Fire Emblem series

[mrs thickness]

Fates remake

God, imagine the seethe. I'd be more than happy with just a straight port to save it from the 3DS though, and it might already run fine on a Steam Deck anyway. Some small touches would be fun, I'd especially love for the capturable bosses to get some supports (hell, just a Corrin support would be massive) and unique voicelines, making the game more closely resemble it's Japanese script and restoring face petting pervert vision, dual audio, a better resource system for things like captures and meals, making Rinkah join in Conquest along Kaze instead of just disappearing for no reason so you actually get an Oni Savage support, making it so you can fucking save on endgame, turnwheel, but it's ok. These all mostly exist already in some form as mods anyway. Probably just my stance as a massive Fatesfag, but there are a lot of other games that need the extra love more than Fates does, and I don't think there's anything practical that could be done to salvage Fates's reputation at this point that wouldn't be better spent just making a completely different game. I'd prefer for them to help me enjoy a FE I otherwise don't than make Fates slightly better.

Luv me Fates pairup. Slow part of a map? Glue the boys together and get em moving in half the time, half the clicks. Like doing crazy rescue canto chains to carry the lord across the whole map in one turn? Now infantry get to join in the fun. Shelter singing to squeeze more uses out of Azura at the expense of action economy. Balancing guard guage to dodge a killing blow and survive an otherwise lethal series of combat. Pairup is even used to create fun little minibosses, from the perspective of the AI. Cheating in marginal extra damage in attack stance through auras, attack stance bonuses, trading weapons, and giving a pairup. Pairing up for extra numbers + guard stance at the expense of action economy, and vice versa. Combine with auras, shove, and lunge. Fates has schmovement in a genre where movement is usually repetitive, and it allows you to make really aggressive plays if you're confident enough. It's so intuitive, and opens up massively significant moment to moment interactions without creating trivially superior, needlessly convoluted, or brainless options. Unless you minmax reclassing to do shit like sol Xander/ninja or vantage one-shot builds, which involve specific, deliberate allocation of limited and valuable resources. Oh yeah, it influences supports too, feeding into the child and reclass systems, and the games are challenging enough to warrant exploring and exploiting all of these things, so they're not just mechanics for the sake of mechanics. I agree that guard stance is slightly overtuned, but I think also simultaneously really overrated and hardly centralizing; it's just an easy decision to default to, especially if you're not 100% sure what you can get away with at any given moment, which I wouldn't blame someone for even if they'd played Fates 1000 times already. If you haven't played it, there's a Shadow Dragon remake rom hack for Fates that makes it so the stat bonuses for pairup diminish every turn, and they stay diminished for the entire chapter. It's neat stuff.

I don't mean it in a faggy gamewarry way, but Fates feels like it has an entire extra dimension of things to consider in moment to moment gameplay than everything else. Playing Fates after other SRPGs feels like taking off a set of plate mail or work clothes.

they don't even give its continent a name

This has always been such a dumbass Cinema Sins non-criticism in my eyes. The story isn't about the continent, and the continent having a name wouldn't change anything. It would add exactly as much to Fates as it adds to something like Sacred Stones, where the only reason anyone knows the continent is Magvel is because it's name dropped three times in the introduction and plastered on the world map screen. It's only even named again, offhandedly, four times in the last fifth of the game; 18 and Final. And that's specifically if you're playing Ephraim route and using Ross in Final. Otherwise it's exactly twice, once per each of those chapters.

 

[Sneak 'n' Snore]

I'm currently deep into the hack Dark Lord and the Maiden of Light and its pretty enjoyable so far.
Good variety in map objectives and a well sized cast with plenty neat character designs. I'm always a little wary with ironmanning hacks but this feels very fair.
I'm just surprised at the "4chan energy" this hack occasionally has, especially given that its from 2019.

 

[AWarmToiletSeat]

>Dual Audio for a Fates port

None of you have the will saves necessary to survive Ai Shimizu as Charlotte.

 

[Metallic Blood]

God, imagine the seethe

Tbh, that's probably one of the reasons why I want it lol. Seeing all the people cry about it and that "it should've been Genealogy!" would be funny to me.

But then again, a port of Fates would be very lovely as well.

I agree that guard stance is slightly overtuned, but I think also simultaneously really overrated and hardly centralizing

Hence why I say "slightly", I really love what you can do with Guard Stance, like schmoving is fantastic, swapping units that have more/less shield gauge, or just swapping to a different unit for different bonuses. I just wish Attack Stance got a bit more love as well. I don't think the latter is useless mind you, but with the many benefits that Guard Stance gives (sometimes even being better offensively if the pair up gives you enough Str/Spd to one-round an enemy) and requiring no investment besides a Master Seal... it kinda makes me ignore Attack Stance, besides if my partner has a Bow against fliers or a Dagger to debuff.

I do like that balance change that you mentioned in Shadow Dragon rom hack, I might check it sometime, sounds fun.

This has always been such a dumbass Cinema Sins non-criticism in my eyes.

I still find it hilarious that even Heroes' main continent has a name (it's "Zenith" btw), but not Fates.

And yeah, I do agree that it's a low-hanging fruit, and really, it wouldn't change anything if Corrin just said "Wow, look at our army, it's people all over Nohrshido." but it still feels weird being the only Fire Emblem game with no name.

I guess the real criticism would be that there's no worldbuilding on Fates, which is a shame, because I do find some of its concepts pretty cool. Two big nations attacking each other while small nations ally or defy one of the two, it's neat stuff, but sadly, that never really gets much explored.

 

[Quartermaster]

Conquest has my favorite map in all of Fire Emblem and I think about it a lot.
And that is Chapter 10.



Ah, just looking at this map makes me want to play the game again.
First of all- its a defence map which already puts it way up there for me cause I love them, second of all it has multiple houses to visit two of which are in pretty dangerous spots.

The game gives you Camilla in this chapter, arguably the best unit of Conquest, alongside another wyvern and a mediocre mercenary.
There is ballistae and these magic ballistae which you can use to weaken up to four enemies, there is a singular chokepoint in the south while the other two sides are a bit more open.

There is a large variety of enemies and even fliers that can just fly over the water and the walls if you're not careful. And to top it all off in the last few turns all the water disappears, giving the enemies an oppressive amount of spaces to attack from.

There is nothing about this chapter I don't love and it's peak Fire Emblem map design.
It is possible to get through enemy lines if you play very aggressively and have focused on levelling up certain units but even then gods like Camilla can easily be overwhelmed so its not even completely mindless.

Chapter 10 gives you so much to do, no turn is ever boring and I wish Fire Emblem did more stuff like this. High pressure defend maps are the best.

 

[Sneak 'n' Snore]

There is nothing about this chapter I don't love and it's peak Fire Emblem map design.
It is possible to get through enemy lines if you play very aggressively and have focused on levelling up certain units but even then gods like Camilla can easily be overwhelmed so its not even completely mindless.

Chapter 10 gives you so much to do, no turn is ever boring and I wish Fire Emblem did more stuff like this. High pressure defend maps are the best.

Couldn't possibly agree more, every single decision matters and every playthrough of this map is going to feel different thanks to how tightly designed it is and the innate nature of FE RNG.
And then you remember that Revelation turned it into a reinforcement heavy rout map without adjusting its giant size for it.
You think you hate Rev enough but you don't.

 

[NerdShamer]

There is nothing about this chapter I don't love and it's peak Fire Emblem map design.

The series needs better siege maps. The only one that I saw in Engage is fucking retarded

 

[Lone MacReady II]

You think you hate Rev enough but you don't.[/ISPOILER]

I hate it for robbing me of shekels. I got Conquest because it was apparently harder, and had the "european" faction. Was alright, but the corrin worship and the early game attempts at heartstring pulls just fell flat to me, I almost laughed at the "Grrrr you killed my mom" transformation scene because Corrin had no reason to freak out so spectacularly when he didn't know anybody there. Turns out the game wasn't just sold like pokemon, it actually was, gatekeeping the actual full story behind another paywall. Put me in a foul mood on the series' future, until a year later and Echoes came out, which I became fond of.

