Incline Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children - isometric tactical Korean SRPG

[KateMicucci]

Irene's Hero individual mastery is so much fun. I love watching her wreck half the map by herself. I just wish they'd made her good looking.

 

[GhostCow]

Irene's Hero individual mastery is so much fun. I love watching her wreck half the map by herself. I just wish they'd made her good looking.

She's one of the prettiest girls in the game though. Only Kylie and Luna are prettier. Maybe you need new glasses?

 

[Jermu]

Irene's Hero individual mastery is so much fun. I love watching her wreck half the map by herself. I just wish they'd made her good looking.

She's one of the prettiest girls in the game though. Only Kylie and Luna are prettier. Maybe you need new glasses?

you both have such a shit taste and Luna is same age as Anne shame on you

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

 

[gurugeorge]

Irene's Hero individual mastery is so much fun. I love watching her wreck half the map by herself. I just wish they'd made her good looking.

Most of the characters in the game are very lively. Irene is definitely a fave, she's delightfully gonzo - but she has her own growth and development. I think only Albus' character is a bit sketchy (some would say boring ), maybe because he was the first one and they never really finished up some aspects of it, or developed him in the way some of the others do?

I just recently did the bit in the story that has the origin of the Alley kids, the literal abandoned children of the story. It's quite moving really, poor little mites. I'm still not sure what turned Carter to the dark side after such a noble start - maybe I missed that in my first run through. I can't think that the Nine Dragon shenanigans would have totally broken his spirit at that time, was it something else later?

I wonder how much of the "horrors of war" theme is influenced by Korean experience, probably a lot.

Also, Troubleshooters are basically X-Men, they're mutant superheroes.

 

[Reinhardt]

Irene best HERO!

 

[Zumbabul]

I just recently did the bit in the story that has the origin of the Alley kids, the literal abandoned children of the story. It's quite moving really, poor little mites. I'm still not sure what turned Carter to the dark side after such a noble start - maybe I missed that in my first run through. I can't think that the Nine Dragon shenanigans would have totally broken his spirit at that time, was it something else later?

Carter hasn't turned to the dark side. His actions are consistent with his beliefs. In his early ages, he wanted to build a better and more fair world. But the currently existing world resisted. First, in the form of the Nine Dragon, then in the form of the Valhalla government. He cannot build a better world without destroying the existing one. So, Carter consistently makes steps toward fulfilling his dream.

In some part of the game, Irene asks a question "If the society itself is evil, what should a hero do?". The game present you different characters, which answer this question differently with their actions. For Irene, the answer is to fight the obvious manifestation of the evil (that is why Sharky calls her 'foolish hero'). For Albus, it is to use the situation to pursue his personal goals (that is why Sharky calls him 'hero made of lies'). For Don, it is to sacrifice his future for the sake of others. For Isaac, it is to make a deal with the devil to protect the people. For Carter, the answer is to destroy the existing society and build a better one.

Also, devs hinted that in the second game you will probably play as Carter. Probably, in the second game, they will justify his actions more clearly.

 

[gurugeorge]

I just recently did the bit in the story that has the origin of the Alley kids, the literal abandoned children of the story. It's quite moving really, poor little mites. I'm still not sure what turned Carter to the dark side after such a noble start - maybe I missed that in my first run through. I can't think that the Nine Dragon shenanigans would have totally broken his spirit at that time, was it something else later?

Carter hasn't turned to the dark side. His actions are consistent with his beliefs. In his early ages, he wanted to build a better and more fair world. But the currently existing world resisted. First, in the form of the Nine Dragon, then in the form of the Valhalla government. He cannot build a better world without destroying the existing one. So, Carter consistently makes steps toward fulfilling his dream.

In some part of the game, Irene asks a question "If the society itself is evil, what should a hero do?". The game present you different characters, which answer this question differently with their actions. For Irene, the answer is to fight the obvious manifestation of the evil (that is why Sharky calls her 'foolish hero'). For Albus, it is to use the situation to pursue his personal goals (that is why Sharky calls him 'hero made of lies'). For Don, it is to sacrifice his future for the sake of others. For Isaac, it is to make a deal with the devil to protect the people. For Carter, the answer is to destroy the existing society and build a better one.

