Squeenix TRIANGLE STRATEGY - tactical RPG from Octopath Traveler devs

[Zizka]

Well, I’m not saying it couldn’t be better (FFT). I’m saying that despite its flaws it hasn’t had any serious competition for the last 20+ years which is saying something about its legacy as far T-RPG is concerned. I mean if you’re going to give it flack, it’d say the mission on the rooftop with the assassins is probably one the worst I’ve ever experienced. No idea what happened there.

I think your criticism regarding the abilities is valid. It just didn’t bother me as much as being in *yet* another high school setting. I’m not sure what Japan has for high schools in games, it’s like the perfect place for stuff to happen. If I play chess, I’m not interested to hear how the rook is a ladies man who’d like to date the queen. I just want to do some tactics. I don’t want to find a way to become friends with a virtual character. I just want to devise the best strategy to win a battle. I don’t care about the archer’s sister best friend who has a hard time opening up.

There’s clearly a demand for it.

 

[Endemic]

I thought combat was interesting although animation and art was janky (pixel art looked better and ages better in general).

Then I got to the academy/high school and my enthusiasm waned as I ran around the place, going to the greenhouse to do some gardening…

Unfortunately that fluff is what drives sales among the casuals and made FE into a mainstream hit instead of a perpetually niche franchise selling ~250k to 750k.

In Genealogy the romances had a point and weren't intrusive; there was a big difference in the 2nd gen units' performance depending on pairings, and the story was designed around it from the start (you even had alternates if no pairings were pursued). In Fates and 3H they seem to be there to pander to the otaku crowd, while having almost no mechanical impact in the latter.

It's sad that 3H has an auto-battle button but you can't skip the fishing minigame (at least if you care about the statboosters from it).

 

[notpl]

Yes, just accessories like Strength ring, Defence ring, etc…

I think the issue is that I’ve been spoiled by FFT. Nothing has ever compared to it and it stops me from appreciating new entries in the genre. No amount of customisation has ever come close. Mixing skills and activities was so much fun.

IGN rated Triangle Strategy an 8 and Final Fantasy Tactics Lion War… a 9. As if they’re only one point apart. If FFT is a 9, than Triangle is a 6 at most. There’s no comparison here.

To be fair, Triangle Strategy does also have:
-branching paths
-interesting choices
-multiple endings

Triangle Strategy has all the same tactical options as FFT - and much better balanced - it just locks them to the character roster. So your only way to get the CC ice mage is by unlocking them through that particular story choice. There's a huge roster of characters who fill out every possible combat niche, you just don't get to freely customize each one into whatever role you want. Choice and consequence is emphasized.

 

[Zizka]

For some, streamlining the RPG mechanics for Triangle Strategy is a positive (Washington Post):

Some players may find these lack of character customization options disappointing. However, I appreciated the fact that I didn’t have to worry about whether I had bought the latest weapons and armor after every story mission like in other RPGs.

I was under the impression Artdink was a new studio but it’s been around since… 1986! It’s just not used to making tactical games. From what I gather, the studio is mostly known for A-Train (train strategy game). None of their games are well known…

Until I found out they were the publishers for the ps1 ports of Ogre Battle (1993) and Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (1995):

Ogre battle:

A PlayStation port was developed by Quest and published by Artdink on September 27, 1996.

I’m confused however. Wikipedia lists Artdink as the developer of Triangle Strategy.

A different website:
https://www.imore.com/project-triangle-strategy

Triangle Strategy is a new 2D tactical role-playing game (RPG) developed by Square Enix exclusively for the Nintendo Switch, at least at launch. It's from the same team that worked on Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler, hence the similar font choice for the title and overall similar graphic style.

Which is conflicting information with Wikipedia; Square Enix is the publisher, not the developer of Triangle Strategy.

On the other hand, Square Enix was both the developers and publishers of Octopath Traveler.

As for Bravely Default, the developers are listed as Silicon Studio.

