To be fair roguelikes aren't my favorite. But even putting that aside I honestly don't get the hype about this game from back then. I mean it's decent for an indie game on the cheap but I find the ship designs and the gameplay loop frustrating. All of it boils down to a couple weapon types are the best and the rest have little to no use except for the early game. And the reward for winning is more ship unlocks that each have a gimmick that tends to fail to be useful in the late game. It's really barebones and I feel like there could have been some easy ways to expand on it. /shrug.
It's not a bad game if you don't mind a slow paced old school rpg that's kinda light on the crunchy bits. Don't expect in depth skill trees, fast leveling, or quests that hold your hand with waypoints and such. I played an archer at first and while it has the advantage of kiting and doesn't really have resource management, your ammo supply gets tedious the further you go along. The good thing is that you can pile as many arrows as you want into the quiver slot. The bad thing is you'll spend a lot of time either gathering wood and iron to make them and/or buying them out from npc's. Don't go to wild on equipping arrows though as if you need to switch in some elemental arrows the regular ones will be split into stacks of 64 in your tool inventory. Speaking of inventory it's a little bothersome at times with the separate sections by type of item and the limited slots. At least there isn't encumberance. I dabbled with mage a bit but it looks like you'll have to swig mana potions on longer fights. So alchemy is probably a must there. But that's constrained by bottles which afaik can only be bought/found and not crafted. I bought this thinking I'd like that farming feature, but it ended up being kinda tedious imo. I was planting melons and pumkins for thirst/hunger and eventually added chickens and pigs as well. But it takes a fair amount of daylight everyday if you're going for max harvest. Eventually I slaughtered the animals and just stuck with growing my food. You can make a little bit of money with chickens but otherwise in the end it just got in the way of exploring/questing imo. Fyi, I'd check out the wiki and steam guides to get a little bit of direction but those will really only get you started. I'd be careful trying to be a jack of all trades as there is a finite amount of skillpoints afaik. Also be aware there are skill books that hidden here and there. They only work for a certain level. I.e. Class Skill Rank 2.
The first act wasn't too bad and I haven't ran into any show stopping bugs. As in no ctd, save corruption, nor have I run into any quests I couldn't complete... so long as I made sure I hard saved and save scummed from time to time. But once I got to the second act where the kingdom management comes into play I just stop having fun. The game just does a bad job at communicating things with the UI. However they want to control the flow of quests and kingdom management, I wish they would at least make things more intuitive. Honestly I'd prefer if they just gate the quests with events and take the time factor out altogether. If they want to prevent people from advancing their kingdoms too fast they could have just gated that side with resources or human resources you had to gather in which to be able to start projects. Then everything would flow well with the quest progression and narrative. No more weird timings. No more having to juggle things like I'm at the office working rather than playing a game to relax. I had a quest that claimed I had 13 days left to get to the location suddenly popup saying I'm late and my kingdom was going to get cursed if I didn't get there in 2 days. Why have the timer if you're not going to follow it? I feel like they followed the source material a little too closely and didn't spend enough time thinking how best to implement this game as a CRPG. Quite tired of losing hours of progress due to trial and error.
ToCS1 was solid despite the school setting which is not my cup of tea. ToCS2 made a few gameplay choices that had me take freq breaks from the game out of frustration - Early on in the game the accuracy nerf on physical types, the reoccurring unbeatable "story" boss battles with bonus AP, forced ambushes, and just a general trend to contrived reasons for why your party has unfavorable conditions. It's like they gave up on balancing the game and focused on gimmicks. It's not that it's terribly difficult mind you. It's just annoying when you realize you need a different approach to something and have to go thru the cut scenes again (skip>speed, imo). I do appreciate that they made getting money easier, but it feels weird having to repurchase everything I had in the first game (played them back2back). I'm not done with ToCS2 yet but I can't help but feel the classes solidarity is a bit forced thru the power of shounen friendship.
A solid kinetic VN I read ages ago. I'd buy it but I already own it.
Glad to see GOG pick up some VNs but unfortunately it is all stuff I've already played or isn't my cup of tea. There is some irony to one of the negative reviews here (unknown if it was intentional) as religion plays a role in this story. I wouldn't call this a bad VN but it wasn't that great either. It's been so long since I read it I can't really give specific examples. I'd give it a 3.5 if I could as well.
TL:DR A solid story driven JRPG and I truly hope the entire series gets localized. I did enjoy this game overall, but there are a few things keeping me from giving it a completely glowing review. I really did enjoy trials in the sky 1&2 for it's emphasis on story. This game is still arguably story driven but, while both series seem to be linear rpg's, cold steel's structure is very repetitive. It fits within the context of the school setting but I wish they had mixed up the formula. I suppose it comes down ultimately to my fatigue with Japanese Highschool slice of life plots. I did enjoy the world building. I was hoping for some reveals of the factional disputes but I feel like I had more questions than answers at the end. My main worry being character motivations. I'm sure it get fleshed out in the squeals. I'm just worried that they've made such a tangled web that a lot of things will be just hand waved away with plot contrivance for the sake of drama. Cliff hanger ending is all well and good but honestly the two back stories I was most interested in, for the MC and main antagonist, are not in this game. In the case of the former a chunk of it was excluded from the game and instead revealed in a Drama CD. In the latter's case it would have spoiled the reveal of their identity so that's understandable, and a slight nod to their motivation is given but it felt to impersonal for the level of vitriol this character has. But my biggest complaint towards the antagonist is that their machinations feel a bit unnecessary in light of the card they had for 3 yrs. That all said, these complaints might be dispelled as further games are released and the storyline fleshed out. But if this game were a book then this would serve better as a first act than a book on it's own. And that's probably intentional but ultimately a weakness imo. I didn't really like the diminishing returns on grinding. I don't like it when it's necessary either but..
I wanted to like this and I've tried to finish it a few times but never actually finished the main game much less the DLC. I think it was the game mechanics that turned me off the most (i.e. Might=DPS for everyone). Normally a good story would still keep me invested but it felt lackluster to me. The premise could have been interesting if executed well, but I felt like it was trying too hard to tick those nostalgia boxes.
I've spent too much time playing and modding this game. I really liked Fallout 1+2 as a kid but I've played this one to death. Alas, this is probably the last Fallout game I'll play as I generally don't like the direction the "new" stewards of the franchise are taking it. I really hope that my fears about the recently showcased 76 go unfounded. Ahem. Anyways FONV is great. I had more fun with just exploration, mods, and the dlc over the main story line. The later isn't bad, but I feel like obsidian could have done better with making some of the branching story more intuitive to navigate (as in the choices).
I've tried a lot of 4X games and there is just something about MOO2 that keeps me coming back to play a game or two. Granted MOO2 has some balance issues. Especially if you take advantage of certain tech against the AI. But the game has aged surprising well and I think it has something to do with personality it has. Modern space 4X games seem to lack a focus on cool tech or fail to offer tactical space combat. I hate the paper, rock, scissors approach to weapon vs. defenses that modern games often take. I guess the biggest disappointment is that no one has taken MOO2 and kept what works and/or expanded on it. I suppose everyone has a different take on that and hence the problem.
