Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children is like the best goddamned game ever made

[Grunker]

The thing is, you can (partly) crush Troubleshooter with numbers. You’re much more limited in that regard in most other tactical games

 

[stephensmall]

Troubleshooter is not a particularly difficult game

Nvm, lost all interest...

Grunker's one of those guys who's in the top 10% of RPG players but in denial about it, so his idea of what is easy and what is hard is incredibly skewed.

I personally thought Troubleshooter had the hardest Easy mode in an RPG I've ever played.

That's not Grunker, you've seriously gotta be the only person in the world to have... trouble with Troubleshooter on easy difficulty

 

[Jaedar]

I can’t play nuXCOM on very high difficulties before I get completely creamed, and I can play this with everything on max no problem. I don’t think nuXCOM is known for being a particularly difficult tactical?

Nuxcom in highest difficulty is quite tough iirc, but unless you ironman then the second highest is really not that hard (the imo is implied). Of course 90% of skill in nuxcom comes down to managing pod activations so it's not a great measuring stick.
I recall troubleshooter being reasonably challenging, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't playing on the hardest difficulty. So I'd say harder than nuxcom for sure from what I can remember.

 

[Roguey]

That's not Grunker, you've seriously gotta be the only person in the world to have... trouble with Troubleshooter on easy difficulty

Hence the "I personally."

I doubt I'm the only one. Good number of negative reviews on Steam, I'm confident some reference the difficulty. Most people who are bad at playing RPGs also wouldn't even pick this up since it's almost entirely about combat and character-building.

 

[Grunker]

I can’t play nuXCOM on very high difficulties before I get completely creamed, and I can play this with everything on max no problem. I don’t think nuXCOM is known for being a particularly difficult tactical?

Nuxcom in highest difficulty is quite tough iirc, but unless you ironman then the second highest is really not that hard (the imo is implied). Of course 90% of skill in nuxcom comes down to managing pod activations so it's not a great measuring stick.
I recall troubleshooter being reasonably challenging, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't playing on the hardest difficulty. So I'd say harder than nuxcom for sure from what I can remember.

It’s definitely easier than nuXCOM, at least for me. Again, you can make up for tactical retardation with numbers in Troubleshooter.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Oh boy, I see we reached a phase of "ackthually you need to have very high IQ to understand Troubleshooter writing".

 

[Atlantico]

This game sounds like it's made by autists for autists.

So the farther up the spectrum you are, the more likely you are to appreciate it. It's all "gameplay".

Oh and JA2 is an RPG, but a very basic one.

 

[Suicidal]

I remember Troubleshooter being not very difficult as long as you build your characters properly but it's kinda easy to do so since the game nudges you in that direction (example: you equip a mastery that increases lightning damage on your dedicated lightning mage, suddenly you see a "MASTERY SET: LIGHTNING ARCHMAGE 1/6" help tooltip that basically tells you what you need to do to go from killing a guy with lightning to killing everything on screen with lightning). You can also get hints from looking at what masteries the enemies have equipped, cause starting from some point enemy units (especially bosses) will have synergistic builds. It's a very elegant system because both you and the enemies have access to nearly the same tools and you can sometimes use the enemies as inspiration on what to build.

Of course you can do better than what the game suggests but even that is often enough to win on the hardest difficulties.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

What are these "dodgy online features"?

 

[Shaki]

Grunker's one of those guys who's in the top 10% of RPG players but in denial about it, so his idea of what is easy and what is hard is incredibly skewed.

I personally thought Troubleshooter had the hardest Easy mode in an RPG I've ever played.

Didn't play it recently, but from what I recall, it used to be easy, due to content being structured in a way where you started to overlevel most missions extremely quickly, if you did all the optional ones. It got much better with the introduction of the mode which capped leveling to the level of the current mission, but before it was introduced I remember game being pretty easy even on max difficulty. That being said it still was harder than most tacticools released these days, especially in the later stages where 99% of games become a cakewalk, but Troubleshooter actually ramps up, and consistently forces you to change strategies.

Ironically, I think outside of KOTC, the only tacticools made in the last ~20 years that I would consider actually hard, were the Codex-hated nuXCOMs, on ironman + hardest diff. Maybe Battle Brothers is up there, but I've played it so much I can't accurately judge the difficulty anymore - it feels easy to me now, but I can't remember what it felt like playing it without thousands of hours of knowledge. I was autistically obsessed with this game.

 

[Roguey]

Didn't play it recently, but from what I recall, it used to be easy, due to content being structured in a way where you started to overlevel most missions extremely quickly, if you did all the optional ones.

