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Reviews Triangle Strategy - Review thread

Final predictions?

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Clix said:
His reasoning for not being hot on the game is perfectly valid - even if I disagree with the premise that everything has to have a sweeping overarching story and must connect - but I get it that many peoples prefer that, and may not be too keen on small scale intimate slice of life style stories for rpgs.
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I was not privy to any of the messageboard drama, but the review itself very much does not premise itself on the game's writing being bad because it doesn't have a sweeping overarching story. it's more that the story that is there didn't work for him, which I agree with (and I much prefer mellower, slice of life style stories in my JRPGs)

Glio said:
Have you seen his reactions to people complaining about Elden Ring stuff? He can be VERY childish.
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Xaltmas said:
Schreier being a petty brat? Perish the thought.
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what are you basing this on, his resetera posts? his tweets are exceedingly normal
 
Aggrocrog said:
But that's not expected to be good is it? Unless VGC's review is going to be that Babylon's Fall is alongside Elden Ring in GOTY contention, VGC is likely to be down on the game along with everyone else.

At the end of the day, I guess it's hard for me to anticipate the mindset of ppl who get angry about reviews so I have no idea.
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It is another PS console exclusive
 
While I generally don't like criticism that amounts to "do something else entirely", I think it was a somewhat justified response to Octopath. Square Enix themselves mentioned Final Fantasy VI in the marketing and were basically telling people "it's like that!" so I can understand people being upset when they were hoodwinked into playing a SaGa game.

I'm not too crazy about making memes of reviews because so often in the gaming community, reviewers receive a horrific amount of harassment. I know everyone likes to joke about "too much water lol" but the author of that review has discussed how the nuance of her argument was lost and she was subjected to rape and death threats. I'm always hesitant about throwing too much criticism at reviewers.

I'm sure Schreier has received a lot of personal shit that we don't know about and that could be the cause for his pettiness. I do think he goes too far sometimes though, and not all of his actions are great. I never saw his actions on era but something that really left a bad taste in my mouth was a stream of him and Tim Rogers playing the Final Fantasy 8 remaster. Tim mentioned he wasn't feeling that hot on Octopath and Schreier played it up like "thank god you finally came around!!" and then his response to something else Tim said he was like "well you just like bad games!" like have some chill. It's one thing when he's like this to people he doesn't know on twitter or forums but it rubbed me the wrong way to see him throw it at a colleague.

Still, I think reviewers deserve more sympathy than criticism given how awful gamers can be. Schreier is a fantastic journalist at the end of the day. I hope Triangle Strategy does well. I agree it's too talky but the combat mechanics seem solid from the little I played.
 
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EtherPenguin said:
Square Enix themselves mentioned Final Fantasy VI in the marketing and were basically telling people "it's like that!" so I can understand people being upset when they were hoodwinked into playing a SaGa game.
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Many headlines made the mistake of writing that exaggeration, but the actual quote was: "In terms of game mechanics, if we had conceived Bravely Default as an evolution of Final Fantasy V, we created Octopath Traveler as an evolution of the Final Fantasy VI system.”

He didn't mention the story in this comparaison for a good reason.
 
SlumWolf said:
he didn't like Xenoblade 2, either, but I wouldn't characterize the review as whiny

(I'd read it again but the GMG union is striking, and I'm not trying to cross the picket line)
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He didn't like the first game. He was in the "why aren't people playing The Last Story instead?" camp. But he definitely hated 2 more.
 
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SlumWolf said:
I was not privy to any of the messageboard drama, but the review itself very much does not premise itself on the game's writing being bad because it doesn't have a sweeping overarching story. it's more that the story that is there didn't work for him, which I agree with (and I much prefer mellower, slice of life style stories in my JRPGs)
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He went more in depth on it at the old place and on social media. It got real petty. He is a bit of a pompous jerk in general, so not shocking.
 
Maronic03 said:
Many headlines made the mistake of writing that exaggeration, but the actual quote was: "In terms of game mechanics, if we had conceived Bravely Default as an evolution of Final Fantasy V, we created Octopath Traveler as an evolution of the Final Fantasy VI system.”

