Heya! Happy new Zelda and impending Street Fighter launch! Lots of gaming to do.

Today, we're covering Fire Emblem: Engage on the Nintendo Switch, released January 2023. Engage is the newest tile-based tactics game from Intelligent Systems following 2022's Fire Emblem: Three Hopes.

Fire Emblem: Engage is a tactics, all-star game where the worlds of the series crossover in this pocket world. The protagonists of each game is worshipped as great heroes and sources of power. You play as the Divine Dragon, a great deity awoken from a long slumber to fight the revived Fell Dragon, akin to the early game's 'defeat the Shadow Dragon' story.

So let's get into Engaging our Emblem Ring transformation.

To quickly preface, Fire Emblem Engage is a very silly game.

​It's the first traditional tactics game for the series that focuses heavily on crossover material. Previous crossover games dabbled in other genres like the gacha mobile Fire Emblem Heroes, musou-style Fire Emblem Warriors on the WiiU, and Shin Megami Tensei crossover featuring idols Tokyo Mirage sessions #FE.

Engage follows in a similar manner with a world that worships the idea of the Fire Emblem protagonists. The spirits of 12 great heroes is stored in the Emblem Rings and worshiped across the continent of Elyos. A select few god-like figures can 'unlock' the power of Emblem Rings and allow anybody to summon one of the spirits.

Players control Alear (their default name), a Divine Dragon able to use the Emblem Rings and very recognizable blue/red split hair. Alear is reawakened after they defeated the big ole Fell Dragon 1000 years ago. Turns out, Fel Dragon's back! Go and assemble the Emblem Rings to defeat the Fell Dragon once again.

​This main plot goal keeps steady through the game. Alear travels the world, meeting the nobility of each kingdom in their quest to gather the twelve Emblem Rings. Some of the nobility are aligned with the Fell Dragon and use corrupted Emblem Rings against Alear's army.

Let's talk on gameplay!

Weapon triangle dictates advantage over another weapon gives a bonuses for attacks like damage, accuracy and so on. When certain weapon targets a specific unit-type (bows against fliers, axe unit's hammer against armored), the bonuses were drastically increased even to 1-hit killing. So proper accounting of weapon triangle was key for gameplay flow.. to a point.

Depending on the game, a player could ignore portions of the weapon triangle (like the sword-axe-spear trio) and focus on building raw stats instead. Don't have to really worry about weapon triangle if your armored unit only takes 1-3 damage a hit, or your sword unit is so fast all spear units can't touch them.

For three turns while Engaged, the unit gains unique skills, weapons, and special attacks drawing upon that character's popular image in Fire Emblem. Sigurd's Engage toolset invokes him being the first mounted spear protag by giving 5 movement (doubling infantry movement!) and cool spears. Lucina's Engage draws on the central Pair Up mechanics of Awakening to allow a unit to defend adjacent allies or swarm a target with support attacks of your whole army.

The Engage mechanic gives a big power surge to the player that really reinforces the game's central theme: celebrate the series by remembering (and using) cool ideas of the prior games. Turn the tides and superhero transform into the Hero King Marth and win the day.

So I often play on Casual when available but treat it as I'm playing on Classic. If a map springs a surprise and kills a unit 45 minutes in, I have an escape valve to not completely waste that half hour.

The series understands the contradictions of this dynamic and continues to implement turn rewinds, starting in Fire Emblem Echoes. Turn rewinds is a great salve to give a player grace in undoing tactical errors and only lose a minute or two as opposed to full map progress. 

Fire Emblem has always been a series I associate with save states since my earliest days of GBA romhacks, so turn rewinds are a natural fit to that idea. That said, I still believe turn rewind should be given unlimited use in the series. Running out of turn rewinds returns to the issue of player death feels really unfulfilling to let stick or wasting 30+ minutes on non-progress.

​The main difference is primarily just environment art and statements from the nobles saying out loud 'this is what our country is about'. It creates a jarring feeling that each country is not just perfunctory writing, but fully only for gameplay setup to a distracting degree.

​A major factor is just writing time. With only a few chapters allotted to each country, the cutscenes are dedicated to introducing one of the three major nobility characters or resolving a major plot beat for the country. Then, the two heirs of the country join the merry crew for the next location.

Elusia does get an exception as the antagonist country but has a similarly shallow vibe to how people live in the snow country. Fire Emblem does have a history with overly cartoonish villains who revive the evil dragon for 'reasons' and Elusia reinforces that cartoonish nature.

There's an interesting contrast with how self-sustaining the eccentric characters tend to be compared to more standard characters. Rule of good writing dictates a contrast between characters helps make things more dynamic, but with the previously mentioned issues in worldbuilding the grounded characters have little to latch onto for their motivations.

Jean, an early optional character, is one of the few grounded characters I really enjoy. He's the apprentice to a small village doctor and joins Alear's army to help people across the continent. His support conversations focus on stress of his duties as a doctor amidst war. His anxiety about the time sensitive nature of his work is a really fun look at the stresses a typical person would have in the world.

Jean is also just a great lil guy with a absurd stat growth, so there's no reason to not use him well into the game.

Minor content DLC to single-player RPGs is not novel to Engage, but it's always been a mysterious quirk to modern Fire Emblem. The incentives baked into the paid DLC was compromised at best: make the process of grinding easier with this $2.50 USD bonus map. Want to get a unique skill tied to a DLC class? Cough up $3.00.

Engage sits in a similar odd spot. You can currently obtain 7 additional Engage Rings through DLC, a massive player power level surge as the 12 main story Emblem Rings are slowly drip fed to you. The current curated pace of the story could be cracked open if you're willing to obtain the Season Pass. It's weird!

I'll admit, if I were to replay Engage soon I'd pick up the DLC for repeat playthroughs cause I am having a blast. But the specter of the DLC does hang over my current playthrough (especially with major plot beats restricting Engage Rings).

​Aside from petting Sommie, the tasks of the Somniel can feel like a list of chores to hit between every fight. Playing every minigame could squeeze out bits of stat optimization like doing situps for +2 HP on Alear. Resource gathering requires scavenging the whole Somniel for errant metal bits.

Engage seems to understand part of these tasks could be streamlined for the player. Some Somniel tasks have streamlined options to auto-pick units like with support rank grinding. Tedious tasks like resource gathering don't and should have implemented options to automatically handle. Please, give me a 'collect all' resource gathering button.

All these Somniel tasks also refresh often and constantly. Depending on optional grinding a player does, the Somniel could refresh several times and exponentially expand how long the player goes without progressing the plot. You have to actively tune out major upkeep tasks to keep a steady pace of plot.

So current Engage is relatively trivial to grind SP on! The well's a good way to address the balance oversight, but the issue of slow SP grinding is still present. By the time the well was patched in, many people had already completed Engage's main story and describe a really stingy management game.

