LogFAQs > #965609560

It's kind of interesting now that I think back. I've played 3 tactics games in the last year or so. Dark Deity, SRW 30, and Triangle Strategy. SRW and Triangle Strategy especially exemplify both extremes of the issue. In SRW, units become way too strong with investment into the rpg aspects of the game. One unit can solo the game and in fact thats optimal, but they become so overpowered, it ruins any sort of strategy or fun for me.

Triangle Strategy is the exact opposite. The rpg aspects barely affects the game at all. In that game, you get massive xp when down in levels and virtually zero xp when even 1 level ahead so the game railroads you pretty hard to a certain power level. On hard though, your units will almost never 1 to 1 matchup with even enemy grunts statistically and that just ruins the fantasy of it for me. I feel very little incentive to play because I can't really power up a unit to a noticeable degree.

Of course, by funneling the player into a certain level of strength, they can ensure every mission is extremely well balanced and while the characters won't match up stat for stat, clever use of their abilities can get you through levels. I'd argue the strategy portion of triangle strategy is the best in all of tactics games, it's just at the complete cost of the rpg elements. Pairing that with such a narritive focus on decisions and shaping your main character, it creates a lot of dissonance for me.

Dark Diety probably ended up being the most fun of the 3 for me, and it had a pretty solid balance of rpg to strategy, but it was at the cost of freedom. There's no grinding or optional maps in dark diety at all and the plot is pretty linear. However, my strong units felt strong but not 1v100 strong and my weak units needed help but didn't feel worthless.

I will at least credit SRW 30 with having a narrative style that suits being overpowered and unstrategic. It does feel very satisfying to overcome problems from series we are familiar with by leveraging strength the characters simply didn't have in the actual show.