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« on: September 28, 2016, 06:08:25 PM »
Joined the Team Known as Codename STEAM (3DS):
After taking a break a few hours in, I resumed this game last week and powered through to completion. This is an unusually difficult game to parse my reaction to and I would be hard pressed to give it a number rating. I found some elements of it to be frustrating throughout and some only frustrating until I had sufficiently figured the game out and/or gotten access to better characters/weapons. This is tough though because I think the point of the game is to keep you feeling pressured and moving decisively under adverse circumstances.
More granules:
-It's continually irritating not being able to see the whole map, walking into overwatch traps, etc. But this makes information a resource in the way that it isn't in the Fire Emblem games, and you gradually learn the right cautionary procedures. You've basically got to get in the game's headspace.
-Getting overwatched by enemies can be extremely annoying. Sure, you can do this to them, too, but I felt the triggers on your behalf are inconsistent and I generally did not find it advantageous to play the game in that kind of methodical/trappy way. Also, it's very annoying that you can't see how much "steam" or whatever the aliens have, or if they have that restriction at all while on defense. You can seemingly get overwatched by them until you die. Information restriction is one thing, but I feel like once you have a bead on alien health you should also be able to see how much juice they have for their overwatch/next turn. As is, I felt like semi-informed blitzing was the only way to play the game.
-As a result, easily half the characters are worthless gimmicks. I stuck with John Henry, Henry, and Lion as my core three members, and they are also the first three you get. The excitement of getting new characters wore off pretty quick when it turned out that they mostly suck after the initial stretch. Somewhat conversely, I was irritated that I didn't have a sniper character up until they introduced the sniper character, and then the game clicked much more. With properly equipped Fox on the team you can pull off some sick **** and depending on the map I leaned heavily on her for much of the game.
-Unpredictable enemy reinforcements are super annoying. But again, this keeps pressure on and ensures that you can't just creep forward and wipe out alien formations.
-One-time use specials per character is a cool feature that adds personality and flexibility in a pretty harsh game. But most characters have terrible personal radius special attacks that you rarely use because you really don't want to get up in an enemy group's face. Henry is not a particularly good character, but I used him in every mission because he had the only truly good special. In fact, I beat the final boss in a clinch when it exposed its weak point after seemingly endless hammering, allowing second-to-last man standing Henry to shoot his patriot rocket for one million damage. But in a way this only partially makes up for the fact that I almost never used the specials of the rest of team (John Henry, Lion, Fox).
-There is functionally no character progression. You can unlock new subweapons and steam boilers, but most of them suck. Your steam allotment always feels kind of weak, and most weapons don't do a satisfying amount of damage. The imprecise aiming and enemy wobble also makes hitting weak points frustrating. But I still managed to beat the game. So I'm not sure how I feel. Though I definitely hit a few points where I was like "If I die near the end of this 30 minute map, with a fucked save point, I'm just not going to play this game again." But each time I squeaked out a victory, at least twice with nearly dead last-man-standing Lion leaping into the goal zone while surrounded by enemies. Which was exhilarating.
So all in all, an odd duck. I feel accomplished for having beaten it, mostly not having a good handle on actual strategy, but the ideal strategy might have been the antic fumbling that I employed.
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