​But, hey, maybe being busy for a few months was a good thing for me!

The experimenting of the Emblem skills is very fun with skill books, giving a flexibility to make a unit into whatever gimmick unit you want (barring bad stat growths). With the well, I do find the Emblem Inheritance system a good iteration upon the Three Houses skill training management. Keep it up Intelligent Systems!

Fire Emblem Engage is a conundrum of a game to evaluate as a whole. It innovates on the Fire Emblem tactics loop in a really powerful way that feels will stick past this entry. In the same breath, I hope the storytelling work done in this game is a one-off and writing style of Three Houses is allowed to continue in the next entry in the series.

A recent game development twitter post helped solidify my full thoughts on Fire Emblem Engage:

The emblem ring Engage mechanics show a great attention of meshing tactics gameplay to a theme of 'superpowered units' the game presents. It draws on a celebration of an all-stars game when you summon the Ike ring to defend against a whole battalion. It rules!

But I also experienced a barely by the books story unfold with limited hooks to keep engaged beyond meeting some fun weirdoes across the continent. There's something to be said about perfunctory stories for enabling gameplay (as an avid roguelite liker), but Engage ​often sets up very telegraphed plot twists hour after hour to its detriment.

That said! If you are a 'gameplay is king' type tactics person, Fire Emblem Engage is a best-of-show for the series. Those that love to replay the games will find some great deep systems to engage with especially pushing through 'Maddening' difficulty.

Production timelines do indicate that Fire Emblem Engage was likely produced during the production of Three Houses so it's hard to say if this game is the definitive vision going forward. Fire Emblem: Three Hopes, a recent release from 2022, continued the complex leaders writing of Three Houses.

So the next Fire Emblem could very well the deep character focus of Three Houses and the gameplay innovations of Engage! We'll have to wait and see.

​Till next time on Triangles, Tactics & Tabletop, Kupo! ​Pet your Sommies.

Heya! Trying a new post format for this entry! With event prep for GDC having me real busy, I haven't had time for deep dives into a tactics game. But I did have time to try a couple Steam Next Fest demos!

As someone who played tons of PSP demos, I've missed the ability to have a low investment try at a game. Tactics demos are especially interesting challenge as a design prompt. Tactics games can be long! Or they develop mechanics in a gradual way over hours, which is difficult to capture in a demo.

But lots of developers made the effort, and I wanted to give them a shoutout! So let's do a Turbo Turn of Steam Next Fest tactics/strategy demos. I had to hone in on this blog's focus cause I played too many! Oops.

Two Point Campus sits on the other side of building planning as a satirical college management simulation game.
​(Note: this is just the actual full game with a weekend grace period to play for free and I played too much to not talk about)

You take on the role of a wandering college Dean given multiple campuses to shape into successful universities. It incorporates building out a campus, managing college employees, and improving the campus to better student success (so they continue paying tuition).

A big part of managing student success is, essentially, traffic management. Can a tired student reach the dormitory to sleep then visit the library to finish an assignment in a fast enough time? Can sprinkling vending machines around the campus reduce the amount of people trying to rush the courtyard of hot dog stands all at once?

The satire of Two Point Campus helps it stand out on its own terms. Having 4 beds for a whole campus is fine, it's just a extra hellish co-ed dorm. It's fine! I, as the dean, may show favoritism for a club cause it gives an important stat boost of 'running across campus fast'. There's a clown degree department in the west building.

Two Point Campus seems laxer in how efficient you need to be compared to its prequel, Two Point Hospital. Where patients would previously die and becomes ghosts for a base inefficiency, students instead struggle to reach their full A+ grades. Student failure/ego death is still on the table but I have yet to have a student fail for a similar time count to Hospital.

For someone like me who doesn't really like minmaxing city strategy planning, the time I put in with Two Point Campus did feel pretty smooth. I'll try picking it up when I'm hungry for making Clown College more powerful. 

Dungeon Drafters is a deckbuilder tactics game pulling upon the roguelike ideas of mystery dungeon games. You play as one of six adventurers who goes into dungeons to collect treasure and get stronger with finding new cards. The demo focuses on a core loop of a single dungeon dive.

Each turn you refresh your Action Points (AP) to move, melee attack, or play cards. From the demo, cards are high impact for particular situations (helped by always having a basic melee attack). The rabbit adventurer had a deck focusing on intentionally being surrounded to hit multiple adjacent tiles or heal per enemy near you.

Enemy turns are handled with an interesting mix of clear list of skills an enemy can have and which skill they might choose in a turn. If an enemy is going to use a ranged attack, the exact tiles they're going to strike is marked on the map. Otherwise, the enemy will display their available skills they might use (movement counts as a 'skill' to use).

It's a fun choice! You can often guess what order of skills an enemy will use (Move -> Melee Range Attack for say basic slime 1 tile away), but sometimes they'll throw a curveball and you have to improvise. And clearly marking ranged attacks gives leeway for enemy skill design. It's fine to have a big cross AOE attack for an enemy if I know I just need to shimmy 1 tile down.

Deckbuilding and the specifics of the RPG layer are not quite present in the demo, but the current basic adventurer decks provide good optimism on how deckbuilding will feel. When cards hit their combos, player turns hit a clean sweep through enemies. I look forward to Dungeon Drafters' ​launch!

Dungeons of Aether is a turn-based dungeon crawler set in the universe of platformer fighter, Rivals of Aether. You play as four different heroes, dungeon diving into the caverns to help the town and get stronger. The demo focuses on a single dungeon dive with Fleet, the baseline hero of the four.

Combat has an initial simple core. Each turn both sides choose a skill to use in combat, first to go decided by 'speed' stat. If an attack was chosen, it must beat the opponents defense to do damage. Accuracy increases options of skills in a turn. Skills have a wide array of effects like increasing defense this turn, or increasing stats next turn.

Layered on top is dice drafting! Six 6-sided dice are rolled each turn, each assigned a color tied to the 4 stats or as a wild card color. Player and enemy draft 3 die to improve their stats, starting with the player and rotating. If a dice matches color with a stat or is a wild card, the stat is directly increased. Otherwise, the stat is only increased by 1.

Dice drafting is a fun spin on RPG turns. This system naturally causes damage to be hard won, so health is very small for all units (Fleet and the demo enemies were 3 health or lower). There may be future issues where it might be a little too hard to damage enemies, which depends on how the long-term balancing is handled.

Fleet represents the baseline idea of the gameloop and she's very fun as a plucky and clumsy thief, boding well for the other three heroes. While the town side of RPG systems was not present in the demo, gradual skill unlocking and equipment management are and those feel very ripe for cool synergy planning.

