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Black Mage Knight posted:Man, the way the writing is constantly trying to sell Nahmi as the biggest badass around is getting really grating. MISSION 4 Out of possibly... 30? 50?
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Aug 17, 2017 05:14
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| # ? May 8, 2024 23:05 |
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Junpei posted:MISSION Children of the Zodiarcs has 20 main missions, so we're actually a significant part of the way through the game already. It also has 4 side missions which are worth doing and a bonus arena with five rounds that is a hellish nightmare.
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Aug 17, 2017 05:17
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inthesto posted:Children of the Zodiarcs has 20 main missions, so we're actually a significant part of the way through the game already. It also has 4 side missions which are worth doing and a bonus arena with five rounds that is a hellish nightmare. wow, I had no idea it was so short.
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Aug 17, 2017 05:25
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Weird, it feels like nothing really happened? We robbed a dude and maybe got a thing?
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Aug 17, 2017 07:30
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Part 5: Nerfed Map #2  Yay... another bounty on hour heads—now the Black Fang wants us dead. Come on, let's get this Relic back to Zirchhoff before anybody else decides to join the party.There's a bit of inconsistent characterization here, considering Pester was the one who was trying to get out without any violence. Mission 5 Moments of Quiet   Anyway, you'll notice a few new symbols here. Skirmishes are now open, which are just random battles on maps we've already completed. Unlike story battles, skirmishes have enemy levels equal to highest character level +1. They are equally boring and necessary, unfortunately. Elite skirmishes will have more enemies and sport the usual highest character level +2 scaling, making them a fair chunk harder. They also force different deployment spots, which you have no control over. Elite skirmishes are generally unfair and even less fun than regular skirmishes. Side missions and the Arena of Xin won't be available for quite some time.   Here's a look at Nahmi's new Risky Strike. The star effect is quite nice, and this card really hurts on a backstab. Unfortunately, as Nahmi goes up in levels, Risky Strike will acquire more blue dice, but they'll be cursed dice that hurt her. In turn, the star effect will go up, making this a moderate risk high reward card. However, by that point, she'll have better options. But at this point, Knives Out is a mediocre card, so I replace 4 copies of Knives Out with Risky Strike. That's another thing, different cards have different numbers of copies. Most have 6, but some will have 3 or 4, and a few will only have 1.   Leech is a melee spell that heals Brice. I put it in and take out Heartless Cruelty, mostly because Heartless Cruelty is completely useless.   Bullet Hell is another area-effect spell, but instead of hitting around a target, it's a cone that originates from Pester. Considering how short Quick Draw's range is to begin with, Bullet Hell's area of effect is far more useful. For some reason, though, Pester only gets 5 copies of it, so we leave in 1 copy of Quick Draw.    Loading up on more dice. Nahmi and Pester get loaded up with more stars for maximum Blitzing and armor piercing. Brice only has one spare die, but it's got a pair of 2-hard faces, so I'm not going to argue.   This is the Orphanage. It's Family members only, but I'll vouch for you. You might just end up Family too, Brice! 'Course, we'll have to “jump you in”—I promise not to kick too hard! In your dreams, Chickenshit!Yes, Brice will refer to Pester as “Chickenshit” from now on. Get used to it.   You can say that again! City Guard, Black Fang, good thing I'm such a crack-shot or we might never have made it out... Shut up, fool! If I wanted a report from you, I would have asked for one! Nahmi? *gulp* Nothing we couldn't handle. Next time, handle it quietly. Whole Shambles heard you crossed up Black Fang turf. 'Least you wasted those fools. And here I thought you was just some back-alley pick-pocket! You stayed tight, don't think we didn't notice. You got mad street cred now, Nahmi. Boss has a new job for you. One that fits your M.O. We're goin' after the motherlode—gonna rip off the great Lord Zulta himself! Pull this off, girl, everything's gonna change... Black Fang, East Side Wimps... they'll be history. Won't be long until we rule these Shambles. One heavy-rear end ancient paperweight, just as you ordered, boss... Behold, children! A Relic from the Age of Apex! This will fetch a high price on the black market! Our little Family will all reap the benefits of Nahmi's triumph! And who is your new friend? Brice. Nahmi says I can trust you. But you're still a grown-up, and you smile too much. Hahaha! I like your spunk, Brice! You'll fit right in! is everyone here really part of the same family? You... you don't look like Nahmi... Heh heh heh! We're... gang related! You see, Brice, on the street, everybody needs somebody to rely on... a family of some kind. I know—I went through it too. So when I got all growed up, I decided to make a place where all the forgotten little children could feel safe—as long as you pull your own weight. And in this family...  