 

[Sneak 'n' Snore]

Turns out the game wasn't just sold like pokemon, it actually was, gatekeeping the actual full story behind another paywall

It's so grimey how they killed off Azura at the end of Birthright and Conquest to really further nudge you into "hey wouldn't it be cool if there was a third route where we explained everything and there was a good ending for everyone ))))"
I have a bunch of issues with Three Houses and its route system but I'm still more than grateful that they're all on the cartridge from the get go and the Ashen Wolves DLC isn't required to understand the whole story.

 

[Computer God Autism]

It's so grimey how they killed off Azura at the end of Birthright and Conquest to really further nudge you into "hey wouldn't it be cool if there was a third route where we explained everything and there was a good ending for everyone ))))"
I have a bunch of issues with Three Houses and its route system but I'm still more than grateful that they're all on the cartridge from the get go and the Ashen Wolves DLC isn't required to understand the whole story.

If your good ending is the power of kpop, is it really a good ending?

 

[NerdShamer]

If your good ending is the power of kpop, is it really a good ending?

Could always be worse.

This is from an actual game, btw.

 

[AWarmToiletSeat]

Could always be worse.

This is from an actual game, btw.

Even leaving aside the bizarre tone of TMS, I still think it's a pretty miserable game. Team building in this game feels like you're putting together a puzzle with 9 pieces. And creative team building is most of the fun that comes from JRPGs.

 

[Computer God Autism]

What fans wanted from an SMT x FE crossover:

What fans got:

Could always be worse.

This is from an actual game, btw.

 

[Computer God Autism]

I would like to see that list ngl.

I spent way too much time on this, and will have to break it into two posts, but here you are - all the SRPGs I've played since 2021, with an accompanying review, in no particular order. Hopefully someone in this thread will find a new game to enjoy, or at least get a laugh.

Fire Emblem: Awakening

Spoiler

I’m not going to spend too much time writing about the FE games since I can voice my thoughts on them anytime in the thread, but they still warrant mention. I decided to play through Awakening again since its 10th anniversary was in 2022, and walked away with a greater appreciation of it than I had the last time I played. Easy but solid labor of love on IS’s part. I’m tempted to write on why I think it was so successful when all the new entries after it have floundered in some way or another, as I think the casual argument isn't entirely correct.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Spoiler

Played through Crimson Flower, Azure Moon and part of Silver Snow through the latter half of 2019. Picked it back up in 2021 to play through the DLC – decided to give AM another spin as I remember enjoying it the most, and after that and rewatching/listening to the other paths on YT, I think it’s the only route that’s fully realized and has consistent throughlines between both phases. Dimitri is a contentious lord even without how politically charged the skub fights over him and Edelgard can get, but I found more to like in him as a character than not and I appreciate IS taking a gamble on his narrative arc when they could have played it safe again. I also have to give kudos to Chris Hackney for giving Ian Sinclair a run for his money at best FE mental breakdown.

I think some of the biggest problems with Dimitri's story could have been nipped in the bud if IS kept Dedue dead instead of unwittingly letting him survive by completing his gaiden – I certainly marked him for death the second time. Aside from that I would have been happy had they cut the Golden Deer as playable and made the Blue Lions split like Black Eagles (which hopefully would’ve given them more time to flesh out Crimson Flower too); they clearly intended for there to be a split path around what objective Dimitri prioritizes with the cut Felix/Annette enemy dialogue, and that would have been far more interesting to me than incredibly idiotic commentary on race relations featuring Claude. Overambition was the bane of 3H.

Anyways, as I’ve already said, I don’t think 3H is a good FE game, but I think it would have been an amazing start for a new IP.

Fire Emblem: Engage

Spoiler

I was one of those people who, after 3H, droned on about not caring about the story and just wanting some good, traditional FE gameplay. Engage put that to the test and made me regret ever clutching that monkey’s paw.

It’d be insufferable in its own right, but this supposedly being a celebration of FE as a series just made it worse for me, especially with how cheap and forced it feels compared to Awakening. I remember laughing at the discount Himiko death scene when Lumera’s hair started clipping through her model and characters just came and went with no respect to where they were standing; I made it about three more chapters before just giving up.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

Spoiler

SOVL

Vestaria Saga I: War of the Scions

Spoiler

I bought Kaga Saga back in 2019 when I was interested in learning SRPG maker but didn't actually sit down and power through it until a few months ago. It's the most Kaga game I've played, with all the positive and negative connotations that carries.

I'm not the sort of person to gush about map design in these games, but I can still appreciate really exceptional map design when I see it. Many maps in VS1 are long-hauls; Chapter 5 is a filter that'll take around 40-50 turns if you want to do everything, and the final map is a genuine test of patience at around 80-100 turns. Thankfully most of the maps respect player agency and there's multiple phases and ways to interact with them, and most maps have their own sidequest. My favorite map was Chapter 11, the Siege of Harral, and for probably the first time in these sorts of game I actually felt like I was besieging something instead of just dealing with a gimmick. I wouldn't say it's necessarily as tight as Conquest-10, but in terms of strategic possibilities and ways to approach it, it absolutely contends.

VS is hard, but fair. There's no Thracia 776 spawn ambush gimpery; most of the time enemy reinforcements can't act the turn they show up, but on the chapters that they do Kaga is actually kind enough to tell you in advance to stay away from the edges of the map for it. When I lost a unit, I never felt it was unfair because Kaga was being unfair, just that I got screwed by the rng (which I don't think uses double rolling). The save system is a great way of keeping the difficulty balanced too. Rather than getting a single mid battle suspend save, you can save at the start of every five turns; it's a very simple change, but very effective in maintaining tension, and I wouldn't mind if it became standard in the genre. It certainly doesn't come with any of the narrative or mechanical baggage the turnwheel does. Balance is also very tight; stat growths are low and I'd say the average endgame unit will have their HP around the 40s.

Kaga also expects you to exploit the game and gives you the means to do so abundantly. A lot of characters have or get personal weapons. These weapons tend to be insane, and they're not obscure unlocks either. For example, one of the very first characters you recruit is a lady knight called Meridia. Her personal spear has 10 attack, x2 strike, is effective against armor, and gives her 6+ speed to boot while having 40 durability. You can get her, with this weapon, in chapter 2. Kaga is also quite generous with repair items; you can get multiple repair stones throughout the game that lets you fully restore an item's durability, so Meridia's lance survived all the way from chapter 2 to 20 for me.

VS1 has some of the most memorable characters I've seen in an SRPG from a mechanical standpoint. Above-mentioned lady knight is actually a fairly orthodox unit. How about a magic bow user as early as chapter 4? Or a healer with a 15% chance to act again each turn and can just randomly find herbs so you don't have to spend another cent on medicine again? How about a thief that will give you(r princess) bullion if he thinks you're too poor? Dancers? Yes, VS gives you a sword dancer that uses magic swords, has skills to buff her own evasion by 20 and the damage of all adjacent allies by 3 and can reliably crit anything. Oh, you meant a dancer to let units move again. No, VS doesn't have that. It has a very bitchy princess who motivates units to move again by whipping them. She also comes with a magic tome that will prevent units it hits from counterattacking for a single turn on top of a skill that lets her strike first even when attacked, meaning she is also one of your strongest 1-2 tanks. She also has a servant who can access the stockpile mid battle and who will autorepair the durability of any item you give him for the first twenty turns. And so on.

I'd say the writing ranges between serviceable and good. The main lord, Zade, is a lot like Sigurd for better and worse. The princess, Athol, is a lot like Celica but even more retarded. About halfway into the game you get your deuteragonist, Cyltan, and he probably has the most character development in the game, going from a spoiled and cowardly heir of a country on the brink of destruction to a proper lord in his own right. The closest thing VS1 has to an avatar character is Zade's tactician, Garlan, who appears primarily in the dialogue cutscenes. He shows up in a few chapters, but always as a weak allied unit that needs to be protected, and while having a minor presence in the motions of the story is actually one of the more memorable characters to me for getting things done and being no-nonsense. There is a surprising amount of attention to the side-characters too; they will often have their own little sidequests to shine and get personal weapons. For example, an underlevelled archer you get in the second chapter actually becomes an important side character halfway through the story - if you consistently use him. The epilogue is also quite long, will give everyone a voice and changes bit by bit depending on who survived.

