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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Jul 13, 2012 3:57:18 GMT -5
After reading through most of the 21 negative reviews on Metacritic I started this thinking it would be terrible. It's not the best, but it really isn't anywhere near as bad as the reviewers made out. I'm also 100% positive that most of them never put much time into it or even bothered to read the instructions, given how many mistakes/omissions were made. All in all, one of my favourite X360 games, despite some unfortunate flaws. Includes an interview with the developer, courtesy of DoubleJump Books. www.hardcoregaming101.net/operationdarkness/operationdarkness.htm |
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Post by Ryzuki on Jul 13, 2012 12:06:53 GMT -5
Well done. Nice to finally see something good said about the game.
The difficulty of the game was mainly from random ambushes that you have no way of knowing how when or where they'll pop up, which will make it hard to counter. (That, and some people really don't like battles that drag on for an hour+.)
Admittedly, the game has some major flaws, such as poor camera angles, voice acting, and the fact that once you lose a character, they're gone for good. (which is bad since you only have one healer.)
Despite that, I still had a lotta fun with this game, and it's a shame so many hate it.
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Post by Allie on Jul 13, 2012 14:04:04 GMT -5
Going on a tangent here, because I'm one of the type being called out on the carpet.
One of these days, all you "You idiots are too stupid to play strategy games" people should actually put out a primer on how to generally play them (especially ones with perma-death, limited EXP, and limited resources), and hopefully not be snarlingly (yes, I'm aware that's a made-up term. Such is life.) condescending about it.
I'd like to actually be able to play the likes of Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, and the Super Robot Wars games one of these days. :/
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Post by chaoticgood on Jul 13, 2012 14:17:04 GMT -5
Frank Gaunt: "Contrary to the shambling ogre of the novel though, Frank is extremely intelligent and quite philosophical."
I read it ages ago, but I seem to recall the monster actually was intelligent and philosophical in the novel, and the dumb ogre version was popularized by the later Universal and Hammer movies. So it seems this guy actually is based on the novel version. Someone who actually has read it recently might want to confirm that though....
One thing definitely agreed in the text is the complaints about how some games turn into save/reload fests, especially ridiculous are the entire Fire Emblem and Super Robot Wars series...
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Post by cc on Jul 13, 2012 22:38:34 GMT -5
...I read it ages ago, but I seem to recall the monster actually was intelligent and philosophical in the novel, and the dumb ogre version was popularized by the later Universal and Hammer movies. So it seems this guy actually is based on the novel version. Someone who actually has read it recently might want to confirm that though.... Yeah, the monster was actually very well read and eloquent by the end of the novel, so the makers of the game actually did their homework pretty well. The "shambling ogre" version only really came into being later through portrayals of the monster such as Boris Karloff's in the Universal Films. More on topic, I'm glad you wrote this article Sketcz, I'd only heard negative things about this game before in passing, but it actually looks more interesting to me than Valkyria Chronicles did which despite having an intriguing looking battle system never really appealed to me. |
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Jul 14, 2012 4:38:32 GMT -5
Uh-oh, I've been found out. I've not read the Frankenstein books, nor seen any of the films. My views come from what other people say - if the team modelled Frank after the monster in the book, then kudos to them for being authentic. I should change that at some point. Admittedly, the game has some major flaws, such as poor voice acting What was wrong with the voice acting? Serious question. I thought it was excellent. Gallant's performance is done to perfection, while Keith's Scottish accent sounds natural and Cynthia is pretty good too. Only the German accents are slightly questionable, since they're English speakers putting on an accent, but are still consistent. The only actor I didn't like was Jude, the same actor who did the book in Nier - since his English accent sounds a little forced and stilted (and the Leona scene was really badly done). But still, having finished the game I thought they found some good actors generally (at least they didn't get Cam Clark to do an English accent like he did in MGS). My idea of bad acting is Chaos Wars. Going on a tangent here, because I'm one of the type being called out on the carpet. One of these days, all you "You idiots are too stupid to play strategy games" people should actually put out a primer on how to generally play them (especially ones with perma-death, limited EXP, and limited resources), and hopefully not be snarlingly (yes, I'm aware that's a made-up term. Such is life.) condescending about it. I'd like to actually be able to play the likes of Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, and the Super Robot Wars games one of these days. :/ I'm pretty sure I didn't actually call anyone