Inkbound is.. a lot.. and a favorite of demos I tried. It's an MMO, turn-based, run-based, tactics, roguelite game with seasonal structure of ARPGs like Diablo. You play as a Needless, primordial goo type humanoids, tasked with helping stop the decay of the worlds of living stories. The demo focuses on showcasing the roguelite loop with the 3 available classes.

Each turn you refresh your action points to either move or use one of your skills (called Bindings). Movement is radius based and important for moving out of range of marked AOEs or out of range of enemy melee attacks. After your turn, all enemy turns resolve at once and the arena tightens with a damaging circular wall.

Outside of battles during a run, Bindings can be upgraded to strengthen synergy with other skills and unique items can be obtained with unique passive. These rewards and battles are handled by a room by room basis, displaying the difficulty and rewards of each room. 

I gravitated towards the Weaver mage class for seeing the potential of the synergy building. Weaver has a low cost, low damage skill that applies a debuff (Entangled) that allows their other skills to function and do big damage.

You could choose to make the low-cost skill the core of the build and add ailment effects that do dramatically more damage the more they're applied. You could also choose to make the skill that splits damage across Entagled targets hit like a truck and crit more often! 

I'm very excited for Inkbound. Much like the developer's prior game, Monster Train, their inspirations are readily apparent but transformed into a unique and ambitious vision. I'm not sure how the MMO layer will play out since I fully played single player, but I had a blast with solo play.

Video games! Lots of them! I have a lot of deep respect for developers who put in what must be a tremendous amount of work for public facing builds like these. And this was a fun writeup to do to try to tighten thoughts to cover the many hours of Steam Next Fest I played.

Until next time!

Happy New Year! Since the holidays gave me more time to get through tactics backlog, this post is coming sooner than expected. Hooray!

We're covering Tactics Ogre: Reborn from Square Enix for the Nintendo Switch, PS4/5 and Steam! The original Tactics Ogre was released on the SNES by Quest Corporation in 1995 with a PSP remake in 2010. Reborn is technically a remaster of the 2010 remake with quality of life polish and some graphical updates.

Tactics Ogre: Reborn at heart is an SNES Tactics game with all the quirks of design choices of that era. An early foundation of the Final Fantasy Tactics Job System and art direction is present, adjusted by remaster polish. All the difficulty of games of that era is well and present too!

So let's get on to it! Let Us Cling Together.

As director and writer of both Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, Yasumi Matsuno's influence lies heavy on Tactics RPGs. Both games tell stories about the hollowness of war as a tool of powerful. Enemies in war are other common folk like yourself being led by squabbling nobility fighting for power.

Tactics Ogre focuses on Denam Pavel, a young member of the Walister Resistance fighting against occupying forces. Denam quickly becomes acclaimed as a hero of the people and is brought into the conflict between the three factions: Walister, Galgastani, and Bakram.

Rather than build a hero's epic around Denam, the world questions Denam if he's willing to launder his reputation as an underdog hero to do evil in service of the Walister. Will Denam choose to be loyal and do atrocious deeds or turn his back and be shunned and hunted.

​Symmetrical Design... Partially

Units between the player and enemy are symmetrical in design with:

• Up to 4 equippable Skills (passive or active)
• Up to 4 items
• Up to 4 Arcana spells
• Finisher skills tied to sufficiently high weapon skills 

Combat then centers on out-optimizing the enemy or having a better strategy over the enemy AI in a direct competitive sense. This mirrored balancing of enemy against the player also fits with all enemies being possibly recruitable (barring narrative exceptions). What would be the use of recruiting weak enemies, right?

The issue comes with where the symmetry breaks and instead of a chess match it's trying to best a cruel Game Master. The risk and reward from the player changes to really slow pace.

First, the player at most can deploy 10 units with 2 additional AI-controlled guest units. The enemy deploys 12+ similar-to-player-stats units, already creating a raw numbers issue. This is really noticeable with unit death mechanics and how those change between player and enemy.

​
Bad Dice Roll Recruiting

I've mentioned recruiting a couple times, so I should cover it more properly here. It's.. rough.

Many units can have one of their 4 skills be taken by a Recruit skill that targets other humanoids or specific type of monster. Recruiting has a low max percentage of succeeding around 25%, decreased by higher health, distance from the enemy, and a unit's random loyalty stat.

Recruiting also exists along the previously mentioned risk/reward of standard play, creating a big risk to waste a unit's turn on an unsuccessful recruitment. With how much control given over human units, it's often beneficial to just not recruit any human units unless they're unique recruitments (which is best found through guides).

Monsters can't be obtained outside of recruitment, providing an incentive for the system. Though, the presence of multiple different types of monsters with different recruitment skills does add a layer of tediousness.

Recruitment really tends to haunt the string of Square Enix-adjacent tactics games from Tactics Ogre forward. Wasting an action on really low percent chances just often feels bad, and good 'recruits' tend to just be story related characters with their own short stories.

Strategy - Slow Burn Unit Management
​

​
Lots to Buy, Limited to Spend

Money in Tactics Ogre is primarily obtained by selling items picked up in battles. This does require the player to keep an eye on loot bags to avoid receiving small amounts of money due to an enemy stealing all the gold as a map ends.

I do wish gold was more generous within the game as you can finish a difficult fight with low rewards, which really hurts unit improvement pace. There's a few cases where fights can end suddenly due to narrative reasons and gold was stolen. I had it happen once and was too tired to redo a whole fight for the money.

With that money, you can use it all at the many shops across the world! Equipment ranges from usual hat, armor, boots, accessory, and primary hand weapons. I tend to autopilot to whatever equipment is strongest for a while until about late Chapter 2 when ailment-based equipment starts to occur.

Eventually in Chapter 2, you unlock Crafting from the shops. You can synthesize more random junk you pick up in battles like wood or ores to improvement equipment stats or add special effects to equipment. The ailment upgrades to equipment was a huge turn of tactics for me and evolving past the large stat number vs large stat number gameplay loop.

The Crafting system is way too dense in number of items and number of levels crafting material can climb. Thankfully, Tactics Ogre allows itself to do the heavy lifting of fusing pre-requisite materials. It uses a overly dense nested menu system to resolve all that crafting.

The costs of fusing is actually quite low, so you come to the system often! Still would've been easier to parse the system if it reduced the number of materials to deal with.

Juggling Jobs & Elements, No Clown Jobs Though ;(

Tactics Ogre has its own Job system to manage across a playthrough, though much simpler than what would be common in Final Fantasy series proper. ​

A Long, Bold Tale

It's really interesting to see how Tactics Ogre forms the foundation for tactics game in the lineage of Final Fantasy Tactics and beyond. Denam is a fun early iteration of what would become Ramza Beoulve of a hopeful hero being pushed against by a cruel world of nobles and war.

Still, the pacing of Tactics Ogre: Reborn is real rough especially against my attempt to make this post relatively quickly since its launch. I'm roughly 20 hours in and feel nebulously a third through and they've been 20 tough hours of tactical thinking.