So this statement implies that three different studios developed Triangle Strategy… none of them Artdink.

I think by “team” they mean that the producer is the same for Bravely Default, Octopath and Traveler Triangle Strategy: Tomoya Asano.

 

[Sentinel]

Team Asano is the "team" behind the concept of Triangle Strategy. They came up the concept and general design and then hand it out to a development studio IIRC. They've done this for their other games.

Why, I have no idea. I guess you can't take the blame for the stinkers if the responsibility of development is spread so thin.

 

[Nm6k]

I have not played FFT yet and am most likely not going to do so. A 5 unit max limited for most maps(Less for some I heard) seems very boring to me for an SRPG.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Unfortunately that fluff is what drives sales among the casuals and made FE into a mainstream hit instead of a perpetually niche franchise selling ~250k to 750k.

FE Awakening took off in the West because it was the first FE game to get actually good marketing (the Tellius games got little marketing and the commercials were crinegworthy. Awakening's commercials showed off the pre-rendered cutscenes and made the game look cool), and because it was the first big game to come out on the 3DS (Pokemon X&Y had not come out yet). True, the fluff probably did help, but nowhere near as much as coming out at the right time and people actually knowing that the game existed.

I have not played FFT yet and am most likely not going to do so. A 5 unit max limited for most maps(Less for some I heard) seems very boring to me for an SRPG.

The 5 unit limit is indeed very disappointing and makes the gameplay rather restrictive and frustrating at times. There are also some very aggravating battles where it is possible to soft lock your save if you did not grind up the speed stat of your units high enough several hours before (particularly the first Lucavi fight at the end of chapter 1, the Wiegraf duel, and the rooftop battle with the Assassins). There is also an insane amount of grinding in FFT as for each character, you have to level them up in a class to unlock abilities and unlock other classes and level up those classes to unlock more abilities and unlock more classes.

 

[flyingjohn]

Triangle Strategy has all the same tactical options as FFT

Okey.

So your only way to get the CC ice mage is by unlocking them through that particular story choice

Nice tactical options.

There's a huge roster of characters who fill out every possible combat niche, you just don't get to freely customize each one into whatever role you want. Choice and consequence is emphasized.

Which are tied to story and not gameplay choices.
Which translates into:
I get to play a very samey game with minimum differences until i reach a story point where i can change something.
Replaying the game is even worse with this method.

 

[Zizka]

Team Asano is the "team" behind the concept of Triangle Strategy. They came up the concept and general design and then hand it out to a development studio IIRC. They've done this for their other games.

Why, I have no idea. I guess you can't take the blame for the stinkers if the responsibility of development is spread so thin.

Do you have a source about this? I’d like to understand the whole thing.

From what I gather: (Wikipedia quotes):

However, within Creative Business Unit II [at Square Eenix]Asano and his team are known as Team Asano as they continue working on games similar to their previous creations.

What threw me off is that ‘producer’ in video games seems to be very different than ‘producer’ in movies.

So I wanted to find more about ‘team Asano’ and came across something fascinating:

He was a project manager for War of the Lions (the updated PSP port of FFT)! His team is also available there:
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Tomoya_Asano

The 5 unit limit is indeed very disappointing and makes the gameplay rather restrictive and frustrating at times. There are also some very aggravating battles where it is possible to soft lock your save if you did not grind up the speed stat of your units high enough several hours before (particularly the first Lucavi fight at the end of chapter 1, the Wiegraf duel, and the rooftop battle with the Assassins). There is also an insane amount of grinding in FFT as for each character, you have to level them up in a class to unlock abilities and unlock other classes and level up those classes to unlock more abilities and unlock more classes.

I haven’t played in years but don’t recall any softlocking happening. As far as I can remember, you could always grind if needed, I could be wrong however. I personally enjoy grinding in games like this. Grinding is fun when it allows customisation, not just stat boost. It gives you something to look forward to. I don’t see this as a negative at all.

