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I can't recall the lines exactly because they weren't particularly consequential. Mostly I remember my feeling confused and then amazed the first time I heard the JP voice stop halfway through the EN text before I heard it several more times. When I start up my own run on emulator I'll try and record some instances and post them.
As for other """localization""" flavor I noted:
- making characters affect an accent or overly ye olde englishe with no equivalent in the JP
- laziness and inconsistency (ex: at the beginning Serenoa is frequently called "wakasama", which is sometimes appropriately translated as "young master" and sometimes lazily translated as "Serenoa")
- changing who says what during exposition (a factoid will be mentioned by the next character to speak instead of the one who actually said it)
The net impression is that the localizers felt they needed to "spice things up" and also have little integrity (surprise, surprise). Who knows, maybe once I actually play through the JP version I will discover the original script is indeed comparatively banal. It still wouldn't justify """localization""".
Even I realised the shitty Japanese translation, and my Japanese is far from good (I can 100% clear N5 and 50% clear N4, which is like advanced beginner level).
The meaning is usually the same, but a sentence goes something like "I will serve house Wolffort with all of my strength" and the translation is "I am glad to be part of house Wolffort now".
Yes, the line serves fundamentally the same purpose in the dialogue, but those are not the same words that were used.
So I have encountered the most extreme mistranslation yet.
" いい。助けた。"
"Yes (You) helped me"
became
"Ihr braucht euch nicht zu entschuldigen. Hughette."
"You don't need to apologise Hughette."
I am playing JP voices and Ger text so idk if JP>English is as horrid, but these two sentences are barely related apart from fulfilling the same role of Roland approving Hughettes actions for which she apologised a sentence before.
So I have encountered the most extreme mistranslation yet.
" いい。助けた。"
"Yes (You) helped me"
became
"Ihr braucht euch nicht zu entschuldigen. Hughette."
"You don't need to apologise Hughette."
I am playing JP voices and Ger text so idk if JP>English is as horrid, but these two sentences are barely related apart from fulfilling the same role of Roland approving Hughettes actions for which she apologised a sentence before.
Playing the original the version is certainly preferable generally speaking.
I admittedly haven’t played the Japanese versions of Earthbound but I’ve read that it was competently translated. Same thing with Mother 3 translation by Tomato.
(are you a native speaker or did you learn it as a second language?)
Playing in the original language is always preferable. In the exceedingly unlikely case that it has been substantially improved in translation, then it's not really the same work at all.
Second language. In 2015 or so I got fed up with subtitles that clearly didn't match the voices in anime. From there I memorized the kana, started grammar with Tae Kim's, and eventually found my way to the DJT guide a few months later.
I'm very pleasantly surprised with how grounded and machiavellian the game is. Sure, some things are dumb if you think about how an army would logistically speaking be able to do a surprise strike and so forth. But it's so refreshing to see that for once we have people playing power games and vying over resources instead of just fighting an ancient evil with his moustache twirling underlings. And that you actually have to try convincing your companions to make the decision you want instead of them just sucking your dick. The game is smart about those choices too, your past choices affect how well certain arguments will work so you can't necessarily just reload a save until you get the right dialogue choices. And the extra information you unlock from exploration phases doesn't necessarily work on your favour, you have to actually think what kind of argument would appeal to the character in question.
Combat even on normal feels like appropriately challenging, it's a completely 180 from Three Houses which was piss easy even on hard. Units are all mechanically unique, though their progression is basically limited to whom you are giving vertical upgrades. But experience gain is extremely generous so you are encouraged to use all units depending on the map. Maps have good variety in unit placement, elevation and gimmicks like flammable tiles. Makes different units situationally really strong, I like the designs overall. And there is good asymmetry on map difficulty depending on the plot context, invading enemy on their terrain does feel like an uphill battle in both literal and figurative sense.
The game is smart about those choices too, your past choices affect how well certain arguments will work so you can't necessarily just reload a save until you get the right dialogue choices. And the extra information you unlock from exploration phases doesn't necessarily work on your favour, you have to actually think what kind of argument would appeal to the character in question.
This is hyping it up a bit too much. As far as I can tell it's really just decided by the three hidden stats. If your stat for the choice you want to make is high enough they'll agree. It isn't really much more complicated than that. In one case I wanted to make a utility choice, but my stat wasn't high enough. To counter that, I went and bought a bunch of stuff at the merchant, which raises the utility stat. This got it high enough to force the choice I wanted in the vote.