Criticisms would start with VS being made in SRPG maker before SRPG maker had a lot of UI and QoL plugins; VS1 isn't going to win any awards for presentation. There are sharp difficulty spikes too; 4 to 5, 16 to 17, and 19 to 20: if you don't have an idea of what to expect or haven't played cautiously with your inventory the difficulty spikes will catch you unawares. It also has two escort chapters, 6 and 16, and these are by far the worst chapters because the escort ai is retarded. Finally, the story relies too much on the assumption of a sequel - which it does have but the antagonist aspect is sorely lacking for it. There's one recurring villain you fight in chapter 19 that is more of a final boss than the actual final boss you dispatch in chapter 20 (who literally has a skill called imbecile that nerfs all of his nearby allies).

I would not recommend Kaga Saga if you're an adderall addict and need keys jingled in front of you every few minutes to hold your interest. If you're a true and honest grog, though, I can't recommend it enough.

Vestaria Saga II: The Sacred Sword of Silvanister

Spoiler

It's a bit odd to say about an SRPG maker game, but Silvanister makes Scions feel a lot like a proof of concept. Knowing how the capabilities of the SRPG maker's engine have gradually increased over the years, and then seeing the ways that Kaga has taken advantage of it compared to what he had to work with in Scions makes me appreciate it all the more.

Most immediately apparent is that the GUI is a massive step up from Scions. That might not be saying much given it is an SRPG maker game, but going from one to two is still a 100% improvement. VS2 also defaults to keyboard controls instead of mouse like VS1, which took me for a loop before I managed to change it. The save system has been changed from the once per five turns to just whenever you want; the game is a bit easier for it, but if you're doing an ironman it actually makes it easier to tank a run. Difficulty is largely the same, but the map design is a bit different, especially early on; far more defensive maps, and the escort ai is actually, mercifully, competent. Your tactician being the thief from the previous game and giving Zade the ability to lockpick is pretty cool.

The perspectives/armies split more frequently too, and the philosophy of the unit balance is much more apparent about making use of what you have on hand than investing everything to a core; unit capture is also brought back as a mechanic (with only select units) and helps fill out your roster significantly. Kaga is also even more wild with the unit design than in VS1. If you thought getting Meridia in the second chapter of VS1 was insane, right off the bat you have access to Accorte with her personal dire thunder tome and a dodge-tank who will go berserk if she gets low enough healthwise, but is also unkillable as long as she has her personal dagger. Then you get an arbalester in chapter 2 with a 3-7 personal weapon, and not much long after a deployable dragon who's only there because you pay for her feed, and so on. Basically Kaga embraced how insane some of the characters were in VS1 and decided to make just about everyone that in VS2 (while designing the maps around it), and it's very fun.

The biggest criticism I can give Kaga Saga II is that it's a partial retreading of I's story. It almost mirrors it perfectly in a geographic sense; you just go back to where you started from the opposite direction this time, and the story itself is just wrapping up a massive loose end from the first game (to be fair, the game was supposed to be a gaiden before Kaga decided to make it a proper sequel). The writing proper isn't worse, but I wouldn't call it better than the first either; it's mostly more of the same, and I'm fine with that because it works. That said Kaga must really hate Accorte for the crime of being a better love interest than Athol.

I really appreciate that Kaga is so dedicated to his craft he's still making these games (and making them well) at nearly 75 years old; if you liked VS1, get VS2, because it's more of the same but better.

Unicorn Overlord

Spoiler

This will probably be my game of 2024, and is easily the best game I've played on the Switch. It's also the most unique SRPG I've played; I can't really think of any easy equivalencies to describe its gameplay for those who don't know anything about it - which in of itself is a selling point, as I hope a sequel is made and Unicorn Overlord or Vanillaware becomes a byword in the same way FE is.

Aside from being one of only two SRPGs I've played that is pausable real time instead of turn based, it's also one of only two that I think has really nailed down a squad mechanic. Even more impressive that it has a massive cast of characters instead of forcing you to rely on generics (though you can if you want).

Aside from the amazing amount of possible combinations you can come up between those two aspects alone, there's an unusual amount of player freedom in this; being able to wander around most of the map, even areas where you're significantly underleved for, and coming up with new ways to break it is very fun. I really appreciate that Vanillaware decided to run with it instead of trying to fight the player or put you on railroads - nevermind having the balls to make the speedrun route the bad ending. Based.

Speaking of endings, the writing's pretty solid, if not overly-ambitious. I heard there was a controversy around the localization but from my knowledge it was just making the dialogue more verbose and flowery instead of pushing anything Treehouse would. I think the dialogue is a bit goofy at worst and has a lot of character at its higher points, so I'd call it a rare dub win. It's also really nice that you can have Alain give the ring to with anyone, but only the female options are romantic (based) - it's something you wouldn't expect to see in current year, and actually allows for a realistic range relationships; you can finally give the father figure a happy ending in a genre infamous for killing them off. Art direction, animation, voice acting and music are all solid too.

I don't want to linger on this too much since I have plenty of other games to go over, but Unicorn Overlord is just an amazing game and has breathed a lot of new life into the genre.

Triangle Strategy

Spoiler

There was a surprising surge in the number of SRPGs coming out across 2020-2022, and of them I'd say Triangle Strategy is the best traditional SRPG. It's definitely a Squeenix Tactics game; relatively low amount of characters per battle, the differences in how you use and play with characters dramatically rises as they level, positioning and elevation are important factors.

That said it's definitely not a game for you if you're an autist whose first instinct upon seeing a cutscene is to press a/start. This is because the story and its progression are actually elements of the gameplay; not only is there a morality system for the lord that depends on decisions you make on and off the battlefield, but that morality system plays into how easy to persuade the core cast of character to go along with certain story decisions. The path of the story isn't just decided by your lord, it's decided by the vote of his inner circle; Serenoa can try to persuade others to vote in a way that you want and can cast tiebreakers (and neither are particularly hard to get - the game doesn't try to railroad you), but can't just unilaterally decide to do something. There's four paths in total, but the actual steps along them are mostly variable, so there's a degree of picking and choosing consistently present throughout most playthroughs. Overall I just have to give Squeenix props for what they pulled off here; not only is this heads and shoulders better than 3H, but it's impressive even compared to some of Bioware and Obsidian's older, party-based rpgs where your companions were mostly just along for the ride.

As for the writing itself, I'd say it hovers between above-average at worst and solid at best. Wars between sedentary states over ordinary resources have always been a stupid and uninteresting premise as far as I'm concerned, but thankfully most of that is in the backdrop and the conflicts driving the narrative you play through are more human and interpersonal. The choices the game asks you to make will have serious repercussions on your party composition after certain points and I'd say the character writing of the core cast is good enough that it manages to sell it as tough choices. It was also very brave of Squeenix to have one of the key conflicts be between Ashkenazim and Sephardim expys, oy vey.

The music and art direction are also superb, but the voice acting is a mixed bag. Sometimes it's charming, but most of the time just amateurish, and that is a problem when the amount of time you'll spend in voiced cutscenes to battles is about a 1:1 ratio. I appreciate that they put in the effort though, and the combat is tight enough that it seems like a petty complaint in comparison. Easy recommend for fans of Squeenix Tactics/traditional SRPGs, and for story aficionados especially.

Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis

Spoiler

I'm a latecomer to Squeenix Tactics: I didn't get into SRPGs until the DS era, and never got into Final Fantasy because I didn't have a PSP/like Disney as a kid. So fishing out my DSlite to play this went into uncanny valley territory for me - everything was recognizable, but nothing felt quite as I had grown to expect it.