The writing style that Matsuno helmed is really strong and one I'm curious how current Square Enix implements in its coming projects. Final Fantasy XVI seems to be concerned heavily with medieval fantasy intrigue so we'll see how that ends up. I have some.. qualms on how it already seems to be viewing 'historical accuracy' through presenting a very homogenous type of people. Ah well.

For now, I'll steadily get through Tactics Ogre: Reborn. Next time, we'll hit Fire Emblem Engage! A much goofier looking game in narrative from previews, but seems like a fun contrast.

Been a bit since last post! This time we're talking about Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes developed by Intelligent Systems and Omega Force. Three Hopes is the second 'Warriors' game that adapts the series standard turn-based strategy to real-time combat. While the previous Warriors game on WiiU (rip) was more of a crossover game between popular (mostly 3DS) Fire Emblem games, Three Hopes is more of a sequel to Three Houses. Sorta!

A major goal of today's post is to solidify how I handle this first general impression post on a game just so that I can take notes better and not sit on posts between games too long. Basically, first impression posts will go as thus:

• Short Overview
• Tactics Layer - Talking about minute to minute decisions
• Strategy Layer - Talking about larger resource management & story structure
• Other Cool Systems - Larger meta systems may have like Triangle Strategy's conviction system

For some games it's pretty simple to break these up: A map in Fire Emblem can be the tactics layer talk while item management & support system cover strategy. For some games it may be looser but its meant as a guide more than strict rules.

This is not to say a game may only get one post! I'll still do deeper dives on particular of a game's story or game systems but I need to put a limit on myself for these general game writings to not go too long.

Onwards to Fire Emblem meets Dynasty Warriors​!

Byleth, instead, is now far from their role as professor at Garreg Mach and the mortal foe of Shez. Shez joins Garreg Mach as a fellow student of the political-leader-building Officer's Academy, but only for a brief moment. Like mentioned, Three Hopes works on knowledge of the original game and chooses to skip the slow burn development of the Academy phase.

Instead of the 'Flame Emperor' mystery, the major conspiracy of 'Those Who Slither In The Dark' is unmasked immediately. This is followed by three separate national power struggles exploding across the continent, allowing the three house leaders to leave the monastery on amicable terms.

Shez, along with their body sharing and supernatural friend Arval, would eventually join as a mercenary hungry for one of the three house leaders as war unfolds across the continent.

Making Mashing Go Down Smooth

The Omega Force brand of action game, while simple to pick up, has to work hard to keep engagement for long hours. 

The key aspects of a character's gameplay kit is their 4-step combo of Weak & Strong attacks, a class-based action, a dodge & guard, 2 combat artes, a special meter charged move, and a unique skill/passive tied to each character. These parts are what carry the game from beginning to end, so Three Hopes gives lots of variety to each of these parts!

There are 40+ classes that change all of a unit's kit but their unique skill, but fall under ~10 archetypes for ease of use. Generally, I really enjoy the spread of classes through the game. Classes are either very fast and high action or hit large areas for slower/magic focused classes.

Then there's each character's unique skill. These range from being fundamentally changing in gameplay like Shez's high speed dash, to a nice variety on pace like Hilda's 'hold heavy attack button to hit harder and vacuum enemies', to.. okay unique skills like the house leader's 'add an element to all attacks'. That said, enough skills are good enough to fill a map with units of fun skills!

On paper, I really like the approach of the Three Hopes chapter structure. The camp management is a firm incentive to not immediately aim for the Chapter major fight. The building resources are substantial for big gameplay upgrades, and possible Training point rewards let you experiment with more classes.

The issue comes in with the same reason I turned down difficulty to Easy: I want to be engaged with (or in spite of!) the simple systems of the game. The smaller maps tend to blend together with their objectives and start to wear on the novelty of obtaining new classes. Doing every single map in a Chapter really drains on pace, especially when you become tempted to skip the unique Paralogue maps dealing with major character arcs.

This compounds into a 'fear of missing out' issue in approaching the Chapter battle. Skipping the smaller maps may skip vital Strategy Points needed for recruiting a character, which would cause an odd pacing shift of leaving the major battle to grind the Chapter.

But maybe it's alright to not recruit characters with how flush you are with units.

Romance Chess, But Real-Time

The support system of previous Fire Emblem entries also carries over, handled very cleverly to match Omega Force's development scope.

Units can build support points with each other (if compatible) by being paired together on training, chores, or assigned as direct support in combats. Personally, I never really used combat as a way to build support levels which was great that it did not require warping gameplay to interface with the system.

Three Hopes tackles an interesting game design issue of how much writing is required for all the possible support conversations by simply reducing the number of conversations! Units will have support levels with other units building from C, B, to A-rank (certain unit pairings stop early at C or B-rank which is a pity).

Despite my qualms with how too simple Three Hopes ends up in practice, I have a blast with the game in returning to it. It's directly driven by how much I really love the world of Fodlan and just the idea of Fire Emblem that doesn't rely so heavily on evoking popular characters.

The cast of Three Houses is just such a great cast and I hope they return to a new full cast after Fire Emblem Engage does its dance as a crossover game. I believe in you Intelligent Systems.

Hey! It's been a while! I fell into a deep hole of fighting games (spectating CEO in person, playing Guilty Gear & Persona 4 Ultimax). Also have been playing Fire Emblem Three Houses so expect a post on that eventually!

For today we're focusing on Into the Breach, a 2018 game by Subset Games (creators of FTL). It received a major (free!) update in July adding new content to vary gameplay and found a home on mobile through Netflix games very recently. So a perfect time to cover it!

Into the Breach is a time-loop, mech, roguelite, tactics game about executing a constant loop of protecting civilians with fierce & ginormous mechs from large insect monsters. The combination of all maps being 8x8 tiles, lasting 5 turns, and given full information of enemy intent & abilities creates a game about careful risk management.

If you like puzzle solving, you'll definitely love this. So dear friends, once more, unto the tactics talk.

The player then gets a phase to kill, move and block the enemy from attacking. The loop repeats until all 5 turns complete! A small review of mech pilot EXP gained, objectives completed, and buildings saved is given.

Key to the triage management of the game is 'Grid Power', the electrical grid underlying the multi-island setting. The Grid powers the mech you control, and every destroyed building reduces Grid Power. If Grid Power hits 0, the current timeline hits a dead end and a game over state is hit.

​A quirk to mention later in covering objective rewards is that a building has a small chance of ignoring damage, acting as the lucky 'critical' hit for an otherwise decision heavy game

So the player's goal is to prevent Grid Power hitting 0 at all costs. In fact this is the only fail state noted. Into the Breach constructs other systems to center this goal. Mechs auto repair at the end of every combat, so there's an incentive to see mech health as a 'free' resource to protect the Grid.

