Board 8 > What have people thought about the Triangle Strategy demo?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I played about an hour last night. Only done one battle and haven't finished the first chapter yet. However, my main takeaway is that I don't enjoy the art style as much as I thought I did. It looks smudgy. I liked it more undocked so maybe that's how I'll have to play it.

Other than that, I'm intrigued by the convictions system. I have gathered very little knowledge on the game so far so I'm unaware fully what role it will play. Seems like there is a large cast of characters and the game said your convictions determines who may join your party, so I'm interested by that.

VA work I'm super iffy on at the moment, but maybe it'll grow on me.

I'm still thinking there's a lot of potential here for me to enjoy it, though I think if the story starts falling flat I may bounce off. Looking forward to continuing the demo.

I dislike the VA work and think there should be an option to turn it off in story scenes but leave it on in battle.

There's an issue with the graphics, I agree. If you compare this to Tactics or even LUCT, I think those older games look much better. Similarly, I think Octopath looks better than this, but that might be because with Octopath there's constant movement/transitions from a map screen to a battle screen. There's a certain "shiny-ness" to these HD-2D games that literally hurts my eyes. This is particularly true for the overworld map, weirdly enough. There's something about it that kind of makes me nauseous to look at. I also think the text is too small. I've only played it docked.

Convictions/battles/story... I'm all interested in. I think the battle system is a lot cleaner in this new demo than it was in the earlier demo.

The voice acting is bad and the story and characters are bland as hell, exactly the same issues Octopath Traveler had. I was excited for the battle system change and had my fingers crossed, but there's basically no chance I ever give this the time of day again.

The 2DHD look is also wearing out its welcome, I think it gets way too much praise. Of course there's likely bias there that all the games that use it seem to end up being bad.

I recommend playing the game in handheld mode. I think the smaller screen and distance from your eyes helps cover up the flaws that show themselves when you project it to a large screen. I also turned off the edge dimming which also seemed to help me.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

The 2DHD look is also wearing out its welcome, I think it gets way too much praise. Of course there's likely bias there that all the games that use it seem to end up being bad.

Nah, I'm with you, but I've never really cared for the retraux style in general.

I still really like the HD-2D aesthetic, but it's not working as well in this game as it could.

I think it's too early to say if the characters/plot is good or bad, but as of now they seem even more generic than Octopath (a game whose story I will defend until my death apparently). There was a certain charm to the main characters there that has been sacrificed for Game of Thrones / bargain FFT. There's still every chance that the game does interesting stuff with them but I've resigned myself to them being just average.

The real issue is the names! And the voice acting honestly

Hey now I will not hear anyone criticizing the name choice of SERENOA WOLFORT

(seriously though Square is really bad with names in any sort of medieval setting ever since the War of the Lions translation)

Leonhart4 posted...

Hey now I will not hear anyone criticizing the name choice of SERENOA WOLFORT

(seriously though Square is really bad with names in any sort of medieval setting ever since the War of the Lions translation)

It's like the worst name ever right??

Almost as bad as ARGATH THADALFAS which basically looks like someone asked Daffy Duck how to say the original name in FFT and went with it

I would argue there are worse names in the demo!

The villain is named Gustadolph! Gustadolph Aesfrost.

That's a new low.

Might as well have named him Gustadolf Hitlerini

Ive been saying the whole time the names including the games title are not good. I havent tried the demo yet, but every name in the game I recall seeing was just bizarre. Might as well name a character Alexanzabar Jefferstonewallusford or something.

There was some generic fantasy anime from a few years ago that's first line was a man and a woman on a battlefield telling each other their names, and I remember that was on par or worse than these to the point where I stopped watching the anime literally the second I heard them.

Really wish I could remember the name of that damn show, but it's one of those seasonal that's already forgotten by everyone before it even finishes airing.

I feel like they literally just forgot to come up with a real name for the game until it was too late, and some marketing manager had already printed up all the fliers.

Triangle Strategy feels like some dumb made up genre, not a game name. "Strand Type Game" energy. Fire Emblem is a "Triangle Strategy Game", too.

but consider: I love stupid names

Although fuck, it's a made up word so I didn't really consider it, but Octopath Traveler is the exact same type of name, huh?

Leonhart4 posted...

Might as well have named him Gustadolf Hitlerini

tbh it's the same energy as Cidolfus Orlandaeu

Japanese writers have always had these chuu2 type naming schemes they think is great. Might as well name your characters Jonathan Lincunshootus Boothsmithson at this point.

FFT had ridiculous names and was still great so that doesn't bother me. Haven't played the prologue demo yet but this game needs to have decent writing so I really hope they know what they're doing with the convictions system!

I like Serenoa as a character name! Definitely sounds like a girl's name though.

swordz9 posted...

Might as well name a character Alexanzabar Jefferstonewallusford or something.

Ooh, I also like Alexanzabar as a character name so maybe take my opinions on this with a grain of salt lmao

It wasn't so bad in the PSX version, but WotL made a bunch of the names dumber, even just via spelling changes.

