This kind of a pre-release review I guess for an updated version.
The biggest selling point to me is mount canto+/reposition and all staff users having powerstaff. Can’t believe it’s not even in the thread description.
Mapping and Graphics
I went to your mapping thread to try and get some inspiration about a month ago, which says everything it needs to.
Both maps and palettes are very nice.
The portraits are nice, no complaints here.
You can tell a hack’s going to be ambitious when it does a UI overhaul.
There seems to be a color lost in the map sprites. This is most noticeable with the wagon, but also in other places like the cavalier’s head.
Female fighter appears to have some kind of AP error.
Pretty sure Ryker’s mug uses fe7 colors instead of fe8 colors like everyone else.
Chapters
The general flow of chapters was quite well done. I really don’t have much to say for the early ones besides the fact they do a pretty good job introducing the characters.
I struggled in ch3 a little since Titus died in ch2 (and I wasn’t resetting for this punk). Action economy was quite tough, but I managed to get all the thieves with a little bit of luck. Didn’t get the boss though. 7 turns is quite merciful for a defend map and the defend target can hold out for a bit, which is nice.
Chapter 4 is my favourite chapter. The horses initially seem very under threat conveying a strong sense of urgency, but since they heal by eating corn (nice touch) they’re not egregious to reach. The flow of “zero exp” pirate reinforcements encourages knocking out the boats even without a hard incentive to rush.
This does not look like a cliff tile to me. It has a similar texture to the road tiles.
What do I don’t need to ask you? This thing has fucking tank treads!
The intermission was pretty cool, particularly the hide and seek person. Honeydew mug does not really fit the kid map sprite.
Finding the ring was a little bullshit though. I stopped on every forest and found nothing so I resorting to opening builder. I think it’s entirely unreasonable for the player to think “maybe this is utilises the ‘beloved’ desert treasure mechanic, I should do the same thing over and over again.”
Chapter 5 is a very creative map, “push payload” requiring use of movement skills to get the wagon to the end. I feared it would be really tedious, but it wasn’t too bad especially since there doesn’t seem to be a hard timer. It separates the good and bad units even more, as preferred units gain lots of exp while the bad units are relegated to movement skill bots, but it doesn’t matter.
Esker’s Edge is a banger name.
Chapter 6 features very cool use of tiles to do rooftop battles.
It’s nice that every chest has a chest key drop as there isn’t a thief. The middle rooftop chest on the left doesn’t have one though. The staircases to and from the roof make for nice shortcuts or opportunities to get loot.
The right path is deceptively frustrating. It’s the path that gets harassed by the many fliers reinforcements which might not be obvious upon starting, particularly in the later turns. Wyverns and pegasi seem to have higher stats than other classes and it turned what I assumed was a good pace into a huge struggle. I think they don’t need to be so backloaded.
Too easy.
You can tell from this screenshot I assumed I needed everyone to escape as is standard convention, which made things a lot harder for me than it could have been. I’d actually suggest all escape because it makes more sense, despite my near failure to actually make it.
Skiver having ‘wyvern-effective’ in the description would have changed how I played immensely.
I still have no idea what “search the houses” for contract 2 means. I couldn’t even find it by opening builder.
I got bonus exp even though it was said bonus exp is only granted by winning before turn 12.
I enjoyed the implementation of quests here, easily accessed through the guide menu and doesn’t require mind games to find ( far better than that contrived quest system I had). I was initially really excited about the reward ‘3 skill books’ until I realised I was thinking about skill scrolls…
Units
Oh boy, I love talking about units.
In general the cast is pretty solid. It’s a bit skewed against physical infantry units minus Lueric (ain’t that a story as old as time) but I think the infantry could be a little better vs dragging everyone else down. The stats have been massively deflated compared to the previous version, evening out to normal GBAish stats. I assume 50 caps is a holdover from previous versions because I can’t see any of these guys approaching that.
Barus is a legend. Canto+ and reposition are immensely powerful skills. He is easily the bulkiest unit in the army. He can 2rko very reliably, even against good defence units using the steel axe. Even as units start catching up to him in levels, he remains a strong contender.
His only downside is bond, which I personally feel is a net negative. It really slows down the start of player phase to heal 10% HP, which I’ve never seen ever change anything.