As any pappy would, I want nothing more than for my children to succeed, to overcome the unjust hardships foisted on us by our Noble “better”... Alone, you are weak... But together, children, we are unstoppable!As I transcribe this script, it becomes really obvious how incredibly inconsistent the character voices are. our time is fast approachin'! Because I have a new plan—a heist that will make us all rich as kings! I have gleaned the location of a most valuable Relic—priceless, they say, but I have brokered a price for it! A great price indeed! These Zodiarc machines that have enslaved us, broken our families and left us in this ghetto... they are the very tools we use to defy our so-called masters! As cool of a line as this is, it's far too poetic for a character that's supposed to have a thuggish manner of speaking.    Nahmi, I'll handle these fools! You get on with the mission. I need that relic tonight! And you'll get it, boss! Nahmi and Brice proceed to climb over a roof that they normally can't climb over.   That chickenshit? Probably hiding under a bunk! We don't need him!  Okay, so the real reason I put Leech on Brice? Pester's out of this fight, meaning we're very short on healing and need everything we can get.   So here's what was so hosed up about this map: The enemies don't follow usual level scaling rules. For some reason, enemies on this map have a floor on how low their levels can go, and in this case it's levels 7 and 8. Before the patch, that floor was one level higher, so enemies would be levels 8 and 9. In case you don't remember, Nahmi and Brice are level 5. When I played this game for the first time, I didn't know how the reinforcements worked in mission 4, and I had to escape early and ran into this map at level 4. Enemies were routinely killing Brice in one hit and Nahmi in two. It was absolutely, 100% impossible without going to grind in skirmishes. It was a complete dogshit difficulty spike simply because the developers never checked their numbers.  This little trio of enemies was especially a problem, because there were two Prosecutors. Because they're long range units, they were guaranteed to kill Brice or Nahmi in one round if you ever stepped into their range.  Okay, enough complaining about things that don't exist anymore. The real reason why Pester is out of this map is because we also have Zirchhoff, kind of. He's gained quite a few levels since we last saw him, but he's not a real participant in this map.  Rather, he's sectioned off in his own little rumble pit against enemies 4 levels lower than himself. It's really mostly a waste of time, since it's almost impossible for him to get killed.    Zirchhoff also has a bunch of cards, all of them with area-effects, but I'm not going to bother going into them too deeply because his fight is just a total blowout.   Brice and Nahmi jump on top of the higher level Officer first, since we're still pretty darn likely to kill him without retaliation. Thankfully, Nahmi gets a star on her intermediary Blitz (which is starting to become pretty likely at this point, thanks to her third die), and finishes him off.   Some things happen to Zirchhoff, but they don't matter.    As Nahmi and Brice continue to brawl, Nahmi hits level 6. She snags a new card, Blend Into Darkness. What it does is somewhat complicated, so I'll put it off for next update, but it's a card that scales quite nicely.   By the way, Zirchhoff rolls a lot of dice.  Enemies will also spawn into The Zirchhoff Zone several times. If you get extremely unlucky and never pull his healing card, then it's possible that he'll eventually die, but that requires some extraordinarily bad luck.  Another Zirchhoff card, notable mostly because it's the first card that's an area-effect centered on the user. Otherwise, since Zirchhoff's magic attack is lousy, this card really isn't worth using.   Enemies just keep spawning in. It only happens once a turn, but for a few turns I'm just handling the Zirchhoff situation because...  Nahmi and Brice are just sitting around, healing, and drawing cards. Yes, as usual, this map uses the “enemy doesn't budge until you move inside their attack range” AI. Even with that, this map was impossible to clear on release. Jesus.   So here's something weird that I just now found out. When I go to trigger the next set of enemies, Zirchhoff is huddled up in one corner of his arena. This puts him in range of the rightmost Prosecutor, and for some reason the AI chooses to hit him instead of moving towards Nahmi. Since Zirchhoff is triple the level of the enemies, he can't be hurt, and this takes a Prosecutor off the board.  In the mean time, Zirchhoff drew his healing card. It's an area effect that also automatically gives Evasion and Regeneration. We've seen Evasion before, but Regeneration also restores 30% of your maximum HP at the beginning of the round. Regeneration is drat good and a status effect you want constantly active if possible. When I first made a thread to complain about this map, other people told me it would become much easier if I used Zirchhoff's support skills to help Nahmi and Brice. Well, this is his only skill that can hit them, and well...  That's as far as it reaches. Yeah, real helpful.   I send Nahmi and Brice back to the beginning point since that's the best way to lure out the enemies into a spot without Brice catching a bullet between the eyes, but that one Prosecutor is determined to mess up Zirchhoff's jacket. This makes things way easier for me.    One dead Officer later, and cleaning up the Prosecutors should be no problem.  Brice hits level 6 and picks up Burn, Burn, Burn! This is easily Brice's best card, being an area-effect spell with giant damage bonuses on it. The main drawback, however, is it only gets 3 copies.    Zirchhoff's No Mercy! is the first card we see that's an area-effect centered on the user. Not much else to say about it, other than that Zirchhoff's magic attack is pathetic, so this doesn't do much damage at all.    