an idiot. Is your review on Metacritic? (I can't access it on this computer due to it being an ancient version of Firefox.) A couple of low scorers weren't too bad with what they'd written, they seemed honest in their views. I'm mainly calling out those places that gave it 2 or 3 and then had a couple of paragraphs lambasting it without any critical analysis. To be honest, given some of the unique systems found in OD, I don't think lacking ability to play regular strategy games will hamper you, necessarily. It's more about understanding the systems, and just hammering them. Also, something I touched upon, is that OD is completely unlike traditional strategy games which demand precise character placement, to make use of choke-points confined areas. OD, in a similar way to Valkyria Chronicles, is all about visualising and dealing with enormous spaces, and maintaining control of them, often with only a couple of characters. When the field is 120 squares long, there technically is no wrong place to stand, so long as you're beyond range - so you can play it loose and casually. It's all about visualising your sphere of control (helped by the yellow circles representing weapon range). We (me, you, other readers, other writers) make a lot of comparisons to other strategy games, but actually, the more I think about it, the more inclined I am to say OD is unlike any other strategy title, apart from perhaps Valkyria. Something I dislike with many strategy titles, and why I don't like chess, is that often you're faced with a choice of a dozen squares to place a character onto, and only one of them is safe, while the rest will spell eventual game over. OD, if you're making use of its systems, is pretty forgiving with decisions on where to stand. Unless you choose to stand right in front of tank which is about to move. That's always bad. My former flatmate is a hardcore Fire Emblem fan, and I watched him play one of the stages in one of the 3D releases, reloading it - and I'm not exaggerating - must have been 20 times before I left the room. One of his guys kept getting killed, and he appeared to be doing the same strategy over and over again, on a tiny 15x15 map in a gloomy forest, except changing one character's movement each time. As he explained it, he was certain he could get his entire team to survive if he found the precise order of movement and placement for each one. I think he did it eventually, after a lot of trial and error, but that to me is an abysmal strategy game. I would say that's garbage. If you're faced with 1000 tactical possibilities, and all but one of them results in failure, that is just plain shitty design. A good strategy game should allow for mistakes and the chance to recover. Would you believe for a long time I disliked strategy games? In fact it's one of my least favourite genres - I can't get on with Disgaea and its 200 hours of repetitive gameplay. Shining Force III was abandoned at that godawful train map. I don't even want to touch the Fire Emblem games. Advance Wars was OK, but it was tough going. I'm really not a good turn-based strategy player. I also despise its sister genre, "real-time strategy games". The game which warmed me to the genre was the first Valkyria Chronicles (which I'm going to say is probably the best beginner's SRPG you'll find - easy to learn, and with just enough direct physical control to settle you in). What I liked about OD, and what made it easy, is that its systems are designed around heavy exploitation. I would argue they're not broken, but rather intentionally designed so as to dominate the field. * Give everyone the Auto-Restore skill, and equip 3 recovery items, collecting more as you go. Already this guarantees most characters will survive without effort. Seriously, cling to this like a liferaft. It's there to be used. * Always, always use cover move - at a guess I'd say you can travel 50% further. It also allows you to move when enemies do, thereby disruptng their tactics. * Whenever possible use Cover Ambush and Cover Attack, and let the enemies rip themselves to shreds by running into your line of fire. * Keep your magic users light. Don't even bother giving Cordelia weapons. Fire magic kills everything. Keep everyone light. If a gun runs out of ammo, unless it's a super rare weapon, dump it. * Use grenades a lot. They're lighter than guns, have splash damage, and can kill most enemies in one hit. * Loot like a great dirty bastard. Loot after moving but before attacking. Often the enemy will have a Panzerfast rocket. Even if waste this on two closely standing enemies, do so anyway! They'll die in one hit and you won't have a weight penalty. * Give the wolves the heavy weapons, like bazookas, then transform. They get a stats boost, so the extra weight isn't a problem. They travel further and hit harder than anyone else. Their punches can kill tanks. * Once you get hold of the items, give them restoratives which heal HP and restore MS. So when they Auto-Recover, they also recover their MS. * Give a character 5 high healing restoratives and send them right into enemy range - they will draw all the enemy fire, thereby keeping the rest of the team safe. Chance are they can survive the onslaught and be moved from harm later. Gallant and Keith in wolf form are near indestructible anyway - let them bullet sponge for the team. They enemy can play dirty, so it's worth being sneaky with your tactics. You also need to abandon some of the ideas other strategy titles drill into you. |
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Post by Ryzuki on Jul 14, 2012 10:13:55 GMT -5
