Project Triangle Strategy: Octopath Tactics

JBear said:

Quietus teleport power

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Huh, I totally forgot about those powers, that's probably part of this!

I also forgot about those for ages. They're not exactly advertised that readily ingame, after all. They are, however, extremely strong and good and game-changing.

Chapter 13:

Oh no, a 3-way choice, and all 3 of the choices are at least a bit compelling! I'm gonna sleep on it, I think.

Anyway, the game has been showing its teeth lately. I dunno if going full Paragon is harder or what (and I've kept it on Hard mode), but the Rosellan village defense was the hardest mission yet, and took me a couple of tries to settle on the best tactics (I've been reloading whenever I lose, rather than keeping the XP & kudos).

One of the things I really like about this game is the boss enemies. They seem about 4x as sturdy as a normal enemy, so it's always a delicate balance to decide when to pivot from removing weaker enemy units (ideally healers or casters) from the map to focus-firing and removing a boss enemy.

Amusingly, because I was curious if it represented a branch point like the House Ende investigation earlier (no branch was visible on the path menu, but it certainly felt like it was possible to screw up), I went back to an earlier save just after that battle and intentionally screwed up the next investigation scene and, sure enough, you can trigger a premature game over outside of battle, with a big climactic scene where all of your characters collectively decide to take a final stand and go down swinging. Fun!

JBear said:

I went back to an earlier save just after that battle and intentionally screwed up the next investigation scene and, sure enough, you can trigger a premature game over outside of battle, with a big climactic scene where all of your characters collectively decide to take a final stand and go down swinging. Fun!

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Out of curiousity, is this if you don't find the rock salt? I reloaded my investigation when I saw I was missing the third item and have been wondering how things play out if you don't find it.

I'm now further on, and finding the fight with Avlora pretty tough! However, this time I know why I'm stuck: I am working too hard to get all the enemies into the pool and hit them with lightning multiple times. I know I should not be focusing on that but damn it's fun.

Yup, that's the one!

JBear said:

Anyway, the game has been showing its teeth lately. I dunno if going full Paragon is harder or what (and I've kept it on Hard mode), but the Rosellan village defense was the hardest mission yet, and took me a couple of tries to settle on the best tactics (I've been reloading whenever I lose, rather than keeping the XP & kudos).

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I did the alternative choice to that branch on my second playthrough purely to unlock the pizza toss bandit. I can tell you that not only is the Morality path easier, the writing on the Utility path for there is like 90% some of the best handling for that kind of choice I have ever seen, and feels like a very direct "fuck you" to how Fire Emblem: Fates handled the Conquest storyline.

Kalir said:

I did the alternative choice to that branch on my second playthrough purely to unlock the pizza toss bandit. I can tell you that not only is the Morality path easier, the writing on the Utility path for there is like 90% some of the best handling for that kind of choice I have ever seen, and feels like a very direct "fuck you" to how Fire Emblem: Fates handled the Conquest storyline.

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A+ naming on the spoiler, that's the official name of that character now.

I've been extraordinarily impressed by the writing and worldbuilding in this game. The decisions are not simple ones. They have weight and the characters have strong feelings and I really do consider what they say.

That being said, it's not a game I can recommend to a lot of people, because I think many will react similar to @Sarcasmorator and be frustrated. The structure is weird and slow and ultimately not very video-game like. If you just want to pick up a tactics RPG and quickly do some battles you are going to be disappointed and that's something I'll have to think about when friends ask me about this game. I love it but totally understand why someone wouldn't. Maybe I'll ask if they enjoyed finding and reading as many books as possible in Skyrim, if they did then this could be a good fit?

Part of the problem I had may just be that I was wanting, you know, a demo of the game. I can sit through a lot of story! (And yes the story is part of the game, but long-term narrative decisions and the like aren't generally going to play out in the course of a limited demo.) I read several books a week just as part of my job, and games don't often turn me off with text volume alone (I do read stories and books and such in open world games, but they also tend to be shorter at a stretch, easy to come back to later, and a break from other activities, rather than a long and obligatory wait in between other things I want to do). But if I want to learn how gameplay fundamentally works so I can make a purchasing decision, I don't want to slog through so much dialogue to do it.