Also, devs hinted that in the second game you will probably play as Carter. Probably, in the second game, they will justify his actions more clearly.

Thanks for that overview. Just as I read that I started remembering that ends-means justification (it's a while since I've played). It could be argued that ends-justify-the-means is the classic supervillain schtick though - don't they all say they want to build a better world and have to tear down the old one to remake it? . I've sometimes wondered whether we'll get to play as Carter; he's clearly set up to be an immensely powerful fire user, and while Irene is fire, it's more of a sideline for her. Presumably Carter's going to be a fire Black Mage. We've surely got to get Luna into the team at some point too (Although thinking about it, she's probably basically the same as Alisa - best implementation of a barbarian in any game ever!)

As a Knowledgeable One, could I pick your brains about another question I was never clear on? What exactly is the Fortress of Suffering? Is it some kind of experimental lab where they turned kids into ESP users for nefarious purposes? That's the vague impression I got, but again I might have missed something important about it.

 

[Zumbabul]

As a Knowledgeable One, could I pick your brains about another question I was never clear on? What exactly is the Fortress of Suffering? Is it some kind of experimental lab where they turned kids into ESP users for nefarious purposes? That's the vague impression I got, but again I might have missed something important about it.

In the ingame enciclopedia, there is a small overview of all the region, with their political and cultural systems. This includes Fortress of Suffering.

Fortress is the biggest psi-mine in the world (about 70% of the total). The war started because of it. Three great powers managed to negotiate a piece under the condition that the fortress doesn't belong to anyone (similar to how it was done to the Belgium Kongo in real life). They buy the psi-stones, but they don't own the fortress itself. Fortress is a place of anarchy and slavery.

When Hakuya and Heixing took control of the Fortress, they disturbed the balance between three great powers. Which can lead to a potential great war. None of the countries can directly invade the fortress to enforce order. Also, valhalla cannot use its army, because it is not allowed to have one. One of the theories is that the true intention of the Abondanded Children project is to gather all unsatisfied citizen under the ubrellla of the spoonism, and use it as an army to gain control of the fortress.

Carter fucked up Edward with his plan. He wants to do something different (join Hakuya or destroy the fortress), and this something can 'destroy the old world'.

 

[gurugeorge]

The Mission A Scent of the Past is actually quite important if you want to a) get the backstories of the team fleshed out a bit more, and b) get three of the crucial human masteries (the green ones) that enable you to maximize the capacity of the mastery board (in several different ways) for endgame builds, as well as a chunk of training manuals and energy extractors, plus a couple of Irene's special "Hero" masteries. It's a mission where at the start you can choose any of several of your characters, and get different rewards each time. So basically you do it the first time normally, and then after that (to pick other characters and get all the goodies) you have to do it from the Case Missions (top right of office).

Just a quick PSA to doing that mission quickly and painlessly (for you do have to complete the mission to get those masteries, and you'll have to do it lots of times to pick all the characters): You have do some initial positioning of some of your guys around the big square "ice rink" in the center of the map without alerting the animals in the rink or the White Tigers in the North West of the ice rink, which means that from the starting position you have to get up north to the gap in the big hedge, and head west, but stop short about 4 tiles from the fence around the ice rink.

Then you get two heavy hitters (e.g. Irene and Sion) down to guard around the the southern edge of the ice rink (still without alerting anything) to prevent escaping dororis. Then put Ray up to the north corner to some rocks up there, but still hugging the East side of the rink, and still without alerting anything.

Hopefully nothing has activated to this point, then you can send Albus down to the southern middle of the ice rink, supported by Heixing (pref. ranger, so lots of responsive fires) and Anne, which activates the animals and starts the mission proper. Then put Ray up facing West behind a tree on top of the rocks there (she gives a message saying "I like this spot" or something). From there she "notices" the White Tigers. I don't know if that's necessary to get them into action slaughtering animals themselves, but probably better to be safe than sorry because they'll do a lot of the killing for you in that area of the map and hopefully prevent northern escaping dororis. You don't have to engage the White Tigers, but I think there's a boss that you can get there if you want, and one or two of them might wander over and engage Ray anyway, so be ready to send Anne or Heixing up to support her if there's an emergency.

