Vanillaware asked what if Fire Emblem was good.
- Crits and misses are calculated in the battle preview. So if the game says your unit will deal 20 damage and receive 10, that's guaranteed. There's almost no RNG to worry about.
-No perma-death, and the difficultly is balanced around that. The highest difficultly is fair but challenging.
-Units are much more than just their class since units can have abilities, conditions to active those abilities that remind me of FF12's gambits, and four pieces of equipment which can also have conditional abilities.
-Classes are also more nuanced since each class is usually weak to multiple classes, thus allowing for multiple ways to take down a foe.
-Units operate in groups of up to six party members, allowing for detailed class synergies. It's easy to switch these as well to adapt to new party members or just a specific map.
-The game is real time with pause, so telling a unit to move across the whole map is just one input rather than having to move them every turn.
-The story actually remembers all of its characters. Party members that haven't been in a cutscene for ten hours will come out again when relevant.
-The aesthetic is beautiful and doesn't fall into generic anime looks.
-The voice actors generally sound like people rather than trying to impersonate anime tropes. This isn't because the voice actors are different, the voice talent is actually an all-star cast of JRPG voice actors, rather it's just that the voice direction is more serious.
-There's a large degree of player freedom as there's tons of optional missions, and some of the main story can be done in different orders as well.
-There's an overworld allowing for a brief respite between battles to talk to NPCs, see party member conversations, buy equipment, etc.
Overall the game fixes all of my problems with fantasy strategy RPGs while also having the unique Vanillaware aesthetic that makes it feel original. I recommend this game to anyone who likes RPGs or strategy games, even if they haven't liked most fantasy strategy RPGs.
- Crits and misses are calculated in the battle preview. So if the game says your unit will deal 20 damage and receive 10, that's guaranteed. There's almost no RNG to worry about.
-No perma-death, and the difficultly is balanced around that. The highest difficultly is fair but challenging.
-Units are much more than just their class since units can have abilities, conditions to active those abilities that remind me of FF12's gambits, and four pieces of equipment which can also have conditional abilities.
-Classes are also more nuanced since each class is usually weak to multiple classes, thus allowing for multiple ways to take down a foe.
-Units operate in groups of up to six party members, allowing for detailed class synergies. It's easy to switch these as well to adapt to new party members or just a specific map.
-The game is real time with pause, so telling a unit to move across the whole map is just one input rather than having to move them every turn.
-The story actually remembers all of its characters. Party members that haven't been in a cutscene for ten hours will come out again when relevant.
-The aesthetic is beautiful and doesn't fall into generic anime looks.
-The voice actors generally sound like people rather than trying to impersonate anime tropes. This isn't because the voice actors are different, the voice talent is actually an all-star cast of JRPG voice actors, rather it's just that the voice direction is more serious.
-There's a large degree of player freedom as there's tons of optional missions, and some of the main story can be done in different orders as well.
-There's an overworld allowing for a brief respite between battles to talk to NPCs, see party member conversations, buy equipment, etc.
Overall the game fixes all of my problems with fantasy strategy RPGs while also having the unique Vanillaware aesthetic that makes it feel original. I recommend this game to anyone who likes RPGs or strategy games, even if they haven't liked most fantasy strategy RPGs.