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 TheGreatEvilKing, This Isn't An Isometric RPG! What The Hell Are You Doing? Dark Deity is a strategy RPG in the vein of Fire Emblem. Specifically, it's a strategy RPG heavily inspired by Game Boy Fire Emblems. However, it has a unique story, a large cast of characters, a unique take on classic Fire Emblem mechanics like the weapon triangle, and writing unlike any seen in Fire Emblem which must be read to be believed. You take your force of standard fantasy heroes such as mages, thieves, and warriors and go... you know, I've beaten this game and I'm still not sure how to describe what exactly the characters are trying to accomplish. But there are a lot of words, so it must be something! Oh cool, you said it's like Fire Emblem, so there's like the weapon triangle and random level-ups and -  Your eyes are not deceiving you, that is a mid-game boss with 2500 hit points in a Fire Emblem knockoff. Yes, the game still scales by giving you a percentage chance to get 1 strength point per level, why do you ask? The mechanics of Dark Deity are weird and strange, and I'll grant I didn't play it after the balance page that reduced all the lifesteal on the mages from 33% to 20% and reduced all the dodge. Instead of the easy to remember Fire Emblem weapon triangle, there's a collection of percentage based nonsense to adjudicate say, fire magic hitting plate armor which you will never remember. Also, there's no luck stat to reduce incoming crits, so the developers "solved" this by making critical hits "only" deal double damage to the target. There's a lot of changes, and very few of them are good as opposed to being different for the sake of being different. Oh, also, there are no permadeaths forcing you to restart. If your characters go down they take permanent stat losses... which 99% of players will just restart through. OK, TGEK, you can't fool me! I know you LP nearly exclusively badly written nonsense! Yeah, you got me. The game desperately wants to have a mythic scope and a bunch of deep lore and major events it doesn't earn, so the story flops all over the place like a fish on land describing his D&D character. I do want to note that unlike ATOM RPG this game doesn't sink into the depths of offensiveness or have any practices that are strictly forbidden, for obvious reasons. It's just not very well thought out. From what I've read the lead made this game at the age of 23 because he really liked Fire Emblem, so good for him. That said, he's in the big boy pool now and will be judged accordingly. I'd also wager that heavily influenced the design of the female characters, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. So you're a Fire Emblem expert? Hell no. Go read someone like Melth if you want to see someone absolutely clown on the game the right way. We're going to be using a bunch of vaguely exploitative strategies to cheese certain maps, and I haven't played the game since the balance patch so I suspect all my drain tanking strats go right into the trash and you can all laugh at me as I get hilariously owned. One strategy we will probably be using is deploying less units then allowed so we can have a few elites hoover up XP and keep truckin via statistical superiority - but also, characters have unlimited usage secondary skills that grant XP so we might abuse that instead. Who knows? The possibilities are endless! Audience Participation? As far as I know, there aren't any actual path choices or even hidden levels. There is a swimsuit DLC (  ) with more levels that I can purchase if the thread demands more once we've killed the final boss. There are probably not going to be votes on units because I reserve the right to use cheese strats and other nonsense. With that said, let's get started!
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Aug 24, 2022 23:40
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This is a game that has been on my radar for a while, but I wasn't sure if it was good enough to bother with. This thread is a sign I was correct.
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Aug 25, 2022 01:51
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mr_stibbons posted:This is a game that has been on my radar for a while, but I wasn't sure if it was good enough to bother with. This thread is a sign I was correct. Same. I'll be very interested to see where this goes.
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Aug 25, 2022 02:18
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mr_stibbons posted:This is a game that has been on my radar for a while, but I wasn't sure if it was good enough to bother with. This thread is a sign I was correct. Yeah, same, this is on my Steam wishlist. I’d been waiting for it to get low enoug to roll the dice on it maybe sucking. This should be educational!
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Aug 25, 2022 03:01
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Well, here you go again. I'm curious to see how unpleasant the gameplay gets, TRPGs can have a bunch of really mean sides to them, like the traditional climb up a cliff while being shot at to start each mission, or the enemies getting a massive action economy advantage that results in a lot of waiting before getting any chance to input anything.
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Aug 25, 2022 03:13
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Oh boy! I remember you showcasing that 2.5k HP dragon a while back elsewhere, and all the other oddities with this game. I'll eagerly await the more detailed dive here.
