Friday, November 27, 2020

Langrisser Reincarnation: One Route Complete + Thoughts/Review

Okay, I've completed one route in the game, the Light one. I know there are more routes and I do plan to play them, but I think I have enough information to write my thoughts about the game.

Yes, yes, I know. We all already know that this is a bad game. But let me just say a few things.



 


To be honest, if you play the game for the characters, it actually isn't THAT bad of a game. The SRPG portion of the game is extremely boring, with very obvious problems I will mention later, but it is fairly stress-free. Of course, I am playing the patched 1.01 or something version which fixes numerous issues that did cause stress, so if you don't have internet or something, you might have a different experience.


Okay, 
So about the SPRG part.

The overall gameplay is like any Langrisser game, where each character can have soldiers that can battle and gain experience for your character. And the rest is normal turn-based SRPG stuff, except the characters all have a movement priority and instead of going "All your characters, then all of theirs", the characters take turn moving depending on their movement priority. Some games, like those ones with heights, do use this system though.

However, the enemy AI in this game is extremely stupid. You see, they will move towards you when you enter their range or if they are just set to charge, but usually, unless they have a clear advantage towards you, they just stop there. They won't attack. Now, maybe they would do 0 damage anyways, but I can't really tell. Anyways, they just move next to you and end their turn. You don't even have to worry about having your HP slowly chipped away by multiple attacks. They just wait for you to kill them.
The only exclusion to this rule is Range attacking Melee and vice-versa. In these cases, they will always attack... And probably still do 0 damage.
Also, mages will cast spells to do a bit of damage. But since no other unit will attack you after you get hurt by the spell, it still really isn't dangerous, just annoying.

Also, one other problem about the SRPG is this... Look at this image. Yeah, you can't tell who are allies and who are enemies on this map. Every single character is the same red color. It's quite useless.


Furthermore, you cannot suspend the game, meaning if something pops up while trying to clear maps that can sometimes take around an hour, you HAVE to use the 3DS sleep feature. Which actually still uses a little bit of battery. Imagine playing a little bit before sleeping and then having to put it to sleep because you can't suspend it. Yeah, sleep mode might only drain a little bit of power, but it'll be asleep the entire night slowly sipping away at that power...

The next thing isn't really as much of an issue, but something noticeable is that there is very little reason to use anything other than the basic soldier. Even after you Class Change and can use stronger ones, there is no point. Why? Because in this game, you will gain experience based off of who defeats the enemy. If your character defeats the enemy, you won't get much points. However, if your basic soldier defeats them, you will get A LOT. As a result, the strategy to this game is to try your hardest not to kill the enemy commander until after you have killed their soldiers, and only your soldiers will fight. Your commander units will NEVER fight a single battle, unless you want to waste a whole lot of EXP. There are literally times where defeating the enemy with your commander gets you like 10 EXP while having a basic soldier defeat them gets you 100 EXP.
You might think, can you defeat the enemy with such a weak soldier?
In this game, very so. You see, each character has a command stat which is how much boost a soldier gets while the soldier is in command range. And this stat can go really high. As you can see in this image, this soldier might only have a basic 6 ATK, 2 DEF, but while in the command range, it becomes a whopping 69 ATK, 65 DEF. And yes, all soldiers use the portrait of their commander character.


Also, in this game, mages and priests all are 1-range characters. Also, as you can see, it isn't like they have low defense or anything, so you can use them as shields. And, as pointed out above, the enemy will not attack unless they have a big advantage, so you can just randomly move them forward and they will not get hurt.


So yeah, I think you can tell the SRPG part of the game is really boring. And since you will be moving so many characters thanks to the soldier system, it will also be long. I'd suggest maybe playing a visual novel while going through a map.


Between battles, you will be at camp and do camp stuff. Between each battle, you can talk to three characters, in which each conversation will have three options and the dialogue changes depending on which. And if you choose the right one, the affection of the character increases by a larger amount. So I'd say this is the best part of the game, and the only reason you would really play it.
After you get to a certain part of the game, you will be allowed to confess to a character. If they have enough affection, they will accept, giving you a CG, which ranges from blushing to what looks like you just had sex since they are naked (and covered by a blanket) in bed. 



Also, you can confess to males too. 
But hey, this is a bad game. And just like one, this confession part happens after a battle, before you can save. That's right, let's say you focus on three characters (since you can talk three times per after-battle). That means you will be forced to play through a map three times to confess to the three characters and get their CG. Also, you have to save after seeing the CG to get it stored in the album.

Other than that, you have basic stuff like equipping and buying equipment and setting up soldiers for characters and positioning your character for the next map.
But, this is a bad game.
  • You can't see what each character currently is equipped with.
  • You can't unequip a character unless you equip them with something else
  • You can't see the next map (no map preview)
  • This game does not remember what characters you last used, so you will always have to switch out characters before each map
  • The shop owner and guild owner can be talked too, but their dialogue does not change throughout the entire game and is completely pointless to talk to

The battle graphics is extremely bad, but I'm sure you already know this. It's like... a few... super-mini-chibis moving around... I mean, just search it up. It's flabbergasting.

Story is also pretty plain, run-of-the-mill. There are also times where I feel the story just makes jumps and I'm left kinda confused how we got here.
Also, Langrisser is literally just randomly found at the beginning of the game... which is... ugh... stupid? They actually made fun of this in Langrisser Mobile.

On the other hand, the BGM is really good. Play Langrisser Mobile? A good number of the BGM you hear in that game came from Reincarnation.

...And I think that should be it?
So basically, it is a generally pretty poorly-made game. However, it does the minimum needed to be playable, so it's... just bad, but not ugh-throw-on-floor-ish.
And you can enjoy the characters, so there is something to play for.

To note, but unless you talk to the character between battles, a lot of the characters do not stand out in the story and thus are really weak and do not leave an impression. So you have to talk to the characters you are interested in outside of battle.

Overall, it is a pretty bad game, but as a result, you can probably get it cheaply and it would be worth it then. Heck, mines came with the soundtrack while being cheap, so it totally was worth it. Just imagine, buying a soundtrack and it came with an extra game.


Finally, let me say one more thing.
A lot of the female characters have weird character designs. Like, a lot of them look like they aren't wearing pants and just showing off their underwear.
Now, I know a lot of original Langrisser characters show skin too, but these characters are wearing bikini armor or leotards, which are clothing. So it doesn't feel weird.
But Reincarnation? They just look like pantsu.

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