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Post by zellsf on Jul 15, 2012 8:48:52 GMT -5
And really not part of how Valkyria Chronicles plays, at all. Only people who play it that way are people who write for GameFAQs. "every more"
Also, is it really worth it giving any attention to Metacritic? Write another page talking about the game itself, not the criticism against it.
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Jul 15, 2012 9:58:54 GMT -5
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. Why ironic? The views are not incompatible. In fact they're much compatible. Even though you and the critics dislike the game, for me it was absolutely worth buying, and I hoped there were others out there who agreed, hence why I wrote a contrarian piece. It turns out there were those who liked it - meaning the reviews are not representative. Some people who would have liked it maybe never played it because of the reviews. I hope my piece gives it a second chance for those who will like it. Anyway, what critics say aren't really representative of any group, only someone who is likely overworked, underpaid, and with an extreme deadline. I worked in-house, and I know what it's like. You get a day, maybe two days or three if you're lucky and freelance, and you need to get 1000 to 2000 words of copy in ASAP, along with screens. You put 6 hours into a game maybe. Most reviewers cheat, and it's very easy to go postal on a game simply because you can. I've done it, others have done, they all do it. So what if some small game gets a low score? They're not advertising with us so it doesn't matter. That's the mentality I faced every day. I took umbrage with what I perceived to be poor journalism. In fact you really shouldn't trust the majority of reviews in print magazines. In contrast, your post actually had more merit and critical thought than some of the reviews represented on Metacritic. Take for example the OXM "review". Metacritic features it as an aggregate score of 20, dragging the overall score down. Yet the review they link to is 4 paragraphs long and appears to be a preview more than anything else, and is pretty weak. I don't even think that is a review! I can't find the numerical score anywhere. I've read most of the reviews, and from the text I got the distinct feeling that they either put an hour or so into it, didn't bother reading the instructions, or just didn't give a shit in the constant need to produce a quota of pages by deadline. Operation Darkness? Looks like crap, so is probably an easy 2 pages where I can have a good rant. I've tried to be honest in my article. There are things I hate about OD, but I am extremely pleased it was released and that I had the chance to play it. Warts and all. I've never played FE properly so can't comment. My experience comes from watching my flat mate and reading on forums, and it seems the game is extremely cheap and unforgiving. OD is cheap when it comes to tanks running you over, but as you've said, there are ways around th difficulty. I enjoyed manipulating that pendulum. I like perma-death, as long as you can recover from it (as in VC, OD, and other SRPGs). It adds tension and forces you to think defensively. Compare that to Advance Wars, where every unit can be sacrificed without care. Perma-death adds value to individual characters. What a strategy game should never do is use perma-death as a stick to beat players with. It should be there, on your mind, but avoidable and recoverable from - something to add tension, maybe a little fear, but not a cheap device to force you to restart again, and again. OD has problems with this because of tank death. VC has problems in that if any enemy touches a fallen comrade he dies for good. Though both games also have their own workarounds for saving a fallen character. I suppose the kind of perma-death I like is the "almost" kind, where a character can die and then you rush to save them. That's cool, isn't it?
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Post by derboo on Jul 15, 2012 10:35:03 GMT -5
Take for example the OXM "review". Metacritic features it as an aggregate score of 20, dragging the overall score down. Yet the review they link to is 4 paragraphs long and appears to be a preview more than anything else, and is pretty weak. I don't even think that is a review! I can't find the numerical score anywhere. Apparently, that's the second of two pages. I can't find a means to switch pages on that site, but this appears to be the first half: www.oxmonline.com/operation-darkness-1 (not that it makes it a much better review, though...)
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Post by Ike on Jul 15, 2012 14:53:40 GMT -5
Is this game pretty heavily military themed or does it delve more into the fantasy aspects overall? I guess, is its tone more CoD or Wolfenstein?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2012 19:00:12 GMT -5
Sketcz, you might want to put that in there about "recoverable" permadeath; here I was about to flame you for that comment in your article and then I read your perfectly acceptable explanation....
When I think of permadeath I think of having to replay every other 45 minute campaign in Fire Emblem, or shit as usual in pc RPGs or in the LOTR snes game. In those cases it's annoying and bad design, since nobody is going to just play through with a gimped army, and in the end the developer just wasted your time. Thankfully the latest FE makes permadeath optional.
