davidjinfla
CAGiversary!
Anyone playing this yet?
any D&D Tactics game opinions?
- Thread starter davidjinfla
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DesertEagleXIX
CAGiversary!
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I was thinking about picking this up, but I'm going to wait for Jeane d'arc. It's $10 cheaper, and it's made by Factor 5.
I played the demo and it's beautiful.
Still I might pick up D&D down the line.
I played the demo and it's beautiful.
Still I might pick up D&D down the line.
moraviapils
CAGiversary!
Gameplay is a little slow, and the interface is clumsy. For example, you can't see what a character has equipped while browsing a merchant's items, so you either have to do a lot of swapping back and forth (annoying when you have 6 party members) or start writing stuff down. There's also little explanation of the whole D&D system for newbies, so when you're creating a character, it's a crap shoot as to which skills and feats are "better."
I'd recommend it only to people who are already pretty familiar with D&D, so these problems don't annoy them as much.
I'd recommend it only to people who are already pretty familiar with D&D, so these problems don't annoy them as much.
davidjinfla
CAGiversary!
seems like it has the typical D&D video game curse. It is either to simple for hardcore fans so they can appeal to new players or it is hardcore so people not familar with D&D will be bored or intimidated.
brandonabley
CAGiversary!
D&D Tactics is a pretty decent game. Massive impression:
This is definitely a Japanese-style turn-based strategy and plays exactly like every other one you've played. The battles are actually the most genuinely tactical games I've played in a game of this type. You have up to five or six different commands for "move", for example -- you decide whether you want to move, or whether you want to take a single step (does not provoke extra attacks when moving near an enemy like running does), perform flips and cartwheels past the enemy, tackle to enemy, or run to the enemy with your sword swinging (does extra damage but opens you up for an attack). You'll have a lot of fun deciding how to carefully maneuver your characters in toe-to-toe brawls. Very cool. You also get interesting special abilities for intimidating enemies, false swings (if successful, leaves the enemy wide open for critical hits) and all that.
Different weapon types matter in ways you probably aren't used to, also. Piercing weapons, for example, are completely useless against undead characters. You'll actually need to keep extra weapons on each character for different situations, because you can end up like me, trying to kill a horde of skeletons with spears, rapiers, and arrows, to absolutely no effect.
Character-building is a blast! You have all sorts of feats and special abilities to choose from, and there are so many spells out there with so many different effects that you will blow your mind. There are spells to generate magical light, distract enemies with fireworks, create cobwebs all over the battlefield, generate foggy weather (makes it hard to see unless you are an orc or elf and can see in the infared spectrum) and others. You can create as many custom warriors as you like and bring six of them with me. If you get the game, I encourage you to make characters from more interesting classes like Bard and Psion and not just Fighters and Clerics. There are a bunch of different races, and they are all actually very very different; it will be a big decision whether you want the fast learning of a human, the size of an orc, the good nature and wisdom of a gnome, or the ability to see in the dark of two or three races. If you like the game, you will always want to play it more than once, because the parties can be completely different.
Also, this is D&D and the rules are forty years old and they are balanced to perfection. Everything is so well-balanced it's ridiculous. It's kind of frustrating if you don't understand the mechanics and why your orc is constantly missing and why your three-foot-tall gnome thief is always kicking ass in toe-to-toe combat against hulking orcs, but once you get it, it's way fun. Maneuvering your characters is much more complicated than other games but very rewarding.
Also, the graphics are really good. You'll barf when you see your character models zoomed-in right after making your characters, but once you are in-game and realize they are zoomed out to about 1/5 that size, it looks really good. The light sourcing is awesome for a handheld and dark areas look great with the subtle effects of magical lighting or torches.
The maps are huge and the battles are epic. It'll take more than one commute to finish a battle -- some of them are up to three hours long! It's a lot of fun to be involved in a pitched, epic struggle against a horde of undead or goblins or whatever, and to lay the killing blow with your final surviving character four days after you started playing the map. It also really emphasizes the usefullness of having skilled archers that can accurately shoot arrows from half a mile away. If you have a high-level ranger with an enchanted bow and special arrows, you can fight battles where he'll pick off dozens of warriors before they can even reach him and you'll never receive a scratch!
