KickStarter Sunrider: First Arrival, free on steam [Domo arigato, Mr Gabato]

[Luka-boy]

Between that and what I've already seen in Sunrider I honestly can't tell if they're playing the clichés straight because they seriously think that's the way to go or they're just having a laugh and playfully mocking all the tropes.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Between that and what I've already seen in Sunrider I honestly can't tell if they're playing the clichés straight because they seriously think that's the way to go or they're just having a laugh and playfully mocking all the tropes.

Actually, now that I think about it we can always asked them directly. I think I may do just that.


EDIT:

Love in Space @Love_In_Space
I'm going to make the captain of the swim team a space whale if it's still rendering in the morning. Hontouni true.

Leaning towards a 'laugh'.

 

[Luka-boy]

Good man.

In that case I won't feel so ashamed of liking Claude's scenes so damn much.

 

[Monstrous Bat]

So, judging by what you said, this game is what Super Robot Wars would be like if the latter had actual gameplay?

Interest piqued. Downloading.

EDIT: Just watched the intro and my head almost exploded from being exposed to so much weabooness. Also, are the names supposed to sound Japanese? Because they do not FFS.

EDIT AGAIN: Holy shit, I had to savescum at least seven times to get through the first mission. Not sure if incline

 

[TigerKnee]

Super Robot Wars has better core gameplay than this, actually.

It's just mostly too easy as a series.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Ey bros how do I use that assasin whore?

She always gets 1 shotted during turn 1. I want to melee enemy ryders n shit but it won't let me.

 

[Grinolf]

Ey bros how do I use that assasin whore?

She always gets 1 shotted during turn 1. I want to melee enemy ryders n shit but it won't let me.

Fly to the enemy rider -> oneshot it in melee -> return to the formation.
She is also a very good tank and enemies like to target her for some reason. Proper formation, a few survivability upgrades and All Guard activated and she is almost invincible and could without a problem to survive a three turns of concetrated attack without need of heal. Not sure why she is such high priority target, but she is no way justifies such amount of damage wasted on her.

I also forget to add accuracy debuff from a pervert girl. But key thing is to not have her isolated from the rest of the group, since isolated unit is very easy prey for missiles. And she is fast enough to fly to enemy in melee, kill it and return back without any problem. There would be at least one mission, that would call her to move forward alone, but accuracy debuff and Full Guard were sufficient in my case.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

E-mail send. Now we wait.

 

[TigerKnee]

Yeah, don't get greedy with Crooked Bee.

Calculate your EN so that you have enough to retreat into the safety of your deathball formation. EN upgrades is REALLY helpful.

Try to save EN if you can by using Claude to pull units towards her instead or moving into their AOO zone.

 

[Grinolf]

Raising her EN doesn't look like a good investments to me. With her very cheap movement she usually has enough energy to kill enemy and return to safety. And in rare occasions when it wouldn't be possible, gravy gun solving this just fun. The only reason to upgrade her EN is in combination with reducing melle attack cost, so she could consistently finish two ryders at turn. But it is a very costly thing to do, and ryders aren't a real threat anyway, mostly they just annoying. So I don't see a reason to bother.
So making her more beefy and raising her melee attack to the point, when he always kill a ryder with it, should be sufficiently enough.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

So I got a replay.

Love in Space says:
Hi WhiskeyWolf. There's a lot of things which happen behind the scenes during production which dictate the direction of the game. We look at sales data, Kickstarters for other games, and what publishers are saying, to figure out what is currently popular on the market when designing a product. Because everyone's under NDA now, much occurs behind the scenes in the emerging English VN industry which the regular player would not necessarily understand or imagine.

As for whether the game's a parody or played straight, I leave that for the player to decide. I've regretted this before, but I'll just gulp and trust people can figure out for themselves. It's obvious enough if you play the game which scenes are supposed to be comedic and which scenes are supposed to be serious.

The first part sounds like a standard response template, the second one sounds as if he didn't quite get me when I wrote 'mocking all the tropes'.

Or am I not reading something between the lines.

 

[Wen Yang]

Super Robot Wars has better core gameplay than this, actually.

It's just mostly too easy as a series.

Depends on which SRWs to be honest. While the more recent iterations are on the easy side... the older games (and the Masou Kishin series) are still pretty hard.

But yeah, tried this, contemplated dropping it right in the middle of the second stage (semi-bad VA going "Imma firing mah Lazors!" just ticked off way too many of my dislikes). The gameplay seemed promising at first, but devolved to a chore and very savescummy later on, which is annoying, and the less talked about the over-cliched story and characters, the better.

 

[RK47]

They're taking out the interesting battles and rely on their 'solid writing' to carry the game on a spin-off VN now?
Good luck with that.

TBH, the story is serviceable - it's just that the execution is pretty lacking. It's pretty expected from limited budget indies.
They tried to add some depth to the girls, a few of them does stand out - if you're not trying to 'spot the trope' it's pretty OK. Claude cannot be taken seriously at all. If they do try to play her seriously, good luck. It's like telling people ice cream counts as a main course. It just can't.

I also kinda hate the 'soft narrative' not doing the dark thing and murder any of the waifus as C&C for bad plays. It's more like 'OH YOU WANNA PLAY THE HARD MISSION? OKAY HERE GOES'
C'mon we're in the middle of war here. Something like a Mass Effect 2 Loyalty Mission to unlock additional conversations and upgrades would've been swell as a reward to those who beat harder missions.

The girls throwing themselves at the Captain is pr. baffling too - it was funny when Crooked Bee is the only girl consistently being hostile with the way I treated her in combat.
"Flak-bitch, get over here. Oh there, a ryder, slice it. Looks like no more ryder, now flak more."
It kinda fits.