That makes the mission quick and easy, mainly because the Tigers and Ray (if necessary) can ensure nothing gets out to a North exit, and your heavy hitters at the south edge of the park can stop any runners down there (which is mostly where the escapees seem to go, as the White Tigers mostly deal with the ones up north. But Albus will probably be able to take care of most of the dororis where they start off in the southern middle of the ice rink anyway.

Note that if you have the difficulty option Limits to Growth on, this run of missions is good for levelling up Ray to the rest of the team (stick Yearning in her Support to help with this) without making the rest of the team over-levelled for the next proper missions, and for getting both her subclasses levelled up quite quickly. Generally all the advanced difficulty options are great to have on. I like Limits to Growth because it enables you to do lots of the Shooter Street quests without over-levelling for the main storyline.

(Note: two other missions to be aware of with similar choices and options for getting important human masteries are Astonishing Reunion and Taking a Step Back.)

 

[KateMicucci]

I dont understand Irene's somersault ability. A couple times its let me jump up onto a roof to kick a sniper in the face, and other times it just says there's no square to land even though it looked like it would work in turn preview.

 

[gurugeorge]

I dont understand Irene's somersault ability. A couple times its let me jump up onto a roof to kick a sniper in the face, and other times it just says there's no square to land even though it looked like it would work in turn preview.

It's funny when you have her bonded with someone else for pincer or cover moves - she ends up in the weirdest places, it adds a bit of spice to the play

My thing I don't fully understand yet is Drones and Pets - I'm slowly starting to understand, but they're both whole other systems, in some ways flavoiur variations of the main characters' systems, but also very deep in their own way. Well, it took a wee while to really get my head into the sytem for the main characters, I suppose it will for those, which are basically two whole bunches of very-nearly-like-main characters characters, in terms of power and versatility. (I chuckled the other day when watching an Ash Tima that Ashuram had built, doing a long one-turn clown-slaughtering fest across that second to last big violent map, just like Albus or Alisa might )

Oh and that's another thing I don't understand yet - the Overcharge system appears to be something that's meant to put a relaxed limit on that sort of thing (after all, it is huge fun, so it doesn't want to be nixed entirely, but it does get a bit ridiculous when one "turn" can almost last the entire map). but I don't really understand it. The description is a bit opaque.

 

[KateMicucci]

I'm in chapter 4 now and the difficulty has really ramped up. Albus and Irene are getting shreked by sword elites. Heck even Heixal with 1600hp gets oneshot by sword elites. Spoonist Combatants are really hard to kill. I just got Ray and unlike in the early missions where she could one-shot two or three guys at once, she barely does any damage now. I don't know what to do with her, probably need to level up her subclasses before she can do anything useful.

 

[Zumbabul]

I'm in chapter 4 now and the difficulty has really ramped up. Albus and Irene are getting shreked by sword elites. Heck even Heixal with 1600hp gets oneshot by sword elites. Spoonist Combatants are really hard to kill. I just got Ray and unlike in the early missions where she could one-shot two or three guys at once, she barely does any damage now. I don't know what to do with her, probably need to level up her subclasses before she can do anything useful.

The main problem with Ray is that when she joins you, she has a shit weapon. Nobody drops spray, and I think you cannot buy them. The only option is craft. So, to make Ray great, craft her a good weapon.

A similar problem is with Hexing, Giselle, and Alisa. But, at least their starting weapon is not total shit.

 

[gurugeorge]

I'm in chapter 4 now and the difficulty has really ramped up. Albus and Irene are getting shreked by sword elites. Heck even Heixal with 1600hp gets oneshot by sword elites. Spoonist Combatants are really hard to kill. I just got Ray and unlike in the early missions where she could one-shot two or three guys at once, she barely does any damage now. I don't know what to do with her, probably need to level up her subclasses before she can do anything useful.

Yeah I went through that a wee while ago. She is pretty disappointing at first, but she ramps up to be a real AoE murder machine (and also scout/skirmisher) in a few levels, once you fill out the Thrower and Grenadier masteries (Alchemist, which is an amazingly versatile class, only gets some of its needed Scholar masteries later in the game, after Kylie has joined, so I'd hold off on that till then, though ofc you can level Alchemist up anyway temporariliy to get its abilities if you do a few "spare" missions, quests or replays - Healing Mist is great to have even on Grenadier, for a bit of clutch AoE healing+smokescreen occasionally).

