I haven’t gotten that far into this, but I’ll be busy for the next couple of days so I thought I’d dash something off quickly while I still had the time.
Ragnarok ~ Hikari to Yami no Koujo ~ (later localized as Ragnarok Tactics) is a regular strategy RPG published by GungHo Online and developed by Chime and Apollosoft, the same guys who brought us Blue Roses. It’s supposed to be related in some way to the Ragnarok Online MMORPG, but since I’ve never played that I have no idea what the similarities are, if any.
The story is the same as for 95% of SRPGs: there’s a war going on between two countries/factions. You’re on one of the sides and you fight till you beat the game. The slight twist is that the player character isn’t a prince/princess/army general but instead a random mercenary you create at the start. As such you have no direct relation to the war going on (you can even choose to side with neither country and keep being a mercenary instead) except as an observer. In fact, apart from one or two story characters on each route, everyone else in the your party is a generic created by you.
So far that hasn’t affected my enjoyment of the game. I’m used to working with whatever fighters a game throws at me, but being able to pour my love and energy out onto my own creations without worrying about them being overshadowed by the story characters is nice in its own way. Right now my MC is a Sniper, I’ve got a second Sniper (as usual archers are slightly broken), two High Priests, an Assassin Cross (basically a thief), a Paladin, a Champion (monk) and a White Smith (axe guy). I wish I could try a couple of the other classes like Clown and Dancer, but you can only field so many characters per battle.
As I said, the gameplay is your standard SRPG fare, speed-based instead of turn-based. Speed seems to be very important, so I’ve been pouring my extra stat points (given at level up) into raising my party’s speed, and I think it’s paying off. You have your regular attacks, skills, overdrive skills and even combos known as Burst Strikes. Battles can be a little slow because the enemies are placed all over the map and generally won’t move until you come near. It makes things easy because you can hang back and buff and heal all you like, but since it’s easy there’s no tension and no real need for thought or strategy. Well, so far, anyway.
After 11 hours, I’m having a good time, but it’s too soon to make up my mind about the game. The only complaints I have right now are
1. The character portraits and background shots are BEAUTIFUL, but the 3D characters look astonishingly bad, especially close up. I’ve gotten used to it, but the massive difference in quality is pretty shocking.
2. Nothing interesting has happened in the story even after 11 hours. I joined the side of Branchard, Aura attacked us, we attacked them back, they counterattacked and took our castle, and that’s where we are. The pace needs to pick up, and soon.
3. Since my character is a complete stranger to both sides, I have no loyalty to any of them, so I feel absolutely nothing no matter how the story goes.
4. Preachy game is preachy! War is terrible! War is terrible! War is terrible! War is terrible! I’m treated to a 5-10 minute lecture on the horrors of war and the meaning of courage before every single battle. Every. Single. Battle. And what hurts most is that the two countries aren’t fighting over anything sensible but over who gets the credit for sealing away the gods and demons a thousand years ago. Honestly, who cares?
5. There are signs that this is shaping up to be yet another one of those stories where some sealed evil needs war and strife on the continent in order to be unsealed. I know I’ve played at least 5 other RPGs like that, though FE:Path of Radiance, FE:Radiant Dawn and Hexyz Force are the ones that come most readily to mind.
6. The game doesn’t like my screenshot plugin and usually freezes when I try to use it.
7. The biggest one: leveling up your party evenly is hard! The only way to get a good amount of EXP is to kill an enemy. Attacking and healing give you 1-10 EXP at most when you need hundreds per level. This makes Kill Feeding essential, but it’s hard to do it right when 1. The game works on a speed system, so the weaker character you want to feed the kill to might not get a turn when you want them to and 2. You’re not given an estimate of what damage an attack will do, so you might either end up killing the enemy by mistake, or NOT killing them because the character was too weak.
Still I’m managing somehow. My party is between levels 8-10 and I could progress the story faster if I wasn’t so busy fighting free battles. I’ve got a high tolerance for crap when it comes to SPRGs, so they just have to avoid doing anything stupid(er than what they’re already doing) and we’ll be fine.
