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KickStarter Children of Zodiarcs (Tactical JRPG with card game elements)

CryptRat

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Developer
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Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
We never get enough tactical JRPGs. Besides visible dice rolling is an underused very fun cosmetic gimmick, and in the case of this game it's even more than cosmetic. Also developers who used to work on Far Cry and Assassin's Creed and now work on a tactical RPG instead is :incline:.
 
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Zetor

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Jan 9, 2003
Messages
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Location
Budapest, Hungary
This is ending today... apparently they hit all of their original stretch goals, too. $20 CAD is pretty cheap for a preorder!

I like the concept behind the cards and dice -- it's unpredictable at its core, but the outcomes it can produce are under the player's full control. Definitely an interesting way to get around the entire "lol RNG" problem of tactical games without going full-on deterministic like Invisible Inc / Telepath Tactics...
 
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deuxhero

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Jul 30, 2007
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11,325
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Flowery Land
Everytime I see a thread title for a new game I'm "Oh! This seems neat!".

Then I find out it's a kickstarter and say fuck it because we've never gotten a good game from a kickstarter (some turned out OK, but most are just pure shit).
 
Joined
May 30, 2013
Messages
155
Location
Lützen
Joined
May 30, 2013
Messages
155
Location
Lützen
Alpha update and a permission to show footage of it on internet video services.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...s-a-new-tactical-jrpg-by-aaa-ve/posts/1692587

i3jtM6Q.png
 

Jimmious

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May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Maybe Jesse Cox is kinda annoying some times but he played this:


*Very badly..
 
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CryptRat

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Developer
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Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
I started playing that, I didn't think it would run on my broken pc but it actually runs at full speed with graphical glitches I don't give a fuck about when I choose very low settings, that's a first good point.
After only 3 battles the game seems to be fun.
The base system is basic, the game uses player turns (not characer turns), at your turn each of your character can move then use an action, there are melee counterattacks (you deal more damage with counterattacks if you have more cards in hand) and attacks from behind deals more damage and prevents counterattack.
Each character has a customizable deck with action cards and each action requires a card, except for guarding or drawing two cards. With each actions you need to roll a number of dices (you can reroll 2 of your choices), and dices give additionnal effect like more damage, life gain, special effect related to the played card, one card draw or even an additional action use. You choose the set of dices each of your character brings to combat (each character has his own available sets).
Note that you can skip cutscenes and many dialogs between characters are simply optional.
 

CryptRat

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Sep 10, 2014
Messages
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So far so good. Battles are fun as well as building decks and preparing sets of dices.
You dices can be improved at the cost of some unused ones (you randomly gain dices).
The number of different cards you can use is not crazy, but it's fine because they're actually different and they also evolve as you gain levels, gaining additional effects, bigger area...Some effects are cool, like making your opponents discard cards or giving them temporary additional cursed dices, more basic ones like armor piercing, blood-loss inducing and immobilization are there too.
Besides story battles, you can join skirmishes in previously visited areas, including hard "elite" ones.
 

CryptRat

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Sep 10, 2014
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The game may use level scaling similarly to Tactics Ogre : Knights of Lodis, although I'm not sure and don't want to know.
 

ColCol

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Jul 12, 2012
Messages
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The game may use level scaling similarly to Tactics Ogre : Knights of Lodis, although I'm not sure and don't want to know.


I don't think it does. I had a boss fight where the bosses were 3-4 levels higher than me. The games leaves extra battles for grinding.
 

CryptRat

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Developer
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Sep 10, 2014
Messages
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I completed the game. In my opinion it's not great but it's OK.
My advice is that you stick to story battles, fixed optional battles and elite skirmishes when they appear and avoid basic skirmishes because you'll fight the same enemies again and again along the game so don't make that even worse.
Besides if you can't bear long enemy turns just wait for the next patch which will include a fast forward button.

+ :
- Good presentation overall, the music are nice, and so are the background paintings during cutscenes.
- The mechanisms work, by the end cards have multiple effects, you get multiple actions per turn and throw a lot of dices, that's the meat of the game, if you don't like card and dice mechanisms you should just pass your way and play something else, but as someone who like those it was satisfying.
- Some challenge at least intermittently and taking into account optional battles. Your characters can make big damages but they are fry and mustn't expose themselves.

- :
- Enemies turns can get long in the rare big fights, that's quite rare but then it's annoying - > wait for patch 1.0.1, they're adding a fast forward button.
- Reliance on level scaling, I know it's not as critical as in a classic RPG where you walk, but well, it still sucks, you can do better than this (I played on hard mode so I don't know if there's level scaling in normal mode).
- The number of different enemies is limited, although they're all quite unique, bosses have their own cards and so. But what is really annoying is that halfway through the game you've probably already met every enemy you'll fight during the game bosses excluded.
- I got one breaking game bug two times - > wait for patch 1.0.1, it's reported and will be corrected.
- Although in general it works, the camera is not always completely convenient.

undecided :
- I'm undecided about the story, I don't think they chose the super easy way which is nice, it's not always predictable and Nahmi is a cool character but the story is really cringy, perhaps they could have presented the same story in a less cringy way. By the way, I don't know if there's any hidden branching, I didn't find any.
- The number of different cards is limited but they're quite unique, and they evolve.
- They are 4 types of objectives if I'm not missing one, kill enemies, kill the boss, reach a point and survive a couple of turns, I guess it's better than just always having to kill all enemies, but nothing to get enthousiastic about either.
- You only control up to 3 characters (maybe except for some very special battles, I don't remember exactly), I think a few more would have been welcome, not saying the game doesn't work the way it is.
 

Jimmious

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Patron
Joined
May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Would you , for any reason, replay the game? Or it doesn't have any replayablity whatsoever? It seems that FF Tactics - like games keep "forgetting" this
 

Zetor

Arcane
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
Messages
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Location
Budapest, Hungary
Yeah, on hard difficulty this game has level scaling just like Tactics Ogre (LUCT for snes/psx -- did Lodis have the same system?): all enemies are scaled to your highest level character+1. Bosses may be +2 or +3.

I didn't know about the scaling going in, so I was fine with Nahmi murdering the shit out of most enemies (it helps that she had two dice with lightning symbols after the tutorial, plus blitz gives her free turns too). Now I'm heading into story battle #6 with Nahmi at level 8, BryceBrice level 6, and Pester at... 5 (because he missed out on story battle #5) and the enemies are all level 9. This puts both Pester and Brice into near one-shot territory considering the enemies in this fight also have a bleed debuff on their attack and how squishy Brice is to begin with. I wanted a run with no deaths dammit!

Other than that, the card/dice system is kinda cool, and has the potential to get pretty in-depth later on once all cards are unlocked and you can build strategies around available dice / card options or vice versa.
 

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