As for the character limit, I also don’t mind. Guess it’s a matter of preferences.

I have not played FFT yet and am most likely not going to do so. A 5 unit max limited for most maps(Less for some I heard) seems very boring to me for an SRPG.

With such slim pickings in T-RPG, you’re missing out in not at least trying. Up to you.

Triangle Strategy has all the same tactical options as FFT -

I wasn’t sure if I was going to reply to this as I was under the impression it might be a taunt. I like to research stuff and write about details so let’s find out if the above statement is true or not.

Jobs/Classes
* Triangle Strategy (TS) has a roster of 20 characters.

* Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT) has a total of 20 jobs.
On this point alone, they seem similar as each character in TS has its own set of abilities (much like a job in FFT). The difference is that:

In order to have access to all characters/jobs in TS, you need to play through the game more than once, which isn’t the case for FFT.

FFT has therefore more tactical options on this point.

Equipment:
*TS has two accessory slots for each character. Although you can use smithing:

*FFT has weapons, shields, helmets, armor and accessories.

This is even more of a no-contest. More tactical options in FFT. I could provide a sub comparison of the accessories in TS vs FFT but I don’t think it’s necessary.

Abilities:

*TS: Each character has a total of 7 abilities. 20x7=140. (This includes both passive and active skills).

*FFT: It’s more varied from job class to job class.
Squire: 10
Chemist: 19 (lots of redundancy here)
Knight: 12
Monk: 12
…

This is where it’s harder to make a hard call (as opposed to the two previous categories) since some abilities in FFT are redundant while those in TS are all fairly unique although some are used by more than one character. Even if some classes have redundant abilities like the chemist or Knight, there are still more options in FFT.

Enemy Variety:

*TS: about six in total by my count.

*FFT: you face against other jobs as well as some monsters like Bombs, Chocobo, Goblins, Panthers, etc…

There are again more varieties in FFT.

Verdict:
I’ll leave up to you to decide about the veracity of this statement:

Triangle Strategy has all the same tactical options as FFT

I rest my case!

 

[Sentinel]

Team Asano is the "team" behind the concept of Triangle Strategy. They came up the concept and general design and then hand it out to a development studio IIRC. They've done this for their other games.

Why, I have no idea. I guess you can't take the blame for the stinkers if the responsibility of development is spread so thin.

Do you have a source about this? I’d like to understand the whole thing.

From what I gather: (Wikipedia quotes):

However, within Creative Business Unit II [at Square Eenix]Asano and his team are known as Team Asano as they continue working on games similar to their previous creations.

It's spread throughout interviews. For example: https://www.destructoid.com/triangl...ers-asano-arai-square-enix-hd-2d-tactics-rpg/

“At the very beginning of this project, we discussed with the developer Artdink, do we take permadeath on this game? And we decided not to take that option,” said Arai. “Because to create the proper mature storyline, we needed the characters in the storyline.”

“It was challenging to find that balance between moving the camera around, being able to move the camera around, but having your characters created by dots,” said Asano. “So that was one of our challenges that we ran into, but our developer Artdink I think did a really good job in figuring out that balance.”

I'll post more quotes if I can find the other interviews.

 

[Thac0]

Played 5 hours today, I like this very very much. Some thoughts:

Gameplay is divided into story, exploring panoramas and fighting. Story is overrepresented, reading fast is required for proper pacing.
Despite the horrendous naming conventions the story is far from bad, it makes a bad first impression by only having three kingdoms and the retardiation that is the saltiron war, but it grew on my quickly.
The low share of combat in the gameplay can be alleviated by playing extra fights in the warcamp tavern. If you don't do them all at once but do them inbetween long story sequences you can make the pacing a lot better.

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.

