Squeenix TRIANGLE STRATEGY - tactical RPG from Octopath Traveler devs

[Amurada]

Yo how complex is this game compared to Tactics Ogre? Does it has good gameplay or is it more shallow?

Take into consideration that I have only played less than an hour of Tactics Ogre (SNES, PSP, & PC alike), as well as having only played the demo of Triangle Strategy -- I enjoy both (or all four, I guess) but I have weird and constricted gaming habits, so it takes me quite a while to actually get around to committing to a given game. All that being said, Triangle Strategy is orders of magnitude less complex than Tactics Ogre. This is by design of course. Triangle Strategy is a hybrid of an FFT/TO style tactics game, & Octopath Traveler's core combat system -- which is itself, a hybrid of Bravely Default's Brave/Default, & Shin Megami Tensei's Press-Turn system. Triangle Strategy thoughtfully features very few combinatorics that feed into a particular ecosystem where your currency is turns. Now, my lack of thorough experience with the game keeps me from commenting on whether or not the system ultimately undermines itself in some way. Solely going off of the demo, there were several interesting trade-offs not just between units, but within units abilities as well. I assume that much like Octopath, the actual build system itself is both obnoxious, obtuse, and restricting, but the toolkits themselves are pretty neat. This in contrast to Matsuno games like Tactics Ogre, which of course, features many obscurant mechanics that one can go an entire game without knowing the vast majority of them. I beat the PS1 edition of FFT as a kid, and was completely ignorant of the Brave/Faith mechanic for the entirety of the game. Triangle Strategy's diplomacy stuff and story seem kinda gay though. It doesn't help that Octopath and Bravely/Default have some of the worst writing in JRPGs.

 

[Lord of Riva]

Yo how complex is this game compared to Tactics Ogre? Does it has good gameplay or is it more shallow?

definitely more shallow, it's even shallow compared to things like Fire emblem or Langrisser.

It's enjoyable though.

 

[cruel]

48h in, chapter 16, and I'm still very happy with the game. It's really refreshing to play a game that actually includes a meaningful C&C. Early game decision in chapter 3 - you miss certain party member for a whole playthrough. Decisions made influence the maps & battles you're going to take, sometimes meaning a much harder fight as the result. And it seems it's getting more and more serious as you approach the end game, with 3 completely separate stories to go through. If anyone is aware of any recent games that did C&C on that level, please share.

My only concern: it seems weapon upgrade materials are somewhat limited, and if you use them as you go and get some more characters later, you end up with a gimped unit that can't be upgraded due to missing materials. It would be nice if this was farmable or at least random.

 

[Incognito]

My only concern: it seems weapon upgrade materials are somewhat limited, and if you use them as you go and get some more characters later, you end up with a gimped unit that can't be upgraded due to missing materials. It would be nice if this was farmable or at least random.

If you're playing in normal mode, don't worry. Last battle isn't that hard.

 

[cruel]

I see that Golden Route difficulty on the first playthrough is no joke. One more try on Chapter 18 first fight (Benedict path) and I will need to load a previous save probably and just go regular Benedict's route instead. Not only you have 7 units only against 12 enemies, but they throw 3x reinforcements at different stages, each one coming with 5 new enemies. Having access to traps helps, but not enough to get through this with my current setup. Oh well.

Advice for whoever is planning to play this - do a first run completely blind, don't do my mistake and aim for True (Golden) ending on your first playthrough.

 

[cruel]

Finished the game after 78h, but probably 20h of those was messing around / bringing rest of the squad to the proper level, so actual time closer to 60h. I was very happy with the game and actually felt a little bit sad when done - clearly Team Asano put a lot of heart into making this, very charming and well made.

Good things:
+ great C&C: impact on story, battles taken, units recruited, people dying, ending
+ very good combat: positioning matters, flanking is important, differences when attacking from behind / high ground, etc.
+ tons of time (100h+) to play through if someone wants to discover everything & good replayability: 4 playthroughs needed for all (!), 2 needed to see most
+ very polished, no bugs
+ good AI that will punish your positioning mistakes
+ excellent music
+ good writing
+ likable characters
+ nice art style
+ very 'unique' ideas for some of the units: acrobat throwing balls, blacksmith building ladders and turrets, dancer charming foes, merchant driving people to fury, child prodigy controlling time, etc.
+ pretty good balance of units, everyone has its uses
+ good story that actually makes some sense and doesn't focus on 'save the world' for once

Worse things:
- no 'build porn', you have premade characters & classes given to them: some people will not like it
- quite limited enemy variety
- normal difficulty is not very challenging, outside of few battles; play on hard if you want a good challenge (some of the fights will be painful)
- story-heavy game, not for pure combat-fags
- some of the maps are reused
- limited equipment choices (2x accessory)
- limited character development options (few skills here and there to pick from)

8/10 for me, time well spent - perfect game to play on Steam Deck before going to bed.