Admittedly, the game has some major flaws, such as poor voice acting What was wrong with the voice acting? Serious question. I thought it was excellent. Gallant's performance is done to perfection, while Keith's Scottish accent sounds natural and Cynthia is pretty good too. Only the German accents are slightly questionable, since they're English speakers putting on an accent, but are still consistent. The only actor I didn't like was Jude, the same actor who did the book in Nier - since his English accent sounds a little forced and stilted (and the Leona scene was really badly done). But still, having finished the game I thought they found some good actors generally (at least they didn't get Cam Clark to do an English accent like he did in MGS). My idea of bad acting is Chaos Wars. OK, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as Chaos Wars. (I don't think anything is) Some voice actors are fine, but others such as Keith, Cynthia and Jude just sound like they're trying a bit too hard to pull out an accent that doesn't belong to them. Obviously this is just a matter of opinion, but there you have it. |
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Post by Allie on Jul 14, 2012 14:12:24 GMT -5
No, I'm not a reviewer. I'm really too stilted of a writer to be one (I tried writing one for a([n] amateur) website about 15-16 years ago, and screwed it up pretty bad). I was talking more about being one of those "you people suck at strategy games" people.
I've never been able to play games with permadeath (Fire Emblem, Crystal Warriors), resource management (Advance Wars with its money and build system), or limited EXP (Super Robot Wars, many Fire Emblem games).
I've always been stuck with stuff like Shining Force and Makai Kingdom due to the ability to grind characters up until they can actually take more than two hits (and if they do die, you can bring them back).
I have no concept of how to out-manuever and out-manipulate enemies. And I've yet to find a game that will actually explain to the player the underlying principles behind how to do it (possibly in fear of making the game too easy if they did).
Which is a bother because I like the concepts of most of these games, I just get embarrassingly slaughtered at them.
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Post by Garamoth on Jul 14, 2012 14:49:25 GMT -5
I really like the idea of expert gamers finding diamonds in the rough that were ignored or reviled by the mainstream, but this ain't the case. Sorry to rain on this parade.
Operation Darkness has its own crazy charm, but it's not a good strategy game. That's even letting the camera and the graphics slide. The strategy is just no good.
First of all, the Cover system is broken. Only two strategies are ever useful. The first is moving fast units farther by making them move in coordination with a slower one. This doesn't make much sense. How can everyone move farther just 'cause one guy is walking with them? The second strategy is putting a long range unit on ambush and the other on attack, so one triggers an attack and the other finishes the enemy off. That becomes entirely useless after the first half of the game.
For the rest, the Cover system might not even be there after the second half of the game. Why? Because eventually magic becomes so powerful and cheap while equipment weight becomes such an enormous handicap that anything else besides using spells (or special attacks) is a waste of time. So give werewolves a bazooka (which, idiotically, are more powerful when the user is in wolf form), and have everyone else walk around almost empty-handed. Annoyingly, enemies do not get the same turn order handicap from weight (some of them are supposed to be vampires, but still).
Near the end of the game, every enemy can take two turns for every one you take, even if you're running around empty-handed. Enemies can take as many as four turns for every turn a unit carrying heavy weapons can take.
The best sign that a levelling system was poorly implemented is that one variable eventually trumps everything else in some crazy runaway effect. This is one such case, even if you give the whole thing some leeway because the story is about superhumans gradually replacing humans on the battlefield.
And no, it does not make sense that Weight affects Turn Order this badly. Are you really telling me that a character with a sword can have time to run up to three different people and stab them (across the entire map!) while a heavy machine gun user cannot move his wrist an inch to shoot at another target during the same time interval?
Weight should mostly affect movement range!
In a game system centered around covering fire, the heavy machine gun should be king. The fact that it is actually the worst weapon simply because of its weight shows they screwed things up pretty badly.
By the end, people are mostly running around swinging swords and flinging spells. I hope you weren't expecting a WWII game based around gunplay... For a game which promises and enticing mix of technology and fantasy, having the guns thrown out the door at mid-point is a huge disappointment.
And holy crap, that's not even the end of the problems! Missions are looooooong: some of them can probably take almost two hours. They eventually all have multiple waves of reinforcements, so what should be a surprise becomes tediously expected. The best "surprise" is clearing out a map only to have a tank appear out of nowhere and run over an essential character. Instant Game Over. Isn't this fun?
