Regdren

Maybe I shouldn't compare every game that has a movement grid with Final Fantasy Tactics. That might be shaping up to be the Dark Souls of tactics game comparisons.

Post-commentary is probably the easiest kind of commentary for me but it still has its hazards. This video makes me wonder if I could play a game of chess against myself and catch myself completely off guard. So THAT's why other me moved the king's bishop so far ahead! I really should have seen that one coming.

Creating your own units and customizing them heavily is a lot of fun, and games that allow these things can have some really big advantages. There are a few disadvantages though. One is that game balance is harder to uphold. Another is that you can't really have split party missions like this. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of perspective.

I think one of the reasons that special terrain effects and weather conditions are more annoying in other games is that they're more prone to having the entire outcome of the mission rely on one roll of the dice. Also sometimes they only affect the player. Ring of Red tend to bypass this problems by allowing the player to make the odds more favorable or skip randomness entirely if the situation is critical. There are things in the game that frustrate me, but weather and night time effects don't bother me much.

I wonder if those in charge of marketing should have put some emphasis on the collectible squads. They're not anywhere near the level of Pokemon but it is fun to pick up a squad with a combination of skills and stats that I don't have already.

I already mention that I enjoy the fire-emblem style of taking extra risks to reach rewards before the enemy does. But it has to be done differently here because Ring of Red's pacing is slower overall. We have units moving fewer tiles at once, various things that can delay the next turn, and sending out one unit alone to secure a village is generally a bad idea. So it seems like a tricky thing to implement.

The game really plays up how snow causes problems in battle, but I don't actually notice it that much.

Also, I'm starting a twitch stream. My focus will be on the .hack games for PS2, starting with the first series starring Kite and friends. I plan to go live every Tuesday and Thursday at 8 PM EST starting tomorrow, where I will talk about the game mechanics, story and general weirdness. If you're reading this, I hope you stop by and see if you enjoy it!

https://www.twitch.tv/regdren

I really let thread go. Which is weird because I haven't stopped making these videos. Here's a couple to help you get caught up.

Mission 10 has the maximum number of enemy AFWs possible on a map. It doesn't look that way at the start, but that's just because the game doesn't want to scare you right away. Also because maybe the game can't handle that many on the map at once.

Starting the map in a bad position is a challenge applied in most tactics games. I've rarely seen it applied as consistently as in Ring of Red. I have two of each kind of AFW. When my team is split, do I have two teams with each type? Hahaha, of course not!

Hooray, we've unlocked a new weather effect! Snow reduces mobility and lowers accuracy as range increases. More importantly, we've got a Fire Emblem situation here!

The good news is that unlike the barbarians and thieves of said game, the troublemaker in this map will happily drop its mission to attack me if I get close enough. It's time for some reckless strats!

Hey, are you doing alright? I checked today and didn't see a stream. I want more brave new world! Or Breath of Fire, that's fun too.

Oh, this is one of THOSE stories. We aren't going to succeed at significant things until the end of the game, I bet.

This was not a bad map overall. The player is challenged to sneak into the villages on the edges of the map where enemies sometimes spawn. It takes some planning.

It's probably a good thing that we don't see the enemy odds of hitting in this game. I'd probably get too angry to even use a controller. It's pretty well known that people will focus on when they miss two 80% shots and ignore hitting nine 80% shots in a row, this is a problem with human brain wiring and I can't wait for it to be fixed. I understand that back when we were simple foragers it made a lot of sense to be extremely harm-averse. Being healthy and reasonably fed was ALREADY as good as things could possibly be and a single bad thing could easily end you or at least end an important part of your body. However this instinct doesn't often translate well to modern risk assessment or video games. I demand a brain update to resolve this issue!

Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between being damaged a bit but comfortable health and being in danger of being killed before you can move again.

It doesn't happen much in this video but I like games where units talk when near each other. It seems to give the writers time to expand on all of the characters and their personalities. The moment when Emilio asks Weizegger if he loves his country was a great moment for me.

Today I'm going to spend a big chunk of my Ring of Red video talking about things not in any way related to Ring of Red. Enjoy!

Also there will be some walking in place because video games seem to love that.

One post above talked about no-brainer decisions. After how that last video ended it looks like those are a perfect fit for me! Let's watch me scrape and struggle to recover from doing The Bad Things.

The thumbnail looks like I'm doing a pretty good job but don't be fooled. There's plenty of interesting setbacks ahead!

I think tactics games thrive when no-brainer decisions are minimized. It sounds obvious, but it's not always easy to design a game where the stakes for losing a unit are high but it's still not always right to recover when at low health. And I'm not talking about some "increase attack at low health" mechanic, just careful weighing of risk and opportunity depending on circumstance. 

I hope you're enjoying the series so far! We have a LOT ahead of us, so maybe get a sandwich or use the rest room or something. Make yourself comfortable. Also, Emilio's machine kinda looks like a jumbled mass of polygons at that angle, yeesh.

Live and learn. today I learned that laziness in the making if videos doesn't pay off. I also learned that I am very bad at predicting what I'm going to do in my own videos. Or maybe I'm good at misleading future me. Who knows?

Also wow that thing looks ugly in a close camera shot.

I made the mistake of playing through this whole mission in one session. I could get away with it when the missions were around two hours long, but now they're more like 4 hours and that is definitely a stretch.

Coming up next: the conclusion of mission 8 and the end of our introduction to the North Japan Loyal Army.

There's always a danger of hyping up an enemy in the storyline but having them be no problem in the gameplay. I think Ring of Red manages to avoid this problem. Most of the enemy squads have 3 skills, their machines are pretty comparable to those of the player (except for the 4-legs), and they are reasonably competent in direct battle. They still suffer from some very odd decisions on the tactical map though. This map also shows the power of Ippei if he is used properly, which I also appreciate. The game doesn't do anything silly like tell you "Move Ippei to this square to shut down the enemy's offense!" Instead the map shape and enemy placement are just designed to encourage such a move. It's still up to the player to figure things out. So, respect for the map designers!

I mention this a few times during the videos, but I think it's worth talking about here as well. Looking back at old footage really helps me to see where my gameplay can improve. This is the sort of thing that didn't really happen before I started recording for Youtube, and it's nice to have this kind of review available. I think Real Time strategy games were the first to include in-built recording to review preevious games, and fighting games followed some time later. I'm wondering if maybe more genres could to with that kind of feature to help discover flaws and patterns in one's own gameplay.

This Breath of Fire 2 romhack interests me greatly. I enjoyed that game despite its many problems and I'm happy that people are taking some effort to improve things. Good luck with Brave New World, I should be able to watch your stream for at least a little while tomorrow.

I have not yet seen an enemy try to escape from a battle except in one of those cut scenes. You know, the kind where a named pilot turns and runs from close combat distance all the way to escape distance on double-crushed legs. So escape as a battle mechanic must have been added solely for the player's benefit. It definitely has to be used wisely. After all, in order to get the bonuses from completing a map quickly, we have to make the best use of every encounter with the enemy. But there are times when it's useful. I feel like a good escape is the kind where I feel I'm getting away with something, rather than just getting away from the battle.

Follow-up question! Would you also like some feedback from a player who goes into the mod knowing nothing about Vagrant Story? Or is this more of a mod for veterans?