Let me show you what I've learned

Let me show you what I've learned.

Attached: Frederica Triangle Strategy.png (250x250, 110.56K)

Really disappointing game. It SHOULD have been a masterpiece, but at every point it's dragged down by some utterly baffling decisions, both in story and in gameplay.

The story doesn't even get going until about halfway through and until that point it tries to tell a serious, grounded and intense story... yet it constantly shoots itself in the foot by undercutting a serious scene with the most insane, unfitting, wacky slapstick.

It's a serious and grounded fantasy world, the entire plot contrivance is about salt. It's not silly, it's not high fantasy, it's low fantasy and gritty... and yet the logic of the setting is that it's impossible to kill someone without their consent. You cannot murder, it simply doesn't exist. So the only time you ever see someone die is when they allow themselves to be killed. Who came up with that? Who approved it? Why? It's illogical, it's inane, and it absolutely destroys the narrative for the first half, and even drags down the better second half.

Gameplay is an insane slog. The slowest, stupidest, most braindead SRPG I've played forever, which finally and fully cemented for me the fact that Faction Based turns are better than Speed Based, regardless of Speed Based giving you more mechanics and abilities that can interact with it. You're always outnumbered 3:1, there's always ambush reinforcements, which means that every battle is 90% not your turn. You just sit there watching your dudes acting like sandbags getting wailed on by the enemy over and over again until you finally get to make an action.

None of that is helped by the absolutely insanely abundant status effects. They're strong, they're easy to apply and they work on almost every enemy. Normally that'd be a great thing, it adds to so many classes and options, but in TS it means that the very few turns you do get are nothing because your guys are suffering from some bevy of constantly repplied debuffs. Making the maps EVEN SLOWER.

Frederica ending should've been the canon ending, except Serenoa should've been alive too. It's the best ending sequel bait.

>yet it constantly shoots itself in the foot by undercutting a serious scene with the most insane, unfitting, wacky slapstick.
>and yet the logic of the setting is that it's impossible to kill someone without their consent. You cannot murder, it simply doesn't exist. So the only time you ever see someone die is when they allow themselves to be killed.
Okay, what is this pasta originally for?

And then you've got things like the Levelling system, where they've tried to reinvent the wheel in an effort to make the game approachable.... except what actually happens is they've abstracted the very idea of levels out to the point where they're actually meaningless. You CANNOT get stronger, you can never (or almost never) get ahead of the difficulty curve. There is exactly two positions in Triangle Strategy: In line with the difficulty curve, or behind it.

So then levels never, ever benefit you. You can't level ahead of the enemies, and you can't funnel Exp onto a few guys to make them outstandingly strong. You're either exactly on par, or you're behind par in which case you need to catch up.

"But catching up is quick and easy!" you say. Which is true, kind'a. Except, with them once again shooting themselves in the fucking foot, you have to catch up constantly, not just constantly, always. Every single map beat, you're now behind the curve and have to level up. I see people defending this by saying you just go do the next map and you'll level up by doing so, and if you lose you keep everything... and that's true, but the reality is that's just a slower version of what you actually do, which is go do the grind maps after every single story map to catch up. It's faster than repeating 2/3 of the story maps because you were too low level and got ground down by the endless swarm of enemies.

And speaking of the endless swarm of enemies, the Time to Kill is absolutely ridiculously huge. The highest I have ever, EVER seen in any SRPG. Combine that with the above bevy of status effects, the fact it's never your turn and the fact you're always outnumbered 3:1 and you can understand why every single map is such a fucking slog. You have to chip each enemy down with multiple units, it takes forever, and your units are getting slammed over and over while you do so.

Thia. The game takes itself too seriously, the only kind of funny character was the shield guy
Having a "canon" ending ruined the whole decision making aspect of the game for me honestly. I also agree that the Frederica ending was great, and so was the Benedict ending too. The other kid's was the worst ending I've seen in a while thought.

The choices (when you're past the halfway, or really, 2/3rds mark) are outstanding and the moral dilemmas are absolutely wonderful, the finale is fantastic. Except once again right when the game is reaching masterpiece territory, they shoot themselves right in the foot.

The endings are largely garbage. The best ending, somehow, is the Church one.

The Benedict one pivots on a fucking dime to tell you "The guys who've been largely helpful the whole time are UNFORGIVABLY EVIL! and the guys who killed everyone you cared about are NOT SO BAD!" and so you go help them destroy the Church and it gets ending that then concludes with this fuckweird sequence that exists just to say "Nah bro, shit sucks bro, don't be happy with this ending!" Frederica's ending is the same, it would have been a satisfying if bleak ending, but instead it needs to twist that knife, so Serenoa dies for basically no reason and here we are.

So it's all about the Golden Ending? Right? Yeah, except the Golden Ending fucking sucks because they shot themselves in the foot once again. There's two main problems with it:

>The choices you make to get it are 90% the choices you would have made on your first, blind, playthrough nayway.
>The Golden Ending is 98% the Benedict ending, just with a minor twist

It's not a pasta, I wrote that myself just now, talking about Triangle Strategy. That's the game's lore, that's the setting. Non-consensual death does not exist in TS, you can only kill someone with their consent.

>It's not a pasta, I wrote that myself just now, talking about Triangle Strategy. That's the game's lore, that's the setting. Non-consensual death does not exist in TS, you can only kill someone with their consent.
There is no wacky slapstick and lots of characters are murdered in cold blood starting with Dragan which begins the entire conflict.

The entire first half is fucking filled with wacky slapstick. And Dragan outright allowed himself to be killed.

Look at all the hundreds of times someone decides not to die, they just say "I don't want to die today" and walk off, and your army fumes and talks about how there's nothing they can do, they failed to convince the guy to let them kill him, so he's alive.

>You start the game rescuing Frederica from bandits, you attack them, scattering them and driving them away. Every single bandit lives. None of them are injured. You meet them much later and they're not only far more powerful than before but now far more powerful than you

>The big fat merchant Lord who's entire character is that he can't fight, isn't a knight and isn't fit. He isn't respected as much because he doesn't fight. You've caught him out for betraying you, he's surrounded by your entire army, your swords are pointed at him. He stands up, says "No! I don't want to die!" and walks away right past your entire force, Anna says "That fat merchant is too fast for us to catch up to". so you let him go.

>Much, much later on, when you finally convince the fat merchant to let you kill him, the serial killer bandit he's with doesn't want to die. So, again, despite being surrounded by your forces, despite having murdered countless people, despite trying to kill your people twice, and despite having just tried to murder you and the civilians of the city... He just stands up and walks away. You cannot stop him, there's nothing you can do, because he doesn't give you consent to kill him.

That's three off the top of my head, the entire first half of the game is full of that stuff, it just goes on and on and on. The entire final map for the Church ending is convincing Dragan's father to let you kill him.

Thanks for the writeup user. I was about to ask for opinions.
I was looking for an RPG with a good story and characters and was considering this one.
Could anyone else chime in and share their thoughts on those aspects in TS?