Tactics V: "Obsidian Brigade"

[h1] <-- Review written for [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35180752/] 3 Point Play [/url] --> [/h1] First of all, forgive my playtime. I was playing like a madman, then got called to do something, had to close the game, ended up bugging it and now I can't play anymore. I have a 1440x900 monitor screen, and while I was trying to click the Fullscreen/Windowed button in the Main Menu, I bugged it out, and now I can't play any longer heh. So, review will have to be about my first impressions, experience I had with the game. Now, when it comes to tactics games, the only one I played was pretty much Fallout: Tactics, and to some extent, some more modern ones with a different approach, like Xcom and Valkyria Chronicles. I also played some Fire Emblem on a GBA emulator, one of the old ones. Other than that, I've never played FFT or other essentials from the TRPG world. We received this one on the curator, and I got around to playing and getting info for a review. While the presentation might not be as appealing, even if it's really good quality pixel-art, the gameplay itself is really solid, and I had a lot of fun with how much I've played. The mechanics, specially when it comes to casting, were really nice as well, I like the fact that a Mage has to "Concentrate" for a turn before he's able to cast spells, and in order to do this, you can either, choose the spell you're gonna be casting and the game will proc it in 2 turns (1 concentrating turn, and 1 cast turn) or you can actually Concentrate yourself on 1 turn, and then instacast the spell the next turn. Really good stuff. When it comes to the core aspects of the game, I feel as they were not properly explained enough, and they can be really confussing if you don't come from a heavy TRPG background, I found myself wondering where did all the experience points I'm supposedly getting were actually going to. Another thing I liked a lot was how the characters change depending on what things they have equipped. This is usually a staple on most tactical RPGs I've played, and I'm really glad they added it here as well. When it comes to customization, this game really shines: you can customize your characters' classes, equipment, techniques and skills, in order to do something that fits your playstyle. The story itself seemed interesting as well, but sadly, since I bugged the game, I might not be able to experience it for the time being. If you have a monitor with 1440x900 resolution, you might want to wait for a patch or a fix. While this is a pretty rare resolution, I'm surprised a lot of games do have issues with it. In fact, I don't even know what happened, since I was playing Fullscreen before I click that Full Screen/Windowed button on the main menu. Well, that's basically it. I'll update if the game receives a fix for this issue, and will surely add more information as well. Stay tuned!

A very solid FFT-like with a slight case of indie game syndrome when it comes to the polishing. I enjoyed the heck out of it and the dev is *impressively* responsive on the steam discussion forums (they improved keyboard controls within 15 minutes of me requesting it) so this is definitely something that deserves your money. Two thumbs up for this dev! That said, there is still some polishing that could be done. I would argue this also held true for all the official FFT games, which had balance problems way worse than this game has, but I'll list my gripes below: There are a few typos and some just plain weird dialogue at times. Some dialogue choices (like the ones about your character's faith) were so random that I have no idea whether the answers affected the story in the end. UI animation pacing and sound effect levels are a bit weird at times (especially the fade-in to the battlescape takes too long, and the sound of footsteps is too high), but animations can be turbo'd and sound effects can be muted, which is very welcome. The last boss is susceptible to crowd control effects, so a team of level 15s who couldn't hit the boss with physical weapons instead just sat waiting for the mages to finish off the level 30 paralyzed boss. Made even more hilarious by Auto-Meditate and Auto-Concentration, but in fairness it takes a lot of investment to get that combo up and running so it's understandable that it's a bit broken. It'd be nice if there was something like the Darkest Dungeon solution to stuns; applying a paralysis effect could also apply a buff that increases resistance to paralysis, so that chaining paralysis doesn't solve all your problems. Sometimes the keyboard controls act weirdly, and I once had to reboot the game when the mouse and keyboard controls on the deployment screen just flat out refused to do anything. The game was clearly designed with a controller in mind. I could never figure out how to actually *use* the mounts I bought, despite loading screen tips warning me that I might not always want to.

I'll give this a thumbs up, but I recommend waiting for a sale price. Simple but Solid Isometric strategy rpg. Needs more job classes, armor, and weapons. Being able to ride horses is neat. Story is not engaging at all. I bought this to satiate my appetite for this type of play style. I would rank it higher than Fell Seal but I'm still left wanting. Wait for a sale price. $15.00 would be fair.