Not that that's a bad thing. I did really like its take on the class system with emblems; gatekeeping certain classes by performing specific things on the battlefield (and also immediately rewarding the unit that did so) is a cool idea. I'm not sure how I would feel if it became standard in the genre, but of all the ones that weren't just 'reach stat/level x to promote' it's the one I've found the most engaging. The magic system is also far deeper than FE's, though there were points where I was just wishing for FE's simplicity, especially given how long some of the battles can be. Speaking of, while eight characters only per battle is a bit disappointing, given how grindy things can get I can understand the restriction.

The writing is a mixed bag for me. On one hand, it has an impressive breadth of worldbuilding and ambition in the scope of its narrative. Even setting aside that it also includes some of my personal pet peeves with JRPG storytelling in general and anything related to Squeenix in particular, I have to admire it and appreciate that it makes your narrative choices affect the outcome, even if the changes themselves are relatively minimal. That said, I didn't find the character writing as compelling - certainly with the side characters, but even with the core cast. I'd say the story has telescopic greatness. It's very impressive in hindsight; the sort of story that sounds amazing if you're reading about it or relaying it to someone, but is far less gripping up close in the moment to moment of it.

It's a solid game, if a bit easy once I got over the learning curve. All that said, biorhythm can die in a fire. I get the feeling that Tellius included it as a mechanic solely because IS saw that Squeenix was doing it.

Tactics Ogre: Reborn

Spoiler

I haven't actually finished this yet - I got distracted, a recurring theme - but I have more mixed feelings about it than Knight of Lodis from the bit I've played. The story seems as impressive, the minutia of the writing better and the combat didn't feel as plodding as KoL, but if you're having to put in level caps to preserve the challenge of your boss fights while still having the option to grind, I think there's a fundamental flaw in your game design. Still, I fully intend to go back and finish this at some point.

Pokemon Conquest

Spoiler

Figured I'd revisit it given its 10th anniversary was also in 2022, and I think it holds up very well despite what it is - an awkward three way crossover between Pokemon, Nobunaga's Ambition (the longest running grand strategy series) and Samurai Warriors (the OG Dynasty Warriors spinoff) distilled into a SRPG.

It's not a hard game by any measurement; in fact it's quite arcadey and easy to break. But it's also very fun and has a lot of charm, which are things I would consider more important when trying to consider whether a game is worth recommending. I'd certainly recommend it if you're a fan of Pokemon, want a casual experience or looking to ease someone into the SRPG genre.

Conquest is one of those SRPGs that has country management aspects and a separate political map to its battlefields, but what sets it apart from a lot of the games in that subgenre is the detail it pays to its battlefields. While most games in this subgenre will have their maps be distinctive from one another in terms of terrain and positioning, none I've seen go as far as Conquest in interactivity. There are seventeen kingdoms in Conquest, one for each type, and the maps in every one of them play differently from each other; each one has its own unique gimmick. Some (Valora) are more annoying than conducive to strategic depth, but every map has different ways to interact with it and will reward or punish the presence of different Pokemon.

Something I think Conquest does well with its formula is pacing. It easily had the potential to become a repetitive slog, but manages to largely avoid that with a few simple design decisions. First, there's no real linearity once you get past the tutorial/main campaign; you're given a few different stories to choose from (unlocking more as you complete them) and can do it in whatever order you want, while ingame the only real linearity is your starting position. Milestone progress on your warriors also carries over between stories; so you could go from completing one story a day to three because your starting warriors will have their Rank II abilities or start with their perfect links. Stories will have different win conditions, too; some stories only make use of part of the region, and others have win conditions like collecting x amount of Pokemon or warriors. It all works together to make the replayability in Conquest much more snappy than in other games in its subgenre.

Another thing I need to give Conquest kudos for is its kingdom management. Most srpgs with Kingdom management reduce it to a few ancillary mechanics, but Conquest treats it as a full part of the game. Gold is the only currency, but unlike in most other srpgs there are no passive incomes or expenditures; money is instead gained through loot in battle (which takes a turn to pick up), selling items (which can also be loot) or mining, and is spent on everything except recruiting new Pokemon/warriors. Every kingdom can hold up to six warriors and has six locations: one of these will always be a bank where you can spend gold to improve/unlock the other locations but the rest will vary depending on the kingdom. Every kingdom has a specialty (some have mines, other have blacksmiths or arenas or alchemists, etc.) and will have locations where you can battle/recruit wild pokemon/unaffiliated warriors. Pokemon will vary per kingdom and their quality and quantity will be affected by the amount you've invested in those locations - item shops can also be similarly upgraded. The result is a system that encourages you to pay attention to more than just your frontline kingdoms, and rewards careful opportunity costs when gold and warriors are tight in the early game. But if you don't want to worry about that, the game also gives you a delegate option. The only thing it's missing is some basic diplomacy.

While the pixel art already looked dated at the time of Conquest's release - imo the Explorers games sprites are better - the portrait art is still my favorite in the series to this day. The warlord's Rank 1 portraits are their SW designs with a Ken Sugimori twist, while the Rank II portraits are heavily inspired by the partner Pokemon of each warlord and do a great job in showing Koei's strengths in character design. The Pokemon also get a lot of love; when shown, they all look a lot more dynamic than in the main series (I don't think I had ever thought of a Dragonite as intimidating before Conquest).

I do think the biggest thing holding it back is the one move per 'mon rule; if Conquest got remade/a sequel, giving the Pokemon a second move would be at the top of my list of things to do, followed closely by adding ways to have more than six Pokemon on the battlefield at once and adding in some character/story events (Koei strategies are actually famous for this so only having random generic events is disappointing to me). 7.8/10, too much child labor in the gold mines.

(1/2)

 

[Computer God Autism]

(2/2)

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

Spoiler

I never got into Advance Wars as a kid for the simple reason I didn't even know it existed despite the GBA being my first console. I'm not very fond of modern settings so I went with Days of Ruin partly for that, partly because it seemed to be a standalone game with a semi-serious setting.

Apparently this game is a contentious topic among the tens of AW fans, but as an outsider coming in I really enjoyed it. I do prefer strategy games that have unit loss/replacement as an integral part of their design, and even with the potential for a war of attrition on some maps the balance of the units was so tight that it never felt like a slog.

The commander system is probably the most unique variation of the system I've seen in games that have them. Rather than just filling up a bar to spam out a power as quickly as possible or providing a flat passive to nearby units, it does both and weighs the two against each other. Officers have to be assigned to a unit instead of being offmap/their own unit, and their passive (usually) grows in strength as that unit fights; activating their ability resets their passive but makes it apply to all units for a turn, so there's a constant consideration of opportunity costs on when or if to use it. The only criticism I really have of the system is how easy it is to recover an officer once the unit they're in is destroyed.

I've never been a fan of FoW mechanics in turn-based games, but Days of Ruin has the best iteration I've seen of it. It's not just there to punish the player or force you to turtle, the AI actually obeys the rules and is affected by it, which genuinely shocked me. Vision being persistent for your whole turn and also being revealed along the path your units move are very simple things that make the mechanic infinitely more enjoyable and makes scouting useful. FoW in this game is actually engaging, which should speak for itself.

I've not played the AW switch reboot yet - I don't like how plastic everything looks and the character art gives off calarts vibes - but playing through this did make me regret never getting to play these games as a kid. Very solid game overall.

Wargroove

Spoiler

Got it in 2021 because I liked the idea of a fantasy-medieval Advance Wars. I enjoyed it, but there was nothing that really held me to it or drew me back after a few days of on-and-off play; the campaign was a bit too much of a slow burn for me. The writing and art style being tumblrpunk certainly didn't help. I also have the suspicion that Advance Wars being a dead IP when it came out helped with its reception since its sequel, which came out after AW Reboot and doubled-down on the DEI, had a mixed reception and only sold a fraction compared to Wargroove. I may go back to it one day, if only because the gameplay I experienced was competent enough that I'd want to get a feel for the rest of the game.

Chaos Galaxy/Chaos Galaxy 2

Spoiler

I've heard a lot of people describe these games as similar to Super Robot Wars. I never played those games, so my comparisons are Advance Wars mixed with Koei Strategy. I'm also putting these together; CG2 feels more like an expansion/overhaul for CG1, so almost everything I could say about 1 would apply to 2.

