Project Triangle Strategy demo - review and feedback thread

[Punished Dayni]

13 minutes ago, Sooks said:

I got the advisor and the apothecary. (I got the advisor before I even made the “big decision”.)

The Advisor? That guy I never got.

How's their gameplay?

(See, this is why I wanted to find the decision list)

[Sooks]

8 minutes ago, Dayni said:

The Advisor? That guy I never got.

How's their gameplay?

His name is Julio, and he wasn’t that useful. He’s all about supporting TP (the points you get from turns to use magic of skills) and he uses a scimitar. He can’t do much damage but he could give an ally 1 TP while raising their strength and magic, use more of his own TP to give an ally 2 TP, attack an enemy at reduced damage and take away one of their TP. His passive skill gives him 1 TP when defeating an enemy. He can’t take hits that well or do much damage, and since I only had him for the archer map when I didn’t fix the good cable thingie, I didn’t get much use out of him. He also wasn’t very fast, for whatever that’s worth.

8 minutes ago, Dayni said:

(See, this is why I wanted to find the decision list)

What’s that?

[Punished Dayni]

3 minutes ago, Sooks said:

His name is Julio, and he wasn’t that useful. He’s all about supporting TP (the points you get from turns to use magic of skills) and he uses a scimitar. He can’t do much damage but he could give an ally 1 TP while raising their strength and magic, use more of his own TP to give an ally 2 TP, attack an enemy at reduced damage and take away one of their TP. His passive skill gives him 1 TP when defeating an enemy. He can’t take hits that well or do much damage, and since I only had him for the archer map when I didn’t fix the good cable thingie, I didn’t get much use out of him. He also wasn’t very fast, for whatever that’s worth.

I'd have loved that kind of support in the Falke map.

The TP passing would be nice for the mages in particular.

3 minutes ago, Sooks said:

What’s that?

A list of what decisions lead to what actions made up by players.

I knew I'd miss something, hence I was hoping someone was figuring it out.

[Sooks]

50 minutes ago, Dayni said:

I'd have loved that kind of support in the Falke map.

The TP passing would be nice for the mages in particular.

He died a little too quickly for that to be useful more than once, considering you’re up against archers on higher terrain.

And if you want to unlock him, say “Flee and protect yourself if you have to” or something along those lines to Hughette in the first exploration section on the bridge.

If you get to the next dialogue decision and he isn’t unlocked yet, I also said “you want me to pick here and now?” or something along those lines to Benedict right before you start the exploration to get info for the vote, if there’s a third dialogue choice in between those two remind me what it is and I should remember what I said.

Edited February 21, 2021 by Sooks

[Armchair General]

For those of you who played the demo, how hard was it? Because as far as I can tell, it looks a little bit on the easy, since it doesn't appear to have enemies who have a custom combination of skills like FE does.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

1 hour ago, Armchair General said:

For those of you who played the demo, how hard was it? Because as far as I can tell, it looks a little bit on the easy, since it doesn't appear to have enemies who have a custom combination of skills like FE does

I think it´s quite easy.

The bridge map is just... really nothing special? Like there is nothing about it that really stands out, it´s just a long walk through some weak enemies.

As for the Archer Wheat Field chapter, I didn´t fix the one thingy, but I could just walk up the mountain on the rightmost path, because the enemies on top just got split up so much. The monk and the mages were entirely incapable of dealing with the Thief and the Chicken Rider.

And then the Defense map would have been pretty easy too, if I hadn´t screwed up - I blasted one part of my Ice Wall with the Fire Mage an from then on everything went to shit. But just blocking the left stairs, cheesed basically the entire map - enemies in general didn´t attack the Ice Wall and just stood there and didn´t even attempt to walk to the right stairway where I just had Prince Boy and the Lord take out the one Armored Knight. I think you can block the entire map when you burn the Houses on top where your own army spawns, because it doesn´t look like you can walk through there after burning it and at that point there´s only one set of stairs to block.

As for skills, the bosses did have some - the Bowmaster couldn´t be blinded and the General Lady was immune to all status effects. Though that`s all i remember.

[Etrurian emperor]

So far so good. I'm impressed. 

The only thing I don't like is how mages work. They seem really hard to use. They seem to get turns less often then the melee units and the range of their spells isn't long so in my two stages the mages where desperately trying to catch up to the melee units so they could do something. 

[Punished Dayni]

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

The only thing I don't like is how mages work. They seem really hard to use. They seem to get turns less often then the melee units and the range of their spells isn't long so in my two stages the mages where desperately trying to catch up to the melee units so they could do something. 

That is one of the bigger things that hurt their exp gain (with their physical stats, I wasn't putting them in the front) and I did mention this as a good reason to get the guy I never saw, being able to give allies TP would help them. Passives are also useful, with one getting TP for KOs and the other getting TP for standing on ice tiles.

I got better use out of them in the Wolffort map, with the ice walls providing cover helping a lot and having more opportunities to get multiple foes at once.

[Etrurian emperor]

I wonder if Norzelia and Octopath's Orsterra exist within the same world. It would be a fun little easter egg to include. 

Or one day scholar Cyrus barges into the castle gushing about getting to examine the famous scales of conviction.  

[Shrimpica]

11 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

So far so good. I'm impressed. 

The only thing I don't like is how mages work. They seem really hard to use. They seem to get turns less often then the melee units and the range of their spells isn't long so in my two stages the mages where desperately trying to catch up to the melee units so they could do something. 