Lueric is carried by Skiver being an incredibly good weapon early game, a 1-2 reaver, letting him get good match ups on all sides of the weapon triangle.
His stats start pretty unimpressive but mine turned out incredibly strong up to the end of the demo. He had enough speed to double slow enemies enabling orkos and good enough bulk to withstand multiple hits. The ideal infantry.
I will mention my overall view of proc skills here. In the older versions of Arms of Valor where stats were inflated, proc skills meant something semi-reliable. In this version, I find them incredibly uninteresting. Lueric’s 2% of Aether adds little to his kit and the same applies for Esker’s adept.
And onto Esker. I do like the idea of Esker a lot, a myrmidon with actual bulk is exciting. Despite putting in significant investment, I feel like she can feel a little rough and there’s a few reasons behind that.
-Swords are a tragic weapon type for her due to low con. Wind edge was incredibly useless due to bad hit, weighing Esker down by 4 and 4rkoing on a good day. Wyrmslayer weighs her down by 5, meaning she didn’t double some wyverns in ch6 and had shaky hit. (this screenshot is after 3 speed levels in a row in ch6.) Even Esker’s own prf weighs her down by 5. Unfortunately, iron swords are her best bet a lot of the time.
-She has good match ups against axe units, but bad match ups against sword units (not doubling leading to 3-4rko) and lance units (4-ifinity-rko).
-Higher AS than competitors is weighed down by not doing better than 2rkos compared to slower units, albeit often with better accuracy.
In all honesty, her stat spread isn’t bad. She has good enough bulk to be frontliner which is a welcome relief from so many paper myrmidons. Just being able to use non-iron swords without being weighed down to infinity and having a skill that does something would be enough to make her a solid unit.
[NO SCREENSHOT]
I don’t know much about Titus because he died in chapter 2 and I didn’t want to reset for him. Granted, that was also because he doesn’t seem to have many advantages. Frenzy gets him maybe +5 damage on a really good day, which doesn’t seem to be able to exceed 2rko. He has little bulk and speed as an infantry unit compared to his peers.
All staff users getting powerstaff is a bold design choice, but I’m here for it. Celina is pretty exceptional, being able to heal twice and early physic is fun to use. Her extra actions also grant her massive gain, getting 6 levels and level capping in chapter 6. I wonder if staff exp might need to be reduced given powerstaff. Live to serve even lets her walk off the occasional healer tank (certified gamer strat).
Humphrey is a pretty solid archer. 2-5 longbow is neat and balanced by its low mt. He can really struggle to 2rko decent defence units even with doubling, but he can afford to pick low defense targets given is range. Prescience seems to do little for him.
Gaskon is a very interesting armour design, being mixed bulk with armored blow and warding blow. Unfortunately, I find him to be quite subpar at his main purpose, actually pulling enemies on enemy phase. He has some of the lowest base HP in the cast and explodes pretty quickly. Esker, Lueric and Barus all usually do the same or better job of pulling enemies. In c6 even slow enemies are approaching 8 speed, meaning he is about to be completely useless as a tank. Furthermore, he has difficulty 2rkoing enemies unless he is using the steel lance, which he has shaky hit with due to his low dexterity. I feel like he has been too kneecapped to account for mixed bulk.
Smite rocks for pushing payload though!
Basil is a decently flexible unit. I worried that rally str would incentivise him to be solely a rally bot, but his decent bulk and solid magic damage in combination with action economy being fairly tight meant this wasn’t the case.
Cherry’s rally speed alone makes her very competitive. She can pull some good match ups against armors and wyverns, but most bulky units having resistance meant she did poorly against pretty much everyone else, so she was stuck to rallying most of the time.
Bigoto makes me sad. I heard he used to be a druid with all 6 seal skills, which sounds more exciting than this unfortunate fellow. His devil axe was unable to get hit past 30s. Heavy strike I find to be not add much and only causes frustration during recruitment (he crit Barus and killed him.) His speed turned out just low enough for me to miss every doubling threshold, just not bulky enough to be able to tank 3 hits, just enough accuracy issues to cause problems and just enough con to not rescue or be rescued by Gaston. At least he could get 2rkos on soldiers.
