I’ve been playing Tactics Ogre Reborn and just got to act 4 and… Man I really want to enjoy this game, but it’s difficult, and the board is rarely even in a way that’s frustrating. For example, casters are clearly stronger than martial units, but they need mp. Pretty typical. But, during combat your units can pick up cards that give buffs like increased mp generation or increased activation of automatic skills (which do things like generate mp, cause buffs/debuffs, one of them fully doubles healing done for the turn). I like the card system, somewhat, because it pressures you to move up as opposed to bottlenecking and defending set points whenever possible. But, once you’re a little way into the game, enemy casters come in with four cards, one of increased magic damage, one of increased auto skill proc, two of mp regeneration. Now your casters are weak as shit and need to run to the front lines to get the buffs necessary to cast high level spells more than once every few turns, while the enemy casters are goddamn artillery pieces that can attack from across the entire map. Your martials need to run through artillery fire and break through enemy tanks to target the back line (oops there are skills that tanks have that restrict movement so you have to kill them) and your casters can’t cast more than once every handful of turns, and can’t consistently benefit from the “your spells have longer range” auto skill, so in some fights you’re just beholden to rng of your enemy skills procing and cards you want/need showing up in places your casters can access without ending in a meat grinder.
It’s the kind of game I wish I had a friend who had beaten it a couple times to give me advice on. I’m open to looking up builds and strats online, but since it’s a remake of a game that was originally on SNES and then PSP, a lot of balance changes have occurred and sometimes you’ll find a forum post going on about how good xyz build is, only to later find someone else remarking “oh yeah that worked amazingly on the PSP version but it doesn’t work at all anymore”
pasdechance@jlai.lu 5 months ago
I rewarded myself this week with a newer release than what I would normally be drawn to when I saw a game in the bargain bin.
I picked up Guilty Gear -STRIVE- at -30% for the Switch. Where I live, that made it cheaper than on Amazon and cheaper than the digital version has ever been.
I haven’t played any fighting game in ages and while I had seen clips of this game, I had never played it or any Arc System Works games (BlazBlu-, Dragon Ball FighterZ) so everything about it is a little knew to me. My fighting game experience is lots of Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct, some Street Fighter and Darkstalkers, about two hours of Skullgirls, and maybe an hour of Samurai Shodown, Red Earth, and Cyberbots.
My initial impressions are positive. There isn’t a soul online to play with, but I’ll be working my way through training for quite some time. Graphics are very impressive. Music-wise, it isn’t something that I’d ever listen to willingly, but it certainly suits the game and sets it apart from others in the genre.
Mechanics and controls are just right for someone like me, but I don’t understand their ranking system for online play. You have to play a match and the system ranks you on that and won’t allow you to play ranked matches below your level. Ranking me 6 out of 8 might be generous since I literally just mashed the same button.