Yeah, as I recall I didn't touch a single optional mission until I got brickwalled by the critical path in I think a couple of spots.

Decided to look up all my liveblogging about it. Mostly seething.

Nov 12 18:36:47 <Roguey> This Troubleshooter mission was an hour an a half, geez
Nov 12 18:45:22 <Roguey> More time than I'd prefer especially in a game with no manual save
Nov 12 18:46:32 <Roguey> I've reached the point where 60% of players dropped it

(yeah I found out there was a save and quit option)

Nov 15 18:04:17 <Roguey> Got to a mission in troubleshooter where you have to defend the line against enemies for x amount of turns and I killed literally everyone but then a megaboss shows up and just demolished everyone and my checkpoint was only 15 minutes into the mission and I've been playing for an hour so I believe I may have hit my filtering point
Nov 15 18:05:18 <Roguey> Like even playing in storytime mode isn't going to make this any easier

Nov 17 17:17:28 <Roguey> Ugh this Troubleshooter mission was awful. A bunch of enemies warring against each other while I have to collect and send cops to an exit, took over an hour

Nov 19 20:30:06 <Roguey> Troubleshooter trolled me by asking me if I wanted to leave a mission early or wipe out all the remaining forces. Last boss standing summoned another boss and had an ability that made him immortal for three turns, a feat that made him block every attack after he drops to 33% of his health and one resurrection. Got him eventually though, but what a pain
Nov 19 20:31:52 <Roguey> 21.9% of players complete the mission, 21.5% beat that guy so I guess if you're this far you're far more likely to accept all challenges

Nov 21 10:38:09 <Roguey> Troubleshooter gave me a "you're under three levels below the recommended" for this story mission but I'm not grinding or doing optional content so let's go

Nov 23 11:39:19 <Roguey> This Troubleshooter mission gives you a choice between going immediately into a gang on gang war or waiting a bit and mopping up but choosing the latter just makes all your teammates rebel who force you to go in immediately anyway, tsk

Nov 23 15:59:35 <Roguey> Ugh I may have hit a brickwall in Troubleshooter. The mission has two people up against two people who are higher level than both my characters, failed twice already
Nov 23 16:16:57 <Roguey> Yeah story time did not help at all, I'm brickwalled unless I grind
Nov 23 16:17:08 <Roguey> It's the one where you're shootbro and hackgirl

Nov 27 09:57:22 <Roguey> agh troubleshooter took away the gun guy with the aoe attack I relied on to kill multiple enemies in one turn for some melee guy

Nov 27 21:02:17 <Roguey> Last mission of Troubleshooter is a never-ending slog, gonna call it a night and wrap it up tomorrow
Nov 27 21:03:17 <Roguey> And I mostly only played scenario missons on easy which means you fight fewer opponents and don't get the ultrabosses
Nov 27 21:03:38 <Roguey> Playing this on normal would be nuts if this is "fewer enemies"

I guess I'm glad I don't remember what a miserable time I was having and ended up with overall mostly-positive impressions.

 

[stephensmall]

Snipe those who insult Troubleshooter

 

[Shaki]

Didn't play it recently, but from what I recall, it used to be easy, due to content being structured in a way where you started to overlevel most missions extremely quickly, if you did all the optional ones.

Yeah, as I recall I didn't touch a single optional mission until I got brickwalled by the critical path in I think a couple of spots.

That would explain it. On my second playthrough I played with the leveling-limiting mode, but even then at worst I was at the same level as story missions since I was doing side content. If you just rushed through story mission, and actually ended up being underleveled for them, especially on a first playthrough, I can definitely see it being extremely hard.

 

[Grunker]

What are these "dodgy online features"?

Yeah, “dodgy” doesn’t really apply.

Troubleshooter can be played fully offline, online portion basically only consists of:

1) Seeing one or two other player avatars in the hub world

2) Seeing what players made what choices in missions displayed as a percentage

3) Theoretically you can trade items with other players, though why would you want to

4) You can play short 8v8 multiplayer matches, but I imagine it’s not very compelling

 

[Grunker]

Didn't play it recently, but from what I recall, it used to be easy, due to content being structured in a way where you started to overlevel most missions extremely quickly, if you did all the optional ones.

Yeah, as I recall I didn't touch a single optional mission until I got brickwalled by the critical path in I think a couple of spots.

That would explain it. On my second playthrough I played with the leveling-limiting mode, but even then at worst I was at the same level as story missions since I was doing side content. If you just rushed through story mission, and actually ended up being underleveled for them, especially on a first playthrough, I can definitely see it being extremely hard.