Units are allright. Character, design and voice acting wise I like them, gameplay wise I like some of them, particularily the archers, cavallry and some of the mages, but the unit progression is a bit slim. You get two slots for accessoices and an upgrade system for their gear which functions as a very simple perk system. You can customise units a bit, but a spade will stay a spade. This is surprising, as FFT like games have always been about buildporn, and post awakening Fire Emblem has moved in the direction of buildporn aswell, but in triangle there is not much customisation at all, rather you can only personalise your playstile by which routes you take and which units you bring into combat.

Luckily the unit roster is large, the routes branch many times and give you route specific units, and you even get special units depending on your alignment and character relations. In pretty much every fight I had more units than I could deploy, and units are unique enough that some semblance of a customised fighting force arises.

Overall I am really digging this. The diorama exploration is so full of life and secrets to be found, the in game documents and books you find are well written enough for me to read them, the combat is superb.
I am not sure yet if this will keep such high quality to enter into the SRPG pentagon next to your Tactics Ogres, FFTs, Fire Emblems and whatnot, it certainly has the potential after 5 hours.
It is miles above any Disgaeas and Mercenary Tactics and other B rank SRPGs I played in recent years however.

 

[Zizka]

I am not sure yet if this will keep such high quality to enter into the SRPG pentagon next to your Tactics Ogres, FFTs, Fire Emblems and whatnot, it certainly has the potential after 5 hours.

Don’t you mean pantheon? Or do you mean pentagon as having five sides? Like 5 major T-RPG? Fire Emblem, FFT, Tactics Ogre, etc…?

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.

On hard, it’s tough. The sandwich design idea as well as backstab = crit is indeed a step forward.

This is surprising, as FFT like games have always been about buildporn,

Especially considering the lead was the project manager of Lion War… certainly he was aware of the customisation of the title.

The diorama exploration is so full of life and secrets to be found

Hyperbole. All I could ever find were healing items and some cash. Some NPC will give you some info to help you in influencing others but to say “is full of secrets” is quite an exaggeration.

It is miles above any Disgaeas and Mercenary Tactics and other B rank SRPGs I played in recent years however.

You’d need to name those B rank SRPG. I’d say TS fits that description to a t. As for Disgea, I could never stand the writing which was like nails on a chalkboard. The combat seems to offer more tactical options than TS does however (an impression).

 

[nimateb]

Can't believe people actually like FFT. If you like that game, you don't like strategy games. You like grindy shit where you can outlevel and roflstomp the enemies with completely broken abilities.

You should try the FFT 1.3 mod, it solves the issue and it's one of the best mods ever going by encounter design alone

 

[Thac0]

On hard, it’s tough. The sandwich design idea as well as backstab = crit is indeed a step forward

Yeah it is great. I lost the very first battle once, as I underestimated how much bite the game has on hard.
Didn't get a game over after that, but I win battles by the skin of my teeth. Very close to perfect difficulty.

Hyperbole. All I could ever find were healing items and some cash. Some NPC will give you some info to help you in influencing others but to say “is full of secrets” is quite an exaggeration.

Idk I found damage items and accessoires aswell, and every second NPC gives you either secrets (which are a good mechanic) or stuff for the ingame codex which is unusually well written for a JRPG. Usually these ingame documents are ass, with the infamous FF XIII codex as a standout, but I dig Triangle's writing.

You’d need to name those B rank SRPG. I’d say TS fits that description to a t. As for Disgea, I could never stand the writing which was like nails on a chalkboard. The combat seems to offer more tactical options than TS does however (an impression).

I played a lot of those.
Mercenary Saga
Disgaea
Dark Crystal Tactics
Tenderfoot Tactics
Wargroove
Stella Glow
Brigandine
Himeko Sutori
Spectral Souls
prolly some more I am forgetting

Fae Tactics
Fell Seal Arbiter's Mark
These two I like much more than the rest of the shovelware, but I like Triangle more.


I think this game is significantly better than any SRPG that does not regularily appear in personal favourite lists (so all your FFTs, Ogres, Front Missions, SMT DeSu's etc.) and may be as good as the later depending on how it unfolds.