Notably, all the areas on an island aren't completable! Once 4 areas are completed, the last 3 are lost and the Corporate HQ is attacked by a Hive Leader Vek. Time for a boss! The Hive Leader Vek are unique in only appearing at Corporate HQ defense battles and unique attacks or mechanics new to them.

Corporate HQ events always have objectives to defend the Corporate Tower and kill the Leader Vek, so preparation should be tuned for that. And on the other end of objectives, any area can have a surprise bonus objective: Time Pods. A pod containing remnants of another timeline will land on a random tile. If a pilot stands on the pod or the tile is undamaged until the end of the map, a reward is given often in the form of a Reactor Core, a pilot, or a new mech weapon.

Island Order

Island Order has quirks as unlocking freedom across different runs as the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd island is completed. It's a good way of handling easing into the complexity of management but eventually opens to allow the 4 Corporate Islands to be tackled in any order. So we'll talk from the perspective of the introductory period has already passed.

From the beginning of a run, general information about all 4 islands is presented to allow for larger planning. The general enemy Vek and eventual Hive Leader Vek are stated for each island. This is really important as different mech teams vary in which enemy Vek they can handle with just base equipment.

This contrasts interestingly against Subset Games' prior game, FTL, and its final encounter being a 'final exam' boss fight. The Rebel Flagship is brutal and requires any run constantly prepare for it, which may contrast drastically from 'basic' enemy preparation. Most runs of my 100 hours there were lost against the Flagship.

With Into the Breach, the final encounter is essentially the Corporate HQ Defense encounter but remixed with harder enemy variants and scales to how many Islands have been completed. Being able to 'win' runs consistently was a huge boon to replaying.

But why replay if the loop is so consistent? Well beyond different enemy types, there are 13 Squads with unique configurations of 3 Mechs & 17 unique pilots to bring into runs.

Last time we talked about combat​ so let's hone in on the narrative systems & themes of Devil Survivor Overclocked!

Devil Survivor is a game centering on crisis management. To that end, it centers on how individuals and major organizations (like the military) react in response to disaster. The major flow of story involves how to spend each 30 minute block from 08:00 - 18:00 each day.

Can you save everybody at risk of dying? If you can, whose plan to end the lockdown do you believe in and spend time trying to make work? You have to make hard decisions in investing your time.

Be warned, this post will have general spoilers for up to the 7th Day & ending setups! Hee ho-nwards!

​Through the power of your cool demons (and lots of RPG mechanics), you can beat fate. This could have become very formulaic in having a daily boss that you grind to defeat, but the predictions of your death vary the pattern.

Devil Survivor 1 eventually chooses to ominously warn the player of the upcoming major bosses that will kill them days in advance. Starting with everybody's favorite difficulty spike, Beldr! [crowd cheer into heavy crying]

Gameplay wise, the Beldr fight is sorta a big problem of early Devil Survivor relying on heavy chance through lucky critical hits & dangerous ailments missing the player. Story wise, it serves to tutorialize the investment the player has to do for major arcs.

So the end solution to Keisuke is preoccupy Kaido with helping Mari kill a vampire. This requires spending time in solving Mari's anti-vampire dust search. You also have to not spend the time to give Mari the anti-vampire dust but give busy work to Kaido to do it so he's busy thinking about the vampire who killed his brother and not Keisuke.

All in all, it's the hardest arc to do correctly with how specific the player has to act. It's also very entertaining to see it unfold and talk about how different it goes with friends! It can go bad in so many different ways! You can even still partially mess up after Keisuke is saved and not confront him and lose a party member! But I respect making so many characters have their arcs intersect.

Part of why elite panic is deployed is that it's often politically convenient for those in power to spread fear of the 'other'. This is how you get things like cruel hostile architecture to prevent the homeless from resting on benches to incredibly inflated police budgets.

Amane, as the representative for the angels faction, pushes heavily for your character to act as a new Messiah of humanity. Not just Amane, but God himself wants the protagonist to be his special little guy and lead humanity as a pillar of faith. Free will of humanity is neat and God wants that to stick around but also would love if it favored God a little more.

Part of this is that angels and demons within Shin Megami Tensei are not omnipotent parts of the world. The faith and vibes of humanity empower the supernatural and make heroes of myth real. Demons thrive in a world where survival of the fittest is king and people fight each other to survive. Angels thrive in a world where everybody follows the rules and listens to those above.

So when you're asked to lead humanity by Amane, she is also asking you to lead humanity to a world where everybody is more subservient to God. But this also marks Devil Survivor 1 unique in thinking about the apocalypse.

My read of this ending is one that reflects the current hell world that is 2022, which is to say one that desperately tries to claw back at a sense of normalcy. Yuzu and most of the normal folk just truly wanted a way to return home and live life peacefully, but the old normal can never truly return.

​I think we (as a people) are collectively in the Yuzu ending of this lockdown, aha..

With all this looooong writing, let's do a wrap up thoughts!

Devil Survivor Overclocked is a really bold game in its approach to multiple endings and the branch of ways multiple arcs can resolve. In return, it's a game that a single playthrough can wrap within 30 hours, with 5-8 hours for Naoya/Amane/Yuzu extra content added on. It sits quite nicely next to Triangle Strategy's 25-30 hour campaigns!

By relative comparison, this is closer to 'average' game length of games at the time versus the 60-100 hour counts you would often encounter in standard JRPG entries. This is really important in terms of game scope, and also allowing for replays! ​

Due to shift in life priorities like doing projects like this blog, a 120 hour game with missable content like Persona 5 will almost certainly never get a replay from me. Something like Devil Survivor 1 with its 30 hour campaigns is a lot more compelling!

​Another idea to take away is how much the player can balance at the same time, without being overwhelmed. Despite having up to 10 possible arcs that run throughout the game, the writing hones in on 3-4 major events happening in a moment. This was right on the cusp of being overwhelming, but I have the benefit of having tried to play this game 3 times. For others who are new to this, it does end up being a difficult balancing act.

Devil Survivor 2 would go on to ease the complexity of character death prevention, which is great for reducing fear of missing out content. That said, I would love a third Devil Survivor to try another sprawling character arcs.

Devil Survivor Overclocked is a real fascinating game to revisit in 2022. Friends and I are revisiting it together and I've been really enjoying dissecting the game's attempt to adapt Shin Megami Tensei to tactics and its narrative around.. a government enforced lockdown. This is my 3rd attempt since 2011 to beat the game and maybe this time will be the one!

Today we're gonna talk about the gameplay systems of Devil Survivor Overclocked! As a tactics genre entry, there's a very unique attempt to adapt Shin Megami Tensei systems to tile-based tactics. The depth for each of the 4 units you can deploy creates such a wide range of unit complexity that intertwines with classic Demon Fusion that SMT ​is known for.

