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 Releasing March 4, 2022. PROLOGUE DEMO AVAILABLE NOW! Triangle Strategy is the newest strategy RPG offering from Square-Enix. It premiered on February 17th, 2020, as part of Nintendo's first full Direct in 1.5 years. It's part Final Fantasy Tactics, part Game of Thrones, with a dash of Octopath's art style and a heaping of that moral choice thing that was all the rage in 2007. From Nintendo's page: quote:Three nations battle for control of the dwindling resources of salt and iron Here's the final trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nhTJ-Evv_U In addition to battles and cutscenes, there are exploration sections where you can walk around maps and talk to people, collect items, etc. The game consistently presents you with three options to answer questions, which represent Utility, Morality or Liberty, but don't tell you which is which. Depending on your choices, the story (supposedly) will unfold differently. There are also moments where you have to make big decisions that cause large divergences in the story, or so it seems. These require all characters to vote, and while you can only choose how Sernoa votes, you can have conversations with your allies to try and sway them one way or the other. The original Debut Demo was available after the game was announced and showcased an early version of the game. You joined the story several hours in and fought a couple of battles in addition to exploring and making lots of choices. The demo was also pretty difficult, to encourage players to really utilize all of the tools they are given. There was one very large decision that had to be made during the demo. Just like with Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default II, Square released a survey so that people could give them feedback based on this demo. Here were the updates based on the feedback: https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/2021/triangle-strategy-debut-demo-survey-results-nintendo-switch/ UPDATE: There is now a prologue demo that consists of the first three chapters. Your progress carries over to the full game! Blackbelt Bobman fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Feb 25, 2022 |
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Feb 21, 2021 00:45
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I'm reserving this post in case I need it and also wanted to separate my feedback from the OP. The biggest issue I had with the demo was my completely inability to distinguish the purple spaces (where you can be targeted by enemies) from the blue ones due to my color blindness. I'm probably not the only one, too. They absolutely need to distinguish them better. The only way I could tell were by the lines that come out of the enemies when you highlight the panels. Another issue I had with the battles was, I didn't think they explained the battle system very well. You have to "stock" turns (was it called TP?) to use certain attacks. Did that require you to not take any actions that turn? Could I still use a regular attack? It needed a tutorial. If there was one, I missed it. The battles were difficult but I also felt like I made a bunch of mistakes and barely won both battles. I'm also curious if using the traps in the second battle (assuming it's the same depending on the big moral choice) have some kind of long term effect, depending on how many you trigger. There also needs to be an option for the dialogue to automatically continue without hitting A every time someone finishes. I also think you should be able to scroll backwards through dialogue in case you missed anything... I believe both of these options were in Octopath Traveler and the Bravely games. I also felt like the menus were kind of annoying to navigate? The status screen had giant portraits of the characters but the actual information was small. Seemed weird to me. I didn't look too hard, was there a place you could see the information you learned from allies & townspeople? Just curious. I definitely missed something because the third option(s) didn't unlock when I talked to Anna to try and sway her not to give the princey boy away to the bad guys. I ended up convincing (almost) everybody to fight instead anyway. Next time I do the demo I'll see what happens if you can't sway enough people. EDIT: I forgot, the demo has a glitch that was present in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 at launch, I recall. If you suspend the game and then put your Switch to sleep, it counts that time and adds it to the timer of how long you've played. A little detail, but definitely something they'll want to fix. Blackbelt Bobman fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Feb 21, 2021 |
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Feb 21, 2021 00:46
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The demo actually has 3 completely different maps in it, as the branching point causes the story to veer in two totally different directions with a different map. I found the one where you surrender Roland to be much harder than the one where you protect him. Definitely agree that it needs a better tutorial, but basically yes TP generates at a rate of 1 per turn no matter what. If you wait or take a non-TP action you can save it up for your more costly abilities. There's a recruitable character (don't know what the requirements are) who also serves as a TP battery. It was pretty interesting how many purely support based characters there are. The colored squares are a bit tricky to distinguish yeah. I didn't have the blue purple trouble, but in the map with the fire traps I was trying to see their exact borders but the orange squares were overlapping with my character's always present purple movement squares so I couldn't see them properly. I liked it a lot overall, the story was interesting enough and I'd really like to see where it goes with the branching paths. This one example makes it SEEM like it could get huge and complicated but many games have promised and failed to deliver things like that before. My biggest gripe so far is how bad the voice acting is, Serenoa in particular. Definitely gonna say something about that in the survey because yikes.