A single Crowd Control from the enemy is nothing to worry about, and predictably the enemy gets wasted in short order.  This is usually the last spawn for Zirchhoff's Arena, a Prosecutor who shows up on a roof that Zirchhoff mostly can't reach. This Prosecutor used to be level 21just like the rest of Zirchhoff's rumble buddies. The devs didn't realize that this particular enemy was capable of hitting the end zone of the map, easily one-shotting Brice and Nahmi.  The solution to this was to kick the Prosecutor down to level 8, where it doesn't do anything but waste time during the enemy turn.  As we waste the Prosecutor who wasted their turns shooting Zirchhoff, one thing to note is that Leech will only heal Brice for as much damage as it deals. Since the enemy only had 12 HP left, Brice would have only recovered 12 HP instead of the 19 it theoretically did. She's at full HP either way, but sometimes this is important.   After that's handled, there's one last enemy group of two Officers and one Prosecutor before we can get to the escape zone. I could have sworn there used to be another Prosecutor here.   At this point, we're high enough level that getting rushed by multiple enemies isn't a mortal threat anymore.     After Nahmi counterattacks, Brice finished off the Officer and Nahmi heals, netting them both level ups. Both characters get upgrades to their bread and butter cards.  In addition to gaining a pair of bonus shard dice, Damned now causes the Bleed status as a star effect. Bleed causes its target to lose 15% of their maximum HP at the start of the turn. It's important to note that Bleed triggers after Regen, so if a unit has both, they're not going to die from the Bleed. Also important to note is that if an enemy dies from Bleed, nobody gets any experience. An annoying oversight, but it's not like experience is a scarcity in this game.  All in all, Bleed isn't that big of a deal when Brice is capable of smoking most enemies anyway.  As Nahmi moves forward, the AI chooses to be extremely stupid. I don't understand why it did this, but I suppose I'm a bit grateful that it speeds things up.  Blitz's upgrade is not quite so useful. In this case, it now has an effect when Nahmi has the Shroud effect, which is exactly what Blend Into Darkness gives her. Pulling off Shroud combos is quite a bit of work and Blitz has one of the lousiest Shroud effects, but it's worth the effort in quite a few situations. Just not with Blitz.   Nahmi finishes off the Prosecutor and then takes some time to heal herself. Normally this wouldn't be noteworthy, but we finally get to see the final die symbol and by far the most powerful one: The lightning bolt. If you roll one of these babies, you get a free action, much like the star effect on Blitz. Except the lightning bolt works regardless of what card you're playing. Lightning bolts are exceptionally rare—Nahmi starts with one on one of her die, and as far as I know, only Nahmi can get lightning bolts on randomly dropped dice. There is a way to get lightning bolts on other characters, but it's extremely difficult and mostly up to the RNG. I mean, could you imagine Brice with several lightning bolts on her dice? It would be a madhouse.  Once again, although we could escape the map, since this rooftop jerk is at low levels, why not bag the experience? And just like mission 4, you get an achievement for killing all the enemies instead of doing the actual objective.  Jesus, Brice.  Listen well, girl; you get to the Inbetweens! You know the route to Lord Zulta's chambers... That's where you'll find the Relic! Gotta get it soon; once they hear 'about your escape, Nobles will get real nervous, hide it somewhere else. Shadow Cult promised my weight in platinum for this relic, and I intend on getting very fat in the near future! Do not fail me, Nahmi! On my Blood Oath, boss, I'll bring that Relic back! Come on Brice, we're going underground! These crappy dice drops are going to be the end of me. Oh well, at least for the next map, we'll have Pester agai—  Oh god dammit, Children of the Zodiarcs. NEXT TIME: Off-screen grinding! Glass cannons! inthesto fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Aug 24, 2017 |
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Aug 24, 2017 15:02
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Not sure what exactly we're supposed to be making of Zirchoff's character here.
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Aug 25, 2017 04:25
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Does anyone else look at Slint and see only adult Sothe from FE10?
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Aug 25, 2017 04:43
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I don't know why, but when the characters are drawn smiling the art goes from "pretty good" to "extremely obnoxious".
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Aug 25, 2017 16:16
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These are the most pathetic oppressors ever. "They found us, but there's no threat because we can easily fight them off". How the heck do they even manage to oppress people in the first place?
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Aug 25, 2017 18:57
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They feel pity for them and go 'oh alright, I suppose you can oppress us a LITTLE bit. Ya scamps.'
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Aug 26, 2017 00:30
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Not sure what exactly we're supposed to be making of Zirchoff's character here. I think part of his bluster is that he occasionally affects a posh accent and gets all dramatic? It'd be easier to tell with voice acting.