 

[Shig]

Worse things:
- no 'build porn', you have premade characters & classes given to them: some people will not like it
- limited equipment choices (2x accessory)
- limited character development options (few skills here and there to pick from)

TS was my favorite game of 2022, and is still among my favorites over the last decade, but I could not agree more with these three criticisms. I was always shocked at the lack of "build porn" as you put it, they had to know what audience they were targeting and what they were looking for, this seemed like a pretty wild oversight to me.

I understand that there is beauty in simplicity, but there is tremendous value in allowing players to have a great amount of choice about how they deploy and outfit their units in a tactics-centric game.

 

[Incognito]

Finished the game after 78h, but probably 20h of those was messing around / bringing rest of the squad to the proper level, so actual time closer to 60h. I was very happy with the game and actually felt a little bit sad when done - clearly Team Asano put a lot of heart into making this, very charming and well made.

Not sure if this Routes map has been posted in the thread before.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

no 'build porn', you have premade characters & classes given to them: some people will not like it

This killed it for me, especially a game that was heralded as a FFTactics successor.

 

[spekkio]

What killed it for me was the amount of text. I don't want to skip the story sections in tactical games entirely (I wanna know who are the fags that appear during missions), but in this game they are just unbearable.

 

[Jinn]

Finally picked this up recently and have been enjoying my time with it quite a bit. The amount of dialogue would normally be a bit bothersome to me, but I really enjoy the more grounded political story and characters, and the writing has been remarkably solid. I get why the lack of build options would bother a lot of people, but ultimately I think the unique utility of each character tends to make up for it in a tactical sense. There's a lot of synergistic gameplay that opens up once you get more characters to use and start to get familiar with your roster.

 

[cruel]

What killed it for me was the amount of text. I don't want to skip the story sections in tactical games entirely (I wanna know who are the fags that appear during missions), but in this game they are just unbearable.

Don't judge the game by the first few hours - the tempo gets better later, much healthier ratio of combat vs text. First 4h are horrible in that regard and not representative of the whole experience.

Also, the game is 50% off right now on Steam.

 

[spekkio]

Yeah, I plan to give this game a second chance in the future. Not a lot of japtacticals these days.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

What killed it for me was the amount of text. I don't want to skip the story sections in tactical games entirely (I wanna know who are the fags that appear during missions), but in this game they are just unbearable.

Not only the amount of text for me, but also how often you get interrupted during gameplay. In the first mission it was just unbearable. Too much handholding. But I remember it was similar in Tactics Ogre (PSP), for the first couple hours or so, but I endured it and it ended up being my favourite JRPG. Probably this one also gives you more room to breathe later on, one day I will find out...

 

[Jinn]

Not only the amount of text for me, but also how often you get interrupted during gameplay. In the first mission it was just unbearable. Too much handholding. But I remember it was similar in Tactics Ogre (PSP), for the first couple hours or so, but I endured it and it ended up being my favourite JRPG. Probably this one also gives you more room to breathe later on, one day I will find out...

All that stuff is easily skipable within a second of it popping up. Weird reason to quit.

 

[mediocrepoet]

What killed it for me was the amount of text. I don't want to skip the story sections in tactical games entirely (I wanna know who are the fags that appear during missions), but in this game they are just unbearable.

Not only the amount of text for me, but also how often you get interrupted during gameplay. In the first mission it was just unbearable. Too much handholding. But I remember it was similar in Tactics Ogre (PSP), for the first couple hours or so, but I endured it and it ended up being my favourite JRPG. Probably this one also gives you more room to breathe later on, one day I will find out...

I came close to bouncing off of it. Actually, I guess I never did finish it. I got busy and lost my place right before the last few missions. But anyway, I came close to bouncing off it much earlier because of the text diarrhea. Imo, set the dialog to auto progress, put your controller/mouse/whatever, down and just listen to it or half-listen to it while doing something else. It makes it far more bearable when you only have to sort of pay attention and still pick up enough to get what you're doing and why.