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Feb 21, 2021 01:16
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I'd also like a better understanding on attacks that do AOE, though color wasn't my issue. Does a cross-shaped spell hit all 4 sides, or does height break it up? Can your spells damage your own people (No but I wasn't sure if that was the case). The horseman can attack people from two steps away, but if you attack through a person to the one behind them do you hit both (I don't think you do, BUT you will break an Ice wall doing this). Stuff like that could use some clarification. Also if an attack moves you, like "rush" do you return to your starting position or not? Hawk Dive (a leaping attack) does return you effectively giving that character a ranged attack, but "Rush" doesn't, I think. Only attacks that use TP will use it. Otherwise you gain 1 TP at the start of every turn, there's way to game that though. Your Ice Mage will gain an extra one if he's standing on ice for example. What that means is for example you can use your healer to heal every turn, but she won't gain enough to do the AOE heal unless you skip healing for a couple of turns. I'm also going to re-hash a bit of what I said in the Switch thread: After playing the demo my first thought was are that there's waaaaay too much interstitial plot between battles. Now, I figure that there are sidequest fights that'll pop up to keep you busy and the extra long loading times between the world map and the seen was a bit much. All that needs to be streamlined with a simple "Elsewhere" or "Meanwhile". If the scenes feature 0 options and are just extra dialog, like the whatever they were called in FFIX, either play them straight or give the player button prompt to explore them, but having to go through the map each time is long. Now, I liked the writing and between this and Octopath it's clear the team's got a writer who wants to just explore characters in a fantasy setting, and more power to them. Octopath was really good at the commonality of life in a place like that. Alfyn and Tressa, in particular have rather basic plots and it's refreshing. The voice-acting is very bad... if I can put it in Japanese I will or I'm just turning it off. It also needs a quick-reset, something I've always liked in FE. In the event you gently caress up you can at least quickly restart your fight if you need too. Having to suspend the battle and reload takes time, unless I missed a load option in the menu. No music came out as super memorable yet, but they better have a music player this time around. The "Profile' button that shows the character portrait is also kind of strange since it stops all dialog. Why not go the FE route and just have text boxes with a face at the bottom of the screen? A full-body portrait seems like the worst option here. Skills seem attached to class, which seem very varied. Even if you ostensibly get a fire, ice, and lightning mage, all of them have different powers and implications. I'd presume some level of promotion but nothing extreme I hope. I'd prefer it remaining a bit grounded Overall, I really liked the game. It's a very good tactics game, it has character, and I like the realistic feudal drama. Favorite character was the Spy/Anna, I got some very good mileage out of her. The battle system is simple but neat. The TP system provides nice hands-on resource management. If you want more mileage out of your mages, you can probably pair them with Julio whose gimmick is pissing TP for everyone else to use. Also: the whole voting mechanic is neat. You can effectively game it, but just convincing people the way you want a vote to go and ignoring those that are already in your camp, but you get good dialog if you interact with everyone anyway. That sort of choice feels nice, and I'm going to replay it to see what happens if I do give up the Prince. I loved this actually. I get decision paralysis rather easily when I'm forced to choose too many things, something that's turned me off of modern FE, and something I also dislike since it's easier to find/discover broken classes/combos, which is harder thing to balance. Things that are broken can be fun, but sometimes it trivializes a game so much it's pointless, and you feel like a dope for ignoring it.
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Feb 21, 2021 01:22
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I think a speedup button would also help, or just a general pace improvement button. If I enjoy this game I'm definitely gonna want to replay to see the other options, but the pace is a little slow.
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Feb 21, 2021 01:31
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No real effort post from me. I just played Tactics Ogre for the first time last year and I'm thinking of grabbing Final Fantasy Tactics to finally give that a try so I'm really looking forward to this coming out. I can't wait to get a second demo which seems to be how Square does these things now. Since Octopath came out I've been wanting more games in this style and I'm glad they're moving away from the Saga base of Octopath. This needs to be on the same level as Tactics Ogre/FFT to be good and the demo lesves me with high hopes.
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Feb 21, 2021 01:32
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Endorph posted:I think a speedup button would also help, or just a general pace improvement button. If I enjoy this game I'm definitely gonna want to replay to see the other options, but the pace is a little slow. You can hold R to speed the game up, at least in battle. There were some serious performance issues, mostly when the rain shaman character summoned the rain and when I activated the fire traps in the second battle. Magic effects in general cause performance issues, reminds me of the original FFT on PSX which is not a good thing.