Combining perma-death with looooong missions is just bad game design.
But fret not, the game is easy as pie because of one single skill: Auto-recovery. It makes units use recovery items automatically, even if they should technically be dead (0 HP). With it, every mission becomes trivial and the only decent strategy becomes running head-first into the enemy since you're pretty much invincible (take that, cover system!).
In fact, the only thing that can kill you and trumps Auto Recovery is a tank driving over you. Considering this, it's surprising the AI never tries to run you over on purpose, so the AI's only effective tactic is something it does unintentionally. How's that for strategy?
You "could" play the game without Auto Recovery, but considering so many things can kill you from across the map (like a lucky tank shell) ruining more than an hour of careful progress, you'd be an idiot not to use it.
Letting you use generic characters when their only long term "contributions" are looting corpses and hogging precious XP is also a pretty bad idea.
So there you have it. Operation Darkness is a stinker, but with a kooky Japanese take on World War II. I honestly enjoyed that, but that is its only redeeming feature 'cause there certainly isn't anything brilliant in its design. There is no great Metacritic injustice here.
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Post by mrcrispy83 on Jul 14, 2012 21:31:26 GMT -5
No, I'm not a reviewer. I'm really too stilted of a writer to be one (I tried writing one for a([n] amateur) website about 15-16 years ago, and screwed it up pretty bad). I was talking more about being one of those "you people suck at strategy games" people. I've never been able to play games with permadeath (Fire Emblem, Crystal Warriors), resource management (Advance Wars with its money and build system), or limited EXP (Super Robot Wars, many Fire Emblem games). I've always been stuck with stuff like Shining Force and Makai Kingdom due to the ability to grind characters up until they can actually take more than two hits (and if they do die, you can bring them back). I have no concept of how to out-manuever and out-manipulate enemies. And I've yet to find a game that will actually explain to the player the underlying principles behind how to do it (possibly in fear of making the game too easy if they did). Which is a bother because I like the concepts of most of these games, I just get embarrassingly slaughtered at them. Actually if you get wiped in SRW, you just get sent back to the start of the stage, keeping all the exp and money you have accumulated so you could purposely fail stages over and over to grind. The only thing this really affects is there's a turn count and if you go over it you can't fight the optional true last boss (but I would assume it would reset on ng+). though, I loathe SRW with the hatred of a million burning suns, because they're as repetitive, grindy, and unbalanced as goddamn Idea Factory games while embodying pretty much everything bad about anime. :/ |
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Post by Allie on Jul 14, 2012 22:07:07 GMT -5
No, I'm not a reviewer. I'm really too stilted of a writer to be one (I tried writing one for a([n] amateur) website about 15-16 years ago, and screwed it up pretty bad). I was talking more about being one of those "you people suck at strategy games" people. I've never been able to play games with permadeath (Fire Emblem, Crystal Warriors), resource management (Advance Wars with its money and build system), or limited EXP (Super Robot Wars, many Fire Emblem games). I've always been stuck with stuff like Shining Force and Makai Kingdom due to the ability to grind characters up until they can actually take more than two hits (and if they do die, you can bring them back). I have no concept of how to out-manuever and out-manipulate enemies. And I've yet to find a game that will actually explain to the player the underlying principles behind how to do it (possibly in fear of making the game too easy if they did). Which is a bother because I like the concepts of most of these games, I just get embarrassingly slaughtered at them. Actually if you get wiped in SRW, you just get sent back to the start of the stage, keeping all the exp and money you have accumulated so you could purposely fail stages over and over to grind. The only thing this really affects is there's a turn count and if you go over it you can't fight the optional true last boss (but I would assume it would reset on ng+). though, I loathe SRW with the hatred of a million burning suns, because they're as repetitive, grindy, and unbalanced as goddamn Idea Factory games while embodying pretty much everything bad about anime. :/ SRW also has ridiculous requirements if you want certain weapons (Viletta in the city, Arado on the moon with Radha). |
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Jul 15, 2012 2:52:11 GMT -5