 

[Urbanolo]

Just wanted to necro the thread to voice my appreciation for the game. I have not finished it yet (chapter 16) but I have not seen a western RPG with such pronounced C&C ever. I chose Benedict route and it allows for some truly morally ambiguous but effective actions (like selling Roselle for a promotion or flooding the capital). The beggining is rough and boring though. After completing it I will have to delve deeper into SRPG genre.

 

[Sentinel]

Historical low on GMG

 

[mediocrepoet]

Historical low on GMG

Is 19,68 the same as 19.68 or is it coordinates? And how do you pay in haircombs anyway?

 

[Kruyurk]

Is 19,68 the same as 19.68 or is it coordinates? And how do you pay in haircombs anyway?

Using haircombs as money makes much more sense than snakes doing pole dance.

 

[Jinn]

It's a good game, easily worth 20 haircombs.

 

[malx]

excellent game.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I played through this and completed the game by going on the morality path by siding with the main character's fiancee. I really loved the fact that there is no good solution (unless you stumble on the golden route or follow a walkthrough).

+ The three main routes are all bittersweet, with victory mixed in with loss. This may be one of the more depressingly realistic video games on the tough choices a leader of a territory might have to make. Good stuff.
+ I like the conviction portions of the game. It is a good way to present all of the positive and negative reasons for taking an action, but it also drives the player to stay engaged with the story instead of breezing through dialogue.
+ There are some really good mission design ideas in the game. Escort missions are always a pain, but I really did enjoy a mission where I was given the option to blow up portions of my own village to stop an invasion force.
+ There aren't many moments in the game where a character does something stupid to drive the plot along. Most of the main actors have intelligent reasons for their actions based on the information available to them.
+ It is refreshing playing a protagonist who isn't a man-child or clueless. The MC always seems like he is in control of the situation despite the decisions that are made by the party.
+ This was a very enjoyable tactical RPG. You have to be clever on using terrain, elevation, and a character's specific abilities. There is also some optimization for different play styles as you can advance each character by focusing on different skill trees.
+ You cannot recruit all of the NPCs unless you replay the game and try different paths. Replayability is always welcome, and the game encourages you to do so, but also a replay gives you a chance to try different skill combos on characters.
- New game+ scales to your level. I understand the reason for this, but I hate level scaling as a general principle.
- Not a real negative, but this is a bleak game. In the words of the great Peter Porker, the hardest thing about the job is that you can't save everyone.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game and I highly recommend it for fans of tactical JRPGs.

 

[grimace]

I played through this and completed the game by going on the morality path by siding with the main character's fiancee. I really loved the fact that there is no good solution (unless you stumble on the golden route or follow a walkthrough).

+ The three main routes are all bittersweet, with victory mixed in with loss. This may be one of the more depressingly realistic video games on the tough choices a leader of a territory might have to make. Good stuff.
+ I like the conviction portions of the game. It is a good way to present all of the positive and negative reasons for taking an action, but it also drives the player to stay engaged with the story instead of breezing through dialogue.
+ There are some really good mission design ideas in the game. Escort missions are always a pain, but I really did enjoy a mission where I was given the option to blow up portions of my own village to stop an invasion force.
+ There aren't many moments in the game where a character does something stupid to drive the plot along. Most of the main actors have intelligent reasons for their actions based on the information available to them.
+ It is refreshing playing a protagonist who isn't a man-child or clueless. The MC always seems like he is in control of the situation despite the decisions that are made by the party.
+ This was a very enjoyable tactical RPG. You have to be clever on using terrain, elevation, and a character's specific abilities. There is also some optimization for different play styles as you can advance each character by focusing on different skill trees.
+ You cannot recruit all of the NPCs unless you replay the game and try different paths. Replayability is always welcome, and the game encourages you to do so, but also a replay gives you a chance to try different skill combos on characters.
- New game+ scales to your level. I understand the reason for this, but I hate level scaling as a general principle.
- Not a real negative, but this is a bleak game. In the words of the great Peter Porker, the hardest thing about the job is that you can't save everyone.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game and I highly recommend it for fans of tactical JRPGs.

What did you think of the difficulty curve? Was it satisfying tactical strategy through til the end?