The game is non-linear, which is always awesome. There are different branches depending on decisions as well as the alignment of your main hero. There are nine alignments in total, with some really neat combinations like Lawful Evil (a corrupt politician) and Chaotic Good (a do-gooder scoundrel like Robin Hood.
But you know, there are some bad things about the game that are really serious!
The interface is really really lousy, and menu-shuffling is just a pain and takes much longer than it should. It takes a lot of button-presses and PSP-wresting to perform basic movement and the like. Trading items and managing characters after battle is just atrocious and you can't get much information about your characters -- unless you go into their status screens, in which case it's information overload. This isn't game-breaking but it's really annoying and brings the experience down.
You have these dungeons where you have "adventure segments". basically, when there are no enemies, all your guys get free moves to move around as you want. Unfortunately, you still have to move them one at a time. Since sometimes you'll have to move your guys 5 turns' worth of distance, it can be absolute torture to dungeon-dive until your next big battle. This only is a problem once in awhile, but when it comes up, you'll want to cry because it is so boring.
The framerate is really bad whenever the game is using a lot of lighting effects, and mediocre at other times. Since the menus are so flashy, sometimes they are hard to navigate whent he framerate dips. Predictably, this is a big problem when you are in dungeons and you have torches and light enchantments and infravision (characters that see in the dark generate a blue-green light that does a perfect job of showing you what a character that can see in the dark sees, while still not looking like actual light) and all that going on.
Also, the game is really really complicated. It's fun once you get the rules, and it's very helpful to understand D&D because the rule conversion is pretty much 100%. One thing a lot of people complain about is that your characters miss 90% of the time. The issue is that your warriors need to have a lot of dexterity so that they can actually hit things! Also, you need to pay attention to position much more than other games -- you'll get critical hits with a clumsy character if he is in a good position, but you will miss almost 10)% of the time if he is attacking from the front. Buffs are also really really important in this game. One neat thing is that archers can shoot arrows from like 80 squares away. They will almost never hit unless magically aided or whatever, but it's neat that the game lets you attempt to make unreasonable shots at the maximum distance a bow can possibly fire.
SO!
I recommend this game if you can tolerate bad menus and you enjoy really ridiculous deep tactical gameplay. You'll be very impressed if you can deal with all the crap that the game will throw at you. If you like Dungeons and Dragons, this will be pretty awesome, because it translates the actual experience of D&D battles almost literally; I assure you that D&D battles are really cool. Character creation and customization is much more sophisticated than other games of this type, and every specialty and every drawback of every character will be a big deal.
If you don't like awful interfaces, steep learning curves, and find gameplay this involving to be draining (sometimes you just want to kick back and enjoy a simple game!), then you should probably avoid this!
Personally, I like this game quite a bit, but I can see myself getting fed up with the awful interface and throwing my PSP at a wall eventually.
This is definitely a Japanese-style turn-based strategy and plays exactly like every other one you've played. The battles are actually the most genuinely tactical games I've played in a game of this type. You have up to five or six different commands for "move", for example -- you decide whether you want to move, or whether you want to take a single step (does not provoke extra attacks when moving near an enemy like running does), perform flips and cartwheels past the enemy, tackle to enemy, or run to the enemy with your sword swinging (does extra damage but opens you up for an attack). You'll have a lot of fun deciding how to carefully maneuver your characters in toe-to-toe brawls. Very cool. You also get interesting special abilities for intimidating enemies, false swings (if successful, leaves the enemy wide open for critical hits) and all that.
Different weapon types matter in ways you probably aren't used to, also. Piercing weapons, for example, are completely useless against undead characters. You'll actually need to keep extra weapons on each character for different situations, because you can end up like me, trying to kill a horde of skeletons with spears, rapiers, and arrows, to absolutely no effect.
Character-building is a blast! You have all sorts of feats and special abilities to choose from, and there are so many spells out there with so many different effects that you will blow your mind. There are spells to generate magical light, distract enemies with fireworks, create cobwebs all over the battlefield, generate foggy weather (makes it hard to see unless you are an orc or elf and can see in the infared spectrum) and others. You can create as many custom warriors as you like and bring six of them with me. If you get the game, I encourage you to make characters from more interesting classes like Bard and Psion and not just Fighters and Clerics. There are a bunch of different races, and they are all actually very very different; it will be a big decision whether you want the fast learning of a human, the size of an orc, the good nature and wisdom of a gnome, or the ability to see in the dark of two or three races. If you like the game, you will always want to play it more than once, because the parties can be completely different.
