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

[damager]

I read the first 1 1/2 pages of this thread and fuck it I get it. "Best tacticool ever made" and the story and devs sound so retarded it's wholesome again.

 

[destinae vomitus]

devs sound so retarded it's wholesome again.

If you have still have doubts about them being both wholesome and retarded just go glance at the responses those madmen write up for literally every steam review, even negative ones.

 

[Vagabond Merchant]

All the shilling here made me buy it, but I am at the verge of refunding after reading this thread

Gave it a try, gameplay got me hooked so I'm not refunding. The anime part is cringe but in an amusing way, so I get both good gameplay and laughs

 

[Saark]

If you have still have doubts about them being both wholesome and retarded just go glance at the responses those madmen write up for literally every steam review, even negative ones.

Their news posts are also typically a clear showcase of how they're both wholesome and retarded. Like when they apologized profusely, multiple times, for not delivering a patch like they initially planned. Because there was a big-ass flood in their neighborhood and their studio was directly affected with no electricity etc. How dare they.

 

[Grunker]

Their newsposts are legend

 

[Zumbabul]

They also made the first DLC free as a sign of gratitude to those players who bought the game and gave them a chance to pursue their dreams. Some players considered this irresponsible and demanded to pay for the DLC. The devs apologized to them multiple times.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

 

[Strange Fellow]

Been glued to this for the past three days now. No build autism game has grabbed me like this one before, and I think it's because of this:

In Troubleshooter, respecs aren't some dirty mechanic implemented to save you from your own retardation - they're fundamentally baked into the game's design because the character building isn't just a personal choice about what character you want to make or what is "meta" - the character building is the constantly evolving gameplay challenge. Looking up a guide isn't even necessarily that much of a help, because there's a vast difference between how you'll want a given character to function 10 hours into the game vis a vis 90 hours into the game. As such, a functional guide would have to make a build for each 1 or 2 hours of gameplay.

It's so much more interesting to tinker with builds when you can go back and fiddle with stuff you've already put in. It makes the optimisation game feel like an actual game, rather than a tedious exercise in planning ahead that can be solved if you have enough patience for reading through a million lists before starting the game, after which you never have to think about it again.

That said, the biggest problem I have with the game so far is the mastery research, which is a massive pain in the ass. The review says it's simple but I guess I must be a moron because I frequently have no idea why I can't research certain masteries, and more often than not researching anything but the most simple masteries is a nightmarish process of trying to figure out which basic mastery to research which can be an ingredient for that mastery which can be an ingredient for that mastery, etc etc. Other times, the autofill thing autofills just fine but the research button is greyed out. It's especially annoying when I'm missing one mastery from a set and it says it's one of the masteries I can currently research. Cue five minutes of getting hopelessly lost in the mastery research screen and wishing I hadn't bothered in the first place.
And yet I do it, because I want that set dammit

I also wish newly acquired masteries and equipment were marked as new in the actual mastery and equipment menus, rather than just in the big pointless list of everything you own.

 

[Grunker]

99.9% of the time the reason you can’t research a mastery is because you don’t have the required mastery (the upper part of the research menu). It’ll be highlighted in red and there’ll be a lock symbol. Find information on where to get that mastery either in the troublemaker list or if it’s not there, ask here, I’ll take a look (a few masteries are hidden in story choices - some are also hidden other places but those are mostly late game stuff).

You’re welcome to add me on Steam as well if you have other questions.

The part about research that’s simple is that you can just Auto if you have the dependant masteries. If you don’t, well, you have to find them

In most cases, masteries highlighted in red when you’re trying to craft a mastery simply aren’t available yet.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yeah, the thing I figured out that made unlocking sets much, much easier is to always keep at least 1 of everything. That way you never run into a situation where you are told you can unlock something and then spend a bunch of time testing combinations to realize you need something you burnt to make a cool new mastery. Though of course I still occasionally gave in when the new thing was just too damned cool or useful.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The intricate character customization of Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children is unparalleled:

 

[Grunker]

Yeah, the thing I figured out that made unlocking sets much, much easier is to always keep at least 1 of everything. That way you never run into a situation where you are told you can unlock something and then spend a bunch of time testing combinations to realize you need something you burnt to make a cool new mastery. Though of course I still occasionally gave in when the new thing was just too damned cool or useful.