Hearing the enthusiasm over the game as y'all work through it makes me think I'd probably like it in the end.

Sarcasmorator said:

Part of the problem I had may just be that I was wanting, you know, a demo of the game. I can sit through a lot of story! (And yes the story is part of the game, but long-term narrative decisions and the like aren't generally going to play out in the course of a limited demo.) I read several books a week just as part of my job, and games don't often turn me off with text volume alone (I do read stories and books and such in open world games, but they also tend to be shorter at a stretch, easy to come back to later, and a break from other activities, rather than a long and obligatory wait in between other things I want to do). But if I want to learn how gameplay fundamentally works so I can make a purchasing decision, I don't want to slog through so much dialogue to do it.

Hearing the enthusiasm over the game as y'all work through it makes me think I'd probably like it in the end.

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The gameplay is reading though. I would say the whole game truly is 70% reading/talking and 30% battles and there are long gaps between of just dialogue and investigation/persuasion.

If the demo was just maps it would be a huge misrepresentation of the game. If you found the demo a slog and felt like you weren't getting to something I don't think you should get the game, honestly.

I'm going to try the demo again. Sometimes I have to be in the right headspace for something; I wasn't expecting all that story, so it put me off. Next time I'll expect it. Dialogue with investigation/persuasion is interesting (and also common in your Fallouts and your Skyrims, which I enjoy), and I didn't really see anything like that in the demo, as far as I got. Octopath had a bit of that too.

It's a game, and a kind of game, that I want to like, so I'll approach it from a few angles until it's clear that I won't.

Sarcasmorator said:

Sometimes I have to be in the right headspace for something

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Oh hell yeah, I vary a lot of what I like or am interested in, even within one day. This is not a game I'm going to play quickly on my lunch break, I want to sit down and immerse myself in it. I've had a couple stressful days at work this week and there was no way this was the game I was going to play that evening.

Finished for the second time, and I think I'm done with it. My first playthrough I chose Frederica's ending, and then my NG+ run I got the Golden/True ending.

It's really good. Battles are nice and challenging, and I feel like the lack of a permadeath mode is a boon here since it allows each individual battle to be challenging. Fire Emblem games have to be balanced around making it reasonably possible to clear every mission without a death, which limits how hard they can be on their own. But since this game has none of that, each mission can be hard on its own right- if you complete a mission with only a single unit remaining, everything that happens afterward won't be any harder as a result.

Ultimately I think it's held back by not having a real strong cast- I don't think there's a particularly weak link here, but also nobody really stands out. They get the job done, but nothing really more than that. Also, while I do think the story is mostly fine, the long talky bits can be a bit much. Scenes could have been edited down more, and the gap between combat scenarios could have been reduced.

Overall, very high on it! Highly recommended.

Square Enix's line of retro-focused RPGs -- a loose association of games, to be sure, but one that I mentally class 4 Heroes of Light, the Bravely Default games, the entire Tokyo RPG Factory catalog, and Octopath Traveler under -- has never failed to disappoint me. (And yes, it does indeed depress me that some of those games are old enough now to themselves be considered "retro.") Either they're less a riff and more of a hollow retread, or the innovations they do attempt merely add tedium, complexity, or dour cynicism to the mix. In both cases, they lack the inimitable charm that made the original games worth of imitation in the first place. Triangle Strategy is the first of these games that I've found to be worth the candle on its own merits.

Gameplay-wise, Triangle Strategy is an echo of games from the Tactics Ogre lineage of strategy-RPGs, with its three-quarters perspective and emphasis on character-by-character turn-based combat. However, Triangle Strategy differs -- and improves upon -- its source material in a few key ways.

