Incline Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children - isometric tactical Korean SRPG

[Nortar]

Not really sure, but one of the "issues" with the offline mode is the fact that additional content, etc are supposed to come with the online element right? At least that's what I read months ago when they finally relent and made a working offline mode.

They had plans to add more quests and an additional storyline for Alisa and Bianca, nothing online focused.
Here's a brief overwiev of their road-map.

 

[Lhynn]

I think the game is a bit on the easy side even on cruel difficulty. It's not braindead easy cause you are quite likely to die if you play carelessly, but if you do everything correctly - don't rush, don't engage too many enemies at once, don't leave your guys exposed, read what the enemies' abilities do - you will finish most missions without a single loss

Game becomes harder the more you advance, but the principles are still the same, dont rush like a retard and you should be fine. Except the game sometimes lulls you into a false sense of security only to ram its big fat cock hard in the next mission. Theres also the fact that sometimes shit can go wrong for a variety of reasons, the overwhelming majority of them involve not paying enough attention, though sometimes you may run into a patrol when you have already engaged a different enemy and fuck that can get hard.
Other than that even being very careful you need to do a good job at building your team, because the synergy between members of the stronger factions becomes insane. Im talking about people sniping you from 5 or 6 different vantage points every time anybody shoots at you, getting massive to-hit bonuses because of their team play, while their bosses will either oneshot even your sturdiest character if they manage to land a hit, or will not go down for X amounts of turns unless you find a way to strip them of their buffs. It makes fights very intense, where you have to take into account many factors at the same time, just to stay alive.

 

[Suicidal]

I think the game is a bit on the easy side even on cruel difficulty. It's not braindead easy cause you are quite likely to die if you play carelessly, but if you do everything correctly - don't rush, don't engage too many enemies at once, don't leave your guys exposed, read what the enemies' abilities do - you will finish most missions without a single loss

Game becomes harder the more you advance, but the principles are still the same, dont rush like a retard and you should be fine. Except the game sometimes lulls you into a false sense of security only to ram its big fat cock hard in the next mission. Theres also the fact that sometimes shit can go wrong for a variety of reasons, the overwhelming majority of them involve not paying enough attention, though sometimes you may run into a patrol when you have already engaged a different enemy and fuck that can get hard.
Other than that even being very careful you need to do a good job at building your team, because the synergy between members of the stronger factions becomes insane. Im talking about people sniping you from 5 or 6 different vantage points every time anybody shoots at you, getting massive to-hit bonuses because of their team play, while their bosses will either oneshot even your sturdiest character if they manage to land a hit, or will not go down for X amounts of turns unless you find a way to strip them of their buffs. It makes fights very intense, where you have to take into account many factors at the same time, just to stay alive.

Looking forward to it.

I already had some missions were things got rough (mostly side missions with cruel + challenge mode) cause they had the next "tier" of enemies I've never seen before, like some Spoonist grand wizard with a chain lightning attack that oneshot a few of my guys who were exposed.

I really like how this game has over 200 different enemy types, that despite being mostly recolors of eachother require you to handle them in different ways. For example, the White Tiger melee goons and Spoonist mid game melee goons have the same model, animations and basic premise (run at you and attack in melee), but at the same time feel like completely different enemies. White Tiger melees are not very tanky but have a mastery that protects against oneshots, so you need to know not to waste your oneshotting abilities on them until they get whittled down. They can also counterattack, which makes fighting then while they are at full HP with your melee units not ideal since they are guaranteed to survive the first attack and then counter.

Meanwhile, the Spoonist melees have over 100% block chance, so unless you stun them and negate their block, you will spend your entire team's firepower just to kill one guy a turn. They also can stun and because all Spoonists get a free attack if another Spoonist attacks the same target, they can perma stun lock your guys if you let them gang up on you.

It's little things like this that make the game not become stale and boring half way through. Something that games like Darkest Dungeon and modern XCOMs (without a healthy dose of mods) are unable to achieve despite all the money they have.

 

[Lhynn]

Yeah, pay very close attention to the enemies you are facing. Spoonists will get upgraded units a little after midgame, because of the narrative. Gangs merging and all that fuckery. And god damn, they get some heavies that can pretty much oneshot anything that isnt a tank. Lighting mages are hardly a threat because of their low to-hit, but their damage is off the charts, so never be exposed when facing them. Spoonists in general are a pain because of their spoon gang bonus too.

 

[Abu Antar]

I will allow you to give me more pleasure.

 

[Luckmann]

Started playing this at the recommendation of JarlFrank and Lhynn, and goddamn, guys, this has no cause 5o be as good and addictive as it is. It's unironic weebshit, unabashedly "teenage protagonist" cringe, the translation is hilariously bad, yet the writing and the presentation thereof still somehow manages to be worse. I'm legit not even really sure what is going on, with frequent timeskips and characters sometimes seemingly getting killed just to pop up literally a day later, and were apparently not even arrested.