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Aug 25, 2022 03:33
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In Which The Core Plot Immediately Loses Coherence As I said, I'm not a Fire Emblem master so we'll be playing on the middle difficulty. It's a massive slog as is.   : That a great empire spread itself thin across the known world, conquering land after land with its superior technology and magic... I'm extremely confused now. I thought there was a great war where the empire brutally colonized everyone at gunpoint. : Little is left from that time, swept away in a deadly cataclysm known as The Calamity.: Thousands of years later, all that remains of life before The Calamity are ancient temples to the gods, and the divine artifacts contained therein. : The Kingdom of Delia lies in the heart of Etlan, a nation that has long thrived off of continental trade and lush farmlands.: Though peace had reigned for over twenty five years, Delia's king now sets his eyes on an enemy of his own construction. A good law for fiction is that the amount of names with apostrophes in them is inversely proportional to the quality of the work. : To this day, Varic is convinced that the assassins were sent by the Aramoran royal family.: To this day, it remains unproven.  Jesus this is a clunker of a sentence! This raises more questions we'll get to in a moment. : Pressed for more troops, King Varic must make hard decisions. He looks now to Brookstead, the site of Delia's most prestigious officer academy.: Each year, its graduating class bolsters Delia's forces, a pact and tradition that has lasted a millennium. Now I am confused again. The king hates Aramor for killing his father. He's used a border dispute as an excuse to apparently send a covert ops team that can somehow destroy an entire city and presumably kill everyone inside. He did not mobilize armies of grown adults as part of this preparation?  : The Academy Trials provide an opportunity to advance in the class rank, or fall behind. For many, it is the most important day of the year.: Though the trials can be stressful, many agree that a life of training with such clear goals is simple. Enjoyable, even.: Come tomorrow, they will find that life may never be so simple again.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
  Meet our protagonist. In an inversion of the usual Fire Emblem trope where Red Country violates a peace treaty to attack Blue Country for reasons, we're going to be drafted by Red Country to attack Blue Country for... reasons.   : You think he'd do that just to punish us for choosing Alden? : I was up at the crack of dawn hearing, 'no son of mine should jeopardize a mission for sentiment.'The irony is that Alden is a contender for strongest character in the game, but we'll get to that shortly. : Well, we couldn't pick Maren without Alden. That was the deal. I think he just can't stomach the thought that his pride and joy might fail.  I'm not making portraits for all the expressions, sorry! : Why don't you try convincing the swordmaster that a 14-year-old who can't lift a training staff can best an 18-year-old graduate.: There's a reason he doesn't teach conjuring. Your dad wouldn't trust a mage as far as he could throw him. Google tells me the average weight of a fourteen year old boy is about 112 pounds, which is probably throwable.  : I'm confident we'll pass. We certainly put in the training. : Of course we'll pass! But I want to break Sterling's record!: Cool the forge there, little man.: But I'm on the best team of any first year! : Good. Now I'm going to need you to focus that appreciation, Alden. There's a lot at stake for your sister.: Right! If we win, I won't have anything to worry about when Maren leaves for the army, because I'll know she's ready! : Well there goes the mood.: Promise you'll focus today and give it everything you got, ok?: Promise!: Let's get going. Can't miss the Trials standing around for a chat. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 The exam is the first actual level. : We're prepared for this. Alden, Garrick, stay close behind. The characters give you little hints as to how to use them. It's a nice touch.   : And so the Trials begin. With such style and grace, I might add.: Just dripping with sincerity today, aren't we Dad? Apparently the actual map background didn't load the map, so we have to sit through a loading screen before being able to get to some sexy grid based tactical combat.  A lot of this will be familiar to you if you've played any Fire Emblem, ever. Melee units can hit adjacent squares in the cardinal directions. The arrows look a lot like the weapon triangle, so let's take a look at what we're doing, shall we?  It's not great. There are four armors: Plate, Chain, Leather, and "Rune Cloak" and all the various damage types have different percentage increases/decreases against them. Crushing does 35% more damage versus plate, but apparently your Nazgul cosplay makes it harder to get hit by a hammer and you get a -5% damage decrease. Now, this is confusing enough, but see that little "Mas" above the speed and luck stats? This determines how effective the character exploits advantages (hitting a plate guy with a hammer) or reduces disadvantages. I can't actually find a formula for this, but there's a wiki page here. It should be noted that you'll never lose more than 10% damage going up against a disadvantage, so in practice you just ignore all this crap and it's a nice bonus for your turbonuker mage to hit.  Alden's up first. Alden is a mage, so he does Arcane Damage and can strike at either 1 or 2 squares.  You know how in Fire Emblem games the characters can equip multiple weapons of different types, so your swordsman can equip a javelin that lets him hit a target at range and also gives him another part of the weapon triangle to get advantage against swords? Dark Deity does thinks differently. You don't equip weapons in Dark Deity. Instead, each character has four different weapons (Power, Finesse, Focus, Balance) that all deal the same type of damage but have different statistics. Alden here has Force, Beam, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Blast. Now, it's important to note that as a result of this you can't equip your melee fighters with thrown weapons or give your mages type coverage.  Anyway, it's time to have our fourteen year old child soldier turn the powers of the arcane against this man in a totally nonlethal way. Attack rounds work like Fire Emblem where each side gets to attack and if your speed is high enough you can double. Alden's not super fast yet so he's just gonna blast this man for most of his health.  Goddammit Alden! I spent all this time hyping you up and you miss with the very first attack! Go sit in the corner!  I have Garrick step in and weaken the cleric.  Irving goes in there but isn't quite able to finish the guy.  