Project Octopath Demo, meh

[Nautilus]

Jumpin said:

Nautilus said:

With all due respect, but it doestn seem so.You say there is no difference between doing a 2x atack in every turn and waiting for the right moment to boost your atack and going for the right moment.You say that this is a "gimmicky" battle system(as if the other battle systems from any game arent "gimmicky").Im too lazy to make my own example, so Im using irstupid post as the example:

"Let's use an example. I'm fighting an enemy and I hit him once and it does damage. He attacks me. My next turn I attack him using 3x and notice on the second hit that I get a break. I just learnt that using that weapon, it takes 3 hits total to set him into break mode. IF you didn't notice, break mode means they lose their turn to not only attack that turn, but the following turn.

Thus I keep that in memory. While he is break mode, I DO NOT use my chain attack, I attack with a normal attack, a magic attack, buff myself, heal, summon ally, whatever. The point is, I build up 1 point for the following turn when he gets to attack again. My turn ends, and its my turn again, due ot him being broke,. He is no longer broke, so he will attack after me. I go to 3X attack, because I KNOW that this will break him. Thus he doesn't get ot attack again.

I've fought so many battles, where th enemy has gotten to attack like once to each of my like 8 turns. Heck, lots of times beyond te first round, the enemy never gets to attack again.

That is how you use the break system, not to just endlessly use as much as you can each round, which would be two. You can go to a max of four, even though you can build up higher than that."

There is a difference when its your opinion and when you try to state this as a fact.If it was only your opinion, then its completely fine.I dont like GTA for example, and thats as popular as it gets.But you are comming here as its a fact that the battle system is bloated or stupid, with 99% of the other users here saying otherwise.

Again, I have no problem with your opinion, just how you are pushing it and presenting here to everyone as cold hard facts.

There's nothing about his description that I didn't understand, he is essentially describing the experience you get during your first battle of the game; at approximately the 12-15 minute mark of the demo. I played for about 3 hours. Explaining the basics of how the game functions does not excuse the bloat of the system.

The vast majority of enemies require 1 or 2 hits to break, since you can do 2 a turn, you can break them every turn - stocking 3 points won't make a bit of difference in the outcome, it will only make the battle take longer.

If the enemy has 3 shields, then 3-special-3-speal works faster than that guy's strategy; or 3-1-3-1-3-1-3-1-3-1, will take a few more seconds but accomplish the same thing in the end. Although, the above strategy is just a variant of my above strategy. You very likely won't die if you do 2-2-2-2-2-2-2, because enemy attacks are weak, and healing is easy; and you'll actually kill the enemy faster since you'll be hitting more often while the enemy is broken (2-3 times instead of once).

The enemies basically have two weaknesses (sword or spear), you don't need more than 2 different command options that only take one command to execute, in order to do this. Then you can have the abilities menu with all the extra skills. All this extra song and dance is completely unnecessary. Pokemon is actually a more tactically rich game in the first 2-3 battles than this demo is in 3 hours - and Pokemon accomplishes more with fewer steps (I'm not a Pokemon fan, but it's a game I recognize as well designed).

 

All of that is somewhat irrelevant though. Let me frame it this way:

I am not arguing that the added steps cause unnecessary difficulty, the game is not difficult. I am arguing that the added steps are unnecessary to reach the ends. The original Dragon quest game already solved the issue of menu based attacks, you select it from a menu, and that's why mostly everyone does it that way; it's exactly what is needed to accomplish the task. Project Octopath Traveler adds extra unecessary steps to attacking, it gets very repetitive after the first few dozens of times interacting with the system - adding more shields to the enemies doesn't make the battle more interesting, it will just mean a different repetitious combinations of commands to complete the task of killing the enemy.

For example - What is a better experience for Super Mario Brothers: 

1. Hitting the A button to jump.
Or,
2. Hitting Up + A to jump?

If you say clearly 1, then I don't see why you're disagreeing with me.

If you say it's all a matter of opinion, then that's where we disagree. I don't think needless added interface steps, for the sake of being more complex, is good game design. It's bloat.

What you are complaining about then, or at least mostly, is that the game up to the boss is mostly easy due to the shields being low.What you are overlooking here is that:1 - every game in the beginning is easy, and this is a demo made not to overwhelm the gamers, and just give an idea of how the game works and what to expect, and thus its easy to "exploit" the system and 2 - If you do go a bit further after the boss, especially at the cave east of Highlands, there are much harder fights there, with enemies with 4 shields, and battles with groups of 3 enemies, each with at least 3 shields.It doesnt get extremely hard, but it is more challeging.

What people are here trying to tell you is that they see the potential in the game and its battle system, not that its particulary challeging the time you have with the demo.And its not bloted.Once you get Primrose or the Warrior(I keep forgeting his name) you get two members on your parties, and the variety of strategies you can use dramastically increases, and its especially needed in that cave I mentioned.

Now, if you find the changing the weapons an useless step, that makes it more "complicated" to play, or that the weapon affinity system is pointless, then I have nothing to say to you other than the opinion of most users here, which disagree with you.But that just goes from taste to taste.I personally like it.