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Aug 27, 2017 20:31
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Part 6: A buffed map? So every time there's a new act, the dice attached to buffs, debuffs, and cards all go up. This makes damage ranges quite a bit more swingy, though it's usually in the player's favor. When we last left off, we just discovered that absentee party members do not scale up. As a result, Pester would be going up against enemies twice his level and frequently being killed in a single attack. The kicker is that the enemy minimum level is actually higher than it used to be. I'm not sure I'll ever understand what goes through the brain that does the math for this game.    The only real solution to this is to do some grinding in skirmishes.  Enemy and character placement is slightly different, and enemies are now scaled to be highest character level +1. Otherwise, there's not anything worth saying about doing skirmishes, as they're regular slugfests.  Afterwards, I manage to catch up Pester for the most part. Part of the difficulty with grinding to even out levels is that your high level characters will inevitably gain levels too, pushing up the bar for your lower characters to catch up on. The only reason I managed to get Pester to level 7 was because I let the last enemy beat up on the party while Pester kept using Compassion.  Nahmi picked up this new card last update. For the time being, the only card that gets a bonus effect from Shroud is Blitz, which will allow Nahmi to draw Will To Live for free. As Nahmi levels up, every single card she has will get a bonus from Shroud. For now, it's mostly just there to block a single attack, but that's still pretty drat useful. 5 copies of Blend Into Darkness go into Nahmi's deck, replacing Knives Out entirely and also removing 3 copies of Will To Live (which is nice but no longer necessary now that Pester's back).   As I mentioned earlier, Burn, Burn, Burn! is easily Brice's best card. An area-effect that's easy to land and gets bonus damage, and will pick up more bonus damage as a star effect as she levels up. Once again, the only downside is that you only get 3 copies of it, but it will become tutorable later on. All 3 copies go in, replacing 3 copies of Leech. Amnesia, like most purple cards, isn't worth the effort.   Pester's upgrades to Quick Draw are not great, but the card dice and star effect give it the edge over Bullet Hell for now. All 6 copies go back into the deck, replacing Bullet Hell. Compassion picks up 2 more card dice which is nice enough, but the star effect is what we're really here for. Being able to cycle the card almost effortlessly and the guarantee that it's a red card can really bail you out of some bad situations. It might be possible to run a deck with Iron Sights/Flashbang/Compassion to guarantee that Compassion will always draw Iron Sights, but that's probably more trouble than it's worth. Enough mechanics chat, let's get back to the story.  You needed me? Who are you kidding, Nahmi? I would only have gotten in the way. I'm not like you guys—I might act tough sometimes, but taking on the whole City Guard? That's just crazy.Pester, you're the only one with multi-target healing right now. You're drat right we need you. I knew it! You really are a chickenshit. What do you know? You're just some needy little leech here to bum a free meal and probably rip us off while we sleep. I've got nothing to prove to you, I just want to keep breathing. You know how this goes, Pester—you can't just run away, nobody makes it on their own for long in the Shambles. Zirchhoff is still crazy for this Relic, says it's now or never, so we gotta nab it fast. Nobody I know can crack a lock like you, Pester. So pull it together and let's get moving. It's a long way to Lord Zulta's chambers...Mission 6 Moments of Quiet  There was, we just never had a chance to eat any... just, try not to think about it, okay? She's right, Hami... if we don't eat soon... we're not gonna make it outta these walls, much less have the strength to pull off this heist... The Boney Hand of Fate is reachin's for us... Yum. Fly-infested meat.  Looks like a camp up ahead... Exiles, living between the walls... They gotta have food... So we sneak in and take some. You said it yourself, Pester; we got no other choice... Bless the Darkness!    Well, back to regular objectives, I guess.  This map features the third and final enemy faction we'll be dealing with: The Exiles. As a whole, they tend to have really lousy defenses but have the most dangerous cards. As you can see, Stalkers have paper-thin Defense, and while their Magic Defense is fairly high, their low HP means they can't defend against Brice well either.  The first move is honestly to just back up into the corner where we start. Fighting Exiles is mostly about letting them run in and then blowing them up before they can hit you. Still, look at how much damage that does, and the card automatically inflicts Bleed. Literally every other card that does damage and inflcts Bleed has the latter as a star effect, but loving Gut just does it automatically.  Unlike every previous mission, the AI for this one has them all charging in at once. Being able to pick off these glass cannons one by one would be far too easy, and having them all dogpile you actually makes this mission really dangerous. Dangerous enough that I actually failed this mission twice while recording. The first time, Pester died early on due to never drawing Compassion, and the second time was a total party wipe because Pester didn't draw Compassion. Compassion is probably the single most important card in the game right now, is what I'm saying.  This just goes to show how hilariously easy it is to one-shot Stalkers.  Unless of course, Nahmi doesn't manage to roll a star. The lightning bolt means we can still finish off that Stalker, but Nahmi's going to take counter-attack damage, and being at anything less than full HP is almost certain death against Exiles.  I get absurdly lucky, and Nahmi rolls both a 2-heart to undo most of that counterattack damage, and another lightning bolt. She gets to draw cards and stay on a 7-card hand as a result.   Pester tops Nahmi off and gets a card upgrade I don't care about.  One thing that kind of sucks about cards upgrading at different points is that it makes some cards far better than others depending on what level you are. Right now Damned is far better than Leech or Ruiner, simply due to getting upgraded first and benefiting from more card dice.  And she barely pulls it off. I would have been quite upset if that Stalker survived and ripped Brice's throat out as a result.    