Reply With Quote38?!?! Amazing!Originally Posted by Geo
Seriously, I'd love to hear what you think of the game. I'm always down for Japanese "tactics" style games.
edit: post 666 about D&D. MY MOM WAS RIGHT.
I picked it up at a Gamestop at lunch. Alas, you'll have to wait about 6 hours for my miserable impressions. :) Thought I'd start a specific thread. If anyone else gets it today and can put some time into it, please do tell.
All I can tell you right now is the case is plastic, and the manual is about 48 pages (really maybe 38 as far as info on the game). :D If you have any questions about something you think the manual would answer, do let me know and I'll try to sneak a peek here at work> :)
Oh, and it says you can move "through" other members of your party, just obviously can't have them both on the same square. I've played some turn-based stuff where you have to move around your squad-mate/party-mate's positions (can't move through the square they're occupying), so that seemed maybe worth mentioning.
38?!?! Amazing!
Seriously, I'd love to hear what you think of the game. I'm always down for Japanese "tactics" style games.
edit: post 666 about D&D. MY MOM WAS RIGHT.
Last edited by DeathMonkey; 08-16-2007 at 10:38 AM.
I hear you can't mutli-class. Or choose prestige classes.
I also hear the framerate is awful. Could you confirm/deny any of these issues?
No multi-classing would be very sad. I would be fine without Prestige Classes though.
Imagine that. A PSP tactics games with an inexplicably horrible framerate. *cough*Field Commander*cough*
It amazes me that 3d action games like God of War and Daxter and Metal Gear can run with fluid framerates with lots of action, yet these developers can't even make a freaking TURN-BASED STRATEGY game run with a fluid framerate?
For shame.
Well caught sir.
Well, let's see - I was ultra-geeking on the detailed character builds, with all of the typical D&D stuff. The tutorials were not bad - but the loads were a bit long.
I'm only in the first adventure, but the frame rate seems to be a bit dragging, nothing serious. It also feels really dark in general, sort of like LotR tactics. Everything else is as you'd expect when you're level 1 with a Sorc in your party ...
Yes it is dark. Too dark. With NO gamma/brightness adjustment.
Hey, developers-
The PSP is a portable system. It's meant to be played outside or in public transit. Not in a dark room with the lights off. When you make your games dark, and you don't put a brightness control in it, the game is unplayable.
Pretty much shelfing this one as I can't see anything on the screen when I'm on the train. Good job, guys.
~30 pp of manual (incl obligatory PSP garbage in every manual), 10 pp glossary and 10pp of credits.
Hey man, trying drawing a torch. Makes all the difference in the world.
I haven't gotten high enough for either of the class issues to come to light. Unfortunately, I was provided with a gold-build, with no manual, so I have no idea.
This is a turn-based game, so I don't know that framerate is an issue at all. I can detect no stuttering in the video of the game on my machine.
Even with a torch, everything outside it's light is impossible to see. And that's pretty much how the game works... everything just out of the torch's light is "visible" to the player, but so dark I can't see anything in any sort of normal lighting.
Ok, I'll be the one to ask the obvious question...
What brightness level do you have your PSP set to?
Everything outside the range of the torch is outside the camera angle of any particular player. If you wander away from the torch's light during exploring mode, then you should reasonably expect to have a difficult time seeing anything -- no one's there holding a torch.
Well I just bought the game and just bought the manual, and the manual is uber sparse. It's just some basic concepts and instructions for using the interface. Gameplay mechanics must be either left to in game help or else not explained at all.
If you've gotten anyone above level 1, standard D20 rules say you should have had been able to multiclass. So if you haven't been able to, you probably can't. I won't cry much about it though, multiclassing usually doesn't make much sense and prestige classes are for munchkins. The core classes along have a lot of flexibility in 3.5 DnD, what with feats and skills and all, to provide a satisfying gameplay experience. Assuming it's all implemented well.
Anyone know if this game goes all the way to level 20 or did they put a limit at leve 5 or 10 or similar to keep things easier to implement?
When I talked about the game being dark, I was talking about playing indoors in reasonable room light last night.
As for framerate, yeah it really doesn't matter in a TBS game.
What I mean is, right when the light begins to falls off, it still reveals monsters. However, these monsters are so dark, I can't see them in normal lighting. If I'm in my room with the light off, I can see them fine.
And my PSP is at max brightness when trying to view on the train.
Perhaps there's something up with your screen, then. I play in the afternoons in my car, while waiting for my kids to finish up at Kung Fu. We've had some seriously bright and hot weather here lately, and I've never had a problem with obscuring the vision.
The one thing I'm critical of in this game so far is lack of a real map. In the dungeon I'm in right now, I cannot, for the life of me, remember if I've been to certain rooms already.
The point of computer D&D games is to be a munchkin. Though Psionics is a rare treat, bad framerate (I don't care if it's turn-based, I saw the game in action today and the laggy camera is baked shit), no multiclassing and no prestige classes means no sale.
Guess I'll reinstall ToEE and get Jeanne d'Arc when I go to pick up Bioshock instead.