Most importantly, there is a strong focus on actual use of tactics. This is primarily achieved by eliminating the job system and cutting down on character customization. The Final Fantasy Tactics games, in particular, are all about min-maxing synergistic builds that can easily overwhelm the computer's forces once they get going. This has its own satisfactions, but it moves most of the core decisions the player makes away from the battlefield and into the menu screen, where they're deciding what abilities to learn and what weapons to equip. In Triangle Strategy, each player character is entirely unique -- there are no classes, and there are no generics. Each character has a list of skills which is diverse enough to provide some tactical variety, but not so versatile that they can handle an entire map on their own. The player can still do powerful things, mind, but those powerful things come as a result of paying close attention to the state of the battlefield and thinking about how their units work together, not from deploying a team of characters dual-wielding Swiss army knives. Because the overwhelmingly powerful "broken" options are not in play, the game has space to make things like knockback effects, status ailments, aggro control, and traps matter; elements that are often in other strategy games, but are rarely worth using when you can instead just order your team of godslayers to go forth and kill. Realizing that you've got things exactly spaced out that one character can knock an enemy directly into the waiting follow-up attack of an ally, or using turn manipulation to skip the charge time on a powerful spell, is way more satisfying than Arithematizing Holy on turn one, or sending out a retinue of Assassins to one-hit-kill everything before the enemy can even act. The game actually presents meaningful challenges, even on Normal difficulty, something FFT usually only manages via cheapness like untelegraphed duels or escort missions.

As a consequence of cutting out all the overpowered stuff, Triangle Strategy boasts exceptional balance. All the characters feel useful, despite their uniqueness, and none of them feel substantially stronger than others. (A system-level change helps here -- Speed is no longer the god stat. All characters get one turn per round, Speed just affects how early in the round they get it. Gone are the days of Ninja taking eight turns for every one a Knight gets, and the maps are designed such that going early in the round is not a pure advantage for all characters.) Moreover, all character types have a place. Tanky melee units are durable and are good at focus-firing down individual characters, and a lot of them have counterattacks to give better action economy, but none of them are durable enough to take on waves of enemies on their own, they're prone to getting sniped by magic, and they tend to have no options for dealing area damage. Mages can cover your area-of-effect needs and deal hellacious damage, but they're fragile and TP-hungry. Support characters have crazy utility, but low damage. Everyone feels like they have a role to play in your overall strategy, and your choice of who is best to use can change wildly depending on the map and the enemy deployment, rather than the Fire Emblem tactic of having an A-team you always use except when certain utility roles are required. I found myself constantly agonizing over who to cut from my teams with each battle, because I could see how each individual person might help me, trying to decide if I could live without Erador's frontline ability or additional healing this particular map. Map design is also nice and varied, with excellent use of terrain to force you to change up your battle strategies.

This is not to say the gameplay is perfect, although I did largely enjoy it. First off, although the game was advertised on its environmental interactions system -- fire spells light burn flammable objects, ice melts to form puddles, lightning conducts in water, high winds lower projectile accuracy, etc -- this system is highly underused. Most of the interactions require turns of setup for very little payoff, so it really only comes up in situations where the element was on the map to start with, which, in practice, tends to be electrifying standing water on maps that have it and occasionally lighting grass on fire in outdoor maps. Additionally, in every map I played, the weather started clear and only changed if I chose to change it, and only one character I recruited could do that. This is baffling to me. You're going to include weather but not have any gimmick maps that take advantage of it?

Individual character levels also feel largely vestigial in this game. There isn't enough experience in the game to use everyone without grinding the mental maps or abusing the retreat mechanic -- but, as I mentioned before, this is a game that encourages pulling people off the shelf as the situation dictates, not investing in a primary team and letting everyone else warm the bench. The game even tags characters with abilities well-suited to the current mission as "recommended," so it's annoying when those recommended characters are ten levels below the curve and can't be deployed to show what they can do. The level scaling is so strict that characters who are at or above the recommended level will gain virtually no experience, and characters who are below will gain levels on practically every action anyway. The only purpose of individual levels seems to be gating off certain abilities, but there are other ways this could have been done. (Indeed, the game does one of them, but more on that in a second.) This game seems like it would have benefited from a Chrono Cross-type mechanic where you level up as a party, and everyone is automatically set to your current party level. Or simply use a Paper Mario setup where character's stats are what they are and never go up, and you work around it.

But far and away my least favorite aspect of the game's combat was the character customization system. Not necessarily how it works, even, but more about how unbelievably reluctant the game is about letting you utilize it.