Way of an understatement. TS has a hard boner for cutscene exposition, and the exploration section isn't any better than other similar JRPGs. Definitely is keen of twisting your arm into perusing all of it aswell.
Between ch.1 and ch.3 (demo's length) there are only like 3 major fights. Demo's meaty in content, but not in the way I hoped.
I think It actually starts out strong, intro voiceover settle us with a basic overview of the game's setting and state of affairs. Not too verbose and pretty much explained near everything needed to know.
Frederica and her mentor Geela are introduced, then we get a fight against brigands. The cutscene prior battle is a bit verbose but isn't much of an offender. However, exposure does some colosal steps in escalating exposition. Cutscene after cutscene getting to know a whole crew of aristocrats from Aesfrost and Hyzante, as they each make entrance, everyone and his uncle proceed to info dump biographies on all of them. This is a pretty awful way to put a batch of characters into scene, often backfires into forgetting them immediately.
Later on, most of these characters later convey a solid first impressions all on their own and followup dialogue immediately clarifies their character and purpose. There shouldn't be any need for Serenoa to hear this intro info-dump in the first place, because he would have and should have learned about it, as son and future head of the family, most of it off screen.
The combat is insanely good. Combo attacks only against units which are pinned from both sites is genius. Pinning for captures is a very old feature of Viking Tafl-boardgames, and it enhances the bog standard FFT esque combat greatly. Add to that that most maps are great fun, and the highest difficulty is adequately challenging (harder than FFT and launch difficulty 3 Houses by a bit) and I am having a great time in fights.
Agreed. I've have not fully seen the whole picture of characters abilities and battle dynamics, but the Aesfrost smugglers fight provided me of a solid idea of how neat is taking advantages of elevations and assault mobile units (roland and hughette).
I think the story dumps is mostly a pacing issue - they couldn't figure out how to economise: which scenes should we show within the story? What is the key plot/character point to communicate in that scene? How can we do that effectively? Instead you sometimes have scenes that clearly didn't need to exist at all ("we will screw this guy over!" *cut to guy* "urgh! they are screwing me over and i am so mad!"), or scenes twice as long as they need to be ("the apples are so expensive today!" "indeed, why just yesterday apples were half the price!" "in my case, i've found tha tapples are twice the price today!") But otherwise, it's surprisingly interesting & practical with relatively little saccharine/edgy bullshit.
I like the choices mechanism and I think it's best played blind and 'honest' (i.e. just looking at the story) and never trying to game / find out the hidden stats. I don't think the realism critique makes sense here. It's clearly a contrivance that adds to the gameplay and it's just weird to quibble about how a STRONK LEADER would make all the decisions on his own. It's also a fantasy from distance that most leaders would just give orders and never persuade, especially given Wolf Boy is in a particularly precarious position with no established power base and his party includes, in fact, his nominal liege.
I don't think the realism critique makes sense here. It's clearly a contrivance that adds to the gameplay and it's just weird to quibble about how a STRONK LEADER would make all the decisions on his own. It's also a fantasy from distance that most leaders would just give orders and never persuade, especially given Wolf Boy is in a particularly precarious position with no established power base...
There's lots of room to implement a system like this without the incredibly forced "Scales of Conviction". Just off the top of my head:
>remove the Scales
>let Serenoa declare his intended policy
>retain persuasion mechanic
>conclude with "council" instead of "vote"
>if majority is against you, can't follow through on intended policy for fear of political schism
Bam, now Serenoa actually seems like a leader but the mechanical side is essentially unchanged.
And the rest?
>fiancé
>fiancé's mentor
>three loyal subordinates sworn to your house directly
>liege's bodyguard
The only one who can be argued to have as much or more authority than Serenoa is Roland. It's not "fantasy from distance" to think that most of these would have far less say in your policy making than the game affords them. I'm mostly fine with the system mechanically, but the magically-enforced voting artifact that officially gives, for example, Geela and Roland the exact same say is obnoxiously artificial.
Isn’t it *always* the case though? Playing blind I mean? Guides rob the player from discovering things.
It’s always odd to me when people ask for advice for games before playing them.
“Should I build my character like this? Any advice on the build?”
It’s as if they were browsing for a good heart surgeon. Just figure it in your own, you’re not mentally handicapped.
