Project Triangle Strategy (Working Title) - New FFTA? Demo out now

[Keyboard Koala]

And it's pretty good too:

 

Nintendo Life: 9.0 out of 10

NME: 8.0 out of 10

Gamespot: 7.0 out of 10

GamesRadar: 7.0 out of 10

 

Eurogamer: recommended

[Cyhwuhx]

I keep wanting to buy this, but the sheer glacial speed of the demo makes me go naaa~hhh.

[dataDave]

Please tell me that the dialogue eases off a bit once the story starts? I’m over three hours in with only two intro battles under my belt. There’s been so much talking and intros that I know pretty much all of the characters/houses unquestionably, which is about the only positive I can get out of this so far.

 

I’m just waiting for some shit to hit a fan, then I’m hoping it’s time for less chitchat and more crushing skulls. The game play is unmistakably TO/FFT so far, but of course it’s going to take whatever systems the game features to mature before it can be judged any further than that.

[Luseth]

25 minutes ago, Fallows said:

Please tell me that the dialogue eases off a bit once the story starts? I’m over three hours in with only two intro battles under my belt. There’s been so much talking and intros that I know pretty much all of the characters/houses unquestionably, which is about the only positive I can get out of this so far.

 

I’m just waiting for some shit to hit a fan, then I’m hoping it’s time for less chitchat and more crushing skulls. The game play is unmistakably TO/FFT so far, but of course it’s going to take whatever systems the game features to mature before it can be judged any further than that.

 

Sadly I can't say it does, it's very dialogue heavy throughout. I'm just playing through short sections at a time because of it  The game's good and enjoyable but I couldn't sit and play through the whole game in one go  When you get the encampment you can then utilise that to have more fights but if you are just following the main story it's a little bit of a slog i'm afraid 

[dataDave]

With that I can’t see how this isn’t going to be 350 hours before I see the credits. Thankfully the story is engaging enough to stick at it, although if I hadn’t paid €100 for the special edition I might have given up well before now.

 

I absolutely can’t play other games when I have something like this on. Once I forget who’s who I drift off, never to return. I’m still on with Octopath, too.

[Melon_Bread]

It does waffle on a bit at the start but the story gets pretty good and shit does indeed hit the fan. Really enjoying it.

[deerokus]

This game is way better than the reviews led me to believe. It's very story heavy,aye, but it's a good story.

 

I guess if you prefer strategy games which are heavy on battles and grinding like, I dunno,Disgaea or something, you would hate it.

[b00dles]

It's very good and I've got everyone and done the all of the endings but a bit of me would quite have liked a bit more "nonary game" to the branching paths flowchart thing. 

 

Similarly I wasn't ever unable to vote the gang to do what I wanted with the scales. Which is probably good as it might be annoying for it to not go the way you want to play but it might have been good to really have to play against type if you want to go down a particular path. 

It's still much more clever than a lot of "morality choices" in games which are often murder a baby or save a baby but there's almost no way of getting any of the sections wrong as long as you speak to all the npcs.

 

It is good and the maps and actual tactics bits are really good, I just think the other parts could have been a bit more fleshed out to encourage the replayability and possible paths. I imagine part of that is because it's all voiced so would be a bit much to have loads of other paths that might lead to dead ends or just a clue for another path a la VLR.

I can't remember a single part of the storyline of FF tactics and I played that for hundreds of hours, so it's a lot more developed than that but it's almost tantalisingly close to something really clever (or something even more up my street I suppose).

[deerokus]

The AI is surprisingly savage in this game. Isolating and ruthlessly destroying your key units, healing bosses just at the most effective time, avoiding clustering, not falling for baits and traps.  

[b00dles]

13 hours ago, deerokus said:

The AI is surprisingly savage in this game. Isolating and ruthlessly destroying your key units, healing bosses just at the most effective time, avoiding clustering, not falling for baits and traps.  

Yeah I did have to grind a few fights (I'm sure it always pitched them a few levels higher than I was, regardless of how much grinding I'd done for the previous level). I completely forgot about the whole "quietus " mechanic, even though I kept buying the things in the shop 🙄

I never really got into using the debuff potions either which I think probably would be an extra element, especially with Medina.

 

I do find the lack of permadeath, or even need to heal outside of combat a little odd though, you almost do a lot better just letting someone die and then revive them, or ensuring anyone likely to die has a resurrection ring. 

 

The battles are good though, I do like the Minecraft and lift levels and I never get bored of flinging a bad guy off a drop with one of those traps.

[deerokus]

I think permadeath would ruin the game tbh, the battles are so finely balanced because they know what units you will have available when and can design battles tailored to them.

[revlob]

I'm a few hours into the post-demo content. Enjoying it so far, even if it's definitely leaning much more heavily on narrative than actual gameplay.

 

But, what brain worms made them use that sound effect for ellipses?!

[deerokus]

42 minutes ago, revlob said:

I'm a few hours into the post-demo content. Enjoying it so far, even if it's definitely leaning much more heavily on narrative than actual gameplay.

 

But, what brain worms made them use that sound effect for ellipses?!

Oh god yes, every time I think it's someone walking into the scene.

[dataDave]

I'm well into this now. The Encampment is my hangout. Sometimes I like a good old mindless grind after a long day of work, so I'm enjoying repeating the Tavern battles for the upgrade mats. I'm also trying to keep all of my units around the same level as one another.

 

The story is really picking up, too. It was never dull to begin with, but it's really beginning to kick off now and it's making me feel genuine grudge towards some of the antagonists. It takes a lot for a narrative to work its spell on me after forcing myself into trying to like tons of absolute garbage over the years, but the work done here is stellar so far.

[deerokus]

Yeah, while a lot of the actual dialogue is a bit naff (probably on the localisation team making everyone sound like they're nerdy teenagers at a LARP event), and some of the main characters a bit bland, the story is really good and engaging.

 

It's not a visual novel but it reminds me of that genre in the way the story has the feel a novel, a pretty solid novel at that. Also it does a very good job with most of the big moral dilemmas, they avoid the usual comical good/evil thing a lot of western games do, but at the same time resist the temptation to go relentlessly grimdark with it too.

 

I hope they get to do more with this setting.

[Triple A]

Playing the PC version of this and it's wonderful.  Get involved!

The dialogue goes on a bit, but the story is alright actually if you still pick up the main beats, and you do get quite attached to your little sprite characters.

Gameplay in the battles is tremendous, with a good dose of both variety in options and tactical depth.  Being able to explore levels to pick up items and tips is a nice touch, as is the added dimension & variety offered by the democracy system which also affects your path through the story.  Visuals are really pretty on PC - 4K (+120fps +HDR if you mod the ini file) yum - levels like the one from the Switch demo where you can burn the houses down, and the one with the waterfall, of those I have seen for now at least, are beautiful.  Various music tracks are decent if not genre-defining, with some melodies that sneak into your memory banks nicely.

Recommended - best JSRPG for me since, what, FF Tactics - omg that's a long time.

[Stanley]

It’s a brilliant game, and quite overlooked IMO.