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Feb 21, 2021 01:34
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Walla posted:No real effort post from me. I just played Tactics Ogre for the first time last year and I'm thinking of grabbing Final Fantasy Tactics to finally give that a try so I'm really looking forward to this coming out. I can't wait to get a second demo which seems to be how Square does these things now. Since Octopath came out I've been wanting more games in this style and I'm glad they're moving away from the Saga base of Octopath. This needs to be on the same level as Tactics Ogre/FFT to be good and the demo lesves me with high hopes. The fact they said that it's the next installment in the HD 2D series of games is so cool, it implies there'll be more. What did they call the extra cut-scenes you could get in FFIX. You know they would just pop up while running around and you just had to hit a button if you wanted to watch it or not? That's how this should work. I really don't understand why it took you out to the world-map between each dialogue. You should be able to skip scenes completely too by just pressing start or something. The battles were good, but it was shocking how much dialogue there was to wade through otherwise.
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Feb 21, 2021 01:39
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I'm really glad that this "HD 2D" thing has been successful for Square so far. The company has really been getting their "edge" back over the past few years.
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Feb 21, 2021 02:07
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II made a joke during the direct about this being another tactical rpg where you mash button through too-much dialogue, thinking it was a generic burn for a new fire emblem. That ended up feeling very true, especially since they were like "just enjoy the atmosphere, don't worry about this out-of-context chunk of story." There were a dozen blue pings on a map I assumed were game content, was impressed how much they gave us... then they were all cutscenes and emotional moments for characters I didn't know. Just a loooot of time spent fast-forwarding stuff. Worst part is, presumably in full game, missing out on those scenes probably impacts things or might be relevant info in some later decision to make? If this was Disco Elysium tier writing... maybe I'd be more invested from the outset? Even then, DE's story works with the gameplay itself, it is the gameplay. This is just... not incorporated into the game at all, it's a separate thing and seems stories will be mostly told in these weird compartmentalized chunks. An "arcade mode" where you just have a super mario world map of the branching choices and you hop from battle to battle without all the dialogue would be sweet. The actual combat parts I really enjoyed. I kind of wish the camera wasn't so free, I think I'd prefer just snapping to cardinal orientations and adjust controls along with it when switching. I liked the classes they let us play with, but I have to wonder if there's any room there for choosing how characters progress, or if it's all just individuals you must independently consider. I like a job system, but I see the merits of individuals too. I look forward to the "judge powers" that we'll eventually get. The two I saw in demo were good, just solid fair little boons, but I'm hoping there's crazier stuff eventually. The AI was pretty good, they were a bit predictable in going for juicy backside crits, so you can sometimes intentionally expose a squishy back to bait an enemy into a spot where you can easily overwhelm it. I was glad the mages could take a couple crit backstabs and still survive.
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Feb 21, 2021 02:11
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Talking about the camera, it was neat how zooming out completely made it a very FE like grid fight. I hope you don't get too many choices when it comes to classes, I get choice paralysis very quickly. Quietus was definitely one of the names that stood out as peculiar to me. A good name was Hughette, because that's a new one. AI was fine, but it was kinda funny how they wouldn't break Ice walls, like in the stairs chokepoint. It was very strange.
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Feb 21, 2021 02:18
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I've been hanging hard for a good tactics RPG in the style of tactics ogre for a few years. This might be it.
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Feb 21, 2021 02:21
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100YrsofAttitude posted:AI was fine, but it was kinda funny how they wouldn't break Ice walls, like in the stairs chokepoint. It was very strange. I was annoyed how the boss in the second fight didn't move unless I approached them. I realize that's how the genre works sometimes but I still found it dumb in the context of the story. She is invading ME not the other way around.
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Feb 21, 2021 03:22
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I enjoyed the demo a good deal. My criticisms don't seem too dissimilar to everything I'm hearing online. The dialogue is a bit stilted and overwritten with some of the more outlandish fantasy names I've seen in a while. The voice acting is not particularly great either. The stuff I liked - just about everything else. I thought the battle system was nice and easy to comprehend. I did lean a little bit heavy on the fast-forward option so that it didn't drag on. Magic seems a bit overpowered at the moment compared to melee. When I recruited the Shaman unit, I took Shield Guy out of combat because I thought he was mostly worthless in the first fight. The Shaman's electricity skill was just about a 70-80% damage when you cast it. As a big Tactics Ogre fan, I'm excited to see how many branching paths/unit differences they can introduce with the Scales of Conviction system. Your party having to vote on which action to take is a neat system, although it seemed a little *too* easy to sway them just by talking to people in the town. The decision being something like 4-2-1 at give the prince up ended 7-1 in the opposite direction (the path I wanted to take). Given this is just an early demo and I'm sure there's surveys to follow, I look forward to seeing more of the game's development all the while still wishing for another Tactics Ogre. Matsuno worked on FF14, let's make it happen.