The scales are superfluous in that you end doing what you want anyway. I’ve never come close to not convincing people not to do what I wanted. It just wastes time.
That's due to the prevalent trend of metagaming for anything. Hence, you see some people chasing optimal builds even on solo games with almost nonexistent flexibility in stat distribution or skillset choices.
About 25 hours in, really impressed with the difficulty. I am playing on challenging and doing every optional tavern fight exactly once, min max my units as much as possible, but reload every battle where I fail because you retain experience points if you choose continue without reloading, and I hate difficulty that becomes easier if you die.
I still get fucked up from time to time, if I blunder a unit early there is a real chance that I will lose the entire map, and some maps are so tough I need to restart them 2-3 times and attempt different strategies before I get a heel in the door.
Honestly it is perfect for my taste, no Fire Emblem "retry this map 20 times on lunatic", no Final Fantasy Tactics "You passed the one hard fight in the game, have fun obliterating the rest of the game".
Also mechanics which I felt were underdeveloped at first, like weather and terrain, are starting to really matter. I got a hot shaman girl, and summoning rain makes her thunder attacks conduct through the ground which is deadly. On snowy maps my Fire mage and my attack item user turn everything into slush through fire damage, then my two mages with access to thunder fuck shit up. Snow is good aswell for creating choke points, and while fire is a bit situational maps where the ground is burnable turn into Vietnam fast.
Burn, trap and fall damage scaling off max hp is great, as it makes them natural boss and elite killers.
Speaking of bosses, man this game loves to send hyperaggressive mobile boss units with super high range and high damage at you. I certainly prefer it to Fire Emblem immobile bosses which are more of a statcheck than a real fight, but the game could ease up on giving a god damn barbarian a range 3 attack which ignores elevation.
For all of the good stuff also some complaints arose. Enemy AI varies between alright and retarded. Put a melee inbetween two enemy mages? As they pin him their AI will now prioritise attacking him with melee attacks dealing 2x1 damage instead of casting their spells for 80-100 damage. Enemies are too dumb to make an attack and then move away to allow a stronger ally to also make an attack, which is how I won the hardest battle in the game against Alvora (no Firetraps). Sometimes AI just completely spergs out, and enemies flee from you as if they were morale broken, particularily on maps with a lot of elevation levels.
Also the tavern fights are weird. They are much easier than mainline fights, which is alright for a change of pace. However they also have more interesting mechanics for some reason? Almost every story fight is just kill everything that moves, the fights in the tavern have alternative win cons, time limits, alternate loss cons, all the good stuff. Strange design decision.
Also there are clear gaps in my roster, for example I havn't received a single proper non-mounted spear user yet, despite the enemy deploying tons of those with special moves unique to them. Probably related to the fact that the enemy pretty much fields no cavalry for some reason. The enemies also use way more elemental attacks than me, why do none of my archers get fire and ice arrows? I welcome the change that the game isn't all about elemental weaknesses like every other jrpg, but it feels like an odd ommission if the enemies still get it. As only I have cavalry and flying units only I need to watch out for cavalries bane and flying bane (spears and bows) aswell.
I guess the structure of the game, where every unit needs to be unique and you can unlock new units in the last chapter demands for oddities like this, odd they feel nonetheless.
While this is the best Asano/Squeenix game in years, it still has that hint of unfulfilled potential that Octopath/Bravely II share, in that I really want to see a Triangle Strategy II with some kinks ironed out.
I don't think the realism critique makes sense here. It's clearly a contrivance that adds to the gameplay and it's just weird to quibble about how a STRONK LEADER would make all the decisions on his own. It's also a fantasy from distance that most leaders would just give orders and never persuade, especially given Wolf Boy is in a particularly precarious position with no established power base...
There's lots of room to implement a system like this without the incredibly forced "Scales of Conviction". Just off the top of my head:
>remove the Scales
>let Serenoa declare his intended policy
>retain persuasion mechanic
>conclude with "council" instead of "vote"
>if majority is against you, can't follow through on intended policy for fear of political schism
Bam, now Serenoa actually seems like a leader but the mechanical side is essentially unchanged.
And the rest?
>fiancé
>fiancé's mentor
>three loyal subordinates sworn to your house directly
>liege's bodyguard
The only one who can be argued to have as much or more authority than Serenoa is Roland. It's not "fantasy from distance" to think that most of these would have far less say in your policy making than the game affords them. I'm mostly fine with the system mechanically, but the magically-enforced voting artifact that officially gives, for example, Geela and Roland the exact same say is obnoxiously artificial.
