Game News Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children is an anime XCOM made by Koreans

[Infinitron]

Tags: Dandylion; Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children

The denizens of our JRPG forum have brought my attention to a game called Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children. Korean developer Dandylion describes Troubleshooter as an "SRPG" but it looks very much like a Western-style turn-based tactical RPG, with anime aesthetics and an urban crimefighting-oriented setting. Originally released on Early Access way back in 2017, the game went largely unnoticed by our users until its official launch two weeks ago, but now they seem to be very impressed with it. Here's the trailer and description from its Steam page.

Everything that SRPG could possibly be.
TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is the first episode of a turn-based strategy SRPG that takes place in the world of Troubleshooter.

Valhalla, the unstable nation
Valhalla is a free trading nation erected by three world powers for their own benefits after the world war. In an attempt to control the nation, three world powers banned the army from Valhalla. Due to the circumstances, public order in Valhalla is always unstable and thus in Valhalla year ten, Valhalla government makes a bold decision.

The birth of Troubleshooter
The Valhalla government grants civilians the right to investigate and arrest criminals in order to lower the rising crime rate. People call them Troubleshooter.

The beginning of your and every others' stories
10 years have passed since the introduction of the troubleshooter system. Albus, a 20-year-old young man, becomes an official troubleshooter. Albus first starts his company on his own but soon takes in many colleagues as he solves various cases. All the new members of the company have their own motivations and stories. You will be experiencing a variety of missions in Valhalla through their stories.

Specialized classes. Over 600 masteries. More than 200 additional masteries
All characters in Troubleshooter have their own unique classes. Each character can rank up to the upper class, and the role of your character changes according to the class.

All characters in Troubleshooter can acquire various masteries according to their levels and classes. Furthermore, you can activate additional effects by combinations of masteries. Utilizing this, you can make a character for your unique strategy.

Such masteries can be acquired by leveling your character up. However, in most cases, you can acquire masteries from enemies. In other words, you can take your enemies' unique traits and apply them to your characters.

More than 80 unique missions
There are more than 80 unique missions in Troubleshooter. All missions are designed independently, and all of them have their own unique circumstances.

More than 200 unique cut scenes
Troubleshooter uses more than 200 cut scenes to portray the story.

The creativity SRPG can have
As new characters join your company, playable content will be unlocked according to their roles. For example, if you recruit a hunter character, you will be able to tame beasts. You will be able to craft drones if you recruit engineers.
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Like many titles from continental Asia, Troubleshooter was originally going to be an online game. However, Dandylion eventually added an offline mode, and it seems they never got around to implementing any actual multiplayer gameplay anyway, so it's all good. If you're interested, you can grab the game on Steam for $25.

 

[Tigranes]

?????

Is... is this like the first turn-based RPG ever to feature Tekken Eddy-style breakdancing as an attack animation

 

[Serious_Business]

Anime Xcom huh

Why don't you rip off my fucking balls while you're at it

 

[Gwendo]

Surpisingly good.

I bought XCom Chimera, Gears Tactics and Troubleshooters in the same week, thinking that the latter would end up on my pile of games to play sometime in the future...

Steam says I've played 6 hours of XCom, Gears Tactics I've played around 1-2 hours (thanks to gamepass). Troubleshooters... 39 hours.

First game of the year to keep me interested so long. (Well, Mount & Blade Bannerlords also is a close contender).

 

[Humanity has risen!]

I think only Asians can make good games anymore because Western Millennials are too unfocused and undisciplined to polish their games properly.

The only three Western indie RPGs in the last 12 years that I found were really brilliantly designed, perfectly polished and fun to play through and through were Knights of the Chalice, Grimoire and Lords of Xulima.

Any other, in comparison to the classics, I found them to be too convoluted, unpolished, with annoying flaws, too many things out of place, etc.

 

[oscar]

It's a good crunchy (the mastery system is excellent and deep) turn-based game but definitely play it on hard. Normal is just a touch too easy.

Plot is inoffensive by genre standards (your team is equivalent to low-powered superheroes who act as a privatised auxiliary police force). Game is long and the mastery system (actually powerful/game-changing skills instead of Sawyer +2.13% to dodge bs) means you can build synergy between your characters in a lot of interesting ways. Enemies play by exactly the same system and can also use nasty combinations of masteries to be a pain in the ass.