He didn't mention the story in this comparaison for a good reason.
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Fair enough, I'll own up to my mistake. I remember "it's a spiritual successor to FF6" being the main talk of the game for a good chunk of prelease but it seems it was just articles and not official marketing, so that's my bad.
 
EtherPenguin said:
Fair enough, I'll own up to my mistake. I remember "it's a spiritual successor to FF6" being the main talk of the game for a good chunk of prelease but it seems it was just articles and not official marketing, so that's my bad.
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Yeah, lots of things out of context. The game was pretty much closer to SaGa as someone mentioned, but I can see for sure the FF6 influence for the systems.
 
Clix said:
Yeah, lots of things out of context. The game was pretty much closer to SaGa as someone mentioned, but I can see for sure the FF6 influence for the systems.
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Aside from the sprites and world presentation there’s barely any FFVI. And there’s barely much SaGa. Game is a straight up love letter to 16-big JRPGs as a whole (including ones that didn’t release outside Japan originally) and draws on a number of different sources of inspiration that I think comparing it directly to any specific game does it a huge disservice.
 
I got a mixed impression from the demo. I'll see how this one plays out. I thought was Bravely Default 1 was so-so and I disliked Octopath Traveler too, so that doesn't bode well.
 
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shoptroll said:
Aside from the sprites and world presentation there’s barely any FFVI. And there’s barely much SaGa. Game is a straight up love letter to 16-big JRPGs as a whole (including ones that didn’t release outside Japan originally) and draws on a number of different sources of inspiration that I think comparing it directly to any specific game does it a huge disservice.
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I would disagree. It definitely has inspiration from SaGa with the way story structure plays out like a mini play. That was my first thought playing through the game. Not saying it does not draw on other sources, because as you said, it is a love letter. But I can see the FF6 and SaGa on its sleeve, the former with the battle system being as he said an evolution, and the way the narrative structure is laid out.
 
Clix said:
He went more in depth on it at the old place and on social media. It got real petty. He is a bit of a pompous jerk in general, so not shocking.
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When it involves investigative journalism about the gaming industry Schreier is one of the best, but when it comes down to gaming itself he's definitely a "my-way-or-the-highway" type of gamer which can rankle some people. I usually just ignore his gaming opinions since they tend to be the opposite of my own and read up on his investigative pieces.
Lichtsang said:
Octopath feels like a mixture between SaGa and Live a Live.
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I would say that Octopath is more reminiscent of Live A Live then either SaGa or Final Fantasy.
 
While it is understandable considering the nature of Asano's games, I wish that at some point people would start judging them on their own merits instead of hoping that they were attempts at resurrecting mistreated FF titles under a different name. I'm already expecting disappointed comparisons to Final Fantasy Tactics lol
 
78-83.

Seven said:
When it involves investigative journalism about the gaming industry Schreier is one of the best, but when it comes down to gaming itself he's definitely a "my-way-or-the-highway" type of gamer which can rankle some people. I usually just ignore his gaming opinions since they tend to be the opposite of my own and read up on his investigative pieces.
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This is how I treat him. As a reviewer, Schreier suffers from Nate Silver syndrome, where his descriptive writing can still be useful, but I've learned not to trust anything resembling a personal opinion.
 
Seven said:
When it involves investigative journalism about the gaming industry Schreier is one of the best, but when it comes down to gaming itself he's definitely a "my-way-or-the-highway" type of gamer which can rankle some people. I usually just ignore his gaming opinions since they tend to be the opposite of my own and read up on his investigative pieces.
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I agree with this. His opinions on certain games just feels entitled and whiny. If I don’t have anything nice to say about a certain game or series I really dislike I’m not going to bother others with it.

I mean no one is interested in my opinion about the Elder Scrolls.
 
I think it’ll be a 75-80, maybe pushing into the 85’s. The art style, while still very good looking, has now been done before so it’ll probably lose some novelty points. The demo does make it seem very wordy (though I guess this is to be expected from the genre), and the poor English voice acting certainly doesn’t help this. Is the Japanese VA better? I’ve not had a chance to look myself.