It's a lot of wrangling over a conceit that works just fine for gameplay at minimal 'realism' cost. Oh you call it "Council" instead of "Vote", whatever? Doesn't seem like a big change to me in terms of the actual game experience.
One change I would support is where for each decision, the 'weight' becomes different, and e.g. Geela just determines to vote according to Frederica's. There's a little bit of that now where in certain decisions some votes are 'locked'. And it would be an improvement from a story POV if Roland and Serenoa had more tension over power/control, instead of being dick buddies (at least as far as I"ve gotten) - that would allow for, say, Roland to go around persuading people as you're doing it, or the vote outcomes to cause more relationship changes. I imagine that was too much scripting to do, though.
I think the game's story scenes often do surprisingly well in navigating the fragility of titles, official pretexts and royal decrees. Under the right conditions, being able to use some ancient tradition or your title as excuse can overrule everyone's objections; when the conditions are lacking (again, in first part of the game they literally don't have a country), it can become a lot more complicated.
What are some good ways to efficiently use the terrain bonuses? Rain creates puddles for electric ladyland, but it's not reliable in where it goes. It's harder to chokepoint enemies and reuse the terrain because they can walk 'through' you quite a bit. Do people spend several turns using the oil jugs and other items to set up a kill zone?
If there are burnable tiles I try to utilize them somewhat, but spread damage doesn't do much as opposed to focusing on single target so I tend to ignore it Using elevation for knockdown feels more important, especially on the map with
What are some good ways to efficiently use the terrain bonuses? Rain creates puddles for electric ladyland, but it's not reliable in where it goes. It's harder to chokepoint enemies and reuse the terrain because they can walk 'through' you quite a bit. Do people spend several turns using the oil jugs and other items to set up a kill zone?
Every three turns she summons a clone of herself to draw aggro and bait enemies out of position, inbetween that she has nothing to do anyway because her stats are pathetic.
With increased range and increased attack item damage she is made to butter up the ground with frost, water, oil and whatnot.
Finished Benedict's route. All in all a pretty great game, although the first couple of maps felt too basic, but it kind of reflects the fact that you aren't the one that's being pushed back at that point. It did bother me how
out of left field it felt that Roland wants to convert to islam. I mean it made sense that he'd rather bow out to Hyzante than Aesfrost, but him genuinely thinking that they'd be more equal under that rule is just dumb. It reminds me of SMT IV with Walter being appalled of the brain harvesting in Reverse Hill and then suddenly being cool with it in Infernal Tokyo. That was more of issue of different script revisions being stitched together, while in Triangle it was more of a result of having to fill a checklist. It felt like they had to display the pros and cons of the different choices through the three central characters, but this one just wasn't executed well.
That being said the combat is experience is the best I've had in a TRPG. Enemies being appropriately tough statwise, proper elevation differences, back hits and follow-up hits and every character being mechanically unique make it so that you have to actually put some thought on unit choices and placement. I played on normal, but it felt like an appropriate challenge. I'm inclined to call this a modern classic and wish that future titles in the genre at least copy the all characters being unique aspect. I've previously encountered it in Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs and it was one of the redeeming factors of the game, though it hand bland maps and it felt like you weren't incentivized to use the whole roster in that one.
out of left field it felt that Roland wants to convert to islam. I mean it made sense that he'd rather bow out to Hyzante than Aesfrost, but him genuinely thinking that they'd be more equal under that rule is just dumb. It reminds me of SMT IV with Walter being appalled of the brain harvesting in Reverse Hill and then suddenly being cool with it in Infernal Tokyo. That was more of issue of different script revisions being stitched together, while in Triangle it was more of a result of having to fill a checklist. It felt like they had to display the pros and cons of the different choices through the three central characters, but this one just wasn't executed well.
That's not out of left field at all. It was foreshadowed if you choose to go there when you get your first vote at the start of the game. He seems pretty convinced the people are living good lives there because of the religion.
It is foreshadowed in several ways, but I think it's still not handled very well because they don't show enough the ways in which he is suffering psychologically.
If you go to Hyzante and then stay with Roland to see him against the Royalists, you get to see all the reasons he might go bonkers. But Roland often stays pretty calm and reasonable throughout all of this - in fact not so different from Serenoa. So, having seen Roland set aside his personal feelings to fake his death and all that other stuff while remaining level-headed, it's weirder to see him blow his top so suddenly. (It wouldn't be unrealistic IRL, but in dramatic terms.) They needed a bit more of Roland struggling to keep it all together.