Which is a great surprise for me personally as Octopath left me completely cold, and with the graphical similarity I did not expect this to catch me so hard. I love the pinning. I played quite a few srpgs where everyone bystanding got a free combo attack, and that was quite shallow as you just swarmed enemies with way too much hp to death by encircling them on all sides.
Needing a proper pin from two opposing sides is such a clean way to give more depth to combat.

Also I really enjoy earning those special tokens for doing cool plays. Shooting into someones back from elevation outside of the reach gives +3 tokens per turn - that's some crack.

 

[notpl]

Team Asano is the "team" behind the concept of Triangle Strategy. They came up the concept and general design and then hand it out to a development studio IIRC. They've done this for their other games.

Why, I have no idea. I guess you can't take the blame for the stinkers if the responsibility of development is spread so thin.

Do you have a source about this? I’d like to understand the whole thing.

From what I gather: (Wikipedia quotes):

However, within Creative Business Unit II [at Square Eenix]Asano and his team are known as Team Asano as they continue working on games similar to their previous creations.

What threw me off is that ‘producer’ in video games seems to be very different than ‘producer’ in movies.

So I wanted to find more about ‘team Asano’ and came across something fascinating:

He was a project manager for War of the Lions (the updated PSP port of FFT)! His team is also available there:
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Tomoya_Asano

The 5 unit limit is indeed very disappointing and makes the gameplay rather restrictive and frustrating at times. There are also some very aggravating battles where it is possible to soft lock your save if you did not grind up the speed stat of your units high enough several hours before (particularly the first Lucavi fight at the end of chapter 1, the Wiegraf duel, and the rooftop battle with the Assassins). There is also an insane amount of grinding in FFT as for each character, you have to level them up in a class to unlock abilities and unlock other classes and level up those classes to unlock more abilities and unlock more classes.

I haven’t played in years but don’t recall any softlocking happening. As far as I can remember, you could always grind if needed, I could be wrong however. I personally enjoy grinding in games like this. Grinding is fun when it allows customisation, not just stat boost. It gives you something to look forward to. I don’t see this as a negative at all.

As for the character limit, I also don’t mind. Guess it’s a matter of preferences.

I have not played FFT yet and am most likely not going to do so. A 5 unit max limited for most maps(Less for some I heard) seems very boring to me for an SRPG.

With such slim pickings in T-RPG, you’re missing out in not at least trying. Up to you.

Triangle Strategy has all the same tactical options as FFT -

I wasn’t sure if I was going to reply to this as I was under the impression it might be a taunt. I like to research stuff and write about details so let’s find out if the above statement is true or not.

Jobs/Classes
* Triangle Strategy (TS) has a roster of 20 characters.

* Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT) has a total of 20 jobs.
On this point alone, they seem similar as each character in TS has its own set of abilities (much like a job in FFT). The difference is that:

In order to have access to all characters/jobs in TS, you need to play through the game more than once, which isn’t the case for FFT.

FFT has therefore more tactical options on this point.

Equipment:
*TS has two accessory slots for each character. Although you can use smithing:

*FFT has weapons, shields, helmets, armor and accessories.

This is even more of a no-contest. More tactical options in FFT. I could provide a sub comparison of the accessories in TS vs FFT but I don’t think it’s necessary.

Abilities:

*TS: Each character has a total of 7 abilities. 20x7=140. (This includes both passive and active skills).

*FFT: It’s more varied from job class to job class.
Squire: 10
Chemist: 19 (lots of redundancy here)
Knight: 12
Monk: 12
…

This is where it’s harder to make a hard call (as opposed to the two previous categories) since some abilities in FFT are redundant while those in TS are all fairly unique although some are used by more than one character. Even if some classes have redundant abilities like the chemist or Knight, there are still more options in FFT.

Enemy Variety:

*TS: about six in total by my count.

