Incline Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children - isometric tactical Korean SRPG

[StaticSpine]

Bros I have questions.

Is this game really 100+ hrs long?

What does this mean?

 

[jac8awol]

Steam says I've played for 162.4 hours. I didn't go off chasing that many side quest mastery things, so yeah, the game is massive, and interesting enough to keep you playing, which is damn rare.

The other part is just that it's a work in progress. The game that is out so far, and the DLC, is not the end of the road.

 

[Lhynn]

Bros I have questions.

Is this game really 100+ hrs long?

What does this mean?
View attachment 16609

Means as long as they dont go under theres a lot more to come.
They barely established the universe in the first game.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Bros I have questions.

Is this game really 100+ hrs long?

What does this mean?
View attachment 16609

The phrase "first season" probably means the existing game is intended to be the first in a series, though it is possible they will instead release DLC/expansions as follow-ups rather than proper sequels.

As for the existing base game, it is quite lengthy, perhaps a bit too much so after the point at which the player attains a full 8-character roster and has reached high enough levels and unlocked enough abilities that further character advancement is relatively slight. Tremendous game on the whole, though, and better than any RPG released this year.

 

[StaticSpine]

Okay then. Thanks, bros. I support the incline.

 

[gurugeorge]

Bros I have questions.

Is this game really 100+ hrs long?

What does this mean?
View attachment 16609

I've clocked 300-odd hours and I haven't even finished the game yet (Mind you, that's because I spent an inordinate amount of time fiddling with the fascinating mastery system and trying out different builds and build combinations. 100 hours sounds about right for a "straight" playthrough.)

 

[Visperas]

I tried to play every mission once, including side missions, and it took me 200h. Such a great game. I'm not a big fan of more DLCs or expansion 'cause all my characters are maxed out now and the progression is so good. I want Troubleshooters 2!

 

[Efe]

how do you discover mastery sets besides chance?

 

[Zombra]

how do you discover mastery sets besides chance?

When a drop happens is random. What is dropped is determined by enemy type. Look up enemies in the Troublemaker List to see which Masteries they might drop and how often. (Example: Street Hoodlum has an 18.75% chance to drop Body Training when defeated.) If you're looking for a particular Mastery, play missions with enemies that might drop it.

 

[Efe]

I meant sets. Installing a certain combination of 4 masteries that gives an extra bonus.
like "sword training" or shukuchi or installing all 4 of irene's hero mods.
when you get 3 it reveals the set with last one hidden (sometimes tells type of mastery rquired) .

I'm asking if theres an in game way to find these combinations besides blind trial and error.

 

[gurugeorge]

how do you discover mastery sets besides chance?

For masteries per se, it's by enemy type as Zombra said. And the more information you have about the enemy unlocked in the bestiary (or whatever it's called in this game, I forget), the more complete your understanding of the enemy type, the more you'll have access to their complete list of masteries as potential drops from them.

With mastery sets, you can either fiddle about replacing masteries in slots, which is helped by the fact that incomplete sets start popping up as hints in the Mastery Set box, once you have 3 of a set (with question marked hints given as to the mastery you're missing - either that you have the knowledge of it, but don't have one built, or you don't have it at all and have to conjecture what it might be, which is often helped by the fact that you can get a sense of the set from the 3 masteries you have - e.g. is it defensive, offensive, etc. Then you might also know who drops them, and check the bestiary for other masteries that they have that might fit the question marked missing mastery. The question-marked missing masteries are also colour coded according to Basic, Support, etc.).

Or consult the oracle here. (Spoilery though, if you want to go through the process au naturel.)

 

[Zombra]

I meant sets.
I'm asking if theres an in game way to find these combinations besides blind trial and error.

Oh. Duh, I'm dumb. Apologies.

It's trial and error, but not blind. As a simple example, a lot of Sets are from the same type. Equip five Earth Masteries and see if a partial (or full!) Set comes up. Look at the name and see if you can infer what other Masteries might play into that.

But no, other than figuring it out or cheating and looking it up, there's no "pay 25g to unlock the next set".

 

[Lhynn]

You can unlock sets by mastering enemies. Most sets in the game are used by a specific enemy type, so by beating the crap out of them and getting familiar with them you can unlock more and more sets. Tho there are so many i would just use a guide, and i doubt theres any guide thats updated, as they release new sets constantly.

 

[gurugeorge]

You can unlock sets by mastering enemies. Most sets in the game are used by a specific enemy type, so by beating the crap out of them and getting familiar with them you can unlock more and more sets. Tho there are so many i would just use a guide, and i doubt theres any guide thats updated, as they release new sets constantly.

Apparently the "main" guide I linked above (RexEvil's) is kept reasonably up to date (last updated Nov 24) - it has a team of 5.