In that sense, I thought the dialogue in the scene after the big decision was superb, and actually elevated the character. This is a weirdly written game that often suffers from pacing and other matters of execution, but it also manages to set up non-obvious political dilemmas and interesting schemes / motivations for characters. I went into it expecting to mostly ignore the story as per most games these days, but I've been pleasantly surprised.
It's just a shame that two of the three endings are kneecapped by the aforementioned wobbly execution, since
the Frederica EXODUS option is presented so suddenly that no sane person would do it, esp. if they didn't go see the Roselle before (I didn't). Everything was always about Norzelia and salt crystals, not some deus ex machina land. If we had been able to talk to some Roselle who claimed to have seen Centralia 30 years ago or whatever, maybe. It's a pity because if this was shored up the option would present a really powerful dilemma for players, and drive home the idea that you can't be nice guy that fixes everybody's problems and you may not be able to do anything to help your wife's people.
exodus option would've worked out better if they actually had a map that shows the way to Rozelle. It's already irresponsible enough to abandon your realm, let alone if you don't even know if the mythical land exists.
I just finished the game, 35 hours on the clock, but probably above 40 in total time spent, as reloading on game losses to not gain extra xp does not count as game time.
I have not much to bicker about, the game ended as it started, as one of my favourite JRPGs in quite a while.
I went for the Golden Route ending, as I knew the triggers from a datamining thread on 4chan. Yeah, I am horrible about not spoiling myself.
I assume everyone is aware of this excellent route guide already, if not here it is:
Gameplay wise going Golden first on hard difficulty was a great idea! Great in a very painfull sense. As I played all alignments very balanced, I had quite a lot of units, but Golden Route expects you to have ALL units. As such I was 2 units short in the final Liberty battle and 3 shot in Morality and Utility. It was hell, it was great. The battles were I was down 3 units even made me break my personal limitation of not keeping xp on retry twice, as I had no chance winning them with level 6 chaff in my backlog, and on retry the chaff was atleast remotely usefull at level 20ish.
The string of brutal battles was very cathartic, as the final three battles after your forces reunite are no slouch either.
Battle 19 against Exharme was a first try victory, but the closest fight I ever had in the game. By the end of the carnage I had only two archers left, Hughette and Rudolph, against five enemies. Thankfully Hughette and Rudolf are really good at kiting numerically superior forces, so between sleep and entangling arrows I was able to win by the skin of my teeth.
Battle 20 against the Time Mage girl might be my favourite fight in the game. Not for any specific reason, there is just a lot of elevation, a lot of strong enemy material on the board, an interesting board, and your army is pretty much maxed out by that point. I won first try, but it was a great time and there were definitly times when everything could have gone south.
Battle 21 was a bit cheesy, every JRPG true ending needs you to kill a dark god after all. I lost once, because the dolls really punish you hard for hoarding AP. Their attack that hits everyone with 3+ AP could oneshot my entire army at once. I had some great experiences aswell however, because I brought Picoletta again after not using her for 19 and 20. Her mimic skill is wicked fun, she stole the 3 AP kill spell and the FP drain by the boss
Combat wise this game is near perfect. From my 22 doods nearly everyone felt fun to use, and the two that did not (tank and flying tank) are probably only shit due to the difficulty not really allowing tanking as a somehow viable strategy. I even enjoyed the fat merchant who I thought I would hate when I had to use him.
One small gripe in balancing is that New Game+ is NOT balanced around using hard. I am fairly sure the first tutorial fight were you can't deploy your fighters is unwinnable on hard NG+ with my setup, Trish can oneshot Roland lol.
General Story musings ahead:
Story nailed some aspects, fumbled on others. I did not like how much the game was focussed around the Jews Rosalie. Pretty much at chapter 9 Frederica stops having any personality except "We must help my tribe". I wish we could choose to romance someone else instead, even fucking Milo had more chemistry with Serenora than Frederica. They really should have made her brother Jerome a mandatory recruit, that way the story role of shilling for the Rosalie could have been split between two characters, and would be less obnoxious. It would also solve my problem of there not being a dedicated infantry spear user until very late, and that one does not even learns the threatening sweep attack I wanted to use.