There’s… really no reason to keep 1 of everything. Once you’ve unlocked the means to craft a mastery you can craft however many copies you’ll ever need. This is because all mastery crafting that have dependencies eventually “chain down” to a mastery that will just require a random mastery to craft. So you can always just go down the chain, and the process is automated.

If you manage to run out of masteries to do the above - something that’s never happened to me - just turn on the +50% mastery drop rate company mastery. A company mastery 95% of players should have on at all times anyway

Essentially, if you use that company mastery you’ll be able to autocraft anything you know how to craft pretty much as much as you want to - provided you also know how craft the dependencies (so for a mastery that requires you have a First Aid, obviously you’d need to know how to craft First Aid, for instance).

 

[Grunker]

Oh sorry, you’re talking about sets, my bad. Yeah I suppose you could keep one of each mastery for that, though I found just crafting stuff when I needed it was easier.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I generally ran into the issue where to complete a set there were perhaps half a dozen different mid-high level masteries that might work and only enough lower ones to craft one or two of them, at least without gimping someone's build. Maybe droprates were different when I played (I was definitely using that company mastery, the others suck iirc) or I just wasn't doing as many sidequests. Or maybe I was doing more and the wider range of masteries made it harder to keep up. Probably depends on which types of missions you do; since ones with fewer, stronger enemies are likely to unlock new stuff that requires a lot of lower level stuff to make.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Yeah, I think maybe my problem is that I keep running out of basic bitch masteries. I've followed your advice and only done story missions since I started playing again, so I might just be tinkering too much relative to the number of masteries I'm bringing home.

Oh, and another thing I'm finding helpful for enjoying the game is to straight up skip every single cutscene and line of dialogue. I'd been skimming through them as quickly as I could but even that takes ages. There's so fucking much.

It gets confusing sometimes when the game drops a choice on you that you don't have the context for, but taking this approach has worked out fine so far:

 

[NJClaw]

I spammed this game a lot in my circle of friends and now I have two people asking me to recommend something with a similar "character building" system...

Well... Troubleshooter 2 will come out sooner or later, I guess...

 

[Xunwael]

Played this one for about 30 minutes. But it's made by koreans, so the UI and controls are weapons-grade cancer. So I returned it.

 

[Grunker]

Yeah, I think maybe my problem is that I keep running out of basic bitch masteries. I've followed your advice and only done story missions since I started playing again, so I might just be tinkering too much relative to the number of masteries I'm bringing home.

Oh, and another thing I'm finding helpful for enjoying the game is to straight up skip every single cutscene and line of dialogue. I'd been skimming through them as quickly as I could but even that takes ages. There's so fucking much.

It gets confusing sometimes when the game drops a choice on you that you don't have the context for, but taking this approach has worked out fine so far:

If you’re really hurting for masteries, do a Violent mission. That should top you off for a long while :D

Are you using the company mastery that gives +50% masteries? Makes a huge diff

 

[Nikanuur]

Thanks a lot, Grunker. Now I am excited and interested about a presentation and style I usually abhore. Really good job. Don't expect me to send you anymore giftcards for this. Not that I ever have, but all the same. Horrible morning, ho rri ble.

 

[Infinitron]

It's so much more interesting to tinker with builds when you can go back and fiddle with stuff you've already put in. It makes the optimisation game feel like an actual game, rather than a tedious exercise in planning ahead that can be solved if you have enough patience for reading through a million lists before starting the game, after which you never have to think about it again.

This is the reason for my unpopular opinion that RPGs can learn a few things from shooters with "loadout management" mechanics, such as the Bioshock games.

