Initial Impressions for the new Square-Enix roguelike:
Oh God, they put in a story. Please stop talking, game. Prospective Qt3 players take note that cutscenes can be skipped by hitting the + button twice.
I’ve barely scratched the surface, but I think this one has potential. Why do I say this? I managed to almost die on like the 3rd story dungeon, when the game should by all rights be wedged firmly into “you can’t die” mode. It’s not that it was overly hard or anything, just that I was being lazy and the game punished me for it. Good!
Multiple classes to choose from, and it looks like they are different in ways besides abilities- for example, the Knight class evidently gets hungry faster.
The game appears to have COLLECTIBLE CARD BATTLING. Yes, a CCG in a roguelike. Additionally, it looks like you can play the CCG online!
Anyone else pick this one up? I just got it, so serious impressions from me will have to wait on getting a chance to delve properly.
A roguelike with a CCG element inside sounds so goddamn good. I take it you find random cards as you quest to build your deck? Can playing the CCG get you more loot for your main character?
The other Final Fantasy Fables game was Chocobo Tales for DS. Rather than a rogue-like, that one was a rather poor mini-game collection with a decent CCG built in.
Do you know if this CCG is the same (or similar) to that one? It seems a safe assumption that it is, but I haven’t seen this new one so I can’t say for sure.
I know that it LOOKS the same as that one, but I don’t know if they play the same. I know for a fact that you can get cards at least two ways- by inputting special phrases you find in the game to, uhh, some weird moogle chick in a grain silo, and, yes, by finding them as drops in dungeons. I do not know yet if it goes the other way, e.g. if winning the card game gives you phat dungeoneering lewts, but I assume it does. Haven’t gotten to a match yet!
Man…a CCG and a roguelike. I think I just popped a chocoboner.
Actually, Chocobo Tales is one of my absolute favorite games on DS.
It’s a wonderful little mini-game collection with oodles of style, and it’s a darned shame more people haven’t played it.
I was shocked when I read the IGN review.
It seems pretty rare for a rogue-like to get an even-handed review.
At any rate, I’m looking forward to picking this up.
The card game is kind of lame. The biggest flaw is the twitch element, which seems especially odd in an otherwise turn-based and contemplative game. At the start of each turn you and your opponent are randomly dealt three cards from your decks. You can see the colors of your opponent’s cards. Then you decide which of the three cards you want to play, and you waggle to play it.
The catch is, this is timed. Whoever chooses their card first attacks first, which is obviously a huge advantage. I guess they thought it would be a nice wrinkle, weighing going first against choosing the proper card for the situation. But instead it’s just annoying. Also annoying are the long unskippable animations that play every round, and how you can’t quit out of a battle once it’s started. It’s a shame really, as the card game seems simple but fun under these flaws.
Wow, this game is really damn good. I popped it into my Wii to check it out when I got home from work, and here I am 3 and a half hours later and it feels like no time has passed at all.
Well, some time has… due to it’s -incredibly- annoying characters. At first I thought your character’s choco-squeaking every time you attacked would drive me crazy. Then I met that Scrappy-do voiced Kupo Dungeon X or whatever and wanted to scratch my ears out.
Then, what do you know, a central character is a SCREAMING BABY! That’s right. You have to hear this baby scream out of your speakers whenever a character mentions it. Beginning a dungeon? Baby scream. End a dungeon? Baby scream. Leave the dungeon? Oh, you better believe that’s a baby scream.
Other than that, I love the systems in the game. It slowly unlocks more and more depth the more you play. It’s not a cakewalk either… you can die (although it’s not as brutal as the Chunsoft DS crawlers, you can retain your XP and equipped items if you die). The production values are very nice as well… all the dungeons, outdoor towns, and creatures look fantastic.
For such a hardcore and deep game, I can’t believe how absolutely sub-juvenile all the characters are. I’m a veteran of JRPG, and I’ve dealt with a lot of annoying stuff, but this game takes the cake so far.
Sounds like a clone of the game in Chocobo Tales on DS. There you used the stylus to touch the card you wanted and flick it toward the top screen. BTW, two new DS Chocobo games were announced yesterday. Oddly, one of them is a port of the Wii game just released. The other is a sequel to Chocobo Tales. IGN says there has been no word of release outside Japan on either title. I’d love to the Tales sequel make it here, but I kind of doubt we’ll see it.
I think FlyinJ really nailed it. The characters are incredibly annoying, but even at this early stage (I just unlocked and took a crack at using the Black Mage job) I can tell that there is a ton of fun depth here. The classes really play very differently from each other, too…I think my favorite is the white mage, but I have not even tried the knight yet. So far the game is well worth the budget ($40) price.