Mina is Esker minus all the parts that make her decent. Skill system wrath is a comically bad skill, no good match ups, can’t even do damage against mages, etc. I assume the intent of Mina is ‘haha funny bad myrmidon’, which I think is kind of a shame. My personal opinion is the just purposefully bad unit doesn’t really add much to the experience. It would be neat if she had some other amusing application despite being bad. Something beyond pulling one mage.
Nikola is great. He has high bulk, decent magic damage on enemy phase, no speed issues and powerstaff. 1 luck is problematic, but a hoplon guard drops fairly recently. Mine got 4 perfect speed levels allowing to orko slow units but even on average, I think he seems like a jack of all trades, master of a lot.
Sabelle shows up being better than everyone in the army. Good str, speed, defence, reposition and canto+. Amazing unit. Granted, that 5 luck means hoplon guard competition from Nikola. Savage blow didn’t end up being too useful due to 20% damage not helping with damage thresholds. I assume the 20-con aid is a balance decision, which makes sense but I still wish she just had the normal aid formula.
I don’t feel like the passive holdeables do anything for me besides take one item slot because the unit doesn’t have a third weapon to bring. +1 to a stat rarely swings anything unless it’s speed. I get it’s probably to prevent passive stacking but my preference is rarer and stronger boosters.
Whoa. Tradeable capture passive item is definitely something that can go into the hack advertisements.
Even though I didn’t get a chance to use it as it drops in the last chapter of the demo, it has some fascinating possibilities. I suspect Nikola, Barus or Sabelle would be the best users, having enough aid to grab non-fighter units with better hit than Bigoto and Gaston. Being able to be traded around for multiple captures per turn could be quite terrifying.
An overall note is that the low luck on player units early game meant pretty much everyone faced a small amount of low% crit against which there is no counterplay. By the time hoplon guard shows up, luck growth does solve this problem but maybe just tad more points for most low luck units would be nice.
Story
I’m not a writer so grain of salt, yada yada.
My first impression of Lueric is that I would not trust this guy with a group project, much less a mercenary team. He gets immediately told off by his mum for not taking things seriously in the next chapter, which I thought was pretty neat. More of a character flaw than a roguish charm.
It’s cool the ‘boys’ do have a college dormmates kind of vibe.
It has been very rare to see romance be so central to the plot, even though I’m not big on romance in general. I blame this on the fact I’ve read way, way, way too many trashy romance novels.
One thing I didn’t vibe with is Ryker. I do like the idea of that one friend where you know he is not a good person, but you’re pals with anyway (we’ve all had one, right?) but Ryker seems comically evil to the point I wonder how on earth Lueric could possibly have been his best friend.
In the flashback scene, there’s one line where he decides to be a little emotionally manipulative, but he caps that off with immediately escalating to threatening to kill Lueric and then delights in murdering a family in front of him. Abusive friendships are not uncommon, but here it feels there isn’t even a façade of one. Ryker in the present day immediately goes “man, I love killing people.” In combination with the flashback, it just seems like Lueric was somehow best friends John Evil CEO of Evil and feels like it cheapens whatever emotional response Lueric might have to a former friend who has become a bitter foe. Of course, this is just from his portrayal this chapter, and it might very well change if I saw more of Ryker.
Misc
Misc
This thief appears to be a master knight. I’d like him on my team.
Stat booster descriptions don’t have full stops.
Corn description has no full stop.
In the survive map, it claims one of the bosses died even though the map was ended by waiting out the timer.
The tactics room claims there are 4 horses when there are 3.
The ch4x cutscene tune is… odd. A friend was able to identify it as Spamton (I have not played Deltarune) but it feels like an extremely bizarre choice for this scene.
The ring conversation in the intermission repeats even after the ring was obtained.
The skip cutscene function seems pointless in the intermission when the player can just press start if they don’t want to see it.
The tactics room in ch5 mentions ballisticians, but I assume this was about an earlier build and was not updated.
The renewal skill scroll I assume isn’t supposed to be infinite.
There seems be a lot of [A] for 1 line instead of for 2 lines [A] in most of the boss quotes. This was also early in the ch1 end event.
Wyrmslayer can be used as a pure water and plays pure water animations with battle animations off.
15 use chest key obtained from the left most chest key drop in ch6.
Guide info about anima magic seems outdated.
Pretty sure this means Atlas owes me 20000 gold for this sponsored review. I expect the payment tomorrow.