*FFT: you face against other jobs as well as some monsters like Bombs, Chocobo, Goblins, Panthers, etc…

There are again more varieties in FFT.

Verdict:
I’ll leave up to you to decide about the veracity of this statement:

Triangle Strategy has all the same tactical options as FFT

I rest my case!

Everything except unit abilities falls under the purview of "strategy," not "tactics." IE pre-fight planning. And your little glancing aside about how perhaps some abilities are FFT are redundant is very telling. We both know the reality is that 99% of the abilities in FFT are straight-up useless.

 

[Zizka]

And your little glancing aside about how perhaps some abilities are FFT are redundant is very telling.

I don’t think you’re being fair here. I think what I’ve written about it is a fair representation:

This is where it’s harder to make a hard call (as opposed to the two previous categories) since some abilities in FFT are redundant while those in TS are all fairly unique although some are used by more than one character.

We both know the reality is that 99% of the abilities in FFT are straight-up useless.

Let’s avoid “we both know that cuz…” argument, it makes for poor conversation.

Well, burden of proof is on you. I think you’d be hard pressed to make the point that 99% of abilities are useless since both games share similar abilities (if not identical). Unless you mean TS abilities are also useless.

Anyway, this is my opinion. People can do their own research by googling job classes and abilities, it’s readily available.

 

[Shrimp]

Abilities:

*TS: Each character has a total of 7 abilities. 20x7=140. (This includes both passive and active skills).

*FFT: It’s more varied from job class to job class.
Squire: 10
Chemist: 19 (lots of redundancy here)
Knight: 12
Monk: 12

This is where it’s harder to make a hard call (as opposed to the two previous categories) since some abilities in FFT are redundant while those in TS are all fairly unique although some are used by more than one character. Even if some classes have redundant abilities like the chemist or Knight, there are still more options in FFT.

One of the things I dislike about a lot of modern Tactics style games is that the so-called tactics often end up being 10-40 hours of using your one allocated action per turn to choose whether you want to deal damage with a basic attack or an attack with a coloured damage number.
Does this game do anything at all to avoid this?

 

[Thac0]

Abilities:

*TS: Each character has a total of 7 abilities. 20x7=140. (This includes both passive and active skills).

*FFT: It’s more varied from job class to job class.
Squire: 10
Chemist: 19 (lots of redundancy here)
Knight: 12
Monk: 12

This is where it’s harder to make a hard call (as opposed to the two previous categories) since some abilities in FFT are redundant while those in TS are all fairly unique although some are used by more than one character. Even if some classes have redundant abilities like the chemist or Knight, there are still more options in FFT.

One of the things I dislike about a lot of modern Tactics style games is that the so-called tactics often end up being 10-40 hours of using your one allocated action per turn to choose whether you want to deal damage with a basic attack or an attack with a coloured damage number.
Does this game do anything at all to avoid this?

Yeah.
Units only have a quite small move pool (2-6 attacks and no way to get attacks from different units on your units) and a mana system where you regenerate 1 point every turn, but cap out at 3-4 points.
If you have the points to do something more than a basic attack it is usually worth doing so, and every move of the few that every unit has feels usable.

Status moves apply their stuff with very high success rate (poison, blind, root all has 80%+ hit rate), there are turn delays, attacks with different targeting modes or ranges, buffs, mana drains and increases, summons, taunts, heals, buffs and debuffs, I honestly can't complain.
The only skill I didn't use once yet is something on the Ninja that increases your jump to 15 this turn, as that is very specific and only rarely usefull to climb a tower to take out an archer.

FFT has a few problems which lead to you using less of the moveset than there is present. You can choose which skill to get, and you are encouraged to not spend too much time in a class and always transit to the next higher class for better stat growths and as you can only use 2 skillsets anyway at the end. So you have 2 maxed out skillsets for any unit, but from classes which are not good enough to end as a final skillset you effectively use nothing, just grab a passive and move on to a better class.
Also a lot of classes have a lot of skills which are basically the same , Aim +5 and Aim +6 is not an interesting choice, neither is Horizontal Jump +3 or +4.