The Stalkers jump on Nahmi and really do a number on her. Did I mention that Defile, the Stalkers' ranged attack, also has Bleed on a star effect? You should really just get used to Bleed now, because this game is going to loving pile it on you. Nahmi's hand is also about as useless as it can possibly be right now.   Brice to the rescue with her best card.    Pester heals, Nahmi finishes the Stalker, gets another free action due to Blitz, and Shrouds up since she's not at full HP. As her reward, she picks up Thief's Habit, which I personally think is her next strongest card after Blitz, but more on that next time.  Considering how hard these jerks can hit, nullfying an entire attack is arguably more powerful than the 30% damage bonus.  Since that guy on the roof is the last Stalker, I'm going to do the smart thing: Back the gently caress up and draw cards. Considering how short this fight is, it's pretty obvious that there's going to be a second phase, and going into that unprepared is 100% certain death.    Finishing the first phase is a relatively straightforward affair. Going in with full hands and full HP on everyone is good preparation for the next part.  Thieves! Heathens! They violate the sacred spaces Inbetween! Kill them! There's so many of them! Once again, we could escape, but gently caress that. It's arguably easier to sit put and let the enemies come to you, because you don't get pincered as badly.  Say hello to the Degenerate, the second enemy type from the Exiles. They have giant piles of HP, do insane amounts of damage, but have really low movement. The name of the game is to kill all the Stalkers before the Degenerate makes his way down to use and really ruins our day.    We can also just ruin the Degenerate's day, since they're extremely vulnerable to magic. Brice's Ruiner gets upgraded, and it's a really important one. It now has a star effect which makes the targets discard, but more importantly its range has improved by one, so it now reaches 4 tiles. While it's still not as good as Damned or Burn, Burn, Burn!, Ruiner is now pretty useful in enough situations to merit a permanent deck spot.  Oh right, Stalkers can give themselves Shroud too. If I recall correctly, they don't get bonuses from cards while Shrouded like Nahmi does, but the 30% damage bonus and damage block is more than enough to make it extremely dangerous. Of course, it's an ability on the most fragile enemy type.  However, we make it through the turn unscathed because of Nahmi's own Shroud.  Now we've got quite the situation. One Stalker is guarding, meaning they're just beefy enough to not get killed in one hit. One Stalker is Shrouded, meaning I can't easily kill them, but I absolutely do want to remove the Shroud so it doesn't turn into extra damage. And one Stalker is right in our faces and has the easiest access to any positioning they want.   Step one: Use Quick Draw to eliminate the injured Stalker and do a bit of damage to the guarding one. It would have been really nice to get that star effect, but no dice this time.  Pester earns an upgrade to Bullet Hell, but I don't remember what it does of the top of my head. Really, the only cards of Pester's worth caring about are Compassion and Iron Sights.    Step two: Nahmi takes a chance, and it pays off. Risky Strike is a better choice that Blitz here, because if the former rolls a star, then the Stalker is dead. Whereas if Blitz rolled a star, Nahmi would get to act again and secure the kill anyway, but she'd end up eating a counterattack. Nahmi gets an upgrade to Will To Live, and now it's an area-effect just like Compassion. This would obsolete Pester, but the opportunity cost of using Nahmi to heal is too high. Pester gets to stick around as a healbot for now.   Brice directly endangers herself to eliminate that Shroud, but also forces the Stalker to discard Gut in the process. Between that and dealing with the 30% damage bonus, I think that's a win.    Unfortunately, there was no real way to avoid this, since Pester didn't have Compassion in hand the previous turn and leaving the guarding Stalker alive was even more dangerous. At least the enemy didn't get any experience due to Nahmi dying to Bleed!    Brice lines up the two Stalkers using Ruiner and Pester shoots another in the back of the head with Iron Sights. There's only one Stalker and the Degenerate left now, but this is risky with Pester sitting on 19 HP.  Luckily, the Stalker is incredibly stupid and chooses to go for a backstab instead of hitting Pester and bleeding him out. Hooray for stupid AI!   This is dire straits, but we can pull this off easily.   One Leech and Iron Sights later, and the mission is wrapped up. Pester and Brice both hit level 10, but only gain stats out of it.   And we got some really nice dice for Brice and Pester!  Yeah—jerky! Let me see! What else is in there? Some raisins, half a clove of garlic... a nice and tender    Disgusting! How hungry do you have to be to eat feet! I guess we're toughing it out after all. 'Sokay, it's, only a few miles of stinky tunnels to the Relic! But... Brice!  NEXT TIME: The bottleneck that never ends!
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Aug 31, 2017 00:23
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"glass cannon" is a hell of a gimmick to drop on a strategy game.
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Aug 31, 2017 02:07
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So I don't necessarily mind morally dubious characters, and I rather like the art style, but the actual writing is starting to wear on me. Putting aside inconsistencies in characterization and voice I really don't like Brice, and that's in large part because I don't get Brice. Like I understand that she's supposed to be a crazy, bratty kid who was pitched over the edge because of phenomenal cosmic powers, but I roll to disbelieve. She doesn't sound deranged, she just sounds like someone trying super hard to be lovely. Moreover I do not believe she would talk or act like that. Voice is really the problem here. How old is she actually supposed to be because she absolutely does not sound like a kid. Also we're 6 missions into a 20 mission game? Really? We're 30% of the way through and what's really happened? You stole a macguffin and fought several flavors of dudes. For all the pomp of the opening narration and the talk of class warfare nothing has actually happened and a quarter of the game has passed. I don't demand the main plot start immediately, but could we get something? If this is supposed to be worldbuilding or characterization it's not been going very well because of previously established character voice problems.
