Re: Games Discussion Thread
So I picked up a game called Grotesque Tactics Premium Edition, published by a German company and (I assume) scheduled for an international release. Despite its relative shortness (it took me one week to get through it) I did rather enjoy it.
It's been described as fairly humorous, and while it rarely made me laugh out hard, it did manage to keep a constant smile on my face. You control a group of up to 10 characters, ranging from the chronically depressed sword fighter Drake to the unbearably arrogant knight Holy Avatar to the cleptomanic goblin thief Rukel to a trio of 3 half-naked maidens (which all need to be saved). The highlight is probably the barbarian West, who not only is talking in ebonics, bro, but also has flashbacks to the Vietkong war, where the Kong, a race of apemen, decimated his squad.
Combat is turn-based in the vein of HoMM and happens on the same map that you explore on. Besides the basic attack, every character has two additional mana-consuming abilities that help you during combat. For example, Drake can blind an opponent to lower their chance of hitting, and Holy Avatar can instantly eliminate weak creatures. On the other hand, every character has obsessions that can hinder them in combat. The obsession bar fills when certain conditions are met (the character suffers damage or scores a hit, for example). Holy Avatar starts telling long-winded stories that put everybody around him to sleep, and the goblin thief throws a flash bomb and teleports to a strong hero.
One thing that sticks out in combat is that neither Drake nor Holy Avatar are allowed to bite the dust. As they are both meant to fight in the front lines, this can lead to a bit of frustration, especially when fighting stronger enemies.
Now on to the bad things. The camera is static (as far as I can tell) and tends to bounce around wildly when objects like pillars or stairs block the view. The graphics are absolutely sub-standard, but at least it will run on lower-powered machines as well. It does have hand-drawn character portraits that grant more detail to the figures.
The game was developed by a very small independent company, and as such I can cut them some slack, but especially the camera bit still hurts the gameplay. Now and then the game crashes, but only very rarely and not in the game-breaking amount that Dragon Age did. A bug locks your camera when you get to the edge of a map, but pressing the move buttons for your characters brings it back to them. The story is very linear and barely has any sidequests (or rather, it has a bunch of sidequests that you are FORCED to take).
On the whole, Grotesque Tactics Premium Edition has barely any grave mistakes, and if you're looking for something to cheer you up a bit and poses some challenge, you may want to pick it up if you can get it for a reasonable price. It's not in stores outside of Germany yet (I think), but if you like turn-based tactical combat, you should give it a shot.