Onwards past the read more!

My main history with the Shin Megami Tensei story begins with Persona 4 in the early 2010s. The main hook for me there was the social life systems interweaving with a solid RPG system. There's a long talk to be had about how I initially thought Persona 4 was transgressive at its time and a very formative work to me.

​But with distance I think it mostly ends up being an extremely poor take on LGBTQ+ themes and mostly a gracious accident that the writers made something sorta resonant on those themes.

After Persona 4, my exposure to the SMT series is Persona 3 Portable, Shin Megami Tensei 4, Persona 5 and three separate attempts to beat Devil Survivor Overclocked since 2011. Oh, and also Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. Look, it's good.

In the past few years, I played a high amount of The Masks We Wear, a tabletop system based on Persona by NatTwentea. That, notably, puts my focus on how one adapts a dense RPG system like the Shin Megami Tensei Press Turn System to a multiple unit tactics (or multiplayer tabletop) game.

Devil Survivor as a series is difficult to talk about without mentioning its artist Suzuhito Yasuda. They are known also for their character design in Durarara!!, Digimon Cybersleuth and.... Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?

My personal thesis is: Suzuhito Yasuda is an artist that needs an editor

Yasuda just truly needs editors that aren't bought in to fanservice designs, which in the grand scheme of marketing is hard to find. Still, major parts of Devil Survivor 1 and especially Devil Survivor 2 are distracting cause the character portraits have notoriously bad proportions centering on absurd chest size.

A curious aspect in how his character concept has been editorialized is in the Digimon games. Due to needing a second artist to make models off the original portraits, the 3D version of the Cybersleuth characters tend to have reduced fanservice to them. The models are much less egregious as a result and more people should do this to Yasuda.

​When one of the teams 'attacks', both attacker and defender are pulled into mini-RPG encounters. Both sides can choose a round of actions and the order is resolved depending on unit speed. Depending on how units perform (hitting weaknesses, getting hit by an element your resist), a unit gains an Extra Turn and can perform another action.

I think this is a really cool way to adapt SMT. Each 'unit' is operating as though they are a player team in the mainline games. The dynamic of a leader unit trying to implement a strategy, while supporting demons try to keep them alive and act as part of a strategy is constant through the game.

Layered on top of the skill system is the amount of free actions a team gets. Each living unit on a team gets a single free action outside of combat. Healing skills, 'active' Racial Skills, and Demon Summon/Recall skills to change team composition can be used anytime before the team ends their turn.

This versatility adds even more complexity to team building! You can recover from a bad fight you instigated by spending free actions healing your demons or use a movement increasing racial skill to run away if movement is still available. If you do really poorly in a fight you can spend the leader's free action to replace a dead demon.

This is where the game really spikes in difficulty at various points. Daisy chaining three active and three passive skills onto a demon with a good unique skill (or element resistances) gets complicated very quickly. And you might need to do this for up to 24 demons! Mostly you just need 12 or so really good demons by the endgame but that's still quite a lot of planning.

Devil Survivor helps to reduce complexity in a few ways. You can see which combination of demons can create a new demon through Search Fusion, reducing guesswork pretty heavily. Element fusion is one I've used much less than other mechanics but allows you to essentially 'upgrade' a unit to their next best type in the same race.

Last time we talked about Triangle Strategy's combat, so let's talk about how it handles narrative!

Triangle Strategy is not a subtle about its themes and interviews with producers Tomoya Asano and Yasuaki Arai reveal a real desire to convey a complicated story as simply as possible. The three kingdoms map to a philosophy of how one should be a leader. On paper, the kingdoms play in par medieval fantasy tropes between a northern snowy territory, wide-field knight kingdom, and a hot desert kingdom.

Where Triangle Strategy elevates itself is in the choices it gives players. Constant small choices in every dialogue and exploration scene builds up to major choices at the Scales of Conviction with pretty wide narrative branching. Each decision helps a player sculpt their Serenoa and how he will respond to structural power. It's really bold!

So let's do a deep dive! (Read More away!)

Three 'Convictions' make up the themes at the core of the game: Morality, Liberty and Utility.

Morality centers on following duty to others and avoiding unneeded bloodshed in the height of war. It maps to Glenbrook, styled in a northern open field kingdom that Serenoa calls home. Glenbrook has a hero king that helped end the great war  a generation before and welcomed persecuted people into the kingdom. Surely the juggling act the king does to keep the peace will never go wrong.

Liberty ​is about chasing ambition and seeking the power to make it realized. It maps to Aesfrost, a snowy northern kingdom with extremely cool scarlet coats and dramatic iron projects. Aesfrost is, supposedly, heralded as a place where the citizenry are free. Also, the current leader appointed his family to positions of power, it's fine.

Utility follows thoughts on practicality, minimizing personal risk, and making necessary sacrifices to continue on. It is represented by Hyzante, a desert kingdom with the main monopoly holder on salt, the major resource everybody wars over. It provides generously for its citizens who believe in its central faith, led by 7 figures who are all pretty suave. Hyzante also ardently persecutes the Roselle and sends them to work and die at the salt mines.

All the writing center on how these conviction are interpreted by various characters. Of the playable cast, the three are represented by Frederica, Roland, and Benedict as they make proposals to deal with major decisions for Serenoa to make. 

A fun side note is that producer Arai note in an interview with Destructoid the lack of permadeath in combat was core to weaving character focused story in a tactics game. Death outside narrative would really hurt a curated story and I feel more campaign story games could do to get rid of permadeath to uncomplicate which characters might still be alive. ​

Before we really dive into the narrative systems, we gotta talk about weird medieval fantasy tropes. Hyzante is the kingdom I find the most compelling as a force of tension but also grew critical of as time passed from finishing a playthrough of the game.

Throughout Triangle Strategy several exploration segments will occur. These are moments where Serenoa can talk with NPCs, be an RPG hero and break into a house to grab some of their money, and find out strategically important information (more on this later with the Scales of Conviction). All of these actions reinforce the Conviction system!

An interesting twist to the Convictions is how much the system is actually obfuscated on first playthrough. In the opening chapters, you're told:

• 3 Convictions guide the world and Serenoa
• Dialogue choices may increase the value of a conviction
• Certain actions may increase the value of a conviction

Scales of Conviction! Use it to decide the toppings of your pizza! The Scales is easily one of my favorite systems to come out of Triangle Strategy. 

At multiple points throughout the story, Serenoa will have to make difficult decisions about how to move forward. Members of House Wolffort will present 2-3 options that align directly with one of the 3 convictions (which is not explicitly noted).

Should we claim this castle by cornering their forces and negotiating a truce? What if we sneak in and take out their commanding officers? What if we just flood the whole area and pay no mind to collateral?