There are only two ways to customize your characters in Triangle Strategy -- you can upgrade their weapon, or you can promote them to a higher class. Upgrading their weapon costs money and materials, but raises their stats or adds to or improves their abilities. Each character has three weapon levels, but upgrading the weapon level doesn't seem to do anything except expand the number of upgrades the character can buy (making those upgrades basically double-locked). Buying an individual weapon ability requires generic materials that can be bought at the shop or found as loot in the battles, so even though each character's upgrades become more expensive the more you buy, you can eventually get the ones you want. Buying a weapon level, on the other hand, requires a rare material, which can only be dropped from bosses or bought (in minuscule numbers) from the sundry shop. As far as I can tell, all the rare materials are absolutely capped in the number you can obtain in a single playthrough, and that number is less than the amount you need to upgrade everyone's weapon. This is absolutely infuriating. It's one thing not to be able to fill in random stat nodes or whatever, but all of the characters have extremely cool upgrades and extra moves that alter their utility substantially buried at the end of their upgrade trees, and the game will not let you use them! You can't buy them, you can't grind for them, no sidequest gets you more. I recruited a character late in my playthrough, and I couldn't even upgrade his weapon to level two, much less three, because I had already used all the Silver the game decided it was going to allow me before he even joined up, before I even knew that Silver might be something I'd want to hold onto. Again, this would be one thing if you were intended to build a core team who fought all the battles and you could focus all the upgrades onto them, but you're not. Why build the system like this?

Why build two systems like this, because class promotions work the same way. There are three levels of class. Going from the first class level to the second requires a character be level 10 and that they spend a Medal of Bravery, and there are more than enough of those to get everyone who starts at the first class level up to the second, eventually. Going up to the third class level requires a character be level 20 and that they spend a Medal of Valor -- but there are maybe a half-dozen Medals of Valor in the game. Again, I wouldn't care if it was only stats, but again, the class promotions lock off cool new abilities and strategies, and every single character you use extensively is going to want one. Hope you're happy with the six you picked.

Look, the idea of these systems is to allow the game to trickle out abilities so that you get more powerful, but not too powerful, so power jumps still feel individually meaningful. (And so that you can't grind your way to a full arsenal in mental battles.) But by the endgame, the trickle-out phase should be over. Let me promote my characters, upgrade my weapons, and deploy them how I want. Put 99 of everything in the shops for the last 3-4 fights and let me set up a final build for everyone. Or just cut the whole system and let me upgrade my abilities without having to pay my taxes first.

The other major gameplay element in the game is, of course, the persuasion phase. Every so often, the team will be confronted by a major choice, and everyone will vote on what to do. Before the vote, though, you have an opportunity to talk to all of them and persuade them to vote a particular way, which they may or may not do depending on how well you made your case (and, I suspect, an invisible stat check). I don't think I expected to like it as much as I did.

First of all, most of the choices are quite difficult. The writers did an excellent job of making sure that there is no obvious "right" choice in any of the votes -- although Benedict in particular comes up with a few truly skin-crawling proposals over the course of the game, he can at least make a good case for most of them. Unlike most games with a "morality" system, it's not a matter of simply aligning with the character or faction whose ending you want or simply avoiding the obvious puppy-kicking choices -- all of the choices have trade-offs, and coming down on one side or the other means accepting that trade. I can't remember the last game where I had to simply put the controller down for a few minutes and genuinely consider the consequences of each choice. In the end, I decided to make the choice that kept my conscience the cleanest each time, and I didn't end where I expected it to. It was also intriguing to me that, rather than aligning yourself with one of the three "factions" in the game, the final vote is instead which one you're going to reject. Rejecting Utility results in a morally upright and admirable choice, but one in which you abdicate your responsibilities and end up chasing something that may be unrealistic and even impossible. Rejecting Liberty means making a safe, responsible choice with arguably the least loss of life, but one which the population of the continent is doomed to servitude under a creed that you know to be an unjust lie, and that you've sacrificed the last, best hope to correct it. Rejecting Morality results in a logical, even clever geopolitical move, but one that it's difficult to justify to anyone as anything other than a self-serving power grab.