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Aug 31, 2017 03:42
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Omnicrom posted:So I don't necessarily mind morally dubious characters, and I rather like the art style, but the actual writing is starting to wear on me. Putting aside inconsistencies in characterization and voice I really don't like Brice, and that's in large part because I don't get Brice. Like I understand that she's supposed to be a crazy, bratty kid who was pitched over the edge because of phenomenal cosmic powers, but I roll to disbelieve. She doesn't sound deranged, she just sounds like someone trying super hard to be lovely. Moreover I do not believe she would talk or act like that. Voice is really the problem here. How old is she actually supposed to be because she absolutely does not sound like a kid. Brice is absolutely, 100% a case of the writer trying to write an unsympathetic character and falling flat on their face. Brice and Pester aren't particularly sympathetic themselves, but they have just enough personality to them that their moral failings make them somewhat believable people. Brice, you can just see through the curtains and see the writer thinking "What's the shittiest possible thing Brice could do?" As far as the voices go, I have a suspicion (but no evidence) that this game was originally written in French and suffered a bad translation.
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Aug 31, 2017 04:15
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We've completed 30% of the missions and it feels like we just cleared Sweegy Woods.
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Aug 31, 2017 16:00
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Oh hey, this game just got patched today.quote:- Feature: Scaling of enemy levels is now set to average between your highest and lowest hero levels Guess I'll never have to grind again! That's a relief.
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Aug 31, 2017 21:59
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Hooray! Someone must have been reading your LP.
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Sep 1, 2017 05:41
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I actually like Nahmi and Pester's design, but Brice looks like someone's WoW Gnome OC Do Not Steal and Shades dude kind of clash. But man, the pacing is atrocious - 6 chapters out of 20 should already put the characters into the thrust of the conflict, not just setting out the pieces, and there's a lot of really dumb design decisions for an SRPG - and as mentioned, the voice and characterizations are pretty all over the place.
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Sep 1, 2017 06:06
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inthesto posted:Oh hey, this game just got patched today. Have they considered that level scaling in a strategy game is even more stupid than level scaling in most other games? I guess not.
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Sep 1, 2017 06:34
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Obligatum VII posted:Have they considered that level scaling in a strategy game is even more stupid than level scaling in most other games? I guess not. Level scaling was actually a thing in FFT (The game that Children of the Zodiarcs says it was mostly inspired from), but it was mitigated by two factors. First and most obviously in FFT raw level was not a big deal for anyone but monsters. The slow growth rates of PA and MA, the effects of Brave and Faith, and the basic damage formulae of most things meant that a level 20 person was at a disadvantage against a level 40 but not completely hosed. Moreover Gear and ability sets played a major role in FFT, and it was largely an advantage afforded only to the player. If I have a level 20 Summoner but I've given them MA and Speed boosting gear, an Elemental Rod, and Short Charge it doesn't matter if I'm 20 levels down, I can blast them better than they can blast me because they don't have the advantage of being able to equip the actually best stuff. Children of the Zodiarcs does not appear to have gear except in the form of new dice, and raw level seems to be the sole contributor to stats and unlocking abilities. In other words all the things that mitigated FFT's possible problems are not present here. Secondly story battles did not scale in important ways like giving the enemies better gear or more advanced jobs. In FFT over-leveling too early on can screw you in its Random Battles, not in its story battles. If you did ridiculous and needless grinding in FFT you could be screwed because Random Battles scale with you making it possible that you'd run up against people with equipment that completely outclasses what you can buy (since shops are locked by story progression). Here prior to the patch Main Story Battles had level scaling based on your highest level character, and because levels are the only way to gain power you had to grind everyone up so they didn't fall behind and get instant gibbed by this rocket tag SRPG. You know, the more I see of this game the less impressed with it I am. I can admire their gumption, but not much else.
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Sep 1, 2017 08:50
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So have the evil rich white people we're supposed to hate done anything so far other than attempt to apprehend a gang of infamous mass-murderers? I am all for eat-the-rich but this game hasn't established any reason I should be rooting for the main characters at all, other than that I've been told there is class imbalance and expecting me to fill in the gaps and just assume the heroes are justified in their murder spree.
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Sep 1, 2017 11:23
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CountryMatters posted:So have the evil rich white people we're supposed to hate done anything so far other than attempt to apprehend a gang of infamous mass-murderers? Isn't that more than enough, comrade? 
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Sep 1, 2017 12:04
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CountryMatters posted:So have the evil rich white people we're supposed to hate done anything so far other than attempt to apprehend a gang of infamous mass-murderers? They had the tenacity to live in fancy houses while we live in the slums.
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Sep 1, 2017 14:35
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CountryMatters posted:So have the evil rich white people we're supposed to hate done anything so far other than attempt to apprehend a gang of infamous mass-murderers? Of course, the game doesn't show any of that either. The writers don't seem capable of pulling "showing" off, so we have to go with what they tell us.