No, I'm not a reviewer. I'm really too stilted of a writer to be one (I tried writing one for a([n] amateur) website about 15-16 years ago, and screwed it up pretty bad). [...] Which is a bother because I like the concepts of most of these games, I just get embarrassingly slaughtered at them. Crikey, 15 years is a long time to be remorseful! I think everyone improves a little bit over time. Or you do if you work at it. My earliest attempts at writing are so bad that I well never allow anyone to read them. Anyway, if you have access to a PS3, Valkyria Chronicles might be the strategy title for you, since I have all the same complaints about strategy titles. it's take a while to get to grips with how movement and attacking are real-time, but once it clicks it really is a marvellous system. I really like the idea of expert gamers finding diamonds in the rough that were ignored or reviled by the mainstream, but this ain't the case. Sorry to rain on this parade. Operation Darkness has its own crazy charm, but it's not a good strategy game. That's even letting the camera and the graphics slide. The strategy is just no good. Operation Darkness is a stinker. Were I the only one who liked OD, I may have started to question the validity of my views (that's a lie, I never question my views). But quite a few people, spread across the blog, Facebook and Twitter have all spoken up in agreement that OD is a good game to play. It has flaws, these need to be addressed, but I'm happy to find that quite a few enjoyed its mechanics. I hope you don't mind, I've done a multi-part quote and answer. Just a quick attempt to cover the bigger points. Why is it idiotic for a bazooka to be more powerful when held by a werewolf than by a human? Are you criticising the game because it subverts your perception of reality? Adherence to real-life realism does not a good game make, especially one that is as abstracted as the strategy genre. You might as well complain that the ground is divided into squares. The best, and I mean absolute best thing about video games, is that you can just make wacky, arbitrary shit up. Whether it's games where you walk on the ceiling, or a werewolf than can punch a tank to death, the abstraction afforded by games is why they are the best creative medium that exists. Pity so few studios make use of such freedom. If that's your view then you must hate Chess because how can a soldier mounted on a horse move in a big L shape, and how can a Castle/Tower slide across the battlefield more effortlessly than a horse - it reaches to the sky and is made of stone blocks for god's sake?! (for the record, I do not like chess) That's like arguing that Mario shouldn't be able to alter the direction of his jump after leaving the ground, and yet he can. The fact that magic users and swordspeople can move more often than someone carrying heavy weapons doesn't bother me. It's a system with a set of arbitrary rules. If you dislike the rules, fine, but they work (they worked for me), and if you do criticise them for being, then you must damn every video game on the face of the earth. Why should it be king? The designer can invent any rules he pleases for the game. You seem to be criticising the fact that design decisions disagree with what you personally want (king machine gun). I ended up finding an enormous gun-cannon with a 150 weight (actually, I found two!), which made whoever carried it lose about 6 turns, and yet it still proved immensely valuable as a Cover Attack weapon. Long range sniper on Ambush, other people running and fighting with light arms, one HEAVY on Cover Attack. The Cover system was amazing. I loved it (and exploited it for my own gains repeatedly). We're definitely in agreement on some points, but the way the weapons/weight/turns system functioned, is something I personally got a lot of enjoyment out of experimenting with, and working to my own advantage. Some of my guys missed turns, but I was prepared for that and worked within that restriction. Not true. I used the Cover system even more towards the end game than I did at the start. To start with enemies are weak, slow and stupid, so you can send troops on their own turn to attack. But as the game progresses, Cover Move is essential to cover ground. Cover Ambush is essential for keeping the vampire hoards pinned down. And Cover Attack (be it with rifles, machine guns, or even a bazooka), allowed me to annihilate tough enemies. Someone like Herbert, who has no offensive magic, did tremendously well with a medium rifle or bazooka and set to Cover Attack - you shot at everyone and often got the final kill shot, keeping his EXP rather high. Actually, at one point he was higher than Van Helsing or Jack. Magic is great, but I couldn't have finished the game without heavy, heavy use of the Cover System. But I didn't throw out guns. The only people had no weapons were Herbert, Cordelia, Lewis and Frank, the others had a mix of sniper rifles, bazookas, the heavy cannon for one guy, and in Keith's case ALL grenades, because he unlocks the super awesome Explosive ability. During the battle with Hitler most guys picked up small arms from the enemy to milk the boss of EXP. Cordelia and Edward always had sniper rifles, but there were cases where I'd sent the rest of the team in weaponless, have a magic user like Cordelia kill an enemy at the start, and then have my other guys run up to it, grab a weapon, and attack with the enemy's own ordinance. Guns always played a part in my playing. Even so, what's the problem with swords and magic. You're criticising the game again for making the decisions you would have made as designer (ie: having the machine gun as king). No, it's not fun. It's a legitimate criticism which I raised. Instant Game Over due to tank death is annoying