The setting of these games is Three Kingdoms period in space with the kitchen sink thrown in. There's about a half dozen cultures spread across about a dozen playable factions; factions share base units and a special mechanic across their culture, but each faction has a unique policy tree that provides them with unique units and different specializations in addition to their different starting positions and commanders, so every faction has a unique playstyle. Additionally, conquering another faction gives you one of their units in addition to the chance to recruit their COs (if they are personally compatible), so you can continue to expand and experiment with your arsenal even after unlocking all your policies. There are also minor factions that will give the same to whoever conquers them first - think TWM2's rebels, but more than just a speedbump. Furthering the replayability is that CG2 has creators; you can make your own COs *and* your own factions, and add them to the game.

Battles transfer from the strategic map to a tactical map; your COs move around the strategic map with units they recruit on your planets (how many units they can lead at once depends on their stats) and engage enemy armies on the strategic map (reinforcements can also be called in from nearby armies; CG isn't as banal about tactical unit limits as other games). Additionally, COs get a unique power off the battlefield as well as on it, so even COs you have no use for tactically can still be very useful. There is an autoresolve if you don't want to fight every scrub battle, and the AI, while not amazing, is competent for the most part. The maps are probably the least interesting part of the combat; since it's space it's pretty open, with Asteroids functioning as forests/mountains and only letting through mechas and fighters, and planet battles may have orbital forts and facilities that repair whoever sits on them.

The best thing I think CG does is how well it manages to balance the strategy and tactics aspects of its game. The tactics side is fun in its own right and the strategy side is okay, but together they become a game that is much more impressive than the sum of its parts. Since this is an AW inspired game, you are expected to lose units at points, but no unit is lost in a vacuum. Losing one of the few lategame units you start out with may be kneecap you tactically in the early game, but it could also be worth it strategically if it was crucial in wiping out an enemy fleet and you no longer have to pay the supply costs of four or five lesser units for it. Inversely, those units improve with each kill, and with careful planning you can take those starting units and push for an early game rush at the cost of expending more of your starting resources on cheap support and upkeep for them. You could group your best starting units into a single deathstack under your best starting CO and juggle your initial enemies piecemeal with it, but they could attrition you enough that you are faced with the choice of either having to turn back to reinforce, or try sieging a planet and risking getting defeated by fresh enemy reinforcements. Similarly, you could spam cheap mechs and subs and send them out to distract/delay an enemy, but that runs the risk of being a waste of prestige and resources that would be better spent on building up your economy. These opportunity costs are most pressing in the early game, but lategame is kept from becoming too much of a slog by having diplomacy; you can vassalize and annex factions after getting enough relations and prestige, or you can even win as a vassal. Classical Chinese Advance Wars Strategy In Space may seem like a silly concept, but it's a damn fun one.

There isn't really a story, per-se - all the pertinent information is given to you in a skippable slideshow when you start a new campaign, and in your faction's opening event - but doing certain things as certain factions will trigger events with rewards or punishments, and there are a few generic events. Certain COs will also have dialogue together if they fight with or against one another. The only serious downgrade in CG2 compared to CG1 is that battle animations were cut in favor of simplified unit animations. However, CG2 has a lot more units than CG1; even setting aside the new factions/cultures/unit types, in CG1 only the faction leaders had unique flagships, but in CG2 *every* CO is a unique unit, and there's close to two hundred of them.

I enjoyed both of these games enough to play multiple campaigns, and the fact that almost all of it is made by a single Chinese guy makes it even more impressive. He's working on a new game that looks like it'll be a mix of CG and Battle Brothers/Wartales, and it's one of the few upcoming games I have genuine excitement for.

Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga

Spoiler

While Triangle Strategy did very well, if I had to point at a 'winner' of the 2020-2022 SRPG revival, it would actually be this game. It might not be too difficult once you figure out how things work, even on the hardest setting, and the writing is very mediocre with its most endearing moments being cheesy, but an indie studio releasing something made with a shoestring budget in RPG maker and having it run laps commercially around a Squeenix release is amazing to see.

I once tried to get a friend into Fire Emblem, and he couldn't really get invested because he was disappointed it was just individual units instead of an army. Symphony of War is made for those people, and I think its sales figures show how much of an untapped market it is; it was the first game I've played in this genre that does squad mechanics well, and the amount of depth and customization that it offers would be a selling point alone. But it also offers zone of control, flanking, dynamic squad creation and inventory management, unit morale and capturing, a fully developed class and growth system for each individual unit in your army, a tech tree to further customize your army, magic and gunpowder, and a dating sim. That all of it was made using RPG Maker MV instead of SRPG Maker is probably the funniest part to me; no SRPG maker game I've seen comes close to trying to simulate actual army management in the way that Symphony does, and Symphony does it in a very fun way. I also like the way Symphony balances permadeath; the unique units you get over the course of the story are unkillable (though you lose autolose if your lord dies, even if the rest of their squad is still around), but any generic unit and the special mercenaries will all stay dead if killed (and not revived in a temple on that map, which you disappear after a certain point).

Easily the worst thing about this game is that (at least one of) the devs have a giantess fetish, and unless if you knew about it before hand it's going to slap you out of nowhere. Thankfully, despite being painfully coy about it and trying to have 'nuanced' debates about what qualifies as fanservice or what level of fanservice is acceptable in current year on their steam forums, they added the option to turn anything related to it off and just have the tall, blonde, hammer-swinging paladin be a tall, blonde, hammer-swinging palandin and not something out of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. There's also a furry character, but he's the only non-romanceable character

Spoiler

because he's a tribute to a cat of one of the devs that died during development

and is entirely optional, so it's hardly egregious.

Overall solid, if a bit casual, game. I hope we start seeing more in this subgenre.

Kamidori Alchemy Meister

Spoiler

Sseth memed me into playing it. A bit grindy but very fun mix of SRPG and crafting/business management. If it wasn't an eroge it would probably be considered a classic.

Battle Brothers

Spoiler

I bought this back in 2021 when I was going stir-crazy over Bannerlord's glacial development thinking it would be a quick fix and it wound up taking up a few months. I'm normally not into procedural games - one of my favorite things about Starsector is that the core remains the core - but I really enjoyed it. Very solid tactically, but also very unforgiving; I do think it can be unfair if you have no idea what you're supposed to do or just waffle around.

Expeditions: Vikings/Rome

Spoiler

I debated against putting these games on this list since, imo, they have more dna from CRPGs like Divinity than SRGPs, but since you brought them up I'll give some quick thoughts.

I like this series. Picked up Conquistador shortly after it came out since Oregon Trail with turn-based combat in an Aztec Conquest setting seemed like a really cool idea and it delivered well, especially for an indie game. Vikings took the best parts of the formula and doubled-down on the RPG aspects, while Rome built on that with an even bigger budget. It's really nice to just see a series go from indie to AA territory without ever really shooting itself in the foot or losing part of what made it fun to begin with. I don't really know how well I can recommend these games for someone interested in SRPGs - I'd say a better milestone would be whether you like something like Divinity: OS2 - but I can still give both of these games a recommendation if you like more traditional rpgs.

Lost Technology

Spoiler

I bought this game on a whim not really expecting much and was really impressed at its scope and depth, especially as I learned more about it. Dominions meets Koei Strategy is probably the only way to accurately describe it, and even that doesn't do it justice. It is a Vahrenturga game, for those of you who know about them, so the UI and controls are positively primeval; it's like playing something out of the late 90s.

Lost Technology looks like your standard 'pick a faction, conquer the map' fare, but has a major twist; the battles are real-time and squad based. Every location on the strategic map has a unique tactical map, some of which are sieges, and their own limit as to how many squads can be garrisoned there. A squad contains up to eight units, and while you cannot actually order your squads to directly attack another squad, you can order them to move into position somewhere where they will automatically attack, order them to directly attack areas on the map and determine which skills they cannot use or should prioritize. Despite squads as an organizing mechanic, you can issue orders to individual units in them too. Battles typically move fast (and have a timer), and terrain will greatly impact a unit's performance based on their racial preferences. Most of your units will be generic units, but there are plenty of officer characters too.