I also enjoyed the actual act of persuasion. I was worried that the investigation segments would result in unlocking "perfect answers" that you would always have to select, but my fears were unfounded -- more information just gives you more arguments, not necessarily better arguments. Instead, you have to take the measure of the person you're talking to and tailor your arguments to what they would find most receptive. The veteran soldier Erador is more likely to be persuaded if you argue towards your feudal obligations and the martial reputation of House Wolffort. Anna is completely unmoved by emotional or moral arguments, but she's surprisingly receptive if you can prove you've done your homework and make a logical case based on the facts. Geela prefers moral arguments, but more from a public relations sense than any inherent ethical code on her part -- she wants a plan that can be sold as House Wolffort being in the right. It's a delight to hear the situation, decide what you want to do, examine the facts, then consider how your allies will respond as you approach them. It's so good, in fact, that I wish there was more of it -- I was disappointed that the core seven were the only people who ever get a vote in the game. I guess it's sort of necessary for the voters to remain consistent so that the player can retain a good grasp of their personalities and values, but I would have liked to see other people join in the voting depending on what route you were on, or more opportunities to persuade outside of the big branches. It's kind of weird that, say, Geela, Hughette, Anna, and arguably Erador (who are all basically randos in terms of the story) all get votes, but none of the other people you recruit do. I suppose we're meant to think that everyone is technically voting, and the seven are just a representation of the overall electorate (simplified down for the player's sake, so that they don't have to negotiate with twenty-odd people every time a vote comes up), in the same way that your "army" is never more than a few dozen people. Don't mind me, I'm just the guy who spends too much time wondering about questions of scale in fantasy strategy RPGs.

(I did notice that Serenoa lost his vote since the first demo, which makes a certain amount of sense -- having a vote and making that vote the tiebreaker gives the player a little too much power to control the voting without having to persuade their allies at all. This would have been especially true once three-way votes started coming up -- if Serenoa joined up with a two-person faction in a three-way vote, the worst another faction could do would tie them, and Serenoa's vote would break the tie. It's a little weird that this basically makes the lord of the house an impartial adjudicator though.)

Oh, I almost forgot to talk about the third major player phase: Investigation. Don't worry, you wouldn't have missed much if I had -- investigation is extremely underdeveloped. You examine all the sparklies, you talk to all the NPCs, you do another once-over while swinging the camera around to make sure you haven't missed anything, then you press Start and move on to the next part. More could have been done. How about bonus negotiations where if you succeed, you can make the next story fight easier by cutting off reinforcements or starting in a better position? Or sidequests triggered by negotiating with NPCs that give you more upgrade materials? You could even move recruitment here -- instead of having them show up in your tent when you cross certain conviction thresholds, have them appear during investigation, and if you negotiate correctly or perform some other task, they join up then and there. (You may have noticed that I want more opportunities to negotiate.) As it is, though, the most intrigue you get during investigation is one-time-only merchants who sell a slightly better class of consummable than your normal vendor. Hardly worth mentioning, and something of a disappointment considering how fleshed-out and interesting the other two main phases are.

I discussed the narrative slightly during the persuasion section above, but to go into more detail: It's a relief to finally get one of these games that commits to being a political drama throughout. Be it Fire Emblem, Ogre Battle, or Final Fantasy Tactics, the trend has always been to start with politics to set the stage, but to ultimately move on to ancient demons and magic artifacts as the real source of the strife. Triangle Strategy is about the conflict between nations for power and resources, and that's it. To the extent that character drama is involved, it's to demonstrate how individuals, even ones who are trying to do the best they can, are hopelessly crushed between the gears of the systemic issues that are bigger than any one person. (I suppose it's a very 2020s game in that respect.) That's not an unambiguous positive in my opinion, but it does serve to set the game apart from its peers, which generally feel like they have to let the player beat up a giant dragon at the end in order to have a satisfying denouement. It's a telling motif that all three of the main nations are corrupt, reversed takes on the ideals they're supposed to loosely embody -- take your pick between a Randian libertarian hellscape, a prejudice-driven xenophobic theocracy, or an entitled, self-serving oligarchy.