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Feb 21, 2021 03:35
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I managed to swing a unanimous vote to protect the prince the first time, but then actually failed to get Frederica to give him up the second go around. The persuasion mechanic does have potential to be very interesting, though it seems like at least as presented here it would always be easy to save and try again if you didn't get the outcome you wanted. Maybe morality choices will make that more complex later on, I dunno. I hope it all turns out good, it's got me looking forward to it.
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Feb 21, 2021 04:16
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lol everyone else saved roland but hey, he wanted to go so i just let him somewhat funnily only frederica couldnt be swayed, kinda wish i had backstory context to understand why shes so different then her bros and sis
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Feb 21, 2021 04:44
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I wound up giving away the prince too and honestly I kind of regret it both because he’s one of the better units and also because the map you get where you do is hard as balls. Also, there’s apparently three recruitable characters in the demo of which you can only recruit two depending on the smaller choices you make. I didn’t get the character that apparently acts like a TP battery, I got the lightning mage and the girl who throws items like a FFT Chemist
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Feb 21, 2021 07:27
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what if we took FFT and removed the interesting art style and appealing character and world design. and made it really straight faces and grimdark.
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Feb 21, 2021 07:34
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Only played through the first battle in the demo so far, first impressions are relatively positive. Main complaint is that overall it feels bad to actually play, like you have to force through a layer of stuff to get results, and that's mainly from a collection of smaller annoyances that others have pointed out. I'd like to use the D-pad for grid selection, but the camera sometimes sits right on the border of switching the direction the pad will take you, so up will move the cursor up and right, but a tiny adjustment will now have it moving up and left. The camera itself and the buttons feel like there's a fair bit of input lag. The colours aren't distinctive enough. The post processing effects are far too strong for my liking, which muddles things more than it needs to, and makes it difficult to tell which character is which. The red lines that show which enemy will attack you come out far too slow, I feel like that should be an instant display. I'd like touchscreen support for the display on the bottom that shows unit order. The UI element for A/action and X/end turn is in the middle of the screen. All seems like stuff that can be polished over the next year. I love what I've seen of the magic and movement. Using a shield guy to punt a grunt off the drawbridge, using the mage to create ice walls that hinders movement and can protect weakpoints, satisfying stuff. I feel like mounted units should be able to move further, but that might just be a class/promotion thing. If they fix a few of those annoyances and deliver on the voting/scales system I can see myself loving this. Maxwell is 100% coming back at a critical point in the story after being "killed" at the end of that chapter.
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Feb 21, 2021 10:41
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Yeah Max is definitely not dead.punk rebel ecks posted:I was annoyed how the boss in the second fight didn't move unless I approached them. Take it as "I'm too good to be bothered with this bullshit" *two hours later* "gently caress gently caress gently caress gently caress gently caress". Scrap Dragon posted:I wound up giving away the prince too and honestly I kind of regret it both because he’s one of the better units and also because the map you get where you do is hard as balls. Oooh. I wanna get that item girl. The first TP battery is Julius who I haven't tried yet. I may break him out and switch him with Benedict, the buffer-unit but "Now!" is too valuable in that Ice Wall Map where you need that chokepoint, unless you want to get swarmed. I also need to try the Lightning mage. I like the hidden dialogue choices it's nice and really feels like the game adapts to your personality.
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Feb 21, 2021 11:43
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Ezana is great on the give up the Prince route because that map's gimmick involves flammable terrain and if you don't want to deal with it her rain spell just lets you say gently caress that and eliminate it permanently.
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Feb 21, 2021 14:00
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Yeah when this game comes out i am going to need the GameFAQs page with recruitment walkthroughs open full time. The two people i recruited were an accountant and the shaman.
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Feb 21, 2021 15:26
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Al-Saqr posted:what if we took FFT and removed the interesting art style and appealing character and world design. and made it really straight faces and grimdark.
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Feb 21, 2021 16:05
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Endorph posted:what does 'grimdark' mean "Grimdark is a subgenre of speculative fiction with a tone, style, or setting that is particularly dystopian, amoral, or violent."
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Feb 21, 2021 16:28
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Rimusutera posted:"Grimdark is a subgenre of speculative fiction with a tone, style, or setting that is particularly dystopian, amoral, or violent." how is this different from fft
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Feb 21, 2021 16:32
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The Saltiron Saga (name pending) isn't grimdark, it's just very dry. There's no fantasy non-human characters, that we know of, and the drama is pretty standard feudal disputes. And frankly I like that. I don't doubt there'll be an ancient dragon/demon eventually but as it stands this is nice. I like that the winged mounted units use birds. I also can't get over the name Hughette. Maybe it's a real name but it just seems absurd to me.