However, I like this game enough forgive its shortcomings.
At least it had some kind of personality and had few good moments in game.
But a pure VN Alternate take on this game - uuuhhhhh. No thanks. Sorry, your 'dating game' aspect is pr. shit.

 

[RK47]

She always gets 1 shotted during turn 1.

If you know what will happen, why are you letting it happen?
:steve-tzu-art-of-war:

 

[TigerKnee]

But a pure VN Alternate take on this game - uuuhhhhh. No thanks. Sorry, your 'dating game' aspect is pr. shit.

2 chapters in and we STILL don't know if our choices have any effect outside of Paragon/Renegade points.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Heh, I'm enjoying the combat, but got blasted in one of the first missions, the pirate outpost one. Thought I could pick off the defenders one by one and then the reinforcements arrived. Not to mention the hp + defenses of the base itself.

 

[RK47]

Is the romance railroaded or something?

 

[TigerKnee]

Yes, on the bright side it's your favourite girl.

 

[RK47]

.......
I WANNA KILL COSETTE.

Heh, I'm enjoying the combat, but got blasted in one of the first missions, the pirate outpost one. Thought I could pick off the defenders one by one and then the reinforcements arrived. Not to mention the hp + defenses of the base itself.

Well, experiment a bit - and don't be too embarrassed to retry a battle if you think you can do better. It seems like most of the difficulty starting players faced is when they scraped past the early missions and could not get past the latter ones due to smaller pool of resources.

I like how it's done in this manner in terms of combat (reminds me of FTL), but it can entrap a lot of players - and also I wish the narrative acknowledge whether the player did well or not. Cause man, it's funny when you see everyone going 'omg we barely made it' when it's a clear pushover in the battles.

 

[kazgar]

Finished it last night, was enjoyable, well worth what I paid for it.

Spoiler

Though not happy with cliffhanger ending.

 

[RK47]

Finished it.
I want to cry but I'm too busy laughing at Alts of Andhairas.

 

[Lucky]

Eight days 'till the release of the final chapter - http://sunrider-vn.com/liberationday/

Don't read if you don't want to get spoiled on what happened previously:

Spoiler

They finally return home. But they will be betrayed…
Warning: This page contains spoilers for Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius and Sunrider Academy.
The Story So Far…
Following the devastating war between the democratic Solar Alliance and the tyrannical New Empire, the galaxy was split into two zones separated by the Neutral Rim, a buffer between the two states.

Weakened by war, the New Empire collapsed from within in the Compact Revolution. A figure known only as VENICZAR ARCADIUS led the people against their Imperial oppressors. Following the New Empire’s fall, Arcadius mysteriously vanished from public view.

Soon after, another entity claiming to be Arcadius returned and declared the formation of PACT. With the vast production base of the former New Empire, PACT invaded the Neutral Rim with the intent of striking the Solar Alliance.

Arcadius sought the hand of the Ryuvian princess for reasons unknown, but was thwarted by Captain Shields of the Cera Space Force.

He was further thwarted at the battle of Far Port, when Cullen’s blunder lead to the destruction of the PACT invasion fleet by a much smaller Alliance vanguard fleet.

What was envisioned by PACT leaders as a glorious invasion into the heart of Alliance space instead became a bloody foreign campaign fought in the undeveloped Neutral Rim.

With the Alliance Fleet approaching PACT space and their initial military goals now in tatters, VENICZAR FONTANA betrayed Arcadius in the Battle of Helion and took control of PACT.

Now unmasked, the truth of the entity claiming to be Veniczar Arcadius came to light…

I've enjoyed the gameplay so far, but the writing was real bad. Lots of wacky shenanigans and then suddenly WHY COULDN'T I SAVE HER drama. It would have been funny if the game wasn't so serious about it. Whoever is their writer should get a better feel for pacing and how human emotions work.
The "famous anime seiyuu" patreon goal also has me a bit worried that future projects by them might take inspiration from the not so good parts of Japanese game development. Loving anime is one thing, but hiring people like that is a waste of money for such a tiny studio.

Love me some strategic space-battles, though. I'll probably have fun, even while fast-forwarding.

 

[Luka-boy]

I just read the FAQ and now they say this part won't be free and in fact might not be the last part at all. GG.

 

[Lucky]

You’re right, I completely missed the faq and apparently they might charge for this one? It’ll be free for backers no matter what, but a big part of the kickstarter was that the game would be freeware.

Spoiler

• Sunrider is FREEWARE. The game will be released for free upon completion.
• Obviously, Love in Space has an absolutely zero DRM stance.
• You are free to modify, translate, mod, and/or expand upon Sunrider is any manner you choose, so long as you do not charge other people money for any of Sunrider's assets.
• Love in Space gives you the right to use Sunrider in any other manner you want, with the only condition being you do not charge other people money for any part of Sunrider.

Keeping Sunrider free is made possible largely through the generous contributions of people like you. I expect to carry the majority of the production costs myself. However, any donations you make will go a long way in making Sunrider a great game.

So apparently this one still counts as part of the full Sunrider game, otherwise it wouldn’t be free to backers, but they might start to move away from their freeware stance. Plus more Sunrider games in the future.

By the way, for those who felt that there was too much gameplay and not enough story in Sunrider, you can get the novelisation of the game from their website. There’s also a visual novel listed called Homeward, for those impressed by the characterisation in Sunrider.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/358750/

The heat is on gentlemen, it's time to fork over that 20€, you know you want it.