Maren goes in. Healers in this game carry maces and wear plate Dungeons and Dragons style, but also don't actually have any attritional resources to heal - they can do it once per turn for free. I'd snark about it, but it's not like you can't just order all the Black Eagles to pass turn standing around Dorothea or something.  There's really not a lot to this level. You go down the line, use Irving to bait out the enemies one at a time, and then murder them in traditional Fire Emblem fashion. It's the first level, what more do you want from me?  Here's Alden's stats. His personal skill is that he has to get 4 or more stats when leveling. He's very good at killing people with magic.  Irving is our nominal leader and his personal skill appropriately reflects that.  Garrick is crit man.  Maren heals herself on healing others, which has led to all kinds of strange armored tank builds. We'll get more into that when we get into promotions.  I'm switching freely between weapons because this is the first level, but there's an entire upgrade system that incentivizes the player to either field fewer units or choose one weapon per character.  The grind continues.  Irving is the first to level up, and I note with some trepidation he's gotten neither strength nor speed.  I mentioned critical hits in the OP, but yes, that is a generic enemy in the first level who has a 15% chance to crit poor Alden.  Alden is fine. I just wanted to show off that the little health vial has various animations depending on how its possessor died. It's a neat touch!  You absolutely can, Maren, you got a real level.  No, I don't know why the pickaxe is a cleric weapon either, stop axing.  The boss is familiar.   Garrick busts out a sicknasty critical that the enemy, sadly, survives.  Alden finishes the job.  I forgive him his early miss.  We continue our attempt to nonlethally stab all these men.  Sterling is a tier three archer class - a Blade Dancer - which is actually really good, but the Dark Deity weapon system bites them in the rear again. Remember how our melee guys can't equip thrown weapons or bows as a backup? This applies to poor Sterling too, who can only attack out to one range.  This means that Alden and Garrick can pummel him with ranged attacks and there's literally nothing he can do about it. He doesn't move, either.  We even get a level for Garrick out of it.  Now, we could just cheese Sterling here by hitting him with arcane missiles until he goes down like a loser, but seeing as Irving talked a big game about whooping him it would be rude to deny him this until I bench his rear end forever.  We gain a "Tier 1 Token" for this, which I will explain once we get an opportunity to upgrade weapons.  You know, Intsys would NEVER give us a boss that doesn't move and only attacks in melee.  I'm really not going for rank here because as far as I know it means nothing.  Incidentally, Sterling is the guy standing in front of the king as he gives out his frankly insane orders about child conscription and warcrimes.  : I'm glad to hear it! : By Vosh, you've all grown. That was quite the thrill. : Surprised, Father?: Congratulations, Son. All of you should be very proud of what you accomplished today. You especially, Maren. : Thank you, Master Galen.: And, now that you've had your thrill, Commander, I believe some kind of explanation is in order.You know, now that I think about it, it does not speak well of Sterling that he volunteered to beat up a bunch of kids. : Of course. As I promised. Brother, friends, if you'll excuse us... : Unfortunately not, sir.: You were never one to live in the past. Always onwards and upwards.: ...: Tell me, how goes the war effort? I want you to keep this in mind, because we are all about to be very confused in a few minutes. : I see. Come to size up our latest graduates?: Not quite. The King plans to recruit the entire academy.   I want to point out the idyllic small town background with trees and sky juxtaposed with the drafting of all these fourteen year old kids into the army because the war is that desperate. : I wish I could say. Now, this is kind of treasonous speech, which is at odds with the king's mad behavior dragging the country into war by nuking a city.  So, Sterling is here to draft the kids, but not Galen, who was referred to as a "swordmaster" earlier. Why not. : Guard your suspicions, Commander, and do not speak so eagerly of war. If the King wishes it, he shall have his soldiers. I only hope you, of all people, understand the gravity of this decision.: All too well...TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
  : At every opportunity, you have shown the resolve and dedication that allows Brookstead to endure, and I have every confidence that the classes to follow would do the same.: I regret that I must conclude this graduation ceremony with grim news. We've received orders from King Varic himself.  Naturally, none of the kids have anything to say about this. : At the conclusion of this speech, you will all be graduates of Brookstead Academy. Outside these walls, you will be expected to exemplify our honor and our code.: Life takes much from us, yet Brookstead still stands. You will have each other to lean on, and I cannot stress enough how important it will be to do so."Meanwhile I'm staying behind even though I'm an able-bodied swordmaster and our country is apparently just collapsing".   : How could the King do this?The answer is that the developers wrote a bunch of deep lore fantasy nonsense but no one bothered to figure out how the king got the political support to start drafting children.  : It seems he'll stop at nothing to avenge his father.: Ah, where are my manners? Allow me to introduce Lincoln and Bianca. They are the leaders of this conscription tour, as well as good friends. Despite whatever the gently caress that outfit is, Bianca shows up on a lot of endgame teams.  This is just clunky. Irving attends a military school and should be able to say "general", "field marshal", "commander of the armies", or whatever. : I must return to Sojourn. I only came because if the King had sent anyone else, Galen might've beheaded them.: You didn't come to see us? So Dark Deity has Awakening style voice acting where characters belt out a word vaguely connected to whatever they just said. In this case Sterling barks out "NO!" so loudly I burst out laughing. : You're leaving, then?: I'm afraid so. I'll see you when you arrive in Sojourn. I can make excuses there to take a few hours off.Is the war really bad enough that they have to draft children but also that the man with the "highest military rank" in Delia is sent here? : Ill news aside, I'm glad you came.: I can't put to words how much even this flawed trip meant to me.: I really should be going, but you can trust Bianca and Lincoln with anything. And Irving, be sure to see mother before you go.: I will. See you in Sojourn. : We did quite well. Sterling was there, actually. : Was he? And too busy to stop by and say hello to his mother, I imagine?: In fairness, he wasn't here for long, and not with great news, either. Mother, I-: Oh I know, I know. Varic's recruited the Academy.: Wha-- How did you find out already?: Word spreads fast in a place like this. I head it from the town crier on the way back from the market.: Ah. Well, then I guess you know I'll be leaving... I believe she means to say Sterling, even though the language used implies he died. : We knew this day would come when I entered the Academy.: Of course, but not so soon. Well, I suppose it's never easy. You must take care of yourself on the road, and your friends. Pretty sure this is just a lie to reassure his mom, as the game has told us - but not shown us - that the King is somehow unprepared to fight a war he started. : War is rarely so simple in my experience. But I hope you're right.: I'll miss you terribly, you know.: I know. I'll miss you too.: Well, I'll grab my things.: Right. Before you go, let me prepare some provisions for you. I'll leave them on the kitchen table.: Oh, and don't forget your running shoes!What. I get this is a post-apocalyptic world, but I am somewhat confused as to how rubber soles survived while black powder firearms didn't. Oh well! TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 : Having expected to graduate in due time, the Academy's students now must quickly say goodbye to their families.: Sterling heads back to Sojourn, leaving the contingent in the care of Lincoln and Bianca.: The contingent heads for Duskwater, a backwater town to the Southeast[sic]: Lincoln hopes to fill the rest of their recruiting quota there. This is the part where the whole "we need to draft the children" portion collapses in nonsense.  Remember, this is a small backwater town.    This is the problem with the scenario. If you've played any of these kinds of games you'll recognize Cia here as a party member and in this game generally the more cleavage a woman shows the more likely she is to join your party.  Can you see the problem?  Notice that Lincoln hasn't conscripted anyone here.  Here's the problem. The kingdom is full of willing adult volunteers like Cia here. It's not just Cia and Elias, there was a nobody Lincoln was thanking for volunteering. It makes no sense to me that the King immediately decided he needed to pull all the children out of the military academy when he has all these people willing to sign on for the war. Now, not everyone is going to join a pointless war of aggression as an adventure, but it's not like you can't promise people plunder from Aramor or monetary gain!  : *sigh* ...And I with her. : Fortune favors us today! I thank you both for your courage.They let the guy with four children go. This is not a kingdom that's desperately strapped for manpower.  : Just one catch, I gotta swing by the tavern and let the matron know I'll be taking a looooong vacation. Wouldn't want her to find out the hard way she's out her favorite barmaid.: Very well. Irving, take your friends and accompany our newest recruits to the tavern. Bianca and I will finish up here. Secure what provisions you can. We've a long road ahead of us.: Yes sir.  : You prefer to travel light?: Excessive equipment is... an occupational hazard. Name's Elias, by the way.: The two of you got a lot of guts signing up like you did.: The 'two of us', right. Try overwhelming bravado and a lack of brains from my impressionable friend. I would never let her do this sort of thing alone. : I wish that weren't true. You've never met a barmaid so bullheaded.: Oh, I think I have.The idea that Cia might be volunteering to preserve the townsfolk from conscription never crosses the brain trust's mind.  The player is diverted from questioning why the king is drafting children by the appearance of Fire Emblem bandits. : Black Abyss, we just left home and we're already in the thick of it. Where is that new recruit?  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 On that note, we'll end today's update, thoroughly confused about what the hell is going on or why anyone is doing anything. Next Time: We have seven turns to grind these morons for experience. Ka-ching!
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Aug 25, 2022 04:12
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: Oh no! Bandits are attacking our town, which is hosting a military convoy powerful enough to conscript our population!
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While the writing around the conscrption is clunky, the plot isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. Medieval warfare isn't the same as the world wars. Medieval kings didn't have the infrastructure to field an army big enough to depopulate the land of military age people like the great powers of the world wars could. They could run low on knights and trained fighters, though. So it kinof makes sense that he wants the entire academy, who are presumably mostly noble kids with actual combat training, but lowborn recruits are still in good supply. (Now, for game balance reasons, the two pesant receuits are probably not going to be garbage compared to the students and soldiers, but that's a reasonable break from reality).
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Aug 25, 2022 05:42
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mr_stibbons posted:While the writing around the conscrption is clunky, the plot isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. Medieval warfare isn't the same as the world wars. Medieval kings don't, but this isn't a medieval army. The king isn't calling up nobles to contribute their retinues, he's making a direct demand to go round up people to report directly to the national army. I do get what you're saying about medieval kings not having the administrative capacity for this, but from what we see Lincoln has a "charter" and a direct quota presumably from some bureaucrat. It's closer to a modern army than it is to a medieval one, especially as we'd expect the noble kids to report to their parents/liege lords and be organized around vassalage. Lincoln isn't a lord as far as I know, whichever lord rules Duskwater is supposed to be the guy calling up whatever men he can find and march to the capital/wherever the war is. Galen also tells us the kids are useless. Earlier in the update posted:Remember, our king doesn't have any significant pushback when he unilaterally sneak attacks a city and, it is implied, kills everyone in it, whereas it's entirely possible the king's vassals could just decide the knights aren't leaving the castle and this is King Apostrophe's problem. This reminds me more of an early modern army than an actual medieval retinue force. It's worth noting that the style of conscription Lincoln's practicing is not something done in the actual Middle Ages, and it reminds me more of modern armies and the levee en masse.
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Aug 25, 2022 06:31
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I've only seen and heard bits and pieces about this game before, but it was pretty much all negative enough to put me off giving it a shot. Looking forward to seeing just how much of a mess this is.