This is mostly a problem for martials, the only martials with truly fun movesets are Monk, Samurai, Holy and Dark Knight.
Casters may suffer some small problems where Firaga and Thundaga aren't necessarily all that different, but stuff like Time Mages, Bards and Geomancers are where the fun kits are.

If I had to compare I would say that Triangle has way better Martials, as they tend to have more viable actions per turn than martials in FFT and can benefit from the whole pinning, facing and elevation system, while mages are a lot more boring, as their kit being the same size as a martial and the mana system forcing them to make default melee attacks inbetween spellcasts every second turn feels wrong.
It gives the game a different feel, as being all about martials and archers is usually a Fire Emblem thing you don't see in TO/FFT likes so much.

 

[Lord of Riva]

I am intersted in how Variable the Story is, I believe I am nearing the end of the Story and there is a lot of decision points.

Depending on how well this is implemented the game is really, really good. Characters, while not as customisable are very different to each other and are a colorfoul and flavorful bunch. Story-wise it's certainly not as "serious" as it could be (as would be expected with the age rating) but there is good political, diplomatic and war drama around and it's mostly believable.

There are one or two aspects as of now in which I think this is either obnoxious stereotyping or a deus ex machina but then again I do not know how it will impact the story in the long run.

Thac0 Can you share the path you have gone thus far.

 

[oasis789]

I played a lot of those.
Mercenary Saga
Disgaea
Dark Crystal Tactics
Tenderfoot Tactics
Wargroove
Stella Glow
Brigandine
Himeko Sutori
Spectral Souls
prolly some more I am forgetting

Fae Tactics
Fell Seal Arbiter's Mark
These two I like much more than the rest of the shovelware, but I like Triangle more.

you forgot Rad Codex trilogy - Voidspire tactics, Alvora tactics, and Horizon's Gate. Has the FFT job system and everything.

 

[Nm6k]

I am intersted in how Variable the Story is, I believe I am nearing the end of the Story and there is a lot of decision points.

Depending on how well this is implemented the game is really, really good. Characters, while not as customisable are very different to each other and are a colorfoul and flavorful bunch. Story-wise it's certainly not as "serious" as it could be (as would be expected with the age rating) but there is good political, diplomatic and war drama around and it's mostly believable.

There are one or two aspects as of now in which I think this is either obnoxious stereotyping or a deus ex machina but then again I do not know how it will impact the story in the long run.

Thac0 Can you share the path you have gone thus far.

While there is quite a bit of bunching in the game at one point or another they always end up merging before the next big decision until the one in chapter 17. It's one of the things I'm hoping they improve on for the likely sequel given that from what I heard the game is selling well for a new SRPG.

 

[Thac0]

I played a lot of those.
Mercenary Saga
Disgaea
Dark Crystal Tactics
Tenderfoot Tactics
Wargroove
Stella Glow
Brigandine
Himeko Sutori
Spectral Souls
prolly some more I am forgetting

Fae Tactics
Fell Seal Arbiter's Mark
These two I like much more than the rest of the shovelware, but I like Triangle more.

you forgot Rad Codex trilogy - Voidspire tactics, Alvora tactics, and Horizon's Gate. Has the FFT job system and everything.

Good catch, I think it is significantly better than Alvora, slightly better than Horizon's Gate and slightly worse than Voidspire. I really really like how Voidspire combined environmental exploration and tight handmade levels littered with secrets, potent loot and entire optional dungeons. Alvora and Horizon were much more quantity > quality imo.
Voidspire is the best Western SRPG I played yet, although that has little to do with its SRPG elements, and more with taking solid FFT foundations and slapping a very exploration heavy game on it.

