A game that on paper I should absolutely enjoy but just has never clicked with me. Dropped after a little over 20 hours, with this version being my third attempt to play this game.
There's some slight remixing that I felt were for the better. Character progression has been sped up significantly thanks to how leveling works now. Magic users for example now get access to crucial skills like Meditate much earlier than before making the beginning of the game much quicker. Buff cards are added into the battle that add a great random effect and can make battles quicker and more exciting.
Some other changes are a bit more puzzling. I'm not sure why the level cap is in there or what purpose it is supposed to serve. It feels especially egregious because the difficulty of this game felt quite brutal compared with the previous version. Some of the fights feel unreasonably hard - especially the castle fights where bosses start out with an insane amount of buffs in addition to their stats. Even when you hit the level cap the enemies are still 1 to 2 levels above you. I'm not sure exactly how much of a difference that makes but often times I was getting crushed so easily that it felt like I was playing the game wrong in some way. I don't know why the game took away the option for me to brute force my way through if that's how I chose to play it.
My other gripes with this game haven't changed. I felt like the game gets repetitive pretty quickly. I don't feel like there's much diversity to the level design between missions and maps seem big for the sake of being big. Some maps get replayed multiple times and the enemy layout becomes quite monotonous.
The class system here didn't do much for me either. I've never liked how classes operate in the Ogre games and this is still the case here. I didn't feel like there was much individual build variety with characters. Give or take swapping out a few contextual skills I didn't spend a whole lot of time tinkering nor did I feel like I was rewarded for the times when I did do it (again, what's going on with this game's difficulty?).
The plot in this game I've always really wanted to like, but while the world is interesting I just found the story itself boring. I felt like the game lacks a human anchor to help me care about the world politics. Dialog became a tiresome listing of factions and families while I was wishing for a little emotion from a character.
This is definitely an excellent game but just not one that I could connect with. I probably would have finished it if it wasn't so frustrating and repetitive.
There's some slight remixing that I felt were for the better. Character progression has been sped up significantly thanks to how leveling works now. Magic users for example now get access to crucial skills like Meditate much earlier than before making the beginning of the game much quicker. Buff cards are added into the battle that add a great random effect and can make battles quicker and more exciting.
Some other changes are a bit more puzzling. I'm not sure why the level cap is in there or what purpose it is supposed to serve. It feels especially egregious because the difficulty of this game felt quite brutal compared with the previous version. Some of the fights feel unreasonably hard - especially the castle fights where bosses start out with an insane amount of buffs in addition to their stats. Even when you hit the level cap the enemies are still 1 to 2 levels above you. I'm not sure exactly how much of a difference that makes but often times I was getting crushed so easily that it felt like I was playing the game wrong in some way. I don't know why the game took away the option for me to brute force my way through if that's how I chose to play it.
My other gripes with this game haven't changed. I felt like the game gets repetitive pretty quickly. I don't feel like there's much diversity to the level design between missions and maps seem big for the sake of being big. Some maps get replayed multiple times and the enemy layout becomes quite monotonous.
The class system here didn't do much for me either. I've never liked how classes operate in the Ogre games and this is still the case here. I didn't feel like there was much individual build variety with characters. Give or take swapping out a few contextual skills I didn't spend a whole lot of time tinkering nor did I feel like I was rewarded for the times when I did do it (again, what's going on with this game's difficulty?).
The plot in this game I've always really wanted to like, but while the world is interesting I just found the story itself boring. I felt like the game lacks a human anchor to help me care about the world politics. Dialog became a tiresome listing of factions and families while I was wishing for a little emotion from a character.
This is definitely an excellent game but just not one that I could connect with. I probably would have finished it if it wasn't so frustrating and repetitive.