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Post by Garamoth on Jul 15, 2012 19:33:30 GMT -5
I've never played FE properly so can't comment. My experience comes from watching my flat mate and reading on forums, and it seems the game is extremely cheap and unforgiving. OD is cheap when it comes to tanks running you over, but as you've said, there are ways around th difficulty. I enjoyed manipulating that pendulum. Ooops, well what I was getting at is that Fire Emblem lets you predict what is going to happen. Attack range is usually 1-2 squares and units can only damage a single unit at a time (at least as far as I know from the earlier entries). If the enemy moves 5 squares and has a range of 2, your guy 10 squares away is safe. That's not even mentionning using obstacles to your advantage and blocking doorways with your units. Plus, heavily armored units can withstand physical attacks with barely a scratch but are weak to magic and vice-versa for wizards. There's also the rock-paper-scissors thing with weapon types, so the unit with the dominant type will usually be the clear victor. Despite the game's harshness, careful placement goes a very, very long way. Things get cheaper with long-range attacks (which are nonetheless rare and usually not that effective) and critical hits, where a 5% chance of an enemy critical hit can mess up the best of plans. Fire Emblem is also guilty of bringing reinforcements out of the blue, tough it's not as bad or frequent as this game. In Operation Darkness, you can't predict a damn thing. Every area is wide open (cover is quite rare) while tons of units have huge ranges, sometimes from one end of the map to the other. Many attacks can instantly kill anyone without Auto Recovery. On the other hand, none of your units have special defenses or immunites to take advantage of. Don't forget later enemies can take 2-5 turns for every one you take (seriously, I wish I was kidding). And there's the multiple reinforcement waves. This is why this game so desperately needs Auto Recovery. But what can be said about a tactics-based strategy game where your team can run heedless of their own personal safety or the tides of battles and barely ever need to support one another?
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Post by zellsf on Jul 15, 2012 20:48:35 GMT -5
I wonder if any of the people who complain about perma-death crippling your process in a game if you don't reload to an earlier save have actually tried if it is true.
Edit: to clarify, not in a badly designed game, I'm sure it would turn out a disaster in something like Operation Darkness, but in for example Fire Emblem: why assume you know better than the game's designers? Surely they didn't build the game around saving and loading which everyone agrees is a bad mechanic?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2012 21:57:32 GMT -5
I'm sure it's possible to beat the game, but when you're eliminating those dead characters from the story, why bother? So yeah, I think I know better than the people trolling us I guess.
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Post by kal on Jul 15, 2012 22:34:13 GMT -5
Fire Emblem is unique in that (at least the GBA games) you can't save and reload since you only have a progress save and an in-mission same turn save. Basically if a unit dies, the way the games randomization works you can't reroll to keep them alive, you must reboot because they will die no matter how many reloads.
I always wanted to get Operation Darkness but being in PAL I couldn't be bothered. It's not mentioned in the article but they pulled the ultimate tease on us - the DEMO was put up on Xbox Live but obviously they thought better of releasing the full game but they still region locked the US release...
As for the game itself it seems like they've applied a series of abstract elements disconnected from the theme of the actual game. There's nothing inherently wrong with that but even reading the Cover System explanation it seems rather extremely counter-intuitive which would make the entire game highly esoteric. Counter-intuitive design is polarizing even in board games.
Incidentally on the subject of Board Games this is different to Chess (and so is vulnerable to criticism that Chess does not usually absorb) since within that board game pieces's are already largely abstract representations of elements so it's acceptable to use arbitrary rules. Where as Operation Darkness is set in a more realistic setting so having a set of confusing, counter-intuitive rules isn't likely to endear it to anyone who went in expecting a somewhat realistic title. This is especially difficult to swallow when you bring in real-life settings/weapons/objects such as is the case with placing the game in Alternate History WW2.
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Post by zellsf on Jul 16, 2012 0:33:03 GMT -5
I'm sure it's possible to beat the game, but when you're eliminating those dead characters from the story, why bother? So yeah, I think I know better than the people trolling us I guess. Yeah... that's not trolling. If you think it is, you have a problem. Also, I don't think games with perma-death has the characters that can permanently die have any significant role in the story.
