TROUBLESHOOTER: ABANDONED CHILDREN
consequence of conflating breadth of options with depth of gameplay is that sometimes something like this slips by as “one of the best tactical games” despite having a second-rate tactical layer. without long-term resource management, urgency, or permadeath it has all the most basic and exploitable elements of nu xcom (action limits, pod-based encounters, cover system, overwatch, etc.) while having none of its guardrails, variety, or consequences. a quick and dirty reduction would be to say it frequently has you solving enemy unknown problems with war of the chosen characters
the real strength here is its build layer. a dozen characters with three classes each and 800+ modular passives and 200+ modular passive-sets and randomized gear and (platonic) relationships and crafting and robotics and beast taming and blah blah blah. the list goes on and on and on as the game progresses and becomes more and more oriented around its diablo-isms. cynically, you could say it’s swallowed up whole, the active layer becoming puppet-object for the passive layer and all its labyrinthine bureaucracies. diablo does not co-exist with other genres, it transmutes them into more diablo; their traits and characteristics may remain recognizable, but in most cases, barring the utmost restraint, the shooter, action game, srpg, etc., is made servile to spreadsheet kudzu. this is why nioh hid this shit behind two full playthroughs, like a quarantine
but the issue here isn’t the form of governance, it’s that the already-flimsy active layer’s been pulled and stretched to the point of translucency despite being demoted to secondary importance. if you contrast it with nearly any direct analogue the most obvious departure here is that it’s absolutely glacial. even with animations cranked so high you break the audio and cutscenes, these missions are SLOW, which is extremely noticeable when you can go so long without making any significant decisions that aren’t four menus deep. half the time it barely matters which enemies you target once you’ve set up your characters, commonly leaving you with hour-long foregone conclusions to wade thru which just as commonly reward you with the chance to do more of the same upon their completion. this goes on for roughly 50-100~ hours
but ok so the tactics aren’t great and the pacing’s not great, but what else. well, the difficulty’s not great either. either you completely abandon any pretense of actually playing the game (normal) or opt to make it even more sluggish and tedious on a difficulty that has some stakes (cruel) but still requires you to put effort into not being over-leveled by skipping everything non-critical. challenge mode alleviates this by scaling enemies, but since it doesn’t scale rewards or loot you’re still discouraged from bothering with missions even a single level below your current gear threshold (5-10-15-20-etc.), which is a problem when passives (crafting) and crafting (different crafting) rely on you going out of your way to grind them out if you want to make the most of the one(1) thing the game does exceedingly well
but ok so the tactics aren’t great and the pacing’s not great and the difficulty’s not great, but what else. well, the story’s not great either, and (like everything else here) there’s a lot of it. some have charitably described it as being poorly translated, but I’d opt to call it poorly conceived and executed. I’m not korean, and I probably never will be, so I can only guess here, but I’d put money down on it being bad in every language from korean to french to whatever. unless you’re into watching plucky teen freelance-murder-cop melodrama, there isn’t a whole lot here for you
it probably sounds like I think this is completely awful, but not exactly. I have no real issue with the wind-up toy approach where builds and itemization out-prioritize everything actively participatory, but the structure at large doesn’t compliment it, nor does the moment-to-moment gameplay ask you to do as much as react differently to different circumstances. once you’ve locked into an archetype.. that’s kinda that, even on cruel+challenging. what you’re left with is a lot of optional min-maxing and an enormous amount of wasted time dedicated to missions that rarely transform in the ways required to stave off the listlessness of the central grind. some people (sickos, munchkins, integer inflationists and menubators) will fall head over heels in love with this, and I’m happy for them, just so long as they keep their hands where I can see them. as for me.. I’m alright dog