“Behold, a man!” Diogenes once said as he held aloft a plucked chicken. With the same spirit, I say… Behold, achievements!
https://retroachievements.org/game/2482?&s=2
99% of these “achievements” are passive milestones you’ll unlock just by playing, they’re not worth thinking about. This filler misses the point of an achievement system. Where are the interesting challenges? If you’ve ever beaten a game only to realize you’ve already earned all its hidden trophies you know how it sucks the fun out of replays.
Tactical Breach Wizards flips the script with “Confidence Goals”, bite-sized challenges laid bare.
The reward? Cosmetic. And they double as stealth tutorials, nudging you away from your comfort zone toward fresh tactics.
One character’s Confidence Goal even mirrors their story! Gameplay-Story Integration, my beloved! Punt that enemy through a window every fight… until the final act, where your challenge is to ignore that grudge and focus on the real mission.
But enough theory. What are the toughest and most interesting extra challenges you’ve ever tackled or created for yourself in tactical RPGs?
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oh hey, TBW mention. still need to get the full game.
anyway that’s the extent of care I have for this thread exhausted.
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playing fe6 on hard mode [stealth tutorial that the game fucking sucks when not played on normal]
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Story progress achievements are fine. The character recruitment achievements (as long as they require some effort to recruit) are fine. Filler imo is stuff like “kill 100 enemies” or, in the case that you mentioned, “promote to x Tier 2 class”.
That said, for tough/interesting tactics RPG challenges… honestly, I don’t play a lot of TRPGs other than FE. I’ve tried Advance Wars and Wargroove, never got far in either. I tried Langrisser for about an hour and have yet to get back to it. I own Tactics Ogre (forgot which one) on Virtual Console and never got around to playing it. Hell, I got 13 Sentinels like 2 years ago and still haven’t played it. Basically the only TRPGs I’ve played are FE games and I don’t think I’ve done anything particularly crazy in any of them. Best I got is beating Fates Conquest on Hard last year.
That said, I’ve been trying to beat every game in the series; currently, I still have to beat:
3H Blue Lions, Golden Deer, and the church route
FE8 Eirika’s route
FE6
Radiant Dawn (still in part 1)
FE3 (left off in book 1, haven’t come back to it in over a year)
And, if we count spinoffs; 3 Hopes, Warriors (funnily enough, I think I left off near the final chapter), and Tokyo Mirage Sessions.
I’ve been taking a break from FE in general because I’ve been playing a lot of a certain other series instead (Etrian Odyssey; just finishing up with EO3 currently), but I’ll get back to it. Soon. Eventually. Probably.
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Progress achievements are fine, but that’s all they are, which is lame. There are youtube videos about getting every achievements in a game, and interesting stories don’t come from “I beat level seven, and got the achievement, and then I beat level eight, and got the achievement”. They come from interesting stories where intended and unintended mechanics are pushed to their limits. “I glitched past the goal ring to find a second hidden goal ring further into the level”, “I learned basic speedrunner tech”, “I developed a new appreciation for characters my usual strategy had no use for”.
Ever seen Zorin’s video on Mozu’s map where he feeds every single kill to Mozu? There isn’t an achievement for that, but there should be.
Come to think of it, Fire Emblem has historically struggled with getting the player to know when there is unique dialogue for specific characters in events or battles. How many fangames dump that information in a text file that comes with the ips patch? Achievements like “Robin and Chrom initiate attacks against Validar” encourage players to see that unique dialogue without an external guide.
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fundamental problem about the basic style of achievements in a fire emblem game (or most games of this nature) is that either they end up “guiding” a player towards a specific playstyle/using specific units because of known achievements, may be made hard because of previous decisions/choices on units (causing the “what did I do wrong” fomo spiral), or require being hidden achievements in order to not ruin the narrative nor force the player into a specific playstyle
if you disagree with the following, please issue a comprehensible list of achievements for FE8
and regardless, the games that often feature (hidden) achievements are often not following the standard FE formula (Hetja’s Quest/Elibean Nights), or have them as part of the plot/as an S+ ending to certain chapters (TLP) (and give you something in exchange)
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Although honestly secrets being secret is kinda something I like. Like, it allows you to be individual in a way. Not everyone sees everything. Like I often don’t 100% games and I don’t mind that, games are interactive, and that interactivity involves choosing and missing content. I just hate when you can be locked into a bad ending, it should always be a complete experience.
But of course I do think achievements can be pretty neat, like Balatro is a game where achievements feel like a big part of the game as in a game about playing it a hundred times, having as much motivation to make your playthroughs unique is good.
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