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Post by Ryu the Grappler on Jul 16, 2012 0:54:53 GMT -5
I find it fitting that the "no permadeath" mode in Fire Emblem 13 is called "Casual" mode. To me, "casual" is just a politically correct way of saying unskilled game player (i.e. "noob" or "scrub").
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Jul 16, 2012 2:01:04 GMT -5
What I was getting at is that Fire Emblem lets you predict what is going to happen. Attack range is usually 1-2 squares and units can only damage a single unit at a time (at least as far as I know from the earlier entries). If the enemy moves 5 squares and has a range of 2, your guy 10 squares away is safe. That's not even mentioning using obstacles to your advantage and blocking doorways with your units. In Operation Darkness, you can't predict a damn thing. Every area is wide open (cover is quite rare) while tons of units have huge ranges, sometimes from one end of the map to the other. Ahh, excellent. I think we've boiled down precisely what it is I dislike about respected mainstream strategy titles, and why I instead like OD. And also why you dislike it, perhaps. That precise predictability you talk about, is something I am never able to grasp. I don't want it in my strategy games. Which is why I have similar complaints to Kitsune. The need to comprehend two or three very precise squares, and a doorway, always ruins me, and I end up bottlenecking myself, getting trapped, or in some way slaughtered. You can't play it loose, you need to play it meticulously tight and ordered. With OD you simply can't be that precise. Which is why I made the Go comparison. You use the Cover system to hold down massive areas of land. It's an entirely different kind of strategy to holding down a tiny 5x5 or 10x10 grid. I feel almost as if we're in absolute agreement, albeit from different sides. I play strategy titles by the seat of my pants. I view the board and calculate with each move - presumably some strategy players plan ahead several moves, but that doesn't work for me. I've seen it with Advance Wars, where I play move by move, and my opponent was like: well I saw we had that narrow band of 3 squares, so I planned ahead 10 moves to capture it and take you out because that was strategically the most important zone. And I'm like: WTF? That narrow band of squares was the key to winning? How you do know this? I sent my best tanks in, wave after wave, and they ALL died because I didn’t spot some esoteric significance in a tiny piece of woodland. As I've said: I am a terrible strategy player. I'm gung ho, I send units into danger, I never plan beyond a basic idea of having someone take out someone else, and I believe that stoic force beats all. OD works with my non-conventional play style. Once the wolves transform, the enemies fall quickly. Long range wide-area attacks which I can spam? Yes please. One-hit kills from Van Helsing - thank you very much! It also rewards dangerous playing. Sending a lone guy into enemy range with no weapons? No problem, just loot a body, steal his bazooka and wipe out that group of enemies in front of you. On some occasions I’d take down 6 enemies with a looted panzerfaust. Also, the dragons I took down by sending guys in with a sword to slice them up, always keeping Herbert nearby to revive them in case they were squished. Also, it pays to have a strong character draw fire. You talk about Fire Emblem messing up your plans - I never have any plans in strategy games. Again, hence the Go comparison. You place hundreds of pieces down and it’s not a case of planning each move like in Chess, rather you predict a kind of general feel for how you will play - ie: I want to focus on that area a bit more. If I had to make precise long-term plans and commit to them, I would inevitably lose. Valkyria Chronicles was the same. I didn’t use strategy, I made it up as I went along and it rewarded me for that. I love that style of play. I suppose if we wanted to sum it up in a single sentence: I love OD because I am terrible at and hate strategy games. Regarding special defences, Van Helsing can kill any undead with a single hit, regardless of HP or defence, using her sword skills. Later on, when there's lots of vampires and skeletons, I would send her in with just a sword to take out entire platoons. It was awesome. Not a defence, but a special ability which gives you an edge. She’s an undead killer! Only against the guys who are weighed down. Cordelia was getting at around 2 moves for every enemy’s move, without weapons. 5 turns is only when you load them down to triple digit weight. Besides, the start off too far away to engage you within their first move, meaning the moment it’s your first turn, you put snipers on Ambush and Attack, heck, maybe even put a bazooka guy on Attack too. It saved me a couple of times. All this while you should also be sending out your mages to flank the enemy or wipe out vehicles. Because the movement range of everyone is quite large, again there’s no precision in this, you just kinda feel it out in a relaxed sort of way. OK, Cordelia, you shuffle along west in the vague direction of those tanks, they’re too far to run over you, and if you get shot, you’ve got restoratives. No worries. The enemy will get it’s turn and before you know it she’s ready to attack the tanks with magic, while the guys on Ambush and Attack were automatically cutting down the advancing soldiers. I’m specifically thinking of this snowy level, where soldiers come from the north and tanks from the east, and it was so satisfying to set things up and then wait as the soldiers were shredded and Cordelia took out the tanks. Next I move all my units to the tank wreckages and then proceeded north to take out the next wave. No fretful worrying about “am I on the correct square”, did I maximise the strategic importance of that tree, it was more like a ragtag amble from area to area, looting and ambushing as I went. Sure I got knocked down by stray tank shells, but there were plenty of health items to loot. As we’ve ascertained, it’s a fairly easy game if you abuse the systems on hand. I’m not sure why so many reviewers had difficulty with it.