I can't remember whether she comes in at 20 or 25 now, but you will probably have enough mats and money to get her a purple spray can of her level, which will make quite a difference to Spray Shoot and her Spray Rain (her basic ability still won't have much oomph till a bit later though, once you can slot the block shred mastery set Penetrate the Sky). Note that there are two kinds of spray cans - all Attack Power, or split Attack/ESP, you need the former for Grenadier, the latter for Alchemist when in more of a healing role.

 

[GhostCow]

I'm in chapter 4 now and the difficulty has really ramped up. Albus and Irene are getting shreked by sword elites. Heck even Heixal with 1600hp gets oneshot by sword elites. Spoonist Combatants are really hard to kill. I just got Ray and unlike in the early missions where she could one-shot two or three guys at once, she barely does any damage now. I don't know what to do with her, probably need to level up her subclasses before she can do anything useful.

The main problem with Ray is that when she joins you, she has a shit weapon. Nobody drops spray, and I think you cannot buy them. The only option is craft. So, to make Ray great, craft her a good weapon.

A similar problem is with Hexing, Giselle, and Alisa. But, at least their starting weapon is not total shit.

Last time I played a little over a year ago you could definitely buy weapons for Ray. The reason I quit once I got to the dlc is because when you get the two new characters it was the first time I couldn't progress without crafting and I hate crafting. I beat the game without ever using bots or pets too.

 

[gurugeorge]

I'm in chapter 4 now and the difficulty has really ramped up. Albus and Irene are getting shreked by sword elites. Heck even Heixal with 1600hp gets oneshot by sword elites. Spoonist Combatants are really hard to kill. I just got Ray and unlike in the early missions where she could one-shot two or three guys at once, she barely does any damage now. I don't know what to do with her, probably need to level up her subclasses before she can do anything useful.

The main problem with Ray is that when she joins you, she has a shit weapon. Nobody drops spray, and I think you cannot buy them. The only option is craft. So, to make Ray great, craft her a good weapon.

A similar problem is with Hexing, Giselle, and Alisa. But, at least their starting weapon is not total shit.

Last time I played a little over a year ago you could definitely buy weapons for Ray. The reason I quit once I got to the dlc is because when you get the two new characters it was the first time I couldn't progress without crafting and I hate crafting. I beat the game without ever using bots or pets too.

Aww man, you're missing out on Alisa Barbarian (Bianca is quite nifty too, though more of a glass cannon). I think I've said this before, but Alisa Barbarian is easily the best implementation of a barbarian I've ever seen in any game ever. It really makes the archetype feel real in the context of the game (I mean the way she behaves when she gets rolling on one of her reckless rampages, occasionally shouting "Bring it on!" you think, yep, that's exactly how a barbarian would behave if there ever was one. )

 

[GhostCow]

Yeah, the posts in this thread have made me want to start over and do another run through. I'll force myself to craft this time. Time to put in another 200 hours I guess.

 

[Jermu]

Luckily crafting did not require extra farming for materials when I did my playthrough. On the other hand I just crafted every "end game" weapon only once and did not pay attention to mods / stars. I did replay some areas few times since Troubleshooter is the only game I went autism and got 100% achievements.

 

[gurugeorge]

Luckily crafting did not require extra farming for materials when I did my playthrough. On the other hand I just crafted every "end game" weapon only once and did not pay attention to mods / stars. I did replay some areas few times since Troubleshooter is the only game I went autism and got 100% achievements.

Yeah, you only really need to farm if you want the perfect affixes and suffixes for all your characters and the best modules and masteries for your favourite pets and robots, or if you want to really go to town on multiple builds (so you need tons of masteries) and multiple min-maxed gearings (for different roles).

But if you just want to have decent at-level gear and maybe just a build for each sub-class and a set of gear for each sub-class, I think you'll get enough mats and money and masteries, and decent-enough red drops from bosses, just from playing normally, with maybe just a little bit of farming as necessary. I think the devs deliberately tuned it that way.