 

[Jaedar]

It's so much more interesting to tinker with builds when you can go back and fiddle with stuff you've already put in. It makes the optimisation game feel like an actual game, rather than a tedious exercise in planning ahead that can be solved if you have enough patience for reading through a million lists before starting the game, after which you never have to think about it again.

This is the reason for my unpopular opinion that RPGs can learn a few things from shooters with "loadout management" mechanics, such as the Bioshock games.

Meh. It works for this game, because it is foremost a tactics game and even though respecing is basically free iirc buying the masteries that you slot in is not free so there is still some opportunity cost. For RPGs with noncombat approaches it doesn't make any sense, it would just make everyone a master of everything as you'd just swap in lockpicking mastery whenever you encountered a lock and then swap it back out.

Unless you mean loadouts as in "these are the spells I prepared in my spellbook today", that is obviously a workable mechanic for RPGs in general and hardly an unpopular opinion here.

(It is a valid observation though, that RPG builds are frequently a bit shit because trying to react and learn as you go frequently doesn't work as it will just mean you unknowingly made a suboptimal decision 10 hours ago that locks you out of the build you wanted. But the solution isn't "lol just remove permanent choices from builds")

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

It's so much more interesting to tinker with builds when you can go back and fiddle with stuff you've already put in. It makes the optimisation game feel like an actual game, rather than a tedious exercise in planning ahead that can be solved if you have enough patience for reading through a million lists before starting the game, after which you never have to think about it again.

This is the reason for my unpopular opinion that RPGs can learn a few things from shooters with "loadout management" mechanics, such as the Bioshock games.

Meh. It works for this game, because it is foremost a tactics game and even though respecing is basically free iirc buying the masteries that you slot in is not free so there is still some opportunity cost. For RPGs with noncombat approaches it doesn't make any sense, it would just make everyone a master of everything as you'd just swap in lockpicking mastery whenever you encountered a lock and then swap it back out.

Unless you mean loadouts as in "these are the spells I prepared in my spellbook today", that is obviously a workable mechanic for RPGs in general and hardly an unpopular opinion here.

(It is a valid observation though, that RPG builds are frequently a bit shit because trying to react and learn as you go frequently doesn't work as it will just mean you unknowingly made a suboptimal decision 10 hours ago that locks you out of the build you wanted. But the solution isn't "lol just remove permanent choices from builds")

Why not put a masteries system in a place of buff mechanics? It would solve a few problems at the same time.

 

[Grunker]

It's so much more interesting to tinker with builds when you can go back and fiddle with stuff you've already put in. It makes the optimisation game feel like an actual game, rather than a tedious exercise in planning ahead that can be solved if you have enough patience for reading through a million lists before starting the game, after which you never have to think about it again.

This is the reason for my unpopular opinion that RPGs can learn a few things from shooters with "loadout management" mechanics, such as the Bioshock games.

Meh. It works for this game, because it is foremost a tactics game and even though respecing is basically free iirc buying the masteries that you slot in is not free so there is still some opportunity cost. For RPGs with noncombat approaches it doesn't make any sense, it would just make everyone a master of everything as you'd just swap in lockpicking mastery whenever you encountered a lock and then swap it back out.

Unless you mean loadouts as in "these are the spells I prepared in my spellbook today", that is obviously a workable mechanic for RPGs in general and hardly an unpopular opinion here.

(It is a valid observation though, that RPG builds are frequently a bit shit because trying to react and learn as you go frequently doesn't work as it will just mean you unknowingly made a suboptimal decision 10 hours ago that locks you out of the build you wanted. But the solution isn't "lol just remove permanent choices from builds")

“It works because this is a tactics game”

Why, exactly? I’d love to see a mastery-like system in an RPG with mastery drops from enemies etc. Don’t see the reason it wouldn’t work in a traditional RPG.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Don’t see the reason it wouldn’t work in a traditional RPG

Other than being a purely combat based mechanic?

 

[Grunker]

Don’t see the reason it wouldn’t work in a traditional RPG

Other than being a purely combat based mechanic?

Traditional RPGs have plenty of combat based mechanics? Or did I miss your joke?