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Post by kal on Jul 16, 2012 7:01:45 GMT -5
It's a little odd that you make the GO comparison Sketcz when on a technical level, the placement of GO tiles and having a long term plan is core to being a good player also no real surprises in GO since all information is available at all times to both players. Just not sure the analogy is working here, seems to be stretching the similarities a bit.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2012 7:28:38 GMT -5
I'm sure it's possible to beat the game, but when you're eliminating those dead characters from the story, why bother? So yeah, I think I know better than the people trolling us I guess. Yeah... that's not trolling. If you think it is, you have a problem. Also, I don't think games with perma-death has the characters that can permanently die have any significant role in the story. My "problem" as you so delicately put it is that I'm only going to play through a 50+ hour game once, and I like to check out as much of it as I possibly can, including the little conversations between the characters that "have no bearing on the story" or whatever that you'd get from raising affinities. But it's also annoying from a more technical standpoint; if you lose one of the more rare types (magic users mostly) you're setting yourself up for a disadvantage. Permanent death of characters is an interesting idea, but so was that one that Hideo Kojima had about a retail priced game that killed itself - just because it's "interesting" or "unique" doesn't always mean it's good game design. Do I know better? Not really. But I know what I like.Anyway, I apologize that I'm not as "hardcore" as you or whatever, but I just don't get turgid over the idea of permadeath. And Johnny, I know there's an underlying stigma to it, but frankly, it's not attached to achievements or trophies, and nobody else is going to know I took the easy way out but me. The way I see it is that I can enjoy the game without having to waste additional hours trying to play it the way I was going to in the first place, and if there's a shame in that, then those people can go fuck themselves; Hope they don't fall off of their high horses trying to do that... Anyway, zell: just btw, it would have been really groovy if you could have said "I'm sorry Joseph Joestar, but I don't agree with you and here's why..." instead of saying in so many words (well, one) "you're a retard and everybody that thinks like you and not me is a retard".
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Post by Allie on Jul 16, 2012 9:37:27 GMT -5
Yeah... that's not trolling. If you think it is, you have a problem. Also, I don't think games with perma-death has the characters that can permanently die have any significant role in the story. My "problem" as you so delicately put it is that I'm only going to play through a 50+ hour game once, and I like to check out as much of it as I possibly can, including the little conversations between the characters that "have no bearing on the story" or whatever that you'd get from raising affinities. But it's also annoying from a more technical standpoint; if you lose one of the more rare types (magic users mostly) you're setting yourself up for a disadvantage. Permanent death of characters is an interesting idea, but so was that one that Hideo Kojima had about a retail priced game that killed itself - just because it's "interesting" or "unique" doesn't always mean it's good game design. Do I know better? Not really. But I know what I like.Anyway, I apologize that I'm not as "hardcore" as you or whatever, but I just don't get turgid over the idea of permadeath. And Johnny, I know there's an underlying stigma to it, but frankly, it's not attached to achievements or trophies, and nobody else is going to know I took the easy way out but me. The way I see it is that I can enjoy the game without having to waste additional hours trying to play it the way I was going to in the first place, and if there's a shame in that, then those people can go fuck themselves; Hope they don't fall off of their high horses trying to do that... Anyway, zell: just btw, it would have been really groovy if you could have said "I'm sorry Joseph Joestar, but I don't agree with you and here's why..." instead of saying in so many words (well, one) "you're a retard and everybody that thinks like you and not me is a retard". And this is why you're still my favorite poster on this board.
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