Triangle Strategy: Thoughts after First Playthrough

So yeah, bought and have just finished my first playthrough, of course on hard mode

Apparently there is a "True Route" and I haven't seen it, but I think I know where it is going, so I am going to go ahead and write my thoughts about the game. Definitely going to play myself and do the True Route, but I'm going to take my time, so didn't want to put this off for so long.

And spoilers alert for people who have not played it.

So my first playthrough took the Benedict route.

To be honest, there really wasn't a choice. You had to choose between Roland, Frederica, and Benedict, but look at Roland and Frederica.

I'm not sure if it is because I chose to go to Aesfrost instead of Hyzante, but nothing in the story showed that Hyzante would create a nice world for everyone except Rosellans, so when Roland suddenly went insane and suggested joining them for this reason, it was just so weird.

And as for Frederica, that is a pretty forced decision, from a story and character-side too. "I can't wait any longer so let's just throw everything we've fought for away!"

So yeah, had to choose Benedict's route. And hey, Frederica is still at the protagonist's side, so all is well. Roland is doing something crazy somewhere else, but whatever.

I assume the True Route will fix all of these problems for a better end, but yeah, I guess the three-way splitting to the final ending is kinda iffy. It doesn't make me want to go to any of the routes, other than Benedict's.

 

As for the gameplay and such goes, it was pretty solid.

Graphic-wise, it was pretty much just that 2DCG or 2D-something that was used for Octopath Traveler, and it looks great as usual. We all know how nice and expressive it looks by now.

And the TRPG part was pretty challenging. To be honest, if this game didn't allow your characters to die, it would have been way too hard. There were even one map where I won barely with just one character remaining. Really hard. Then again, this is an acceptable difficulty, considering I did choose Hard mode. Also, the enemy bows and mages are really dangerous. Bows because they do heavy damage from afar and without even using skills, and mages just do so much damage in one hit, even considering they have to use TP.

The overall system itself is a fairly generic tile-based, height-based, speed-based TRPG. We've seen them before. Stella Glow, for instance. Although instead of MP, you have a more Bravely Default, point system for what moves you can use.

The decision making system, I think is fine. It's kinda like, learn more about the other story characters and their thoughts + letting you make decisions, though depending on your actions, will punish you by making you go a route you don't want.

Hey, I've played School Days. I'm used to the game sending me to routes I don't intend to go to!

So yeah, solid game. Square Enix should stick to funding other companies to make games instead of making their own. Else we get abominations like Final Fantasy 15 and Chocobo Racing