Despite this, the game is legit amazing. It's been a really long time since I found myself sitting down and then suddenly realizing it's 6 AM, going "but if I just.. hmm.. this thing here..." fiddling with something, after having gone "If I just do one more mission, then X/Y/Z" for hours, whether it's because I was hoping someone new would join my team or just so I could reach lvl 26 to unlock a mastery slot so I could finally finish two Mastery Sets at once.

It's so fucking addictive.

It's not perfect. It's clearly a budget project. Proper voiceovers would be nice. The translation is genuinely ass, and although the writing is confusing and downright bad, that at least has a charm to it, but not being able to figure out what something does or seeing frequent spelling errors is just fristrating. There's also a bunch of "vestigial" online shit that existz for no reason, like the ingame mail function, even in offline mode, and the game is needlessly MMO-ish in parts, and the worst is that I'm not even sure why this game was an online game to begin with.

Also, what the fuck is up with some enemies only showing up in lolhueg and annoying storyline missions? Farming Scott is going to take fucking days.

Tell us a variety of ways we can make up for your precious time. We'll try our best to do it.

Manual saves?

Offline mode I guess? This issue happen due to always online requirement right?

There's offline mode that's nowadays quite stable.

Not really sure, but one of the "issues" with the offline mode is the fact that additional content, etc are supposed to come with the online element right? At least that's what I read months ago when they finally relent and made a working offline mode.

I fucking hope not. I have zero interest in playing an online game that holds all my saves and shit. Always-online trash needs to die in a fire.

 

[Luckmann]

Yeah, pay very close attention to the enemies you are facing. Spoonists will get upgraded units a little after midgame, because of the narrative. Gangs merging and all that fuckery. And god damn, they get some heavies that can pretty much oneshot anything that isnt a tank. Lighting mages are hardly a threat because of their low to-hit, but their damage is off the charts, so never be exposed when facing them. Spoonists in general are a pain because of their spoon gang bonus too.

On one of Anne's first outings in my game, a bitch lightning dog critted her for 12k. Lightning doesn't play the fuck around, it seems.

Funnily, she was at the end of a chain lightning thing, but it missed all the others. Now, Anne is no longer allowed to come out and play unless she stays in the tall grass or behind really tall objects.

If Irene gets special Masteries, I don't see why no-one else does. Anne really should have a cheap/default mastery that allows her to treat half-cover as full-cover.

Yeah, pay very close attention to the enemies you are facing. Spoonists will get upgraded units a little after midgame, because of the narrative. Gangs merging and all that fuckery. And god damn, they get some heavies that can pretty much oneshot anything that isnt a tank. Lighting mages are hardly a threat because of their low to-hit, but their damage is off the charts, so never be exposed when facing them. Spoonists in general are a pain because of their spoon gang bonus too.

In my last mission last night/this morning, I suddenly ran into mass amounts of White Tiger heavies for the first time, which was conversely also the first time I met not-named-boss-enemies that have the mastery that cuts any damage over 50% of full HP down to 50% HP maximum damage.

Good times were not had, but man, that was a fucking curve-ball, considering my team was largely built around slamming the enemy hard and fast. My Albus does amazingly with the whole retaliation/forestallment thing, but then he was picked down by their shooters. Finished that mission with everyone dead but Irene.

Edit:
Question: What are you supposed to do with Valkyrie Coins? I have a bunch of them, but all I've found to do with them is to buy Mastery Boards, which is legit useless.

 

[Lhynn]

If Irene gets special Masteries, I don't see why no-one else does. Anne really should have a cheap/default mastery that allows her to treat half-cover as full-cover.

Irene needs the special masteries to enable her gameplay style, though even that isnt enough late game, nobody can afford to go on their own. Anne doesnt really need that, the whole point of her character is about the player trying to keep her out of danger because of how valuable and fragile she is. Her being a kid works both on a narrative and gameplay level. That said, there are ways to make her nigh unkillable if you go for the earth tank masteries that you get later down the line. Dude you get them from has the whole line and its ridiculous how tough he is.

In my last mission last night/this morning, I suddenly ran into mass amounts of White Tiger heavies for the first time, which was conversely also the first time I met not-named-boss-enemies that have the mastery that cuts any damage over 50% of full HP down to 50% HP maximum damage.

Good times were not had, but man, that was a fucking curve-ball, considering my team was largely built around slamming the enemy hard and fast. My Albus does amazingly with the whole retaliation/forestallment thing, but then he was picked down by their shooters. Finished that mission with everyone dead but Irene.

Yeah, imagine if the white tigers HAD shown to up save the angry bulls.

Edit:
Question: What are you supposed to do with Valkyrie Coins? I have a bunch of them, but all I've found to do with them is to buy Mastery Boards, which is legit useless.