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Aug 25, 2022 08:38
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The target demographic probably wouldn't even question the use of child soldiers in this game if the writing didn't bring up the issue. They're probably used to settings where the mean retirement age is thirty.
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Aug 25, 2022 09:06
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I think the running shoes are a Pokemon "joke"?
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Aug 25, 2022 09:55
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This game does not inspire confidence with its writing for female characters. We have a Shy Demure Healer Girl straight from the factory in a decent outfit, then two half-naked Spunky Girls.
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Aug 25, 2022 12:15
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Cythereal posted:This game does not inspire confidence with its writing for female characters. We have a Shy Demure Healer Girl straight from the factory in a decent outfit, then two half-naked Spunky Girls. Honestly 'straight from the factory' is probably a good descriptor for most of the writing in this game. Not that I've seen it before, but what's shown so far does not instill confidence. Also that's an amusing description and I'm stealing it.
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Aug 25, 2022 14:03
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maybe king apostrophe just really hates Alden and he's okay with throwing away the rest of the academy too
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Aug 25, 2022 14:17
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 Well, this makes me feel better about the game I played recently from the same publisher (but a different developer). The flow of the writing here is ridiculous; I honestly appreciate the irreverent summaries just for checking my understanding.Also drat, wish Fire Emblem would give me units guaranteed to have at least four stat-ups every level.
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Aug 25, 2022 14:30
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This is one of those games where someone saw an existing game system, had some decent ideas on how to improve it, then decided to keep "improving" things long after the stopping point. I kind of like the "limiting characters to 1 weapon, but giving 4 different ways to use it" idea (or having a character that has two weapons with 2 different ways to use each, or someone who has 4 different weapons or...). It's not a bad idea on paper and let's you make characters a but more unique in their fighting styles. That's not what we're going to get, is it?
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Aug 25, 2022 15:54
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I suppose you could slightly handwave the conscription nonsense just by saying they need X amount of people, they got most of it in a big lump from the academy and they're filling in the gaps with scrapings from villages too small to have been cleaned out in earlier recruitment drives and that by implication the bigger towns have already been raided by press gangs or whatever before things got this bad. It's a bit convoluted though. That said, this doesn't seem so bad... yet. I look forward to seeing how it nosedives off the rails.
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Aug 25, 2022 16:28
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Ah, it's good old Villageburner the Bandit, I've missed him. Well, at least his presence makes him look like the country's falling apart a bit.
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Aug 25, 2022 16:47
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:A good law for fiction is that the amount of names with apostrophes in them is inversely proportional to the quality of the work. Fairly certain that "good law of fiction" requires more than one apostrophe per name.
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Aug 25, 2022 16:53
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NullBlack posted:The O’Connors, D’Angelos, N’Dours, and D’Artagnans of the world would like a word with you. You got me! I was thinking of WoW/Steven Erikson when I wrote that.
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Aug 25, 2022 17:33
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Okay, I can see one reason why the king may want to use military cadets over conscripting random adults: presumably the 14-year-old from the military academy will have some inkling on how to use their sword (considering it was a graduation ceremony, I'm assuming the first-year students actually FINISHED the first year) over Joe Farmer who's experience with a weapon is "That one time I had to deal with a particularly stubborn patch of thistle" and who may be able to handle a spear. Maybe. I mean, the 14 year old won't be MUCH better, but "Has a small amount of training" is better than "Is still a farmer from Buttfuque Nowhere".
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Aug 25, 2022 18:53
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sadly not every labor of love for a niche genre can be Stardew Valley. this game falls into a lot of the pitfalls similar works often do, but it manages to make enough improvements that the "improvements" aren't too agonizing. honestly its biggest problem is the problem Fire Emblem proper has yet to figure out a way to shake: "pick an anime stereotype, hand it a weapon, call it a day" design philosophy for your units rests at a convergence of cheap, marketable, and easy to write that is VERY hard to fight your way out of, particularly as the cast grows. will confess i found the awful plot slightly endearing, though. it's a throwback to the good old days, when someone had clearly come up with a grand story, and then had to rewrite it like eighteen times as different parts of the rest of the game got moved around. things just kinda happen, and we are expected to take them very seriously, and sure, whatever, i'll roll with it, i want to see how many kills I can get the tiny child. i'd encourage anyone who's a fan of the genre to pick it up, but with the awareness that you're buying an indie labor of love, and all the traditional caveats apply.
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Aug 25, 2022 22:48
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:
 The plain, tired generics talking about their sorrows followed by the colorful, smirking anime girl is just fantastic. It’s so good.
BassMug fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Aug 26, 2022 |
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Aug 26, 2022 06:41
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I don't know what possesses you to play these games GEK but I am extremely here for this one. Please continue.
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Aug 26, 2022 14:51
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I was very interested in playing this game! I'll be more interested in reading this LP first 
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Aug 26, 2022 18:52
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I forgot to add in my earlier posts, but I wouldn't be too surprised that the greatest swordsman that ever lived is hanging back training the kids, strikes me as plenty reasonable since that's what the WW2 allies did to spam well trained pilots in WW2 instead of pumping up the killcount of hero pilots like Nazi Germany tried by all possible means, or just flying them till they died like Imperial Japan. Furthermore it could be used as foreshadowing that said greatest swordsman is a bit of a coward, but I'd be annoyed by that given the reason above. I'm sure we'll eventually get enough things to poke at, we can leave this specific thing be.