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Sep 1, 2017 17:15
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Yeah I guess it's the tell don't show that is bothering me. FFT set that up early and extremely well with Delita's backstory and motivation, and I guess for something inspired by that, the lack of effort to get us invested in the setting is a bit disappointing
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Sep 1, 2017 20:42
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CountryMatters posted:Yeah I guess it's the tell don't show that is bothering me. FFT set that up early and extremely well with Delita's backstory and motivation, and I guess for something inspired by that, the lack of effort to get us invested in the setting is a bit disappointing Ignoring the prologue mission for a second, by the end of FFT's 6th mission that game had introduced Ramza, Delita, Argath, and Wiegraf and their particular deals. To a greater or lesser extent it had gotten across Ramza's naivete, the frustration and desperation of the Corpse Brigade, the uncaring political games of the nobility, and basically already set up all four characters to land where they would eventually end up. To go further Battle 7 is the end of Mileuda, battle 8 is the first fight with Wiegraf and the end of the Corpse Brigade, and battle 9 is Fort Ziekden. Note that all of these really important things happen BEFORE the War of the Lions starts, BEFORE Delita starts making his own plays, and BEFORE the words "Holy Stone" or "Lucavi" or "Germonik Scriptures" are ever uttered. The main plot has not started yet, but Chapter 1 is incredibly eventful and impactful, which is really how you're supposed to do the build-up. I can point to other strategy games as well. Battle 6 of Devil Survivor 2 is the fight against Fumi, which means the world ended, you've already killed a Septentrione, have met and sort of joined JP's, and already felt the escalating panic and despair of the entire city. Battle 6 of Disgaea 4 has Valvatores officially announcing rebellion against the government and setting up the entire rest of the game. Most Fire Emblem games have also started by this point, FE9 has the Greil Mercenies fleeing south towards Laguz country, FE10 has had Micaiah unite with Pelleas to bolster the rebellion, and Chapter 6 of FE Fates is literally the decision point where you choose which version of the game you're playing. The only strategy games of the modern era I can think of that doesn't consistently hit the ground running within 6-10 missions is Super Robot Wars, and that's because SRW needs more time than most for set-up because it has to run like 10 different show's worth of story. Even then stuff happens. Even discounting that introducing all those series means they've also had to introduce like 15-20 important main characters and on-going storylines, by mission 6 of Z1 Setsuko has been shunted through parallel universes while Rand has joined up with a loose amalgamation of good guys. Meanwhile by the end of mission 6 in SRW V the protagonist has joined up with the Yamato, picked up travellers from another universe, and seen the Wave Motion Gun fire. By mission 6 of W the Ardyguns had met a LOT of different people and started making connections with the rest of the good guys in the setting. This isn't even counting the really content heavy SRW games like Z3.2 and Alpha 3 where they basically carry on the amount of stuff from previous games and start off with major events like Sidereal's invasion or Balmar showing up for realzies. Omnicrom fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 1, 2017 21:30
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Omnicrom posted:Ignoring the prologue mission for a second, by the end of FFT's 6th mission that game had introduced Ramza, Delita, Argath, and Wiegraf and their particular deals. To a greater or lesser extent it had gotten across Ramza's naivete, the frustration and desperation of the Corpse Brigade, the uncaring political games of the nobility, and basically already set up all four characters to land where they would eventually end up. To go further Battle 7 is the end of Mileuda, battle 8 is the first fight with Wiegraf and the end of the Corpse Brigade, and battle 9 is Fort Ziekden. Note that all of these really important things happen BEFORE the War of the Lions starts, BEFORE Delita starts making his own plays, and BEFORE the words "Holy Stone" or "Lucavi" or "Germonik Scriptures" are ever uttered. The main plot has not started yet, but Chapter 1 is incredibly eventful and impactful, which is really how you're supposed to do the build-up. One of the big problems, I think, is that they seemed bloody mindedly determined to attach every story scene to a fight. FFT was much more liberal with its usage of scenes that didn't immediately lead into a fight.
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Sep 1, 2017 23:56
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having non-battle cutscenes will do a lot to flesh out the threadbare characterization and not make them murder-happy idiots that should be taken down with the same prejudice they give to their opponents. And note all the examples Omnicorm listed are all games with way more than 20 chapters/battles, and yet they managed to get more of a plot going by this point. 20 missions is on the short side for SRPGs, so for a game as relatively short as Zodiarcs, it really needs to get the ball rolling, and yet we're basically what would be considered Prologue territory in other games.
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Sep 2, 2017 00:34
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Is this game supposed to be a self-contained story and not a prologue?