Nothing, more mastery boards isnt useless, if you are into farming missions having more diverse/specialized builds really cant hurt you. At some point you want some of your team with builds specialized in taking down robots, those masteries are expensive but needed to kill them with relative ease, otherwise you will struggle. Same with killing beasts, some of them are insanely strong.
Two is the bare minimum as you want one for either class.
Oh, and probably the best company specialization is the one that grants 50% more masteries.

 

[Luckmann]

Irene needs the special masteries to enable her gameplay style, though even that isnt enough late game, nobody can afford to go on their own. Anne doesnt really need that, the whole point of her character is about the player trying to keep her out of danger because of how valuable and fragile she is.

Yeah, but that's just it, I think such a mastery for Anne would work both narratively and mechanically. Irene's whole implied gameplay style is really just narratively informed, and only based on one out of her three personal masteries, so I see no reason why Anne couldn't get something similar, albeit perhaps not to establish an entirely seperate playstyle.

I enjoy little touches like that in a game and just thought it'd be cool. I gave her the double-bonus-in-tall-grass mastery entirely based on the same logic.

Nothing, more mastery boards isnt useless, if you are into farming missions having more diverse/specialized builds really cant hurt you. At some point you want some of your team with builds specialized in taking down robots, those masteries are expensive but needed to kill them with relative ease, otherwise you will struggle. Same with killing beasts, some of them are insanely strong.
Two is the bare minimum as you want one for either class.

I dunno, man. You get three mastery boards for free, which is more than enough for the bare minimum, and so far I've used one for each character except Albus, and that's only because I took him out of Great Swordsman so I could max out Magic Knight "because why not" and wanted to save my set-up so I don't have to do it again when I switch back.

I also want to make a day/night thing so I can switch easily between night-ops and day-ops, because Owl's Eyes are fucking great but completely wasted in daytime. And sure, robots later, I guess, because tons of shit doesn't work on robots it seems. One thing I fucking love in the game so far is the profound effect masteries can have. Irene has gone from squishy to a fucking tank with just a few masteries.

That said, it's less about Mastery Boards really being literally useless and more about Valkyrie Coins seemingly having no other use. It's like the big reward system for collecting info somehow, yet all you can do is get mastery boards which you may not even use? I'd rather take money or high-end crafting supplies.

Oh, and probably the best company specialization is the one that grants 50% more masteries.

Yeah, Expertise, the one that makes it 50% more likely you'll get a mastery drop? I feel the same. I ran with the Scavenger one at first, but there are so many masteries, with low drop-rates, randomly gained, etc., and your ability to produce more hinges on you finding them to begin with. I have many unlocked masteries I can't produce because I have yet to find the masteries necessary to produce them.

Items can always be bought, and at worst you lag behind in gearing a bit, but masteries are powerful and build-defining.

 

[Lhynn]

They are not useless. Though it is true that you got enough of them to play the game. Still, a couple new boards for your mage and your sniper to destroy robots will make those missions a lot easier.

 

[Suicidal]

If Irene gets special Masteries, I don't see why no-one else does. Anne really should have a cheap/default mastery that allows her to treat half-cover as full-cover.

I recently got another character that also has special masteries unique to her, maybe there will be others later.

I'm legit not even really sure what is going on, with frequent timeskips and characters sometimes seemingly getting killed just to pop up literally a day later, and were apparently not even arrested.

I don't have much trouble following the general storyline but yeah I don't really understand why the gang bosses I kill/arrest can come back in literally the next mission. Do they break out of prison or something? Also I just had a mission where I killed a boss, but he escapes in the ending cutscene but back at base I get a reward mail from the police thanking me for arresting the guy.

Despite the crappy writing mired by bad translations I find myself oddly invested into the story and worldbuilding of the game. Maybe it's the fact that you are fighting mostly humans with their own hopes and dreams and sad childhood memories as opposed to the faceless uncaring unfeeling aliens in something like XCOM or the good feeling I get when my team busts up yet another gang whose boss probably thought they would keep getting away with all their bullshit. Maybe I wanted to be a police officer all along, which also means that I'm a racist.

 

[Visperas]

Hahaha! The bosses being out of action and back in action from one mission to the next also bothered me for a while but I've learned to let go. These days, I'm not sure what to do with the quests 'cause it's like they force me to repeat side scenarios that I don't really want to repeat. Some of them will appear in new, still to be done side scenarios and that's great, it's an added objective to the mission but man, I think I've rescued trucker Lee from the timas like 3 or 4 times already.

I'm still enjoying the shit out of it.

 

[Lhynn]

Hahaha! The bosses being out of action and back in action from one mission to the next also bothered me for a while but I've learned to let go.