Every unit, generic or officer, has a level and class which affects their stats and what skills they can use on the battlefield; squads can be led by a generic or officers, but who is leading the squad determines what you can recruit. Every faction has its own baseline units it can recruit, but officers have their own units they can recruit on top of that. Additionally, there are plenty of unaffiliated officers (and officers will become affiliated after the faction is destroyed), but officers can only be recruited by compatible officers - e.g. none of the Elves are joining the Lizardmen unless the Lizardmen can recruit someone who can recruit an Elf officer. But once you get over that hurdle you can start diversifying your army and covering some of your faction's strategic weaknesses.

Every faction has its own story that unfolds as you conquer the map (and, like most games in this genre, there are combat convos between certain officers), and most of the officers in a faction will get some limelight in it. None of the stories end the same and few even cover the same ground - the Empire story is a branching story about a dying empire, the Elf story is about going on an anti-drug crusade, the Dragon Knights story is about trying to save a dying species, the Demon story is a branching story about trying to prevent the apocalypse, the Musket story is about accidentally causing the apocalypse by rediscovering muskets, so on and so on - but all of the stories meaningfully expand on the setting, which is easily one of the highlights of the game. Lost Technology has by far the most interesting setting in a game in this subgenre, enough that I got the impression a professional writer was involved despite being a freeware Vahrenturga game - more on that later.

Strategic gameplay isn't complex compared to Pokemon Conquest or Chaos Galaxy, but it does have some depth: you get income from your territories to pay officers, recruit units and conduct diplomacy with people you don't want to immediately fight, and positioning is key when it comes to your territories. They're connected to one another by lines, so you only have to worry about invasions from/into areas that have adjacency, creating chokepoints or allowing you the option to overwhelm an enemy by pulling in reinforcements from adjacent territories (you can request this of allied factions too). Armies can only move between uncontested territories however: if you cut off the territory a faction leader is in and defeat them, it will destroy their faction and cause their other territories to go neutral, so surrounding and cutting off enemies is entirely possible.

If you don't feel like playing one of the twelve factions, however, there's another options; you can actually freelance. You can play as a free officer and instead join a faction as a subordinate, command your own squad, hire other officers into it in addition to generics (unbelievably broken with leveled Dragon Riders), and even strike out on your own, conquer your own territory and make your own faction. While officer mode is less developed than playing as a faction, it's still amazing it even exists; there's also a free campaign (no faction stories, sieges are painful), a dungeon crawler mode (where you build up and command a single squad) and a way to change the campaign scenario. I've got over a hundred hours in this game for only five dollars - which went to support the translation efforts, which are mostly complete - and I still haven't seen everything this game has to offer. Every inch of this game oozes passion from its creator.

On that topic, it got me interested in who actually made this - and the answer was surprisingly Carlo Zen. Yes, the guy who made the Saga of Tanya the Evil actually started making Vahrenturga games, and Tanya itself is partially based off another Vahrenturga game he made that is, afaik, untranslated.

Banner of the Maid

Spoiler

This is an alt-history game in the same way that Guns of the South is an alt-history novel; it's fun and has some interesting ideas, but the plot is fundamentally driven by magic. Don't ask questions about how a magic stone used by Jeanne d'Arc turned Pauline Bonaparte and Marie Antionette into mahou heroines and also somehow genderbent Arthur Wellesley, just enjoy the anime tits in this surprisingly not-eroge srpg.

The most involved this game gets in its Revolutionary French setting is in its class system, which combines FE's class system with the weapon triangle: Light Infantry beat Line Infantry, Line beats Heavy Cavalry, Heavy beats Light Cavalry, Light Cavalry beats Light Infantry. I think they did a really good job of converting the feel of Napoleonic warfare into an SRPG format; Line Infantry get bonuses for adjacent infantry, Light Cavalry have canto built into them, Heavy Cavalry deal extra damage for how far they travel, Artillery deals more damage for not travelling, Military bands function as dancers and support, etc. and it pairs well with its skill systems. It reminds me a bit of Fates; every units has a personal skill, and then there are skills that can be learned as a result of class, or items. None of the skills are dramatic in the way of Sol or Astra, though; they're all either passives, related to movement or activate on command.

I also like how they handled characters being defeated; they won't die, but you will lose out on gold from a chapter proportional to the number of officers you lose. Two or three is often enough to wipe out any bonus, and those bonuses are important for staying ahead of the difficulty curve. Similarly, defeat is oftentimes losing x amount of units or failing to intercept x by y as it is conventional defeat conditions. On that topic, at least on hard, the game is difficult. It expects you to quickly understand the ins, outs and necessity of movement skills (even providing multiple challenge gaidens to help you) and the AI is actually good at identifying your weak spots. The first third of the game - the Italian Campaign - was a very tight, but very gratifying challenge; it felt fair, and I'd rank it up with some of the best early game experiences I've had in an SRPG. Unfortunately the difficult spikes proportionately to how anime the story gets; the last few chapters were a slog for me and not fun.

The worst part of the game was the execution of the faction system. Having to curry favor with factions is a great idea in a srpg; as you level up your reputation they offer new items for sale and even give you passive benefits. The awful execution came in as better weapons are gatekept behind certain factions and you only have limited opportunities to improve your standing - meaning you can cuck yourself out of getting the second tier of muskets for a long time by not sucking off Robespierre like I refused to. There is also, regrettably, no impact on the outcome of the story for which factions you curry favor with, but given that the second act gives up all pretense of history it's not too surprising. There isn't really much to say about the story beyond that; you play as Napoleon's sister and take over most of his role in the Italian Campaign (many of his eventual marshals, such as Desaix and Murat, become your subordinates), and then the story gradually gets subsumed by mahou anime nonsense from the second act on. You do get to play with Napoleon in the final chapter at least. The limited voice acting is all in Chinese and I don't remember the music, but the pixel art is charming - very Maple Story-esque - and the art is genuinely gorgeous, if very fanservicey. I can appreciate that all the historical characters have their art based fairly closely off of historical portraits at least; it's a level of respect that most anime adaptations of historical figures won't typically show, though you wouldn't think it for some characters like Lannes (historically he powdered his hair during the period the game takes place but every time I looked at him I just wanted to call him Robin).

The first third of the game was worth the pricetag alone imo, especially since it's only $17, but I wouldn't replay it beyond that having finished it. This did make me wish that Koei would remake some of their older games, though; they used to make historical SRPGs and one of them was Napoleonic.

Lost Eidolons

Spoiler

Three Houses at home. I don't want to be too dismissive given this is the first game from a then-new studio, but it really does feel like a love letter to Three Houses more than its own game. It has a hub area you return to after every battle like 3Hs with all its associated activities, the class system and its progression are open-ended like 3H, the magic system took 3H's framework and expanded it into something customizable, it decided to go one step further than 3H in making units fungible by evening out their growth curves to be largely nonexistent, it has monster fights like 3Hs even though they play no part in Lost Eidolon's narrative. Even the story inspiration follows 3H: because Koei did most of the legwork in writing 3H's setting and Koei are history nerds, they took a bit of inspiration from Three Kingdoms China for it; Lost Eidolons saw that and just decided to copy the Chu-Han contention almost paragraph for paragraph. Essentially everything bad about 3Hs, especially in how grindy it could get between story battles, is exacerbated here, but most of the good stuff from 3H is also built on. The most unique aspect of Eidolons is how its magic system can affect the terrain - e.g. casting water spells on a unit to not only damage it, but wet the surrounding tiles, and then following up with a thunder spell to damage every unit standing on those wet tiles.

The writing is mid. The story gets interesting, eventually, but it's not as immediately gripping as 3H and the early dialogue is barely tolerable. I also don't like the aesthetic direction. 'Realistic Fire Emblem' would be a very interesting choice if there were more variety in the faces, if most of the characters didn't talk and act like millennials, and if everyone's hairstyles weren't in the uncanny valley of 'not outright anime but still perfectly conditioned and coifed'. There's also just random black people hanging around without any comment in a setting that seems to consist entirely of late medieval not-European kingdoms.