Not a big fan of the geopolitics. You are railroaded into losing all your army against the surprise sweep by Aesfrost, then allying with Heissand to even the odds, after that you get the choice of wether the throne should go to either combatant, or choose the third or fourth way out. It makes all of the routing pretty much only gameplay related, story wise you are experiencing the same story no matter what you do. I wish that Glenford did not crumble like paper mache when attacked, and we actually saw some more resisting by house Falke and Telliore before Falke falters and Telliore betrays you. Then you could have an actual route split where your actions decide wether Aesfrost or Heissand gain the initial upper hand in this war.
In general it feels very fuzzy how many men and ressources Wolffort has at any given moment, why the hell for example is Aesfrost so strong they can march against the most fortified town in the country after taking the capital and it is a do or die battle for the defenders? Defending fortified territory gives you a 1 to 3 advantage at least, as Russia is learning in a painfull way currently. Taking an European fortified castle is nigh on impossible with even roughly equal numbers, to the point that most medieval castles fell starvation, betrayal, sabotage or subterfuge. Unless Aesfrost has like 10 times as many soldiers as Wollfort taking the capital, then rushing against a highly fortified town should be impossible.
The recovery from that low point to suddenly being a mayor player again felt very fuzzy aswell. You were essentially playing a roving band of bandits, until suddenly you are a superpower again.
I guess I shouldn't expect too much from Japs here, given that their country was so shit for fortifications that they never even invented siege weapons.
I liked Roland going full converting to Islam. I did not like him as a character so much anymore and stopped fielding him, but his fall from grace was very well done. His rehabilitation in the Golden Route was a bit meek, but you can't have everything I assume.
But overall I bought into the ideological conflict between Aesfrost and Heissand, and the little kindom sandwiched in the middle. I also did not mind the wordyness of the initial story, after all I am a fast reader and fast to skip ahead when I have read a blurb, instead of waiting for the voiceline. All 4 factions, including the Rosalie, felt very fleshed out and had distinct identies and a clear visual language, that goes a long way for immersing into the world.
I did like the NPC interactions. Strange that after fumbling so hard on making Octopath feel like a game with a coherent party they completely succeed here. I liked quite a lot of the cast (Anna, Geela, Hughette, Roland, Picoletta, Rudolph, Narve, Medina, Ezana, Maxwell and Alvora, which means that those mostly made up my party together with Jens, who was a bit boring but very fun to use). A lot of the alignment triggered dialogue scenes were plain well written. I enjoyed Anna's search for her parents, Ezana's stupid melodrama with her lover, Narve's quest to restore his grandfather's name before realising it doesn't matter that much, and they helped specifically the optional characters who are absent from all cutscenes feel much more alive.
This game could have the clinical negative charm of Octopath, with 2/3rds of your party never being present in cutscenes due to consisting of alignment recruits, but they circumvented this well. The optional recruits loirtering around the warcamp and having frequently updating dialogue based on their story events and upgrades was nice aswell.
To end on very high praise, this is a game where I see myself playing the New Game+, which is something I have only ever done for a Fromsoft game before.
I'm almost at the end of this one and have been playing spoiler free on hard. The combat is generally reasonably challenging and I have failed maps before by not taking the correct strategy. This is *almost* like a puzzle on this difficulty, but not entirely because I suspect it would be possible to still pull a victory out by taking the "wrong" route and either getting an RNG victory, or having better tactics than I did.
The game is, as mentioned everywhere, overly verbose, but I don't mind it as much as I often do because the setting and storyline is suitably dark and reasonably mature even if some of the set up is a bit dumb (i.e. it takes the protagonists way too long to figure out what's going on and why), but I like that there's room for both heroism and cynicism in the plot and your reactions in game to it, as well as that it's possible to screw yourself into an early ending death (sorta)*.
I'd still put Elden Ring as my GOTY so far, but this is easily a close second. Great game.
* Your choices impact your battles and overall situation. There's always a way to victory (so far as I've seen), but if you miss things, you can get an "ignoble death" ending which shits all over whatever idealistic pretentions you or the protagonist may have, which is awesome. It then also prompts you that perhaps there was something you missed that would avoid such a fate and lets you reload either your manual save or autosave to try again, so it's not a dead man walking type of scenario. I thought this was a pretty good way of handling having reasonably actual choices and consequences without totally screwing over someone who just wanted to go for the story rather than some ironman experience.