I am intersted in how Variable the Story is, I believe I am nearing the end of the Story and there is a lot of decision points.

Depending on how well this is implemented the game is really, really good. Characters, while not as customisable are very different to each other and are a colorfoul and flavorful bunch. Story-wise it's certainly not as "serious" as it could be (as would be expected with the age rating) but there is good political, diplomatic and war drama around and it's mostly believable.

There are one or two aspects as of now in which I think this is either obnoxious stereotyping or a deus ex machina but then again I do not know how it will impact the story in the long run.

Thac0 Can you share the path you have gone thus far.

While there is quite a bit of bunching in the game at one point or another they always end up merging before the next big decision until the one in chapter 17. It's one of the things I'm hoping they improve on for the likely sequel given that from what I heard the game is selling well for a new SRPG.

This basically. The routing is not very complex, I choose morality every time it is available. This will probably bite me in the ass eventually, as in dialogue I mostly gather liberty points, so maybe I will lose a scale of conviction eventually.
You can see by the colours of the scale in the cutscene which alignment each decision has.

 

[Nm6k]

I will say at least the choices in Triangle Strategy are more satisfying,engaging and better handled then the ones in Dying Light 2. I actually give a crap about them in Triangle Strategy.

 

[WhiteShark]

I've been taking turns playing and watching with my brother in law. I agree with Thac0 that the naming is whack but the story has impressed me so far. Likewise I actually enjoyed what I read of the lore documents (and got really annoyed with Wolfort's historical role in geopolitics).

AI has some issues. I've observed many cases where an enemy unit will just stand in place or wander around aimlessly at the far edge of the map. On occasions where all my units are completely inaccessible (happened a couple times that we got down to only Hughette alive on top of a roof versus melee enemies) they would all stand in place and do nothing instead of retreating out of range. Allied NPCs are generally suicidally aggressive, except they too are sometimes stricken with pathing confusion. That can be a blessing in "protect the NPC" missions.

Combat mechanics are good. I'll try not to repeat stuff Thac0 already said but one thing I didn't see mentioned was the strength of elevation. Not only does it seem to increase evasion versus units at lower elevation, but it also adds range to ranged attacks. Hughette is my favorite unit for her ability to get on a rooftop and blind enemy archers many squares away. I beat a couple missions with only Hughette left alive by abusing rooftop archery and blinding arrows. If the game allowed class changing I would probably make 80% of my team hawk-riding archers.

You have a set of special commands you can issue with a resource called Quietus Points. Each command can only be used once per battle and expended QP don't come back within a battle. You unlock more as you go along. My favorite so far is one that lets you teleport a unit 8 squares. It saved my bacon in one map where your squad's starting positions are scattered across the map and I wound up with a guy completely cornered. I've also gotten decent use out of one that gives all of your units +2 move for a round, which is great when you're rushing to get everyone on the high ground at the start of a fight. Reminded me of the CO commands in Advance Wars.

I like the story choices but thematically I find the voting mechanic silly. It makes Serenoa look like a mega cuck when he's supposed to be the leader but not only makes no decisions but doesn't even get a personal vote. I've also yet to run into a situation where I couldn't get my way through persuasion anyway, which seems to undermine the whole mechanic. Disclaimer: I haven't been present for the whole thing. I think we're on chapter 12 and as far as I know he hasn't had any trouble getting his way either.

The English translation is liberal as expected. For a couple hours of playtime we put on the JP voices with EN text and I listened while comparing. I didn't hear any plot points being butchered but there were lots of cases where lines were needlessly altered or sometimes added wholecloth. Par for the course for """localizers""".

Overall I would say it's pretty good. The gameplay is fun, hard mode is challenging, and I'm ensnared by the political intrigue story despite myself. I'll probably try emulating it by myself so I can make my own choices and see the parts I missed.

 

[Palomides]

Could you give us an example or two of some of the 'flavour' that has been needlessly added to the game? I really do despise that trend.