AI is very good too. Your police bros you get on some missions are actually useful and tough while the enemies are reasonably smart (also have some personality like beast-foes slinking off to hide when low on health).

The MMO trappings (dw this is definitely 100% a single-player rpg) are a little odd but don't mean much ultimately. I'm more puzzled on why poor indie developers wasted money on them. Must be a Korean thing.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

My impressions after 2h:
* too story-rich, all those dialogues get in the way of shooting, and it feels like some kind of visual novel. Off-putting for me, but sure plenty of folks will find it nice
* combat is fun, but feels bit too magical, whole thing feels like some anime show or jrpg
* art style is weeaboo
* mastery system looks wonderfully developed, will take a long time to figure it all out, as oscar said above. Downside, it seems bit overwhelming at the beginning
* engrish - ffs, some of the descriptions make no sense
* waifus aplenty

Overall, I like this way more than Chimera Squad, despite too much story. I also enjoy the less-bleak and grim atmosphere than in Gears Tactics, not decided yet on which combat system I like better.

 

[Dr Schultz]

Interesting in so many ways (as a case-study for instance).

It's a shame that my GPU went down the toilet right before the pandemic broke out.

This must wait.

 

[Jimmious]

First things first, while the combat system has some similarities with nuXCOMs , mainly the 2AP "base", the game is pretty much unrelated to nuXCOMs in every other way.
It has a crazy amount of systems that can be combined in different ways. Abilities, items, masteries, crafting, beast taming, robot building, identifying, some sort of a strategic layer and possibly even more.
To think that this was made from a small team in Korea is crazy.
You do not control randomly generated units, all characters have a story and specific abilities etc , in a JRPG fashion.
Combat scenarios are generally pre-determined and so far for me that has made a big difference since enemy compositions, events etc are different each time which is of course really cool.

"Cons" would be weeboo-ness (which is not in a retarded level though) and the mediocre translation (keeps being improved)

It is not a strategy game, the most specific title would be S-JRPG or sth

 

[Haba]

Anime Xcom huh

Why don't you rip off my fucking balls while you're at it

It will cost you extra.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

This is the quality of translation you're getting if you buy the game now. Devs have commented on the forums saying they will improve it.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Surpisingly good.

I bought XCom Chimera, Gears Tactics and Troubleshooters in the same week, thinking that the latter would end up on my pile of games to play sometime in the future...

Steam says I've played 6 hours of XCom, Gears Tactics I've played around 1-2 hours (thanks to gamepass). Troubleshooters... 39 hours.

I agree.

This is the quality of translation you're getting if you buy the game now. Devs have commented on the forums saying they will improve it.

The translation didn't bother me so far. OK some explanations are weird, but to me it's tolerable.

I like the story, it makes me want to learn more about the world and the characters - I find Gears Tactics' story worse / generic in comparison.

The game is a bit too easy on normal if you aren't new to the genre, but on the other hand, the game throws you into larger fights with several independent groups of player controlled characters rather quickly.

 

[DarkArcher]

Clearly I'm not the target demographic but the comments here make me curious. The art style and dialogue sound a bit juvenile, but maybe the gameplay makes up for it.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Game is long and the mastery system (actually powerful/game-changing skills instead of Sawyer +2.13% to dodge bs)

"Hey this is pretty good, I get an attack of opportunity if an enemy moves close. Nice, now I inflict bleeding status too. Oh wait my vampiric sword regen is twice as effective when the enemy has the bleeding status. And if I attack a bleeding enemy I now hit easier, enrage and I move up in the turn order."

 

[mlby1215]

This is the quality of translation you're getting if you buy the game now. Devs have commented on the forums saying they will improve it.

It was a joke. This female always want to be a superhero, and see things only in black-and-white. She just doesn't like doing analysis, and let's her fists doing her talking.
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This game is pretty good IMO, granted I can't say I have played many. One thing I would like to add to is that this game has no waifu or whatever. There is no romantic relationship. All woman characters are pretty "real" IMO.

