Okay, first impressions based solely on the first mission, so obviously not representative of the game as whole. I figure it might be useful to those with older devices. In terms of performance, I played through the whole of the first mission and experienced no crashes on my 2G iPhone, which I was kinda surprised by seeing all the reports of crashing on older devices. Note that I'm on 3.1.3 however. I didn't experience even any noticeable slowdowns, everything ran smooth, unlike the other SRPG I have, Battle for Wesnoth, which still runs pretty bad on my 2G. However, there have been a few reports of crashes for older devices, and a lot of these seem to be for OS4. There is apparently an auto-save function though, so you should be able to carry on right where you left off. Graphically, the game is pretty good. The illustrations are clean and very well done, as are the portraits for each character. The battle map seems to have quite hi-res textures (that may actually be part of the whole RAM problem, I dunno), but the sprites could be better. Then again, portraying mechas in tiny sprites is always extremely hard. The in-fight cutscenes where your units actually fight in are well done, the illustrations there are also detailed (which is tough when drawing mechas) and clean/hi-res. However, there seems to be just a black background, which makes the fights look a bit dull. The way Fire Emblem did it was to offer either the darkened battle map as a background, or have an illustration which changed depending on the terrain. You fight in a forest, a backdrop of a forest appears in the background, and so on. This could be done in an update. The animations are pretty good, if a little basic. There are a lot of attack animations, but a lot of it seems to be just moving the illustrations as a whole, instead of actually animating it. This is understandable though, as animating whole mechas is again extremely difficult and painstaking. I also may have been spoilt by the animations of the GBA Fire Emblems, which I regard as the best sprite animations I've seen. The gameplay itself seems to be pretty deep, with many factors to consider, such as shield/barrier levels, energy levels, will, etc. with each unit. In the first mission, there wasn't all that much of a tutorial, just a few text boxes showing what each stat meant. I feel it would be been better for a slightly more in-depth tutorial at the beginning, as people might get overwhelmed by the volume of info to consider. Again, this is only the first mission, if there's more of a tutorial later on in the game, feel free to say so.
Is there anyway to turn off combat animations? This should be a mandatory feature for all turned based rts =/ And what causes barrier to happen?
Game Impressions I finally got around to trying this out, and so far very impressed. As I said earlier, it's not really my type of game, I usually feel too bogged down in all the menus and too far removed from the action. Not here. The interface is excellent, the tutorial is straight forward and does just enough to ease you into the game. The game feels deep without feeling overwhelming. The upgrade system is addictive. Everything just feels right as a whole. For once, I'm actually finding the storyline engaging. The translation is a definite downside; grammar errors and oddities are encountered frequently, and it's a shame that in a game with this much polish the developers still can't find a good reason to allot the writing some professional attention. That aside though, this is a class act.
You've got the wrong genre, I'm afraid. I can't think of a single turn based RPG that lets you turn off animations. The barrier comes up automatically based on the power of the attack and your GEAR's barrier value, as well as your current will.
May be, even the SRW:OG on GBA and PS2 can minimize combat animation. But as far as I concern, the current level of "animation" in WoE is fine.
The thing is, with the game being on a mobile device, most people probably don't have all that time watching the animation every time they play. so being able to turn it off is still required.
That's fair enough. It's pretty clear, though, that this game was designed more for hardcore gamers and not as a typical mobile time-waster (this was originally an iPad game, after all). I think the game would lose a lot if you were to touch a button and immediately see a combat result.
Fire Emblem, Every super robot taisen, every sd gundam srpg, advance wars. A game can be hardcore and time efficient as well =) Final fantasy viii and X probably have the longest animations, yet those are probably some of the most casual rpg's imo.
Actually, I wish I can have bigger robot models, with full "hot blood" warcry combat animation we see at SNES and GBA version (well voice over is too much to ask for), plus an option to skip it. I actually prefer the UI of SRW:OG on GBA, it is cleaner and simple.
I stand corrected. I couldn't find a way to skip combat animation in the DS Fire Emblem or Devil Survivor, or any of FFs (as you point out). Advance Wars is more of an TBS than a SRPG, and I'm only familiar with SRT through Wikipedia and YouTube videos. To be fair, from what I can see on YouTube, the combat animations on SRT are a heck of a lot longer than the ones on WoE. (I should add that the budget for one of those animations -- including voice over work -- is probably larger than the entire art budget for WoE). @currymutton: the UI may be simpler and cleaner, but you still have to cycle through your options, which I've never really liked (I've always been more of PC gamer). I find it much easier to directly select options on a touch screen, especially when invoking multiple abilities in one attack. Obviously, that's very much a matter of personal preference.
The combat animations are way longer in srt, but they are all skipable. So the way I play those games is animation on for whenever I got a new weapon or move to see how the animation goes. Then I leave animation off for the fights against the 'pions'. Then turn animation on for the boss of the stage because the animations help on an emotional level imo =P Anyhow the battles seem to drag in a bad way for me, but that could just be my chuggin iphone 3g on crappy ios4... Anybody have a video up of this game on a 3gs or iphone4?
That sound like a good strategy. On the iPad and the 3Gs the animation sequences are short (a few seconds per attack) and they add a lot of suspense to the combat. Will I get hit by that attack? Will I leave the enemy standing for his counter attack? A single hit, even from a peon, can make a big difference in a battle, especially as your GEARs start getting battered. On some of the later stages, that tiny pause for the attack can become extremely tense. Sorry to hear that it drags on the 3G, but I guess I'm not surprised. Perhaps the devs can add a skip animation button for folks with older devices. (In the original iPad release there was no skip button for the cut scenes, and now there is -- the dev has been pretty responsive to player comments).
yep. btw, have ya tried out the new control system? I find it pretty pointless and unintuitive. It's basically an invisible inverted joystick... Don't see the point when the default works so well. It even has a cancel button unlike stupid rogue planet... which also doesn't have a skip animation i think lmao.
Didn't know there was an alternative one, lol. I agree -- pretty pointless, considering how well the tap-to-move approach works.