If you are uber-min-maxing, then you'll be wanting to make like 20 of a given purple so that you can be sure of finding something with the perfect stats for the build(s) you have in mind, and you'll be wanting to +9 all your several sets of perfect gear on top of that, and you'll be wanting to do something similar for the main characters and your main pets and robots, so you'll want to farm the violents from the late 30s on for red drops and masteries, and you'll want to farm the animal maps for animal mats and psi stones (and masteries for animals too).

So the game has that infinity farming if you want it, but you don't have to do that to enjoy everything the game has to offer, or to have capable endgame builds.

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[gurugeorge]

God, I've really been sucked back into this game big time. I think it's pretty much my favourite game now, perhaps not of all time, but certainly of the past few years. It just has so much depth and content.

It's great because you can sort of bumble through on hard difficulty fairly easily as I did last time, i.e. it's friendly enough to a newbie playthrough in that sense. First time I went through the game, I was focused more on builds and learning the mastery system, combining masteries into sets, etc., but because I was used to other games, I didn't really have much of a sense of the importance of AT gain/reduction, AT queue manipulation, etc.

But this time round I'm playing on all maxed out difficulty with all the extra difficulty options (some of which didn't exist when I first played the game), and with all that nonsense you really have to learn the game in more detail, you can't just bumble through any more, certainly for the first 20 levels or so. The game won't let you go cruel or high risk high return till lvl 15 or so, but all the other difficulty tweaks on hard and challenging make the first ten levels or so really quite challenging, and you learn a lot from having to slow down and eke out your measly flash/ice/wind grenades and whatever. You also have to get into Inspecting (your chars and the mobs) to see what's what, and using the combat preview (which lets you see, for example, where you can go that you won't be spotted, while in combat, or what the reach of the ability you have selected would be if you moved to x position). You also learn more detail about how the masteries are affecting things by looking at the information displayed bottom center when you target a mob - there, it actually breaks down all the things affecting your hit chance, crit chance, mobs' dodge chance, etc., in a really detailed way (more detailed than most games), so you start to really learn the effect the masteries you've slotted are having, and the effects of the mobs' masteries too.

But most importantly, you really start paying attention to the action queue. It's another level of tactical gameplay. On my previous run-through I just thought it was whatever, and that was fine - you can more or less ignore it most of the time on less than maximum difficulty, and just power on through - but thinking the action queue through while building a mastery board and while in combat really adds another level of depth to the game. I'm now much more aware of getting AT back in builds, keeping myself up in the queue, being aware of which mobs are up next, which are up before teammates, what their positions are, etc. (A simple example, actually offered in the loading screen tips, and quite important in the really early game: the second attack that the VHPD suppressors have pushes mobs back in action time, so you can actually bump a teammate to go to the top of the queue by suppressing the mob just before him with the - well, suppressor Previous me just though it was "the slightly chunkier, more expensive attack." But no, it's meant to be used tactically.)

The extra layer of combat depth and build intrigue that the action queue brings (plus the relative weakness of cover - full cover is less of a no-hit guarantee - and the relatively tougher mobs, who can actually survive the occasional hit standing in the open) are what distinguishes this from XCOM and prevents it from being an XCOM knock-off. It really is something more, something actually better in some ways (though of course the simplicity of XCOM has its charms too).

I'm even really into the story, God help me. It's actually very moving in places (particularly re. the damage war does to people, the clash between duty and preference, etc.), and I want to see more of it unfold.

I've even been contributing to the translation (the in-game tool for which is quite well thought-out and easy to use).

 

[KateMicucci]

The AT system is great. The masteries system is great. I really want to see western devs rip off this game.

 

[gurugeorge]

The AT system is great. The masteries system is great. I really want to see western devs rip off this game.

Yep, they're genuinely great ideas that should percolate through to the design community in general (I believe the AT system originally comes from Final Fantasy Tactics, Dandylion have just iterated on it; but the masteries system looks like its all their own brilliant invention).

 

[Zumbabul]

The AT system is great. The masteries system is great. I really want to see western devs rip off this game.

You may try X-com Chimera Squad. In my opinion, this is a half-assed troubleshooter clone. Although, after playing troublshouter, you will most-likely puke.