 

[gurugeorge]

Some basic general thoughts on the build process in this game. Curious if this makes sense to any other players here:-

One starts off a character with some basic sets that use the widely available ordinary masteries, sets like Shukuchi, Combat Training, Final Resistance, The Best Choice, etc., as appropriate to the class. Here one wants to have at least one good and appropriate defensive set, one offensive set, and if possible one tactical set (one of the sets that's conditional on the character's normal fighting circumstance - whether they're normally going to be surrounded by enemies or friends as they fight, etc.).

The point here is that even at this early stage one wants to have already some basic "shape" to the build that exploits what the class is best at (which is usually marked by the inbuilt mastery that defines the class).

Then as one harvests more of the class, sub-class, and human masteries, one moves on to the (usually more powerful) mastery sets that include them - but (here's the trick) one only replaces the more basic sets when one finds a more advanced set that does roughly the same, or a similar thing, so that one is still maintaining the basic "shape" that one started off with (having a build that exploits what the class is best at).

And THEN, so long as one maintains that balance of offensive, defensive and tactical sets, one "fills out" the build with "dangling" masteries (masteries that aren't contributing to any sets) that are independently powerful, that really stand out, or are appropriate to particular circumstances and enemy/environment types (Impulse Fields, Veteran, Snowman, etc.). At this point one should also pay increasing attention to Speed and Action Time (especially lengthening enemies' AT and shortening one's own - especially if one is using a lot of responsive attacks - responsive fire options for ranged, or things like Counterattack and Forestallment for melee, all of which lengthen one's Action Time, which needs to be compensated for if one wants that character to do stuff more than once in any given combat! ).

As a general rule, I think that it's maybe a mistake to fill in all the advanced mastery sets one can possibly have just because one can, and completely ditch all the basic sets from one's build. Of course that's going to happen sometimes - I think particularly with the magic classes, they seem to benefit from having a lot of the advanced mastery sets. But one should try not to completely let go of ALL the basic sets, if at all possible, because some of them remain quite powerful all through the game (e.g. one's melee fighters should probably retain Combat Training until one really has something BETTER from the more advanced mastery sets, or some combination thereof).

This makes the build process really engaging, and the depth here is a speciality of this game. As with all good progression systems, one is constantly weighing options - is it REALLY worth replacing THIS bunch of stats, procs, conditionals, etc., with THAT? It's a constant ongoing process of "massaging" the build and then testing in-combat, as new masteries and sets are discovered. (In parallel one is also doing the same thing with gear, just as one would normally in most games - but I think one should prioritize the build, and have the gear fit around the build.) But the other interesting thing is that the appearance of new possible mastery sets is always tempting one away from the build one had, so there's a process there of weighing up whether wandering off-piste is going to be worth it.

Always maintain that basic "shape" - a general outline of a few sets that balance offense, defense and tactical, and exploit what the class is good at, what the signature inbuilt class/sub-class mastery does, etc. Then one can "fill in" with other good single masteries or interesting sets, to taste.

 

[Derringer]

After reading all the positive feedback in this tread, I decided to give this game a try. I played only 12 hours and I think the game is awesome. In my opinion, Troubleshooter = nuXcom + Anime + Jews.

Why Jews? Your main character is a boy with a jewish last name. Albus only helped Don, when the Don agreed for discount. Sion always dreams about a raise in the salary, but Albus always tries to avoid the topic. The head of the police team have jewish first name. Jews everywhere!!!

Jokes aside, the game is fantastic. My only complaint, is that almost all male character are kind of gay. Is this to much to ask to have a game with straight males?

What is it with South Koreans and wanting to be Jewish? The game itself looks like a less shitty Manhwa Nu-Xcom clone though, looks alright for what it is.

 

[GhostCow]

I decided to put this game on hold until I build a new PC and recently picked it back up. It's really surprising how demanding this game is. My load times went from nearly unbearable on my 4770k to merely annoying on a 5800X. I'm only averaging around 100-120fps on a 3080 at 1080p. I can play Horizon: Zero Dawn at like 200 fps. Totally nuts.

 

[gurugeorge]

I decided to put this game on hold until I build a new PC and recently picked it back up. It's really surprising how demanding this game is. My load times went from nearly unbearable on my 4770k to merely annoying on a 5800X. I'm only averaging around 100-120fps on a 3080 at 1080p. I can play Horizon: Zero Dawn at like 200 fps. Totally nuts.

I find it's quite demanding in terms of heat too - the old jalopy really whines with it, more than any other game I've got. Mind you, I don't have any really cutting edge graphics games at the moment to compare, and probably couldn't even run such very well anyway, since it's an old and CPU-bottlenecked system (i3 6100 + GTX960). The most graphics-intensive game I've got on atm is Titanfall 2, which is 4 years old, and that runs quietly in comparison with maxed settings. PF:K is probably the next-most whiney game I've got. Most non-ancient games I've got run at around 50-60fps maxed, which is comfortable enough for me, as an inveterate graphics whore, and this does too (about 55fps consistently). Oddly, loading times don't seem to be too bad - a bit long but not exasperatingly so.

