The Alliance Alive (3DS)
Feb. 7th, 2019 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroAzura lives in the Rain Realm, where humans are ruled by daemons and beastfolk and the sun never shines. But she dreams of seeing a blue sky, and with the help of friends new and old, she just might do it.
A semi-sequel to The Legend of Legacy that keeps some aspects (a lot of the battle systems, using regenerating SP for most attacks and “sparking” new ones) but changes many others (adding a coherent plot and actual characters, removing a lot of the map-making in exchange for map buying/finding, making this more of a story than an exploration adventure). They also made it easier to customize your characters, with a “talent” point pool that lets you buy skills in specific weapons and accumulates even for characters you aren’t using.
You have multiple groups of characters with access to different areas / skills until they meet up about ten hours into the game. Chapter 20 is when the game really opens up, when you can form an alliance of the five guilds and start recruiting new members and building new towers for them, which gives you more control over what battle bonuses you get and allows you to unlock better equipment and spells. (The chapter designation is kind of odd, as chapters 20, 25 and 34 are massively longer than any others because they’re when you do the many sidequests and the recruiting.)
The influence of the Suikoden series is evident here: The most obvious influence is the gathering of many, many side characters to join you. The battle system, with multiple positions and larger party sizes is subtly similar, as opposed to the three-stage battle with Grossa that comes straight out of the battle with Luca Blight in Suikoden II.
I remain somewhat irked by the number of different factors that affect the effectiveness of your skills, because many of them are non-standard or unclear. Better weapons generally mean more damage, and your skills gaining levels generally seems to increase the upper range of their effectiveness; but buff spells never seem to help as much as they “should” and some enemies are just inexplicably tougher than others of the same type. A lot of the battle tactics comes from remembering strategy and how to use defenders/support characters from the previous game. Unlike that game, I didn't change formations in battle much-- at all, really. I generally found hit-all enemy magic attacks and the lack of full-party healing to be my biggest issue.
It seems to have an overall shallower power curve than many other games: The bottom-level Hippocampus water devil destroys you early on, but they're still a concern well into the endgame when they appear in the top water devil lairs. Awakening higher-level skills and using better equipment matter much more than grinding. (The Library guild also gives you some sort of combat bonuses at higher levels, but like everything else, it's not clear what they do.) You need to buff up all of your characters until the three-tier battle in Chapter 25, but after that you can settle on a primary team.
They do a good job of switching things up and adding new wrinkles in each area. In addition to your ark-ship, you collect an ornithopter, a snow bunny and a flying wyvern as modes of travel. And you can go back to them later to find various extra recruits and prizes.
The quick save remains pleasantly broken, as it allows you to save and resume anywhere with no restrictions, allowing easy replay if you test yourself against something that’s too strong.
The endgame area was very interesting from a difficulty perspective, as the random battles there are very tough (though very rewarding) and you’re better off dodging past them, but the finally miniboss and boss battles aren’t actually that bad. Granted, I’d loaded myself for bear by that point, but I had half expected to lose to the final boss and have to go back to grind, and I beat him on the first try with no casualties.
And spoiler: Clearly, water devils are made of people. They’re the people from the parts of the world destroyed by the Great Barrier, mutated by exposure to the dark ether. The books in Vivian’s collection and the things the water devils say in their lairs make that pretty clear.
Overall: I thought this was an excellent game. It had a solid plot, a bunch of innovation that actually worked, relatively few points where I was concerned about the difficulty level, and was generally fun throughout.
A semi-sequel to The Legend of Legacy that keeps some aspects (a lot of the battle systems, using regenerating SP for most attacks and “sparking” new ones) but changes many others (adding a coherent plot and actual characters, removing a lot of the map-making in exchange for map buying/finding, making this more of a story than an exploration adventure). They also made it easier to customize your characters, with a “talent” point pool that lets you buy skills in specific weapons and accumulates even for characters you aren’t using.
You have multiple groups of characters with access to different areas / skills until they meet up about ten hours into the game. Chapter 20 is when the game really opens up, when you can form an alliance of the five guilds and start recruiting new members and building new towers for them, which gives you more control over what battle bonuses you get and allows you to unlock better equipment and spells. (The chapter designation is kind of odd, as chapters 20, 25 and 34 are massively longer than any others because they’re when you do the many sidequests and the recruiting.)
The influence of the Suikoden series is evident here: The most obvious influence is the gathering of many, many side characters to join you. The battle system, with multiple positions and larger party sizes is subtly similar, as opposed to the three-stage battle with Grossa that comes straight out of the battle with Luca Blight in Suikoden II.
I remain somewhat irked by the number of different factors that affect the effectiveness of your skills, because many of them are non-standard or unclear. Better weapons generally mean more damage, and your skills gaining levels generally seems to increase the upper range of their effectiveness; but buff spells never seem to help as much as they “should” and some enemies are just inexplicably tougher than others of the same type. A lot of the battle tactics comes from remembering strategy and how to use defenders/support characters from the previous game. Unlike that game, I didn't change formations in battle much-- at all, really. I generally found hit-all enemy magic attacks and the lack of full-party healing to be my biggest issue.
It seems to have an overall shallower power curve than many other games: The bottom-level Hippocampus water devil destroys you early on, but they're still a concern well into the endgame when they appear in the top water devil lairs. Awakening higher-level skills and using better equipment matter much more than grinding. (The Library guild also gives you some sort of combat bonuses at higher levels, but like everything else, it's not clear what they do.) You need to buff up all of your characters until the three-tier battle in Chapter 25, but after that you can settle on a primary team.
They do a good job of switching things up and adding new wrinkles in each area. In addition to your ark-ship, you collect an ornithopter, a snow bunny and a flying wyvern as modes of travel. And you can go back to them later to find various extra recruits and prizes.
The quick save remains pleasantly broken, as it allows you to save and resume anywhere with no restrictions, allowing easy replay if you test yourself against something that’s too strong.
The endgame area was very interesting from a difficulty perspective, as the random battles there are very tough (though very rewarding) and you’re better off dodging past them, but the finally miniboss and boss battles aren’t actually that bad. Granted, I’d loaded myself for bear by that point, but I had half expected to lose to the final boss and have to go back to grind, and I beat him on the first try with no casualties.
And spoiler: Clearly, water devils are made of people. They’re the people from the parts of the world destroyed by the Great Barrier, mutated by exposure to the dark ether. The books in Vivian’s collection and the things the water devils say in their lairs make that pretty clear.
Overall: I thought this was an excellent game. It had a solid plot, a bunch of innovation that actually worked, relatively few points where I was concerned about the difficulty level, and was generally fun throughout.
