Recent reviews by Miah

LGBTQ+ rep and a ton of new words to learn. I love it!

So, before I go on, I will say this: the Discord group for this game is super friendly, and one of the best gaming communities I've interacted with. I realize that has next to nothing to do with the game, but I feel that I should point out I've had very positive interactions with the devs and the community they've created, so bear that in mind.

I got into this game looking for The Last Remnant meets Fire Emblem, and while that's not exactly what I got, what I got was pretty fantastic. The story is great. The mechanics are splendid, and there's a lot of variety and depth to the systems. I got lucky and found multiple dragons early, so rushed to the dragon rider techs, and that was a core part of my army throughout the entire playthrough. - but there are a lot of different, viable approaches. - and I feel like there's still a lot of unexplored space within the game's meta, especially with more stuff planning to be added.

The game took me around 30 hours to beat, and I think it has many more to offer, and good systems to chew on. It's too early to say where it's going to rank for me ultimately, but it's already better than Three Houses for me.

This is not a perfect game, that's obvious. However, some lines of criticism of this title come from ignorance, and some aspects the game does well get overshadowed, so as someone who's having a pretty good time with the game, I'd like to address those things so people can make a more informed decision about their purchase:

First off, there's a lot of people who talk poorly of the DW9 combat without even knowing how it works. I'm not saying you're not allowed to dislike the combat, but if you don't even understand its fundamentals and what it's doing, I don't know that your criticisms should be trusted in that regard. The best source I've found in explaining said combat is Fail Upload's DW9 combat guide (not me). It completely changed how I saw the game's combat system and how I play, and I've had a lot more fun since, even though I consider myself pretty bad at the combat still. ^^

In addition, cloned movesets do have distinct state-based combos within them. For example, Xingcai's stun-state combo naturally has enemies end in the airborne state, so continuing to attack will naturally have her transition to an airborne-state combo. If, upon an enemy landing, you initiate a stun trigger attack, you can infinite combo enemies, and that's probably the most basic conclusion you can get from the combo system, and not remotely touching its full potential. Then Lu Lingqi, someone with "the same moveset" has the generic stun combo for Sword and Shield, but a unique airborne one, and I've found that generally I can combo it into itself by using an airborne trigger attack as soon as the previous combo lands and, so long as the enemy is hit by it, you can essentially infinite with that, with her special attack being there to bail you out if you miss.

- and that's just the most basic stuff. You can get some pretty wild infinite combos that don't rely on dropping the combo and reinitiating it while they're in a helpless state like the above combos I've found do if you take the time to learn the system better. That isn't to say the previous light-heavy combo system isn't better. They're just different, and I enjoy them both, and it's okay if you don't, but do make a more informed decision on the matter than "DW9 combat bad" without knowing its fundamentals when making a decision on whether to get this game.

In addition, the strategic layer actually matters! Troop counts matter, rations matter, and if you try to rush the game with a core group of 8 officers and leave your territories unguarded like you easily got away with in prior titles Vagrant groups are going to absolutely rise up and claim your territory behind you and you're going to have a bad time. You actually need to have standing garrisons in your territories, and taking advantage of moving troops during the War Council can save you a month where you're not having to reposition troops instead of doing something more beneficial, and it's by far the best Empires game I've played so far as far as the strategic layer mattering.

One of my favorite moments in my first campaign win (Chaos difficulty Yellow Turban campaign, if curious, Vagrant to Emperor Xingcai) was when I learned to keep four officers stationed in every province, and was able to win a fight against a Vagrant force by keeping my troop numbers as high as possible by having my officers claim bases their officers weren't at while I handled the secret plan and went around bonking officers to keep our relative strengths close enough to not be overwhelmed until the battle went to time. Had I had 0-1 officers there that would have been impossible, and it really felt like I was using a standard garrison against a prepared foe where the goal was to survive and outlast them.

It's not the best DW game for sure, its DLC practices are abhorrent, the fact characters with DLC weapons still don't have specials and musous for that weapon is inexcusably lazy, and it really feels like you get a better product buying their non-mainline titles (Fire Emblem, Zelda, etc.) these days, but I really think, if these things aren't deal breakers for you (or you get gifted the game by a friend like I did), there's a good time here, and one of the best Empires games in terms of the strategic layer that has largely felt like window dressing in other Empires titles.

Finally fixed the server fiasco. Been playing through the story. It's... okay. Pretty sure this game's population will drop substantially within a month or so. Neat combat system, but gated behind way too many "go here, go there, collect 10 bear bottoms" sorts of quests that don't take advantage of it. It's a shame.

So, maybe wait for the game to be patched up a bit before purchasing if you can't afford the current sale price on a "long"-term investment. I've had no game-crashing bugs, but YMMV.

The story is admittedly rather briskly paced with developments happening faster than they ought at times.

EDIT: Several things in my initial review have already changed. I've beaten the game, and am on a second playthrough. The game is an incredible amount of fun (I prefer it over Three Houses), and is definitely worth your time if you're at all interested.

A lot of the complaints I've seen about this game are from people who don't understand what this game is trying to do, and that's understandable.

In 2008, The Last Remnant came out on XBOX 360. It was a very quirky game, borrowing some systems from the SaGa series, but like those games did very little to teach you how the game worked, so ended up dismissed by many for being too heavily RNG-reliant or luck-based.

What were these systems? A leveling system where you gain XP based on your actions, but with no progress bars visible to the player to track your progress, a class system where your class changes based on which sorts of things are significant (one-handed weapon ranks vs two-handed vs magic, etc.), and using too many combat actions on your "healer" could have them change into another class, and so on. Because a lot of the management of your character is done under the hood, it can appear to people unfamiliar with these systems that they have no control over their characters, when in reality you do have total control if you know the systems and can control the input to achieve the desired output.

This game, built on those same symptoms, will cause a lot of those same reactions in people, despite the game doing far more to explain its systems than TLR ever did. My hope is, as the game develops, the in-game encyclopedia can explain these systems even further so that we can ultimately dispel the notion the player doesn't ultimately decide the outcome of a fight.

That all said, I've enjoyed the game so far, and would definitely recommend it with the caveat that you're willing to engage with the game's systems with an open mind, rather than simply bashing it for not being the umpteenth FFT clone as some other reviews have done. The writing is pretty fun, the battles engaging, and I'm having a good time with the game.

- and for those notoriously hard sections people complain about? I'm working on writing guides for them, despite owning the game for less than 24 hours. If someone who just jumped into the game, but has system knowledge of the games it's inspired by, can write guides on how to consistently beat some of the game's harder fights, it can't be too hard, right?

Give it a try. :)

New things to see. They'll kill you.

The monsters eat my men. I cannot prevail.

Kicked my butt. Music rocks.

Hard as balls. Good as ♥♥♥♥.