that one RPG you held off playing for years because you knew you had to savor each minute when you finally had the time for it

>>3773633 (OP)
>savor
What is to be savored exactly?
Humor me OP

>>3773633 (OP)
They couldn't even bother enough to give the game a proper name, obviously it's shit like every single other Square Penis game.

>Choices matter multi route game that has massive consequences on your actions and HAHAHAH just kidding here's how to get the golden mega happy ending.

>>3773633 (OP)
Ah yes, my favourite RPG series

Default Mediocrity

>>3773633 (OP)
Picture unrelated.
It's a good example of a game that was wasted potential. It tried to be Tactics Ogre and FFT, but didn't take any real lessons from either.

I also don't wait to play good games or games I think I'd like.
In a sense the closest would be Metaphor, since I saved playing that since I knew I would be away working in another country for half a year. Needed a long RPG to play and I knew I'd like the game.

>>3773633 (OP)
I bought it when it came out expecting a shining force style experience with Octopath graphics.

What I got was 3 straight hours of boring, quasi-Game of Thrones dialog that put me to sleep, a quick 2 minute fight, and another 3 straight hours of dialog.

I put the game away and played FFT again.

>>3773633 (OP)
THIS piece of shit?

>>3773633 (OP)
Cyberpunk 2077
Waiting for patches never hurts when it comes to RPGs

>>3773633 (OP)
Based OP

>>3773773
>It tried to be Tactics Ogre and FFT, but didn't take any real lessons from either.
Except it did. TO and FFT can be trivialized by grinding; Triangle Strategy cannot.

>>3773916
Triangle Strategy is piss easy without grinding. You're never challenged.

Meanwhile Triangle Strategy fucked up even basic things like world building. The world feels super small because nothing outside of the 3 nations is mentioned.

>>3773934
>I didn't play it on hard

>>3773966
>i'm not good at games

>thinking the game was even difficult on hard

>>3773974
>>3773981
>I'm lying or being disingenuous

>loss condition is green NPC dies
>green NPC, without fail, goes straight for the boss every time
All of my reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

>>3774014
>i cannot accept i'm not very good at games and other people are better than me
The fact you even highlighted grinding as a way to bypass challenge in other games says it all, since that's probably your go-to strat.

>>3774022
It's significantly challenging on hard.
I'm right. You're wrong.

>>3774019
That's shit design anywhere. That should NEVER be a thing unless they make sure you have plenty of ways to protect or delay them from doing so. Not just one route but multiple, tested through thoroughly over and over and over.

Otherwise protect/escort missions are almost always fucking stupid because they never test it enough.

>>3774042
>>3774022

I played the first mission or two on hard and didn't stick with the game due to lack of interest at the time but it was hard enough that I'd say it's challenging in general if you can't grind later on.

You couldn't grind in the first Vandal Hearts (unless you capitalized on two specific stages going Super Saiyan Autist) either and it was challenging enough, but Triangle Strategy seemed like it was more so by a good margin.

I will go back to play it at some point when I'm in the mood. It seems good, probably not as great as fans think, and not even close to as bad as contrarians pretend it is just to be edgy, cool, trolling haters or whatever their stupid gimmick-of-the-day is.

>>3774053
The opponents hit like a fucking truck on hard. You basically can't let your dudes get isolated at all or they get taken out real fast.
Fights are fairly manageable on hard when circumstances allow you to just turtle.
When circumstances don't allow you to just turtle, like >>3774019 or the one where you have to defuse bombs, then the fights get significantly more challenging.

>>3774070
Are they unfair in their challenge, or are there multiple ways to solve the problem? I hate when it feels like a puzzle rather than strategy, where multiple approaches can prevail. That separates good from great easily.

>>3773981
Same poster here.
>hard mode is just your attacks deal 25% damage compared to enemies dealing 50% more damage to you
I hate when they do this.
It's artificial difficulty at best.
GBA Fire Emblem does it well by introducing different spawns that only appear on Hard Mode.

>>3774112
It's not unfairly difficult and there's multiple ways to solve problems.
It's not brutally difficult or anything like that, but it's just flat out inaccurate to claim it's not substantially challenging. If you try a fight without a well-thought-out strategy you're gonna get slaughtered.

>>3774134
Thank you for the info. I'm definitely going to go back around to it in the future. I love good turn-based strategy JRPGs on a square-grid. Hex-grid I've NEVER seen been done well.

>>3773633 (OP)
While I wouldn't exactly use the word "savor" there was a time when I did wait, but not years. Games do not hit better because you may or may not play better games then realize you should have played it as soon as you heard of it.

>>3773633 (OP)
Skies of Arcadia, but that's in-part me coping about a way to play it on original hardware.
So far, nothing has been satisfactory, so I'll have to bite the bullet and emulate.

>>3773633 (OP)
I hate this game's playable roster so much.
SRPGs are badly balanced, but the vast majority of Triangle Strategy's characters are 4/10s, and it feels like wading through a swamp with one leg to play them compared to the good characters. If you're going to restrict virtually all meaningful customization from a genre, at least have the decency to not make 90% of the playable chars into halfassed gimmick buttons.