Changing Orlandu to Orlandaeu is a prime example. And obviously Algus to Argath is then most notorious.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Changing Orlandu to Orlandaeu is a prime example. And obviously Algus to Argath is then most notorious.

It will always be Aeris to me

I'm good with Aerith because it fits with the naming convention they were going for with her

I don't use any of the WotL names though

I'll be giving the demo a try, but I want to wait closer to when I'd actually be able to play the game. Sounds like the first two chapters throw a ton of character introductions and story at you, and I don't want to forget all those details by having a month+ break.

A lot of people hate the name of the game, but to me it has this real old school videogame energy that I dig. It's like the name of an Atari game or something. I feel like people are just hung up on triangle for some reason. Like if it were called "War of the Triad" people would think that was better.

colliding posted...

Like if it were called "War of the Triad" people would think that was better.

That's Sleeping Dogs.

Aerith is fucking terrible and worse than any of the names in this.

Also people hating these names should never play FFXIV. Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn is the height of unpronounceability.

I enjoy the goofy literal name and I'm fine is we want to carve out a series a spiritual successors that utilize them.

Mac Arrowny posted...

Also people hating these names should never play FFXIV. Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn is the height of unpronounceability.

Yeah but they only ever actually say her last name once and it's all the way back in ARR!

I have a feeling that was a concious decision lol.

https://youtu.be/TSimArfExtk

should've just gone with the phonetic spelling, Bluefistin'

Triangle Strategy hates Particle Strategy
They have a fight
Triangle wins

So other than the names, how is the actual game

masterplum posted...

So other than the names, how is the actual game

User SaveEstelle says it's good

masterplum posted...

So other than the names, how is the actual game

marked for off topic

Battles seem slow.

It's the beginning of tactical JRPG though, as turned off by the demo as I was I can't pretend it s a great representation of the gameplay potential.

yeah, I won't be able to assess the gameplay until I get more of a sense of the classes / progression

Your adjacent allies doing an automatic follow up attack is neat, but I'm hoping it gets expanded upon a little. Something like special dual attacks maybe.

ZaziGuado posted...

Your adjacent allies doing an automatic follow up attack is neat, but I'm hoping it gets expanded upon a little. Something like special dual attacks maybe.

One thing I do like is that it can't just be from any angle, like disgaea or something. It has to be the ally directly opposite. So going for the extra attack bonus is more likely to leave you open.

Turning off the background blur helped the graphics A LOT for me. Highly recommended.

is there a job system?

It doesn't appear so. Every character has a set class. They can promote within it, though. Think Fire Emblem in that regard. There's also a small upgrade tree for each character as well. There also appears to be a lot of characters and whether or not they join you will probably depend on which way you steer the story and how you form Serenoa's convictions. I haven't seen anything that tells you about those yet, though

The scales of conviction were interesting and I'm curious if they will expand upon it at all. From what I've seen in the demo, it seems pretty simplistic on it's face but the idea of needing to know the personalities of your team if you want to sway them is intriguing enough. Will finding the information needed to unlock the dialogue options be more involved than just talking to everyone during the time you are roaming an area? I don't like how it displays which was everyone is leaning, though. I'd prefer that be hidden to make the actuall voting a little more suspenseful.

All said, I've liked what they've shown me so far. I'm definitely leaving towards a Day 1 purchase at the moment.

I like it. be prepared for a LOT of dialogue though - FFT is very efficient in this regard, with short and to the point scenes that go like 5 minutes. triangle strategy can take that 5 minutes and turn it into an hour.

My husband loved it.

And while we are talking about names... Hughette. That name comes across as "I was expecting a boy and am too lazy to come up with a girls name"

colliding posted...

A lot of people hate the name of the game, but to me it has this real old school videogame energy that I dig. It's like the name of an Atari game or something. I feel like people are just hung up on triangle for some reason. Like if it were called "War of the Triad" people would think that was better.

"If the game was named something entirely different people would like it better, so people are just irrationally hung up on it"

Hughette is a very bad name. Also, the character portrait and voice acting for Patriatte do not go together in the least. I'm not a voice actor, so I don't know how improvements can be made overall for the voice acting performances, but it all feels so disjointed.

It sounds like...like they got people from around the office to do the VA work, but those people were actually training to be voice actors.

The video game equivalent of a student play.

ZaziGuado posted...

Hughette

Hugh+Super Crown?

The Bowsette Legacy lives on!

I assume this game'll have Japanese voices? I've played most of this team's games with the Japanese voices, and I don't think I'll stop now.

it does have japanese voices

and yes, I maintain people are irrationally hung up on the name

sorry, meant to specify that people would like the name better if the name was entirely different

masterplum posted...

So other than the names, how is the actual game

was w8ing on this discussion but ushireryomiya eva (awful name, acknowledged by in universe person) wont shut the f*** up about names and derailed the topic

greengravy294 posted...

was w8ing on this discussion but ushireryomiya eva (awful name, acknowledged by in universe person) wont shut the f*** up about names and derailed the topic

I literally responded directly to the same post you just did 5 days ago buddy.

Little late with your drunk post.