There's a whole elaborate leadup to a decision that feels momentous as a case is made for each choice. The seven key allies of Serenoa make their vote between the options presented. This is where finding strategic information in explore segments comes to fruition! 

Serenoa can attempt to convince each of the 7 voters to change their vote to another option. This is done through a similar 3-choice dialogue done with NPCs in explore segments. The key difference is that the third option in these convince dialogues is always locked initially. If Serenoa talked to or interacted with key information before this third option is unlocked as a dialogue choice. 

Triangle Strategy, a tactics game developed by Artdink and Square Enix, is the rare game where I immediately wanted to replay to see what content I had missed. It was such a smooth tactics RPG and I was so excited in talking with others about what different story choices we made. 

Combat scenarios are presented like puzzles more than a level curve to beat. Through use of a curated experience curve the maps keep a constant forward pace where you're never stuck on a map too long but can't trivialize a map.

Triangle Strategy is, honestly, the main inspiration for this blog. It's a game I feel synergizes the spirit of high momentum fail-forward tabletop games, tactics game design loop, and branching storytelling experiments of the recent years.

So I'm gonna do a series of posts on the game! Today we're gonna cover an overview and lengthy dive into combat.

The game was initially revealed in a 2021 Nintendo Direct with exciting news, a new tactics game in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics is on its way from Square Enix! It's utilizing the HD-2D art style used in Octopath Traveler! Also they immediately want you to know about its thematics and important proper nouns.

The three kingdoms of the world war over salt, iron and trade routes, creating the 'SaltIron War'. The kingdoms created the Consortium to try to end the bloodshed and broker peace. The heroes of the Consortium used the 'Scales of Conviction' to guide their decisions weighed between the convictions of Utility, Morality, and Liberty.

This is a bold opening marketing salvo (that matches the opening 5 hours) that seeks out an audience willing to meet it halfway to take on the journey of a story heavy strategy tactics game. And, yeah, that's me. I'm the indulgent long cutscene enjoyer.

But it also served to have an early showcase of the branching narrative that would be center to the game. A tactics game with constant branching decisions was incredibly novel for me as someone who had not played Tactics Ogre (which I plan to rectify). Decisions, also, framed around larger philosophies of governance with the 3 convictions especially interested me. I was very excited to see how the writers at Square Enix would try to wax poetic about the world.

​​I avoided the demos because I was already sold on getting the game but was curious on some of the early thoughts people had on the game. Of note is Austin Walker on a Waypoint Radio podcast episode (Ep. 376) had really interesting thoughts on the localization's use of archaic English that seems to overly lean on Game of Thrones (heavy use of 'bend the knee in the initial demo).

​Triangle Strategy aims to give equal weight to its dense branching narrative and its similarly robust combat systems.

They truly want you to embody the role of Serenoa, a rising noble lord who will impact the political state of the world. Your Serenoa has multiple choices to make about what he feels is 'correct'.

Part of this does require a lengthy set dressing at the immediate opening of the game.

But you do quickly learn about the world! As an overview:

• The 3 kingdoms are Glenbrook, Aesfrost, and Hyzante
• Glenbrook is a medieval monarchy resting on good river transport systems
• Aesfrost is a snowy northern kingdom with an abundance of steel veins and values 'freedom' amongst its people
• Hyzante is a desert kingdom that values providing for people it deems worthy and sits on a massive salt monopoly
• The three were at war 30~ years prior for the resources of the others, now at a tenuous peace

Of note with the worldbuilding, the world is heavily grounded with its focus on kingdoms struggling over simple resources. Magic does exist in the world but there's nobody preparing a magic calamity, it's mostly a tool of war & medicine.

While this opening is heavy-handed this helps to inform the player for major branching decisions and underscore why combat is going to happen. This is where Triangle Strategy really grabs me.

Major choices presented to the player are concerned both with long term narrative stakes and the battle the player is willing to engage with.

​There may be a morally correct option but it may lead to a harder battle encounter and less narrative power for Serenoa. On the reverse, the tactically correct answer may give Serenoa leverage but it may require some underhanded and evil action that the game will definitely bring up later.

So let's talk about combat!

​Triangle Strategy has a few combat systems to briefly cover:

• ​All units have a facing direction where accuracy is higher if a unit is attacked from the back
• If an ally is on the direct opposite side of an enemy being attacked, the ally performs a pincer follow-up attack

One of the big appeals of combat is that I was reminded quickly of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and its utilization of high-impact ailment applying classes early in the game.

To quickly establish the style of tactics game Triangle Strategy delves in, the most used unit I've used for every single combat since obtained is Hughette.

Hughette:

• has a hawk that allows her to ignore the height limit a unit can move vertically
  
• has a ranged attack that can blind a unit, having their attacks miss for a few turns.
  
• can activate pincer attacks easily as a ranged unit

Hughette is my MVP.

Her MVP status gets at the primary tactics design challenge Triangle Strategy sets out: handle the overcoming odds of an enemy primed to overwhelm you with raw strength or a better starting position. Each of your units is designed to address specific problems the game may set out.

Hughette in particular is a response to high damage or high range enemies, hindering them for multiple turns. Each unit follows in a similar design pattern with abilities designed to solve a specific problems. The game actually presents each character with 2 bullet points for their central focus.

This creates a strong dynamic where you decide which problems you want to focus on for the 10 units.

Enemy is primarily archers defending a choke point?  Deploy a few units with good physical defense along with high mobility units to pincer enemies or apply ailments to reduce their damage.

Enemy is physical tanks supported by multiple healers? Deploy mage units to shred through the enemy frontline along with frontline damage to deal with the healers.

Enemy has a high height advantage? Deploy your good boy Jens with a ladder.

An interesting aspect of the focused design of each character is the recommended units for story battles. Certain units have abilities that can take good advantage of terrain or defeat certain enemy types easily.

An aspect of recommended units I enjoy is trying to parse why the designers believe a unit is strong for a map. Take Anna who is a high mobility stealth unit. She is often recommended for maps with a healer hiding in the back or dangerous mages and tasked with killing them quickly.

Anna is also recommended sometimes for maps with switches that require an action to activate. Why? Well Anna has 2 actions a turn and can stealth on her second action if the switch is in the center of enemies! This is a really clever way of suggesting puzzle solutions to tactics challenges.

Strong unit identity extends to enemy units as well. If an enemy unit has a particular sprite, you can expect it to have similar abilities throughout the game, scaled for increased stats or an additional passive skill. You can plan your tactics and what units to deploy just on the visual makeup of units present on a map, which really helps clarity for large maps.

Combat is generally very readable through allowing player to see turn order, enemy skills, enemy attack range, and resources. It makes planning each turn feel fair with so much transparent information.