Also, this is D&D and the rules are forty years old and they are balanced to perfection. Everything is so well-balanced it's ridiculous. It's kind of frustrating if you don't understand the mechanics and why your orc is constantly missing and why your three-foot-tall gnome thief is always kicking ass in toe-to-toe combat against hulking orcs, but once you get it, it's way fun. Maneuvering your characters is much more complicated than other games but very rewarding.
Also, the graphics are really good. You'll barf when you see your character models zoomed-in right after making your characters, but once you are in-game and realize they are zoomed out to about 1/5 that size, it looks really good. The light sourcing is awesome for a handheld and dark areas look great with the subtle effects of magical lighting or torches.
The maps are huge and the battles are epic. It'll take more than one commute to finish a battle -- some of them are up to three hours long! It's a lot of fun to be involved in a pitched, epic struggle against a horde of undead or goblins or whatever, and to lay the killing blow with your final surviving character four days after you started playing the map. It also really emphasizes the usefullness of having skilled archers that can accurately shoot arrows from half a mile away. If you have a high-level ranger with an enchanted bow and special arrows, you can fight battles where he'll pick off dozens of warriors before they can even reach him and you'll never receive a scratch!
The game is non-linear, which is always awesome. There are different branches depending on decisions as well as the alignment of your main hero. There are nine alignments in total, with some really neat combinations like Lawful Evil (a corrupt politician) and Chaotic Good (a do-gooder scoundrel like Robin Hood.
But you know, there are some bad things about the game that are really serious!
The interface is really really lousy, and menu-shuffling is just a pain and takes much longer than it should. It takes a lot of button-presses and PSP-wresting to perform basic movement and the like. Trading items and managing characters after battle is just atrocious and you can't get much information about your characters -- unless you go into their status screens, in which case it's information overload. This isn't game-breaking but it's really annoying and brings the experience down.
You have these dungeons where you have "adventure segments". basically, when there are no enemies, all your guys get free moves to move around as you want. Unfortunately, you still have to move them one at a time. Since sometimes you'll have to move your guys 5 turns' worth of distance, it can be absolute torture to dungeon-dive until your next big battle. This only is a problem once in awhile, but when it comes up, you'll want to cry because it is so boring.
The framerate is really bad whenever the game is using a lot of lighting effects, and mediocre at other times. Since the menus are so flashy, sometimes they are hard to navigate whent he framerate dips. Predictably, this is a big problem when you are in dungeons and you have torches and light enchantments and infravision (characters that see in the dark generate a blue-green light that does a perfect job of showing you what a character that can see in the dark sees, while still not looking like actual light) and all that going on.
Also, the game is really really complicated. It's fun once you get the rules, and it's very helpful to understand D&D because the rule conversion is pretty much 100%. One thing a lot of people complain about is that your characters miss 90% of the time. The issue is that your warriors need to have a lot of dexterity so that they can actually hit things! Also, you need to pay attention to position much more than other games -- you'll get critical hits with a clumsy character if he is in a good position, but you will miss almost 10)% of the time if he is attacking from the front. Buffs are also really really important in this game. One neat thing is that archers can shoot arrows from like 80 squares away. They will almost never hit unless magically aided or whatever, but it's neat that the game lets you attempt to make unreasonable shots at the maximum distance a bow can possibly fire.
SO!
I recommend this game if you can tolerate bad menus and you enjoy really ridiculous deep tactical gameplay. You'll be very impressed if you can deal with all the crap that the game will throw at you. If you like Dungeons and Dragons, this will be pretty awesome, because it translates the actual experience of D&D battles almost literally; I assure you that D&D battles are really cool. Character creation and customization is much more sophisticated than other games of this type, and every specialty and every drawback of every character will be a big deal.
If you don't like awful interfaces, steep learning curves, and find gameplay this involving to be draining (sometimes you just want to kick back and enjoy a simple game!), then you should probably avoid this!
Personally, I like this game quite a bit, but I can see myself getting fed up with the awful interface and throwing my PSP at a wall eventually.
bread's done