If it's relevant, I believe the engine this uses is a version of Ogre that the team have modified for themselves.

 

[Reinhardt]

After reading all the positive feedback in this tread, I decided to give this game a try. I played only 12 hours and I think the game is awesome. In my opinion, Troubleshooter = nuXcom + Anime + Jews.

Why Jews? Your main character is a boy with a jewish last name. Albus only helped Don, when the Don agreed for discount. Sion always dreams about a raise in the salary, but Albus always tries to avoid the topic. The head of the police team have jewish first name. Jews everywhere!!!

Jokes aside, the game is fantastic. My only complaint, is that almost all male character are kind of gay. Is this to much to ask to have a game with straight males?

What is it with South Koreans and wanting to be Jewish? The game itself looks like a less shitty Manhwa Nu-Xcom clone though, looks alright for what it is.

What is it with people with 2020 reg date ranting about joos trying to fit in. You need to at least have access to GD for this.

 

[Derringer]

SK likes the Talmud a lot, I'm not exactly sure that's them complaining.

 

[Zumbabul]

I always wondered what online mode does in this game. Today I found out. When there is an update, you cannot play. So, today I will probably go to bed at the right time. Also, since I cannot play, I have time share my impressions.

I have clocked 90 hours and finished about 2/3 of the game. I reached the point where I fell in love with this game. It is truly impressive that some noname studio could make such a game. The game has the level of quality comparable to XCOM2: WotC, but it is much cheaper. This is the first game that gives me a feeling that I paid to little. I feel guilty about this, and probably will find a way to give developers more money.

This is the game that is worth sacrificing sleep for. After playing this game, XCOM:Chimera Squad looks and plays like a half-assed clone of the Troubleshooter. If you liked nuXCOM, play this game!

 

[Zumbabul]

I'm also amazed that after playing 90 hours, missions feel fresh. This is some kind of combination of the story and the map design. Even after 90 hours, missions are interesting. Even the side missions.

And speaking about story, the game has a damn good anime story. It is engaging. A lot is going on, and you have absolutely no idea what is going on. But you care about it.

The game has excellent pacing. Once you get used to your characters, the game give you another on. Once you get used to the new one, a new one appears. It kind of force you to be in constant process of building a character. Once you figured one character, the game gives you another one.

I can point only two negatives in the game. It has slow start. First mission is boring. But starting, from the second one you are hooked. So it is not a big of a deal. The second one is difficulty. I feel that Cruel/Challenging is not tough enough. So, I guess for a second playthrough, I will need to come up with some home rules.

 

[Zumbabul]

Also, let's talk about jews a little bit more. Have you noticed that almost all non-criminal organisations are ruled by jews? Albus is a head of your company, Isaac is a head of the SWAT team, Giselle was a head of another teem...

 

[gurugeorge]

I'm also amazed that after playing 90 hours, missions feel fresh. This is some kind of combination of the story and the map design. Even after 90 hours, missions are interesting. Even the side missions.

And speaking about story, the game has a damn good anime story. It is engaging. A lot is going on, and you have absolutely no idea what is going on. But you care about it.

The game has excellent pacing. Once you get used to your characters, the game give you another on. Once you get used to the new one, a new one appears. It kind of force you to be in constant process of building a character. Once you figured one character, the game gives you another one.

I can point only two negatives in the game. It has slow start. First mission is boring. But starting, from the second one you are hooked. So it is not a big of a deal. The second one is difficulty. I feel that Cruel/Challenging is not tough enough. So, I guess for a second playthrough, I will need to come up with some home rules.

Yeah, it definitely needs another difficulty notch. Because the progression system is so goddamn addictive, you eventually build a team of absolute monsters, and even Cruel/Challenging becomes not exactly easy but not enough of a challenge.

This was brought home to me in one of the later "training" missions, where Giselle and one other handpicked team member and a bunch of grunts have to face off as "defence" against the rest of your team and another bunch of grunts, AI-controlled as "attack". The first time I played it I had to laugh at how quickly and thoroughly my team under AI control obliterated my defence team. (I could picture the AI thinking to itself, "OMG, I can do this??? GO!!!!") I tried a bajillion different strategies, but every time it was complete armageddon in a few minutes, and eventually I had to actually strip the attack team of its masteries and gear to make the mission doable. Mind you, it also made me feel quite proud

 

[Spectacle]

I really wonder if there's any deeper meaning behind the the "Black Witch" character from the "White Lion and Black Witch" story, "Bianca Leblanc" having a name that literally means "White the White"? Or are the Koreans just picking European names at random?