Someone is paying for their release. Theres a quest chain that goes into how easily that is to do with a few connections. Theres a lot of fuckery behind the scenes to make the police look incompetent and ineffectual, its part of the plot.

 

[Visperas]

Is there anything special about Legendary Items with the Binding Item tag beyond being good items? Or can I sell or salvage as soon as I get something better?

 

[Lhynn]

Is there anything special about Legendary Items with the Binding Item tag beyond being good items? Or can I sell or salvage as soon as I get something better?

Salvage, it will give you rare components. Though some you may want to save for newer members.

 

[Luckmann]

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

 

[Cyberarmy]

Lol which mission was that, Irene and Heixing saved the day it seems.

 

[Luckmann]

Lol which mission was that, Irene and Heixing saved the day it seems.

I don't remember the name, but you have to arrest Sharky before he leaves, but then it turns out that if you're smart and try to do it fast and avoid taking out other enemies, you get buttfucked by the fact that as soon as he dies, the entire fucking map legs it for the exit, including 3 other bosses. And my entire team, except the police, was in the ass-end of the map and had just killed Sharky, tied up in combat. I tried to break people off, but several died before they could even make it back to the entrance/exit as the enemies all swarmed there, through areas I'd previously cleared.

And the NPC-controlled police officers were absolutely fucking retarded, not using the Riot Guards I had strategically placed, instead running away behind a corner and just entering an ineffectual overwatch. One SWAT killed herself because I had put her on automatic defense of the location and not had a chance to change it yet, and she decided to, at the first sight of enemies, to line herself up against a wall and get shot by 5 enemies before I could even take direct control of her and gtfo. It was a humongous clusterfuck that just kept getting worse.

I'm not joking when I say that Heixing was down at ~10 HP, and it wasn't until one of the two riot cops had died, the other one being in absolutely critical state, and there just being ~3 enemies left that the retard police NPCs started laying down smoke and handing out heals.

 

[Lhynn]

That is, i believe, one of the last big missions where Irene can afford to go libero, it only gets harder from there.

 

[Suicidal]

Lol which mission was that, Irene and Heixing saved the day it seems.

I don't remember the name, but you have to arrest Sharky before he leaves, but then it turns out that if you're smart and try to do it fast and avoid taking out other enemies, you get buttfucked by the fact that as soon as he dies, the entire fucking map legs it for the exit, including 3 other bosses. And my entire team, except the police, was in the ass-end of the map and had just killed Sharky, tied up in combat. I tried to break people off, but several died before they could even make it back to the entrance/exit as the enemies all swarmed there, through areas I'd previously cleared.

And the NPC-controlled police officers were absolutely fucking retarded, not using the Riot Guards I had strategically placed, instead running away behind a corner and just entering an ineffectual overwatch. One SWAT killed herself because I had put her on automatic defense of the location and not had a chance to change it yet, and she decided to, at the first sight of enemies, to line herself up against a wall and get shot by 5 enemies before I could even take direct control of her and gtfo. It was a humongous clusterfuck that just kept getting worse.

I'm not joking when I say that Heixing was down at ~10 HP, and it wasn't until one of the two riot cops had died, the other one being in absolutely critical state, and there just being ~3 enemies left that the retard police NPCs started laying down smoke and handing out heals.

When I played this mission I stupidly split my squad all over the map to do all the optional quests thinking that the mission would end as soon as I killed the boss, which resulted in my entire team dying and in the end I won with Albus (who was at like 1% HP at one point in the mission) and 3 injured cops

That is, i believe, one of the last big missions where Irene can afford to go libero, it only gets harder from there.

You can get more mileage out of her if you give her immunity to stuns or knockbacks, counterattack and some combination of masteries that shortens the turn timer, such as the one which gives 30 time when you kill someone with a counterattack. I'm past the White Tigers and she can still solo enemy squads that don't have bosses with this setup. Only problem are mages but only Spoonists have them.

 

[Lhynn]

I'm past the White Tigers.

You are never really past them.

 

[Luckmann]

That is, i believe, one of the last big missions where Irene can afford to go libero, it only gets harder from there.

I never built Irene for libero. She was just the last one to break off, after having been left at the boss site to pick off the stragglers, and subsequently the last one to make it to the entrance/exit, hard enough to survive and just in time to help save the situation.

 

[Iron Balls McGinty]

Irene can do vicious fucking damage with her counterattack, she is almost always the last of my team to drop, and my team drops a lot now, level 40+ lol.

 

[Suicidal]

I'm past the White Tigers.

You are never really past them.

Yeah I assumed that after a big story mission where you kill all of them and then the next few missions being against some new gang that I was done with them for good but they were back on the next mission after I said that.

 

[Reinhardt]

Irene can do vicious fucking damage with her counterattack, she is almost always the last of my team to drop, and my team drops a lot now, level 40+ lol.

Well, she's a hero.