Ironically, the odds of this happening increases the lower the difficulty you play on since some difficulty options give more XP. I.e. if Roguey rushed ONLY scenario cases, on easy, with no additional options, the game would definitely get kinda b0rked

Doing only main missions on easy would also mean missing a bunch of masteries, making the game harder in that way as well.

 

[Abu Antar]

I play a lot of weeb games, but I very rarely recommend them outside of the jRPG Weeaboo Discussion. The first one I felt I had to recommend on other parts of the forum was Ho Tu Lo Shu. The second game is Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children.

Yes, for non-weebs, the story will be shit. I urge you to look past that, and just try the gameplay. The strengths of the game far outweigh the cons. Not that I claim to be one of the posters with the best taste in games.

Someone said that the game was made by autists for autists. I can't comment on that, but I can't wait for the sequel.

 

[lukaszek]

Didn't play it recently, but from what I recall, it used to be easy, due to content being structured in a way where you started to overlevel most missions extremely quickly, if you did all the optional ones.

Yeah, as I recall I didn't touch a single optional mission until I got brickwalled by the critical path in I think a couple of spots.

That would explain it. On my second playthrough I played with the leveling-limiting mode, but even then at worst I was at the same level as story missions since I was doing side content. If you just rushed through story mission, and actually ended up being underleveled for them, especially on a first playthrough, I can definitely see it being extremely hard.

Ironically, the odds of this happening increases the lower the difficulty you play on since some difficulty options give more XP. I.e. if Roguey rushed ONLY scenario cases, on easy, with no additional options, the game would definitely get kinda b0rked

Doing only main missions on easy would also mean missing a bunch of masteries, making the game harder in that way as well.

it reminds me of homm4 chaos campaign. Enemy starts with army that is hard to beat. Unless you play on hardest diff that is, then they will lose to neutral mob

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

the story makes almost complete sense to me. It is logical and self-consistent

nothing about the story gets even a percentage better on the second playthrough

So the story is either completely logical and self-consistent or it's nonsensical anime gibberish. Thanks, that clears things up.

Actually, it is kind of both. The story is nonsensical anime gibberish that is logical and self-consistent.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

just be careful after playing this game not to go to a weeb sex party and get aids

weeb lovers are usually not into gay sex

uh-huh

eeeee?
You are surprisingly knowledgeable about that stuff.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

It really doesn't help that the game leads with its story so hard. When you start a new game it's about 45 minutes of dialogue and cutscenes before you even see a status screen or get a glimpse of the real mechanics. When I first played this I legit thought it was a VN with some light battles and ya'll were fucking with me.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

just be careful after playing this game not to go to a weeb sex party and get aids

weeb lovers are usually not into gay sex

uh-huh

eeeee?
You are surprisingly knowledgeable about that stuff.

The curse of a long time on Codex.

 

[Reinhardt]

And the nuxcom style tactical combat

are you sure you played this game? because it literally nothing like nuxcom 2 ap combat.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

And the nuxcom style tactical combat

are you sure you played this game? because it literally nothing like nuxcom 2 ap combat.

Occasionally someone refers to Troubleshooter as similar to New-XCom due to each character's turn permitting movement and one action, without consideration for the fact that Troubleshooter tracks time increments, with the action taken therefore affecting how long it will be until that character's next turn (and some attacks/abilities can hasten or delay the next turns of allies and enemies), much less the other complexities of Troubleshooter's myriad game mechanics.

Spoiler

Even the one action per turn limit isn't strictly true, as there are a few ways of circumventing it; early in the game, when Heixing joins as the 5th party member, the player should have the "One Shot, One Kill" ability (which triggers when killing an enemy at full health) on both Heixing and Sion, enabling them to frequently take multiple actions in a turn.

 

[Grunker]

And the nuxcom style tactical combat

are you sure you played this game? because it literally nothing like nuxcom 2 ap combat.

Actually, that’s exactly how the game starts at the very beginning, as I state in the review. It drops that facade pretty quick, but in the first couple of missions you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a kind of Korean nuXCOM.

 

[Jaedar]

And the nuxcom style tactical combat

are you sure you played this game? because it literally nothing like nuxcom 2 ap combat.

Actually, that’s exactly how the game starts at the very beginning, as I state in the review. It drops that facade pretty quick, but in the first couple of missions you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a kind of Korean nuXCOM.

Yeah, it's been many years since I played this, so I just went with the reviews comparison.