It's a decent indie RPG, but I don't see it really satisfying anyone as any more than filler.

Himeko Suitori

Spoiler

I got this because the idea of combining multiple units into a squad is something that I had wanted to see more of in SRPGs, and it was promising that. I dropped it after about an hour ingame.

There was nothing particularly egregious in the brief gameplay that made me quit - it felt like your standard Squeenix Tactics fare with the squad mechanic being the main twist - but the writing activated the fight or flight instinct that I feel whenever looking at something clearly involving the alumni of Tumblr. It could be the best SRPG ever made mechanically and I would never know because I started zoning out the moment it was brought up the main character's mother was Amaterasu and her father was Saladin. It certainly didn't help that all the character's portraits look like they were made with one of those 2010s anime pfp makers.

Langrisser I & II

Spoiler

Langrisser is one of two PS1 SRPG series that experienced a revival for the Switch at the turn of the decade, though it wasn't just a PS1 series; it actually competed with FE for a good decade. As such you get a two for one deal - you get Langrisser 1, localized as Warsong in the west, and its sequel which never made it overseas. Unfortunately, the original games had a very tight numbers game, and it seems the remakes went with the design philosophy of bigger is better, which makes battle matchups not nearly as clear or tight as they could have been. I am, of course, too much of a retarded zoomer to have experienced any of this firsthand and am just relaying this as part of the setup.

Langrisser's most immediate distinction from FE is that it's a squad-based SRPG; you hire new mercenaries to fill out your squad every stage, the max number and types depend on a unit's class (some don't even have squads). Units in your army also have a command range; mercenaries attached to them operating outside of it will have significantly reduced performance. Having to worry about moving all your units individually across a map is thankfully alleviated by a a very simple QoL feature; if you move a unit and end turn without moving its mercenaries, the ai will try to automove them into its command range. There will be times you want to manually move mercenaries to secure chokepoints, snipe a weak unit or grab loot, but for the most part you'll want to keep them together. The enemy follows these rules too; defeating the commander of an enemy squad causes their whole squad to retreat, though it isn't as efficient in xp or loot as defeating the squad piecemeal. Magic is also pretty different: every unit, no matter the class, has access to spells (different classes and units have different mana pools), AoE spells, including buffs, are very common, but a unit has to be stationary in order to use one and the amount is limited by their mana points. The class system is also a little more involved than FE. Every unit has their own class tree with four or five tiers and multiple branches. Units unlock new classes through class points; these are gained on level up, but also for killing the most units on a stage. Higher tier classes require more class points to unlock, and the spells and mercenaries you have access to in one class will carry over into the new one.

Overall the gameplay is competent. It's not really challenging on initial playthroughs - though subsequent ones can ramp up the difficulty - and suffers from numbers inflation. I get the feeling a mechanically faithful remake would have been more satisfying, based on the gameplay I've seen of the original. The big selling point for me was the branching story; the remake came out a few months after I set down 3H initially and reading about a game having done close to ten branching paths three decades before 3H bungled four made me intrigued. Of course, while the story and characters are not anywhere near as involved as in 3H, they are fun and respect your time a lot more. It allows you to play the conventional hero's journey story... or you can join the military empire, or outright become the evil power that's manipulating it. The second game even has a route to let you just kill everything and everyone. All the branching storylines in the first game were apparently created wholecloth for the remake too.

The artwork feels like a short-lived mobile game, which I find very ironic given Langrisser already had a mobile game and it's art is significantly better than what the remake offers. The original 90s art for Langrisser was done by Urushihara and he actually came back to do some art for Langrisser mobile (and the art not done by him still follows his style), which launched prior to the remake. Despite that they didn't make use of mobile or him for the remake - at the very least they allow you to use the 90s art instead of the incredibly plastic-looking portraits made for the remake. Apparently the mobile game also has good gameplay, but I can't speak to that.

Overall these were acceptable filler games. I don't know how a long-term fan of Langrisser would receive them; the best thing I can say about it is Langrisser introduced me to Record of Lodoss War.

Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia

Spoiler

I'm going to sperg a bit about this one. Brigandine is the other PS1 SRPG that was revived for the Switch, but unlike Langrisser it's not a remake, it's a sequel. Bought it in 2020, played for a few battles and then and got distracted by other things before finally coming back to it at the end of last year.

Initially, Brigandine is very impressive. There's a separate strategic map from the tactical maps your knights and their monsters will be duking it out on, each territory across the strategic map has its own monsters to summon/quest locations, your knights are garrisoned in those territories across that map where they can train/quest/attack other territories, and each location has its own custom map. Those maps try to recreate the terrain scene on the strategic map at a macro level, and which directions it is attacked from also determines where the attackers troops will spawn in. Knights are squad leaders that command monsters; every knight and monster has an equippable inventory, skills and spells (instead of a generic attack), and elemental defenses and offenses. Knights have a class system that does allow for switching after maxing their proficiency, monsters evolve like Pokemon; knights are strategically invulnerable but defeating them tactically forces their squad to withdraw while monsters are on (almost) permadeath. There's a lot to initially grasp, but the biggest problem I have with Brigandine is that once you get over that initial hurdle there's not much left.

The combat itself is very tight, but actually getting there is ponderous. I can appreciate the effort to recreate the strategic terrain tactically and representing different vectors of attack, but the result is that a lot of maps feel empty; terrain only provides flat modifiers and movement penalty, dependent on class, and aside from that there's very little typically to interact with on a map as you move your army towards your opponent's. Your army is hardcapped to three knights, which may sound restrictive, but each knight can have up to six monsters accompany them into battle at once (this will rarely happen as monsters have a mana value and knights often have far lower mana cap than six decently leveled monsters together - but you'll likely still have to corral an army in its teens by the endgame). Unfortunately there's no QoL automovement like in Langrisser where if you just move a knight and end turn their monsters will try to stay in its command aura; monsters outside of it have steep penalties to combat. Further slowing the combat is that while you can move and activate a skill (attack), you cannot cast a spell if your unit has already moved; this might not be a problem if the maps were more compact, but they are vast and mostly empty.

The RPG aspects felt disappointing to me. It's standard fare; every knight has a class which belongs to a class tree, and after maxing out proficiency in their class can either promote or tab into another class tree if they meet some requirements, and some promotions are multi-tiers. But few the classes or units feel particularly fun or unique to use; most of them follow the same movement paradigms, unadjusted for terrain (there's no cavalry and almost everyone is foot), while some attack skills and spells will carry over from class changes dependent on proficiency, there's none that really synergize in the way that skills or weapon types can in FE, and given this is one of those SRPGs with large numbers, growth types and disparities are not readily apparent between characters (nor are they particularly clear in how they work). Essentially it's an unhappy medium between flexibility in customization and depth in specialization. Every unit, including monsters, have four inventory slots; the sort of items that can be equipped will change somewhat depending on class, but generally speaking items are usually x-increase to y-stat, with a few altering a unit's elemental damages/resistances and even fewer being powerful enough to change how you use a unit. It's a thoroughly competent system, but that leads me into sperging about how you get items; the kingdom management.

Put bluntly, there is none. There are only two resources to manage; your mana and your knights. Knights are stationed in territory (there is no cap), use mana to summon new monsters, their existing monsters consume a pittance of mana as upkeep, and your territories generate more mana than you'll know what to do with. There is nothing interesting or involved about monster summoning; each territory has specific types of monsters it can summon, you summon one and pay some mana. I wouldn't have a problem with the system if it just ended there. But they added randomization to it; monsters don't just come with baseline stats, individually summoned monsters will have deviations from it. Some will come with tradeoffs, some weaker, some stronger, but the result is a gacha system. Items suffer similarly; knights not sent out to battle or the training yards (exp grind) should be sent on quests. Quests vary per location, but the result is always the same; it's randomized. You could get an item or even one of the initially unaffiliated Rune Knights or even nothing, but you'll never know in advance. I wouldn't have an issue with this if it wasn't the only way to get these things. This is especially bad because it bottlenecks progression in some areas; many monsters need a specific item to advance to a third class (no generic master seals, so you can get an advancement item and not even have a monster you can use it on), and the only way to revive a lost monster is with an item rarely found through questing. I cannot stand random chance being prioritized above player forethought.