Actually, contrasting Triangle Strategy with the other big Switch strategy RPG, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, is of great interest to me. Three Houses covers for its somewhat shaky main plot with an extensive cast of well-written and compelling characters. Even the fringe-iest PCs had more to them than met the eye, believable backstories and realistic inner lives. Triangle Strategy, by contrast, has much more solid main plotting and logical world-building, but it does so at the cost of characterization. The minor characters are fun to use in battle, but they have to be, because that's basically all you get. They never interact with anyone besides the main cast, they don't have plot or character arcs aside from one three-stage side story per character, and they don't intersect with the main plot at all. (It is kind of funny to me that people have been arguing for years that FE should get rid of permadeath so that the minor characters can more reliably interact with the main plot, and then you get this, which doesn't use permadeath but integrates its minor characters into the narrative with even less care than the worst FE game.)

The voice acting has picked up some criticism, and not unjustly, in my mind. (I'm loathe to criticize voice acting recorded in the pandemic, however.) Most of the actors are experienced and I don't feel anyone was miscast, but there's some bad direction here. However, that's not to say there are no good performances. In particular, (endgame spoilers) Benedict's scornful dressing-down of Serenoa in the Morality final route was hair-raising, as was Serenoa's indignant defense of his actions and beliefs.

Overall, an excellent game and highly recommended. It's the first long-form game since Three Houses where I rolled credits and immediately wanted to start another run, which is high praise. (With Kirby coming out next week, I'm probably not going to right away, though.) I'd buy a sequel, and if they fixed the character customization problems they'd have an all-time classic on their hands. Buy it unless you hate reading.

This is a fantastic writeup! I just finished the game last night (did Frederica's route, but really thought hard about Benedict's). I definitely want to do the NG+ that shows you all the invisible stats so I think I'll play again to do Benedict's ending. Maybe the Golden route too, but maybe on Easy or something to make it go quicker and survive one of the required battle conditions that I see as difficult to do.

Tanto said:

This is not to say the gameplay is perfect, although I did largely enjoy it. First off, although the game was advertised on its environmental interactions system -- fire spells light burn flammable objects, ice melts to form puddles, lightning conducts in water, high winds lower projectile accuracy, etc -- this system is highly underused. Most of the interactions require turns of setup for very little payoff, so it really only comes up in situations where the element was on the map to start with, which, in practice, tends to be electrifying standing water on maps that have it and occasionally lighting grass on fire in outdoor maps. Additionally, in every map I played, the weather started clear and only changed if I chose to change it, and only one character I recruited could do that. This is baffling to me. You're going to include weather but not have any gimmick maps that take advantage of it?

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Agreed, I wanted more. I wish that Ezana had been a bit more capable of taking hits, I wanted to use her more to generate water but she just couldn't survive that much.

I will note that the "Tempest" high winds condition is subtle, and there was one time where I didn't realize it was a Tempest until archers seemed to be missing a lot and I finally saw it noted somewhere. Makes me wonder if other levels were that condition and I just couldn't tell?

I do want to add that you can electrify the mine cart tracks, that level was absolutely my favourite in the game and again, I wanted more. I was glad to see it used as a mock battle. I wish the same was true for The Source, that's probably my second-favourite level.

Tanto said:

First of all, most of the choices are quite difficult. The writers did an excellent job of making sure that there is no obvious "right" choice in any of the votes -- although Benedict in particular comes up with a few truly skin-crawling proposals over the course of the game, he can at least make a good case for most of them. Unlike most games with a "morality" system, it's not a matter of simply aligning with the character or faction whose ending you want or simply avoiding the obvious puppy-kicking choices -- all of the choices have trade-offs, and coming down on one side or the other means accepting that trade. I can't remember the last game where I had to simply put the controller down for a few minutes and genuinely consider the consequences of each choice.

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Seriously, the writing in this game is absolutely spectacular.

Tanto said:

(I did notice that Serenoa lost his vote since the first demo, which makes a certain amount of sense -- having a vote and making that vote the tiebreaker gives the player a little too much power to control the voting without having to persuade their allies at all. This would have been especially true once three-way votes started coming up -- if Serenoa joined up with a two-person faction in a three-way vote, the worst another faction could do would tie them, and Serenoa's vote would break the tie. It's a little weird that this basically makes the lord of the house an impartial adjudicator though.)

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I did get one result that was 3-2-3, and then had to put my vote in to break the tie between the two that got three votes. So you do come in as needed, but I like that you're impartial until needed.