>>3774053
The challenge wildly oscillates, but it's typically not a fun "think of a unique and fun way to handle this map" so much as "jesus christ this is going to be slow and painful" because the maps are so much of a slog to push through. The only time I ever felt strong in this game was at the end when the ice mage gets an ability that makes him better than 3 others units combined.

>>3773633 (OP)
>MC name is Serenoa.
Not playing as a character with such an awful name.

>final chapter of golden route
Well, that was piss easy, wasn't it?
>playing on hard
>think "it can't really be as simple as just using the +2 move quietus and bum rushing the boss, can it?"
>it is
>it works on the first try
Huh. That was unexpected.
Fun game. NG hard was just right - challenging but not frustratingly so.
It's hilarious how good Picoletta/decoy was.

>>3773633 (OP)
>finally had the time for it
Who doesn't have time to play a game?

>>3773633 (OP)
>Gaslight Strategy
>worth savoring
Surely you jest.

>>3774042
Nigger

>>3773633 (OP)
It's a solid 7.5/10 but the plot really does not hold up to scrutiny
>Pros
I'm a real sucker for the art style, I think it's beautiful
I found some of the characters very sympathetic
The gameplay is quite fun and some of the battles really capture that feeling of being outnumbered and needing to use terrain properly to survive

Cons
>The central premise being a salt shortage is totally ridiculous - nobody ever decided to sail all the way down one of the many rivers to the sea? How do all the animals survive if there's no salt in the ecosystem? Nobody in this late middle ages coded setting knows that salt, which they apparently only see in its pure form, is a mineral? Come on now.
>The setting is otherwise overly simplistic - "the food kingdom", "the iron empire", and "the salt theocracy" where each faction suffers from shortages of the other products sounds like I'm being overly reductive, but unfortunately I'm not
>The Rosellan subplot is just awfully written and comes off as saturday morning cartoon villainy, it's impossible to take seriously
>The ending choices are silly and the 'cons' of each of them (but particularly the Benedict ending) feel very contrived because they wanted to have the perfect/true ending option

It's definitely very playable though as long as you try not to think too hard about the scenario

>>3773633 (OP)
I finished a route and I know there are more but man starting over is such a slog
If only this has the similar anchor points system like TO's postgame it would've been hassle free

>>3780271
You can literally save right before the chapter 17 voting session then just return to that save point after completing one route if you don't want to do NG+.

>>3779391
I never played it, but I own it. That plot sounds like fucking ass.

>>3780428
But aren't there other decisions and scenarios can happen in the previous chapters? Also aren't at some point your previous decisions kind of affects the later ones? At some point I remember trying to convince my guys to do A, but they kept choosing B (because before this I kept doing B) even if I kept repeating the voting session and doing different choice to change their decisions.

>>3780651
If you raise your liberty, morality and utility in a balanced manner throughout the game you should be able to create a chapter 17 save file where you can access any of the four routes successfully.
But yes, if you want to play every fight you have to do a NG+.

>>3780651
>>3780704
Oh, also, sometimes for voting decisions you need to have found specific information to unlock certain dialogue choices when trying to convince people. This typically involves being very thorough during exploration sessions - talking to everyone and finding all the sparkles.

>>3780704
>>3780705
Yeah, exactly what I was thinking, I played my first run blind so I really just did whatever so I have no idea about a lot of stuff
Anyway it's no problem, I'll probably revisit it at some point.

I liked the scales negotiation system but I hate the points gathering one. Collect-a-thon mechanics don't belong in SRPGs, especially one as linear as TriStrat.

>>3779391
>>The central premise being a salt shortage is totally ridiculous
I'm not defending the entire story of the game but salt being treated as a precious resource is fine when it has been historically true. "Just find salt elsewhere bro" isnt as easy of a solution as you think. Having saltwater isnt the same as having solid salt, and you cant just reliably find salt by digging down, this is as implausible as saying "just dig for more oil, why wage wars over it?"

>>3780943
Salt has been valuable, it has never been in such shortage as to literally threaten the lives of the poor and middle class of entire nations.
>Having saltwater isnt the same as having solid salt
Saltwater has been used for salt since prehistory.
>and you cant just reliably find salt by digging down
This is LITERALLY the plot of the game. They realise you can find salt by digging down.

>>3780943
>>3781063
further to this:
>Evidence indicates that Neolithic people of the Precucuteni Culture were boiling the salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage to extract salt as far back as 6050 BC. The salt extracted from this operation may have directly correlated with the rapid growth of this society's population soon after production began.
>The harvest of salt from the surface of Xiechi Lake near Yuncheng in Shanxi, China, dates back to at least 6000 BC, making it one of the oldest verifiable saltworks.

This setting is standard JRPG late medieval generic fantasy roughly correlating to 1300 or 1400 with the standard smattering of 19th century technology where convenient (sewage, clothing, etc). In any case, it's completely fucking retarded and there's zero defense for how ridiculous it is.

>>3781064
>>3781063
Salt is a weird element in general. It's valuable but it's not especially rare. Honestly if there's a salt shortage it's probably a sign of a more concerning problem. I can understand why they might not wanted to focus on stuff like grain or fertile land being the cause of conflict but sometimes the obvious and simple stuff really is the better choice.