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[nenjin]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/46450/

Anyone tried it? It's $15 now on Steam. Normally I'd give it a go because it's that cheap, but I'm especially broke.

It makes no bones about borrowing heavily from stuff like Final Fantasy Tactics. On the one hand, I dig strat games like this, and I enjoy a good parody. On the other, this seems like it's taken parody beyond funny to just down right silly. So I'm kind of torn. Someone go out and buy this and tell me it's amazing and $15 is a steal.

Ah, apparently this is a European game. No wonder I'd heard nothing about it. >.>

[Frumple]

There a demo? Game's website is half in not-english even when english is selected as the language, and I'm too tired to bugger around with that right now. Couldn't find one in the twenty seconds or so I browsed the site Wait, nevermind, it was nested in some menu.

Demo download button should be on front page.

EDIT: Nevermind. Demo is over 700 megs. Don't feel like making room for that right now.

Someone try it out and give us a heads up, maybe? Screenshots make it look way too pretty for me to be even remotely interested...

[Sowelu]

I'm at work and text-only right now, so I can't look at it, but:

borrowing heavily from stuff like Final Fantasy Tactics

:D

seems like it's taken parody beyond funny to just down right silly

... :(

Disgaea was really nudging that line.  And by nudging I mean straddling.  Stomping on.  Riding that line like a mechanical bull, cowboy hat and everything.  There was so much dust you could barely see that line.  But it didn't CROSS it.

[nenjin]

Well if there's a demo, I'm diving in.

Disgaea was really nudging that line.  And by nudging I mean straddling.  Stomping on.  Riding that line like a mechanical bull, cowboy hat and everything.  There was so much dust you could barely see that line.  But it didn't CROSS it.

And the most dangerous creatures of all...............women.

I can take silly if it's at least funny. We'll see.

Edit: Bah, the demo is in German, and people's suggested workaround is opening .xml files and such and changing the language settings to English. Grah.

[nenjin]

Ok, after 20 minutes....

1) This is a thoroughly indie game.
2) It doesn't perform all that well....at least the demo doesn't.
3) There is A LOT of dialog.
4) It is very silly, from the premise to the execution.
5) It is crawling with gamer in-jokes and self-referential humor.
6) It's delivered almost like Final Fantasy Tactics; character portraits that pop up when people are speaking, the intro credits roll while you're actually playing the game...it's thoroughly inspired by FFT and other Square products from that era.

It is quite an odd bird...but I think I could get into it. Tweaking graphics setting makes the game look CONSIDERABLY less glowy. It's like someone forgot to define the thresholds on some of the gfx, because even in game the default settings are so glowy I think I'm seeing double.

It's funny....sort of. At least the intro is. You're literally a depressed hero, and your guide is literally a Holy Avatar wearing sunglasses that speaks about themselves in the 3rd person.

I can't say much about the actual game play, since the tutorial is pretty heavy-handed....but all evil heroes have an "Obsession" stat, that when maxed out does something. It relates to some bizarre obsession that's specific to each hero.

I really don't know what to say about this game...but I'm going to play the demo out and see what's what. And amazingly, that language fix works pretty well in the demo.

[nenjin]

So, my verdict on this is it's probably worth the money, at the discount. I don't know if I'd pay $20 for it though.

It's cute, it's got some RPG stuff going. It's got some tactical/strategy stuff going. How in the end it really makes for a game....just not entirely sure. You can field 10 characters in a battle, but characters are essentially:

Their weapon.
Their stats. (The standard attack, dexterity, magic, defense, stuff.)
Their armor type.
One trinket.
Two special abilities.
Thier obsession, which is basically a limit break that goes off once you do enough damage, and has both good and bad results. I.e., a stirring speech by the leader boosts attack of everyone 1 square away for a few turns, but then he gets depressed when the bonus wears off.

I want to say there's more than that, and maybe there is, but what's outlined in the demo seems fairly straightforward. So it's like a nice, simple JRPG Strategy game, with a lot of humor and RPG tropes. Also, the demo crashed right at the area transition, possibly right before the demo was supposed to end, because I hit a "NO TRANSLATION STRING." So....yeah. It's all the stuff I just said, plus a decent dosage of indie issues.

The game also plays better, mostly, once I dialed back the resolution and shadows. But maxed out it lagged on my system, which it shouldn't be because it's not a demanding game, and my system isn't weak.

The demo level at least is fairly open, with chests to go recover, and groups of enemies that activate once you get close enough. So it's not quite FFT in that regard, but I'm sure they do a lot more with the format later on in the game. Terrain tiles have a large impact on movement and defense values, so where you stand to attack is pretty important.

I will say this. Some of the animations and art are pretty good, a nice blend of JRP look with modern styling. When people miss an attack, every monster/character has their own animations, some of which are pretty funny. Like when Holy misses with his 2 handed sword, he buries the tip in the ground behind him as he goes for an overhand swing, and then swings with nothing. Then he just kind of sticks his hand back and gropes for the sword handle and puts it back on his shoulder. Or other guys attack but whiff completely as their weapon falls out of their hand. Cute stuff, I lol'd a couple times.

In terms of silliness, I would say this is easily on par with Disgaea, if not more silly.

I suppose you could do worse for the money, and it's not like someone is making one of these kinds of games every day.

[nenjin]

And a note from the pirate-sphere:

There are supposed to be over 1million copy protection glitches in the game ..... doh

I guess this game has already been out on Impulse for a while? And there are multiple versions of the demo on the web, I'm not even sure which one I played.