What's laggy about the camera again? My camera appears to be just as responsive as I expect it to be. Perhaps I'm overly happy with this game -- I can't tell. I woudn't hesitate to guess, based on your commentary to date, however, that you aren't equally hypercritical.
I had a long workday, got some play time this evening.
I have no complaints about the camera. You maneuver it with the thumbstick and it seems quite responsive (at least in the early going - I dunno, maybe it gets slower when you have a full party or something?). I guess I could beef that here and there I can't quite get the camera angle I'd like, but overall it feels fine (imho). Load times feel a tad sluggish but not too bad (and it's something the redesigned PSP's doubled flash memory might remedy a bit).
You get what seems a very generous number of action points to maneuver and attack, which I like. I've played some of these type things where you can't move more than 4-5 squares, or can't do multiple maneuvers on one turn and it can feel constricting. This seems more flexible than that, and it feels livelier than some TBS stuff I've tried because of that.
I haven't gotten that far yet (tutorials, and I chose to use the "pre-setup" party members Quick Start option).
All the info and stats can feel a bit intimidating, but the controls work well and I certainly can't complain about a lack of in-game help and info (it's just the sheer amount to wade through is a bit intimidating to me).
I got to play it quite a bit last night, and my first impressions are positive.
The character creation is fun, especially getting a jumbo party of 6. It seems like a lot of fights will let you use all 6 at once too. I'm only four adventures into the campaign because I killed a lot of time with my three campaign restarts, but two of the adventures let me bring all six party members which is nice. Why three restarts? Because I'm a fiddly bastard who must have his party just right.
This game does have some of the goofiness common to computer interpretations of DnD. They abstracted resting to a simple menu option available whenever there are no enemies in sight. This means that it's trivially easy for spellcasters to refill on spells which tilts the power balance game towards casters. My third campaign restarted in a party with 4 of the 6 characters as casters due to this fact.
Interface seems just fine to me, no problems with screen darkness or camera controls. The first two adventures are very dark, but I think that's just a faithful representation of DnD rather goofy visibility system where a character can't see more than 6 squares in darkness unless they have dark/lowlight visions. My only interface quibble is how hard it is to set up complex movement paths. Picking a direction of move seems to be relative to the current camera angle and since the camera is rotatable it can mean that it's awful hard to tell sometimes whether you need to press due right or diagonal up/right to move.
Mobility is surprisingly important. The game has features a surprising amount of enemies with ranged weapons. I don't normally think of gobilns as proficient with bows apparently whoever designed this game is firmly of the belief that they are. Mobility is also extra important for a rogue because there's chests scattered around the levels and a strong incentive to go get them before the last enemy dies (which ends the adventure). My first party had a halfling rogue and the reduced mobility of halflings just wouldn't do. Another mobility concern is strength because this game, unlike any human DM I've ever played with, actually calculates encumbrance and applies penalties to movement for being too heavily loaded.
So overall I'm pretty satisfied with my first taste of this game and eager to get some more playtime in. I'm wondering just how a high level the game goes to since I'm seeing 50k gold magic items for sale already. By typical DnD wealth progressions, that's stuff usually not obtainable until characters are in the 15+ level range.
So can you multi class? (eg start as Rogue then pick up a few levels of fighter etc)
Or are you the same class forever?
I am not sure why I am asking - either way this is the game (plus Ultima VII on Exult for PSP :-) that is perilously close to making me get a PSP.
Now I just have to decide if I want to go with the certain home brew support on the current model, or wait for the extra memory etc in the slim model and hope like hell home brew still works.
I felt like that was a tease - since you can come back to any shop at any time it is nice to know that stuff is there ...
I wouldn't call the game a 'system seller' but it is pretty good so far.
Looks like same class forever, but that's really not a big deal to me. Multiclassing between core classes in DnD is rarely effective anyway, except maybe some fighter/barb hybrids. There's still plenty of character customizatio as they go up in levels since you get to manually pick new skills, feats, spells, psionic powers, etc.
Is flanking or attacking enemies on their backside important in this? (flanking is apparently pretty critical in Jeanne D'Arc from the reviews).
Even though I have this, so far I haven't read in the manual or really noticed in the game whether it makes a difference if one of my characters attacks his target face to face; or approaches from the side or back.
The combat tutorial talks about flanking the opponent and it *is* important, but it is handled differently than in Jeanne d'Arc. In Jeanne you get a 'facing' bonus that is really important, whereas flanking in D&D Tactics is about having one person of your party on either side of an enemy. I felt it made a big difference for me in the 'banner carrier' battle.
BTW - Jeanne D'Arc rocks ... I have run down my battery since yesterday going back & forth with these two games ...
Not that that's saying that much. :)
Shutupshutupshutupshutup. I'm covering my ears! LALALALALALALALA I Can't Hear You!!!!1!!
I do not need two addictive PSP games in my life at once.
... and I had to stop playing Puzzle Quest yet again to start those :D
As for the battery, yeah, I know ...
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