Tanto said:

The voice acting has picked up some criticism, and not unjustly, in my mind. (I'm loathe to criticize voice acting recorded in the pandemic, however.) Most of the actors are experienced and I don't feel anyone was miscast, but there's some bad direction here. However, that's not to say there are no good performances. In particular, (endgame spoilers) Benedict's scornful dressing-down of Serenoa in the Morality final route was hair-raising, as was Serenoa's indignant defense of his actions and beliefs.

Overall, an excellent game and highly recommended. It's the first long-form game since Three Houses where I rolled credits and immediately wanted to start another run, which is high praise. (With Kirby coming out next week, I'm probably not going to right away, though.) I'd buy a sequel, and if they fixed the character customization problems they'd have an all-time classic on their hands. Buy it unless you hate reading.

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Agreed on all counts. Benedict's voice actor can especially step up I feel. I didn't think about recording during the pandemic, that's a great point.

Just made what I assume to be the game's most climactic choice, and boy was it a doozy. It feels very much set up so that no matter what choice you make, you will feel bad about it, and someone else will make you feel worse about it. Love how spirited everyone got in the discussion leading up to it, as well; for the first time, this felt like an actual contested debate worthy of the space with the big tables. Real great vocal performances all around. Also, mother fuck, "You are shackled to the past" -> "I would call it loyalty" is an A+ line, dripping with condescension and judgement.

Anyway, the game has really started kicking into high gear and I'm loving it. I have essentially zero complaints of any kind with this game save two:

1. Save management: I wish there were more than 10 save slots, and I wish you could delete save files. (I had been making a save before each decision point, but then ran out of space, and being unable to delete limits my ability to reorganize now that I know there's a limit of 10.)

2. The name is bad. Yes, lol memes, but I really think sticking it with the development placeholder name has done it a disservice. The internet likes it, but I doubt that people who actually care about it do? Better names, off the top of my head, although I'm sure they could have come up with something better still:

• Saltiron Tactics
• Salt, Iron, and Blood
• Saltiron Conviction
• Scales of Conviction
• Economies of Scale
• The Norzelia Triangle
• Source of Confict
• Source of Conviction

Everything else is great. I feel like I can say this is hardest hard mode of any tactics game that I've played, and I'm really enjoying it. I routinely have to attempt an encounter more than once (for which I reload; I don't want to keep my kudos and XP), I rarely finish a fight without at least one casualty, and there is often little room for error. The battle against Avlora was appropriately the hardest encounter in the game (thus far, anyway) by a fair margin. (And the subsequent battles were a bit of a breather that I got first try with few casualties.)

I love the game's morality system. I'm sure it has actual names for the 3 colours, but I absolutely cannot be arsed to learn them, and prefer to think of them as Paragon (Green), Renegade (Red), and Incorrect (Yellow). I'm 50 hours deep and assume there's at least another dozen left, but I expect I may dive right back in to pick the other Red/Green choices throughout. (Oh, I also noted that just before the Big Choice, my Path Travelled shows a branch I had no control over leading into it, which implies that my previous decisions may have been consequential, and also hints at the possibility of another path entirely that has me fascinated. If true, I hope I didn't fuck myself out of some Best Ending by killing the jerk twins or failing to go home and see dad, since those are the only two of my past decisions that I'm genuinely conflicted about.)

I love that arguably the game's biggest spoiler sounds utterly mundane when divorced of its context (rock salt exists and has been found in the new mine) but makes you go "oh shiiiiit" in the moment. I love how much this game reminds me of Vandal Hearts, although I do wish it had a bit more novelty like in the minecart level.

Anyway, this remains a good triangle. Would trigonometry again.

"Final Fantasy Tactics: Salt of the Blood; Salt of the Iron"

If anyone wants to know how to get the "True" Ending, here is the explanation below in spoilers

Started a NG+, and man am I impressed by how different things are. I thought it would rely a lot more on recycling maps but nope, quite different. Decided to see what happens if I surrender Roland and... whoof. Burning the wheat fields is heavy.

I also unlocked Decimal who is the goofiest and not really useful but I love it. I very much like the addition of seeing the point effect of the choices and the characters I can recruit. This is very cool, and I would love it if more games would let NG+ peek under the hood like this.

