Triangle Strategy (2022)

Played the new demo and have some updated thoughts.

Context, literally just beat FF Tactics War of the Lions for the first time. It's impossible for me to not draw comparisons between the two games, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

Story wise I find the premise quite interesting and want to learn more. This kind of precarious peace between three previously warring nations sounds like an interesting place to start, in particular I think Hyzante is a fascinating location with an interesting societal structure and want to learn more. On an execution level I think is where it starts to falter. The writing is clumsy - very often characters just outright say their internal monologue to each other, no sub-text or interpretation of the dialogue is necessary. Tell, tell, tell, and no showing. The writing could also be far more succint and pointed, and the ratio of cutscene to gameplay so far leans way too far towards story. Could be a prologue thing. The voice direction seems off - weirdly stilted and melodramatic, luckily you can turn voice volume to 0 if you want.

Gameplay bops. The actual strategic stuff is interesting has a lot of depth to it already, with freezing tiles, follow-up attacks and Quietus all being really interesting additions. I love what we can see of the character progression so far. I think not being able to reclass characters is an interesting change, in other games I often find myself reclassing everyone to the OP class and rolling the game, whereas here everyone seems to have discrete rolls. I love that there is a tank character with provoke, my favourite archetype. This is actually really good - but why is there only one battle per hour?

I think I'll pick this up on release date and see how it goes - but Feb is stacked and will likely bleed into March for me.

Kudos to the devs though, they addressed multiple of my previous complaints: snap rotation of camera, input lag and load times are all far better.

Just finished the demo and saving some thoughts here for now.

Haven't played a tactics style game for a long time, not since tactics ogre on PSP. I think on that front this is a very sound game. The gameplay is classic tactics and it is satisfying to take time thinking of the right moves. The red line indications that seem similar to the ones in Fire Emblem are a great QOL addition. The difficulty also seemed fairly well tuned. I wonder if permadeath will be a part of this game? Maybe this isn't their intention but I also love job systems in these types of games. The story seems fairly run of the mill but was executed well in the demo and was engaging. I like the scales system and decision making, it's a unique take on it - trying to persuade your crew of certain things. The music as well was great classic stuff.

While I like the art-style I feel like the game chugs a little bit. Not sure if it's the framerate but there was noticeable input lag and heaviness to moving my character around, as well as the camera. On that note being able to snap rotate the camera in 90 degree increments using the triggers would be nice. I might prefer a less flashy presentation for a more responsive game. Being able to fast-forward is great. I think the pre-battle menu could use some work, and I wasn't able to change my characters' equipment (maybe that's just a demo thing). The load times when clicking on each of the little story scenes were ludicrously long for how short some of those scenes are. It made watching a set of these back-to-back far too tedious to do - I hope they can figure out some way to streamline this as it will get old quick during a playthrough.

Overall, very much looking forward to this game as there's not been one like it for a very long time.

Having recently completed the demo, I'm putting down some of my thoughts for the feedback survey when it releases.

Overall, it's still pretty amazing that this game is real, its combination of rpg mechanics feels and sounds like a fan's dream game. I'm very much enjoying the way abilities are tied to this TP system, and how different units so far all have their own unique job classes based on their role in this world. I'm very curious if they'll be locked to this job through the game or if they will have the option to swap jobs or promote as in other tactical rpgs.

I'm very excited about the different game modes at work and hope they all are expanded upon in the full game. Being able to explore towns, take on side missions, manage your armies equipment, and seek out content like optional characters and storylines outside of the main story all help substantially add to the overall experience.

I don't have many criticisms at this point, mostly just nitpicks. I think battles would benefit from a button to rotate between a couple preset camera angles or functions such as rotating 90 degrees, etc. The voice acting can also be hit and miss. But mostly it's Serenora, who as a primary protagonist, just sounds too flat and robotic in many of his lines, and I hope they'll consider re-doing his lines as I've seen this to be a popular complaint.

I'm very excited for this game overall. It'll almost certainly be a day 1 purchase.