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Feb 21, 2021 16:57
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Huguette is an old-fashioned name in Québec. Mostly grandmas have it.
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Feb 21, 2021 17:03
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I enjoyed the demo a lot, and am looking forward to this game. I'm a bit concerned about what kind of customization there will be other than "X is an ice wizard, Y is a scout" more akin to FE when you're usually used to a genre of class changing/subclassing/ability/passive choosing. The speedup button was nice but really needs more oomph. Enjoyed the story bits (LOVE the profile hotkey during them), not too much of a fan of the comical bad guys artstyle, but way too early to tell if this is fleshed out into one big great story or not. But unless they really mess this up, I will definitely be getting this.
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Feb 21, 2021 17:05
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From my playthrough of the demo: - I think the mages need more speed outright. They don't hit hard enough for how slow they are and they need to use 2 TP to get their real spells off to boot. - I think the enemies are maybe too tanky, I think I'd prefer larger numbers of enemies who are a bit more squishy. - I want to be able to turn the bloom and depth of field off, JP voice acting, battle speed options, the portraits should be on for dialogue boxes, not hidden behind the + button. The load times suck but I chalk that down to being early dev and being a switch game that isn't fully patched up BOTW. Octopus Tales came to PC so I imagine this will. - I want a job system, these games gotta have em, but if it does have one, I want it to be significantly better than Octopi Tingler's. - The EXP for using an action very clearly favours faster classes, so Anna is the clear MVP with her act again trait because she's not weak to boot. It's not going to be possible to keep casters up to speed with levels on that exp system. - They should lift the timeline menu from Tactics Ogre to help visualise the ramifications of your choices. - I think some of the controls are clunky at the minute, though you do settle into them. Those all sound negative, so: - I like the difficulty level despite feeling enemies are maybe a touch tanky. - I liked being able to exploit the A.I. to punch Arlova into the oil traps to finish her off outright. These games are at their best when they reward your thinking. - I like that heavily armoured enemies are actually hard to kill with melee. Really looking forward to seeing how it shakes out. Jones'ing for a TO: LUCT playthrough now.
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Feb 21, 2021 17:09
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Al-Saqr posted:what if we took FFT and removed the interesting art style and appealing character and world design. and made it really straight faces and grimdark. did we play the same thing??
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Feb 21, 2021 18:11
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Al-Saqr posted:what if we took FFT and removed the interesting art style and appealing character and world design. and made it really straight faces and grimdark. I don't know about grimdark. Heavily influenced by Game of Thrones? Yes. Grimdark? Ehhh, no. I'm excited to try the demo again so I can find the characters I missed and try to get other paths. Another gripe I have is the names of the items. Might be minor but "HP pellet" is the dumbest name for a potion, just loving call it a potion.
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Feb 21, 2021 18:32
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FFT added playable playboy bunnies which cancels out all the boring war and strife you fast-forward through
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Feb 21, 2021 18:47
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Endorph posted:how is this different from fft I'm not entirely sure what the other poster means comparatively, I was just quoting the definition. Maybe they're thinking most of FFTA? That was relatively bright and lighthearted upfront, and though it went to some more serious places narratively I wouldn't call its plot line grimdark.
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Feb 21, 2021 18:57
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i would say the plot is exactly in line with FFT, as they are both war drama taken seriously neither are really grimdark
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Feb 21, 2021 19:20
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Completed a second playthrough of the demo, apparently it’s possible to only recruit one of the optional characters as I only got the item girl this time around. Edit: The trap map was a little touch and go but it was so, so, much easier than the other one
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Feb 21, 2021 20:19
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Scrap Dragon posted:Completed a second playthrough of the demo, apparently it’s possible to only recruit one of the optional characters as I only got the item girl this time around. Wait there's more than just the water shaman lady?
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Feb 21, 2021 20:46
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Dackel posted:Wait there's more than just the water shaman lady? Three total it seems!
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Feb 21, 2021 20:48
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It's possible to recruit two per playthrough
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Feb 21, 2021 21:03
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Looper posted:did we play the same thing?? Not at all.  And it can't be said enough, this is much closer to Tactics Ogre than FFT. Mostly because of the split paths and decisions than anything else really since both were pretty grounded fantasy war dramas.
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Feb 21, 2021 21:27
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I'm so happy we're finally going to have a good Tactics Ogre game.
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Feb 21, 2021 21:40
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