And even after waiting for TP and the 4 Mov, the damage they deal is nothing impressive.

Couple that with their low speed, and they get like one attack every 4 turns

[Sooks]

4 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I wonder if Norzelia and Octopath's Orsterra exist within the same world. It would be a fun little easter egg to include. 

Or one day scholar Cyrus barges into the castle gushing about getting to examine the famous scales of conviction.  

”but only if your utility is high enough”

[NoNameAtAll]

5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I wonder if Norzelia and Octopath's Orsterra exist within the same world. It would be a fun little easter egg to include. 

Or one day scholar Cyrus barges into the castle gushing about getting to examine the famous scales of conviction.  

Just have a certain endgame boss from Octopath show up as a superboss here

Spoiler

Galdera

. No explanation. Just "Why the fuck is this thing here?".

[Punished Dayni]

So, anyone else get emails by now?

I presume most of you have. Did anyone find any of the questions in particular interesting?

[Karimlan]

The first few questions will have you describe, in 250 characters or less, what you like/don't like about the demo. The remaining questions dealt with whether or not you picked up the new characters and used them in-battle, how long were the battles for you, and if you play other SRPGs/Tactical RPGs. Weird that the survey didn't have anything like a notification that you were done with it, though. It just routed you back to the Nintendo website.

Edited February 23, 2021 by Karimlan

[Punished Dayni]

2 hours ago, Karimlan said:

Weird that the survey didn't have anything like a notification that you were done with it, though. It just routed you back to the Nintendo website.

It just went to a thank you message for me, Mario picture and all.

It's a little disappointing how short the text limit was, but I think in the multiple choice questions there's none stated for entry in the other option and I didn't see any in particular.

[MagicCanonBalls]

I thought this was fun. Combat wise, since I tend to play defensively at the beginning to figure out the mechanic and all, mages with their aoe and wall magic did help out, though the fire mage did die. The spy is the MVP of my run, but my fav is that guy who can buff def & attack. 

The press R to speed up is too great a temptation for me to not use it. I ended just skip through the whole story til almost the end (like I usually did in games). Is there an auto function that I missed?

I never liked Final Fantasy Tactic or Octopath, even though internet keep saying this feels like mixture of both, I don't really feel those vibes.

Class & Job wise, I hope they would allow more jobs/classes, otherwise why even bother assign classes like spy or conjurer to characters. I do think that the UI needs some polishing, but this is looking pretty good.

 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

I played through the demo twice, and I'm a pretty big fan thus far. Although, the second playthrough tempered my enthusiasm somewhat.

Story-wise, there's great potential here. Hyzante looks somewhat like Begnion, where corrupt theocrats plot away from the fires of war. Aesfrost is our Daein, a cold bunch of conquerors led by a real dick. And Glenbrook... well they're "Herolandia", somewhere between Crimea and Lycia. The promise that "your decisions really matter" is a big one, and after two playthroughs, it's borne some fruit. A few of the story beats miss the mark, though - Gustadolph sent Avlora after our heroes immediately, yet they have time to wait by a bridge for a boat? Gustadolph commands his soldiers to kill the royal family, then he wants Roland (and his sister) alive, then he wants him dead again? It could use some polish. 

The units offer a really cool variety. Roland hits hard, and as our resident Cav, gets great move. Seleora is competent, but kinda boring outside his Hawk Dive. Anna is rad - taking two actions every turn will never not be broken, and she can disappear, put people to sleep, or shift to another tile. Benedict is all I've ever wanted from a Jagen - good bulk, meh offense, but able to buff his allies (and at range, no less). Hughette is the return of the Kinshi Knight, and Erador is a tank with good move (his Provoke is less consistent than I'd expected, though). Geela is healer/10, while Federica suffers the "mage problem" that's been talked about. That is, only being able to do magical damage every other turn, while having less movement than physical allies, just sucks. Corentin has the same problem, except I don't care, I'm having too much fun making walls out of ice. Medina can be good if you buy her a lot of HP Recovery Pellets (rolls off the tongue, huh), while Julio was vital to keeping Landroi boxed-in. I never used the Shaman (thanks, game, for giving me a lady who summons rain... right before the map where I'm supposed to light people on fire).

Presentation-wise, the sprites are certainly cute, but I won't lie - there's something less impressive about what we see than actual combat cut-ins. It feels like Genealogy map animations - quick and charming, but not very expressive. Speaking of which, we only ever see the sprites with thought/speech bubbles. I like how characters have their relative positions established (and so far, the game seems to have avoided the "boss conversing with the Lord from across the field of battle"), but I still wish we got facial portraits, or even talking heads, with each bubble. The backgrounds are nice, and I really like how these maps are using elevation to affect the flow of battle.

Overall, I really liked it! It's not Fire Emblem, but it does some really cool things. There's a good chance I wind up buying this one.

11 hours ago, MagicCanonBalls said:

The press R to speed up is too great a temptation for me to not use it. I ended just skip through the whole story til almost the end (like I usually did in games). Is there an auto function that I missed?

The lack of an "auto-advance text" button feels like quite the oversight, especially with so many "side story" scenes, that are fully-voiced and require no player input. Hope this is something they add in the final version.

[Shrimpica]

So, do they only send E-mails to certain players? Because i finished the Demo and didn't get one...

[Thane]

No email here either. Maybe Europeans don't get to chime in? 

[Yexin]

well tbh i actually got the survey email, and i live in italy

no idea why you guys aren't getting it