A particular highlight is resource transparency of each unit's Turn Point (or TP). TP is the typical secondary spellcasting resource and Triangle Strategy keeps the values intentionally low for readability. Most units have a max of 3 TP, and recover 1 TP on their turn. Dangerous abilities (primarily magic unit spells) a player should fear cost around 2 TP.

​So an optimal plan is try to have enemies waste resources on your sturdier units, then send in everybody else when you see they're at 0 TP!

The player also has free actions called 'Quietus' available to them, reminiscent of Law Actions in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

These range in functionality such as:

• healing a unit
• stopping an enemy unit, preventing their next turn 
• moving any unit up to 8 tiles
• reviving a unit
• allow an ally to be next in turn order

These are partially understated through combat design but add a fun tactical layer of planning when best to use these actions. I personally loved utilizing the turn order affecting moves to either have a healer immediately heal a critical unit or stop a major boss unit from destroying whoever is right in front of them.

New recruits can come in well into the game, I obtained characters even at the 75% mark of the game. You will obtain about 25 characters in a playthrough, give or take. With an average 10-unit deployment limit per map, underused units are bound to fall behind and be unusable, right? Well, no! Thanks to their curated experience curve.

Triangle Strategy gives experience to any action, modified by a multiplier based on the difference between unit level and the stage's recommended level. This multiplier scales drastically.

Units basically get a full level of exp per action if they're 2 levels below the recommended. This was major in keeping niche character relevant if I only deployed them once every 4 battles.

The multiplier scales drastically in reverse as well! Units go down to 2 exp per action when about 2-3 levels ahead. This makes it difficult to brute force any chapter through grinding. 

An interesting addition to this is that all units keep their experience gained even if you lose a map (consumable items are reset). Due to the multiplier also reducing experience when over leveled, there's a forward momentum where maps do become easier if you fail but they aren't made trivial. 

I adore how this keeps a forward momentum throughout the game. When I fail a map, it never feels that a map wants me to overpower a map with raw numbers but wants me to try a different tactical approach. This is especially important as Triangle Strategy is a linear campaign with no randomly generated battles for grinding (it does have a few set 'mental mock battles' that serve as repeatable grind content). 

These overlaying tools all combine for a finely curated combat experience that never overstays a particular map. I hope more systems like these are considered for further games in the tactics genre. I struggle with grind heavy midgames due to my increasingly busy life outside of playing video games.

That's it for combat! Next time we'll talk about how Triangle Strategy constructs its themes and handles player choices!

My big plans for this blog can be summed up as follows

• Talk about tactics games I've recently played or played long ago that struck me with cool design choices
• Talk about certain design patterns and design challenges that come up in the tactics genre
• Explore the 'canon' of tactics games and see how they hold up (Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc.)
• Discuss tabletop games and notable systems I find really impactful as a collaborative experience
• Possibly discuss the process of creating my own grid-based tactics tabletop RPG
• Shout out indie tactics and tabletop games that I really think deserve more attention

So I hope you'll join me on this tactics adventure! Onward past the Read More!

So why this name?

Triangles​--
Well what is a rock paper scissors triangle but the ultimate tactics game. The idea of a weapons triangle is front of mind whenever I think of tactics games. Fire Emblem was very foundational to my experience of tactics games over the years and honestly? Triangle Strategy has taken over my head as a top game ever very quickly so I really wanted to shout that out.

Tactics--
At its heart this blog is gonna talk a lot about tactics games! I'll get more into what I mean by that later in terms of games to cover.

Tabletop--
Tabletop games rule! I really enjoy seeing discussion on what the tabletop medium can aspire to be. I'm someone very passionate about pushing the medium to extend beyond the big system everybody automatically defaults too (check out NatTwentea!!!). 

Kupo--
Kupo.

No but seriously, the Final Fantasy Tactics Advance moogles have been my favorite design from any game period, let alone just tactics games. And in recent years FFTA has struck me at trying some really interesting game design choices that I will ardently defend. One day I'll write about Laws and Antilaws.

My initial history with tactics games was primarily appreciating the idea of the Fire Emblem games and especially their romhacks around late 2000s, early 2010s. Back in the days when Twitch.tv was Justin.tv there were a few streamers who played some of those extra hard romhacks so spent a lot of time watching them.

This was also at a time where Fire Emblem Awakening was years out and all other FE games were incredibly rare. Also, I was bad at navigating emulators and got computer viruses a couple times. That was embarrassing.

Fast forward to 2013 and huzzah! Fire Emblem Awakening! The core loop of gameplay captured the impression I had of watching streams of older FE games and romhacks. And it had shipping! It was very approachable in the way the game eased in mechanics and common recruitment requirements, but also had an engaging difficulty curve!

This was also clear when I discovered the idea of fandom! A blessing and a curse. This was when I started really interacting with other fans about favorite characters. Around 2013 I still hadn't built up a confidence to draw fanart yet but I did appreciate every art of my sweet baby boy Donnel.

After that, I sorta fizzled on Tactics games for a bit. University struck! Fire Emblem Fates came out right around when college hit me with lots of stress. I did not like Fire Emblem Fates, haha. And I completely missed Shadows of Valentia, so Fire Emblem was put on the backburner for a bit.

Then around 2018 my then college roommates introduced me to a lot of big tabletop board games like Betrayal At the House on the Hill and the Fallout board games. But most importantly they introduced me to actually playing tabletop RPGs like Dungeon & Dragons!

That was my real first experience in collaborative storytelling which I really enjoyed. I would play various sessions in D&D 5E and would eventually try running a few campaigns in Inverse World, a supplement to the Dungeon World system, as well as Blades in the Dark. I really enjoyed running systems that encouraged that forward momentum in narrative but still had layers of tactical challenge to it.

Around 2019 I would move to also playing tabletop games through NatTwentea, an indie TTRPG group run by very cool friends Cecil & Rubin (check our their games on Itch.io here). I would end up playing in a bunch of sessions over the next years in their Persona, Fire Emblem systems and their original system Trail Between Sun and Stars.

Fast forward to 2021! I graduated from college! There was also.. still a global pandemic going on! So I joined the sea of folks that turned to increased video game play as a hobby. And a big one was that I decided to stream Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on a somewhat weekly basis!

That experience was great! It was really formative for where I was as a game developer and also someone trying to parse moving on to post-college life in the midst of a profoundly isolating time. I felt very accomplished making goofy stream banners for these streams, loved getting attached to certain party members that were recruited, and loved sharing that with friends and viewers. If you watched those streams, thanks! I really appreciate ya!

​I wrapped on FFTA that around September 2021 and from there delved into various other tactics games. Horizon's Gate, Triangle Strategy, Fire Emblem Three Houses to name a few. I came to those with a more refined knowledge of points I know I enjoy and points I have heavy friction with and look to how a game solves them! And streaming made me realize I love elaborating on design thoughts, so here we are!