Tanto said:

Going up to the third class level requires a character be level 20 and that they spend a Medal of Valor -- but there are maybe a half-dozen Medals of Valor in the game. Again, I wouldn't care if it was only stats, but again, the class promotions lock off cool new abilities and strategies, and every single character you use extensively is going to want one. Hope you're happy with the six you picked.

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I will note that when I started a new game I immediately got five of these. I'm assuming more will show up as I continue on but the game may be pushing players more toward multiple playthroughs than I thought.

I think I'm about 7 or so hours in at this point, and I'm really liking this game a lot. I'm actually quite interested in the story, which is good because the more I think about the mechanics, it seems like they've been very stripped down compared to Final Fantasy Tactics, which is an obvious visual inspiration. If anything, I think the closest analog at this point is Vandal Hearts, which is no knock of course, just not the pedigree I was expecting with this game.

Also, the 2D-HD-tilt-shifted-blurry-overblown-highlights is now officially played out to me. Give me crispy, pixelly textures if you're going for the PS1 look or not at all.

Gave the demo another shot while I wasn’t tired and liked it a lot more. Picking up today with Kirby.

My NG+ playthrough has been delightful, there's so much more variety to the paths than I thought even though the stories do reconvene at a couple points. Also the character side stories continue which I did not expect, with more of Anna's history and Benedict's flower being explained for example.

Finally, the geologist lady is a great character but I'm super bummed that her powers are based on what she's standing on, making her of no real use in the urban fights. Oh well.

Yeah, Giovanna is very disappointing, which is a shame because she has a neat design and concept that just do not pan out in practice whatsoever. Maybe if this was more like Wildermyth and she could target squares in range to cause them to do their effects, she'd be better.

This is the hardest TRPG I've ever played. I'm not sure if that is a compliment or a complaint. I end most maps with 2 or 3 units left, and that is usually on the 2 or 3 try. I am nearing the end of the game, I believe (Chapter 18), but I still don't feel like I know how this game works.

Maybe I should grind some trial battles; a big problem I have is that I constantly leave enemies with 15-20 hp and no way of finishing them off before a healer gets involved.

Rascally Badger said:

Maybe I should grind some trial battles; a big problem I have is that I constantly leave enemies with 15-20 hp and no way of finishing them off before a healer gets involved.

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Absolutely do the mental mock battles. They also give you a lot of the materials/money to do more upgrades with Jens. You'll be starved for upgrades on your first playthrough unless you do them.

I feel like you're "supposed" to do each at least once. Use them for experimenting with bench characters.
Also, some characters, e.g. only get passable/broken when they get certain passives.

How long is this game? I'd like to check it out, but I'm currently nearing 200 hours in Elden Ring and don't want to go to another long game when I decide to put it down for a bit

Paul le Fou said:

How long is this game? I'd like to check it out, but I'm currently nearing 200 hours in Elden Ring and don't want to go to another long game when I decide to put it down for a bit

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My first playthough was around 30 hours I think? Just finished my second at 50 hours, the second goes way faster since I skipped dialogue in parts I'd already seen, and you don't have to re-search areas to find items in the investigation phase. I'm debating a third to see another ending branch.

Kalir said:

I'm on New Game Plus and have gotten every unit not locked behind specific routes. My take is that every unit is good and cool except Lionel and Piccoletta.

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Piccoletta seemed really good to me at first. Decoy can absorb a lot of hits and being able to take away 3 of your enemy's turns with a single action is very strong. (A trap can only take away one). She also has a good jump, so is pretty mobile on vertically-oriented maps.

However, her ability to do damage really falls off at higher levels and the Decoys can also get obliterated pretty quickly. I lived to regret investing so many resources in her

What is everyone's take on the healers?

Geela is very effective but is also a little boring because she is one-dimensional. I experimented with two others but ultimately found it difficult to manage without Geela.

Medina is fun and she later gains a that is very powerful, but I've been short on money the whole game and it is expensive to consume so many healing items.

I tried to go with Hossabrau for a bit. Her attacks do some nice damage and can pick up extra TP relatively easily with one of her abilities. However, it is brutal that her healing ability doesn't heal herself and only has a range of 1.