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Aug 27, 2022 01:15
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Ooh, a heartbreaker in video game format! These are always interesting partly just to see what the creators thought would be an improvement over the game that inspired him. The idea of certain weapon types being good against certain armor types is potentially fun.... if it leads to interesting gameplay, otherwise it's just tedious fiddly bits. Or just static bonuses inherent to all characters versus other character types, since everyone is apparently lugging around 4 weapons of the same rough type. Which just strikes me as absurd. I think it would work better if they were different stances or somesuch rather than a guy carrying 4 swords of wildly different styles on his person at all times. I'm no expert, but I'm reasonably certain effectively using a saber is veeeery different and offers distinct pros and cons compared to a proper longsword (especially if this game is recent enough to be using the term properly and not in the D&D fashion). I'm also very appreciative for your little dialogue summaries, because I'm having too hard a time making myself read the actual dialogue right now. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of this and more info on how the mechanics work. The usually quite simple and clear math in Fire Emblem has always been one of the most endearing things in the series for me, so I'm quite curious to see just how much this game strays from that.
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Aug 27, 2022 06:34
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:You know, Intsys would NEVER give us a boss that doesn't move and only attacks in melee. They did do that, though. Several times in early maps in the gba games.
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Aug 27, 2022 12:09
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I played this for many many hours. It turned into a slog so bad that i didn't finish it and settled on writing a review on steam on what it could have done better. Tldr it is almost a decent game but falls short.
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Aug 27, 2022 12:56
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Eeepies posted:I played this for many many hours. It turned into a slog so bad that i didn't finish it and settled on writing a review on steam on what it could have done better. Can you still find your review?
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Aug 27, 2022 14:06
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Delphisage posted:Can you still find your review? I have it, but I don't think it's appropriate to put it until the LP is finished.
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Aug 27, 2022 15:44
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These devs wildly missed a big point about Fire Emblem with how in general the math is simple Attack - Defense is very easy to do in your head. All these extra modifiers make knowing what your units can do that much harder.
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Aug 27, 2022 17:03
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Dr Pepper posted:These devs wildly missed a big point about Fire Emblem with how in general the math is simple
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Aug 27, 2022 20:18
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There was that lovely chart at the beginning of the Black Geyser OP, a thing to be feared. In my opinion there is a certain value to making that math fuzzy, non obvious and non displayed, it means we have to look at it, evaluate with imperfect information (as we normally do when we don't know if those three forts will spew out knights or mages when we approach) and then decide with gut feeling, experience and careful observation what we could be looking at and how it's going to be used, and possibly be entirely wrong. It's one of my favorite aspects of many grog games, or something like Nebulous Fleet Command, fuzzy, incomplete but vital intelligence and fuzzy incomplete but vital math to murder with or be murdered by. It's also obviously not the intent neither here nor in Black Geyser, nor in many of these games, where it's mostly a case of people noting that the abstractions used don't make much sense, and making more abstractions, theoretically closer to the metal, that also don't make much sense either.
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Aug 27, 2022 21:20
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I feel like I understand Shovel Townsperson on an instinctual level.
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Aug 27, 2022 21:36
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Bonding Time!SIGSEGV posted:I forgot to add in my earlier posts, but I wouldn't be too surprised that the greatest swordsman that ever lived is hanging back training the kids, strikes me as plenty reasonable since that's what the WW2 allies did to spam well trained pilots in WW2 instead of pumping up the killcount of hero pilots like Nazi Germany tried by all possible means, or just flying them till they died like Imperial Japan. Furthermore it could be used as foreshadowing that said greatest swordsman is a bit of a coward, but I'd be annoyed by that given the reason above. I'm sure we'll eventually get enough things to poke at, we can leave this specific thing be. I don't mean to be That Guy, but that's not supported by the text. Sterling immediately tries to recruit Galen after passing on the bad news, and Galen says no and that's the end of that. I think it's telling just how thinly held together the sequence of events is that the thread is desperately trying to slap together extenuating circumstances for how it makes sense - I don't mean this as an insult to the thread posters, but to the writers of the game. Welcome back! Last time we got a bunch of fourteen year olds conscripted to fight in a war where it turned out there were able-bodied adult volunteers just lying around the kingdom with PC character classes. We picked up an anime girl and some kind of angsty man in expensive plate armor. Then a bunch of bandits attacked us before we could question it.  This is Elias. Elias is an adept. Adepts are an extremely bizarre character class. Their secondary ability is to chain a target in place so it can't move for a turn (does not work on bosses per the tutorial) but the player could be forgiven for thinking the adept line is a spear melee class. Adepts are actually akin to D&D sorcerers, who have inherent magic power and they promote into different variant magical dudes who do things like teleport around or fly with wind powers. We're going to be very confused by some dialog in a few minutes. Right now the only magical thing Elias has is his "Soulfire" passive, which gives him a small but completely separate chance to critical hit (I think it's 7.5, don't quote me on this). Fire Emblem veterans might notice the javelin in the weapons slot. Don't worry, it explicitly says it's not for throwing (ha ha) despite the javelin historically being a throwing spear. Don't think about Dark Deity too hard or your head will hurt.  