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Sep 2, 2017 04:36
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Part 7: Bottlenecking When we last left off, Nahmi and company ganked a bunch of cannibals and got more cards out of it.   Will To Live is now an area-effect and can also give its targets shard dice. It's comparable to Compassion now. Thief's Habit is what I would rank as Nahmi's strongest card after Blitz. The star effect allows for a lot of card draw, freeing up Nahmi's dice faces for other symbols, and eventually she'll get a guaranteed free action while in Shroud.   As previously mentioned, Ruiner has an extra space of range and discards on the star effect. Unfortunately, I know that Ruiner is not going to be good for the upcoming map, so I swap it out for Heartless Cruelty.   Bullet Hell has a star effect now, but just like Ruiner, it's not going to be a good card in the next map, so Quick Draw stays in the deck. Flash Bang gives a free action if Pester starts with 6 or more cards in hand but... yeah, still not worth it.  Also, dice crafting is open to us now. You can take die faces that don't have a little lock on them and replace them with any other symbol. To do this, you have to burn spare dice with the requisite symbols. As you can see, a 2-shard requires consuming three shards, a shield, and a star. Any given symbol is pretty easy to get, except...  The lightning bolt, naturally. The only way to craft a lightning bolt is to burn up other lightning bolts. Not only are they extremely rare, but only Nahmi will natively get lightning bolts on her dice. If I can, I want to get a lightning bolt on Brice, but there's no guarantees that this will happen. Mission 7 Moments of Quiet (11-27)  LOOKIT! Food! I've never seen so much food! Ohboyohboyohboy! Wait! What if it's a trap? I mean, who just leaves food out like this? Maybe it's poisoned! Poisoned? Doesn't taste poisoned. Anyway, only a crazy person would waste delicious food like this... The Nobles waste everything in this world. Nothing means anything to them except useless treasures.Listen, I'm for class warfare and all, but man this is hamfisted. You sure hate 'em don't you Nahmi? Is that why you always volunteer for these burglary missions? Seems like you aren't stealing Relics for the good of the Family as much as you just want to punish the Nobles... Quiet! Someone's coming—get ready to fight!  Bah! Bird again? The kitchen staff grow complacent... maybe I'll fire the Head Chef—last time I asked for something exotic and rare, he brought me uncooked meat! I'd be better off eating with the Guard in their Barracks! Lord Zulta, Head Treasurer and Master of Coin, demands more respect... Ha! No need to worry, it's just a pathetic Noble. Couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag... What are low-born... children... doing in my dining hall?! Shoo! Get out of here! Guards! GUARDS! Go ahead, pig, squeal for your guard dogs! I am Nahmi, last of the Timbu people of Jalain!Uhh, what? In case you're wondering, that little plot point never really goes anywhere. I'm going to take your most treasured possession today, and there's nothing you or anyone can do about it. Today, it's your turn to feel powerless! So this fight kind of has a lot of enemies in it.  Including Zulta himself. Say hello to your recurring cartoon villain. Zulta's stats don't matter too much, because I'm not sure he actually has any damaging cards.  Anyways, this is why I tossed Ruiner and Bullet Hell. We're going to be spending most of the fight lined up in this little doorway.  So, Zulta has some loving cards. The shield dice don't matter too much, but as we've seen, Regen is very powerful. It basically means you need to one-shot every enemy.   We're reaching the part of the game where the enemy factions start to reveal their gimmicks. The Guards are all about buffs, and they're going to keep piling extra die on themselves.   They start throwing a lot of dice.    And then Nahmi gets god drat dogpiled and killed in a single turn, even when she started with Shroud. Let's rewind that and try again!     The best defense is a superior offense. Or something like that.   Nahmi and Brice take a few bullets to the head, but nothing life-threatening. Now that the Prosecutor's Long Shot has armor piercing, that's the thing to watch out for.   Pester patches things up and Brice demonstrates why children should not be allowed to have murder-gauntlets. The last Prosecutor folds quickly once all their buddies are dead.   Once the first wave of enemies is finished, Zulta summons more and retreats.   Two of the Officers have special names, but completely unremarkable stats. I have to assume they were crowdfund rewards. We also now get to meet the Peace Keeper, who is essentially a non-boss version of Zulta. They have absolutely no ways to deal damage, so they're good experience pinatas.  I go ahead and bunker up again, and Nahmi nabs level 11 and an extra dice slot for Shrouding.  One of the Prosecutors somehow manages to shoot Nahmi through a wall.  That... sure is a big conga line.  Brice likes it when the enemies are all lumped together.   Pester too, to a much lesser extent. Since the Peace Keepers can't actually do any damage, I'm kind of gambling on Pester being able to take two hits on the chin from the Officers. The level ought to help too.  In retrospect I should have healed first for the chance at extra shard dice but oh well.   No armor piercing, so we're all good.   From here on out, it's a pretty simple clean-up mission. I take my drat time with it, letting the Peace Keepers heal themselves with impunity, since I want to catch up Brice on some levels.     If you think it's slightly suspicious that Nahmi has a card that duplicates Pester's and that Pester didn't get anything for hitting level 12, you might be onto something.  Let's make sure we're gone when they get here! NEXT TIME: God dammit, Pester
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Sep 6, 2017 02:56
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drat, that's what we're going with for main villain? Geez, that's boring,
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Sep 6, 2017 03:43
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Ah, so that's what those partly-cursed dice are for. Shard fodder to build up better dice.
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Sep 7, 2017 02:19
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| # ? May 8, 2024 23:05 |
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Okay so far you could basically cut out most of the fights before this part and just turn them into cutscenes. Like, I know this thread has already gone on and on about it, but wow this games pacing is kind of abysmal so far. At least things seem to be about to happen now.
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Sep 8, 2017 15:18
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