I still want to get this game but that article pushed it even further out. I prefer the more random, less puzzle style tactics than the narrow, this way or the highway alternatives.
I just started this too, and also really liking it. The emphasis on dynamic movement shenanigans makes for a very different feeling than most tactics games.
I don’t fully agree. Aside from the bonus stages (which are explicitly puzzles, like “kill all enemies in 1 turn”), the stages are puzzle-y, but not single-solution puzzles. I mean, you can choose your units from a list of about 10, so there’s going to be all sorts of potential combinations.
Getting a perfect rating in each mission can be slightly puzzle-y, but that’s mostly about identifying a correct general approach, more than specific actions each turn. A perfect rating is based on # turns, and 0 deaths, but you have a lot of leeway in terms of who takes non-fatal damage and when.
It isn’t even as puzzle-y as, say, Fire Emblem can be.
@Misguided Yeah, that boss was one of the more frustrating ones for me. I really struggled dodging those attacks and kept retrying to get that Perfect score. The cover is brutal and the timing unpredictable.
@LMN8R I’m not too great at sticking with turn-based games either but, yeah, both this and Steamworld Heist I breezed through and thoroughly enjoyed.
@Gendal What @CLWheeljack said. The challenges can be puzzle-y but most of the campaign battles and bosses are plenty wide and chaotic enough for various approaches and reactive play. The stellar movement is instrumental in keeping a lot of options open too.
I think this is exactly right. Not puzzles so much as puzzle-y.
Alrighty then, glad to hear that.
All I can say is that if I were you I’d have the exact same concerns you have, but knowing what I know from my experience with the game, there are really a lot of options for trying all manner of different tactics in the missions. I’m very happy with how it turned out, it’s my number 2 game this year :)
Not sure what you mean about the timing being unpredictable. Do they change the order things happen in or which direction the boss moves? I assumed it was the same. The timing of the boss phases is entirely up to the player.
Adjacent to the level variety issue though, my biggest issue with the game is that I think it does a poor job incentivizing you to use the full range of characters.
The way that progression works is: finishing a chapter gives you money, you use money to buy new weapons. Weapons in each tier do 1.5x-2x as much damage as weapons in the tier below. That means that you should only every use weapons from the highest tier that’s available.
But each chapter only gives you enough money to upgrade 1 character (~2 weapons worth of coins, 1 primary and 1 secondary weapon per character). So, whoever you upgrade is basically who you’re locked into until your next bucket of money comes in. And there aren’t really situations that require a certain character’s skills, so there’s no real reason to make yourself mix it up.
Its not a huge deal, but it means that the levels can start to feel a little same-y unless you actively force yourself not to allow them to.
I found that individual upgrades were optimal, but not necessary to advance. So I was fine with alternating which characters were upgraded, knowing that using the weaker ones would not be crippling.
If you aren’t going to obsessively optimize, even to the detriment of your own experience, why even bother playing a strategy game? It’s like I don’t even know you.
If it helps, I bet if you scraped every single coin off of every single overworld area, did all available puzzle missions etc, you’d be able to keep much of the crew upgraded :)
I agree with @CLWheeljack that you do seem to have to prioritize in a way that’s less than optimal. This is why many JRPGs will only allow you to use three dudes/dudettes but still give the XP to your whole squad whether they participate or not. You can keep everyone together on abilities that way.
I’m sure if they make another one they might find some way to address that. I mean, playing the challenges does get you extra dough to keep them up too though, I suppose? It’s just more gameplay to get there which isn’t a bad thing really.
It was just the attacks. I recall them being random and it took me a while to work out that only the full cover black blocks shielded you from the wave. The blocks were just far apart enough to be awkward to get to if you got knocked back as well. One of my favourite tricks for that boss was using Sentries to trigger the plate!
@CLWheeljack I cycled my heroes throughout the game and almost always spent my coins upgrading the weakest characters first (followed by keeping Mario strong because he never gets switched out). I did the same with Steamworld Heist and it worked really well.
Sometimes a character might skip a tier of weapons entirely but this approach meant I could choose who I wanted without taking too much of a hit on damage output or status effects. I found it was worth doing the challenges after each world because the difficulty is just right and it allows you to grab some more upgrades before you move on. I think if I’d come back to the challenges later they’d have been too easy and I relished the difficult battles.
Yeah, I agree they are far apart, which makes it a pain if only one character gets knocked back, since they are probably then out of range for movement shenanigans, forcing you to move one character out of desired position to get another character where you would like. The other things you mentioned, I figured it pretty quickly. The aggressive play I made with Mario was necessitated because of the 180 flip on the last phase and the fact that Luigi had been knocked back, so it would have taken too many turns to employ that tactic. Knowing how the fight works now, it would be much easier to position Luigi into cover before the switch so that wasn’t necessary.
Yeah, in practice, I’d have enough cash to upgrade my 4 mains, and then a couple of the other ones before the next tier is unlocked. My least used characters might leapfrog a tier, but everybody was more or less on track by the end of each world / next tier.
I just didn’t ever feel a motivation to use some of the later characters unless explicitly forced to.
I think the two Yoshis are introduced a bit too late to get a good feel for how best to use them effectively. I found Rabbid Yoshi and Rabbid Mario a dream team with their combined ability to push then pull a ton of enemies into a cluster. Rabbid Yoshi was a good hero for getting behind enemy lines with his high mobility, dash attacks, scream and shield. Yoshi was very versatile, but as I said, he comes late so he’s tricky to slot in. I tried to max their unique abilities out first to get a better idea of their strengths.
Here is a great video about how the Ubi team convinced both Ubi and Nintendo to do this game.
Oh wow, that was remarkable. Got a bit teary eyed at the end there. Clearly a labour of love. Thanks for sharing.
What characters do you like to use? I’m kind of at an impasse.
- Luigi is so good I feel like I can’t not use him
- If I use Luigi I’m not allowed to also use Peach because they limit non-rabbid character selection
- I usually use Rabbid Peach and can’t really tell whether Rabbid Luigi or Rabbid Mario are worth it