[h1]Not Those Orcs[/h1]
[h2]Story[/h2]
The good news is that there is some more individual characterization for some of the Scrap Springs Division party members, since many of them suffered due to the ESA's tyranny. It's a good way to handle both the macro story of the ESA and the micro story of individual characters, and motivates the player to fight the ESA even harder.
Chronus-13's interactions with the party are weird, since it doesn't seem to mind at all about being ostracized by everyone and it generally acts as a medium for Zeron to communicate with everyone else. This might be intentional, since Krax likely didn't want it to develop too much free will and run off with the important Molarian data. Personally, I would have found it more interesting if Chronus did have more agency and question which side it wants to remain loyal to, since it is essentially treated as a tool even by the good guys. It would add a lot more weight to [spoiler]its digital death in the ending of the game[/spoiler].
As for the macro plot, we get more context about how Carol Everson [spoiler]got blamed for the Raxion II incident, and how Novus went along with the ESA in framing her. We also get to see how the ESA propaganda works due to the news networks framing the story to suit the country's agenda, which is eerily similar to the real life war on terror. Personally, I think the news segments are a good way to show what each country or faction expects their citizens to believe. It's also a good callback to the optional NBN event in Origins, where the player themselves could have been easily suckered by the pro-Novus documentary[/spoiler].
[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
The game is mechanically very similar to Origins. However, there are some new additions that greatly affect the balance.
* First of all, there are both one-time and respawning enemies, and taking advantage of the latter means the player can reach the party's power ceiling much more efficiently.
* Shops now have an accessory that can grant a passive speed buff with a power penalty, with the latter not actually mattering due to how power cost scales to max power anyways. This is an excellent placeholder until the user can learn the temporal acceleration passive from their own skill tree.
* There are now robot party members, who use an entirely different skill tree. They cannot benefit from the brain drain series of skills nor can they use the more broken non-robot equipment, but their ceiling is incredibly high due to their threadripping skill tree, which can grant them three actions a turn. They do have some weaknesses though, since they require specialized synthetic healing methods and they are very weak to electricity by default.
Like before, every humanoid character has very similar skill trees, though due to the higher enemy power ceiling, it becomes even more obvious that the Technician class is the best one. They have power/charge regen as well as passives for power attack, making them excellent at pretty much every role in the game, though their best role is to refill the party's power/charge as required. While their OPness is somewhat acceptable in this game, in the main "Suikoden"-like game, they will definitely need to be nerfed to prevent the player from just running through the game with a party full of infinitely recharging Technicians. The only non-Technician class that stands out is the Combatant, since they have group buffs that surpass the generic support drones.
As for enemies, the first dungeon of this game is more beginner friendly than Origins, since it's smaller, has mob sizes of 1, and has a boss with an easy alternate win condition, which makes it doable on normal. Afterwards, you get access to the shop to properly prepare for the real challenges of the game. However, enemies also require you to learn the electric and antimatter damage types, since many of them will easily tank Matcon Scythe attack spam. Fortunately, if you have the brain drain series of skills, you can easily farm enough knowledge points to learn every damage type you might need.
One thing that really tips the scales in the favor of the player is that shops have almost all available equipment tiers available from the start, instead of unlocking progressively. This means if you farm enough money through criminal skills or Blackjack gambling, you can make a fully decked out team before the first true boss of the game and clobber them even on very hard. Shops for humanoid equipment are also fairly frequent, though robot shops are much rarer for some reason, so make sure to take full advantage of the latter before making any story progress. The only things truly locked behind story progress are [spoiler]the far futuristic weapons in Time's Eclipse, but you probably don't need them for beating the final boss[/spoiler].
As for the infamous Doppelganger armor, I think something like this should be locked behind challenging late game sidequests, since it seems like something that is too strong to simply be buyable from the start. Additionally, the temporal acceleration passive should be similarly difficult to obtain, since increasing the characters' speed in an ATB game gives a huge advantage. Combining these two can completely break the game in half due to the player gaining a massive turn advantage even on the highest difficulty.
Tactics battles are mostly the same as before, though I do find some maps easier to deal with than others due to the available space to maneuver in. One thing I did notice is that for some battles, you have more control over your units' starting positions than others, which can be bad if the game starts off your allied units facing away from the enemy. Also, like before, tactics battles do not have the same extremely high preparation ceiling as regular battles, so I stuck to normal mode with these.
One new addition are cyberspace battles, which are basically regular battles but with a more limited skill tree and item loadout. This time, the skill trees have even less individuality and a fairly low ceiling, so I stuck with normal mode for these.
[h2]Verdict[/h2]
[i]ORC: We have supply issues because of the ESA's crackdown.
Also ORC: We sell almost every tier of equipment in the game. Have fun.[/i]
7.5/10
The story is much better than in Origins and you get a better sense of what's at stake for those who fight against the ESA. I do wish Chronus-13 was more fleshed out, since it feels like the story couldn't decide if they wanted it to be a tool like the fully robotic party members or if they wanted Chronus-13 to truly be a main character. As for the gameplay, the way shop progress is handled, or lack thereof, makes it hard to find the balance between being underpowered like in Origins's first dungeon or grossly overpowered like my fully equipped team. Maybe it's better to treat this as a preview of the main game's potential power ceiling.