[h1][b]4.5/10[/b][/h1] Decent tactical RPG that's ruined by a terrible charged attack and spell system that's *so* bad even the AI can't use them. Such a shame, because without that one issue, I'd keep the game and give it a 6.5-7/10 easily. [h2]Pros:[/h2] - I really like the graphics overall (except for unit visibility in combat). They remind me of games like Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor and others - Seems to run well, and there are battle options like overhead view that help the experience [h2]Mehs:[/h2] - Music and sound design are not good. Not *terrible* either, but there's not much to look forward to there. Music is a critical part of tactical RPGs and even if free use music is necessary due to budgetary constraints, there's no excuse for choosing music you wouldn't want to listen to for hours [h2]Cons:[/h2] - Biggest issue that ruins the game for me: charged attacks and spells. It's extremely difficult to find out if it'll go off before the target's next turn or not. This should be very visible info. Also... - THE AI LITERALLY CONSTANTLY MISSES SPELLS BECAUSE IT DOESN'T KNOW THE TARGET WILL MOVE BEFORE THEY GO OFF. If it happened once, maybe it's a fluke. But it happened 4 times in a row. Even worse: you can target the unit and not the tile and *the AI doesn't even do that* - AI keeps moving even when there's no benefit to moving. Moving takes time and delays your next turn, so the AI constantly delays turns for no reason. This makes Training battles extremely drawn out if you use AI to do them (which you probably would)... even if you turn battle speed up - Difficult to see units in combat (especially when they're wearing green against green background) and difficult to distinguish between allies/enemies - You don't get all your mana back after a fight? - When you class change to, say, Wizard or Healer, you don't start with any spells. So you just have to Meditate forever or do 0 damage with weapons/fists until you can afford an actual spell. Incredibly lame

This game captures what made tactics games of the 90s and early 2000s so great, while still bringing something new to the table. The graphics are charming, the story is interesting, and the gameplay is tactical, rich, and engaging. At the time of this review, the developer has updated and improved the game nearly every other day. Obviously this in not expected, but it is exciting to see that the developer is still passionate about the product. This is a very enjoyable game and it will only get better.

The game plays well using a controller, and runs well on the PC I am playing on, other than these vertical and horizontal bars that block/distort the view in battles and some cut-scenes. I thought that the bars may be a filter at first, then I looked at the game-play videos on \the product page and none of them seem to have the bars that I am seeing. If the visual error of the distortion bars were fixed, then I would recommend this game. EDIT: *Running the game in DirectX11 fixed the issue with the bars.

[b]Eski tarz rpg unsurlarını görebileceğiniz bu oyunda; sıra tabanlı bir oynanışın eşliğinde ilerleyişi sağlamaya çalışabilirsiniz. İçerisinde farklı karakter ve zorluk çeşitleriyle de karşılaşıp, yaptığınız birçok taktik ve stratejiyle düşmanlarınızı yok etmeye çalışabilirsiniz.

Targeting is too tedious. It is too easy to strike your own men unintentionally. Until that is fixed I will give this a pass. I am not a huge fan of low res pixel graphics, but these seem even worse than normal?

The good: -It's an FF-Tactics-like turn-based strategy that you can play with a friend. It's probably one of the only few, if not the only one where you can play it with a friend. -So far looks like there'll be a lot of depth (I've not played it for too long, so I'll be updating this review eventually.) The bad: -All the controls are told to you as if you were playing with a controller. On PC. bruh -You can't access the menu while selecting units. Also, you can't save until you finish the second level. -Playing with your friend is literally just passing him control over specific characters that you select, which, I guess? At that point you may as well play FF Tactics or something and then pass control over to your friend manually? -It may be a personal preference, but I've always hated the pixellated-3d-model artstyle, it looks horrid. You have to go 2/2.5d pixellated or stick with 3d, don't do that thing where you make a model then pixel everything. I love retro artstyles and pixel art, but I have to request, please let us choose to unpixel everything, or at least the characters. -Please let us rename our units, it's such a simple thing and so many turn-based strategy games don't let us do it, one that lets our friend control characters should have had this from the start.

タクティクスオウガやFFTの雰囲気を持つ本作。 デフォルトではちょっと見にくいのでSmooth Renderingモードでプレイ。 1周20時間ぐらい、実績解除用の強くてニューゲーム込みで80時間ぐらいでした。 基本、リニアな進行で分岐はほとんどありません。 国の乱れに悪魔がかかわるお話。 8ユニット程度を出撃させ、各ユニットを動かして戦う戦闘システム。 ClassごとにSkillとPowerを習得していく育成システム。 と、それぞれ少しずつFFTを小規模にした印象でした。 タクティクスオウガやFFTと比べ、荒削りで不親切な面もあるものの値段の分は楽しめたと思います。 英語も大したことはないので、この種の作品が好きなら。