I enjoyed the demo, but there’s a lot of other games that are coming out this month. Unless the reviews are stellar, I’ll probably wait for the price to drop before picking it up.
 
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Renmazuo said:
While it is understandable considering the nature of Asano's games, I wish that at some point people would start judging them on their own merits instead of hoping that they were attempts at resurrecting mistreated FF titles under a different name. I'm already expecting disappointed comparisons to Final Fantasy Tactics lol
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I agree with this, but that's also hard to do since they're clearly influenced by 90s JRPGs. However, I think that if there's a Hollow Knight moment (where someone creates a modern 90s JRPG that's very well-received), then I think ppl will start comparing other games.

Maybe Triangle Strategy or Sea of Stars will be those games, but until then I expect everything to get compared to FF and Chrono Trigger.
 
shoptroll said:
Won’t be Sea of Stars with how much they’re trying to draw attention to the Chrono Trigger influence 😂
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Lol, touché. Someone said it earlier in the thread that it doesn't matter what the number on Metacritic is, this is gonna be a 9/10 game for me. With Eiyuden Chronicles, Dragon Quest 3 Remake, Live A Live, SacriFire, and Sea of Stars all coming in the future, ppl who are fans of these types of games will be well-served.
 
75-80
I kinda enjoyed the demo, but not that much. The gameplay just doesn't seem to flow at all
 
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Clix said:
I would disagree. It definitely has inspiration from SaGa with the way story structure plays out like a mini play. That was my first thought playing through the game. Not saying it does not draw on other sources, because as you said, it is a love letter. But I can see the FF6 and SaGa on its sleeve, the former with the battle system being as he said an evolution, and the way the narrative structure is laid out.
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So my experience with SaGa is pretty limited, the most I've played in the series was Frontier 1 and even then I didn't finish any of the stories. So maybe it's different with some of the other games? The ability to carry multiple weapon types and skills tied to weapons is very SaGa. But even then, the whole structure of playing through multiple stories for a crew of 8 characters is just as much Live A Live as it is SaGa Frontier, assuming you overlaid it with an open world reminiscent of older CRPGs like Might & Magic II where you're dropped into the world and left to your own devices.

I don't see how Break/Boost is at all an evolution on FFVI though. It's definitely an evolution over Brave/Default, but I just don't see how this really evolves the ATB battle system. Maybe they're talking about how skill progression works? But that isn't much different than how Chrono Trigger worked except now you can choose the order each character learns their skills, so I'm confused about what exactly they're referencing when they talk about an "evolution" here.
 
shoptroll said:
So my experience with SaGa is pretty limited, the most I've played in the series was Frontier 1 and even then I didn't finish any of the stories. So maybe it's different with some of the other games? The ability to carry multiple weapon types and skills tied to weapons is very SaGa. But even then, the whole structure of playing through multiple stories for a crew of 8 characters is just as much Live A Live as it is SaGa Frontier, assuming you overlaid it with an open world reminiscent of older CRPGs like Might & Magic II where you're dropped into the world and left to your own devices.

I don't see how Break/Boost is at all an evolution on FFVI though. It's definitely an evolution over Brave/Default, but I just don't see how this really evolves the ATB battle system. Maybe they're talking about how skill progression works? But that isn't much different than how Chrono Trigger worked except now you can choose the order each character learns their skills, so I'm confused about what exactly they're referencing when they talk about an "evolution" here.
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I think what you touched upon, with skill progression, especially with magecite and how customizable it was in 6 with the skills you can have a character learn. Octopath obviously took it to a much more expansive level.

Sure, CT also took it there, but it wasn’t as customizable IMO
 
I'd expect them to start trickling out around 6pm Pacific on Thursday. So either later today or tomorrow depending on your timezone.
 
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A bit late on the party but I expect a good 80-85 on OC. Pros being the quality of the system and the art style and cons being that it's poorly written and have some so-so english VA.

