Tactical Indie RPGs - The sucessors of X-COM, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics and Heroes of Might and Magic.

Sparky Lurker said:
HoMM Olden Era on Early Access:
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I picked this up and for an early access game it's very good. The most important thing about it is that it does it's fucking job and gives me that HOMM3 cycle where I feel like I can stay up until the sun comes out playing it. That being said it very much is an early access game, there are a lot of unpolished things that will shine when they fix them. I will now sperg about it.

Multiplayer:
*Online multiplayer sort of works but is very prone to crashing, we tried to reload a saved game after a crash and couldn't figure out how to get people back in. Easy fix though.
*If someone playing gets felted then they're done, which is fine, go play single player because you over expanded. From a game design perspective they should probably put in some kind of safety net.
*We couldn't get teaming up to work, I don't think it's in there yet. Trading resources would help with the above problem.
*I'd really like a spectator mode to watch important fights and yell at my friends for not playing a game from 1999 for as long as it's been out.
*My friends kept comparing it to Heroes Hour because they're plebians. Of all the times to tell me they've never played Heroes and they choose now. Honestly.

Game:
*The campaign dialog is bad, it's very lolrandom and pointless most of the time. They need to hire a writer if they really want to nail that aspect down. Nobody plays heroes for campaigns so I hope that's at the bottom of the list.
*The campaign mechanics look cool, there's branching missions and dialog choices. There's also a score showing how much other factions like you, I have no idea what it's supposed to do except the bugs hate everyone? Could be cool. Again. Hire a writer.
*Factions so far are solid. Necromancers are good, castle guys are good, dungeon is good, the elves are just plants, the lovecraft guys are neat, the bugs are an okay big bad guy faction I guess, WHERE IS MY FUCKING TOWER AND MY TITANS YOU CUNTS?
*I like they made vampires a tier 7, they just realized they're busted in every rendition of Heroes and just said "fuck it". You can still kind of rush them.
*The art style is serviceable, it has that overly detailed smooth modern fantasy look to it. It's not my cup of tea but it'll do. Same with music. HOMM3 is it's superior in both regards as it is for every other game in existence.
*They need more verity of things on the map, everything seems to be "do this fight and get a resource".
*I'd like to see more types of fights for that matter, good opportunity to expand on the original games.
*Random maps work very well, they look like they've been designed by someone instead of just dumping shit on a map like HOMM3. I kind of liked just dumping shit on a map though.
*There's a focus point system where you build a meter that lets monsters use powers. It's not part of my regular combat but is a thing for big fights. There's a lot of strategy to dig through with it. It's a neat little mechanic but needs a lot of work.
*There's points that go into building your magic and your law. Law lets you buy little perks on a tree, don't know how I feel about it yet, I don't completely understand the magic part aside from that you can upgrade and buy spells. Maybe thats it? Haven't played with it a lot because I DONT HAVE MY FUCKING TOWER YOU CUNTS.

Overall, it's a good start. I really hope it takes off and I hope it gets a good community that makes a bunch of maps and content. The team knows what it's doing and it comes from a place of love. I hope to soon get yelled at by a slav after getting rushed in week 2.
 
The tired cat said:
From what I recall, the biggest selling points in this game were that they had the OG Xcom dev involved, how you can do limb damage on enemies and how they would adapt to your attacks and mutate right on the battlefield.
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The issue is that while some of the tactical combat with limb targeting and such is great, the strat map sucks, the DLCs give you new problems but no tools to do so or significant rewards (one of them gives you a unique, non-replicable suit of armor and a gun in a game where equipment can be outright destroyed by certain attacks), and enemies wind up stacking so much armor your only realistic solution is to shred it with hard-hitting weapons like New Jericho's Gauss or some of the Anu things like the axe and handcannon because the Synedrion pew-pew lasers just bounce off as they focus on spamming low-damage shots.

At least the December update made the ancient shit way, way easier to actually get.

Oh, and the final boss has so much bullshit psychic damage its pretty much mandatory to bring at least one guy of the Priest class with the anti-psychic bubble aura.

As to MENACE, tested it out a bit before they added what's basically Act 2, was good fun, although its a shame the Wiki doesn't list the full name for them, instead only using the shortened acronym.
 
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I loved Phoenix Point at launch (or maybe I played at some point in EA) where it was more streamlined. The aiming system fucking rules; it completely solves the "99% chance to hit" bullshit by putting it your hands as well as opening up new possibilities, and I'm surprised it hasn't been ripped off more. It's still a fucking nuXcom but it is (or was) nuXcom done right. Aside from the fucking level 2 hive maps.
The setting and the way you have to actively focus on expanding so you have a refuelling network instead of the game chilling until you can afford to just buy new bases is also neat.

But I tried playing more recently with all the DLCs and nigga what was you thinking. The devs just piled everything new on to trigger immediately, so there's no focus on what's important while assholes are giving you sidequests you can't afford to take on just to sell you unnecessary shit that will tank your funds which you need for important shit early game, and there's a fucking protoss carrier with god mode eating the cities you need from the jump which you won't be able to do anything about (or even slow down effectively) for tens of hours. I assume this is what turns most people off, and they're right, but it's sad the game got that rep.

But I tried again with the Terror From The Void mod and it fixes basically everything (which is why the devs are now backporting things from it). It also tweaks the classes so there's more synergies instead of one massively broken multiclass soldier build. I had a lot of fun.
So this just is your regular posting remind people not to touch the game without installing TFTV.
 
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