Categoría: °RPG

Metaphor: ReFantazio — Creator’s Voice

~ Ichiro Yamazaki ~ Deja un comentario

This is a must watch if you are curious about the game or need more details than just the trailer.
Keep in mind the developers behind this game are a super team, they are the same people who worked in modern Persona games but featuring Nier series artist and Neon Genesis Evangelion mechanical designer.

Valkyria Chronicles II – gameplay advice

~ Ichiro Yamazaki ~ Deja un comentario

I finished the game so it’s time for some gameplay advice, hoping it’s useful for both newcomers and people familiar with the franchise.

In battle:

  • Most times, it pays off to have control of the areas, and we achieve this by capturing enemy’s camps. By capturing a camp we don’t only block their reinforcements, we also boost Morale and have a ready-to-deploy base for ourselves. Besides, this game features special camps called gate camps, and if we capture them we can use them to deploy to additional areas.
  • Always keep in mind mission objectives and failure conditions. A common failure condition is to lose our main base camp, so we better keep track of nearby areas and have at least an ally nearby protecting it.
  • This game distributes the battlefield across areas, so we need to quickly adapt to the current situation by deploying and undeploying the correct soldiers. Examples include deploying lancers to effectively countering tanks.
  • Idle, unnecesary people better be removed from the battlefield because we can have at most 6 soldiers (tank included) deployed.
  • Use orders effectively and keep in mind they are CP expensive. However they come in handy in tight spots for boosting attack and defense stats, and for healing requests.
  • Snipers are actually better and more useful than what we believe they are. And promoting a sniper to Elite Sniper is one of the best things we could do to have the upper hand on many situations, but specially while fighting bosses. Having an Elite Sniper means a sick combo of all accuracy, range, firepower and little risk.

Outside battle:

  • Don’t forget to go to the Drill Grounds every now and then. When leveling up, I strongly suggest to give priority to the frontline soldiers: scouts, shocktroopers and lancers.
  • Go to the R&D lab frequently and upgrade as most equipment as you can. Try to keep some balance between upgrading the tank and upgrading the soldiers equipment.
  • On this game, I believe the tank is so much better than the APC on every mission. Besides, you should know the tank may use only a CP by picking the correct body.
  • We may purchase more orders at the Shop, so it’s always a good idea to pay them a visit and see if they have anything useful. (by the way, it is very cool to have Welkin and Alicia here). Purchasing an order costs EXP instead of DCT, so keep that in mind and don’t use all EXP only on leveling up.

My own SRPG tier

~ Ichiro Yamazaki ~ Deja un comentario

Strategy RPG is my favorite game genre and I’ve been having a great time with all these games.
So I decided to rank all my favorite SRPGs based on this criteria:

1.- First of all, combat system aspects including map design, difficulty design, level of unit customization, objective variety, incentives to get victory as fast as we could, risk-reward frameworks, fun side objectives, real army management, last but not least: original battle mechanics.

2.- Everything related to the story: quality of the script, character development, world building, pace, dialogues, depth, narrative style, beginning, climax and ending.

3.- Artistic features including music, world art, character art.

4.- Visual related works including UI, sprites, 3D models, combat animations.

I’ve played more than that but I need to play even more games. This tier only shows my favorites instead of every SRPG I’ve beaten. It is not meant to be a comprehensive must play strategy games or anything like that. It’s only my structured recommendation.
And by the way, I already reviewed some of these games here, so feel free to read about them for more detail.