and needed fixing. We are in total agreement. I don't understand this. First you say the game is too difficult. Then you say it's too easy because of AR. Then you say you should play without it. But then that makes it too difficult again. Why would you handicap yourself on purpose anyway? It's part of the game system, use it. I've read on forums how people try to play games without using parts of the system (one guy was determined to finish Ni no Kuni without items for example), and I find this disturbing and perverse. If it's there, use it without feeling guilty. I love the Auto-Recovery system. It's an ingenious and fantastic idea. It's not a sign of a broken system, it IS the system. That's why tank shells wipe out all your HP, because you're expected to carry one or two restoratives. I don't think we can even argue this, because it comes down to very personal likes and dislikes. I approached every situation with the understanding I could lose all my HP, and so always kept a restorative, even a weak one. When a guy ran out, i'd scramble to a corpse and loot another one. if the corpse has 2 restoratives, I'd leave one for another team member. I had to restart maybe 5 missions during me entire playthrough? Using AR there was still a challenge, but the resource management aspect of it was satisfying. I would like to see more, many, many more strategy games feature AR. AR could be the most revolutionary idea I have seen in the genre. I covered this in the article. Did you read to the end? You also failed to mention the Valhalla Reports, which are perhaps the worst part of the game.  I appreciate your taking the time to explain in precise detail why you think the game stinks - you did a more eloquent job than many professional reviewers. But your points are not universally felt, since as I've mentioned, others besides myself appreciated the mechanics featured in the game. I think if you were given free reign to change the game as you saw fit, and you removed what you didn't like, altered what you thought almost worked, and added things you felt were missing, I would no longer enjoy OD, and I probably wouldn't have liked playing it through to the end. My enjoyment of the game had very little to do with any supposed zany Japanese charm (because aesthetically I don't see it there at all - Disgaea has Japanese charm, OD does not). For me it was all about the mechanics. I like strange mechanical systems - Pathologic is on my top 5 PC games list, and that too was universally hated. |
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Post by Ryu the Grappler on Jul 15, 2012 3:35:13 GMT -5
I wished I had a 360 to try this game out. I know of at least one person who said it was better than the greater Fire Emblem games.
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Post by chaoticgood on Jul 15, 2012 7:01:07 GMT -5
Actually if you get wiped in SRW, you just get sent back to the start of the stage, keeping all the exp and money you have accumulated so you could purposely fail stages over and over to grind. The only thing this really affects is there's a turn count and if you go over it you can't fight the optional true last boss (but I would assume it would reset on ng+). though, I loathe SRW with the hatred of a million burning suns, because they're as repetitive, grindy, and unbalanced as goddamn Idea Factory games while embodying pretty much everything bad about anime. :/ SRW also has ridiculous requirements if you want certain weapons (Viletta in the city, Arado on the moon with Radha). Not to mention just flat out completely broken stuff like in OG2 when enemies can move around for free for 'cutscene' purposes even if it's your turn... There's one battle I specifically remember where you get a warning that the enemy will get reinforcements at X turns or something to this purpose. I naturally assumed the reinforcements would appear at the border of the map like in a real strategy game, so I made sure the main character (whose death is an instant game over) was nowhere near there. Naturally, what actually happens is the enemies teleport right in the middle of the map, immediately move and attack, and one shot the main guy -> game over... The entire game is 100% full of garbage like this. I can't comprehend how people think these are good games. |
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Post by Garamoth on Jul 15, 2012 7:41:56 GMT -5
Hmmm, Sketcz, I find it ironic that you're saying that "my points are not universally felt", while the theme of your article is that "the critics didn't get it right". If you want to boil it down just to like and dislike, they had the right to hate it if they wanted to. All I'm saying is that it's pleaseant to think that "the critics don't know anything", but I think they had a fairly good grasp on this one.
They borked the game by making it impossible, but then unborked it too much by giving you a skill that makes every battle trivial. It's like a pendulum swinging too far to one side and coming back too far to the other afterwards.
Anyway, I wrote all this because I was procrastinating on doing something else. It's incredible what you can do while trying not to do something!
Extra question for analysis: why does perma-death work in Fire Emblem, but doesn't work so well in Operation Darkness?
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