahmi. If you don't know this, which I did not on my first time through, you can easily step over the line, activate the enemies guarding the exit (of which there used to be one more) while also triggering the reinforcements from behind, all while you're not full up on cards and HP. That exact thing happened to me on my first playthrough of the game, and I was forced to make a mad dash for the exit. At the time, I actually thought it was a fun and interesting way to design the map. I am older and wiser now.   The second set of reinforcements spawn from the back, and I believe they used to spawn at highest party level +2. Now they only spawn at +1, making them much less of a threat.  And as I've demonstrated here, if you step on the exact line that causes them to spawn, you can turn around to tackle them without having to deal with the enemies in the end zone. It really is a shame that the developers chose to “fix” this by cutting enemy numbers and levels, when it would have been far more interesting to put the map on a timer instead. It would have even been easy to give warnings with Pester yelling about how he can see them on the horizon. Oh well, missed opportunities.  Another thug and outlaw show up two turns later. Once again, if you don't know this is going to happen and stumble in unprepared, it can easily steamroll you.   Quick Draw does not do good damage when the enemy is defending.  Defending does not raise Magic Defense, however, so Brice gives no fucks. Nahmi then swoops in to finish the kill.  Ambush is a buff that confers a new status effect: Evasion. When a unit has Evasion, all attacks that target said unit suffer from a cursed shard die. This is especially nice against area-effect attacks, since only one target needs to have Evasion for the cursed die to show up. Evasion is generally pretty good and we'll want it as much as possible, though it's not always easy to get.   The AI continues to be annoying and I continue to punish it for that.  I thought I was going to get a two-for-one with Ruiner here, but I forgot that it only gains 4 range on higher levels, and that's as far as Brice can move. Oops!  Well, I guess I can't really be too upset in the end.  Pester finishes the job without even needing armor piercing.  Brice softens up the outlaw with Damned. One thing to note is that cursed dice will still have positive sides on them, so if you get lucky they can be helpful. Overall, though, they're still a detriment.  Nahmi shitcans the outlaw with Blitz and hits level 5, which allows her to equip another die. Unlocking dice slots is a straight upgrade, since it means you just get more dice to roll on every card you play. Apart from certain key card upgrades, unlocking dice slots is easily the most powerful level up bonus.  With those four reinforcements eliminated, that's more or less the end of it. All that's left is to kill the guys guarding the exit. Or escape, I suppose, but since we're under no pressure, we may as well harvest their organs for experience.   Why, thank you for making this so convenient for me.   Some multitarget damage, and Pester gets both a dice slot and the Bullet Hell card he was talking about. Bullet Hell is another area-effect attack that works slightly differently from Quick Draw, but is generally better.   Nahmi Blitzes the outlaw and then hits the thug with Knives Out. I kept this screenshot just to show off what the Hold animation looks like.   Sadly, Brice couldn't move far enough to hit both enemies with Ruiner and end the fight, so we'll have to suffer through another turn. She also reaches level 5 and gets a third die slot of her own.   The thug does something completely ineffectual on his turn, and then we finish off the map. Once all the enemies are dead, the map ends automatically and you actually get an achievement for completing it this way. Remember, that it is completely possible to sprint past the end zone guards and escape, but it's really not recommended for reasons that will be obvious next mission.   God drat, these are some lousy loving dice I'm earning. NEXT TIME: The other mission that had to be fixed!
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Aug 16, 2017 22:55
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quote:Brice, you are a child. [The big guy's boots] don't even fit. I've always wondered this: Why does nobody ever comment on human barbarians squeezing into, say, corsets that dropped off snake-women the diameter of my leg? quote:Risky Strike What does that one do? I'm curious about it being a straight upgrade for now but gaining drawbacks over time. Is it just not as good as later stuff, or does it actually evolve detrimental star effects?
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Aug 16, 2017 23:11
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Sorites posted:What does that one do? I'm curious about it being a straight upgrade for now but gaining drawbacks over time. Is it just not as good as later stuff, or does it actually evolve detrimental star effects? The short of it is that the bonus dice granted by cards are sometimes actually cursed dice. Risky Strike doesn't start with cursed "bonus" dice, but will gain them as you level up. This is the trade off for its having higher damage, but Nahmi has more stable card choices later on.
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Aug 16, 2017 23:16
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Man, the way the writing is constantly trying to sell Nahmi as the biggest badass around is getting really grating.
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Aug 17, 2017 05:10
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