 

[vonAchdorf]

This game is pretty good IMO, granted I can't say I have played many. One thing I would like to add to is that this game has no waifu or whatever. There is no romantic relationship. All woman characters are pretty "real" IMO.

I'd say this game has lots of waifus but luckily no cringey romance options.

 

[Manx]

Ah, yes, Gook-Com. I played it for a bit while it was in early access.

The base gameplay is nu-XCOM, i.e. solid and perfectly serviceable (unless you're an X-Com: UFO Defense hardliner). There are some differences, though:

• More story, which is served through short vignettes before and after every mission.
• Little to no base building. Your HQ is mainly used for mission planning and character customization.
• A highly involved level-up system, more akin to something from an MMO. Surprisingly, though, it doesn't involve as much grinding as your typical Asian MMO because...
• ...the missions themselves are annoyingly--sometimes crushingly--long. Some of them can easily rival late-game Long War missions. This will give you all the XP you will ever need.
• Plenty of NPC allies. The AI is decent and it adds to the realism of the setting, but can make each round take forever to play out.
• Dialogue options. The options are mostly illusionary, typically only changing a few lines of dialogue. But a good chunk of them actually change mission parameters, such as were you start on the map or which allies join you mid-mission. If you're a masochist, like myself, you can even replay the long-ass missions to experience the different outcomes.
• Anime aesthetics. Whether this is a strike for or against it is a matter of taste. I personally find the environments neat and the girls cute.
• A translation that is, shall we say, "a work in progress". Everything is in English and perfectly understandable, but there are moments where you can't help but chuckle.

Again, this is from when I last played the game, which was about a year ago over a year and a half ago, so some things will have changed. For example, crafting had barely been implemented (or at least I barely used it) and not all story missions had been finished. I doubt that the core experience has changed much with the full release, though.

tl;dr: Anime XCOM. Pretty good overall.

 

[Jimmious]

I will insist that the opinion that this is "anime XCOM" is fundamentaly wrong and will lead people to false conclusions.
The similarities with XCOM are minimal, namely the 2AP system
Even the turn order is completely different since we have an initiative based one in Troubleshooter.

 

[Manx]

Well, it has plenty of other XCOM trappings as well, including power/item usage and an all but identical UI. While Troubleshooter borrows from other sources I can't think of another game that it's closer to, at least not superficially.

Ultimately, though, "XCOM" is merely shorthand for a small-scale, turn-based tactical game with unit customization in a modern/futuristic setting. Whether you call that XCOM or something else is just semantics.

 

[Jimmious]

I would personally say that Troubleshooter is a turn-based SRPG, not really a tactics game

 

[Manx]

It's got elements, sure, but an outright SRPG, like Fire Emblem or Langrisser, it just isn't. SRPGs are by definition played on a strategic macro level (hence the 'S' in SRPG), while both XCOM and Troubleshooter are decidedly more tactical in both scale and scope. Troubleshooter even more so than XCOM, I'd argue; after all, the latter gave you a world map and tech-trees.

EDIT: Honestly, the strategy/tactics distinction is just another matter of semantics. Game developers themselves often get it wrong since there's a gray zone between the two, and plenty of people just use the labels interchangeably. Hell, even Steam lists Troubleshooter as both "turn-based tactics" and "turn-based strategy". Point is, it's turn-based.

 

[HiddenX]

If you like XCOM and Jagged Alliance games this is the game of the year so far.

 

[Lhynn]

• ...the missions themselves are annoyingly--sometimes crushingly--long. Some of them can easily rival late-game Long War missions. This will give you all the XP you will ever need.

A thing thats worth mentioning is that the save system is pretty great. It saves in real time, and if you quit the game you can start at the exact spot you left the game. So for those long missions you can slowly play through them.

 

[Agame]

I understand this was inevitable but I am not sure if I am happy about it.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I will insist that the opinion that this is "anime XCOM" is fundamentaly wrong and will lead people to false conclusions.
The similarities with XCOM are minimal, namely the 2AP system
Even the turn order is completely different since we have an initiative based one in Troubleshooter.

I must add that manipulating that tick-based initiative order is major part of the gameplay.