Story is there. Every faction has their own story, it advances by capturing kingdoms (though calling some the events you get a story is a bit generous), and then there's a background story for the setting shoved into the forefront for a final boss fight after you unify Runersia (by that point I was using the autobattler more often than not and couldn't be bothered to care). There will also be battle conversations between certain units if they face off against one another, but there's no good way to predict who will talk to who and given you start with a large amount of units (most of who will not have convos) you can easily miss 90% of these. I'm torn on the art style. It's gorgeous on one hand but incredibly gaudy on the other; the best way I can describe it is anime baroque, and it at least manages to be very distinctive. Unfortunately that doesn't translate into the character designs proper. Most of them are acceptable, a few are outstanding and some just remind me of FE designs (there's a character called Rose who is just Cordelia at home), but due to the lack of story there's not any design I could really call iconic. This is especially worse for the monster designs. While there are at least some knight designs that can immediately make me interested in a character, there's none of that for the monsters - which is a problem when they're half of your game. Most monsters don't get a new design when they 'evolve', they just get a new color palette, and I can't think of a single one I'd put on the box art - which is probably why all the box art is of the faction leaders.

I wanted to like this game; that's why I can get worked up enough to write so much about it. On paper it has a lot of stuff I'd like, but unfortunately it's not greater than the sum of its parts and most of those parts are done better elsewhere. I can understand why someone would enjoy it - I did at certain moments - but I can also understand why it took two decades to get a new game in this series.

Dark Deity

Spoiler

I said I would put it at the bottom, and I am for a very good reason. Unlike Brigandine, where I can at least see a solid game buried under mediocrity, I don't see how this game could have worked as a competitor to FE. I got it shortly after it came out in 2021, played a few chapters and figured I'd wait a year or so for the devs to work out the kinks in the design. Unfortunately this was apparently the wrong choice, as apparently the devs managed to suck out whatever fun and potential the game had over subsequent updates.

I'll get the good out of the way because it's pretty short; I like the idea of units losing 10% of a stat on dying instead of just staying dead in games like these, and I like having an actual armor system with different types of damage resistance - though both of these have their own problems - some of the character designs are good and the combat animations are decent. Starting with the criticisms, the game feels unfinished. Not just narratively or mechanically, but it's also unpolished. A common criticism when it first launched was that it felt like it was rushed, and that is a feeling I still got when I came back to it two years later. Bugs are not crippling but are also not uncommon, the ui is some unholy marriage between console and keyboard (it's impossible to do everything just by clicking, for example), the difficulty curve is atrocious and apparently the lategame balance is too but I only got about a third through before quitting so I can't speak authoritatively on that.

The combat system is needlessly complicated and too simple simultaneously. The vast amount of weapons, classes and armor types on top of stats, when combined with a poor gui, make combat impenetrable, and all these systems work against one another. Armor types and weapons are inherent to classes, albeit attacks types are upgradable. Everyone has four types of attack, focusing on a different specialization (power, critical, accuracy, speed). The first problem is that you will be fighting against enemies with no solid idea of what the damage might actually come out to, further complicated by them constantly introducing new classes whose roles are not really clear because of how the weapon and armor system works. A new stat, Mastery, is then thrown into the mix; Mastery increases the damage done by good matchups, but by how much is never quantified beyond a letter. What is a good matchup is where things get especially convoluted. Weapons are matched against armor, not each other, so units may have a good matchup according to the interface, but because the weapons lack power or speed it can be a very bad combat. Attack upgrades will also eat up most of your gold, which is fairly limited, and so you'll only want to upgrade one or two types of attack for the characters you invest in. The result is the most roundabout way possible to get back to the starting point of the genre, which is to just go with whatever attack type deals the most damage.

The class system may seem interesting at first, but it's really just trying to double FE's system with half of the substance. The armor system, and especially the attack system, really work against it mechanically as there's little purpose or reward in experimentation. Because DD has so many classes, nothing really stands out visually either. It's not easy to tell what unit is what class from a glance in the same way you can in FE. Meanwhile, the sprites are very mid; that would be fine if they individual characters were more distinctive, but they aren't: it's just their head and hair/hat, with not even any adjustments made for height or color. I really have to wonder how closely the art team worked with the devs since there's a clear disconnect between the two; many sprites simply have no connection to their armor types. Units with chain or leather armor in their portraits will consistently have sprites with platemail, and the sprites themselves have barely any connection to the character portraits, including some characters having weapons in their portraits that they simple don't wield. This may seem petty, but DD chose to pigeonhole itself like this mechanically and it again shows how little polish it has.

On the topic of characters, DD has probably the worst case of roster bloat I've seen in an SRPG. I get the feeling that the devs looked at old FE - as the devs loved to talk about how they were inspired by FE - and saw that it would reliably throw new characters at you and ran with it without bothering to understand why. Characters don't die in DD; there's no need to keep getting new units after a certain point. Worse, the new characters you get are almost always better than the ones you have, so not only is there no incentive to train up units, but you have no clear idea of when you should start investing in a unit's attacks. Most characters join you out of the blue at the start of a map - most of which are thrown together, claustrophobic spamfests - without any rhyme or reason (especially given just associating with you puts a target on their back for every faction fairly early into the game), and there is little player involvement in actually getting new units. Needless to say the character writing is largely subpar, the story exists to just shuffle you from setpiece to setpiece when it doesn't just feel like an inside joke at your expense, and the bond system only exists because FE has a support system.

I can't really see who this game would appeal to. FE grogs are not going to be impressed with the combat or map design. Story nerds are going to be bored out of their minds. Hopeless romantics are not going to connect with any of the characters or find the designs uniquely appealing, and casuals are going to be too intimidated by how convoluted the combat is. The average FE player will get filtered by the difficulty curve if they get through all of that, while people coming from other SRPG subgenres are not going to be impressed by a game that fundamentally misunderstands what makes FE's formula work. The only people I can see being impressed by this game are FE junkies too lazy to find a better hit and people with low expectations/who don't know better.

 

[AWarmToiletSeat]

>Kamidori

Knife Ear or Sword Autist?

 

[Computer God Autism]

>Kamidori

Knife Ear or Sword Autist?

Servalwi. Her story seemed like it had more to do with the setting than Yuela's.

 

[AWarmToiletSeat]

Servalwi. Her story seemed like it had more to do with the setting than Yuela's.

Yeah, I think the elf story was just better. I also kinda wish Melodiana had a route. It's weird thar Eushully's mascot is an Angel, but the Angel characters are always a tertiary focus of the story.

 

[Mentos]

I'm currently deep into the hack Dark Lord and the Maiden of Light and its pretty enjoyable so far.
Good variety in map objectives and a well sized cast with plenty neat character designs. I'm always a little wary with ironmanning hacks but this feels very fair.
I'm just surprised at the "4chan energy" this hack occasionally has, especially given that its from 2019.
View attachment 6317832View attachment 6317835View attachment 6317838

This particular character causes a lot of seethe amongst certain prominent faggots in the hacking space. Great hack though. In my opinion it's the best one to be done using FE7 instead of 8 as a base.

 

[Sneak 'n' Snore]

This particular character causes a lot of seethe amongst certain prominent faggots in the hacking space. Great hack though. In my opinion it's the best one to be done using FE7 instead of 8 as a base.

Yes, I'm guessing I'm one or two chapter aways from the end and it was great.
I enjoy a lot of the QoL and other "advanced" stuff that FE8 based hacks brought in like being able to display growth rates but this hack especially really captured the classic FE feeling.
The only substantial complaint I have is an absurd difficulty spike in a chapter I recently finished where the boss, who is a bloated ball of stats, can stonewall your entire team unless you have legendary weapons on extremely fast, strong and durable units. I'm salty about this because its completely unprecedented and even after that there are no bosses anywhere that strong.