EtherPenguin said:
Still, I think reviewers deserve more sympathy than criticism given how awful gamers can be. Schreier is a fantastic journalist at the end of the day. I hope Triangle Strategy does well. I agree it's too talky but the combat mechanics seem solid from the little I played.
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Not only a fantastic journalist, Schreier is also a fantastic writer imo. His review of FFXV might be the best game review I've ever read.
 
Jason Schreier has universally awful opinions about JRPGs, so I'm not sure why people who are interested in JRPGs would dedicate much headspace to reading his opinion about this one.

FTR Octopath and Bravely 2 both had reviews out the morning before release. I'd expect reviews to start hitting in like 4-5 hours or so.

Party Sklar said:
A bit late on the party but I expect a good 80-85 on OC. Pros being the quality of the system and the art style and cons being that it's poorly written and have some so-so english VA.


Not only a fantastic journalist, Schreier is also a fantastic writer imo. His review of FFXV might be the best game review I've ever read.
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Not to be a Debbie Downer, but Kotaku and all other G/O Media outlets are currently on strike and have asked readers to avoid the sites for now.
 
What if no one reviews the game lol edit: damn, just saw the famitsu review
 
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Os 6am here, I'm going to sleep, as soon as I wake up I'll start updating the OP with reviews and meta/open numbers.
 
I would have loved to get this as I enjoyed the demo well enough. However, it is just not enough for me to get at $60. Hopefully will pick up if they ran a discount in future. My next full priced game will be Advance Wars.
 
I’m expecting around 85, with it getting criticised by some for the story taking a while to get going and a high proportion of cut scene/reading to battles.

Personally, I love SRPGs. Doesn’t matter if it’s Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, Front Mission, whatever. If it’s turn-based and moving units around on a map, that’s my jam. I think the last one I played was FE Three Houses, and my one big criticism of it was the stuff between battles was literally formulaic with its calendar system, making the entire second half feel laughable when the plot is in high gear but you’re still going back to the classroom because Persona. Meanwhile, this is using the pacing between battles to have characters actually discuss what’s going on and it’s consequences for minor factions, civilians, settlements.

FETH has great characters, one of the best casts in the series as it avoids a lot of the FE cliches (let alone wider JRPG ones). But it focuses almost entirely on them and their personal problems, despite them functioning as the spearhead and commanders of these massive armies in a continent-wide war. I find Triangle Strategy interesting because it seems more of a balance between the internal conflicts of the characters and their actual thoughts and impact on the wider events and strategy beyond the house leaders, probably because FE, with it’s 4 routes and ~35 characters, can’t make them all critical. They all have a place in society, which you can explore piece by piece on multiple runs, but it’s largely relatively inconsequential and focused on their growing pains as young adults in a messed up feudal world. Meanwhile the actual military campaign is glossed over as it’s only the back half the game and they run back to the school between missions.

It reminds me of the relationship between the mute PC strategist and Lyn, Hector and Eliwood in the GBA Fire Emblem, I guess. You’re literally the tactical leader on the battlefield but hailed as the wider strategic force too.

That’s not to say that everything needs to be the same. But my point is that FE is much more abstract in how little the strategy of the campaign matters and is discussed in cut scenes, focusing on social/calendar stuff for pacing instead, whereas Triangle Strategy agonises over the strategic decisions and consequences of the war and involves the player in them instead. And I really like that for a change of pace at the moment.
 
Caviar said:
Jason Schreier has universally awful opinions about JRPGs, so I'm not sure why people who are interested in JRPGs would dedicate much headspace to reading his opinion about this one.
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I think it's fine to have heterodox opinions on things. Not everyone can enjoy every popular thing. Especially as someones who plays a lot you'll eventually run into popular games you don't enjoy. Or you might find out that your preferences are just very niche. I don't think that makes your opinion awful, but your impressions are not applicable to many. I for one am a JRPG player who really doesn't like chatty games. I play JRPGs for their mechanics first and foremost, which is rather rare.
 
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Also I never knew Hank Azaria and Ben Stiller were inexplicably in that music video...

Was that song made for Mystery Men or something?
 
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Reviews should be out in just over 15 minutes.
 
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