Cia is your classic fantasy rogue who goes in and fights armored men with a dagger. I'm not going to crap on the Dark Deity developers for this, because Fire Emblem and other strategy games do it too. It's certainly no stupider than the XCOM troops who train to fight aliens with machetes.  On to the mission proper. The narrative implies we need to defend the town, but there's no actual defensive objective where we lose if bandits make it in. Thus we are free to maneuver our predeployed infantry whereever we want without having to worry about bandits burning villages or stealing treasure chests or whatever.  I then immediately ignore my own advice and send the gang forward to assault the lead squad of bandits. Cia manages to not proc the crit rate. It's alright, she'll earn the money we're probably not paying her.  I guess that man will never be a father. Low blow, Alden!  There really aren't any particle effects or anything when Elias attacks.  We end the turn with an awkwardly formed square protecting the bar from the bandits, um, trying to self medicate themselves out of being in this game. Don't worry, most of the bandit infantry doesn't have the range to assault.  Cia you had ONE job.  You are forgiven. Praise RNGesus.  Irving stabs a guy to level up. He gets a point in Mastery and I still don't have a full idea what it does.  The square prepares to receive the attack from one million archers. Did I mention I'm not great at Fire Emblem?  Specifically, the archers who aren't in range to attack and have to waste an entire turn running at us. I'm sure half the thread is going to bust out with how they would totally have gone in and I'm wasting XP, but eh.  Having learned nothing I keep kiting.  The dread goddess Arengee smiles on me today after accepting Cia's prior sacrifice.  Alden pops a critical here that unfortunately does not kill this man.  I never realized it before, but the spear animation is weird. Elias does a step forward and extends the spear, but it never actually goes into the guy.  This is really not a great formation. Maren is heavily armored, true, and I'm hoping one of the bandits will try to engage Alden with a bow. The game does implement similar features to the Fire Emblem AI where it prioritizes hitting people who can't fight back, but we'll see!  Apparently Elias is hardier than I give him credit for. The sheer proximity of his spear collapses probability around the bandit's chest, causing him to once again explode.  She can take it, she's only exposed to one melee guy.  I could have sworn these dudes did way more damage.  Alden returns fire with his Curse of Sterility.  Yea, he's an annoying kid, but I really question what you're doing if you don't put him on the endgame team. Is it hypocritical for me to think the child soldier plot is a lot more inhumane than the game is giving it credit for and then say and do things like this? Absolutely!   What a mathematically elegant number.  Maren levels up after healing Cia, healing herself too and letting her keep tanking.  Here we go again. Elias has chained the archer at the bottom so he can only fire on Irving or Maren who can take the hit pretty easily. Alden is out of attack range unless the archer blocks off Cia. A bunch of these guys are out of range.  I guess this guy has a day job with the Saudi morality police and objects violently to Cia's empowering dress.  Alden fights an inconclusive engagement with the archer.  The chained archer wastes his turn.  Huh. You know, I never realized the witch hunters were "Aramoran" while the footmen are "bandits". Aramor is the enemy country where the king opened the game by having a "covert ops team" nuke a city.  Wait, is this a bug? it's the same engagement and he went back to being a bandit. I'm so confused...  No, Cia, it's not fine! I assume it's a bug. Last time I played this game I found an exploit for infinite upgrade tokens. It was a strange time.  Here we go again.  You actually use items from this screen. It was kind of confusing at first, but I had most of the wounded pop vulneraries and wait to receive shock assault.  Choices were made. Wait, what the hell? He's an Aramoran again!  I swear to you I did not edit these screenshots. It's been a bit since I took them, but I am pretty sure it's the same engagement.  It keeps happening!  Elias levels up, gaining a point of magic he might find a use for later.  Player phase counterattack. This bandit man has a 0 percent chance of hurting Garrick. Instead of farming him for free damage, Garrick criticals and 360 noscopes this man into the dust, putting the question of his confusing allegiance to bed forever.  Eh, I'll take it. We'll probably be switching you out for certain future characters anyway.  This is just rude.  Jesus these guys suck!  I am sure someone is going to point out something I've missed in a Fire Emblem game, but I don't remember ever starting one with this many units who just no-sell enemy attacks like this. I don't think I've gotten particularly blessed on defense, either, and I usually play on medium difficulties.  The bandits collectively realize they've left the stove on back at their hideout and leave before we get the opportunity to slaughter them to a man for XP.  Cia is our MVP today.   This ends our exciting tactical action for the day, and the remainder of this update is going to be glorious, glorious words.  Lincoln, Bianca, and two generic cavalry run up to us in the meantime. : Splendidly! You may be surprised to learn this isn't the first time I've stepped out of a tavern and into a skirmish.: Hardly.: That was hairier than I expected.: Yes. No fine academy, or drunken brawl, can fully prepare one for the perils of battle.I dunno, we got everyone out alive and unwounded. : Still, I was glad to have our new recruits with us. They both held their own. This is where adepting gets weird. Elias in combat posted:  As far as I can remember "adepts are persecuted" never comes up again. We are going to meet at least 3 more adepts who will join our incredibly bloated roster of people wandering the land to do violence. None of them mention this. : Ah! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to find a fellow adept in an army. : That's where our talents inspire the least superstition, I've found. So long as you're standing under the right banner.Now, I don't understand why adepts - who at this level are basically just spearmen - provoke this level of hatred when Alden, the literal child wizard can do more arcane damage at longer range, but you do you game. : Who were those guys anyway?: Where those the Aramorans we're supposed to fight?TheGreatEvilKing wants answers too posted:: Hah. Believe me, that would not have ended so quickly, or so neatly, were we up against the forces of Aramor. No. Bandits, more likely.I do appreciate that Lincoln leaves some room for doubt with "most likely", but the game isn't going for him being an unreliable narrator. It's kind of a shame, as I think having Aramoran foraging parties roaming this deep into Delia would do a lot more to sell me on the war being as desperate as the game wants me to believe it's become. : Huh. We've had trouble with bandits these past few months, but for the last week or so things have been quiet. Maybe they were gearing up for something big like this?I'm very confused if so, because you'd think if you were planning a big raid to stand outside the tavern with no meaningful objectives you'd wait for the royal army's commanders and heavy cavalry to leave the town. : These bandits you speak of, do you know where their base of operations is?: Not exactly, but I know they used to ambush folks by the Northeast Crossroads. Had to patch a couple travelers up when they came through bleeding like a summer pig.: That isn't an expression, Cia.: That's just a day's trip north from here, correct?: Just about. You don't look like you move too fast though, so don't hoist me to the gallows if I'm off by an hour.: Lincoln, the sun's already low in the sky, and Varic's not one to overlook a delay. : What about the other recruits?: I'll send them on ahead. If they at least make good time to Sojourn, Varic might be more understanding.: Let's be off. Best we reach their camp before they catch wind of what transpired here.: I can tell you one thing, the townsfolk will be glad to be rid of these thugs.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 On to chapter 3!  : Irving and his friends are sent to escort one of the final recruits, Cia, as she gathers her things.: While they wait in the inn, a fierce assault from bandits comes over the town.I don't like this wording. : The four from Brookstead, along with new friends Cia and Elias, hold the bandits off from the inn.: Now, they plan to follow the trail - to ambush the bandits on their own ground.: This group had been troubling Duskwater for months, and, in Lincoln's eyes, there is no question that something must be done. : Couldn't agree more. I have some weapon maintenance I need to take care of as well.Irving was crafted in a lab to be the most boring protagonist alive. : Always rushing off to your next errand, Irving. I'm looking forward to kicking back and having a nice rest before we plunge into mortal peril again.: I'll catch up with you, it won't take long to get my weapons situated.: Irving, I'll be around if you need help. Garrick, don't come by my tent to pester me with useless questions.: Useless? Just because you don't see the use doesn't mean there isn't one.: As your commanding officer, that's exactly what it means. I don't have the patience for it tonight.: Oh, alright. I'll go pester Cia or Elias instead.: Mmm. You do that.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Oooh! A spoiler on the loading screen! Who are these mysterious figures having an evil meeting?????  We now finally have access to item and weapon upgrade menus, but I know you're all here because you want to read more Dark Deity writing. Let's check out the bonds tab, shall we?  Two things stand out here. First, Lincoln and Bianca are now official party members we can command as our unseen unmentioned radio network or whatever the hell the player is in these games when they're not Mark the tactician. Second, we have support conversations. A LOT of support conversations. Support conversations don't have mechanical effects, so we're not going to try to pair up, say, Irving and Cia to raise Cia's dodge rates or have them birth an uberkid who will never die. Second, there's no limit to the amount of bonds we can have the units form, so this is entirely because you want to read more Dark Deity writing. Naturally, I'm subjecting you all to this.  There are a lot of archetypes lying around, and we have a lot of chats to get through. This is a fairly long update as it is, so I'm going to drop them in the SSLP test poster and you can read them all at your leisure. Or not. I understand. : But after everything I'd seen Cia through, I couldn't watch her get thrown to the dogs at the whim of some King.: Well pardon me for sticking by centuries-old cultural traditions of identifying with the place I live.: That's beautiful... I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry, You just looked like you needed to let some steam out.: You should be very proud of your patriotism, Cia.: Thanks! I've been training a lot!I'm definitely looking forward to stepping onto the stage and making an actual impact. I've spent my entire life up to now in the audience.: You just don't want to see Claudia again.:Oh we'll get him alright. I have a plan.Did you pack enough beans?Yep. Headmaster Galen. Still sounds weird when people say that.Am I really that bossy?That is a lot of words, so I am going to leave it here. These are just the C conversations, we have B and A conversations and I'm not going to talk too much more about the characters. Cia's implied tragic backstory is confusing, but I benched her before seeing all the supports, so who knows? Next Time: A filler level, followed by a lady so boobalicious the fans actually asked the developers to tone her design back.
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Aug 28, 2022 00:46
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Y'know, the whole "starts weak but with absurd growths" character is a series staple of Fire Emblem, but usually they come a little ways into the game and require babying. Not right from the first map with passable starting stats.
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Aug 28, 2022 01:48
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Next Time: A filler level, followed by a lady so boobalicious the fans actually asked the developers to tone her design back. I'm always intensely suspicious of a game like this that doesn't let you choose the gender of your protagonist, and the first post already raised my hackles. Good to know my instinct was right.
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Aug 28, 2022 01:54
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The changing nametags here are still a better issue to deal with than FE5's lategame enemies having affiliations that crash the game.
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Aug 28, 2022 02:30
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